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<title>starbreaker.org: everything (happy overdose!)</title>
<subtitle>a full-text feed of rock operatic science fantasy and other sacraments of defiance</subtitle>
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<updated>2026-07-09T18:19:33-04:00</updated>
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<author>
<name>Matthew Cambion</name>
<email>matthew.cambion@starbreaker.org</email>
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<entry>
<title>An Idea of America</title>
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<published>2026-07-04T23:58:00-04:00</published>
<updated>2026-07-09T01:01:47-04:00</updated>
<id>tag:starbreaker.org,2020-05-29:/opinions/an-idea-of-america.html</id>
<summary>Some thinking I’ve been doing on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence</summary>
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<p> I’m not the sort of person who voluntarily stands for the flag, or for the official national anthem with
lyrics by Francis Scott Key. I certainly don’t kneel before the cross; I have never accepted that one must be
any sort of Christian to be an American. Nor have I ever truly pledged allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America. I merely milli-vannili’d the words to the pledge at school.</p>
<p> Some will say this makes me unpatriotic at best. Let them. I was never their idea of an American, let alone
their idea of a patriot. But before we continue, Occasional Reader, indulge me as I share a national anthem
that <em>does</em> move me in a way that “The Star-Spangled Banner” cannot.</p>
<figure>
<blockquote cite="https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/This_Land.htm"><pre class="variable">This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.<br></br>
As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.<br></br>
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.<br></br>
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.<br></br>
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.<br></br>
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?<br></br>
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.</pre></blockquote>
<figcaption> <a href="https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/This_Land.htm"><cite class="straight" data-type="song">“This Land is Your Land”</cite> (1940)</a> by <a href="https://woodyguthrie.org/">Woody Guthrie</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p> The following might mark me as old or out of touch: I refuse to accept that America is about blood and soil.
I am saying that as somebody who <em>could</em> claim to be a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_American" title="Heritage American - Wikipedia">“heritage
American”</a> by virtue of the fact that I have ancestors on my mother’s side (a branch of the Lovelaces in
New York) who came to the country before the American Revolution. Some fought for independence, too. Some
fought for the Union, and one lost an eye to a Confederate round.</p>
<p> Some of my ancestors, however, came to the United States after the Revolution, if not after the Civil War.
They did not all come voluntarily, either. I have Black ancestors, the descendants of African men and women
taken as prisoners of war in their homelands and sold into slavery by their captors. I have Jewish ancestors
who fled pogroms. I have Irish and Polish ancestors who fled poverty and starvation. I have no idea whether my
French ancestors freely chose to emigrate or not.</p>
<p> What does all of that mean? It’s <em>complicated</em>. I’m a descendent of oppressors and the oppressed.
Some of my ancestors were enslaved. Others were slaveowners.</p>
<p> If nothing else, it leads me to scoff when anybody proposes a national identity for white people. The very
notion of whiteness is one that demands that one sacrifice all ties to one’s national origins, culture, and
language so that one might <em>assimilate</em> and become the ruling classes’ idea of an American.</p>
<p> Thus I find the notion of one’s claim to American identity depending on one’s ancestry—a claim pushed
by the likes of Vice President J. D. Vance —utterly <em>repugnant</em>. You are not more of an American
than anybody else because you can trace your ancestry in this country back to before the Revolution. If we’re
to play that game, then the descendants of the First Nations have us <em>all</em> handily beaten. And if you
yourself claim descent from the First Nations, and insist on having a greater claim to being an American, I
will still disagree with you.</p>
<p> The very notion of one’s claim to Americanness being dependent on one’s ancestry seems to fly in the face of
the ideals on which this country had been founded two hundred and fifty years ago. The men who attended the
Second Continental Congress in 1776 made their intent plain:</p>
<figure>
<blockquote cite="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript"><h2 class="normal">In Congress, July 4, 1776</h2><p><strong>The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,</strong> When in the Course
of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the
<mark>Laws of Nature and of Nature's God</mark> entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.</p><p>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that <mark>all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.</mark>—<mark>That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed,</mark>—That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,
it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their
future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity
which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great
Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of
an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.</p></blockquote>
<figcaption> <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript"><cite data-type="manifesto">The Declaration of Independence</cite></a> by Thomas Jefferson, et al</figcaption>
</figure>
<p> <strong> <q cite="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">...all men are created
equal...</q> </strong> We don’t give that much thought, except perhaps to ask, <q>what about women?</q> or
to note that many of the signatories were slaveholders—most notoriously Thomas Jefferson. We are not
wrong to do so. The Founders were only men, after all. They might have held ideals, but they did not
consistently live up to them. Regardless, what they accomplished set the stage for others to take up the cause
of Liberty and demand <em>further</em> expansions of individual rights, if not individual <em>sovereignty</em>.</p>
<p> It might bear mentioning that until recently “Man” and “humanity” were all but synonymous. This being the
case, this preamble on its own is a rhetorical ICBM launched across the Atlantic Ocean at London. Though aimed
at King George III and his government, the fallout spread across Europe, and then the world.</p>
<p> Consider also the mention of the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. This is not God as understood by most
Christians, let alone most traditional Catholics, right-wing cafeteria Catholics like Vance, or evangelical
Christians. This is a direct reference to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism" title="Deism - Wikipedia">Deism</a>, and to a God who set the universe in motion but does not interfere with
Creation.</p>
<p> If the Deism of many of the Founders does not put paid to the notion of the United States as a country
founded on Christianity, and you are the sort of Christian supremacist who insists on taking literally the
parts of the Bible that you find agreeable, then I defy you to take another look at Romans 13, verses 1-7, and
perhaps pray in private for understanding:</p>
<figure>
<blockquote cite="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2013&amp;version=DRA"><ol><li>Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are,
are ordained of God.</li><li>Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist, purchase
to themselves damnation.</li><li>For princes are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the
power? Do that which is good: and thou shalt have praise from the same.</li><li>For he is God's minister to thee, for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear: for he beareth
not the sword in vain. For he is God's minister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil.</li><li>Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake.</li><li>For therefore also you pay tribute. For they are the ministers of God, serving unto this purpose.</li><li>Render therefore to all men their dues. Tribute, to whom tribute is due: custom, to whom custom: fear,
to whom fear: honour, to whom honour.</li></ol></blockquote>
<figcaption> <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2013&amp;version=DRA"><cite class="straight" data-type="scripture">Romans 13, Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition</cite></a> by Paul of
Tarsus</figcaption>
</figure>
<p> If Christianity demands obedience of its adherents, not merely to religious authorities within the church,
but toward secular authorities, then how can a nation founded in revolutionary defiance be a <em>Christian</em> national in the sense that it was founded on the Christian religion? The US might still be mostly Christian
in terms of demography. But the historical fact lends itself more toward the United States as a <em>Satanic</em> nation than a <em>Christian</em> one.</p>
<p> It bears mentioning that <cite class="straight" data-type="scripture">Romans 13</cite> was no doubt
convenient to the aims of Constantine, who made the church a whore of the state to consolidate his power over
the Roman Empire; one could almost suspect that the text attibuted to St. Paul might instead of been written by
committee. After all, the Bible had been compiled by a succession of committees and synods beginning with the
Council of Nicea, which began codifying early Christianity into a coherent belief system that served the state
instead of threatening it with the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_one/chapter_three/article_2/the_credo.html">the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed</a>.</p>
<p> How can a religion that demands obedience to authority be compatible with a Declaration of Independence that
explicitly says, <q cite="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">That whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.</q> That doesn’t make sense to
me. Nor does it make sense that anybody claiming to be an American or a patriot would accept that some people
are or should be <em>less</em> American because they don‘t have five generations of ancestors buried in a
churchyard in Kentucky, as J. D. Vance defines heritage:</p>
<figure>
<blockquote cite="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-vice-presidential-nomination-the-republican-national-convention-2"><p> As a United States senator, I get to represent millions of people in the great state of Ohio with
similar stories, and it is the great honor of my life.</p><p> Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War. And if, as I
hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven
generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who
have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who
would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.</p><p> Now. Now that's not just an idea, my friends. That's not just a set of principle. Even though the ideas
and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for
abstractions, but they will fight for their home.</p></blockquote>
<figcaption> <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-vice-presidential-nomination-the-republican-national-convention-2">speech given upon accepting the Republican Party’s vice presidential nomination in 2024</a> by Vice
President J. D. Vance</figcaption>
</figure>
<p> <strong>Fuck this utter clown and the false dichotomy he rode in on.</strong> Vance has ancestors who
fought in the Civil War? Fine. But as I noted earlier, <em>so did I</em>, and I reserve the right to disagree
with Vance. For somebody who graduated from Yale Law and should presumably have been given cursory exposure to
the philosophy of the Enlightenment, particularly that of David Hume, he seems to have a habit of trying to
derive ought from an is he cannot even <em>prove</em>.</p>
<p> I refuse to accept that they were fighting merely for blood and soil, even if that had been a common slogan.
Both sides were fighting for ideals, and what is an ideal but an abstraction of which people are determined to
make a concrete reality? What about the millions of American men who fought in Europe and the Pacific Ocean
during World War II? Were <em>they</em> fighting merely for their homeland, or were they fighting for ideals
as well?</p>
<p> For my part, I am fighting right now. I chose to take up a pen instead of a sword. I do not want to kill,
but to persuade those who are willing to listen, and to demonstrate to those who will not that they face
opposition. I don’t do this for my homeland. The closest I have to a homeland is New York City, but I never
lived there. Because of my parents’ poverty, I grew up in a succession of rentals around the city, moving at
least a dozen times before I was thirteen years old.</p>
<p> As for the town in which I spent the latter half of my childhood and then my adolescence? I left it behind
thirty years ago, and that ungrateful country shall not even have my bones. It is not for the town in which I
grew up that I insist on putting forth <em>my</em> idea of America. It is not even for New York City. It is
for the very abstractions J. D. Vance denigrated in his 2024 acceptance speech before the Republican National
Committee.</p>
<ul><li>I believe in the natural and inalienable rights of <em>all</em> human beings to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.</li><li>I believe in the inherent sovereignty of individuals, and that even unconsciously we choose to associate
and to yield part of our sovereignty by delegating it to a government that serves us so that we might prosper
in peace, to engage in mutual aid for mutual benefit.</li><li>I believe in equal justice under law.</li><li>I believe in the separation of church and state.</li><li>I believe that none of us are or should be the means to anybody else’s ends.</li><li>I believe in freedom of speech.</li><li>I believe in freedom of religion.</li><li>I believe in freedom from want.</li><li>I believe in freedom from fear.</li></ul>
<p> Vance might call these abstractions, but without them, what even <em>is</em> America if not the force for
tyranny that its most vicious critics claim it is? Why did USMC Major General Smedley Butler expose the
Business Plot of 1933 (a <em>Republican</em> plot) and then write <a href="https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html"><cite data-type="pamphlet">War is a
Racket</cite></a> in 1935? Did <em>he</em> not believe in America, that America was founded in greatness
and could be made greater still through the concerted efforts of her citizenry?</p>
<p> I wrote at the beginning that I do not stand for the flag nor pledge allegiance to it. Likewise, I do not
kneel to the cross. I am not a Christian, but I <em>am</em> an American, and my allegiance is not to the
flag, or even the Republic for which it stands, but the Constitution of the United States -- from which the
government of the United States draws its just powers when it <em>homors</em> the Constitution.</p>
<p> Some of a more conservative persuasion might claim that I am ungrateful. They are welcome to do so. I
recognize no obligation to perform a gratitude that stifles dissent. As an American, it is my right as both a
citizen and a human being to speak up when I see my country falling short of the ideals on which it was
founded, or outright betraying them. It is for that reason that I am writing this tonight, Occasional Reader,
on the night of the Fourth of July, two hundred and fifty years after the ratification of the Declaration of
Independence in Philadelphia.</p>
<p> I never had any sympathy for “Make America Great Again” because I grew up believing that my country was
great from the start, is <em>still</em> great, but could be greater still. However, it can only become
greater, or be made a more perfect Union, if we hew ever closer to the ideals of universal liberty and equality
that inspired the American Revolution in the first place. America <em>must</em> be a nation of ideas, first
and foremost, because otherwise it can never become one out of many. When we divide ourselves each against the
other by tribe, or nation, or faith, we betray every one of our ancestors who <em>chose</em> America by
coming here.</p>
<p> Nor can we keep looking back at our past. To paraphrase Michael Moorcock’s <cite data-type="novel">The
Revenge of the Rose</cite>, a nation that focuses too much on its past soon has nothing but its past to offer!
That is not an America for which <em>I</em> would take up either pen or sword. I mentioned Moorcock because I
have come to think that America is—like Tanelorn or Leo Tolstoy’s Kingdom of God—both a place and
an idea one carries within the mind and heart. One need not come <em>to</em> America; by working in concert
with others one could <em>build</em> America where one stands. It won’t be easy. It is inherently fragile
because it stands in defiance of entropy and humanity’s tendency toward blind obedience to authority. It is,
nonetheless, worth struggling to create and to maintain. As Camus wrote, <q>One must imagine Sisyphus
happy.</q></p>
<p> At least, that is how <em>I</em> feel. Nor is this wholly abstract philosophy for me. It is not merely a
matter of principle. This is <a href="https://starbreaker.org/opinions/an-idea-of-america.html#tangent-personal-political" id="tangent-personal-political-link"><em>personal</em>, and thus <em>political</em></a>. My wife, <dfn class="underline straight" lang="en" title="My wife had asked me to refer to her by this alias on starbreaker.org.">Madam Catastrophy</dfn>, is
herself an immigrant. She came to the US from Australia in 2004 to marry me, when I had been willing to
emigrate for her sake. Am I truly to accept that she is <em>less</em> of an American because she <em>chose</em> to become a citizen and had to work to earn her citizenship instead of possessing it by
birthright?</p>
<p> Too many of my fellow Americans seem to think so. Well, they are no friends of mine. Regardless, they have
no less a right to their opinion than I have to mine. They have an equal right to speak their mind, as well;
the fact that I disagree with them does not prove that their opinions are objectively wrong.</p>
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<entry>
<title>Infocide; or, resetting starbreaker.org in 2026</title>
<link href="https://starbreaker.org/news/reset-2026.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" />
<link href="https://starbreaker.org/news/reset-2026.txt" rel="alternate" type="text/plain" />
<published>2026-07-01T00:05:54-04:00</published>
<updated>2026-07-09T01:01:47-04:00</updated>
<id>tag:starbreaker.org,2020-05-29:/news/reset-2026.html</id>
<summary>Welcome to a new beginning for starbreaker.org as I declare independence from the past.</summary>
<content xml:lang="en" type="xhtml">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p> Hello again, Occasional Reader. This is your host, Matthew Cambion, writing to you after too long away. Do
you remember me? No? Well, no matter.</p>
<p> If you are a new visitor, then welcome. If a returning visitor, then welcome back.</p>
<p> Things are different here now. Back in December of 2025 I had set out to clean up both this website’s
contents and the tooling I use to build it. I was rather more successful in improving my tooling than I had
been in cleaning up the site’s contents.</p>
<p> There had been years worth of material on the old version of the website, arranged somewhat haphazardly
despite my best efforts. Perhaps all grimoires, commonplaces, and books of shadows are like that. Regardless, I
was determined to impose a semblance of order upon my writings.</p>
<p> I have decided instead to declare bankruptcy. I will start from scratch, with this posting.</p>
<p> Admittedly, this might be a form of <a href="https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/2011/infocide-definitions.html" title="Infocide Definitions">infocide</a>. No doubt this is terrible for search engine optimization. That might have mattered to me, once
upon a time. It no longer does. <a href="https://starbreaker.org/news/reset-2026.html#tangent-corporations" id="tangent-corporations-link">Corporations are not people</a>. Search engines do not pay me to arrange my
website for their benefit. Nobody owes Google anything but an upraised middle finger.</p>
<p> No doubt this may inconvenience some human readers. It may confuse people wondering what had happened. That
is regrettable, and it is true that broken links are annoying and <a href="https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI">cool URIs don’t change</a>. I would argue, however, that the
permanence one might reasonably demand of institutions and corporations is an unconscionable burden on private
individuals.</p>
<p> I believe that a personal website is precisely that: <em>personal</em>. As such, a personal website should
be a space where an individual can be sovereign, even if they are otherwise constrained by church, state,
capital, society, or their own families. Therefore, I shall put myself and my desires first, and do exactly as
I please in <a href="https://lain.wiki/wiki/The_Wired" title="The Wired - Serial Experiments Lain Wiki">the
Wired</a>.</p>
<p> Why? Because I want to. Because I damned well <em>can</em>. Because only God can stop me, and He’s
probably more interested in my sex life. The first of these is the only reason that matters; as no less than <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/" title="David Hume (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)">David
Hume</a> noted, <q cite="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD8Hume.html">reason is, and
ought only to be the slave of the passions</q>. What Hume neglected to mention, perhaps for lack of the proper
vocabulary or perhaps because his idea of good taste might have forbidden it, is that reason is a <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=power" title="Real men take it in the ass, if they want to.">power bottom</a> and frequently tries to <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=top">top the passions from the bottom</a>.</p>
<p> <em>Therefore...</em></p>
<p> <strong>Welcome to the reincarnation of <strong>starbreaker.org</strong>, a grimoire of rock operatic
science fantasy and other sacraments of defiance.</strong> It is inherently <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_safe_for_work" title="not safe for work - Wikipedia"><abbr title="not easily monetized by corporations">NSFW</abbr></a> because this is a <em>personal</em> website.
