Not exactly what you described, but Battlefield Earth isn’t too far off in spirit. Close enough that it might scratch that itch for you

The system is still broken

Man, I truly appreciate the effort and passion you put out there. That’s some beautiful humanity inside you.

The only thing I can say that doesn’t insult what you put out is that, as wonderful as it would be for your hopes to come true, I simply don’t believe it is possible without tearing down the country built on slavery, oligarchy, and sheer hubris, and starting fresh. The system isn’t just broken, it was never whole.

Again, I am so glad to see someone put that much thought into a response to my sheer disgust at the world, and bring hope into the subject. I can’t debate the fine points of it without dishonoring the intent there. So I’ll just say thank you.

As better as it gets, thank you :)

I really thought my life was over. Now I’m married, have a kid, good friends, and find ways to enjoy even the bad days.

I mean, that’s part of pain tolerance. It isn’t just how much pain you feel, it’s how much you can take.

Chronic pain has taught me a lot about what is and isn’t bearable. Things that when they were new would leave me sobbing, I now don’t even show more than a frown and gritted teeth for on a good day.

Part of that is taking the pain, putting it in a little box cake “I will not fucking quit” and throwing that box into the depths of the mind where it can’t bother you for a while. Your body still hurts, you still know it hurts, but you keep going until you can’t, and the pain can just fuck right off.

Now, let me stub my fucking toe while doing all that and it cuts right through all of that and says “nah, dawg, you gonna feel this”. Different pain, and acute.

So, little shit like shocks and needles in muscles, and the like, you know they’re coming, and they go right in the box with the chronic, and into the oubliette of agony.

That kind of pain testing? That’s totally within mental techniques’ ability to ignore. Your pulse will still change, blood pressure too, but it’s still a distant thing that won’t reach you for a while.

But everyone is different. You can take two people with the same injury, and they’ll tolerate it differently, even if they’re siblings of the same gender.

Part of that is indeed built in, but there is always a psychological component to pain perception.

Now, please note that I’m not saying that walling pain off and ignoring it until you’ve injured yourself is a good thing, much less better than letting pain guide your actions so that it isn’t worse later. I’m just saying that the green text is realistic, and the person responding like that may not be bullshitting, they may just have worked on managing pain.

Okay, that’s a story you couldn’t make up

And people went the fuck home

I would say that any time a group is targeted, deprived of freedom and moved into brutal conditions, comparisons about exactly how bad a given version of a concentration camp is kinda ignores the point that they’re fucking wrong by nature. They are a stain on humanity, period.

And I actually include prisons in the United States as morally equivalent since there’s a disproportionate amount of minorities targeted the be put in there. But at least they had the pretence of due process, so it isn’t the same thing.

And make no mistake, the “holding” facilities were indeed intended to treat humans like filth. And they’re designed in a way that has led to rampant death.

The only reason that deaths haven’t reached genocide levels is no active killing, it’s all passive so that people can ignore or and pretend they aren’t responsible for each and every death that does occur. Any citizen of the United States bears the onus of what w.e did to the Japanese citizens in ww2, and we bear the onus of what has happened, and is still happening to our fellow human beings in this hellholes currently.

What I’m doing here is expressing my disgust with so-called activists and militants that claim to want serious change, but will not risk anything to do it. And yes, it is impossible to do alone, it takes feet on the ground, willing to take any action necessary, and that’s risky. Every attempt to organize a serious effort that I could find failed because nobody was willing to take action. They wanted to fuck around, have a little circle jerk about how bad it was, and go home.

We, as a population, have stood by while our fellow man have been treated worse than we treat animals. Which is pretty bad, if you’ve ever seen industrial farming.

One million, one thousand, one hundred, even one is too many.

You know, I was tempted to just give you a bit of a troll and tell you to blow me, but damn dude.

Pull down everyone in power and rebuild a nation. That’s what revolution is

I’ve never needed anything beyond the combination of the whole “I don’t do politics, or religion at work”, and a blank stare until people go away.

And I was a nurse’s assistant, so it was a similar situation, where I was often the only male employee. I didn’t learn how to give good blank face until almost 30, though. It’s harder to do when you’re younger.

Later on, I had to add the bits about sex/romance because, believe it or not, some women will mess with you just to cause trouble. I would add sexual matters to the politics and religion, and just walk away. There’s zero way to engage in those kinds of talks as a man in the workplace. It can not end up in a good place.

Now, I could easily get away with the stone face because I’m typically a very friendly, polite, and affable guy. I’m even downright charming at times. So when I drew firm boundaries, it was rare for anyone to take it personally. Those that did, well, they’re not the sorts that last at any job.

Now, if it’s break time, and we’re swapping recipes or other nice things, I was often at my most affable because as much as I actually hate people in general, and get worn out from group interactions, I can fake being an extrovert very well. That’s mostly about a lot of listening, laughing in the right places, then offering the occasional bit of conversation to let them know you’re paying attention.

