Confessions of a student activist

The time would come, I heard my fellows say,
To rise above the mediocrity;
Though knowing not the hour nor the day
When it would come, I wanted to agree -
To stand against the armies of the night
Whose persecution complex, in this game,
Has long been cultivated that it might
Best keep the Reichstag oiled for the flame.
But I am small, and dare not stand alone,
Nor, when the endgame comes at last, to fold;
No David, I, with sling and well-cast stone,
Nor Robin Hood with bow of burning gold.
What fellowship have I, to help regain
My life lost on the corner of Biscayne?

In case I was wondering...

Coming soon to a continuity near you

One of these years, maybe this year, I wanna do Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day. A dystopian one, of course, because dystopians have the most fun.

But I'm not really thinking of the usual post-apocalyptic style of dystopia.

In an homage to Dan Simmons, Bruce Bawer, Bat Ye'or and the entire class of professional prophets of Islamophobia, we're gonna be

Tourists From The Grim Darkness Of The Evil United American Islamofascist Caliphate Of 1930.

(1930 Hijri. That's something like AD 2500 as the kaffirs reckoned such things.)

And I mean we, because the way I'm seeing this I'm gonna need a few lady friends to do this with me.

• Them: The actual tourists. Wanting to get out of the confines (such as they are? The United American Emirates did have to soak up a lot of unbelievers really quickly, after all, and if Iran and Europe are any indications having an official state religion really helps secularize a society quite a bit) of the mind-numbing boredom that projections of neoconservative utopias will wind up being when the whole wail-and-envy-the-dead part wears off tend to involve. (And presumably burqas. You can't have a proper Evil Islamofascist Caliphate without all the women being forced to wear burqas.) Far too genki and tourist-y for their own good. Which is where I come in.
• Me: The handler. Grim, frustrated, looking vaguely like a cross between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Uncle Jam Wants You.

  I've commented on this before talking to Engel, but I may as well say it here too: Shi'a fundamentalism would be greatly improved if it took some fashion points from George Clinton. But I digress.

  Bored out of my mind, obviously out of place, and only there because in the grim darkness of the Islamofascist future women can't go outside or do anything without a mahram male. I'm the straight man in all the jokes; the killjoy who tries to make sure they never have any fun (Sisters, it's haram! The pious ancestors never let themselves have fun. It's part of the jihad an-nafs); the enforcer of Islamopatriarchy, who's scandalized by everything they do and writes it all down in his little black book.

Not sure about what exactly we'll do, besides wander around as a group and pose for photographs. I do have one basic vignette worked out, though:

(to a passer-by) "It's so strange, all the signs in English... where I'm from everything's in Arabic."
("Where are you from?") "Milwaukee."

Or something like that.

A belated happy New Year

And may it be better than mine, which has been spent getting a bumper replaced, getting sick, infecting all my friends, and being cut off from my beloved Intarwebz for a week and counting.

*sighs*

The infection of all my friends was worth it, though. I got to make a few new ones (and infect them, too.) And to see Erin again, for the first time in months. I watched the MST3K remix of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the ball drop on Times Square through the pain and fever.

And about a half hour before that, we broke out some bottles and started a few rounds of very geeky toasts.

Not alcohol. Erin's a disgrace to her Irish ancestors, and gets visibly tipsy when she drinks nonalcoholic beverages. But yeah - several bottles of sparkling cider.

To creativity.
To health. (This was mine. It was lame, but appropriately ironic given my infectiousness.)
To Grandfather Nurgle, the Chaos Lord of Plague and Disease. (This was the one that followed me.)
To cat macros.
For the love of God and all that is holy (Adam's toast, prompted by having one of the cloud-guys on my shirt. Not his actual words, but better.)
To geekery.
To our friend, the Weighted Companion Cube.
To cat ears.
To surrealism (Fox's) - we argued back and forth about more or less.
To the two-term limit (Rob's.)
To stability. (Rob's. And mine.)

And, on the way home with Dayquil in my system, one that I said to Fox:

To surrealism and justice.

May your times be interesting and your world be better in the new year.