Took my family to see Guardians of the Galaxy last night. I had only heard good stuff about it and it was a fun movie. What's funny is I thought it was pretty good while my wife and kids thought it was amazing. My son kept going on about it and my wife said she wanted to go watch it again. Usually with a film like this it would be the other way around and I'd be the one who was more enthusiastic. Funny.
Republican Party: Far RIght Fascist
Democratic Party: Center Right Fascist
Conservative Tory: Far Right Fascist
New Labour: Right Fascist
Liberal Democrats: Center Right Twats
Interception
I had the computer wake me up at six so I'd be ready for the pirates. Of course, when the alarm went off I thought "damned whores" until I looked and was reminded that I'd set the alarm myself. I started coffee, took my shower, and ate a quick breakfast. Huh? Steak, egg, and cheese wrap. A small one.
Then I went downstairs to do a quick inspection of the engines and generators. Thankfully, nothing was broken or being worked on and everything was all right except number seventeen and the port generator. I only did a cursory check looking for red or yellow lights. I usually spend two or three hours down there, sometimes a lot longer if there's trouble, checking readings, but the most time I had then was forty five minutes or so.
I went back to my quarters and checked the holo map; they'd be here in forty five minutes. That would be about quarter after eight.
Destiny was awake by then, so I had coffee with her while she ate and we watched the news. Nothing new in the news. More people dead in orbit around Venus and everyone on the station was sick. Cops had tried to arrest a nest of Pirates in San Diego, but ten cops and two pirates died and fifteen cops and five pirates were hospitalized. The rest got away, more than fifty of them.
About quarter 'til eight I went to the pilot room with a cup and a full pot of coffee, and at eight I did my normal checkouts. Good, everything was okay.
At five after eight I picked up the fone and addressed the PA system. "Strap down, ladies," I announced. "Gravity changes in two minutes and it's going to be dangerous." I masered Bill to change course and gave him coordinates to change to and had the computers lazily turn the boat around and head towards the pirates.
I lifted us to point eight nine gravity, the best I could do on one generator. Better than pirate boats can do, unless they've captured some of ours, which I didn't think was very damned likely.
They took chase when they saw me, and I turned around and headed to Mars on a different course, one that wouldn't take us anywhere near Bill's boat. The droppers were going to be happy, even though it was an hour later when I changed course again to a more direct route towards Mars and dropped it to half a gravity, a bit more than we'd been going before eight but we needed to go that fast to outrun the pirates.
I unstrapped and went back to my quarters, and alerted passenger and cargo that it was safe to unstrap.
"John, you need to talk to Tammy," Destiny said.
"Huh? Why? Talk to her about what?"
"Pirates and droppers!" she said. I didn't get it. "Look," she said, "Tammy has a last ditch weapon; you read her book and didn't get it but it's clear to me what she can do. Tell her about the pirates, I promised you I wouldn't. I know even telling me about any danger was against the book and I understand, but she might wind up saving our lives. I'd say she has an operational need to know."
Women. "You're right, I don't get it," I admitted, "and it looks like you have an idea. Talk to Tammy for me, would you? No restrictions, I trust her. But I still don't get it."
"Christ, John, you can really be dense sometimes but at least you know you can be. Why can't you understand? These women are incredibly dangerous! I can't believe you read that book and missed that!"
"I know they're dangerous, but they're a danger to you and me and themselves and the boat, not the pirates."
"Tammy's a psychologist and an anthropologist, dumbass. She can handle these women!"
She's right, I'm a dumbass. I don't know why she likes me so much. I still didn't get it, though, how in the hell can anybody handle a redeye monster? Christ, tasers have no effect at all and bullets only work if you hit an artery or a vital organ, and there weren't any guns inside the ship, anyway.
"Okay, okay," I said. "I told you, talk to her. I hope we don't get boarded," although I still didn't see what she had in mind.
"Boarded? You said we were safe! She might be our last chance if they actually manage to board," Destiny said. "That's what I was talking about."
