Wow - North Korea agrees to suspend nuclear weapons tests and uranium enrichment
POSTED BY: pizmobeach
UPDATED: Monday, January 5, 2026 02:41
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I think the point bein made Jack - was that most people, even when they do the most outrageous things, think they're the good guy, that they are in the right, because they need to believe that to keep goin.
Factually, they're right less than half the time.
Part of the REASON I self-identify as a villain is cause I know damn well I ain't one of the good guys.
But, yanno, I'm better than most of the bad guys. 
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Sometimes thinking like a villain is called for. If you can think like them, two steps ahead of their villany, then you can outsmart them.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Quote:
Originally posted by RionaEire:
Jack, I'm sorry about your uncle, it sounds like you two were really close and had a special relationship and cared about each other a lot. He sounds like he was a nice and caring person.
I guess he just couldn't do it anymore. :(
Hey Riona,
Thanks :smile"
Gary really was a great guy. He had infinite potential but was plagued his entire life by his own demons. He never once sought help for his issues, and I really believe that he was just in a lot of physical pain from the abuse he gave his body at the end (possibly/probably numerous undiagnosed cancers), on top of all of his spiritual/psychological pain he suffered through his entire life. This was actually his 3rd suicide attempt, his first being when he was only 8 years old. The second, only one week before my parents got married.
I've never met anybody in my life as intelligent and as book read as he was. His mind was like tack paper that remembered quotes and facts he'd read 40 years ago. He would have been a regular on Jeopardy for months if he ever had the desire to.
He was also very well aware of how flawed he was, and although I'm sure he didn't project his feelings about himself to anyone else, he really cared about me and most of his "life lessons" were really just how not to live like he did.
He loved Simon and Garfunkle, and I did too. I'd say the song that would be his theme song was "I am a Rock"
Those were some really good times. Just chilling, watching Lost and Survivor and listening to great music and bullshiting with the smartest person I've ever known.
I sure wish I got those smart genes. My old man has them too. Maybe they skip a generation?
It's so sad that only his family came to Gary's funeral. When his brother died 4 years later of cancer, my other Uncle Carm who got me started playing guitar, I was amazed at how many people showed up. In the end, he was very much a loner as well, but there were so many people there that the pews were filled and people were standing out in the lobby. He was a journalist. I had no idea how many people he touched in his life. Too bad his OCD became so chronic that he pushed them all away the last few decades of his life.
I'm a lot like both if them in many ways. All I can do is try to emulate as much of their positive traits and kill off any of their negative traits inside of me. Carm's dream for years was to move into a nice Indiana town and get a job at a local paper here. I'm not a journalist, but I'm living the other half of his dream now. I wish he were still here to see it.
Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I think the point bein made Jack - was that most people, even when they do the most outrageous things, think they're the good guy, that they are in the right, because they need to believe that to keep goin.
Factually, they're right less than half the time.
Part of the REASON I self-identify as a villain is cause I know damn well I ain't one of the good guys.
But, yanno, I'm better than most of the bad guys.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
Hey Frem,
Of course, you're right.
The true definition of crazy is somebody that is totally mad but doesn't even question their own sanity.
Factually speaking though, only hindsight is 20/20. That, and history is written by the winners. Had Germany won in WWII, what we all read as "fact" in Social Studies in America today would be a completely different book from front to back.
You are NO villain though. Perhaps you have made some choices that you lose sleep over, or you even do things you're not proud of when you know nobody is watching, but in the end, at the very least it's a wash.
You make things happen. Good things. In the end, although others might not agree with the tactics, I believe the ends justify the means.
I feel like you many days too man... and I don't do 1/10th the shit you do for oth
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If little ones try to commit suicide that young then they probably have some notable mental health challenges. Fighting a war probably compounded it because that can bring about more mental health issues sometimes. My friend's niece just joined up and she already has childhood PTSD, I wish that she could tell them and they could intentionally give her assignments that aren't where fighting will be going on, there's lots of things she could do that aren't fighting and still be in the military, desk jobs, disaster relief etc.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You make things happen. Good things. In the end, although others might not agree with the tactics, I believe the ends justify the means.
I don't - that's a trap, you fall into that and eventually the ends BECOME the means.
See, with me, sure I play rough or dirty, but I don't claim moral high ground or shift the blame, nor do I insist that others assist or agree, cause those sins, those are *MY* sins, and mine alone.
