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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

"It's a stock options thing, right?" Actually, no.

I believe that the edges of mainstream thought, conversation and ideology are becoming increasingly narrow, and that this constriction on our social soul renders more and more of us as outsiders within our own society. Strangers in our own land.

The false dichotomy of choice we are given - left/liberal vs. right/conservative - comes bundled with a predetermined set of issues, values, and expressions that are to be allowed discussion. The dogma of these two camps has been crafted with exquisite care to divide and distract. It invents and emphasizes issues of no consequence over which we war and bleed, all the while allowing the interests of power to remain safe behind the curtain of our ignorance and apathy.

To speak or live outside the accepted lines is dangerous. The world is not kind to those who have something truly different to say. To question "The System" as a whole is to court rididule, fury, and even violence. The status quo serves but a few well, but almost all of us have some little stake in it, of which we can be persuaded to fear the loss.

The mainstream is a place of limited options, but comfortable surroundings. It is a world of narrow vision, but of clear and familiar choices. It is a crude and discordant instrument, but with a song so loud that it often appears to be the only music playing. The mainstream is not the majority.