it's tomorrow in kazakhstan
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@ -16,6 +16,257 @@ ideas' witlessness;
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ideas' witnesses;
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ideas-
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2023-01-05
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2021-07-07
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Antero
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A person woke up wrapped in satin sheets, head atop a comfortably
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stuffed pillow. They remembered the two most important things: Take the pill.
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Check the book.
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The book. Where was the book. Their room came into view. A wallpaper of
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lilacs on a cream background. Large windows, nearly floor to ceiling. The book
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was to their left.
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June 1, 21XX. Ah, the first of a new month. Funny how that happens.
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They quickly flipped to the front. EDWARDS Eugene \ Class: Well-to-do. Ah.
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Well-to-do. Well in-deed.
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The last thing Eugene Edwards remembered was sitting in a pub in, oh,
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what year is it now? 21XX. So 40 years prior; sitting in a pub, having a pint
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of whatever happened to be on tap at that point. No televisions. No televisions
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at the bar. There were people on phones though. Eugene watched them, thinking.
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Kids on their phone. Is it a phone? Are they still phones nowadays? Fuck it.
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Phones. Just about the same anyway.
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The kids were on their phones scrolling through memetic imagery like a
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hundred years prior back when lead and fluoride and Donald Trump and quantum
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computers and oh god think of the children were on people's minds and when
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those were the only just about the only things on people's minds no
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cognitoviruses no hazards just green grass et cetera. A hundred years prior.
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Eugene wasn't there, nor were Eugene's parents, nor grandparents. Eugene's
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great grandparents were alive though. Given the plastic content in the
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grandparents' bones, Eugene figured the times were not great. But maybe they
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were okay. They could have been okay.
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The concrete age.
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Eugene was watching them on their phones. Whatever the fuck those
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hipsters used. And Eugene watched the kid on the left, or the right - the one
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farthest from the exit - Eugene watched them drop their phone, suddenly, and
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tense up. Like getting electrically shocked. All their muscles tightened, their
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face got red, their veins got big, like Rob Muscanis doing a dead-lift. Then
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the kid passed out. Passed the fuck out. Then the same thing happened to
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another kid and slowly as the kids checked what was on each others' phones it
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rippled out.
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Cognitohazard. That was what it was called. A memetic cognitohazard.
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Sweeping the god damn planet. The Indians and the Koreans both denied it was
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them immediately though they were under the closest scrutiny; India in
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particular had been known for trying to manufacture cognitohazards for military
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use. And all this investigation (in the wrong places) while it took kid after
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kid. And killed them! A fucking memetic image.
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That night was when Eugene learned about Antero.
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Antero is an experimental (now not so much) drug aimed at preventing
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the formation of new memories for 24 hours after ingestion. It's usually taken
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in the morning; available to every class and every body free of charge from the
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government not out of nefarious purpose (though that is questioned daily by a
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number of folks more than suspicious of the UPK's leadership) but out of a
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great need. Without Antero, fuck. Antero turns the permanent death of a
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cognitovirus into a temporary absence from the brain of the user. Antero is the
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penicillin of the twenty second century. Thank your local god for Antero, then
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thank the drug company that came up with it, Gokko (pronounced "gohk koh")
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Pharmaceutical. Then, of course, thank the Japanese.
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Eugene took their first Antero the following morning, and by the looks
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of Eugene's book of short term memories gone long term gone gone, Eugene had
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taken Antero every morning since then, for the past forty years. Well,
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thirty-six years technically, thirty six years, three months, and a day. Eugene
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figured most people would be afraid to wake up forty years older (especially
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given that Eugene was just about reaching UPK life expectancy of sixty-four).
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However, Eugene did not have emotions; Eugene was technically a psychopath.
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Though this word is antiquated now and will be far more antiquated by the time
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this story occurs; psychopathy is not a real diagnosable medical condition,
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rather a collection of common attributes, and the term is hampered by a very
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strong connotation that psychopaths are violent and compulsively homicidal.
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Eugene was neither.
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Eugene's book was written in a somewhat different way from their usual
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writing. At least that's what they figured at first look. On first glance, the
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entries were scrawled quickly and looked dirtier than their usual work (or
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their usual work of forty years' prior). Done so to save time, probably. And
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the entries were bulleted and abbreviated. "I went out for dinner with Laura.