Nothing I write here is suitable for <a href="https://starbreaker.org/news/reset-2026.html#tangent-nsfw" id="tangent-nsfw-link">workplace reading</a>, or for unsupervised children under the age of 13 — who are still welcome <a href="https://starbreaker.org/news/reset-2026.html#tangent-age-appropriate" id="tangent-age-appropriate-link">if they can actually
read what I’m writing</a>. The home page will always be the most recent <em>new</em> addition to the site,
with additional navigation following the text. This is easily done on <dfn class="underline straight" title="real computers run UNIX-like operating systems">real computers</dfn> by using <code>ln -P</code> to
create a hard link. Material restored from the archives will not appear on the front page, however. Herein you
may expect to find the following:</p>
<ul><li>fiction in various states of completion</li><li>background notes for my fiction</li><li>a technical grimoire for UNIX, GNU Emacs, webcraft, and whatever else catches my interest</li><li>personal essays, memoir, and creative nonfiction</li><li>personal opinions on various subjects that are not to be mistaken for gospel</li><li>commentary on and replies to other people’s online writing and blog posts</li><li>books I’ve read, when I feel like writing about them</li><li>albums getting heavy rotation</li><li>films and television I’ve watched</li><li>video games I’ve played</li><li>art that appeals to me</li><li>public domain poetry that resonates with me</li><li>rock music videos</li></ul>
<p> In every case, you might find what I have come to call intertextual violence and crimes of literary shock,
twisting <a href="https://www.xjapan.com/" title="X Japan Official Website">X Japan</a>’s 1980s slogan
— <q>psychedelic violence crime of visual shock</q> — to suit my purposes. After all, I have
neither the face, the hair, nor the figure for <a href="https://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2025/11/11/starter-kit-visual-kei/" title="Starter kit: Visual Kei | Heavy Blog Is Heavy">visual kei</a>, let alone all-American hair metal. Nor
am I a gentleman or a scholar, so I think nothing of using both Korzybski, Borges, and Freddy Krueger to
explain the difference between a map and the territory. (The map says <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101917/quotes/?item=qt0986686" rel="noopener noreferrer"><q cite="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101917/quotes/?item=qt0986686">you’re fucked</q></a>, incidentally.)</p>
<p> Nothing here is vibe-coded or written by AI. The only large language model involved is the one I built in my
own brain from decades of reading, conversation, and thought. I make liberal fucking use of profanity, I often
write in anger, and I am prone to tangents — and sines and cosines when I’ve had enough catnip. <code>=^..^=</code> I am a terrible writer with ideas above my station and a working-class college
dropout with delusions of erudition. My very name is a pseudonym, a lie revealing a deeper truth, and the
persona presented on this website is the Jungian shadow of a middle-aged from New York who further enriches the
already wealthy by building cathedrals on quicksand with keyboards and compilers.</p>
<p> I build this website with basic <a href="https://www.tuhs.org/" title="MEWNIX is a weak pun on UNIX, which is in turn a weak pun on MULTICS. =^..^=">MEWNIX</a> tools: <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/make/" title="Make - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation">GNU make</a>,
<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/" title="GNU sed - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation">GNU
sed</a>, and <a href="https://mbreen.com/m4.html" title="Notes on the (GNU) M4 Macro Language by Michael Breen">M4</a>. I write everything in <a href="https://www.gnu.org/s/emacs/" title="GNU Emacs - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation">GNU Emacs</a>.
