Random Thoughts and Mostly Pretty Useless Stuff

[pmbrennan]

Hammacher Schlemmer Holiday Catalog - Apocalypse Edition

The Human Sacrifice Altar

The World's Best Torture Rack

The Monogrammed Box of Pain

The Genuine Cambodian Pile of Human Skulls

The 21' Cordless Prelit Intestines

The Full Length Washable Leather Apron With Matching Leatherface Mask

The Thomas Kinkade Sparkling Lanterns

[pmbrennan]

“Look - they’re in distress! You gotta see things from their perspective!”

[pmbrennan]

The mighty G-13 Booster at stage separation. This monster weighs in at 1200 tons on the pad and lifts off using 13 Mainsails. It's extremely sturdy and reliable and can achieve a 100x100km orbit with over 22,000 units of liquid fuel and oxidizer. Except for MechJeb and Navigation Lights, this booster is constructed entirely out of stock parts. At this point it is configured as a tanker, but it will be adapted shortly as a heavy booster for interplanetary missions. This isn't the biggest booster I've seen, but it is an original design of mine, and it was designed with scalability in mind. I intend to scale it up to even more epic proportions.

[pmbrennan]

[pmbrennan]

King, Obama, and the Surveillance State

On the 50th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's speech in Washington, DC, as our first black president speaks at the same spot, it might be a good idea to remember that in that time, Dr King was being spied upon, constantly, aggressively and thoroughly illegally. Dr King was never under suspicion of committing a crime. He was not a terrorist, nor did anyone believe he was a terrorist. At no point in time did any police agency stand before a judge and ask for a warrant to tap his phone, bug his hotel rooms, read his mail and follow his movements. The entire point of the effort was to discredit, harass, intimidate, and silence a man who was engaged in peaceful, Constitutionally-protected, political speech. The vast spying power of the state, justified by a need to fight an existential threat to the United States, was used instead to try to silence dissent. Because that's what it's always used for, then - and now.

Oh, and did you notice how well all those FBI agents following King around actually protected him from an actual, real terrorist? Right.

The major difference between then and now is that today, the state has the power to bug each and every one of us as thoroughly as it did King. We each have a microphone we carry around, that the FBI can turn on at will. They read our email. They know who we call and they know what we say. They track our movements. And all of this is done without a court order or even a suspicion of having committed a crime. And it is only a matter of time before the trove of information that is being gathered on us all is harnessed to squash dissent.

President Obama might consider this history when he stands up and talks in Dr King's place, as his administration relentlessly advances the perpetuation and expansion of the National Surveillance State. He might, but he probably won't.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mlks-speech-attracted-fbis-intense-attention/2013/08/27/31c8ebd4-0f60-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html

[pmbrennan]

Teaser for the Next Play

Coming in 2014: Terms of Use.

"We used to imagine that the Internet would be the vessel of our liberation, and it would take us to Utopia. Imagine our dismay as it slowly dawned on us that we were on a slave galley, and hopelessly far out to sea."

[pmbrennan]

Singulariteen is Top Seller at the SF Fringe 2013!

I'm very pleased to announce that Singulariteen, my new Pre-Apocalyptic Nightmare Comedy, is the top seller of advance tickets at the 2013 San Francisco Fringe Festival! We are hard at work getting everything ready to rock a full house, and it's shaping up to be an explosively funny show. It's a very good time to get your tickets now and join us!

[pmbrennan]

Announcing the Cast of Singulariteen!

Undefined Symbol Theater is proud to announce the cast of Singulariteen by Patrick M Brennan, directed by Hester Schell, which will have its world premiere at the San Francisco Fringe 2013: HELEN : Terry Bamberger GEORGE : Steve Menasche EDDIE : Marcus D. Lance SISSY : Emily Radosevich JESUS : RJ Castaneda ASPEN : John Lennon Harrison

We are very fortunate to have such talented and professional actors committed to this project. They join a top-notch production team in what is shaping up to be a very exciting show. We are looking forward to making you laugh at Singulariteen! PS: Now would be a good time to get your tickets, before we sell out! : www.brownpapertickets.com/event/390097

[pmbrennan]

Here are the banners that my good friend Dean Calusdian are making for Singulariteen. He's super-talented and I'm grateful for his help on this project.

[pmbrennan]

First Reading: Thank you!

Thank you to all the wonderful people who came out to read Singulariteen yesterday. The actors read so well! It was wonderful to hear the play for the first time. Afterwards, there was an outpouring of perceptive and extremely useful comments. I'm very encouraged about the success of this play! I can't wait to dig into the rewrite now!

[pmbrennan]

Singulariteen Set For Four Performances at the Fringe!

