JamesSavik

There is a key word that you seem to keep coming back too: straight. I hate to be blunt about it but by pursuing straight guys, you are setting yourself up for failure and heartbreak. That officer/subordinate thing is also a snake pit waiting to happen. There is a saying in the oil business: there ain't no sense in pouring money down a dry hole. There's nothing more futile than chasing straight guys. It's like fishing for bass and using the wrong bait.

The quote by Lincoln is disputed but widely distributed.

I heard about that. People don't understand the rural life. Help could be a very long way off. You have to protect yourself.

Characters: Bishop Keilor- leader of the anti-augmented human faction Sebastian Beck- Former Alliance Marine Colonel, Keilor's 2nd. _________________________________________________________________ Free Trader Argus Parking Orbit above Parliament Sebastian Beck was having that same old nightmare again. It always took him back to the war: his war. When a cabal of rouge corporations rebelled against Alliance authority, he was a twenty year old Marine platoon leader. What the history books called the Corporate Wars had been a little slice of hell. The Corporate Wars were a bloody, hard fought affair that lasted three years but his dream always took him back to the final assault on MilTech’s headquarters on Pelenor. The Pelenor system was littered by the debris of the largest naval battle in Alliance history to date. The fleet had slugged it out with the rebels for over a week before they had cleared the space above the planet enough to begin the assault. The transport carrying the 22nd Battalion was the old Normandy. She and her four of her sisters brought the 3rd Regiment into orbit and began a 2 hour bombardment from orbit to smash as much of the planetary defenses as they could find. When the bombardment ended, the assault shuttles immediately began the drop. Even with an escort of fighters and fire support from the ships, four assault shuttles were destroyed and another eight were so badly damaged that once they were down, they would never take off again. Beck’s platoon was lucky. He got down with all five of his squads, a headquarters detachment and a heavy weapons section. That was the last thing that went right all day. Due to heavy fire on the drop, they were 20 kilometers off target. Enemy jamming snarled communications and they couldn’t reach Battalion HQ. To top it all off, they had landed less than a klick from an enemy artillery battery under heavy concealment and were forced to assault it almost as soon as they were dirt side. What they did not know at the time was that Beck’s Bobcats had landed inside the enemy perimeter. Their quick assault and destruction of the artillery battery actually punched a hole in the rebel lines. The enemy counter attack came in battalion strength and was supported by a heavy artillery concentration. The rebels were savage. They were cyborgs: genetically modified humans that were extensively modified with implants, armor and other enhancement. They had no fear and you had to blow them to pieces to keep them down. Even with state of the art Marine body armor and with the best firepower available, it was a horror show. What kept coming back to Beck in his worst nightmares was one of the last assaults on their position. One of the cyborgs was shot up but it wasn’t dead. He turned it over and he could see the humanity in its face. Something was broken inside it. With tears in its eyes it said, “Please, please God, kill me.” Beck and his men fought from the captured enemy fortifications for three days. At the end of the third day, Beck had lost almost half of his men and they were low on everything when they were finally relieved by Captain Keilor and the rest of the company. After the battle, Beck had received an Alliance Cross: the second highest decoration a marine can win. Over drinks Beck, Keilor and many others swore an oath: they would never again allow insane, amoral men to create such monsters. They had worked for years to create a network as a means to accomplish that end. When Beck awoke, drenched in sweat, he saw that he had a message pending. He got out of bed, got a drink of cold water and sat down at his terminal. RESET WARNING: at time 14:22 local Implant #2234 was reset. Fault 22: overload. Beck issued a command: “Computer, establish an encrypted link to the Bishop.” There was a short pause and Bishop Keilor’s face appeared on his screen, “What’s up Seb?” “Maybe trouble, maybe nothing but I thought you needed to know. Marion’s implant reset itself. It looks like she took a good shock when she was putting together the gear to hack the wireless network.” The Bishop frowned and said, “Marion may be trying to be entirely too clever for her own good. What is their status?” Beck replied, “The Mason kid went out and bought a new power cell, some clothes and a few other items. Marion has her system up and is reading the security network and the rest of the teams are in place and ready to go.” The Bishop sighed. “Things are so close now Seb. I think Marion has served her purpose. When this is over she joins her family.” Beck said, “I’ll set it up. See you in orbit.”

Wait till you get a load of what I did with Prompt 268 – The Change

< Oh crap. He's been in THAT part of the internets again. Fappy the Dolphin: Michell Bachmann's gift of sexual and religious confusion to Middle Schoolers everywhere. God knows she has to to her husband in business.

If you are wearing pants, you pass.

If you've ever happened to overhear a bunch of jr high kids waiting for the bus, they could teach sailors a few new words.

Mississippi is deer hunting. So that's why we've all got rifles.

