PYF Goon Sagas & Dramas: I may be mad, but I am undeniably correct.

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > PYF Goon Sagas & Dramas: I may be mad, but I am undeniably correct.

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Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

Texarrakis was also advertised here. It's like the Hawaii commune but cheaper land, without the rain, or the trees, or water, or anything edible, and you can die from exposure in like 24 hours.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 11:57

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# ? Jun 11, 2024 06:56

Frank Frank: Jun 13, 2001; Mirrored

The Saddest Rhino posted:

Kwasimodick was also a CC treasure whose writings all featured that exact punchline. It is unclear why he was banned and we all lost something precious, not unlike that with a street value of approximately 1 million US dollars, that day.

Is there a repository of these somewhere because I was laughing like a lunatic at the two posted here last night. Knowing what the punchline is going to be somehow makes it even funnier.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 12:22

MagpieConcept: Feb 6, 2022

KirbyKhan posted:

That was portrayed real well as part of one of the "Make webcomics out of Saga" thread. If someone has the link it is a good find.

I keep this one on my phone:

This one is made even funnier knowing bears aren't obligate carnivores and are happy to eat berries and grass. In fact their typical diets are only 10-40% meat. :biotruths:

# ? Jul 14, 2022 14:07

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

I've bashed my head against google and SA search looking for variations of "saga" "comic" and "goon". Combed the goldmine too. What was that thread (where I got the bear comic) that people drew Sagas called? I think it was a GBS but it could have been PYF.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 14:53

shelley: Nov 8, 2010

KirbyKhan posted:

I've bashed my head against google and SA search looking for variations of "saga" "comic" and "goon". Combed the goldmine too. What was that thread (where I got the bear comic) that people drew Sagas called? I think it was a GBS but it could have been PYF.

E/N Comics - Draw me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of goons.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 15:10

Paladinus: Jan 11, 2014; heyHEYYYY!!!

shelley posted:

E/N Comics - Draw me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of goons.

I was looking for this thread in the Goldmine. Should be there, imo.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 15:33

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

shelley posted:

E/N Comics - Draw me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of goons.

Thank

Cat Hassler posted:

The goon who lived with his wife and young daughter in a trash filled trailer but had a sweet gaming computer was a good one simply because he actually unfucked his situation. It�s funny when goons absolutely refuse to listen to advice but cool when it actually helps someone change their life for the better

Ok, this is the thread itself:
CPS gave back my kids: turns out I was a bad parent.

quote:

E/N Comics - Draw me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of goons. Page 9

quote:

Page 10 I think idk anymore

# ? Jul 14, 2022 15:43

Argus Zant: Nov 18, 2012; Wer ist bereit zu tanzen?

KirbyKhan posted:

That was portrayed real well as part of one of the "Make webcomics out of Saga" thread. If someone has the link it is a good find.

I keep this one on my phone:

I think that bear one might have been from a different thread? There was a point in the past few years where someone was briefly doing comic illustrations of posts dug up from reddit in the r/relationships thread in GBS. The one I remember was the reddit poster complaining about their parents constantly having PDAs for one another, and the punchline of the comic was the OP being Wednesday Addams. It might be that I� misremembering; I can�t check the E/N thread due to not having archives.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 16:24

shelley: Nov 8, 2010

Argus Zant posted:

I think that bear one might have been from a different thread? There was a point in the past few years where someone was briefly doing comic illustrations of posts dug up from reddit in the r/relationships thread in GBS. The one I remember was the reddit poster complaining about their parents constantly having PDAs for one another, and the punchline of the comic was the OP being Wednesday Addams. It might be that I� misremembering; I can�t check the E/N thread due to not having archives.

The bear one is definitely from the E/N comics thread. The artist is Mjaulm, and they also did a color version of the bears:

I have no idea if Mjaulm did art in the r/relationships thread, sorry.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 17:32

Empty Sandwich: Apr 22, 2008; goatse mugs

Cat Hassler posted:

No I think he did make it to Florida in his BMW to work for his Dad pulling stumps and died from a stump

the actual coda to the story is that he lasted a week in the stump-pulling business, gave up, and moved to the Midwest, and started a blog with one entry that goes over this development. then he died.

he did not die as far as I know.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 17:33

Jerry Manderbilt: May 31, 2012; No matter how much paperwork I process, it never goes away. It only increases.

