Mayan Doomsday Party + Totally Rad Quotes + Fiscal Crack + the Nuclear SNOB

» This might be my final entry .. seeing that Doomsday arrives in but 9 days .. on the 21st .. coming with the winter solstice (.. which occurs at precisely 3:12 AM .. here on the Left coast). In other words ... we're down to single-digits .. and counting » 8, 7, 6 ...

Stonehenge"Houston, we *have* ignition."

So it seems this would be an appropriate place to post my last entry » on 12-12-12 (.. seeing there will be no 13-13-13).

"Twelve-twelve-twelve" .. has a nice ring, doesnt it? [ specially when you consider that Radified has been online 12 years. "Ding!" ]

Once each century. One-per-lifetime the standard allotment .. for 12-12-12. No mas.

Earlier today .. I was thinking about what to write for my [ twelfth annual ] New Years eve entry .. when it suddenly dawned on me .. that the end of the world could come before that. =)

Mayan Doomsday, December 21st, 2012, winter solsticeSo I figured I should probably post it now. But what does one write on the eve of Armageddon?

Crafting humor online can be fraught with misunderstanding, seeing the writer is limited to text (.. no body-language clues to play off.

There's no voice-inflection to intuit). In other words .. hopefully you know I am just joking.

But the best jokes are funny for the subtext of truth that they play off.

Now I may merely be letting my imagination run away with me .. or perhaps playing with the power-of-suggestion .. but I definitely feel like something NEW is nigh. Is it just me? Or do you sense it, too?

I mean, maybe it's not the end-of-life on-the-planet full-monty .. but something .. something tingly .. like your spidey senses are picking up something .. like the sound you hear when a pin has been pulled from a grenade. (Guess we'll find out soon enough.)

» Totally Rad Quotes on 12-12-12

In honor of the occasion (.. the end of the world) and to provide a treat to help celebrate 12 years online, I've posted a » Quotes page. [ If those arent an eclectic mix, I don't know what is. ]

Bukowski | 1920-1994And that is the order in which I added them. You can eavesdrop on my intellectual development .. as the list grows. I think Dostoevsky is on deck. Then Einstein.

Maybe Oppenheimer. Definitely Nietzsche. Tolstoy should be #12. Dylan #13.

Guess I need a quote from Shakespeare (preferably from Twelfth Night) but he is already so frequently quoted.

And of course, we will need to include a representative quote from the wildman himself » Hunter S. Thompson.

••• today's entry continues here below •••

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I will have much to say about Gonzo, seeing that he had an influence on me .. at an age when I was fairly influenceable. Gonzo taught me (among other things) that appearances don't matter. It's what's on the inside that counts.

Update » Uh, let me amend my last. Rather, appearances shouldnt matter .. as much as what's inside. Obviously, appearances matter very much to some. And to others, appearances seem to be ALL that matter.

I love quotes. I could post a whole web site full of nothing but cool, thought-provoking quotes .. but uh, it seems that others already have.

I just realized that -- to be really cool (.. and not merely eclectic) -- I should have posted 12 quotes .. to reflect the day's theme.

But those pages are actually quite a bit of work to assemble .. like a set-of-photos, but with more text. Hopefully you can see the care I put into them ..

.. not just the quotes themselves, along with a photo, but I also include why I like the quote and what it means to me.

Oh, this is interesting » Revelations 12:12 (I was just curious) says (paraphrase) » He knows his time is short (.. and he aint none too happy 'bout it, either).

The phrase 'time-is-short'  plays nicely into today's theme, no?

» The Fiscal Cliff, the Debt-Ceiling & Our Crack-Pipe Economy

The first thing that comes to mind regarding Doomsday .. is the » Fiscal Cliff .. and the negotiations of our leaders .. and their apparent inability to come to an agreement .. and the consequences that would have for you and me .. citizens of the United States ..

Our Crack-Pipe Economy.. and perhaps even bigger .. is the debt-ceiling debate .. where Republicans hold the trump card .. their ONLY trump card. So I would expect them to play it to the hilt.

If history is any precedent .. these debt-ceiling negotiations will not be pretty. I don't know what would happen, but the mere specter of a U.S. default .. would be enough to rattle world markets.

My intuitive-feel regarding our Economy .. is that we are like a person with walking pneumonia .. who really just needs to rest for a while and let nature take its course .. to give the body's built-in natural healing abilities a chance to work.

But the powers-that-be have the economy so drugged up with stimulus (fiscal and monetary crack) .. that we are preventing the natural healing .. that needs to occur ..

.. because they fear that .. if Old Man Economy [ a closet crack-head ] does indeed go down .. he might not be able to make it back up to his feet again. "Oh ye of little faith."

"You can pay me now or you can pay me later."

Before closing this section on the economy we would be remiss if we did not pause to thank our kids .. the ones who have let us live beyond our means for so long. They are the ones who will pay our mountain of national debt long after we're gone. And they're therefore the ones who make this party possible. "Thanks, kids."

I would expect that .. before the SY$TEM does indeed "go down" .. it would first shit itself .. in increasingly telltale ways. No?

In other words, everybody knows that the prospect of a Doomsday party is about more than an ancient Mayan calendar.

As a fiscal-aside .. do you not find it curious .. that people are starting to refer to Bernanke's 'Fiscal Cliff' .. as a 'Fiscal Slope'? Cuz I do.