And should I ever have to answer for them in the hereafter, well, that's between me and my hereafter, right ?
But justify it ?
Oh hell no - DO it, sure, but that whole justification/rationalization thing is pure bunk, and half of how people wind UP doing evil in the name of good, so I keep my eyes open and acknowledge the ill I do, to do less would demean any good that happens to come of it.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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I get you Frem.
What you say makes perfect sense to me actually, and I really appreciate that you suffer the blows that your own conscience deals to you for things you need to do every day. That really must be one massive boulder you carry on your shoulders.
Some of the scariest people the world has ever seen have taken tactics that you have but were so convinced that they were the "good guy" while doing them that their actions escalated to the point of insanity and megalomania when their conscious no longer played a factor.
I'm not justifying your actions. I'm just saying that I appreciate them. I realize that when you're fighting battles for a good cause against some of the worst of humanity that you probably find yourself having to sink to levels even lower than even they comfortably tread on a daily basis.
My only question to you, and this is not a challenge, but given my new understanding of your world and how you see yourself, I'm curious about posts we had together years ago. Although I'm too young to have followed Hunter Thompson when he was young, I was a big fan of his work in the last half-decade of his life. You "poo pooed" that idea because of some closed door thing he allegedly was involved in.
I'm just wondering if A) Maybe he just got himself over his head in the DARK BS to get a story (even if he found himself enjoying it or not), kind of like a lot of undercover Narcs end up being junkies themselves.... and B) If maybe the reason that he killed himself was because demons of the past that had been haunting him for years had finally caught up to him.
I know you're not too fond of him, but forgive me for saying, you're the one person in my life that I converse with on a semi-regular basis that, at least in my mind, is very Hunteresque.
Take that as a compliment or an insult, but however you take it realize that it was meant 100% as a compliment.
Keep fighting the good fight. 
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
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Hey Riona,
Childhood PTSD, huh? I've never even heard of that. Funny, since I'm probably a survivor of it. I was never physically abused, by either my real parents or my step-parents, but up until I moved out of my Mom and Step-Dad's house when I was 19, I walked on eggshells constantly. Even though I was a usually straight A student, a wrestler, and i didn't do drugs and rarely drank all through high school, any little mistake I'd make along the way was blown into epic proportions constantly. I had to be the most grounded kid in my high school that had a 3.8 GPA year after year.
I think half the reason I got drunk 7 nights a week and started getting high all the time after I got my first apartment was because if I had to do all that time, I was finally going to commit a crime.
There were several 5 year or more periods between 16 and 29 where I didn't talk at all to either set of "rents". It feels good to be able to be a part of everyone's life again. Part of that is because they've all grown up and lightened up, another part of that is because I'm completely self sufficient and have no need to every come back to them and ask them for anything. It's liberating to know in the back of my own mind that I can just tell any one of them to "F-Off" if I even sense they're going to encroach me. They're at that stage of their life where they definitely need me more than I need them.
I'm going on 33 now though and not married. I can't even see that happening in the near future. Even being as successful as I am compared to my Uncles, and most Americans, I kind of think that "Lone Wolf" is my future as well.
I don't trust anybody, particularly women. That's not a knock on the female of the species... it's just an observation and confession of my own neurosis that I can't seem to get a hold of.
So I just go on, burying myself deep in this project, or that cause, and every year I get older.
At least my tombstone will be able to say that I really made something of myself, and a large part of my activity was helping other people. I may not have 400 people coming to my funeral like Carm did, but I'd be surprised if the turnout wasn't at least 100 or more.
I still believe that I'm prepping myself to marry a young beautiful girl with a great kid who needs a leg-up like my Dad did in his second marriage when he was 40 and she was 20. She is the sweetest person I know, and both her own kid and their shared kids are my brothers and I love and respect the hell out of them and what they're making of themselves in their life with their full rides to collage paid.
I couldn't bear bringing my own child into the world we live in today, but if I could be the cornerstone for a beautiful girl and mentor her otherwise fatherless child into being a successful man like my old man did with my brothers, I can't imagine a better life than that....
As far as your friend's niece goes, it's a pity that it's 2012 today. 1999 or 2000, she probably wouldn't have passed the mental health examination to be allowed in. Today they're desperate.... Short of taking amputees, Meth Addicts, or starting a new Draft, they'll pretty much take anyone who will sign the dotted line. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in 10 years they even stopped drug testing randomly.
