I can't remember the last time I talked to a dude...

I mean, I'm sure it must've been sometime last year, rationally proceeding upon the hidden midden of history. Nevertheless... I just can't remember it. I'm not putting it on anyone, it's mine and I own it, poor memory on my part, it happens (especially with age). I'm not saying it's because they didn't have anything intelligent (or at the very least interesting) to say so reliably an' sustainedly it eventually came to where the volume got turned down by degrees to zero, and then eventually the speaker unplugged to be used somewhere else, as a counterweight perhaps, because it was just collecting dust anyways.

Meanwhile Paladin Press closed down (with the sudden & unexpected death of its owner, coupla years ago), the sultan of Omanⁱ also died (just as suddenly & unexpectedly I guess, though he had been in charge for a fucking half century, how long are these misfortunates required to hang on already ?), leaving behind... well, he had no children, so he invested the succession in the royal court. Seriously, he told all those dorks, I don't know them but I can imagine, to pick whoever they want. Evenⁱⁱ among themselves. He also had the presence of spirits (not to mention the knowledge of the working material) to hide a letter indicating whom to pick -- which they did, the very next day.

Imagine these fuckwits an' fucktards! Uppity enough to block each other on one hand, bureaucrats of sufficient ambitions on paper to "I don't see why it shouldn't be me!" -- but only for as long as behind the safety glass of the clucker. Definitely not gonna start a war or anything over it! For as long as the discussion's online and every dog's a sultan, then every dog's a sultan an' there's NO WAY TO CONVINCE ANYONE OTHERWISE!!!! They got their rights an' things, they know! Yet nevertheless and all that notwithstanding... once it comes to those lefts, well... let's see what Mommy left in the fridge, it's better that way. As long as it's daydreaming... why, they can daydream as well as anyone! And once it's not daydreaming anymore but doing instead... well... let's see what's on Netflix.

Ultimately I suppose the point is that there ain't anything to talk to dudes about. They're utterly derealised, so it's not like they'll ever have anything meaningful -- let alone interesting -- to say about the world. Not even to the most basic level of "go down two blocks and make the next left" or anythingⁱⁱⁱ, they just don't know. Unless you're particularly interested^iv in indulging their autistic "worldview"^v, there's really nothing there to talk about at all.

So I spend my time talking with women about how terrible women are^vi, during the occasional breaks we take from doing things together^vii, and... well, it's a living, what do you want from me.

There is something I want from you, though, and that is : don't put too much stock in that "you" pronoun. Who the fuck knows whom I'm talking to or thinking of when I write "you" on Trilema ? My mental model of the readership "you" is neither particularly stable, nor too frequently reasonable^viii, not to mention reliably uninformed by actual data^ix. It's just something you say, it doesn't [have to] mean anything. Right ?

1. You remember, I'm sure, the Qaboos dude whom "mercenaries" and other "supreme gentlemen" of the early MAGA / 1970s sustained through an insurgency against his father and then through a communist insurgency against himself, pretty much the last time in history US-born & Ioway-corn fed dudes about town actually amounted to anything in practice. They did ok in WW1 (not great, but ok) under the supervision of their own government. Then they did miserably enough in WW2 (about on par with the Italians, dicking back and forth over Sicily pretty much, lawd's mercy) s'as to make sure there ain't ever gonna be another one (because, as every owner knows, you don't send your mutt to competitions it ain't gonna win just to burn the gas on the trip). Then they showed themselves marginal in Rhodesia and actually won something in Oman, under private management (meaning : in greatly reduced numbers, imposed by having to select among the "available resources" consisting of 99.x% pure shit). And then... that was it, if you don't mean "leading the coalition that conquered Mosul", of course, kekekex.

   Because in any fair an' balanced reckoning that's the history of the shithole, unavoidably : America went from
   

   about 80% of adolescent males worth, if not nearly as much as a Prussian, then still just about on par with an Austro-Hungarian (though not really the Hungarian side)

   back in 1915 to
   

   about 50% of adolescent males still worth a residual nonzero something, about on par with the Italians and other African nations (excepting Eritrea), well under the French even, not to mention of course the Brits, Poles, Colonials, Romanians, Hungarians, Serbo-Croatians and other maniacs, Germans, Soviets, Japanese or Fins (in that order)

   back in 1940, to finally
   

   less than 1% of adolescent males worth anything at all, they barely got enough gut to make a native

   after yet another quarter century, so by 1965. Ok, American ? [↩]

2. No, seriously, what exactly makes this either uncontroversial or even conceivable ? What, because the boss dies now the servants become boss-able ? If 00-Batman dies do you expect to promote that Ask Jeeves character to Supermanhood ? Or what exactly, if you drive into a truck tomorrow wifey's gonna promote the family dog to your vacant cuckhood and carry on that way ? [↩]
3. In a most amusing application of this, a waiter at some place I frequent very excitedly approached me a coupla days ago to tell me all about this great club he's found (this is something I welcome) where there's oodlebunches of hotties and what a great time he's had with his gal there and I absolutely gotta check it out (by now it was getting suspicious, we're not that close) ; only for it to turn out upon examination that "the club" consists entirely of yet another dork who can't answer his phone (too much pressure!) and otherwise the oodlebunches & great timehaving etcetera is basically the waiter's wife looking for someone to eat her out. Which... holy shit Charlotte, the gals downtown will do it for a twenny, get with the programme what the fuck. [↩]
4. "Law Enforcement" does this for a living, incidentally. In the US it's mostly expressed as "indulge dudes in lengthy, torturous exchanges full of accidental puns and unnoticed double-entendres, to be then turned as '''evidence''' of '''terrorism''' in '''legal proceedings''' (such at they are)", but here for instance it's expressed as dudes on bikes and in uniform (facebras included, of course) waiting for someone to ask them directions.

   It's not just me doing it, the vast majority of police-citizenry interactions I've to date observed begin with "Disculpe amigo" and end with "tres a la derecha" (or izquierda or dos or whatever the case may be). So basically, getting the dudes involved to any degree is outright work, like elevating grain or moving earth. The only difference's that here they pay the dudes to do the very basics of realisation (giving directions, it requires some degree of presence in actual ontology) ; whereas over there they pay caretakers to pretend like some sort of realisation's somehow ongoing (somewhere else, just over the horizon) -- because, I suppose, the autism's so advanced over there, any real approach's doomed from the start by the laws of large numbers, leaving only idle pretense as an open avenue. It's just a guess, don't bite me.

   It's not "civilised" vs "uncivilised", not anymore. Everyone's equally poor, materially an' spiritually, and poor in the exact same ways single global way. It's not "developed" vs "undeveloped" because the same boats from the same China supply all shores the same way. When the plushies invade they're the same plushies, when the "fashion" shows up it's the same fashion some bald Chinese dude who likes to touch nine year old girls intimately came up with. It's not East vs West nor North vs South nor anything whatsoever besides
   

   paying the very dudes to personally satisfy some moderate standard of involvement

   versus
   

   paying some dudes to personally swear some other, "large" batches of dudes (as misquoted and misrepresented in effigy) pars-pro-totum satisfied some much lower standard of involvement

   That's it! [↩]

5. Of which you can of course "take your pick", though it does not change over the centuries : 1900s, 2000s, will add the 2100s here though it'll be exactly the same stale ole shit, I assure you. [↩]
6. After a coupla hours productively invested in ironing out protocol wrinkles, sorting out edge cases and all the rest of that sweet sweet systems work (just like last time),

   mircea_popescu nu e o problema, las' ca e ok
   diana_coman ma rog, daca e chiar o problema in practica ma gandesc ca vom afla
   mircea_popescu cam asa
   diana_coman da, adaugirea aia suna bine
   mircea_popescu bon. deci ne-am scos ?
   diana_coman macar m-am lamurit ce ar fi de facut mai departe
   diana_coman de scos... inca nu stiu, pana nu ma vad cu el in functie,lol
   mircea_popescu bine. hai ca ma duc sa mai scriu niste articole despre ce rele-s femeile in cimpu' muncii si cum incurca ele draga barbatii de la treburi.
   diana_coman ahaha, da
   diana_coman asa si ie!
   mircea_popescu ca daca n-ai stiut asa chiar si este, is niste muncitori astia ca albinutele pe-acolo,
   mircea_popescu si nu pot draga face ca-i tin fetili de cot.
   diana_coman eu stiu da' mi s-a parut mereu foarte amuzant macar.

   [↩]

7. I wrote an actual novel with one over New Year's ; and (leaving aside how it's the best fiction item come out since my last one, and by a wide margin at that) it was quite fucking enjoyable an experience! Not because interspersed with fucking, but because fucking enjoyable of itself and of its own substance. [↩]
8. Maybe it's "the population of a typical Internet Cafe in 1990s Romania", maybe it's "the criminal underworld gathered at a wedding", maybe it's "the retarded adolescent kids of my friends", maybe it is "the sort of idiot who'd watch some film and take some device straight", you really never know. I barely ever know, and most usually only in retrospect anyways. [↩]
9. According to which, about 80% of the readership's female, and non-ESL. [↩]