"Yeah, usually we're okay but shit happens, you know? I like to be as prepared as I can. They'd need a hell of a lot more boats than are after us to do it, and they can't catch us, anyway."
She kissed me. "What you lack in education you make up for in wisdom," she said. I have no idea what she meant by it. "Look, I'm going to see Tammy, try not to get into any trouble."
I laughed. "Want to watch something when I get... SHIT!" My phone was alerting me; pirates ahead of me. How the hell did that happen?
"Destiny," I yelled, "Pirates ahead!"
She laughed. "Poor pirates!" she said. I didn't get it.
I went to the pilot room, calling Bill over the maser with my fone. "Bill, we got pirates, see 'em?" I didn't know how far away he was, and hoped he was too far away to hear me or to get picked up on the pirate's radar; our boats are stealthy but can be seen if you're close enough. "Go to zero gravity if you can hear me and they haven't spotted you so you won't leave an ion trail, I'm gonna nuke the sons of bitches."
I switched to the PA system. "Strap down, ladies, weird gravity almost immediately. We don't need nobody getting hurt today."
Rather than changing my heading away from them, I kept on course to intercept. Yeah, I learned that word in boat training. And yeah, this was strictly against company regulations, but fuck regulations. I was in too much danger from my cargo to have to worry about a bunch of God damned pirates.
Ten or fifteen seconds later I got a "roger" from Bill, he must have been pretty damned close. He should have been way away by now, did that damned fool follow me or was it orbital mechanics? Orbital mechanics is way over my head. Ten minutes later the pirates were coming towards me. I grinned. Poor bastards... die, you motherfuckers! I dropped my atomic right when it would be in the middle of them, and made the boat's portholes, which were all in the bow on the ceiling, turn black. Not sure how this shit works but it works. I plan on going to college.
Gravity got a little weird, of course, but not near as much as I thought I'd have to make it.
That bunch was easy, the blast from that one atomic got all of them... but there would be more, I was sure of it. There were half a dozen pirate gangs and they all hated each other, but they hated us so much more that sometimes they would band together. This was probably one of them times.
Next: Boarded!
Sneakers
I woke up a little early, maybe ten or fifteen minutes after seven. I started coffee and did my morning bathroom... oh, shut up, head, bathroom, what difference does it make? "Head" is a dumb name for a room you take a bath in, anyway, almost as stupid as bow, stern, port, and starboard. At least those make sense in an ocean ship even though they don't on a space ship. "Head" don't even make sense in an ocean boat. What? Well, that's a good reason they started calling them that but even ocean boats weren't like that was for over five hundred years back.
Anyway, I was in the dining room drinking coffee and watching a zero gravity baseball game... What? You never watched zero G baseball? It's kind of like zero gravity golf except there's more to baseball; it has teams throwing and catching a ball that's bigger than a golf ball while people "run" (I guess that's what you'd call it, even though they were flying) from one pole to the next and golf is one on one and you just hit the ball into a hole. The sticks are similar, a zero gravity golf club isn't anything like an Earth-side golf club. Baseball bats are really similar to ground-side bats, though.
I can't believe you guys never watched zero G baseball or golf. I like them almost as much as zero G football. Anyway, when I was watching the game Destiny came in the dining room wearing a robe. "What are you watching?" she asked.
"Zero gravity baseball, St. Louis against Chicago. Six to two Chicago's favor, they're in the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded. If McMurtrey doesn't get on base the game's over, and probably will be anyway unless he hits a home run, and home runs are really rare in zero G. If he does hit a homer I'll miss the end of the game because I have to go to work at eight." Of course, if he'd hit a single the game would still be in play unless they threw anybody else out...
She poured a cup of coffee and McMurtrey struck out. I switched it to the news and we had corned beef and cheese omelettes for breakfast. The epidemic on the Venus station was worse and three people had died from it. It was completely quarantined and supply ships couldn't even dock, they had to leave supplies floating in space and somebody from the station or maybe a robot, I don't know, the news didn't say, somehow they had to get them in the space station.
