Mr Unlucky - 2. page

Just one comment; the cellphone/gas station thing.

I do, among other things, safety and security training for a chain of fuel stations and convinience stores. So far, out of the fifteen years in which cellphones and the stations and stores in my region were involved, no explosions correlated to cellphones. That’s approximately eight to twelve cellphones per hour, between 1 PM and 1 AM each day, twice that on weekends, for fifteen years.

If it was going to be an explosive problem, it’d have happened at some point. So far, no proof; multiple sources available at most fuel company homepages will detail this. It’s a sick, twisted urban legend, gone horribly out of control.

I’m with that idea, as well.

I’d say it varies by the brick, but.. you gotta be loved, and missed, by one hundred million people.

A pop icon who hijacks a style of music doesn’t exactly draw out the full ‘oomph’ of the risk-takers most of the Idols were; anyone who either put themselves into harm’s way, or did something extrordinary, through force of will.

Hitler, being a tard with a bad mustache, was just another dictator.

Ghandi, on the other hand, could make a country riot through simply *not* eating.

One’s power, the other is a bad mustache.

Kurt Kobain had a bad mustache.

Listening to his music, though, did make me want to skinpop heroin, drink like a fish, and blow the back of my head off with a twelve gauge.

Music moves the soul.

Perspective, in my humble opinion.

To hear about a rickety old roller coaster, well.. that’s one thing.

To feel the safety bar get jammed securely into your abdomen by some barely-paid, hardly-trained carnie with dubious chemical enhancements..
then the swelling throb in your gut as you ascend the first angled upwards climb…

then the slow clacking of each of the notches on the ascent ticking down to what you know will be when the bottom drops out, and the true excitement is going to start…

then, the arrival at the apex of the first ascent, and the massive vista in front of you, stretching your field of vision outwards to infinity, all things under your feet, eyes, and growing tension…

the first look down the ramp, behind you, to the teeming masses all secured in their seats, locked in like cruise missiles, safe in their vapid little mental prisons, unfeeling of the swell of power in you…

and then your seatlcok gives way, letting you know on the first turn or steady descent, you are going to fly into the parking lot at mach one, colliding with pavement like a meat-filled bag of crushed bones and pain.

Gosh.

Horror’s where you are vulnerable to a situation that didn’t just *suddenly* happen. It’s where, if you exercised some common sense, could have avoided. It’s the inevitable punishment for a lack of foresight and wisdom.

That, and waking up with a naked man dressed as a clown standing over your bed, speaking to someone not in your range of sight, saying, “.. is the other leg off yet?”

Take your pick.

I’ve found the concept of the laws of obedience and paradox to have a fair amount of parallels. Make of them what you will.

Object worship in lieu of a large-scale ideal or ideology — one look at the cargo cults of the Pacific islands, and you should have an idea of the interruption of the planned worship of a given ideology/iconography with the addition of random ‘alien’ artifacts and concepts; sudden appearances of shipments of photographs and canned food can tip the power base and groundwork of countless generations of shamanistic rulers in mere seconds, just by uttering the three most fatal words to those who lead the blind: I Don’t Know.

The Judeo-Christian God is a good, benevolent Creator; ask Sodom and Gomorrah.

Quoth the Bible, Thou Shalt Not Kill; except when Crusading.

“Read my lips… No new taxes.”

Need further examples?

Take a look around; irony, oversight, bullshit, sarcasm, paradox, call it what you will, but its out there, in vast abundance. Life’s got lies, truths, ugliness, and beauty all wrapped up in one convenient, easy-to-misunderstand package.

Your mileage may vary.

So, that about covers ‘Paradox’.

Obedience; essentially, it is handing over the keys of one’s life to a higher state of being, science, consciousness, or status, and giving control to another force, rather than taking control of one’s own destiny.

People do it daily, for a thousand reasons, in a million ways; you ride a bus to save the expense of driving. You rely on a thousand workers to produce a vehicle safe enough to convey you from point A to point B, and hope that the safety inspectors to whom you’ve elected to dictate your personal safety to find nothing unsuitable or dangerous about this bus. You’re reliance on a hospital to get well, on a teacher to explain things, on a policeman to save you from the crimes commited around you. All of this, so you don’t have to walk, don’t have a persisent hacking cough, and so you don’t find a knife in your belly, so you don’t have to get tired, sick, or injured.

So, many are content be quiet, get on the bus, obey the doctor’s instructions, and listen to Mr. Policeman, until they’re utterly self-reliant. It ain’t easy, it ain’t a good plan, and it sure as Hell ain’t a catchy ideology, as it’s a lot of work.

Nature seems to follow Occam’s Razor with ease, so I’ll venture further, and imply that human nature, generally, follows suit closely.

Then again, I’m using someone else’s theory, not mine. But, I’m lazy, and not self-reliant.

Esoteric Reasoning — DC is a classy example of it. By doing so, one can connect the insubstantial ‘connectiveness’ of two people, events, places, or concepts, and diagram them out, allowing the esoteric to become rational long enough to be coherent in more than just the caster’s mind.

Ritual components: chalk, chalkboard, bucket of rocks, coffee.

Skipping a rock off of Deputy Andy’s is strictly optional.

Discussing the system with a friend of mine, and essentially, I summed up the UA vs. Other Games ™ argument as:

“They’ve got rules. (UA) has potential. Which sounds like fun?”

If I wanted to retread the same ol’ tired hack/slash/roll-a-D20, I’d do just that. I do, actually, at times. But, for the better end of the deal, the system in place for UA calls out a little louder, and a little clearer.

Just my thoughts.