sigurj

I've always thought of video games as a form of artistic expression, I just want to get other people's take on it.

It was nearly three-hundred hours when Vera and her team arrived at the apartment complex. The temperature had dropped below fifty degrees by then and a dense fog had fallen over the surrounding area, leaving very little to see other than the target building. The familiar scent of petrichor warmed Vera somewhat, though she knew she would be spending most of the night wiping condensation from her rifle, and cursed under her breath at the thought. At the time of their arrival, the militia had already set up security positions around the building and appeared rather bored, indicating that they must have been there for quite a while already; Vera was surprised to discover that aside from her team, there were almost no SAG personnel around. Almost on signal, Sig asked out loud what the rest of them were thinking, “where the hell is everyone?”

Vera and Marc turned to look at Sig, each half-expecting the other to answer his question. Meanwhile, Sanchez started over to the field headquarters to inquire about the situation. Taking this as a cue, Sig and Marc squatted down near the front wheel of the van and began to smoke. Vera patted the pocket below her sidearm and cursed again, realizing for perhaps the sixth or seventh time that day that she was trying to quit. It would be a good idea, she thought, to have one before the raid, just to calm her nerves. But Evan would smell it on her when she got home—the little brat always did—and ***** her out and no one wants to deal with that, so instead she walked to the other side of the van, propped her elbows on the hood, and started to scan the apartment through the optics of her rifle.

The building was three levels high, probably twelve units total. Each level was accessible from an external staircase on either side of the building. In some of the windows, the residents could be seen peeking out through they blinds. They must have been nervous, a standard reaction for anyone about to be raided by the SAG, but as long as they complied and didn't try to resist or—god forbid—try and shoot at them, they had little to worry about. A couple of days in a heated detention block, a chat with the guys in Human Intelligence, most of them would be out in time to start the work week, if they had nothing to hide.

I had this dream several times over the course of around six months when I was around 11-12

When I was in the 4th grade, one of my classmates died suddenly from some obscure medical condition that I can't quite recall. I didn't know him very well, but we'd had the same teachers on and off since kindergarten, so I was reasonably familiar with him.

In the dream, we are both standing on top of a tall building in the middle of a massive city. It was always nighttime in the dream, and usually either raining or snowing; it was never a clear sky but I remember I could always clearly see the lights of the city glittering beneath us.

Most of the time the dream would involve the two of us just standing at the edge of the roof looking down. Eventually it would occur to me that at some point the both of us would have to jump. I would realize this without him telling me or even saying anything at all. But somehow it seemed like he was conveying it to me in some non-verbal manner while just standing there next to me. I was always scared to do it, but for some reason I felt like it wouldn't be as bad if we both went at the same time. I think in some of the dreams I would ask him what would happen when we landed, but I don't remember if he ever responded.

Invariably, I'd let myself fall off of the roof, from hundreds of feet in the air it was a long way down, and I'd look over to see if he had done the same, but there would always be nothing but empty space and the glittering city stretching for miles. Immediately I'd feel betrayed, like I'd somehow been duped even though he never actually told me to jump there was a sense that he'd tricked me into doing something that I might have secretly been wanting to do the whole time.

And then, before I hit the ground, I wake up.

Bear in mind that nothing you do will be permanent; once your six months are up, any laws you passed can be repealed or declared unconstitutional by the appropriate government branch.

Please include your home country in your answer.

Bear in mind that nothing you do will be permanent; once your six months are up, any laws you passed can be repealed or declared unconstitutional by the appropriate government branch.

Please include your home country in your answer.

When I tried to connect to a server on a Steam game this evening, I noticed that nearly all of the servers were pinged at 300+ milliseconds. When I looked at the Steam servers for all of my games, they all had the same high ping. I then opened the command console on my computer and pinged random websites, same problem. So obviously, it's my computer and my side of the connection that is the problem. I have a fairly new computer and a broadband Internet connection, and I already tried reseting my modem, so I'm pretty much stumped.

Any ideas?

Mine: Gather as much information and knowledge as possible, and pass it on to the next generation.

