Revolution From Within: An Office Worker Imagines The Odds

Fatwah / February 13, 2012

By Khakjaan Wessington

Let me tell you the game I was playing with a kid I love. He’s almost nine and has been into tough guy myths lately. He works out, so he’s extraordinarily strong for his age and thinks he’s safe against getting attacked. So I asked him:

“A guy attacks you. What do you do?”

“Defend myself.”

“You died. Try again. A guy attacks you. What do you do?”

“I defend myself!”

“You die again. A guy attacks you. What do you do?” Tears formed around his eyes.

“I wasn’t even ready! I didn’t have time to think!”

“Exactly my point. A guy attacks you, what do you do?”

“Uh, I uh…. uh…”

“Too late. You died again. Why don’t you take a minute to think and we’ll play again in a minute.” He sat there with a sour look on his face. After sixty seconds, I started again.

“A guy attacks you. What do you do?”

“I run away!”

“Where?”

“To a crowd or policeman.” Pretty good answer for a kid, but not good enough. At least I got him thinking about it. Now, I’m certain that this game we played will save his life someday so I don’t feel guilty about pressing his boundaries. I bought the kid an ice cream and took him back to his house… in my molester-van of course.

All joking aside, people are pretty bad at statistics and don’t realize that life is a Monte Carlo simulation (look it up geniuses)(ok, don’t): if you decide you want to live with a 1 in 118 chance of getting violently attacked each year, like in San Francisco, then you’d better have a bunch of life insurance because there’s a high statistical probability you’re going to die or at least get seriously fucked up over your lifetime. Now the crazy thing is that if you decide you’re a bad ass because you lift weights or took a self-defense class, you’re probably going to improve the odds that you’ll be murdered. You’ll, as a former friend once said to me, seek out gory glory—that is, you’ll do stupid shit in the name of some solipsistic superhero fantasy and get murdered for it. People who have never been desperate can’t imagine the depravity of the desperate. Mostpeople (to borrow from ee cummings) set their phasors on stun when their attackers are Klingons who only use the kill setting and don’t believe in a ‘fair fight.’ What I mean by Monte Carlo is that you’re disposable. You’re just one of many people just like you, who survived to read this essay. Think about that: Just. Like. You. For example, in San Francisco a few years back, a family was massacred by some gangsters in a crowded street in a case of mistaken identity. Personally, I’m in that intersection frequently enough that it could have been me that was murdered. Instead it was a dad and two out of his three sons. On the quieter side of the city, a teenage girl got prison yard rushed by a psycho with a knife and nearly killed her. It’s a known fact that gangsters hate walking up hill, so you’re usually safest at the top. But somehow some lunatic ex-con who spent too much time in the sensory deprivation chamber just happened to pass by and in a psycho-schizo-fucker-fury, stabbed her a bunch of times.

People are afraid of calculating the odds, so they pretend that odds don’t exist. I used to be one of them, but then the going got weird and I turned pro… yes, I’ve been reading Hunter S. Thompson again. In Hey Rube Thompson brutally analyzes the psychology of odds-making and explains his vicious methodology for exploiting rubes for sport and profit. In his betting methodology for football, he makes the great point that teams are often differentiated by their performances in the beginning, middle, end of the season and post-season. A team with an oppressively daunting win-loss record can fall apart in the post-season as ordinary blunders cost them the game (“Getting Braced for the Last Football Game” Hey Rube, Page 131). As a flamboyant and sloppy chess-player I am keenly aware of the way blunders shape the game’s progress. The greater an individual’s sloppiness or willingness to abdicate control to fate, the worse his or her fate is likely to be. I’m accused to being a control freak, but I have always instinctively been congruent with Dr. Thompson. People are animals and if you truly understand their casual depravity, then you know that it is essential to be intolerant of what are often characterized as a minor ‘character flaws.’ A selfish friend is your divinely designated cattle-car-on-the-way-to-the-concentration-camp assassin. Don’t worry, you’ll provide your pal with the practice s/he’ll need to survive.

Until I started reading Hey Rube I didn’t realize that I’m a natural gambler, but I don’t bet money. I think that’s stupid. No, I bet my life. Don’t ask why. I’m getting better though—I’ve stopped hanging out in dark parking lots wondering who’s going to murder me (I have danced between the glass shards of hostile 40oz bottles). In fact, more than ever, I realize the truth of what my friend, Doctor Ishmael once told me before he became a psychology professor: “You spend so much time in the alleys looking for the maniac who is going to kill you. And then one day, you realize you ARE the maniac in the alley.” Since he once chased a hippie with a machete for getting too close to his art studio shack, you know he’s a quality person—or at least you know his heart is in the right place. I have learned that by expanding one’s imagination, one can improve one’s odds of survival. To survive in modern California, this is a must. I am surrounded by con men, transients, earthquakes, crooked cops, fuckfaces, friends, Oakland, anxious billionaires and millionaires, illegal immigrants, and the stoned remains of the best minds of my generation—which, depressingly, aren’t even that good. Throw into the mix a bunch of high technology, guns and a port that connects us directly with China and I feel like I live in a low-budget Bladerunner take-off. How could I not be a degenerate gambler? Safety isn’t safety around here—highrises are where the high-casualty jobs are around here. An earthquake, an ancient power transformer blowing out in the middle of downtown San Francisco, a terrorist attack, a North Korean first strike… living here is an act of gambling. Idiots make hundreds of thousands of dollars (what normal person dares dream of millions anymore, save that single one for retirement?) while geniuses serve coffee around here—we are all gamblers, at least around here. We all believe that frantic, focused work can give us that jackpot at the end of the Castro street rainbow.

So why shouldn’t revolutionaries haunt the glass spires of downtown San Francisco? To quote a friend “I don’t do Oakland.” Why do I need to go all the way out there to get my class war on? I know I’m being unfair, but I am xenophobic, agoraphobic and claustrophobic. I prefer grinding my teeth. A phalanx of the wimpiest protesters allowed me to buzz them on the way to my office without so much as a Molotov Cocktail to make me hustle. I recalled how a mere nine years ago, I was nearly torn apart by Critical Mass during their 10th anniversary for trying to form a human chain to enforce the traffic lights. Yup! A gang of recreational bicyclists is more likely to get violent than a protest against plutocrats in America today. Don’t get me wrong, if they attacked me, they’d be attacking their own kind. When did suits become class enemies? The real wealthy don’t wear suits. If you need to wear a suit to work, you are probably not a plutocrat. Maybe you work for them, but so do the rest of you yutzes. My death-by-mob would have been totally unjust had the occupiers ran at me with shivs and speared me with their Occupy banner handles. I can imagine it now: “financial autopsy shows that a member of the fiftieth percentile was murdered by a scion of the ninety seventh percentile. The victim wore a suit, so the murderer was acquitted.” Instead, I was confronted with florescent lights and Bloomberg updates in the elevator—all presumably sucking down a lot of fossil fuel and former Soviet nukes. As I rose to heaven—my office in a building somewhere in San Francisco—I thought about how it would be just my luck to be ensconced in the center of American power and get murdered by something as trite as an office shooter. All the martial arts in the world, all the preparation, all the imagination I have at my disposal—none of it would stop me from eating a nine millimeter bullet. I drank my coffee and got to work.

61 Comments

Add your own

1. Mike C. | February 13th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Entertaining. Fortunately, I’m at a point in my life where I no longer demand to know what things are about.
Now I cede the comments section to the coming accusations of the author being Dolan.
2. BlottoBonVismarck | February 13th, 2012 at 4:27 pm
I, WANKER ?
Bring back the War Nerd for love of god!
Save us from the murderous fantasies of this Exiled fanboy USan sociopath.
And let poor little Wessington preserve his last remaining brain cell for actual sex with himself, versus the verbal wanking inflicted on his audience in this pathetic piece of delusional rubbish.
3. Lanius | February 13th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
The author is a dolt.
I always carry a loaded handgun with no safety and a round in the chamber, and regularily train to be able to put a half a dozen holes into a man shaped target in under 1.5 secondcs at ranges of up to ten meters. And a full magazine in under three seconds, and a second magazine into someone else under ten seconds. Provided that’d be needed, 15 holes per thug is overkill. If given time, I have no problem hitting a head sized target at 25 yards. No adrenaline involved, the action of taking out a gun, cocking the hammer, aiming, firing has been practiced so thoroughly it feels as natural as cracking one off late at night..
You telling me this makes me more likely to get killed by some low-cost thug whom I can spot from half a block away?
And no, I don’t seek out trouble, nor do I cringe from the underclass. That only makes them more likely to attack. I just ignore them. They draw their own conclusions, same as dogs..
4. Dimitri Ratz | February 13th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
I just like to take this time to thank Wessington for his bravery going to work against all these odds. It’s really inspirational. Reminds me of the story from school, “Where the red firn grows”, the part where the dog’s intestines get entangled.
5. Balloonable Bastard | February 13th, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Tuffguygunfag says: “You telling me this makes me more likely to get killed by some low-cost thug whom I can spot from half a block away?”
Hey, Charles Bronson: What if they come at you from out of the bushes from behind while your hands are full with grocery bags? Whatchew gonna do when they march you into your own house and tell you to get down on your knees? You’ll never even see their faces.
6. joe | February 13th, 2012 at 8:59 pm
@ Lanius
you’ve just dramatically increased your chance of getting aids wile in prison for an 8 year manslaughter stint.
7. Foog | February 13th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
Alas poor #3 Lanius, I knew him well.
…actually, I didn’t. But I figure the knuckle-dragging dumbfuck is probably dead by now and deserves some sort of eulogy. If not today, then tomorrow.
8. AMY ALKON | February 13th, 2012 at 10:37 pm
DR DOLAN PLS COME BACK AND TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU GOT THE TROTS FROM BONGO BURGER YOU PORKER
9. AMY ALKON | February 13th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
UNCLE DOLAN
10. Warlord | February 13th, 2012 at 10:46 pm
1 out of 118 is pretty good. Wonder what it is here in Russia? And where is a War Nerd, btw?
11. Obsidian Eagle | February 13th, 2012 at 11:39 pm
Nice work KW,
No offence but I think I like your prose better than your poetry. Perhaps it’s easier to relate with.
Anyhow, I’m currently residing in one of the most dangerous Central-American republics and can similarly attribute my survival to a combination of caution and courage. Still, it’s definitely a gamble and if the man upstairs says the time has arrived to punch your ticket, well then that’s just that!
12. Dimitri Ratz | February 13th, 2012 at 11:41 pm
People have one out of a hundred chances of being born with a tail. The murder rate in Russia was twice that in United States when Chechnya war was ongoing and those deaths were included in the Russian death count so sleep safe at night number 10. Number 2, I know Mr. Wessington might be taking great chances, with a staggering 1 out of 256 chance of contracting an HIV STD from unprotected sexual contact with a positive woman, but positive things are important at life.
13. Hick | February 13th, 2012 at 11:42 pm
1 out of 118 means you’ll be attacked once out of every 118 years, or 50% chance of being attacked every 59 years. Since 59 years is probably the new US life expectancy, I’m not that worried. Maybe, as you say, you might get some psycho stabbing you 98 times, that’s gonna hurt before you die. Or you get in some altercation with some idiot and get a black eye and a loose tooth that needs replacing because it needed replacing anyway. Both show up as a violent attack.