Empty Sandwich posted:

the actual coda to the story is that he lasted a week in the stump-pulling business, gave up, and moved to the Midwest, and started a blog with one entry that goes over this development. then he died.

he did not die as far as I know.

aw man, really? here i was thinking he somehow managed to run pops' insanely lucrative stump-pulling business into the ground

e: the fact that he had previous permabans on alts for SA-Mart scamming made this saga all the more :discourse:

# ? Jul 14, 2022 17:36

EorayMel: May 30, 2015; WE GET IT. YOU LOVE GUN JESUS. Toujours des fusils Bullpup Fran�ais.

Vox Nihili posted:

Going to need a full recap of the infamous unpaid goon labor colony that guy attempted to establish in Hawaii at some point

Goon island best hits :intv:

The OP got his rear end kicked by a plant akin to a three stooges branch slap gag

Socratic Moron posted:

We had our first bad injury today. Luckily it was me. I took a spring loaded strawberry guava to the face and four stitches later I'm supposed to stay away from the land for at least 48 hours But hey, for a few minutes today I was able to drink through my chin. How many people can say that?

An industrial machine intended to pull down trees was tied to a tree to secure it, then stolen alongside the tree it was tied to at night(alongside a SHITLOAD OF TOOLS)

Socratic Moron posted:

I've been rather quiet lately due to the fact that I've been bummed out. On July 1st, the 6x4 Gator and a shitload of tools were stolen from the land. The tools didn't surprise me all that much because Hawaii has one of the highest theft rates in the country, the big island is the highest of all the islands, and the Puna district (the one we're in) has the highest theft rate on the big island. However, the Gator getting stolen DID surprise me as they literally cut down two trees and hotwired it in order to steal it. To say this theft brought up a lot of emotion and stress would be an understatement. God knows I didn't budget for it.

I know there are some goons here in Hawaii and others with connections. Please spread the word over coconut wireless as there is a $1000 reward for the return of the Gator. I'm slowly getting over it, but am holding onto a thin ray of hope.

With all that said, we're working on multiple projects right now. We're building a huge gate (reactionary security++), cutting more exploratory trails at 1200 and 1500, building a longer driveway using nearby lava rock since we're tired of getting stuck in the mud, and various other tasks.

All four Goon volunteers are absolutely amazing people and I'm super impressed by everything they're doing. They're hard working, entertaining, and just plain cool people. I'm quite pleased to have made four new friends thanks to this project.

The descent into becoming an armed cultist compound accelerates with plans to get more guns and gates

Socratic Moron posted:

Thank you all for your kind words and support regarding the Gator. I spent much of today trying to rework the budget in an effort to figure out how to buy a new one or something similar.

We're currently in the process of making a HUGE gate as part of our reactionary security system. I've also ordered security cameras, will be getting a dog with an attitude, am spending a couple nights a week camped out with my shotgun, and we'll be setting up booby traps. Should be fun.

Anyway, we're building the gate, in part, out of Ohia by selectively cutting a few trees that we feel will actually improve the health of the forest. One such tree didn't fall the way we wanted and got stuck in the canopy so we tied a long rope around it and gave it a tug. I'm sure the woodsmen reading the thread will freak out, but it actually wasn't all that dangerous (in my biased, somewhat head-in-the-clouds opinion). The result?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcOXCO6M5kk

Goons discover they are really bad at building things but are instead really good at torturing small animals and play to their strengths

madlilnerd posted:

Eurgh, I couldn't stand to be in Corvallis for more than 6 days. Although the girlfriend of the person I was staying with was a bi-polar furry, which probably didn't help.

Ah, the piglets. This was a day and a half. Just to refresh your memory, we had two little piggies: Spam (the boy) and Lady Oink. Spam had a weird/possibly missing eye and was being pussy whipped by Lady. We decided that because he had poo poo quality of life, it was probably best if we killed him and let Lady live. Plus she was getting all cute and letting me scratch her back and poo poo. The plan was two people would get into the pig pen, hold him down, hog tie him, take him out, shoot him in the back of the head, string him up and slit his throat.

The piglets had other ideas.

Freaked out by two scary burly men in her pen, Lady jumped 3 feet and scrambled out of the pen, dashing off into the jungle. The plan changes. She's now on the menu. We watch her trot off over the hill and into the brush and hold our ground. We know she'll come back out. She's not used to the jungle. Everyone listens for tell-tale oinking and we all reposition, ready to pounce when she emerges.

Nonchalantly, Lady strolls forth. Socratic Moron takes aim with the handgun.

And with the accuracy of a bad guy in a Western, he fires off 6 rounds. One hits Lady straight through the ribcage; she freaks, turns, runs off into the jungle. We wait until the piercing squeals stop and retrieve her.

Anyway, she gets strung up and skinned and then we throw her in a hot pit to cook for a few hours.

So, to answer the question in relation to piggy size- I'm the goon in the 2nd photo and I'm 5ft 1.

The proof is in the pudding

madlilnerd posted:

My A level Biology class dissected a whole lamb that had been squished to death by its mother, so this wasn't much of a leap. The only difference was I saw this one get shot. And used a big-rear end knife instead of a titchy scalpel. And had raised the animal for 3 weeks and got to the point where she would do this cute little wiffley nose thing when put out food and water for her and then scratch her ears and

why do you kill some animals with pellet guns and other animals with actual guns?

I believe that's because we didn't have an actual gun up until now and vastly underestimated the thickness of a mongoose's skull. The general consensus after we killed the first one was "poo poo, we need a better gun". The one we found the next day had been shaken to near death by a dog and only needed one pellet to finish it off. Since then, we haven't been baiting traps.

I'll leave Socratic Moron to take the other questions, because hell if I know.

After some mild hooting and hollering in support, moments of clarity start emerging

Eggs posted:

You killed the one healthy piglet you had because it got out of the pen?

Edit: Why were you mercy killing the other piglet, because it was "pussy whipped"?, why are you killing baby animals, why do you kill some animals with pellet guns and other animals with actual guns?, why do you have guns to begin with?

After much more criticism and :airquote:

concern trolling :airquote:

comes the coup de grace

temple posted:

Since when did 'learning as you go' mean play with sticks, guns, and knives all day. You could have a formal plan, professional crews, bazillions of dollars invested, and you would still have to learn as you go. You would still have to improvise. It would still be interesting to watch. The idea that reinventing the wheel for lets say for about every loving thing needed on the island and never ever referencing the slightest bit of established knowledge or experience reeks of a childish 'no gently caress YOU dad' form of intellectual oppositional defiant disorder. People have been doing what you are doing for LITERALLY thousands of years bbbut but please don't over think our work here. Its a trial by fire.

The project was doomed the minute you said 'this is a learning experience' when someone criticized a poorly thought out action. No, a learning experience is something where you think about what you are doing, do it, and evaluate. Digging holes, cutting down trees, and posting video on youtube without visable organization or outcomes is literally showing off your jungle book goon fantasy island for entertainment. Lets see the next wacky installment of 'THE LAND' staring Clueless Confidently Wasteful Idiots.

Just slip on some goon tears and puncture an artery already. That would be vastly more entertaining and enlightening. This is like watching a car crash in slow motion, except the cars are poo poo and the crash makes a circular motion accompanied with a low sucking sound. Why do you throw away even more money to get MIA to sing Paper Planes live while you romp around like cowboys and indians shooting paintball guns at each other.

Why are you building trails first if you goal is sustainability?
Why are you killing animals (for sport) if you give a care about yoga and all that mindfuck jazz?
Why haven't you erected, at least tried to erect, even loving drew housing, if you plan on actually living there long term?
Permaculture? What in the holy gently caress does permaculture have to do with anything if you haven't mapped out temporary access to things like water, shelter, and sanitation outlets? You are just pissing and making GBS threads anywhere.

I dare you, show any of these plans other than slinging words like 'micro hydro' around when you can't even listen to simple advice about building gates and not torturing animals.

edit: and if a little ribbing from THE INTERNET about your project is enough to close a discussion, how to expect to accomplish such huge goals? FYAD did you a favor. I'll guess you are already looking for buyers for the property.

Bonus FYAD thread on the matter in the FYAD goldmine :fyadride:

Yad Rock posted:

to defeat The Land, wait two weeks (or set your system clock ahead) and the entire area will be destroyed and lifeless. you will be rewarded with a secret camoflauge that allows you to remain unnoticed by society for an indefinite length of time.

EorayMel fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jul 14, 2022

# ? Jul 14, 2022 18:49

EorayMel: May 30, 2015; WE GET IT. YOU LOVE GUN JESUS. Toujours des fusils Bullpup Fran�ais.

Also reminder the intended goal of working on :bahgawd:

THE LAND

was trying to make an environmentally friendly yoga studio as a long-term project

Socratic Moron posted:

Oh god, what have I done? I'm either 98% excited and 2% overwhelmed or 2% excited and 98% overwhelmed. I recently purchased 100 acres of incredibly dense rainforest on the big island of Hawaii. My intent is to build a home and retreat center over the coming years with a focus on permaculture, regeneration, and building all kinds of badass stuff. I want to get to a point where the land is almost completely sustainable in the way of food via raised fish, chickens, fruit trees, gardens, etc.

The first year will mostly be exploration of the land by cutting trails, getting to know the land by observing and measuring its nuances in detail, self education, and planning. I may put up some temporary structures such as a yurt during this time. Year two should see the first permanent structures such as a home, solar power, maybe micro hydro power, ponds, yoga studio, etc begin construction.

Hawaii has seen a significant amount of highly invasive species take over. My desire is to return the land to as much of a natural habitat as possible. If I can do everything I want without cutting down a single native tree, that would be badass. I have a LOT to learn about everything from native plants to permaculture to construction and god knows what else and am going to need a LOT of help.

Let's get to know the land, shall we?

# ? Jul 14, 2022 18:56

Radia: Jul 14, 2021; And someday, together.. We'll shine.

those comics are so sad but ultimately end a little happier. jeez. goons sometimes.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 19:00

fun hater: May 24, 2009; its a neat trick, but you can only do it once

the goon commune is my favorite story. i wish there was a documentary crew there

# ? Jul 14, 2022 20:13

Frank Frank: Jun 13, 2001; Mirrored

I wonder how much 100 acres of land on Hawaii cost back then. I bet it was not a small number

# ? Jul 14, 2022 20:24

Kia Soul Enthusias: May 9, 2004; zoom-zoom; Toilet Rascal

Frank Frank posted:

I wonder how much 100 acres of land on Hawaii cost back then. I bet it was not a small number

On the big island? Probably not as much as you expect.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 20:29

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

I like how failing to slaughter a piglet is reframed as this tacticool operation that still fails, complete with the goon king magdumping to make cops proud. Then they celebrate by having a lord of the flies-rear end cookout.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 20:46

Inexplicable Humblebrag: Sep 20, 2003

i, too, like how.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 20:53

Roth: Jul 9, 2016

I don't like that

# ? Jul 14, 2022 20:54

Son of Thunderbeast: Sep 21, 2002

Vox Nihili posted:

Going to need a full recap of the infamous unpaid goon labor colony that guy attempted to establish in Hawaii at some point

Years after this saga I found out a friend of a friend of a friend had attempted the exact same thing, with extremely similar results (even with pig poo poo in their water supply etc), but it turned out not to be that goon. It makes me wonder how many people have tried this

# ? Jul 14, 2022 21:28

Frank Frank: Jun 13, 2001; Mirrored

Roth posted:

I don't like that

# ? Jul 14, 2022 21:33

pentyne: Nov 7, 2012

Son of Thunderbeast posted:

Years after this saga I found out a friend of a friend of a friend had attempted the exact same thing, with extremely similar results (even with pig poo poo in their water supply etc), but it turned out not to be that goon. It makes me wonder how many people have tried this

Pigs are small change. Let me know when their homesteading experience ends up creating a bear problem.

https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project

quote:

In its public education campaigns, the U.S. National Park Service stresses an important distinction: If you find yourself being attacked by a brown or grizzly bear, YES, DO PLAY DEAD. Spread your arms and legs and cling to the ground with all your might, facing downward; after a few attempts to flip you over (no one said this would be easy), the bear will, most likely, leave. By contrast, if you find yourself being attacked by a black bear, NO, DO NOT PLAY DEAD. You must either flee or, if that�s not an option, fight it off, curved claws and 700 psi-jaws and all.

But don�t worry�it almost never comes to this. As one park service PSA noted this summer, bears �usually just want to be left alone. Don�t we all?� In other words, if you encounter a black bear, try to look big, back slowly away, and trust in the creature�s inner libertarian. Unless, that is, the bear in question hails from certain wilds of western New Hampshire. Because, as Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling�s new book suggests, that unfortunate animal may have a far more aggressive disposition, and relate to libertarianism first and foremost as a flavor of human cuisine.

Hongoltz-Hetling is an accomplished journalist based in Vermont, a Pulitzer nominee and George Polk Award winner. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) sees him traversing rural New England as he reconstructs a remarkable, and remarkably strange, episode in recent history. This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals�part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt�s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. While their various platforms and bugbears were inevitably idiosyncratic, certain beliefs united them: that the radical freedom of markets and the marketplace of ideas was an unalloyed good; that �statism� in the form of government interference (above all, taxes) was irredeemably bad. Left alone, they believed, free individuals would thrive and self-regulate, thanks to the sheer force of �logic,� �reason,� and efficiency. For inspirations, they drew upon precedents from fiction (Ayn Rand loomed large) as well as from real life, most notably a series of micro-nation projects ventured in the Pacific and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s.