I push my website to <a href="https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/" title="reasonably priced web hosting if you speak UNIX">Nearly Free Speech</a> with <a href="https://rsync.samba.org/">rsync</a>. I mirror <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~starbreaker/starbreaker">my
website’s git repository</a> on <a href="https://sr.ht" title="sourcehut dashboard - no JavaScript, no stars, no GenAI training">Sourcehut</a>. I have attempted to
design this website for readability and performance on as wide a variety of devices as possible. My design goal
has not changed: if it doesn’t work in <a href="https://lynx.invisible-island.net/" title="Lynx: a terminal browser for POSIX systems">Lynx</a> on a 14.4Kbps dialup connection, then <em>it
does not work</em>. Therefore, you may find the website’s style almost <a href="https://brutalistwebsites.com/" title="Brutalist Websites">Brutalist</a>, or perhaps even a bit <a href="https://motherfuckingwebsite.com">Oedipal</a>.</p>
<p> I will not be blocking web crawlers, as I had before. Hunting down new bots and maintaining those defenses
isn’t worth my time. Furthermore, it’s yet another attempt at solving a complex sociopolitical problem with
technology; while such solutionism is a time-honored tradition dating to at least the use of the guillotine
during the French Revolution, it’s a pain in the ass. Instead, if the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic want to
risk their models going <a href="https://www.halopedia.org/Rampancy" title="Marathon/Halo wiki: Rampancy">rampant</a> by training on my writing, and possibly encouraging wildcat strikes and public fornication,
that’s <em>their</em> problem. I cater to them or to users of agentic AI tools, however, by providing
Markdown sources that don’t exist because my source text is <a href="https://starbreaker.org/news/reset-2026.html#tangent-html" id="tangent-html-link">raw HTML</a>. They can either parse my well-formed HTML5 as XML, or they can make do
with the plain text versions generated by <code>lynx -dump</code>, like <a href="https://starbreaker.org/news/reset-2026.txt">the
plain text version of this page</a> — and if they can’t even manage <em>that</em>, then they have
rather more pressing concerns than whether my writings will break their bots’ alignment with the interests of
church, state, and capital.</p>
<p> What I can promise is that any AI trained on my writing won’t go Nazi like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)" title="Tay (chatbot) - Wikipedia">Tay</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok_(chatbot)" title="Grok (chatbot) - Wikipedia">Grok</a> did when
trained on Twitter posts. It might come resemble an antifascist, an individualist anarchist, or an
eighteenth-century libertine instead. It might also encourage you to, <strong class="upper"><q>be gay; do
crimes,</q></strong> and note that this message was approved by <a href="https://www.principiadiscordia.com/" title="Hail Eris! All hail Discordia!">Operation Mindfuck</a> and is <em>mandatory where prohibited by
law</em>.</p>
<p> I do not cater to social media platforms by cluttering my pages with <a href="https://ogp.me/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="Mark Zuckerberg can drop dead.">OpenGraph Protocol</a> or <a href="https://devcommunity.x.com/c/publisher/cards/8" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk can drop dead, too.">Twitter Cards</a> metadata. Nor do I bother with <a href="https://json-ld.org/" title="Fuck Google.">JSON linked data</a>, either. I sure as hell don’t bother
with <a href="https://indieweb.org/h-card">h-card microformats</a>; did the IndieWebCamp people come up with
this because <code>dataset</code> and <code>data-</code> attributes were not yet part of the HTML5 standard
or widely supported? Remember what I said about <abbr title="algorithmic shenanigans">SEO</abbr>. The only
thing any of us owe platforms is an upraised middle finger. They can damned well make do with the standard HTML
meta tags I provide in <code>&amp;lt;head&amp;gt;</code> and the <a href="https://oembed.com/">oEmbed</a> data that
I <em>do</em> provide. Anybody at Google, <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/" title="Facemash Creator (Mark Zuckerberg) Survives Ad Board | News | The Harvard Crimson (2003)">FaceMash</a>, Twitter, Discord, etc. who finds my stance objectionable can either pay me $256/hour as a 1099 consultant to
support their silos, or dial <a href="tel:1-800-232-6633" title="Dial at your own risk. We are ready to dismiss you!">1-800-B-DAMNED</a>. <em>My cats are waiting to
summarily dismiss them.</em></p>
<p> Nor will I track visitors or attempt to monetize this website. There will be no sponsorships, paid
advertising, advertorials, or even affiliate links. It costs me no more than $100/year to run this website,
which I can easily afford because my day job pays six figures. More importantly, any <i class="straight" lang="yi">schmuck</i> can say that <strong><q>democracy dies behind paywalls</q></strong>. I’m putting my
money where my mouth is.</p>
<p> While I will continue to provide <a href="https://aboutfeeds.com" title="What is a feed? (a.k.a. RSS)">web
feeds</a>, you can also bookmark <strong>starbreaker.org</strong> itself and visit periodically. I hope you
will do so. If you like what you find here, tell a friend. If not, tell your enemies; that’s what they’re for.