At eight I went to the pilot room to do my eight o'clock chores. It turned out to be a light morning, the computers were all agreeing and we didn't need a course correction. All the droppers were asleep except the German girl, who was in the commons eating. The generators were fine, except that one of the two wouldn't work. all the engines were fine except seventeen, which wasn't going to be lit before the Mars overhaul, since it destroyed two mechs and damned near ruined the last generator. There weren't even any robots working on any of the other ones.
We had an early lunch, ham sandwiches and... yeah, I was just checking to see if you guys were paying attention, we really had Italian roast beef sandwiches and chips, and Destiny put a movie on.
We was watching the movie when I saw a light on the holographic map again. Huh? An old twentieth century western, Rawhide I think. Short movie, maybe forty minutes or so. It was in two dimensions, like I already said there wasn't no hologram movies back then. Hell, they didn't even have lasers and holograms need lasers. Haven't you guys been paying attention? I mentioned that show a bunch of times already. This one didn't even have colors, just shades of gray. Weird. A lot of old movies were like that, I mentioned them before, too. Why? What difference does it make?
The map was a holo of nearby... huh? Maybe five or six light minutes. Come on, guys, it's standard, haven't you ever been on one of these boats? Anyway, it was a holo of any bodies close by and any EMF sources, didn't I say that earlier?
Shit, pirate traffic! More pirates this far out? I sure didn't expect that! We were two weeks from Mars and the company fleet wouldn't be accompanying us for another week, which was twice as far as pirates normally went. I didn't expect anything but false alarms until we were almost to the fleet.
"Sorry, hon, gotta work," I said.
"Is this movie boring you?"
"No, keep it paused until I get back. Look, hon, I have to go, there's pirates. This is serious and I have work to do." I kissed her and went into the pilot room and looked at the holos there.
For once I caught a break, but unfortunately at some other boat captain's expense. It wasn't our company, I don't remember what company, I didn't really care. Anyway, the pirates thought he was me and started chasing him.
I masered Bill, hoping he was close enough that the signal would be strong enough to be understood. "Wild Bill, John here. Pirates ahead, go around if you have enough batteries. They think some other company's ship is me. I'm slowing down until they engage, then I'm hauling ass."
I addressed the women. "Ladies, it would be a really good idea to strap in right now because gravity might get weird." By now they knew what I meant when I said gravity was going to get weird. Unless they were short on drops and they probably wouldn't even feel it then anyway.
I reduced gravity, which probably pissed the whores off. Good, payback is a bitch, bitch. They're monsters, pains in my ass. Glad Destiny and Tammy was there, I'd probably have been dead by then, along with everybody else. They'd have killed me and then each other.
I went back to Rawhide. "That didn't take long," Destiny said, unharnessing. "And is gravity less?"
"Yeah."
"The droppers won't like it."
"They wouldn't much care for pirates, either," I said. "Pirates would make them slaves if they could live long enough without drops. There's pirates chasing some other poor son of a bitch who they think is me. He's hauling ass and they're hauling ass and me slowing down helps us. When I see a battle I'll haul ass. I masered Bill, he's behind us, hope he can get around."
And right then Bill answered. "What should we do, old buddy? I'm on batteries! The best I can do is a quarter gravity."
"Arm all your shit and we'll try to sneak past when they're attacking that other company's boat."
Bill had seen me in action and was probably grinning right then; he was too far for video, at least with our equipment. "Poor pirates!" he said.
"Fuck all them God damned pirates," I growled. God damned sons of bitches. I hate pirates.
My holo showed more EMF; a battle. "Hit it, Bill," I said. "I'll follow."
"Roger."
Destiny asked how long it would take.
"I don't know," I said. "You need to strap back down." I kissed her and went back to the pilot room.
I gradually increased power while Bill gave his boat all it had, which wasn't much, being on batteries and all. We were doing maybe point two gravities, if that. I followed. I saw, thankfully, that they were still battling the boat they thought was mine and I almost kind of felt sorry for the poor bastard the pirates were after because they thought he was me.