So you go live somewhere safe, say, San Clemente? Nixon’s old digs. Safe as hell as far as I know. And some idiot runs you down with their (insert type of .5%’er car here) and you’re dead as a doornail but since being run over for sport is considered part of the normal tenor of life in the US, you’re dead of “natural causes”.
In fact, does anyone out here in Exhole-land know what the chance is of being seriously maimed or killed in an auto-connected accident in the US? I say auto-connected because I’d like to count in things like being run down while waiting at a bus stop, walking on a crosswalk, or sitting in one’s living room.
I live in a fairly high-crime city, next to a notoriously high-crime city. I get my buzz cut in a barbershop that’s a favorite of gangbangers, the Viet lady wielding the clippers does good fades. I regularly bicycle around areas that look like Dee-troit. And the biggest threat to my life on a day-to-day basis is motor vehicles. Whether I’m in one myself or not.
14. osamabindrinkin | February 14th, 2012 at 12:08 am
Kind of a stupid bottom troll turd piece I am. Exile’s troll demographic slipped a lot in the past year, sorry to say but they just don’t sic the good quality NMS trolls on this site anymore since the AEC came to troll town and made it so that decent, god fearing folks could comment in peace. Amen.
15. aleke | February 14th, 2012 at 12:21 am
Good lod.
16. aleke | February 14th, 2012 at 12:26 am
This is utter shit. Fuck off. How’s that for shitty commenting? Hell, you don’t have to write to know this is shit, but even I can do better than this. Get off it, yuppie. If you want to be a revolutionary, stop fearing death so much.
17. Dan | February 14th, 2012 at 12:45 am
Carry a gun. Stop being a sheeple. The revolution is going to go nowhere until some Marine’s loved one gets shot by some fascist cop and he gets some friends together to go guard a group of hippies. Anarchy and blood letting will in sue but if you think change is going to happen any other way you haven’t read your quoted book.
18. Esn | February 14th, 2012 at 1:16 am
Well… this just makes me glad that I live in a large Canadian city where the homicide rate is over four times lower than in San Francisco.
On the other hand, it’s so GREY here. The greyness just seeps into your soul.
19. Hussayn Khariq | February 14th, 2012 at 1:35 am
Does Dolan know Farsi (“KhaakJaan”)? Also “gangsters hate walking uphill” Good to know
20. Mr A. | February 14th, 2012 at 4:46 am
On self-defense, read Marc “Animal” MacYoung’s stuff over at http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com
21. Trevor | February 14th, 2012 at 5:48 am
It’s always refreshing to see an honest take on violence. It ain’t clean or fun but there are legions of insecure man-children running around (especially on the internet) who think their strip mall krav maga class has prepared them to star in a real life action movie.
Come to think of it, we should probably encourage those morons. Like Lanius, they’d be as likely to blow their own dick off as end up in jail for manslaughter.
22. Eric | February 14th, 2012 at 7:48 am
“A guy attacks you. What do you do?”
“Kill him.”
Will this attitude increase my survival chances? Maybe. Maybe not. But until someone can conclusively demonstrate that curling into the fetal position any time I’m threatened guarantees my safety; it’s the one I’m sticking with. Besides, who the fuck wants to live long enough to move into a retirement home anyway?
23. Jay | February 14th, 2012 at 7:51 am
It reads like Dolan-lite but it’s short, unfocused and full of cliches with that bourgeois infatuation with hypothetical violence.
What the “Khakjaan” ignores is that, while a person in San Fran may have a 1 in 118 probability, those odds for a white-collar cubicle slave living in a comfortable house or apartment is more 1 in 800+. This balances out with the 1 in 10 figure for the working poor living in neighborhoods with street orange vendors and louder mufflers.
Citing a city-wide statistic and a few exceptions to common sense doesn’t change this fact. Nor does it hide the real truth that the article is that trite, inverted tough guy routine… A superficial Celinean praise of cowardice being the real strength. A self-satisfied Take Back the Night for guys who used to get locker-slammed in high school. Furtive envy for the stronger, meaner apes with the shorter life spans.
Also, why does every middle-brow who learns about shit like Monte Carlo simulations or Fourier transformations (look it up geniuses)(ok don’t) feel the need to unnecessarily shoehorn it into conversation? Especially with that threadworn “Life is like…” lead-in.