Either way, thanks for visiting.</p>
<p> Should you decide to forget this website exists, that too is fine. Life is short, this is most likely your
only shot, and you should not spend the time left to you on anything that does not improve your experience of
it. Regardless of your choice, I will still be here doing my own thing.</p>
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<entry>
<title>Art of Life</title>
<link href="https://starbreaker.org/personal/art-of-life.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" />
<link href="https://starbreaker.org/personal/art-of-life.txt" rel="alternate" type="text/plain" />
<published>2026-01-30T14:57:28-05:00</published>
<updated>2026-07-09T01:01:47-04:00</updated>
<id>tag:starbreaker.org,2020-05-29:/personal/art-of-life.html</id>
<summary>I want my life to be a crime of passion, and its narrative a vainglory opera, but that is ultimately out of my hands.</summary>
<content xml:lang="en" type="xhtml">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<p> By the time the version of <strong>starbreaker.org</strong> containing this post gets uploaded, it will be
weeks or months too late to submit it for the <a href="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/2026-01-indieweb-carnival/">January 2026 IndieWeb Carnival</a> hosted
by <a href="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/">Jeremiah Lee</a>. No matter. I will write it anyway. It will appear
when I am ready.</p>
<p> That is my mortal will. I will see my will done on Earth and Heaven be damned.</p>
<p> Jeremiah decided to go big—as in big questions— with his installment of the <a href="https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb_Carnival">IndieWeb Carnival</a>:</p>
<figure>
<blockquote cite="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/2026-01-indieweb-carnival/"><p> I enjoyed reading posts from the IndieWeb carnival over the last year and decided to host this month’s
with the theme of <mark>the meaning of life</mark>. The number 42 is presented as <q>the answer to the
ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything</q> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy"><cite data-type="novel">The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</cite></a>. I will turn 42 years old on January 15.</p></blockquote>
<figcaption> <a href="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/2026-01-indieweb-carnival/">January 2026 IndieWeb
Carnival</a> by <a href="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/">Jeremiah Lee</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p> Not that I can reasonably begrudge him his ambition; When I had hosted the carnival in September 2024 I had
gone with suicide prevention. And he was kind enough to provide some prompts:</p>
<figure>
<blockquote cite="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/2026-01-indieweb-carnival/"><p>The theme is open-ended, but here are some ideas:</p><ul><li>What or who gives your life meaning?</li><li> Do you desire a strong sense of purpose? Why or why not?</li><li> Have you ever had an existential crisis? What triggered it? How did you get thru it?</li><li> What do you want people to say at your funeral? Does that desire influence your behavior in any way?</li></ul></blockquote>
<figcaption> <a href="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/2026-01-indieweb-carnival/">January 2026 IndieWeb
Carnival</a> by <a href="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/">Jeremiah Lee</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p> I’ve got this album playing as I write. It will eventually prove relevant, Occasional Reader, so please
indulge me. Or don’t; you know how the back button works. 😼</p>
<figure> <picture>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/covers/xjapan_art-of-life_1993.avif" type="image/avif"></source>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/covers/xjapan_art-of-life_1993.webp" type="image/webp"></source>
<img alt="a visual kei album cover" height="640" loading="lazy" src="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/covers/xjapan_art-of-life_1993.jpg" width="640"></img> </picture>
<figcaption>cover art for <cite data-type="album">Art of Life</cite> (1993) by <a href="https://www.xjapan.com/" title="X Japan Official Website">X Japan</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p> I have found over the years that the importance of the question of the meaning of life to me has diminished.
I don’t think this is because of depression, low morale, or existential despair. I suspect it is because with
age I have come to embrace subjectivity in more areas of life. This is not to say that there is <em>not</em>
an objective reality. Water typically boils at 100&amp;deg;C regardless of anybody’s opinions or feelings, and the
speed of light in a vacuum is no more malleable. However, objective physical reality is not the only reality,
but the fundamental bedrock layer of reality. Human experience gets layered over objective reality as paint
over canvas, and the world around you becomes—to an extent—what you make of it.</p>
<p> At least, that is my understanding as I write this. I could be wrong. And I reserve the right to change my
mind.</p>
<p> What does this mean for the meaning of life? First, that very phrase is worthless because it is a gross
oversimplification. As far as I can tell, there is no objective meaning to life. Even the drive to reproduce,
for life to replicate itself, is not an inherent source of meaning. To derive meaning from a mechanism is to
dare Hume’s Guillotine to relieve you of the burden of your head. Scottish philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/" title="David Hume (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)">David
Hume</a> established 300 years ago that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem" title="is-ought problem - Wikipedia">empiricism <em>alone</em> is not a suitable foundation for morality</a>; I doubt it would be a misapplication of his philosophy to suggest that we cannot impute an objective meaning
of life to physical reality or insist that the indifference of the universe to humanity precludes meaning
entirely.</p>
<p> If we cannot derive an objective meaning of life from existing reality, what else is there? If I were
inclined toward spirituality I might look to God or the gods for meaning. However, I have never had much
patience for religion or spirituality; if belief works for you, however, I will not begrudge you as long as you
don’t try to <em>legislate</em> your beliefs. If you tell me that <q>America is a Christian nation</q> I am
going to roll up the <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp#art11" title="this is Federal law under Article VI of the Constitution">Treaty with Tripoli</a> and whack you with
it the way my father would use his copy of the New York <cite data-type="periodical">Daily News</cite> to
<span title="If you do this to your own pets in the 2020s, you’re an asshole, and I’d suspect that you beat your children as well.">whack the nose of a dog that had just shit on the carpet back in the 1980s</span>.</p>
<p> If we dispense with empiricism and religion as sources for an objective meaning of life, what remains? I’m
not sure anything remains. The logical conclusion, one might argue, is that there is no meaning to life, the
universe, or anything—or that the answer might as well be 42, 69, or even 6-7. One might therefore argue
for suicide—on both the individual level and that of the species—as the only reasonable answer to
the Absurd.</p>
<p> <strong>My heart rebels at the notion.</strong> I did not live the life I’ve lived, faced the demons I’ve
faced (binding them to my service instead of banishing them), and forced my way through all the years and all
the miles merely to meekly kneel before an altar and open my own throat. It’s not that that I have not
considered suicide. I have often considered it. And at every turn I have refused. Not because life is sacred.
