Ft. W

FT.W

kbd

“I don’t know but I’ve been told!”
The 16 year old soldiers-in-training only knew the marching chants they’d heard on TV, so they tended to be pretty cliche.
“That fortune favors the bold”

“That this shit is getting old” thought the last young SIT in the column.

Ray tended to put about as much effort into the marching and marching chants as he did into the rest of his mandated military training, just enough to not get yelled at or picked on for being lazy.

He’d been at Ft. George W. Bush (H4) for the last four months, seven days, 6 hours and 7 minutes. His watch could tell him this, but Ray knew without checking it. He could also tell you that meant he had approximately one year, three months and 17 days until his graduation and the option to discharge from the Army of Texas.

That is if there was no draft in place and the uneasy peace with “The Union” ,as it was referred, to remained. If the “Great War” ever came, even SITs as young as Ray would be drafted and turnen into SATs, Soldiers of the Army of Texas. Many people with young sons defected north when President Bush assumed the Presidency of Texas and seceded from the rest of the United States over the federal governments refusal to allow anti-immigration militias to continue to patrol the borders after a series of brutal murders had been secretly filmed and put on the internet, leaving the army short on able bodies to put into battle.

Able bodies was a relative term though. The obesity rate was at about 35% the last time anyone checked, back in 2012, before the secession. It was better among SITs due to the strict exercise regimens, but dealing with 15 years of an almost entirely HFCS and Carbohydrate diet was tough even for Army physiologists with the latest obesity drugs.

When the secession happened, the US had just sent almost every available member of the armed services to Iraq, stop lossing hundreds of 55 year old men. This left very few to force Texas to rejoin the Union, and a peace accord had been forged between the two countries very soon after President Palin took office a few months later.

Ray sat down at the lunch table with his two best friends at the table they always shared in the corner of the lunchroom of what was once the largest of Dallas’ high schools, and like all the high schools in Texas had been renamed Ft. George W. Bush when the military training programs began.

So this is more of a brainstorm than a beginning, but check it.

FTW

From kbd

This is where the last 2 days of my life went. A better picture is hopefully coming.

inspiration:

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Synaptic Stimuli

The Call to Arms by Auguste Rodin

Before:

From kbd

just breathe

JUST BREATHE

Click the picture for .giffy goodness and/or epileptic seizures. (srsly, please don't give yourself a seizure).

dreaming life

are we different people when we're asleep?

Zhuangzi's Butterfly's Dream has always made me think. but today i encountered two things that helped me think about it better, if not that differently.

the first was listening to the audiobook of "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" by H.P. Lovecraft.

it begins:

"I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences—Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism—there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier."

from there it explores the relation of dreams to waking life with the story of a hillbilly named Slater in a mental hospital, i don't want to spoil anything, i'd recommend reading it.

i really loved the introductory description of Slater.

"his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive Colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a little-traveled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more fortunately placed brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of “white trash” in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of native American people." lovecraft at his arugala eating elitist best.


the second thing was Sleep Talkin Man. it's the hardest i've laughed in a long time and great evidence that people are other people when they sleep.

have you ever really looked at a phone?

I mean really looked at it?

And wondered if you're the only person who ever has?

I doubt it.

spirit animals two

this is another of my spirit animals. it's a cat. it's watching some shit go up in flames, but it's inside a stone castle or something. he's around a lot. not sure the time for his advice to me has come yet.

spirit animals one

this is one of my spirit guide animals. mort. he's a penguin (obvs.). he came to me in a dream and said, man, it's fucking cold out here. but i'm a penguin. what was i expecting? you know what i mean?

i know what he means.

he likes to hang out near the water and look at the stars, it's even colder out there away from the penguin herd, but the view makes it worth it.