I know why we did it. I watched. Fear drove it. We voted for candidates who would get tough and make a difference. Thirty years ago they said BE AFRAID! We need tougher laws because drugs are out of control. So we bent the constitution a little and it didn't hurt most people. Twenty years ago they said BE AFRAID! We need tougher laws because of perverts are out of control. So we bent the constitution a little and it didn't hurt most people. Ten years ago they said BE AFRAID! We need tougher laws because the terrorists are out of control. So we bent the constitution a little and it didn't hurt most people. Now we've got people looking at our socks and underwear at airports, SWAT teams assaulting houses in the suburbs that have an interesting looking greenhouse and the NSA is listening to our phone sex and... NONE OF THOSE PROBLEMS HAVE IMPROVED. NONE OF THOSE PROBLEMS HAS EVEN BEEN SERIOUSLY ADDRESSED. Like a poor doctor, we attack the symptoms and not the disease. It's time to do something different. It's time to repair the wounds to the constitution. Otherwise we are just another police state that has a nice Constitution that no one really pays any attention. The Soviets were like that. They had a wonderful Constitution but never bothered to read it. We must do something different soon. We once worried about the military-industrial complex. Now we have a prison-industrial complex that consumes human beings, eats money and law enforcement is equipped with armored vehicles! We have lost our way. Many of us are afraid of the horrific potential for repression of the machine that we have built. We must find the courage to find another way or we may all find ourselves at the mercy of a machine that can only be described as the bluntest of instruments.

No wonder the kids are all insane.

"We Will Send Robots to Read the Genomes of ALien Life Forms and replicate them Back on Earth" 10/7/2013 http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/10/we-will-send-robots-into-space-to-read-the-genome-of-alien-life-forms-and-replicate-them-back-on-ear.html In 2010, Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome, became the first to successfully create "synthetic life" using chemicals and inserting DNA into the cell of a bacteria —putting humankind at the threshold of the most important and exciting phase of biological research, one that will enable us to actually write the genetic code for designing new species to help us adapt and evolve for long-term survival. Venter, the scientist famed for his role in sequencing the human genome, has answered a question that lies at the heart of biology: “What is life?” Life, he asserts, is wholly reducible to the “DNA machines” and “protein robots” that operate within cells, and he hopes to prove it by constructing organisms entirely from scratch, detailing an ambitious vision for a future in which custom-made organisms heal the planet, unlock life's origins and extend humanity's reach beyond Earth in his new book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life. Venter believes scientists will soon be designing basic organisms to include features useful in farming or medicine, as well as sending robots into space to read the sequence of alien life forms and replicate them back on Earth: “In years to come it will be increasingly possible to create a wide variety of [synthetic] cells from computer-designed software. The creation of cells from scratch will open up extraordinary possibilities.” Venter predicts in the future machines will be able to analyse the make up of genomes and transmit this through the internet or even space, creating more possibilities in the search for alien life: “The day is not far off when we will be able to send a robotically controlled genome sequencing unit to other planets to read the DNA sequence of any alien microbe life that may be there. If we can . . . beam them back to Earth we should be able to reconstruct their genomes. The synthetic version of a Martian genome could then be used to recreate Martian life on Earth.” ____________________________________________________________________ My Comment: This sounds like someone pitching a bad Sci-Fried channel B-movie. In a world where a scientist has an insanely brilliant yet stupid idea! What could go wrong? Apocalypse ensues, clueless military tries to nuke whatever is eating the world but it doesn't work and we are saved at the very last second by a disgraced scientist's wacky alcoholic nephew pulling something out of his butt that everyone else had previously missed. When will we ever learn: CLONING ALIENS IS A BAD IDEA. JUST SAY NO TO CLONING ALIENS!

There are two distinct periods in Beatles music. The early period was bubble gum and teen idol stuff. It's that later stuff that get's interesting. The critics call it their psychedelic phase. Yellow Submarine, the White Album, Abbey Road and Let it Be doubled down on their innovation. It was exceptionally influential and set the stage and public tastes for further innovation. When the Beatles broke up in 1970, several new bands were brand new: Led Zeppelin, Yes, the Allman Brother and Supertramp all started in 1969. Other bands grew in popularity: the Rollings Stones, Pink Floyd and the Who. It's all very much like a family tree, all branching out from common origin.

There is a whole lot of classical music that I don't like... and then there is Debussy. Maybe you don't care for the Beatles. It doesn't diminish them at all. I'm betting that if you listened to a lot of older music, you would find a lot of it is good and, tons of it are rubbish. Here's some rubbish that was once billed "the new classics":

I can think of a lot of people besides cLooney that I would like to blast into space.

Whether you want it or not.

They don't land on their feet do they? Apparently not.

the Beatles marked a sea change in music. Everything changed. It's not like they were the best musicians ever. They synthesized a lot of the what came before- blues, jazz and rockabilly and created something altogether new.

10 Years Clean & Sober A.K.A What a Long Strange Trip it has Been October 1, 2013 I got this nifty little medallion. It means after years of fucking up with the assistance of various chemicals, I wanted to change the downward trajectory of my life. It means I am no longer the life of the party. I don't have cocaine in my underwear. There's not a bong under the sofa. There aren't any bottles under my bed, in the pantry or under the seat in my truck. It didn't work out the way I planned. I didn't get back everything I lost. I got back what I needed. It doesn't mean I grew up. Awe hell no. Like that will ever happen. It just means that when I fuck up today, it's on me. The chemicals are gone. I don't need them. I am perfectly capable of fucking up in brilliant, unconventional ways all by myself. Now... Go play some good songs loud.

As I live in Mississippi, there are more religious nuts than alligators and we've got a butt load of alligators. No, thank you, I don't want to join your wretched cult doesn't seem to work. Neither does Odin is angered when I stray from the true faith. How do you deal with pushy religious cretins that just know that the only reason you say no is Satan?