UPS hires anyone. That's because the turnover rate is so high and if they shot for the stars with every new hire but only offered them 2 bucks over minimum wage for some of the shittiest hours and shittiest pay of any job in the world they'd never hire anyone. It won't be long until Uncle Sam doesn't give two shits that his new recruits smoke 2 packs a day and smoek an ounce of weed in a month.
Unfortunately for her, she's Government property for the next 4 years (and maybe more). If anything she's having to do gets to be too much for her, the best solution she could hope for is an honorable discharge for mental health issues.
I hope you all tried to dissuade her from going in. I also hope nobody in the family berates her if she gets
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Well, my annoyance with Gonzo comes of the one time it really DID get too weird for him, and while this is gonna get maybe woo-woo weird, all but the tiniest portion of this is documented fact.
See, back then there was the whole "Snuff films are a myth" thing going on, and consider, consider well that organ smuggling, the hellcamps, abuse within the catholic church, a lot of things were considered myth and urban legend in order to avoid dealing with the ugly and horrifying realities of them.
And so Gonzo found himself in the Franklin-Boystown-Bohemian Grove pipeline somewhere, probably introduced to the principals by one Russel "Rusty" Nelson, Rusty was the photographer who took pictures at their little kid-humping initiation parties, what you call "The Hook", as how they got them "on-side" and in the game, thus ensuring the ruling cartels lock on them.
I think that Gonzo went into the matter with less than noble intentions, since there was a $150,000.00USD bounty out for "proof" of a snuff film as a mock on the idea, and consider that in hindsight some of the folk making the loudest noise about such things being urban legend were at least tenatively connected to this - plus Gonzo being Gonzo, the strangeness and weirdness of it drew him in like a moth to flame.
What, exactly happened at that point is a matter of dispute, as Gonzo never discussed it beyond the vaguest and oblique references, Rusty flat lied about his involvement and when placed at the scene by another witness (who wound up dead with his tongue ripped out) changed his story often enough no one can believe anything he says - and then it all went to hell for the Franklin-Boystown-BG pipeline, although it was effectively kept out of the public eye and the business end was later picked up by Jack Abramoff resulting in a new cartel, which when thrown down was allegedly picked up by Erik Prince and his cultie-cronies, but no one has hard evidence on them as yet.
(Note: notice how the press avoided mentioning the "prostitutes" Abramoff was providing weren't old enough to drive ?)
My best guess is Gonzo got out while the getting was good and tried to act as if it never happened, but he knew SOMETHING, as both the guy who wound up dead and Rusty placed him at the scene...
And then out of the blue many years later Rusty gets pulled in and questioned, then dissapeared, I mentioned it here when it happened as a matter of fact - and almost immediately thereafter Gonzo committed "suicide" - although how he did so with a gun that had a full mag, no round in the chamber and a clean, unfired bore kind of mystifies me.
My best guess there is that he was actively cooperative in being suicided for reasons of his own, cause I can't see Gonzo going down easy if he had gun in hand, unless he wanted to, wasn't his style yanno ?
I continued to hope for a while he had a death-box, or some kind of contingency in which that would come out after he was gone, but apparently he took the truth to his grave, however awful it was - and it annoys me cause Gonzo never really backed down on anything, EXCEPT that.
I actually am quite fond of him, it's just that I feel he choked on that one, and he shouldn't have.
I'll also have you know that since, I have picked up the entire Vertigo run of Transmetropolitan and very much enjoyed it, I looooooved that rant in "Monstering" when he just goes ballistic (again) about hounding the bastards who hound us.
Oh, and regarding your aloofness - I suspect you might wanna run the Myers-Briggs again, cause I'd lay odds your life experiences and introspection since have moved you closer to ISTP.
Just, some of the things you've said trip the same switches for me I think they do for you.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Quote Babbling-Jack: "these 'people' are animals."
I guess the foolish and immature among "them" think the same of us.
They've had over 50 years to see how cruel we are. So who can blame them?
I completely agree with Anthony. Disrespecting them demeans us.
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We're past that Oonjerah,
I've already said that I will refrain from refering to them as animals.
I believe I even posted another quote in my babbling about "if I was going to spend so many of my years as a kid being treated like a criminal, I was finally going to do the crime", or something along those lines, so I get what you're saying.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
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