None of those micro-nations, it should be observed, panned out, and things in New Hampshire don�t bode well either�especially when the humans collide with a newly brazen population of bears, themselves just �working to create their own utopia,� property lines and market logic be damned. The resulting narrative is simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling. Sigmund Freud once described the value of civilization, with all its �discontents,� as a compromise product, the best that can be expected from mitigating human vulnerability to �indifferent nature� on one hand and our vulnerability to one another on the other. Hongoltz-Hetling presents, in microcosm, a case study in how a politics that fetishizes the pursuit of �freedom,� both individual and economic, is in fact a recipe for impoverishment and supercharged vulnerability on both fronts at once. In a United States wracked by virus, mounting climate change, and ruthless corporate pillaging and governmental deregulation, the lessons from one tiny New Hampshire town are stark indeed.

�In a country known for fussy states with streaks of independence,� Hongoltz-Hetling observes, �New Hampshire is among the fussiest and the streakiest.� New Hampshire is, after all, the Live Free or Die state, imposing neither an income nor a sales tax, and boasting, among other things, the highest per capita rate of machine gun ownership. In the case of Grafton, the history of Living Free�so to speak�has deep roots. The town�s Colonial-era settlers started out by ignoring �centuries of traditional Abenaki law by purchasing land from founding father John Hancock and other speculators.� Next, they ran off Royalist law enforcement, come to collect lumber for the king, and soon discovered their most enduring pursuit: the avoidance of taxes. As early as 1777, Grafton�s citizens were asking their government to be spared taxes and, when they were not, just stopped paying them.

Nearly two and a half centuries later, Grafton has become something of a magnet for seekers and quirky types, from adherents of the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to hippie burnouts and more. Particularly important for the story is one John Babiarz, a software designer with a Krusty the Klown laugh, who decamped from Big-Government-Friendly Connecticut in the 1990s to homestead in New Hampshire with his equally freedom-loving wife, Rosalie. Entering a sylvan world that was, Hongoltz-Hetling writes, �almost as if they had driven through a time warp and into New England�s revolutionary days, when freedom outweighed fealty and trees outnumbered taxes,� the two built a new life for themselves, with John eventually coming to head Grafton�s volunteer fire department (which he describes as a �mutual aid� venture) and running for governor on the libertarian ticket.

Although John�s bids for high office failed, his ambitions remained undimmed, and in 2004 he and Rosalie connected with a small group of libertarian activists. Might not Grafton, with its lack of zoning laws and low levels of civic participation, be the perfect place to create an intentional community based on Logic and Free Market Principles? After all, in a town with fewer than 800 registered voters, and plenty of property for sale, it would not take much for a committed group of transplants to establish a foothold, and then win dominance of municipal governance. And so the Free Town Project began. The libertarians expected to be greeted as liberators, but from the first town meeting, they faced the inconvenient reality that many of Grafton�s presumably freedom-loving citizens saw them as outsiders first, and compatriots second�if at all. Tensions flared further when a little Googling revealed what �freedom� entailed for some of the new colonists. One of the original masterminds of the plan, a certain Larry Pendarvis, had written of his intention to create a space honoring the freedom to �traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights.� He had also bemoaned the persecution of the �victimless crime� that is �consensual cannibalism.� (�Logic is a strange thing,� observes Hongoltz-Hetling.)

While Pendarvis eventually had to take his mail-order Filipina bride business and dreams of municipal takeovers elsewhere (read: Texas), his comrades in the Free Town Project remained undeterred. Soon, they convinced themselves that, evidence and reactions to Pendarvis notwithstanding, the Project must actually enjoy the support of a silent majority of freedom-loving Graftonites. How could it not? This was Freedom, after all. And so the libertarians keep coming, even as Babiarz himself soon came to rue the fact that �the libertarians were operating under vampire rules�the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded.� The precise numbers are hard to pin down, but ultimately the town�s population of a little more than 1,100 swelled with 200 new residents, overwhelmingly men, with very strong opinions and plenty of guns.

Hongoltz-Hetling profiles many newcomers, all of them larger-than-life, yet quite real. The people who joined the Free Town Project in its first five years were, as he describes, �free radicals��men with �either too much money or not enough,� with either capital to burn or nothing to lose. There�s John Connell of Massachusetts, who arrived on a mission from God, liquidated his savings, and bought the historic Grafton Center Meetinghouse, transforming it into the �Peaceful Assembly Church,� an endeavor that mixed garish folk art, strange rants from its new pastor (Connell himself), and a quixotic quest to secure tax exemption while refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the IRS to grant it. There�s Adam Franz, a self-described anti-capitalist who set up a tent city to serve as �a planned community of survivalists,� even though no one who joined it had any real bushcraft skills. There�s Richard Angell, an anti-circumcision activist known as �Dick Angel.� And so on. As Hongoltz-Hetling makes clear, libertarianism can indeed have a certain big-tent character, especially when the scene is a new landscape of freedom-lovers making �homes out of yurts and RVs, trailers and tents, geodesic domes and shipping containers.�

If the Libertarian vision of Freedom can take many shapes and sizes, one thing is bedrock: �Busybodies� and �statists� need to stay out of the way. And so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town�s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat. �Despite several promising efforts,� Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, �a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services.� Instead, Grafton, �a haven for miserable people,� became a town gone �feral.� Enter the bears, stage right.

Black bears, it should be stressed, are generally a pretty chill bunch. The woods of North America are home to some three-quarters of a million of them; on average, there is at most one human fatality from a black bear attack per year, even as bears and humans increasingly come into contact in expanding suburbs and on hiking trails. But tracking headlines on human-bear encounters in New England in his capacity as a regional journalist in the 2000s, Hongoltz-Hetling noticed something distressing: The black bears in Grafton were not like other black bears. Singularly �bold,� they started hanging out in yards and on patios in broad daylight. Most bears avoid loud noises; these casually ignored the efforts of Graftonites to run them off. Chickens and sheep began to disappear at alarming rates. Household pets went missing, too. One Graftonite was playing with her kittens on her lawn when a bear bounded out of the woods, grabbed two of them, and scarfed them down. Soon enough, the bears were hanging out on porches and trying to enter homes.

Combining wry description with evocative bits of scientific fact, Hongoltz-Hetling�s portrayal of the bears moves from comical if foreboding to downright terrifying. These are animals that can scent food seven times farther than a trained bloodhound, that can flip 300-pound stones with ease, and that can, when necessary, run in bursts of speed rivaling a deer�s. When the bears finally start mauling humans�attacking two women in their homes�Hongoltz-Hetling�s relation of the scenes is nightmarish. �If you look at their eyes, you understand,� one survivor tells him, �that they are completely alien to us.�

What was the deal with Grafton�s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. �Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.�

Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all�especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet �Doughnut Lady,� revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else�s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn�t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just �don�t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,� Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem.

Pressed by bears from without and internecine conflicts from within, the Free Town Project began to come apart. Caught up in �pitched battles over who was living free, but free in the right way,� the libertarians descended into accusing one another of statism, leaving individuals and groups to do the best (or worst) they could. Some kept feeding the bears, some built traps, others holed up in their homes, and still others went everywhere toting increasingly larger-caliber handguns. After one particularly vicious attack, a shadowy posse formed and shot more than a dozen bears in their dens. This effort, which was thoroughly illegal, merely put a dent in the population; soon enough, the bears were back in force.

Meanwhile, the dreams of numerous libertarians came to ends variously dramatic and quiet. A real estate development venture known as Grafton Gulch, in homage to the dissident enclave in Ayn Rand�s Atlas Shrugged, went belly-up. After losing a last-ditch effort to secure tax exemption, a financially ruined Connell found himself unable to keep the heat on at the Meetinghouse; in the midst of a brutal winter, he waxed apocalyptic and then died in a fire. Franz quit his survivalist commune, which soon walled itself off into a prisonlike compound, the better to enjoy freedom. And John Babiarz, the erstwhile inaugurator of the Project, became the target of relentless vilification by his former ideological cohorts, who did not appreciate his refusal to let them enjoy unsecured blazes on high-wildfire�risk afternoons. When another, higher-profile libertarian social engineering enterprise, the Free State Project, received national attention by promoting a mass influx to New Hampshire in general (as opposed to just Grafton), the Free Town Project�s fate was sealed. Grafton became �just another town in a state with many options,� options that did not have the same problem with bears.

Or at least�not yet. Statewide, a perverse synergy between conservationist and austerity impulses in New Hampshire governance has translated into an approach to �bear management� policy that could accurately be described as laissez-faire. When Graftonites sought help from New Hampshire Fish and Game officials, they received little more than reminders that killing bears without a license is illegal, and plenty of highly dubious victim-blaming to boot. Had not the woman savaged by a bear been cooking a pot roast at the time? No? Well, nevertheless. Even when the state has tried to rein in the population with culls, it has been too late. Between 1998 and 2013, the number of bears doubled in the wildlife management region that includes Grafton. �Something�s Bruin in New Hampshire�Learn to Live with Bears,� the state�s literature advises.

The bear problem, in other words, is much bigger than individual libertarian cranks refusing to secure their garbage. It is a problem born of years of neglect and mismanagement by legislators, and, arguably, indifference from New Hampshire taxpayers in general, who have proved reluctant to step up and allocate resources to Fish and Game, even as the agency�s traditional source of funding�income from hunting licenses�has dwindled. Exceptions like Doughnut Lady aside, no one wants bears in their backyard, but apparently no one wants to invest sustainably in institutions doing the unglamorous work to keep them out either. Whether such indifference and complacency gets laundered into rhetoric of fiscal prudence, half-baked environmentalism, or individual responsibility, the end result is the same: The bears abide�and multiply.

Their prosperity also appears to be linked to man-made disasters that have played out on a national and global scale�patterns of unsustainable construction and land use, and the climate crisis. More than once, Hongoltz-Hetling flags the fact that upticks in bear activity unfold alongside apparently ever more frequent droughts. Drier summers may well be robbing bears of traditional plant and animal sources of food, even as hotter winters are disrupting or even ending their capacity to hibernate. Meanwhile, human garbage, replete with high-calorie artificial ingredients, piles up, offering especially enticing treats, even in the dead of winter�particularly in places with zoning and waste management practices as chaotic as those in Grafton, but also in areas where suburban sprawl is reaching farther into the habitats of wild animals. The result may be a new kind of bear, one �torn between the unique dangers and caloric payloads that humans provide�they are more sleep-deprived, more anxious, more desperate, and more twitchy than the bear that nature produced.� Ever-hungry for new frontiers in personal autonomy and market emancipation, human beings have altered the environment with the unintended result of empowering newly ravenous bears to boot.

Ignoring institutional failure and mounting crises does not make them go away. But some may take refuge in confidence that, when the metaphorical chickens (or, rather, bears) finally come home to roost, the effects are never felt equally. When bears show up in higher-income communities like Hanover (home to Dartmouth College), Hongoltz-Hetling notes, they get parody Twitter accounts and are promptly evacuated to wildernesses in the north; poorer rural locales are left to fend for themselves, and the residents blamed for doing what they can. In other words, the �unintended natural selection of the bears that are trying to survive alongside modern humans� is unfolding along with competition among human beings amid failing infrastructure and scarce resources, a struggle with Social Darwinist dynamics of its own.

The distinction between a municipality of eccentric libertarians and a state whose response to crisis is, in so many words, �Learn to Live With It� may well be a matter of degree rather than kind. Whether it be assaults by bears, imperceptible toxoplasmosis parasites, or a way of life where the freedom of markets ultimately trumps individual freedom, even the most cocksure of Grafton�s inhabitants must inevitably face something beyond and bigger than them. In that, they are hardly alone. Clearly, when it comes to certain kinds of problems, the response must be collective, supported by public effort, and dominated by something other than too-tidy-by-half invocations of market rationality and the maximization of individual personal freedom. If not, well, then we had all best get some practice in learning when and how to play dead, and hope for the best.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 21:40

DOPE FIEND KILLA G: Jun 4, 2011

lol 'Dick Angel'

# ? Jul 14, 2022 21:43

Frank Frank: Jun 13, 2001; Mirrored

The only solution is to give the bears guns.

they have a right to bear arms

# ? Jul 14, 2022 21:46

pentyne: Nov 7, 2012

The idea that a libertarian town that complains to the state about bear problems and is told "well maybe you were asking for it" is so magical it would get rejected from a screenplay for being too absurd.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 21:50

Muscle Tracer: Feb 23, 2007; Medals only weigh one down.

Frank Frank posted:

The only solution is to give the bears guns.

they have a right to bear arms

Grafted on like Barrett's, or that lady from Grind House

# ? Jul 14, 2022 22:45

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

It's what happens when animals access the internet. They get stupider just like us. Goonbear convincing goonbearwife to drop the berries teehee

pentyne posted:

Pigs are small change. Let me know when their homesteading experience ends up creating a bear problem.

https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project

gently caress yeah, that article is a fun read. Stupid libertarians and their bears.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 22:45

Vox Nihili: May 28, 2008

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Texarrakis was also advertised here. It's like the Hawaii commune but cheaper land, without the rain, or the trees, or water, or anything edible, and you can die from exposure in like 24 hours.

I remember these guys. I'm not sure if they were goons or just goon-adjacent and documented on SA. The ringleader bought some empty, far-flung desert land in Texas on the cheap and moved there from Boston on a shoe-string budget with plans for some sort of eternal Burning Man called "Fort Awesome". Turned out to be really difficult and expensive to bring in the necessary water, much less the power required to watch Star Trek reruns in a tent. Ultimately they spent 90% of their money on gas and had to give up and return to their former 9-5 lives.

Iirc they were actually a bit more successful than the Hawaii goons and managed to drag out some "recycled" (waste) lumber and build some actual structures out there. Much like the Hawaii goons, they also habitually talked about "living off the land" and were obsessed with the concept of "the land" in particular, it felt like a settler version of salmon trapped in a lake instinctually trying to find a stream to spawn in or something. Both of these projects were circa 2009-2010 also.

http://archive.boston.com/jobs/college/articles/2010/03/27/four_friends_are_pulling_up_stakes_and_heading_west_as_21st_century_pioneers/

https://www.marketplace.org/2010/08/06/living-land-fort-awesome/

Vox Nihili fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 14, 2022

# ? Jul 14, 2022 23:01

Vox Nihili: May 28, 2008

Notably, the founder of Texarrakis/Fort Awesome acquired the land in eBay by swiping the emergency credit card entrusted to him by his parents to the tune of $650. He was 28 when he did this.

"Their extensive plan, detailed on texarrakis.com, includes clearing brush and building a water capture system, raised garden beds, and some kind of latrine. A wind generator will power lights, electronics, and cellphones."

Unfortunately, the site is long gone, as are the YouTube videos it seems. They actually bought a windmill and tried to set it up for power, among many other half-baked endeavors. One of them worked in construction so they weren't totally helpless.

# ? Jul 14, 2022 23:13

Empty Sandwich: Apr 22, 2008; goatse mugs

# ? Jul 14, 2022 23:37

Fajita Queen: Jun 21, 2012

pentyne posted:

Pigs are small change. Let me know when their homesteading experience ends up creating a bear problem.

https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project

Wait, that's why my state has turned into such a shithole over the past couple decades?

Fuckin libertarians.

# ? Jul 15, 2022 00:12

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

I like how failing to slaughter a piglet is reframed as this tacticool operation that still fails, complete with the goon king magdumping to make cops proud. Then they celebrate by having a lord of the flies-rear end cookout.

I wonder how many people they were expecting to feed with that little tiny pig.

# ? Jul 15, 2022 06:43

Kia Soul Enthusias: May 9, 2004; zoom-zoom; Toilet Rascal

I don't feel like reading all those paragraphs, was that a wild pig or a pet one? The pigs on Hawaii (in fact most mammals) are invasive and destructive

# ? Jul 15, 2022 07:37

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

EorayMel posted:

Goon island best hits

The OP got his rear end kicked by a plant akin to a three stooges branch slap gag

An industrial machine intended to pull down trees was tied to a tree to secure it, then stolen alongside the tree it was tied to at night(alongside a SHITLOAD OF TOOLS)

The descent into becoming an armed cultist compound accelerates with plans to get more guns and gates

Goons discover they are really bad at building things but are instead really good at torturing small animals and play to their strengths

The proof is in the pudding

After some mild hooting and hollering in support, moments of clarity start emerging

After much more criticism and concern trolling comes the coup de grace

Bonus FYAD thread on the matter in the FYAD goldmine

Socratic Moron later turned up in a medical advice thread. His symptoms matched those resulting from severe internal organ damage from some sort of parasite IIRC.

# ? Jul 15, 2022 07:46

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

Kia Soul Enthusias posted:

I don't feel like reading all those paragraphs, was that a wild pig or a pet one? The pigs on Hawaii (in fact most mammals) are invasive and destructive

It is a farm animal. There is a reason we don't slaughter food animals with handguns. Several reasons, in fact.

That reminds me of the one goon people went crazy for because he killed feral pigs in "hilarious" ways, posed their bodies, and generally came off like a serial killer in the making. But you couldn't post that because you'd get dogpiled about how feral pigs are a menace. True, but there's a well-adjusted way to purge them and there's whatever that thread was.

# ? Jul 15, 2022 11:07