Lucky pirates. For now. I was pissed and I hate pirates anyway. Yeah, getting pissed is unprofessional but professionals went to college and I ain't, so fuck you, I'm retiring anyway. Now shut the fuck up before I just walk out of here, there ain't nothing you can do to me.
Yeah, asshole? Prove it.
Okay, I accept your fucking apology. Now shut the fuck up and let me finish this God damned thing so I can go buy a ring for Destiny. Where was I?
Oh yeah, me and Bill was trying to sneak past the God damned pirates and get to Mars alive. Anyway, I told everybody it was safe to unstrap. It was all right for quite a few hours, but they must have finally boarded that other company's boat, and no doubt killed its Captain and commandeered his ship for their own use. Poor bastard, I felt sorry for him.
It looked like me and Bill was okay, at least for now. I went back to Destiny and my movie.
Huh? Christ, guys, what does it matter? It was a show about driving cattle across the ancient American west. And God damn it, I'm hungry and I'm getting some God damned lunch. Excuse me.
What? You're all hungry, too? Well, okay, a hamburger and brogs and a glass of Shike will do for me. Yeah, with caffeine. Thanks.
I put a plug in my ear to hear the pirate traffic without bothering Destiny and still be able to hear the show myself. Huh? Really? You never heard of it before? Jees, guys, a lot of the greats that shaped culture for well over half a century had a hand in it. The art form was in its infancy then, barely half a century old. Go watch it, there's a series of 'em, just pull the library up on your tablet, it's there. I guess Destiny's wearing off on me, she's big on movie history. Actually, she likes history, period.
Anyway, when that was over Destiny put a really silly one on, an old two dimensional movie that was hilarious. I don't think I ever laughed at puns before. I don't remember the movie's name, sorry, but there was one place where a woman wearing a dress is on a ladder with a man looking up saying "nice beaver." She says "Thanks, I just had it stuffed!" and then hands the guy a stuffed animal, a beaver a taxidermist had worked on. I laughed my ass off all the way through -- at least, until the pirates realized they'd boarded the wrong boat and knew I was still alive.
Shit. I'd hoped they'd been fooled. They must not have been. I wonder how they figured it out.
They knew I was alive, wanted me dead, and had an extra ship, full of whatever cargo the boat was carrying. I hoped it wasn't weapons. I'm glad it wasn't one of ours, not just because I work for the company but because we have the best boats and especially the best weapons. Guys from the other companies are always bitching about their crappy boats and especially about their crappy weapons, but they get paid better than we do and they say the robots on their boats make okay coffee.
At the rate they were traveling they'd catch up to us in maybe twelve hours. We were in trouble. I was in for some serious trouble, because if I lived through this I was going to be in some deep trouble with the company because of what I had in mind.
I got back on the PA. "I'm sorry, ladies, but everyone is confined to quarters because of an emergency that's come up. You will need to strap down again at seven forty five tomorrow morning, I'll let you know over the PA when we need to strap down. If you get hungry, call the computer and it will send food to you."
The doorbell rang, it was Tammy. "John, I have to be able to treat the droppers," she said.
"You're not confined, that's just to help keep them under control until we can speed back up. Just pretend you sneaked out or something. Have a robot deliver drops if you can."
"What's the emergency?" she asked.
"I can't talk about it right now."
"Okay, I'll adjust the dosage so they'll sleep through most of the low gravity," she said, and left.
We watched the end of the movie but I didn't laugh much after that. It was still early but I was going to need a good night's sleep.
The last several chapters are the latest chapters written, with the exception of the book's final two chapters, so they're pretty short. Most of the rest have been pretty heavily edited already; edits usually add words. I keep track of progress by recording a daily word count, when it gets to single digits or below I'll just count changes.
Got my main machine running with the Nvidia card again. I crack myself up. It seems to be working o.k. so far. We'll see how long it lasts.