My new one-act play, Singulariteen, will have four performances at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September:

Saturday, September 7th, 2013, at 10:30 PM

Sunday, September 8th, 2013, at 2:30 PM

Saturday, September 14th, 2013, at 2:30 PM

Friday, September 20th, 2013, at 9:00 PM

Singulariteen is the story of the Bristol family: Helen, George, Sissy, and Eddie - a normal American family trying to keep it together as the world hurtles toward the abyss. On the eve of the Singularity - whatever that is - the Bristols face the prospect of the very end of their life as they know it. Jesus, Drones, the Second American Revolution, Cyber-sex, Guns, and a mysterious man named Raoul all conspire on a hilarious romp through our apocalyptic fears and assorted foibles. I'm very excited to be able to present this play. Initial reactions to the script have been extremely positive, and I am assembling a fantastic team to do the production. I will be posting more details as we get closer to the production date.

(repost of http://www.undefinedsymboltheater.com/2013/05/25/singulariteen-set-for-four-performances-at-the-fringe/)

[pmbrennan]

Eight Ways The Tyrannical US Government Can Shut Down Your Bullshit Rebellion Without Bothering To Confiscate Your Guns

Let's assume (strictly for the sake of argument) that you've joined a group of Second Amendment Fundamentalists like yourself, and you're prepared to fight against the Tyrannical US Government to resist their diabolical plan to come and confiscate your guns. Congratulations! You are part of a proud American tradition, though it's debatable whether that tradition is that of rebellion against authority or the tradition of being batshit crazy. In either case, in order to demonstrate how feeble you are in placing your faith in your guns and your guns alone, let me list a few ways the government can fuck with you without even bothering to take your guns away.

1. Declare you to be a terrorist. Once you have definitely decided to make war on the US government, you are officially a terrorist. You are now fair game for all sorts of measures, up to and including disappearing your ass in a US black site or just, you know, drone-bombing you. Yes, these things are basically unconstitutional. Good luck arguing that now, terrorist. But let's assume that the government has decided that it doesn't want you dead or disappeared. Now that you're officially a terrorist, there are lots and lots and lots of ways the US Government can legally screw you and your ragtag band of miscreants - again, without even actually taking your guns.

2. Take Your Car. If you're driving out on the highway with the license plate that's registered to you, they will find you and they will stop you. I guess you can opt to get into a shootout with the cops, but I think we all know where that will end.

3. Stop you from flying. Without your car, you're going to have a hard time moving around the country (or the world, you fucking traitor) to meet with your fellow rebels. You could try to fly, but even if you're travelling under an assumed name, you can't be packing when you board that plane. Maybe you should go Amtrak.

4. Freeze Your Financial Assets. Hey, you're a terrorist. Your bank accounts? Your 401(k)? Your stock portfolio? Say goodbye to all that. Nobody ever said freedom was free.

5. Deny you the use of your credit/ATM cards. We all know who wears the pants in the marriage between Uncle Sam and Mrs. Wall Street. He does what he's told, we know. There's one exception: When Sam tells a bank to stop any and all transactions by a terrorist, they get stopped. By now, you're thinking you need an assumed identity, forged credentials, and anonymous piles of cash. Gold, maybe.

6. Track you via your internet access and cell phone, and/or block access to communications networks. Because the government has a cozy relationship with all the telecommunications providers, they pretty much have unfettered access to your communications. There's lots they can do even without actually decrypting your traffic, and if you manage to make yourself a high enough priority target, they can do that, too. Much of what they will do doesn't even require a warrant. You might consider ditching the cell phone entirely: even when you think it's off, it can be pinging cell towers, telling the network where it is. It's true you can try to do what al Queda and the Mob do, and arrange to use one-time-only cell phones. Of course that's going to take big piles of cash to arrange.

7. Jam your radios. So you and your buddies think, hey, OK, we don't have cell phones or internet, but we can just use radio for communications. Right? Actually, not only have you made yourselves easier to track, you've also made yourselves easier to jam. Without tactical communications, those firefights you're fantasizing about are going to be over pretty quick.

8. Deny Your GPS. You'll know you've really made it to the big time if the government decides to deny you the use of GPS signals. By the way, remember who owns those satellites? It's non-trivial for them to jam yours without causing problems for themselves, so if they're doing this to you, you have truly arrived.

So if you really want to protect your guns against the Tyrannical US Government, you're going to have to learn how to live a little differently. Convert all your finances to cash, and keep it in the house. (Or bury it!) Become an expert at camping and wilderness survival. Learn to hunt. Make sure to become an expert at orienteering. Stock up on false documents and become an expert in disguise, as well as in cryptography and/or steganography. Just remember that you're not going to have any help when the shit hits the fan, so don't fantasize that you'll actually be able to run a coordinated rebellion. In the end, you'll just be a lone criminal hiding out, stealing food and supplies wherever you can, waiting for the inevitable day when they do catch you. But until that day, you will have your guns.

What is my point? Only this: your fantasy that you will someday participate in some kind of "Red Dawn"/"Turner Diaries"-style rebellion against the government is a perfectly delightful fantasy to cherish, but don't ever imagine it'll be anything more than that. And we should stop allowing the existence of this stupid fantasy to dictate our policy decisions around guns.