You work in a cubicle in northern California *and* know what a Monte Carlo simulation is?! Wow! Tell me what life’s REALLY about!
24. Whyawannaknow | February 14th, 2012 at 8:05 am
Eh. Possibly related, and certainly a rich vein for “Eileen” to mine?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul4CZrnEFxU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
(God Bless America)
25. zot23 | February 14th, 2012 at 8:43 am
If Wessington gazed into his navel even harder, he might discover a good article in there (eventually.)
26. A. Furtiv Russell | February 14th, 2012 at 8:51 am
a straining screed worthy of that p.o.s. StreetBoners website.
and get johnny depp to do the audio version he’s tuff like dat
27. hello | February 14th, 2012 at 9:39 am
Where the fuck did Dolan go?
28. JIM GOAD | February 14th, 2012 at 10:46 am
shut the fuck up stupid piece of shit cockroach dick
29. DeeboCools | February 14th, 2012 at 11:18 am
I’m a coward. That’s my strategy. I’ve been the victim of 3 robberies and 1 burglary, only having once been hit in the face(needlessly.) I’m still here.
30. MQ | February 14th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
This doesn’t sound like Dolan at all. Dumber than Dolan.
31. Fissile | February 14th, 2012 at 12:42 pm
Getting murdered is the least of my worries. What worries me is that I’m going to get sick, and I’ll hit the limits on my health insurance in a month, and then I’ll lose my house, and get thrown out in the street to freeze to death.
Getting stabbed to death by someone in the grips of amphetamine psychosis seems peachy by comparison.
32. jonnym | February 14th, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Unfocused and several misspellings, but still enjoyable. You have talent but could use a good editor, Mr. Wessington. Still, I’m glad to see someone address the myths of being “ready for a fight.” No one is ready for every possible violent situation, no matter how well trained you think you are. Pretending any different only means we’re unprepared for the day a violent situation finally happens.
33. adam | February 14th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
@17
Sorry, friend. But the revolution ain’t happenin till the Chinese finally get around to invading this shit-hole. And if I were Chinese, I’d be kinda offended by that: after all the bullshit – the wars, the bailouts, the declining press freedoms, the billionaire tax dodgers, the sliding household incomes, the decaying jobs market, and the spreading dereliction of our towns – it’s gonna be in the name of kicking out the damn foreigners that’ll get us off netflix to pick up some guns.
And the invasion will be the perfect cover for the score-settling that needs to happen. See under “Iraq War”
34. Joe | February 14th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
I did’t det dolan from this.
35. Derek | February 14th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
I hope this isn’t Dolan. I really enjoy the War Nerd, and this guy is pretty far up his own ass.
36. Phil | February 14th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Good to see praise for the often maligned “Hey Rube”. Those columns, and later book, had some of the best writing on the Long War anyone was doing in the days and weeks following 9/11.
And, yes, good betting tips too.
37. Tommo | February 14th, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Bizarrely, I was robbed at knifepoint while drinking beer in a parking lot in downtown Auckland, New Zealand just on Monday.
38. deweyite | February 14th, 2012 at 9:01 pm
What utter trash.
Though I do find fascinating the new middle class obsession with ‘self defense’. Every second rich white boy in the country who has seen a bit of UFC is studying Brazilian Ju-jitsu (or BJJ for those in da no).
I think the commentator above has it spot on; a bourgeois obsession with hypothetical violence.
39. gink | February 14th, 2012 at 11:35 pm
Russian girls don’t wear seat belts because it may wrinkle their dress
Ukrainian girls smoke too much because they know it won’t kill them
They walk in the streets without fear
better in a fight then a hipster too
40. Cum | February 15th, 2012 at 1:26 am
Speaking of a bourgeois obsession with hypothetical violence – I was once nearly stabbed by an ex-girlfriend. What probably saved me from injury? I was a fencer in high school, so it was just calm reflex to go for the wrist, there isn’t time to think or panic when the knife is raised.
41. a spotlight hits the sky | February 15th, 2012 at 1:52 am
OK this is the War Nerd Signal
Imagine it is like the Batman Signal (Bat Signal? Nerds.)
What does it look like? A diet Coke? A half-eaten pie?
I’m putting it up there right now, whatever the hell it is. Syria. War Nerd. Honestly.
42. Mike C | February 15th, 2012 at 3:10 am
I wouldn’t have figured the article merited so much hipster cluck. I mean, it mentions bikes. Hipsters like irony and bikes. And that’s the best I could figure was going on here, since there’s an excess of too-cool-for-this.
I think people are missing the point. Either that, or I’m being too profoundly affected by a point that’s obvious or not very interesting. Maybe it’s because I’ve been bombarded with dozens of rebuttals to the Hedges piece on black blocs, and the cringe-worthy “radicalism” that’s erupted from the armchair Che—and in this scenario one could easily infer such a presence.
How do ineffectual pussies revolt against more experienced bullies, with our correspondence school Karate lessons? How do we respond to a loutish elite, and a militarized government, when escalation only provides a pretext for our annihilation?
I’ve long ago accepted that when the revolution comes, I’ll witness about ten minutes of it before finding myself on the ground trying in vain to stop the bleeding.
43. James | February 15th, 2012 at 6:08 am
If you fall into the demographic that the police are there to protect then fine call the police. In some neighborhoods you’ll get harassed more by crack and meth head panhandlers if you look scruffy. Why? Because they know from experience that the guy in the suit might well turn the corner and whip out his cell phone to call them in. When the cops show up and they see the street person harassing office workers for money they’ll hit him with attempted strong arm robbery. On the other hand a real robbery on an unemployed person or minimum wage worker in another neighborhood will get written up as attempted assault or something.
44. Q | February 15th, 2012 at 8:24 am
“1 in 118 chance of getting violently attacked each year” – odds such as these are very misleading. What the statement in the quotes means is that 1 in 118 people gets violently attacked through out the year, which is obviously not the case.
Let us instead assume that an attack lasts an average of 1 minute. That means the chances of you being attacked during any given minute is 1 in 62020800. So, I am pretty safe in general.
But even this figure is misleading. The probability varies enormously depending on the locality, time of the day, season, etc.
45. Futhorc? | February 15th, 2012 at 9:06 am
Heavy, man, heavy.
46. FOARP | February 15th, 2012 at 12:44 pm
“I always carry a loaded handgun with no safety and a round in the chamber, and regularily train to be able to put a half a dozen holes into a man shaped target in under 1.5 secondcs at ranges of up to ten meters. And a full magazine in under three seconds, and a second magazine into someone else under ten seconds. Provided that’d be needed, 15 holes per thug is overkill. If given time, I have no problem hitting a head sized target at 25 yards. No adrenaline involved, the action of taking out a gun, cocking the hammer, aiming, firing has been practiced so thoroughly it feels as natural as cracking one off late at night..
You telling me this makes me more likely to get killed by some low-cost thug whom I can spot from half a block away?”
You do realise that this means that one of these days that chambered round is likely to accidentally pop off and make a big hole in you don’t you? And that the risk of this is greater than the risk of being murdered?
47. nick | February 15th, 2012 at 4:58 pm
at first i thought this article was satire of a paranoid californian, a stereotype i am very aware of and sometimes embody. i’m not so sure… you have to be a crazy paranoid guy to go to this website and even crazier to want to write for it.
48. Archer | February 15th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
This site is fucked if every author who writes halfway decent is going to get accused of being Dolan.
Good piece anyway, well written, amusing. Not quite sure what its point was – of course, I’m thick as fuck – but I sure enjoyed reading it. And I’m pretty sure the people above who have read it straight as a commentary on how likely you are to be violently assaulted or killed are even thicker than me, which is a nice thought.
49. Punjabi From Karachi | February 15th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
You all are utterly tense and utterly paranoid. Like seriously, seriously tense. The writer of this essay, the eXile editor (possibly Ames) who posted this and the guys who are frantically nodding their heads in agreement with it.
50. Davrus | February 16th, 2012 at 4:35 am
If I was to hazard a guess as to the point of the piece. It’s trying to point out the fact that, whatever we do, or not do we’re taking risks. To put it into the context of class warfare, if you don’t risk getting your teeth cracked in protesting the 1% now you risk the consequences of further general societal degradation later (The more blunt risks pointed out in the article). In addition it points out the stupidity of thinking you can stand up to these dangers all by yourself, like how the anarcho-capitalists (libertards) somehow believe that when all traces of government intervention are removed they will all be able to protect their own interests, as private individuals. In reality unless their the Kochs or their ilk they’ll probably be chewed up and spat out by, well, the Kochs.
51. coprologie | February 16th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
as a weirdo and an outsider i don’t like this person because he probably wouldn’t like me
i have a lot of ‘character flaws’ yet for some strange reason i feel as if i am much more likely to be passenger than engineer on the white boxcar express
52. Oaklander | February 16th, 2012 at 5:33 pm
If you live in San Francisco then you ARE the class enemy.
53. motorfirebox | February 17th, 2012 at 8:50 am
Yeesh, this old argument again? “You carry a gun so you must be a borderline psychopath with Dirty Harry delusions!” “Nuh uh, I’m a disciplined warrior-saint who has a deep respect for both my weapon and the filthy brown people who force me to take their lives!”
There’s never any room in that particular back-and-forth for someone who isn’t afraid to admit to being genuinely terrified of the world around him.
Seriously, they faux moral superiority of “If someone’s going to kill me, at least it will be a completely random happenstance that no amount of preparation could have prevented” is just as flawed and just as false as the old “I’ve got a gun and I’m a badass and I’ll outshoot any criminal scum who tries to take my stuff”.
54. Jefferson | February 17th, 2012 at 8:58 am
Totally sub-Exile. This dude has the attitude but not the chops.
55. Jesse | February 18th, 2012 at 5:31 pm
None of us are going to survive. The best we can do is live free of fear and that’s not going to happen by gunning up. Freedom from fear comes from looking to a higher purpose than survival. I found freedom from fear as a volunteer firefighter. It felt great. Fucking capitalism, investorism, survivalism, it’s all cowardice. Cringing, gut sickening cowardice. Stand up and fight for community; fight for truth and the common good and be liberated from from fear.
56. CensusLouie | February 18th, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Good lord. This article is a mess. It reads like one of John Nash’s schizo moments.
57. Zhu Bajie | February 19th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
“Sorry, friend. But the revolution ain’t happenin till the Chinese finally get around to invading this shit-hole.” — Adam 33
To quote Qian Long, emperor of China:”We have everything we need; you have nothing we want.”
58. Zhu Bajie | February 19th, 2012 at 10:49 pm
“Where the fuck did Dolan go?”
Another tour of duty in Suleimaniyya, I think.
59. Zhu Bajie | February 20th, 2012 at 12:27 am
“You all are utterly tense and utterly paranoid.” — 49. Punjabi From Karachi
Too true! Siberia, Central Asia, SE Asia have much more to offer invaders. The US has no mineral resources any more, only fat, lazy, whiny, people.
60. MikeJake | February 22nd, 2012 at 2:28 pm
I swear I know that dude in the picture.
61. SAMO | June 29th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Dude, you’re afraid of Oakland?
That’s hopster Valhalla,the new-old Brooklyn,
even the NY Times signed off on it.
(no way were they coerced by realty,
rich people have enough money,
complete poppycock
that they’d accept bribes)
“Poppycock” – that’s how “15%ers”talk right?
See,
I’m trying to connect with you MR yippie,
in noway do I think
you’re a waste of sperm.
My friendly advise –
ditch the suit, it makes people nervous,
go to “Out of the Closet” on Polk ST
and get a dress,
everyone knows trannies are super tough,
I guarantee nobody will fuck with you then.
But
I’m being an unreasonable asshole,
they’re scary mean people in SF.
(where did the bad man touch you?)
You’re scared of everyone on the wrong drugs in the ‘Loin?
True – the Tenderloin is a UN of malcontents,
you probably pass through it going to SOMA or wherever..
..Yeah they’re bat-shit crazy, real psychopaths,
crack is wack – can’t say Keith Haring didn’t try to warn them.
But the sociopaths in offices are marginally more dangerous,
I’ll take a dozen zombies over a CEO any day,
those fat pasty fuckers are mean,
see what they did to poor Iceland?
P.S.
“rose to heaven”?
That’s not sarcasm that’s a Freudian slip.
Office building elevators give you erections Lil’ Wessy?
I’m not judging MR yippie,
art-deco gets me all kinds of wet.