My paranoid friend is convinced that "at least three-quarters" of all Americans would call the police if they saw someone toking in a public place, and I think he's full of crap. So if you saw some people who you KNEW were smoking pot while driving around, walking around, whatever, would you report them to the cops? And, parenthetically, under what circumstances would you report people for smoking weed?

Mine: Gather as much information as possible, and pass it on to the next generation.

Who's to say that a one world government will definitely be a bad thing? How do we know it won't turn out to be a benign dictatorship?

In the plainest, simplest language you can. No partisan BS. Please make sure you can back up all of your claims.

This video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseF7kRJFHo

freaks me out, even though I love the song. Is there anything you've seen that's creepier/more disturbing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BarackObamaCerti...

This looks real to me...

I've seen a lot of hardliners here who consider pirates to be some kind of subhuman who deserve to die no matter what.

What happened to human rights?

What happened to due process?

Doesn't it seem reasonable to assume that these pirates have some good reason to do what they do? It doesn't seem right to think that they all do it just for thrills or because they're sociopaths. Maybe it's all they know, maybe there are no other opportunities.

NO, I don't think that pirates shouldn't be punished. But at the same time, I don't think what they're doing is inexcusable. We don't know all of the circumstances that these people live under, so what gives us the right to play judge and jury?

Personally I think we should, it would reduce drug-related crime, taxation of the plant would provide revenue for the government, and it would prevent us from filling our prisons with minor drug offenders who would have no other inclination to break the law.

I disagree with the idea that if we legalized weed, we would see a surge of new users. The people who are inclined to use weed will use it regardless of whether it's legal or not, legalizing it would simply protect them from imprisonment and halt the anti-weed enforcement that is a waste of the taxpayers dollars. The people who smoke will keep smoking, and most of the people who don't smoke will continue to not smoke, with only a few who cross over.

Personally I think we should, it would reduce drug-related crime, taxation of the plant would provide revenue for the government, and it would prevent us from filling our prisons with minor drug offenders who would have no other inclination to break the law.

I disagree with the idea that if we legalized weed, we would see a surge of new users. The people who are inclined to use weed will use it regardless of whether it's legal or not, legalizing it would simply protect them from imprisonment and halt the anti-weed enforcement that is a waste of the taxpayers dollars. The people who smoke will keep smoking, and most of the people who don't smoke will continue to not smoke, with only a few who cross over.

The room temperature

Air discomfort is

Dignified and bold

Soldier of the kings in a particle of smoke

rising from my mouth!

Exhume fear like it's all that satisfies

or justifies!

Or never

love love laugh love laugh

laugh love love love

love laugh to laugh love

I love to laugh!

Demand and believe

I'm doing everything else

When I should be screaming

And do not try a new enemy

'Cause I swear you're as close as you'll ever be

With fixated brights aglow...

From one end of the hall to the other

You hear corrupt

It'll spin you corrupted in turn

Rate from hatred a system of

Awkward paranoia

Good morning beautiful and please-oh-please

Don't take it personally

From one earend to the other

"Read it."

F--k you

Come with me

Into the tower

Come and see

What we've done to protect ourselves

In the tower we are free

In it's power we believe

And now

It's time to bring together

But how

Can we breathe forever?

Repopulate and dominate the end

To feed the self-obsession

Want and need

You congregate in me

Suffocation

The tower is all

The tower is our faith

Resignation

Dominate, you dominate me

Devastation

Always waiting for the light

Sleeping guarded through the night

The ground below will carry me

The tower wants us to believe

The skies above us to remind

The time that burns us ill-defined

But not that we were remembering

The dust that settles in everything

As the tower brings us farther from the ground

Its power resonates in every sound

It's midnight in my bedroom

And Scarlet's in my brain

Scarlet holds the keys to my suffering

Scarlet takes away the pain

Lights never go off in here

It never feels right

And Scarlet never wants to play

Scarlet always turns away

Scarlet always turns away

And the walls can turn from blue to black

The floor will fall the ceiling cracks

And I can't keep track of time

And the speakers lose their rhyme

The humming of the white box shouts

The characters are running out

My bitter hands no longer free

Scarlet can't inspire me

Scarlet won't inspire me

The Spider King whispers in my ear

He wants to know why I am still here

Scarlet barely knows my name

But I still play her game