Being in Arizona this summer was nice. It was crazy hot of course. That's the norm. But it has been a while since I'd been able to really enjoy the desert. I did miss it. I love the big sky, the cactus, the beautiful sunsets and the smell. We had some storms and there is a very unique odor that is a wet Sonoran desert. I love it. It brought back a lot of memories from my childhood.
Our family got to go to a Diamondback's game and timed it very well as they won, which is something they aren't doing a lot this season. It was a lot of fun for my son, who is a big baseball fan. In fact, a friend let him be a part of time with a batting coach once a week while we were home. That was very generous and was great for my boy as well. There is little league in Hungary but not the same level of resources as in the US.
We went out shooting one day. What could be more American than that? It was a lot of fun for my kids. A very strange thing has happened while we were away. It is pretty much impossible to buy
I have a lot of friends who are gun enthusiasts and I don't know if my kids appreciated the variety of weapons they got to try out. They did have fun - though I couldn't afford to do that too often, even if we did still live there. I always enjoyed archery a bit more. No need for hearing protection, less expensive over time and no cleaning when you are done. But still the fun challenge of hitting a target from a distance.
We spent a week up in the mountains. I took the family to Woods Canyon Lake, up on the rim. It was super, super busy. The campgrounds were all full and the lake was pretty crowded. We were driving out and my son says, "It would be cool to see an elk." I said, "You wont see any around here today. Way too many people around for that." Not two minutes later here comes an elk with a big beautiful rack just wandering on through. We pulled over and watched it for a while. I'm guessing it's become accustomed to people. That's not good - but it was cool to see.
I think next time we visit Arizona (probably in 2 or 3 years) we'll hike Havasupai and the Grand Canyon. The kids will be old enough and it will be a good chance for us to do something like that together before the kids start leaving the nest.It is hard for me to think that we've come that far.
Oh - back to the gun thing quickly - my kids were worried about getting shot at all the time. It's funny how crazy that aspect of American life is when you've stepped outside of it for a while. I had to keep reassuring them that they were not in constant danger of being gunned down. They hear about shootings in the US so much, and it's something that pretty much never happens in Hungary. I didn't realize how much they'd thought about it though or how it worried them until we got home. I used to be a big pro gun ownership guy but not so much any more.
That said - I don't plan on getting rid of the guns I do own there. If we moved back I would teach my kids to be more proficient with them. As long as the laws are the way they are I think it's better to take that approach. And it was nice for the times we were in areas where I was concerned about animals. I didn't normally carry but I did in a few situations where I knew we might run across javelina and some other critters.
I don't think there's much else of note. It was great to see friends and family but I don't need to record any of those details here. Oh - movies. We say Edge of Tomorrow. Pretty good. Also went and saw the latest Transformers. Not the best but still delivered what I want most out of that kind of movie - giant robots fighting. I watched Pacific Rim on the flight over. That movie really delivered. What else did I watch on planes? Grand Budapest Hotel. Rather charming I thought. Fiennes is an amazing actor. The new Captain America which I thought was pretty week. I can't remember what else I watched. I know at least one other movie. You know what else? Americans love to talk about movies. We really do. Not necessarily to any depth but more recommending them to one another, recounting favorite scenes, etc. It's funny how often we do that. I wish I could remember the other one I watched on the plane. My kids watched Mr. Peabody and Sherman. I was napping then but caught a bit of it on their screens. OH - when we saw Transformers they had a trailer for The Giver. I just read that a couple months ago. Judging by the trailer they are pulling a Running Man. The movie will vaguely resemble the book - sort of. But all amped up hollywood style.
All right - back to work.
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644037)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644039)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644041)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644043)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644045)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644047)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644049)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644051)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644053)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644055)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644057)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644059)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644061)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644063)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644063) 15
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644075)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644077)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644079)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644081)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644083)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644085)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644087)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644089)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644091)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644093)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644095)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644097) 12
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644113)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644115)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644117)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644119)
(#121 is by a real user who happened to post within this barrage)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644123)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644125)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644127)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644129)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644131)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644135)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644137)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644139)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644141) 13
Someone posted an ad to Slashdot, it looks like 40 times, in 3 batches.
