Scream: Mary Surratt Edition

Mary Surratt. You've probably heard her name before. She was the first woman to hang in the United States. She was convicted of conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln. Bad person, yes?

Except her *military* trial was rigged. Basic rights were grossly denied her. She shouldn't have even had a damn military trial, she should have had a civil trial with a jury of her peers, not a bunch of generals- good friends of Lincoln, angrily grieving their loss.

Still, she was just a bad person who just got the harsh treatment she deserved, right?

Her attorney, Mr. Aiken, asked a DC court for a writ of habeus corpus with the argument that the military tribunal had no jurisdiction over his client. The writ was issued at 3 AM. President Johnson cancelled the writ at 11:30 AM. She was walked out to hang at 1:15 PM. From the scaffold, one of the others set to hang (Powell) said, "Mrs. Surratt is innocent. She doesn't deserve to die with the rest of us." She complained that the bindings about her arms hurt, and the officer preparing her said, "Well, it won't hurt long."

Bitches be bitches.

Why do we not learn of occasions such as this in history class? Is it because that may spoil our allegiance to the flag? We are being indoctrinated into the national cult, the history of which we are not even fully aware.

Please, take your time to learn a little about the hell some have gone through at the expense of liberty before you go around declaring America to be the greatest country in existence.

Hacker

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested After Bank
Tampering"...Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your
three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look
behind the eyes of a Hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick,
what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a Hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with
School... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they
teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in
Junior High or High School. I've listened to Teachers explain for
the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No
Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work, I did it in my head..." Damn kid,
probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because
I screwed up. Not because it doesn't like me...Or feels threatened
by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and
shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it
happened... A door opened to a world... rushing through the phone
line like heroin through an addicts veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a
board is found. "This is it, this is where I belong..." I know
everyone here, even if I've never met them, never talked to them,
may never hear from them again... I know you all.

Damn kid, tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You
bet your ass we're all alike...

We've been spoon-fed baby food at School when we hungered for
steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were
pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found
us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the
desert.

This is our world now, the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing
without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by
profiteering gluttons, and you call us Criminals. We seek after
knowledge, and you call us Criminals.

We exist without skin colour, without nationality, without religious
bias... and you call us Criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage
wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us, and try and make us believe
it's for our own good, yet we're the Criminals.

Yes I am a Criminal, my crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that
of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look
like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will
never forgive me for.

I am a Hacker, this is my Manifesto. You may stop the individual,
but you can't stop us all. After all, we're all alike.

The Mentor

That was shamelessly taken from one of the realistic missions at HackThisSite.org, my new favorite playground.

Retarded Child With a Hunched Back

I was rooting through the desk in the back room at my dad's house like the eccentric busybody that I am (hey- I live there once every few weeks, I have a right to look through desks, right?) and found a DVD that I don't believe has been touched since the end of my seventh grade year. My Gifted DVD from the seventh grade.

You could probably use a little bit of background information. I will provide that. Gifted was where they stuck the obscenely over-intelligent kids who didn't really fit in (okay, so maybe that isn't the official description). The program was later renamed Horizon, which Mr. Z (Z being short for Zajdel, the surname of the fucking awesome teacher I had for Gifted) said he came up with while passing a gas station or some such thing. Moving on. On Thursdays and Fridays, for one class period- about forty minutes total, I believe- we, the geeks and nerds who will someday rule the world, got to leave Normal Class and go to Gifted. Yes, the capital letters are meant to be there.

During the second semester of the school year, each Gifted class (we were divided up by grade; all the seventh-graders were in one class, all the eighth-graders in another, etc.) got the chance to make a movie. In sixth grade, my class, which was comprised of about seven students, made (well, attempted to make) four movies. My personal favorite- the one I still get compliments on today, four years later- is titled something along the lines of The Adventures of Mustache Lady and G/T/S Man, G/T/S Man meaning Grandpa/Teacher/Superhero Man. G/T/S Man was a BAMF, in case you can't tell. There was something about a Holy Cow in that one.

Anyways, I've lost my DVD from that year, but Mr. Z, whom I still visit occasionally on Thursdays and Fridays when I can get the hell out of my fourth period, has promised to hook me up with another copy.

But I found the DVD from the next year. Seventh grade. Our movie- an entire eleven minutes long- was called The Stolen Keys. Rosie was a huge player in that one. I believe I had one line throughout the entire thing. Rosie didn't like what I did with the script, so she edited it until it was how she wanted it. I suppose you could say I'm a little resentful. Moving on.
I watched it with my good friend Katie last night (rather, this morning... it was two in the morning). We cracked up. Our dear friend Tyler's voice had not yet deepened at that point, and he was going through his Monk phase. Our friend Sarah had short hair. I was... well, I looked like a retarded child with a hunched back. I mean, it was bad. I'm surprised my mother let me out of the house like that. Jesus.

Ten Reasons My Friend Xeno Kicks Ass

Well, I have this friend. His name is Grayson, but I don't allow anyone to call him that. If you meet him, you have to call him Xeno, otherwise I may or may not crucify him. He and I have only seen each other in real life a few times, and have only had one physical conversation, but we're pretty tight online. Thank you, Facebook. A few moments ago, I told Xeno to give me something to blog about. He told me to write about my badass eighth grade friend who can't spell for shit. I told him I'd get right on that.

1. He's a criminal mastermind.  
Xeno is what most people would call unethical or immoral. He prefers other words, like "commie" and "awesome," but I know the truth. All this means he has a black hole where his heart should be. In a good way.

2. He's freakin' hilarious.
This Xeno guy makes me laugh. Really hard. In the face. He and I have exactly three metric shit-tons of inside jokes, and the end is anything but near. Honestly, if Xeno were a comedian, he would... okay, so maybe he wouldn't be too successful, but I'd totally download illegal versions of his albums from the Pirate Bay. (I joke! I would never do such a thing! Heh.)

3. He doesn't make fun of my Britishisms.
He really can't make fun of my British spellings and slang, otherwise he'd be a complete and utter hypocrite, but I still appreciate that he doesn't insist on American word usage. It gets irritating when I'm innocently (or not-incredibly-innocently, if you count certain conversations I've had) chatting away on Facebook and someone nails me with a "You spelled that wrong! It's 'organize,' not 'organise!'" and I have to point out that they are, in fact, a cultural jackass.


4. He's open about himself. 
Almost scarily so. Xeno is not afraid to tell anyone certain things about himself (or so it seems to me, the chick who hides with her secrets in the shadows of the alleyways off the streets of society). Since we first spoke (or, rather, typed) with each other, he has told me many things that, if I were him, I would have kept under lock and key.


5. He doesn't tell me to eat meat.
Not once has Xeno told me that I "have to" eat meat. This is quite the feat, as most people are constantly telling me that there's no way I'm getting enough protein without ingesting flesh (despite the fact that I actually get more protein than your average fleshy, or meat-eater, most of the time). Xeno honestly just doesn't give a shit what I eat.

6. He gave me a present.
He's threatened to give me a number of gifts (a machete, a vibrator, and the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, to name a few), but a few days ago Xeno actually went through with it! I am now the proud owner of a pocketknife. It has a little scissor thingy that amuses me to no end. That is all on this topic.


7. He lets me ramble.
Most people give me about thirty seconds to ramble and then decide to cut me short with an "Artemis, get to the damn point already." Not Xeno. Today he actually encouraged me to tell him a story about my cats. Encouraged! The fact that Xeno allows me to ramble without cutting me off makes me enormously happy.


8. He uses proper grammar.
Most of the time, that is. Xeno also has this tendency to use proper capitalisation, something almost unheard of here on the internets. I have a feeling that if he didn't suck at typing, he would probably spell things correctly as well. As it is, he frequently makes typos and has been known to say such things as, "Fuck typing."


9. He understands the word "privacy."
Xeno gets that some people don't share everything. There are even a few things about Xeno that I don't know. There are (for sure) a lot of things about me that Xeno doesn't know, and unlike some people (ahem, I'm talking to you, Pretty Princess), he doesn't demand that I inform him of my every little thing. Granted, I usually bitch to him about most things anyways, but it's nice to know that he understands secrecy.


10. He makes awesome cookies.
I'm not even kidding. Xeno is the Queen of Baked Goods. I swear to God, he must put, like, unicorn blood and magic in his cookies. And crushed sleeping pills, because after I ate about twelve the other day, I was exhausted. Those chocolate chip cookies are definitely in my list of the top ten tastiest things I've ever eaten.


Those are the ten (main) reasons my friend Xeno kicks ass, even though he's a muffinfucking jackwagon communist who deserves to burn in Hell.