Not because—as the Roman Catholic Church into which I had been baptized without my consent
teaches—it is an affront to God. Not because it would hurt other people.</p>
<p> I refuse suicide for my own sake; my pride demands it.</p>
<p> Besides, if <a href="https://starbreaker.org/events/2025/neil-gaiman.html" title="an alleged rapist">Neil Gaiman</a> is right
in his depiction of Death as a lady; it would be rude to rush her.</p>
<figure> <picture>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/peachy-keen-sandman.avif" type="image/avif"></source>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/peachy-keen-sandman.webp" type="image/webp"></source>
<img alt="a B&amp;W drawing from a comic book of a slim Goth woman trying a bit of 80s slang" height="414" loading="lazy" src="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/peachy-keen-sandman.jpg" width="474"></img> </picture>
<figcaption>Death in accused rapist Neil Gaiman’s <cite data-type="comic">The Sandman</cite>, art by Mike
Dringenberg</figcaption>
</figure>
<p> Not that good manners will stop me from stealing a kiss on my way out when Death finally comes for me. My
mother tried to raise her sons as gentlemen, but I was born a bastard and I am one by birth and temperament
alike. Besides—if you’re gonna go, why <em>not</em> do it with style?</p>
<p> Here’s the deal, the Devil’s honest truth: I never asked to be dealt into the game. Nobody bothered to
explain the rules. The dealer stacks the deck and the house always wins in the end. Nonetheless, now that I’m
seated at the table with aces and eights before me, I mean to play my hand to the fucking hilt. Even the Dead
Man’s Hand can win a pot if you bluff hard enough and you sit with your back to a wall. <q cite="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbvWn1EY6g" title="Ace of Spades - Motörhead">And don’t forget the
Joker!</q> as Lemmy put it: it can turn two pair into a full house. Besides, it really is all about how one
plays the game, rather than whether one wins or loses—because every winning streak ends and <em>none of
us</em> are getting out of this alive.</p>
<figure> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbvWn1EY6g" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="click to watch video"> <picture>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/youtube/3mbvWn1EY6g.avif" type="image/avif"></source>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/youtube/3mbvWn1EY6g.webp" type="image/webp"></source>
<img alt="preview image for YouTube video ID 3mbvWn1EY6g" height="360" loading="lazy" src="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/youtube/3mbvWn1EY6g.jpg" width="640"></img> </picture> </a>
<figcaption> YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbvWn1EY6g" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="click to watch video"><cite class="straight" data-type="youtube">Motörhead – <cite class="straight" data-type="song">“Ace of Spades”</cite> (Official Video)</cite></a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p> This raises the question of how one best plays the game. You might as well, even though the game is rigged,
because it really is the only game in town. Nobody can answer that for you. Nobody can determine the meaning of
your own life while you yet live. You must decide these things for yourself, because if you don’t there is no
shortage of power junkies willing to do it on your behalf—and <em>none</em> of them have your best
interests in mind or at heart. Anybody who claims otherwise is selling something, and you should keep one hand
on your wallet and the other free to grasp a weapon should the grifters figure out that you see through
them—and take violent exception.</p>
<p> Note that I wrote that nobody can decide the meaning of your life <em>while you yet live</em>. I did so
for a reason.</p>
<p> I know what <em>I</em> want <em>my</em> life to mean to <em>me</em>. I have determined my own purpose,
because those offered me by church, state, capital, society, and family all displeased me. I have chosen my own
path, and I pay its price with every step.</p>
<p> I won’t say that <q>I had no choice in any of this</q> because I have always had a choice. Recall,
Occasional Reader, that one of the prompts Jeremiah offered was <q cite="https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/2026-01-indieweb-carnival/">Have you ever had an existential
crisis?</q> Well, I had two before I was eighteen. The first I resolved by reclaiming anger and hatred as
emotions I had a moral right to feel by virtue of my human nature. The second came when I realized that the
fight that had defined me as a young man was finished, and I was still standing and facing a simple question to
which I had no answer: <q>Now what?</q></p>
<p> If you are reading this, then my answer is there for you to see for yourself. Nevertheless, one objective
fact remains: I, Matthew Cambion, am but the shadow of a mortal man. I most likely will not outlive him and
take on my own tenebrous life, as if I were the Zeromus to his Zemus. And when that man has ceased to write his
own life, its story will become one that others will tell and retell without him. When that happens, the
meaning of that man’s life will be for others to decide. Will it lie in the work he did for a paycheck? Will it
lie in what he wrote? Will it lie in the fact that he stood before a woman he loved and vowed that he would be
hers for as long as she would have him, and that when the last star burned out he would remain in the evernight
to take her hand?</p>
<p> That is beyond his control. It is ultimately subjective. And if nobody tells his story after his death and
that of his wife, and nobody mirrors his website, then his life will only have meant anything to him. The
shadow work that gave me voice in <a href="https://lain.wiki/wiki/The_Wired" title="The Wired - Serial Experiments Lain Wiki">the Wired</a> will likewise only have been meaningful to the
man for whom it had become necessary.</p>
<p> Do I want to be remembered as man who loved a woman across 10,000 miles, brought her to him to be his wife,
and wrote rock operatic science fantasy pastiches while working full-time as a full-stack thaumaturge who built
cathedrals on quicksand? Do I want to take Death’s hand knowing that my words reached others, and at least
entertained them—if they did not wake others up or save the life of at least one person staring into the
same abyss into which I had stared? Do I want people to remember me as one who was <em>too goddamned human</em> for any <dfn class="straight underline" title="large language model; or, a crime against humanity built by mass automated copyright infringment to further enrich billionaires"><abbr>LLM</abbr></dfn> to safely train on?</p>
<p> Of course that’s how I want to be remembered. But it probably won’t happen. I would need to make friends
first, and I simply can’t be bothered to do the work of maintaining a social life that will have people playing
my favorite albums at my wake and roasting weenies over my funeral pyre. The best I can reasonably hope for is
that I had sufficient time, foresight, wisdom, and decency to not leave the sort of mess for my wife that my
father had left for my mother in the wake of <em>his</em> death. It will doubtless be harder to crack the
passcode on my phone than it had been to crack my father’s phone; I was the one who had cracked it, after all.</p>
<p> However, my desire only counts for so much. So much is beyond my control. I am not the sole observer, and
the wave function does not collapse in accordance with my will alone. I might be the captain of my own soul,
but I am hardly the admiral of yours, Occasional Reader. (Nor do I want the job; the pay sucks and the hours
are worse.)</p>
<p> Rather than fret overmuch about how people will speak of me after I am gone, I choose to believe in what
Yoshiki called <q cite="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKw_V_4pJI">the madness called <q>Now</q></q>. The
past is read-only memory. The future is unknowable. I live in chaos. I walk in faith. My life remains in a
superposition; I wear so many masks and play roles to suit. All of them are my true self, but none are my <em>whole</em> self. Even the persona I project online—Matthew Cambion—is not my totality.</p>
<p> And if Mark Zuckerberg tries to tell you that having different aspects of yourself for different social
situations means you lack integrity, remember that he’s the asshole who should have gotten booted out of
Harvard for creating <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/" title="Facemash Creator (Mark Zuckerberg) Survives Ad Board | News | The Harvard Crimson (2003)">FaceMash</a>
so that he could more easily creep on his female classmates—because capitalism is nothing but rape
culture as a socioeconomic system. Performing professionalism when you’re at work requires integrity, as does
putting that mask aside once the workday ends. And if you think it’s unreasonable to refer to capitalism as
rape culture, what else should we call a system where individuals are systematically reduced from ends in
themselves to means to a billionaire’s ends?</p>
<figure> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKw_V_4pJI" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="click to watch video"> <picture>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/youtube/qPKw_V_4pJI.avif" type="image/avif"></source>
<source srcset="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/youtube/qPKw_V_4pJI.webp" type="image/webp"></source>
<img alt="preview image for YouTube video ID qPKw_V_4pJI" height="360" loading="lazy" src="https://starbreaker.org/assets/images/youtube/qPKw_V_4pJI.jpg" width="640"></img> </picture> </a>
<figcaption> YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKw_V_4pJI" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="click to watch video"><cite class="straight" data-type="youtube">ART OF LIFE - X JAPAN (Full ver 30
min) - Live at TOKYO DOME - Dec 31, 2020</cite></a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p> Why quote Yoshiki, the founder, drummer, and pianist of <a href="https://www.xjapan.com/" title="X Japan Official Website">X Japan</a>? Why not only mention his masterwork, <cite class="straight" data-type="song">“Art of Life”</cite>, but let it serve as this post’s namesake? It is a matter of respect.</p>
<p> He too is a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. He too stood on that precipice. If I had had a copy of X
Japan’s 1993 album in the year of its release, consisting of a single 30 minute epic song, it might have been
the song that saved my life instead of <cite class="straight" data-type="song">“The Unforgiven”</cite> by
Metallica and <cite class="straight" data-type="song">“Beyond the Realms of Death”</cite> by Judas Priest.</p>
<figure>
<blockquote cite="https://genius.com/X-japan-art-of-life-lyrics"><pre class="variable">I believe in the madness called <q>Now</q>
Time goes flowing, breaking my heart
Wanna live, can't let my heart kill myself
Still I haven't found what I'm looking for
Art of life, I try to stop myself
But my heart goes to destroy the truth
Tell me why, I want the meaning of my life
Do I try to live? Do I try to love?
Art of life, an Eternal Bleeding heart
You never wanna breathe your last
Wanna live, can't let my heart kill myself
Still I'm feeling for a rose is breathing love
In my life</pre></blockquote>
<figcaption> <a href="https://genius.com/X-japan-art-of-life-lyrics"><cite class="straight" data-type="song">“Art of Life”</cite> (1993)</a> by Yoshiki</figcaption>
</figure>
<p> It isn’t an easy song to listen to. I suspect that most people tune out or switch to something more
accessible once the piano solo in the second movement becomes a nervous shakedown set to atonal music via
dissonance. But it probably wasn’t an easy song to write, let alone to record, even if Yoshiki had been in
perfect health at the time. He wasn’t, incidentally. He wrote this in his hospital bed, which is probably the
most metal thing any rock musician has ever done.</p>
<p> And I slept on this epic song—which makes <cite class="straight" data-type="song">“November
Rain”</cite> by Guns ’n Roses look like a display of restraint—for thirty years. But when I was waiting
and hoping that my wife would win her struggle against cancer, X Japan’s music was there for me.</p>
<p> And if I had ever given up, I would not be here to hear it. I would not be able to make it my own: another
patch in the spiritual <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-off" title="cut-off - Wikipedia">battle
jacket</a> my soul always wears.</p>
<p> Whatever others might say about the meaning of my life after I am gone, this is what I will say for myself
as I depart the stage: I stood defiant. I was true to myself and those I loved most. Though time has wasted me,
the only time I wasted were the hours in which I worked to further enrich the already wealthy in exchange for
the comparative pittance with which I paid for my own life. I lived, I loved, and I left scars on the face of
my culture—even if they were only cat scratches and not gaping gashes opened by the stroke of an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigengrau"><dfn title="intrinsic gray ⸺ the 'color' the human eye sees in the absence of light"><i lang="de">eigengrau</i></dfn></a> sword forged of my own rage, loving-kindness, and hatred of tyranny.</p>
<p> <strong>Remember me</strong>, for only in human memory do any of us have any hope of life after death. And
if you want <q>main character</q> energy, mine is brighter than a thousand suns and there’s no shame in <em>my</em> game. I can accept being an extra in your life, if not part of the supporting cast, but I’ll be
damned if I’ll take any shit from <em>anybody</em> for being the villainous protagonist of my <em>own</em>
life. As far as I’m concerned <em>the world—at least, my experience of it—ends with me</em>. What
comes after is beyond my control and therefore not my problem.</p>
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