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She seemed happy and has just gotten engaged to the kind-hearted and hearty
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mutual friend of ours Brian." becomes simply "dined with laura. now eng. w/
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brian"; "laura" and "brian" both hyperlinks to the relevant written profiles
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within Eugene's book (mentioned entry dated January 8 and both profiles updated
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automatically with this information at the same time).
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So, what to do today. 21XX-07-01. Go to work at Rogo Corporation. Job
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is to supervise the automatic production of electric machetes and rapidly debug
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errors. At nine hundred hours, attend meeting determining scope and cause of
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formula errors in accounting department, and consequences. Okay. Eugene got out
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of bed, went to the bathroom, brushed their teeth, and did other usual
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activities similar to one does in the bathroom. Then they put on a
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tight-fitting black collared t-shirt, light and thin dark blue jacket, and
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black jeans, and walked downstairs to hail a cab to the tallest skyscraper in
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their city.
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"Memes", viral thoughts, have existed for millennia. As the time taken
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for a thought to circumnavigate the world decreased, the sheer amount of memes
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increased. The printing press, telegraph, telephone, television, all
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accelerated the travel of memes. However, the mass popularization of the use of
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the Internet mainly through the world wide web in the early twenty-first
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century predictably spawned an unprecedented environment in which memes could
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form, pass through the minds of millions of people, and die, in the span of
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hours. This was the perfect petri dish in which cognitoviruses could evolve.
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Cognitoviruses, or memetic cognitohazards, are self-propagating mind
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worms that often interfere with the capability of the subject's brain to
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accomplish tasks necessary in order to think. The first cognitoviruses were
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temporarily distracting and rather harmless; for example, a game where,
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whenever one thinks of it, they lose, which is in turn unwinnable unless the
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subject never knew of the game in the first place, but of which the subject is
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compelled to tell others, is a very classic example (and one that was popular
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on the Internet through the mid 2010s). As research into the phenomenon of
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cognitohazardous materials and the memetic transmission of cognitohazards
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evolved, cognitoviruses were developed and published that began to circulate
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through popular communicative Internet services, and soon became a "meme"
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themselves.
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It was in the late twenty-first century that a cognitovirus was
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developed that was, more or less, lethal, and theorized to be the work of a
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state military though the true origin is uncertain. And Antero sat as a
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published paper and niche-market drug, usually applied in the treatments of
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mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. In the
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week following the release of the first lethal cognitovirus the usage of
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communicative Internet services plummeted, meanwhile Gokko Pharma's valuation
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increased fifty-fold. And so the world kept spinning.
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Antero. Eugene needed to take the pill. They were halfway down the
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stairs from their rented living space before they remembered and had to walk
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back up. On the other side of the bed from where their book was. A blue bottle
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with white cap; inside, a dozen or so green pills. Eugene dry-swallowed one and
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went back down the stairs to the street to find a driver.
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This is not nearly my best writing. I thought 七月 was June, the
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description of Eugene is so bland yet so pseudo-edgy. I like that Eugene uses
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gender-neutral pronouns but that was because of my misunderstanding of gender
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in which I thought such a thing was ridiculous and everybody should be neutral.
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I like the idea of memes as weapons and still think about it - I used to do
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stuff like that (and that's all I can say about that). But I think this style
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of narration sucks and the world described was excessively bland - intended to
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be British but without much subtle charm that colors the otherwise gray world
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of England in media. It's nice that my writing's improved so much in 18 months
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- or maybe I'm just not divorced far enough by time from what I write in this
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blah to see the glaring flaws.
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I'm gonna have to put pipes at the start of the next one's lines
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because it's reliant on the structure of the text - I can't just indent each
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paragraph and shove it together to indicate relation between segments like I
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can when I put random snippets of writing in here.
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2021-08-12
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|Anonym's journey to the center of the universe
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| began on 31 september 2021 in the town of little rock maine. anonym
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| went to a big franchised or whatever drugstore to buy a coca cola. then they
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| went to check out but they noticed no registers were open. yet the store was
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| still open, and there was a worker there striding around the registers
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| "hi, I'd like to check out please" anonym
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| Worker: "Yes, that's for what I'm here."
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| "well, ah, where should i pay for my cola?" anonym
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| Worker: "Please use the self-checkouts."
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| "i don't really understand how to use the automatons" anonym
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| Worker: "Yes, that's for what I'm here
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| I'm here to show you how to use the self-checkouts."
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| "alright" anonym
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| anonym learned to use the automatons to complete transactions
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| "so, what do you think of coca cola? what sodas do you like?" anonym
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| Worker: "I don't know. I drink any beverage."
