canned cocktails

They lounged around a sunny picnic table, drinking canned cocktails.
One of them said:

"Well, I was feeling like sharing what seem like some moments of clarity I've been having recently -- just now -- about how everything really can be done, and done better, without money and things like elections and lawyering -- the mechanisms of centralized authority. EVERYTHING, including safety, including music, including... well, you name it. So about the only thing to do if you agree, I guess -- you can do what I'm doing right now, which is repeating something that's been said many times, many ways. Repeating an idea."

One said:

"People think, if the empire falls, we'll die."

One said:

"They're right! But we will anyway. And If it falls, we'll live longer and better.

Negativity and ego are such subtle mechanisms, that I so often focus on trying to be positive and constructive, that maybe I've often forgotten that sometimes we do have albatrosses around our necks, and that extricating ourselves from drags like that might sometimes be a positive and constructive act. Sometimes the best way to improve a computer's performance is to uninstall something."

A bit later they were back inside, one of them sitting on the couch, and the other on the chair in front of the computer. One got down on the floor and said:

"Man. Let's do a ritual. Let's make a cone of.... of whatever we want. Just a cone. The kind with a circular base, and a point at the top. Well, I guess that's what a cone is, right? Unless you've got the circle at the top or something, and the point at the bottom. But since we're sitting on the floor... and our bodies are kind of like cones, right? Wide on the bottom, coming to almost a point at the top? Okay. A cone around us. Yeah."

They said various other things that afternoon:

"So let's see what I can say to this person, or reptile?, I've been thinking about so often. Of course, now I'm saying it to everybody!! :) Wonderful person. Hah."
"What can this be but a con, a calculation, a trick, a joke, a ploy to elicit a word... well, it could be other things too, and it could function in ways besides being! What? Fixme, maybe. FIXME, that's what I used  to write in my notes to mean, following the convention used by Eric Raymond, who I think I kind of learned it from, 'revisit this in a subsequent draft'."
"Yes. Why not weasel our way out of weaselly words."
"You provoke whatever extent of eloquence ... in a relative sense ... might escape."
"I'll take everything back, sure."

"People, or at least a person, who I saw at a restarurant, a bar, with you, has been posting things online which a couple people have expressed concern about. He provoked a memory of a guy on an AI mailing list a couple years ago, who said he had a brain implant, but seemed to be doing some interesting coding with artificial life forms... "

"Everything is awesome. The legos have that much going."
The sky darkened.

"If you're a continuation of the spacetime, localized spirit, that I mean, then hey. And ... Well? Okay. If I express something here, let's say for now it's experimental, hypothetical, and tentative. For certain limited purposes. I know you somewhat, and these media -- English words, black letters in a white box on a flat screen -- seem to somehow sometimes be optimized for speaking one-on-one, one specific person to another specific person. So by addressing you, I'm trying to work the system. Sorry for the inconvenience! And damn. And rejoice, and ..."

"It's merely an exercise in pouring out truth, reconciliation, onto a forum where it will be effective. Now, let's deal seriously with the eventuality of it being effective."

"Alien to each other, too, I suppose? And maybe less so, more amenable, more compatible, with closer cousins! Unless, un miraculo viene, supongo,"

"Increible, las cosas que BLOCK? la comunicacion. Y ningun acentos aqui?"

"See, I'm sorry. I want to promote tidings of the best wishes and cheers, Christ, all the luminaries, everybody, Muhammad Ali, on and on and on. 100 percent."

"All right. Here's something I've been pondering. Do you ever find that something happened the previous night, or the previous minute, and you swear, or almost swear, that you couldn't have possibly acted so ... like the memories must be false, implanted. Hah, there! My excuse! No, I'm not saying they are implanted. I don't think they are. Necessarily :) Really. I'm saying... What AM I saying?! That... "

"Now, anyone can feel free to decipher this."