The Angry Exile: Fucking computers

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Tuesday, 7 June 2011

Fucking computers

I fucking tell you, in forty thousand years when the sea level has dropped a couple of hundred feet there'll be a bunch of archaeologists scratching their heads and wondering if some bizarre and long forgotten ritual was the reason why 21st Century Man was dropping the fucking things into the Bass Strait. If the interwebs survive to leave a record of these times then possibly one of them might discover that it was actually just one 21st Century man taking his revenge on the fucking bastards for all the fucking headaches they caused, and the only ritual involved was one which began with the words: "Look, you electronic cunt, I fucking mean it this time..." and would one day build to one or more computers being launched from the decks of the Tasmania ferry in just retribution.

That is all.

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The Wasp · 720 weeks ago

Damn - and I thought this was going to be an exclusive on the new Apple meets fleshlight (very) personal assistant ;)
My recent post Jumpy Japanese panic over video of an earless Fukushima rabbit

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

That's... that's just.... seek help.

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microdave · 720 weeks ago

Things must be VERY serious for an Apple fanboy to write a post like that.... It can't be a Winblows problem as he would have told us!

Retires to nuclear bunker and waits for the shitstorm to pass over...

1 reply · active 720 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Did I say it was a Mac? Would I have passed up the opportunity to bag Apple again for being such a shower of cunts, albeit a shower of cunts whose desktop machines I like even though somewhat hilariously they can't make a decent fucking mouse to save their corporate lives? Would I have ignored the chance to take the piss out of their stupid names by making up something along the lines of iCannotfuckingdealwiththis? Would I have left unmentioned the thousand dollar electronic novelty doorstop that a year on still sounds like a feminine hygiene product and costs almost as much as a vastly more useful laptop?

No, I was dealing with a couple of Windups machines. Just didn't think it needed saying. :)

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microdave · 720 weeks ago

Holds white flag up!!!!

They were probably HP Pavilion "Compact" desktops - I bailed out of trying to repair one today after looking at "known issues" on HP's driver download page...

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

Actually one of them was an HP though HP-ness was not the cause of the problem so much as running Windon't. The thing about it that's a lot better than OS X is that it's so customisable, but that's also the thing about it that's so much worse - it's harder for casual users who've been told something that's bollocks or misunderstood something that might have been accurate to fuck up OS X too badly. But Apple are still a shower of cunts.

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microdave · 720 weeks ago

The errant HP is used by all and sundry - kids included - and is full of junk applications. There were so many "free toolbars" on IE that only half the screen was usable! I might have another go in my spare time, but advised them to buy a new unit for now...

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 720 weeks ago

I'd advise them to take a ferry trip and Bin Laden the motherfucker.

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