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| "you don't have a preference? even something you like more than others?" anonym
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| Worker: "No."
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| anonym left the store and continued their journey to the center of the
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| universe
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That one was basically just a transcript of an interaction I had at my
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local CVS. I hate my local CVS.
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2021-03-05
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The Journey
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Kenan Gleick woke up on a Tuesday morning, in a town neither you nor I
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have heard of, Michigan, to a soft roar emanating from outside the room in
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which was the bed in which he'd apparently slept. He recognized neither the
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bed, nor the room, nor the view outside the window, nor, upon putting on the
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clothes in the mahogany bureau next to the bed (business-casual khakis, a pair
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of sneakers, and a black "Thanks for the toast!" tee shirt) and looking up at
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the mirror above the bureau, himself.
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He pocketed a cheap multitool on top of the bureau. He knew who he had
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once been - a cashier at a local supermarket - but it didn't seem relevant to
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who he was now. His palms had worn since he'd last seen them. He crossed the
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hardwood flooring and opened the white door before entering a hall, painted a
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diseased maroon, to find what appeared to be a handyman or some other sort of
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contract laborer grinding through the drywall with a rotary saw. The man turned
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off the blade and stared at Kenan. "That room was just empty."
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"Sorry." Kenan quickly walked into what was marked as a stairwell and
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treaded down the stairs until he came to the sign indicating the ground floor,
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where he broke into a jog and quickly made it outside the hotel before anyone
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could ask any questions.
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I remember thinking about this one but I don't know what it was gonna
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be about. This is also probably the earliest piece of writing I have saved on
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my computer. There are really old ones that maybe I'll dig out at some point
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but I've already pasted three here for today and I can only bear so much
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embarrassment at the writing of my 17 year old self.
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The trinity.moe/blah chronological cut must be so confusing to watch!
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I found an ancient blog of mine from when I was a kid.
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2016-04-09
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Today we didn't have school because it's Saturday. I went to one of my
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friend's birthday parties, [...]'s, to be exact, and I got him a Nerf Elite
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Dual-Strike. It was a Nerf party, by the way, and it's no mystery of whether
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Han or Greedo shot first. I did. I also met up with my (old) friend, [...], and
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shot him. It was kinda boring today altogether though.
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2016-04-11
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School was nothing special today. I've been trying to think of a
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YouTube video to make. I've been getting vlogger's block. It's weird. Also, I
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heard of something I think everybody should check out - a petition asking
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Blizzard to stop trying to sue Nostalrius. Sign it! Please!
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2016-04-16
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I didn't post anything for the week, since I was so busy with school,
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but now it's April vacation so I can blog all I want. My favorite Minecraft
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server, play.prxcraft.net, is shutting down on the 20th.
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2016-05-24
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I've been busy this month. It's just too much, especially with
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volunteering and all the other crap our school makes us do. Meh. Another day,
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another blog. Another Weebly site to watch is AnimeFreak. Weebly's doing
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something stupid so that entire sentence was linked. Enjoy.
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EDIT: I linked the word now. Just the word. DEAL WITH IT.
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Somewhere along the way, probably inspired by Paul Graham's blog, I
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learned it's less interesting to write about what you /do/ (unless what you do
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is absolutely fascinating, which most of the time it is not) and more
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interesting to write about what you're /thinking/.
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About a month after these I started on a webcomic which had the writing
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quality of CtrlAltDel and a slightly better art quality than Arson Comics. It
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had various unfunny jokes about virtual reality (which I had not yet tried),
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self driving cars (which did not yet exist), arcade machines that could play
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every video game ever made (which I didn't know existed), and the usual
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violence-as-a-punchline, a hallmark of 00s and 10s webcomics.
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My favorite webcomics were xkcd (which I discovered at the time Vodka
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was published - 2015-05-22, I guess) and MegaTokyo (which I discovered on
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xkcd's site footer). MegaTokyo taught me leetspeek and a ton of weaboo culture,
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and I still love the common fantasy of being stranded in a metropolitan area
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and being forced to just Figure It Out. Later I also read TwoKinds, Savestate,
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Junior Scientist Power Hour, and others.
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I would be thoroughly shocked if I found anything older than 2014 that
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I could paste onto here. My life only really began when I turned 18, anyway.
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2023-01-04
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Karl and Will watched Captain James Cook sit in his recliner, seeming
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