experienced actors wanted

A major American news outlet is seeking actors to film scripted segments for its coverage of the Syrian conflict. Prior military training preferred, but no special language skills required; the opposition currently fighting the rule of Bashar al-Assad is nearly entirely foreign-born. Depending on the timetable for illegal U.S. involvement in the struggle taking place in Syria, a sovereign foreign nation, actors may be expected to sign contracts lasting more than 1 year. Non-disclosure is mandatory for participation. After Damascus has been bombed to rubble, employment opportunities may become available with al-Qaida, a paramilitary terrorist organization rumored to be run by the federal government of the United States of America. Persons wishing to participate in misleading and lying to the trustworthy people of the world should run a Google-searh on “potluck trampoline breakwater” (without the quotation marks), wait 8 minutes, then make the mark of the beast on their front doors. Armed federal agents will arrive within the hour, black-bag and hogtie the applicant, and transport him forthwith to mock-ups of the Syrian countryside being constructed deep in the deserts of California.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

encylopediamericanifesto: phaltweariness - dehydration

  Among the many serious dangers the smog rider faces daily is the risk of dehydration. A condition easy to overlook but deadly if ignored, the body's dehydration distress call resembles closely the distress call it makes to signal hunger; additional telltale signs of dehydration are crankiness and fatigue. A few reports say that within smog rider packs it is common for the incessantly whining and inexplicably binge-eating member to be forced to hydrate by the IPM (the Instant & Perpetual Militia, i.e. the smog-packs' ubiquitous, fully meritocratic agents of enforcement), however our trust in the source for these reports is shaken.

  Multiple trustworthy sources report that when cycling in desert climates the smog rider adjusts his body to the local variances for temperature and humidity, a somewhat risky process in which he trains his body to need less water than it needs in more northern-lying areas. The first step he takes in this process is to eat of the local soil, and to pledge his fealty to the spirits of the land, and to praise the things growing in it, and to celebrate the things scampering across its face (a curious custom akin to the practices of First People tribes). Once he has ingested of the local earth, he cuts back on water gradually until he needs only a liter of it a day, and perhaps a few ounces more if he should exercise vigorously.

  An active person and avid reader alike, the smog rider learned some of the eternal lessons of the desert by reading tales about Rommel and Lawrence of Arabia, tales of Westerners surviving in the desert on minimal amounts of water using methods they learned from the Bedouin people. (In fact, he considers himself deep down an adjunct member of the hard-scrabble group of desert dwelling bad-asses know as the Fremen, from in Frank Herbert's book Dune.)

  But he is not Fremen, and he is not Bedouin – he is a smog-riding street-art vagabond, a man free of scorn and haste whose heart is pure, and in whom there is no room for death.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp