Quote from: DiaperedDynamo on September 05, 2011, 07:00:15 AM

Quote from: bitconformist on September 03, 2011, 02:32:17 PM

It all started when I was 17. I remember that it was a hot summer; the crickets were chirping and dad hadnt beaten me for a few days. He did that sometimes, when he was drunk and Id been a worthless parasite. I tried hard in school but even so I was still leeching off him. Knowing that made me feel worthless, because it is the strong man who provides for the weak and I was weak. His fists were not violent, it was my impotent sloth that was violent, my lack of industry that forced my father to pay the bills. Such violence is not compassion.

I hope one day to be the man that my father is, the man that he dreamed that I could be. Ill show him my strength and then he will love me.

It was almost time for the robot championships - wed placed in the top 50th percentile last year - and Id spent weeks sketching designs. Tall robots; squat robots; robots to catch and robots to throw; robots with a thousand dongs, each hanging from a hundred other dongs, each dong whirling like a throbbing dervish. The latter was to give the coup de grâce to my demoralised enemies, an android teabagging if you will.

Clem came round that morning. I clearly remember the excitement in her face as she opened his laptop - bought for her by her parents, the leech - and started a strange program. She was shaking a little, and since father blocked the air conditioning vents in my room, she was sweating slightly from the heat.

One day I will marry Clem, if she remains pure and finds a suitable job with good benefits. I could never marry a lesser creature, one of the unclean. What Would Ayn Do? was my motto and I strove to meet her expectations, at least so far as I understood them. Wed never touched, for she was not of that type, but I knew we had a quiet, unvoiced connection. She could be mine if I truly asked.

Confused by her awkward excitement, I stammered my bewilderment. What is it?

Its amazing! My brother showed me. You run this program and it makes Chuck E. Cheese coupons or something. Still excited, her face was tinged with uncertainty. Was it: will he like it? Or perhaps: do I even know what I am talking about? That had never stopped us before, not when we started the Objectivist Lunch Table, nor when we threw those rocks at old Mr. Gillard when he put that Local 602 sticker on his car. His VFW buddies had chased us but we knew we were in the right. We knew.

I showed her my teeth as mother had taught me, trying to calm Clem from her agitation. The program beeped a successful note and something popped onscreen about blocks. My father had never given me any blocks as a child. Id resorted to carving some from the cheddar that the government had given me after my emancipation. My father had been so proud to emancipate me: hed called it my 10th birthday present, a coming of age and the beginning of my long road to manhood. I was no longer dependent upon him, for hed passed me off to society at large.

What happened?
We just mined a bitcoin!
A what?
Its really cool! Its like money except on a computer. You cant buy anything with it, of course, because no one gives a shit and its completely pointless but my brother says that it will change the world.

I spent the next week frantically searching online. On the third day I made a fantastic discovery: a program called Google that lets me look for things. It was like going to the library and bugging Mrs. Rudd to show me where the von Mises biographies were but without the blank look and the awkward shuffling away. It found things! I found things! Bitcoin was a revolution and I was going to be at the forefront, blasting aside the old order of tax violence and oppression and replacing it with a new world of poorly regulated currency, volatility, child pornography, poverty, fraud, and smug ignorance! Bitcoin was the answer!

My heart raced and I blacked out. An hour? Two hours? When I awoke, I was naked from the waist down and my thighs were sticky. Someone had drawn my secret dongbot design on the floorboards and my mouth tasted of garlic. I pulled myself unsteadily to my feet - I had to stop wasting time, for a new day was dawning.

Wait, if you were emancipated from your dad when you were 10, why were you still hanging out with him when you were 17?

Emancipated meaning he was no longer required to pay for my schooling or healthcare. I still lived with my parents.