* How did they get the system to accept 12-15 posts a minute from one account?
* In looking at the message ID's, I thought maybe it involved every other post being to somewhere else, such as to foil the moronic "slow down, cowboy" filter. But then I looked at the user ID's between these two accounts, and apparently
* Not new news, as RG got spoofed some time ago, but it was an unfortunate font choice that was made by
* The spoofer even replicated the bio text from the real account's bio. This is pretty cold to poor old real jellomizer.
* I don't really have any way of telling how recently these accounts were created. But my what is maybe the non-subscriber's view of their comment histories shows only the spamming of two articles, today and Friday. And yet, they have "achievements". One they both have is a +5 score comment achievement. Which I guess would, of course, be all too easy to quickly garner if having just read
* The newest account in the system as of this moment is #3781073, which is 55,061 account numbers away from this person's first here. I can't think of any way to estimate how many account creations
Anyways, surely the system should disallow such things. Points to how
p.s. I wonder how said spammer picked that jello person to spoof.
' LIZA
Where'd you get your subscribers?
JERRY
I put an ad on a computer bulletin
board. I log on at the library so
I can't be traced.
LIZA
Well, I've been tracking them down
all morning.
JERRY
You haven't been bothering them,
have you?
LIZA
They're dead. Four out of five
anyhow. All in the last 24 hours.
One car accident, two heart
attacks and a stroke.
JERRY
Jesus... It's my fault. They drew
a black line over me and now I'm
passing it on.
(realizes)
I'm passing it to you, too.
LIZA
I'll be fine. Let's worry about
Henry Finch. P.O. Box in St.
Louis. He's the last on the list.
I haven't been able to reach him
yet.
JERRY
Maybe you better not try... I
worked so hard to keep quiet.
Like a mouse. I should have
realized.
LIZA
Realized what?
JERRY
Henry Finch. That they monitor
everything. That it was only a
matter of time. And now four
people are dead.
Liza reaches into her pocket, takes out the newsletter.
LIZA
Elaborate on 'they,' okay?
JERRY
There are all kinds of groups, all
kinds of initials. But they're
all part of two warring factions.
One: families that have held
wealth for centuries.
They want one thing. Stability.
Group Two: the boat rockers.
Eisenhower's military industrial
complex. They want instability.
It's a trillion dollar a year
business. When there isn't a hot
war, they make a cold one.
LIZA
Cold War's over, Jerry.
JERRY
So now they feed us terrorists.
To create fear. How much do you
think an airport security system
goes for? Then multiply it by
every airport in the country.
LIZA
And you think Group One is at war
with Group Two.
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/conspiracy-theory.html
Arena
I woke up about seven, maybe a little earlier. I laid there a while before I got up and started coffee.
I did my business in the head, and Destiny was just getting up. We had eggs over easy, sausage and toast. It was hard to hold the fork; I had blisters on my fingers from the plug on that stupid damned robot.
They were trying to worry people even more about the Venus virus; someone had died. One of our competitors had a fire in its factory in Peru and somebody died in that, too.
Someone tried to assassinate Britain's Prime Minister and their bobbies put seventy three bullets in the would-be assassin, as well as a few more bullets in some innocent bystanders. Why in the hell can't cops shoot straight?
I was hoping today would be a lot lighter than yesterday. At least all I had to inspect was downstairs. The eight o'clock readings were normal so I sauntered down the hall to the damned stairs. Lek and Tammy were in the commons drinking coffee and reading. I marveled at the job Tammy was doing with Lek, Lek was really coming along.
As I walked past I heard Tammy telling Lek "Your eyes are really getting bloodshot. Better have a dose before you start hurting and I can't help you." I didn't hear what was said after, I was just passing by.
Two droppers were arguing in the hallway so I called Tammy, and she said she'd take care of it.
Down my damned stairs everything was okay, except another robot was trying to plug itself in to seventeen, but was too stupid to know it had to unplug the plug I'd cut from the burned up robot. I logged it and trudged back up those damned stairs.