Workplace conversation should be casual at all times, no overly personal stuff, no hot button topics ever. If things are that friendly, meet up outside work and get back to the job. Not because of some bullshit protestant work ethic or capitalist bullshit, but because you agreed to do a thing for a period of time, and fucking around while the job is still on is lame.

Man, you can’t even get people to do anything about actual concentration camps. Like, some people tried to organize raids on the places where humans were being held because they dared to cross a border, in horrible conditions, including children. Nobody did a gods damned thing. A lot of fucking noise about how “somebody” should do something, but they couldn’t.

Yet another black man was murdered by police a few years ago, and people did rise up a little, but didn’t have the will or stamina to do the job all the way to the finish.

Truth? The people that think they’re all progressive and good are fucking complacent. They really think that they can fix the system from the inside without any sacrifice.

Fuck, you can’t even get far left radicals to actually do something concrete.

Meanwhile, the far right has ridden on the coat tails of racism and hate until they’ve been taken over completely by the racists and fascists, but they’re united enough via identity politics that they’ll never, ever let go of what they’ve gained without an actual, real fight.

Eh, it is kinda watering down the original punk, as a term for what the original punk movements represented. But that’s language. No matter what a word starts out meaning, people can use it for something else. If that new use takes off, there’s nothing that can stop it other than people as a group ceasing that usage. Isn’t that cool? See what I did there?

Tbh though, once a word gets used a new way, and it spreads, it’s just as likely that the original usage fades away. Don’t forget that words like idiot and moron had a more clinical jargon usage originally.

Living languages love shifting. Humans are sort of like birds with words. We collect shiny ones and play with them.

The various _punks and _cores are just a current example of playing with words.

As far as disliking or resisting that kind of appropriation, it can be frustrating. Anyone that was a punk back in the day would likely sneer at some of the _punk iterations, possibly calling anyone using them a fascist (and if you’ve never seen the show The Young Ones, you really should just so you can see an early version of the caricatures of what punks, hippies, and such were. Real life punks and hippies were a much more diverse and interesting thing, but less funny).

My advice as a fellow old dude that knew some of the old school punks? Just shrug and smile. Change is inevitable, might as well just roll with it.

I have my moments lol.

And anyone would blow all three.

Okay, I think I may have to try this eventually.

Man, it depends on how you think fucking up a chance is. Long story ahead, warning.

So, I was raised by hippies. My dad is/was a country as fuck hippie, but still. So I had access to the library of two laissez-faire parents. This meant I was rather precocious about some things.

Which matters a little in the story.

My mom was a stay at home mom until I was in high school. She got a pretty shitty job, but made friends.

This included a lady that was maybe two years older than me (and I was legal in our state), and gorgeous. I’m talking she could have been a pinup model. Curvy, with these soft, gentle blue eyes and non-bottle blonde hair that was like silk.

Needless to say, I was rather happy to have this lady visiting often.

It turned into her sometimes visiting when my mom wasn’t home (which started happening more since there was a rift between my parents) and hanging out with me.

Now, I was not the suave and sophisticated motherfucker I am today, but I did have some game. And I was not an idiot about everything. So as the flirting escalated on both sides, we were both quite aware that it was going to end in something spectacular. I didn’t know if it would be just sex, or something more intense, but we were two trains heading towards each other with no brakes.

Annnd, it didn’t happen.

My mom fucking cock blocked me. No bullshit, she decided to make her friend swear to not date or have sex with me. Since this woman was a good sort, she promised and kept her word. But, since she was a good sort, she told me the truth when she called a stop to things.

Words were had with my mom lol. Which, I’m not getting into her reasoning beyond saying that it was not a reason I consider a good one even more than thirty years later after being a parent myself. That’s a whole different story.

Anyway. Years pass, and there’s always this fire between me and this lady. It’s a small town, so we would run into each other regularly when I’d come into town to visit (I had moved to a nearby city for a while). But it never happens.

And then I moved back home. Moved into the family home in specific. Which is another long story, but not relevant here.

So, my mom was in the process of moving out at that time, and dragged that process out for two years lol. But her friend would still visit, and that fire started burning harder and higher.

There was a kiss on my birthday. I was asleep, and she came to wish me well. I had been sleeping. And I saw her angel face when I woke up, and damn. I just pulled her into me and our lips melted into each other. Other than my wife and when we finally met in person, it is the best kiss I had ever been involved in. Fucking choirs were singing hallelujah.

But she had made a promise. That my mom refused to let go of.

So, some more time passes, my mom moves out, and I’m in the process of buying the family home (another long and boring story). I get a call. It’s her, calling from a bar saying she’s had too much to drink and be able to drive. So I go get her.

She doesn’t want to go to her home, for good reasons. So I bring her to ours. She says ahe wants to get drunk, and would I take care of her while she did. I’m Mr fucking sober buddy (for real, I’m known for it), so I agree.

There’s flirting, there’s some serious conversation about the situation, but there’s mostly just us playing cribbage and bullshitting. Why? Because cribbage was what she wanted to play. No idea why, she couldn’t give one.

She gets to the level of drunk that I would have cut her off for safety’s sake. She passes out on the couch, I get her into a safe position, and set an alarm in the next room to check on her in a half hour. I figured if she was fine then, I could sleep and she’d be fine.

Well, she was fine, and I turned in. Only to be waken up as she’s climbing into bed with me. She’s mumbling something, and kinda pushes her bottom against me before passing back out.

Now, I can not state clearly enough how good she felt next to me. Soft, warm, and even under the bourbon, she smelled divine. Just her personal scent, no perfumes. Maybe a hint of her soap. She was in her underwear. My body reacted. It reacted strongly.

But, even though I have never been perfect, one thing I have never done is take advantage of someone like that. Never have, never will. So I put a pillow between us, cuddled up, and went to sleep.

She was gone when I woke up.

We lost contact. Or, more truthfully, she wouldn’t return calls, and this was before cell phones, so there wasn’t the same immediacy of knowing that someone is deciding not to answer as there is now. She could have been busy and not at home. But after a bit, I gave up and figured that something had happened where she didn’t want contact, and left it at that.

Except. Small town.

We ran into each other maybe a year later. A little awkward, but I just waved and smiled, and left it at that. No pressure, that’s another thing I’ve never liked doing.

But she calls a few days later, wants to talk.

She tells me that she’s sorry. Not for ghosting me (that wasn’t a common term then, I didn’t even hear it for years after that), but for being so horrible that I didn’t want to have sex with her that night!

She had gotten tipsy with the intention of losing enough control to not care about her promise. Once she got home with me, and I’m being Mr fucking sober buddy, she thought I was not into her, so she got more drunk to make a move herself.

And, here’s the kicker. When she climbed into bed with me, she wanted me to have sex with her. That was the entire goal of the evening, and she genuinely thought it was a good idea that she get so drunk that she wouldn’t feel bad for it happening. Then, when I didn’t rape her in her sleep (which is what it would have been, in my mind then, and still is now), she thought I was too disgusted by her drinking to want her at all.

The lady did have some issues, obviously.

I reassured her that I had wanted her from the first time we met, and it had never changed. But I was a little upset, and asked her if she really thought I was the kind of person that would do that to someone. And she said “that’s just how men are”.

Which says it all, doesn’t it? Kinda encapsulates the kind of life some people suffer through, to be left with that as something that they not just accept as part of an ugly world, but think it’s normal and that it’s okay. She really was hurt that I didn’t want to have sex with her while she was unconscious.

It was a long conversation after that. But she was with someone, and as much as I cared about her, and still wanted her, I was fine with that being the end of it. I still can’t wrap my head around the dissonance of her thinking I could do that. Like I said at the beginning of this, I was precocious. So I was not shy about discussion sex casually, and had talked about sexual issues with her. Drunk sex had come up in conversation. I had said I wouldn’t be comfortable with it since it just felt skeevy. So it wasn’t like the matter was new to the both of us.

Hell, I had even clearly stated in one conversation back when I was still in high school that my biggest turn on is being wanted. Not just in a casual sense, but being actively desired. There’s a magic in it for a big, hairy dude, and I was big and hairy even then. Not many of my peers were into dating a damn sasquatch, you dig?

So, I don’t know that I fucked up the chance. I kinda think she did. But I guess it counts.

Eh, grills are kinda meh, imo. They do protect from impact, but that’s not as likely as you’d think. But dust and debris? Grills are useless. You need something that will prevent things like that from getting on the speakers and causing deterioration over time.

Unless you’re including screens and meshes in grilles, and some folks do.

But yeah, it’s cheaper, and people like to see the speakers, so it helps sales. No bullshit, I’ve lost track of how many people have been weirded out that my car system is covered by a screen. They think you have to see the speakers or they’re somehow fake or made of cheap materials. Like, motherfucker, I built that damn box for one thing. But car speakers are exposed to sun and heat and even worse dust. Not having a screen over them is silly.

.

It does get stuck in there. Just don’t make the mistake of going out in public until it fades lol.

I had an NPC during a table top rpg session that was my excuse to do my foghorn leghorn voice. Spent all afternoon doing that voice, and couldn’t stop when I made a beverage and snack run.

I already have a southern accent (technically a mountain accent, but that’s quibbling), so hamming it up can get absurd lol

Hell, be an rpg hero and make it a lending library to your actively playing associates.

The only parts of my collection that I don’t lend out are the absurdly difficult to replace box kits. Even then, I’ll make copies of the material. My kid’s d&d group plays 5e, but the DM has borrowed some of my 3.x books for ideas, and has (with full supervision because I’m a little protective) had access to my spelljammer box (before they redid it).

Besides, I may end up running a game again. Most of my regular players have expressed interest, and it’s only scheduling that keeps it from happening. Shit, I might even do a game with the original rule materials some day, the way I used to do ad&d short games (a few months of a story, or breaking out a module) when we were playing 3.x