(no subject)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

From Another Time by W. H. Auden

(no subject)

one thread and one shorter post crossposted from my nsfw twitter (as I periodically delete those).
both somewhat on the topic of thought crime discourse, taboo art, and a warning to younger folks given my past background ..


( thread one )

(no subject)

> in the middle of monthly backups
> get cranky at system refusing to delete old files from trash and claiming the disk is full
> accidentally wipes external hard drive for backups in hissy fit
(whoops)
> spends the rest of an unplanned sunday evening trying not to sweat as i figure out how to reformat/image/mount an external hard drive totally from scratch on a new OS :D;;;;

man o man am i really glad i fucked around in gparted back in the great Asus DualBoot Debacle so at least i recognized Half Of These Words
(technically if shit hits the fan i still have my legacy files from the old laptop but at this point that's like a year out of date so there'd be A Lot lost.) 

i gotta say tho, even if it's slightly stressful to not Know(tm) how to do half of this shit, i really love the sense of actually having to use brain cells in linux and not just click-clicky-ing on an app or two to do all the hard work for me ... i don't pretend that i'm doing like, bare metal 1334 hacking, but every time something like this happens i learn a staggering amount of cool stuff of 'why is this named /sda' or 'why does fat32 a thing'. it feels like i'm owning a car and actually taking piece by piece of the engine apart to fix it instead of paying a vendor XX to do it.

the powers of ownin' yer shit!! etc