Tammy'd had to spray one of the two I'd called her about, and the other one was being treated in sick bay for two black eyes. Luckily, Tammy hadn't been injured. Destiny and her was just coming out of the commons as I passed. "Rough one," Tammy said. "I'm sure glad my bottle worked!"
"How did it happen?" I asked.
"The one in sick bay had stolen her drops. The one I sprayed was almost redeyed. Quite frightening, but it turned out all right. Maybe Karen will think twice about stealing drops from now on after that, but I really doubt it."
"Those poor women," Destiny said.
"No kidding," I replied. "I wonder what time it is?"
"I don't know," she said, "but my stomach says it's lunch time. Want to have lunch with us, Tammy?"
"Sorry, I can't. I have a paper to work on and don't have time to eat right now, I want to get a passage written down before I forget what I was going to write."
We went home and had fritter dogs and Turkish potatoes. I'll bet there's no way at all to tell that God damned stupid computer to make roast turkey and Turkish spuds.
We had the news on as we ate. The closing of the Mexican hog farm, a huge operation that used a lot of human labor, caused a ripple effect through the Mexican economy and its two biggest banks went bankrupt. The closing of the banks had caused riots and Mexico had to get help from the American military. There was talk of Mexico becoming part of the United states. Most Mexicans wanted it, but few Americans did because of fears of what it would do to their economy.
Tammy put on a short, really stupid twentieth century two dimensional science fiction movie called Arena about a spaceship's captain who has to fight a giant sentient lizard with a really bad costume. It was so stupid it was almost funny. Traveling faster than light was dumb enough, but the rest of the show was even dumber. No robots and everything looked really primitive, especially the costume the actor playing the lizard was wearing.
We watched another Emergency; that one was pretty good. Then a short western, I forgot what it was called but it was a gray movie about a nineteenth century rancher and his young son.
We ate some Irish sandwich Destiny said was an ancient Irish working man's lunch, with French fries and cole slaw and she put on a modern holo named Yesterday's Promise. Then we cuddled to some old classical blues and went to bed.
This is the newest chapter, so it's also the least edited chapter which is why it's quite a bit shorter than the following chapters. They've been edited extensively.
There are 11 more chapters.
I had one package that caused some warning but it was really out of date so I just removed it. It was VLMC and I'm not going to be using it on that machine anyway.
I finally got my taxes done. Life was so crazy this year that I just kept not getting around to it. Which is stupid on my part as I'm just leaving money sitting with the government that I could be using. I had a really odd thing this year, my Foreign Earned Income Exclusion was smaller than it has been in the past. I don't know why- but I doubt it's worth the time and cost to find someone who would know. With 3 kids and our income not too high, my tax liability is very, very low. And so it's all pretty small amounts involved.
We've been back a couple weeks now and I'm back to the weight I was before we went to the US. For that 6.5 weeks we visited we ate out a lot. There were a lot of places we missed that we wanted to eat at. And of course lots of good Mexican. That's pretty much impossible to get here. And in general we just consumed more. I think the first time we went out, they gave me my huge glass of diet coke that they would refill the moment it was empty and I must have gone through like 6 of those before we had even finished the appetizer. So funny.
Anyway, if we lived back home we wouldn't eat like we did when just visiting. The one thing that really struck me is how much more expensive fast food has become in the 3 years since we left. It used to be around 20 bucks for our family to go to McDonalds/Burger King. Now it's more like 30.
Of course gas and milk still felt ridiculously cheap compared to here in Hungary. I know why gas costs so much here, not sure why milk is so much. Probably due to the same reasons though - government choices. Just not sure which government, in which direction. Are Hungarian dairy prices inflated or does the USDA (or whoever manages dairy in the US) keep US milk prices artificially low? It was also fun to be able to buy milk in a gallon container. Buying it a liter at a time is a pain. Our kids go through them quickly.
That's all for today, more tomorrow.
UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker