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine» The Single-Digit Midget & the SNOB

My enlistment lasted 6 years. You gotta commit to 6 years if you want to get one of the extra-groovy military schools. That's 2192 days (.. including two leap years).

That's a long time. And when you are counting the days .. it's a long-ass time.

Every sailor always knows how much time is remaining on their enlistment. When you have less then 100 days .. you become a "two-digit midget" .. which of course is nice .. comparatively speaking.

Cuz, by now, you know your way around a reactor plant rather well. You know your shit. Shipmates look to you for answers, both technical and regarding life-in-general. [ In commercial nuclear power, we called them "Ultimate Warriors". ]

Anybody who lives with a nuclear reactor .. or anything, for that matter .. for several years .. naturally becomes .. proficient.

But! .. when you have LESS THAN 10 days left .. you become a "single-digit midget" .. who suddenly starts "tripping over dimes" .. cuz he is so 'short'.

Nuclear-powered submarine launching its ballistic missilesWhen you become the nuke with the least amount of time remaining on the ship, you become the » "Shortest Nuke On Board" .. or » the SNOB. And as you might imagine .. SNOB's rule. =)

When nuclear sailors arrive out at the fleet .. to their assigned boat [ after school ] .. most of them have ~4 years remaining on their enlistment (6 minus 2 years of schooling). Dude, that is nearly 1500 days.

The old salts stand around and ask, "How many days does he have left?" They they turn and say, "I would just shoot myself now." =)

Of course he was joking .. but every good joke is good because of the truth that it plays off. And you could tell from the faces of those standing around there in Engine Room Upper Level [ ERUL] .. there between the main engines .. and right in front of the reduction gear .. that it was a good joke. Very good.

I did not believe it at the time .. but military bureaucracy has a way of choking the life out of you. The military does not want you getting creative with their reactors. "Shoot me now."

Once you get to less than 500 days [ ~18 months ] you start feeling the love. And while the two-digit midget might think he is Master-of-the-Universe .. the single-digit midget knows he is.

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarineYou pinch yourself the whole day that you get out. EAOS = End of Active Obligated Service. (The military is all about acronyms.)

I still have dreams, every so often, that I am still in the Navy. It's like a nightmare.

In my dream I go to the Yeoman chief and tell him that I should have been discharged years ago .. but he says (rather irritatedly), sitting at a desk covered with tall piles of paper ..

.. "Look, I don't have the TIME right now. Just keep working and I'll try to get around to processing your discharge paperwork in a couple of weeks."

He always addresses me by my last name, like they do in the military. It's like I can't get out .. like I'm stuck there.

I call the Dog whenever I have one of these dreams. The worst ones (by far) are when I lose the Bug. Terror.

And today we all just became single-digit midgets .. Doomsday midgets .. 5, 4, 3 ... seems like a good reason to throw a party.

Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right) | August 6-9, 1945» Nuclear Weapons in the Modern Age

As a former submariner, it is difficult for me to forget that those of us who live in the modern age .. live in a world populated with nuclear weapons ..

.. many thousands of them .. to make Armageddon a reality .. weapons which have already been used .. and which have already killed real people. Many of them.

The primary purpose of a ballistic missile submarine (.. such as the one I was station aboard for 4 years) .. is to function as a delivery mechanism .. for these nuclear weapons.

Your average, run-of-the-mill ballistic-missile submarine carries more firepower than all the bombs dropped in all the wars since the beginning of time immemorial.

Lots of nations possess nuclear weapons and more are working diligently everyday to develop them.

Misunderstandings among people from diverse backgrounds, cultures and educations are understandable. But such misunderstanding can have tragic consequences when the misunderstood have nuclear weapons at their disposal.

This is why the world changed in 1945, and we can never go back. We can't put the nuclear genie back in the bottle.

Stonehenge» WIP

Today's entry remains a work-in-progress [ WIP ]. To be cont'd...

I am just going to have fun with this. I have no particular destination in mind .. tho several very cool stops we could swing by ..

.. on our way to the party on Friday-the-21st. (Most of them begin or end with the number 12.) Why not? The end of the world (.. as we know it). Let the party begin.

Tonight might be a good time to watch Apocalypse Now.

Speaking of parties .. spending the 2012 winter solstice at Stonehenge .. the Doomsday solstice .. that would be totally bitchin'. ■

Update - December 15, 2012 » Two days after I posted this entry, a score of First Graders were slaughtered in Newtown, Connecticut .. at Sandy Hook Elementary. I grew up in Connecticut, a stone's throw from Newtown.

My son is 7 years old. The similarities are too close for comfort.

I suddenly lost interest in continuing this entry. Here is a link to the new entry (.. because it seems to go with the theme of the one you just read) » Shooting First Graders? Like Fish in a Barrel? What the Fuck?

For more along these lines, here's a Google search preconfigured for the query » mayan doomsday december 21 2012 .. another for » single digit midget nuclear navy snob, and one more for » totally rad quotes

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Rad published on December 12, 2012 12:12 PM.

Tears of Incarceration | Stealing from Your Kids - Part 3/3 was the previous entry in this blog.

Shooting First Graders? Like Fish in a Barrel? What the Fuck? - Part 1/2 is the next entry in this blog.

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