Torture

You'll have to excuse my pants, they've been refusing to stay up since dropping to my ankles this morning. I was just enjoying my morning cup of coffee and reading the papers when one odd article caught my eye:
"US military interrogators are using unorthodox musical techniques to extract information about weapons of mass destruction of fugitive Ba'athist leaders from their detainees - a fearsome mix of Metallica and Barney the Dinosaur. "
Can you imagine grown men, members of a absolutely ruthless regime crying for mercy halfway through "Wherever I may roam" or "Barney the Dinosaur" ? I sure can't. I might be begging for mercy after 10 minutes of Gareth Gates or a season from "As the world turns", but then again, I have a particular weakness for these things.
Reading on after a few minutes of going through the repertoire of Metallica for possible songs they'd use, I read that if you play metal for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken, according to US-experts. A crude calculation on my history in listening to metal leads to the conclusion that my train of thought must be halted by now, if it isn't in reverse already. The other possibility is that you can become immune to the mindboggling effects of metal if you listen to it long enough. Of course you'll have to build up your tolerance slowly if you are not to damage your mental health permanently. A bit of the Beatles to start with, then some Stones. In a few months you could try Aerosmith and maybe within the year you will be listening to van Halen without even twitching! Building your mental barriers for Barney the Dinosaur might be a little harder, but most parents seem to be able to cope with it eventually. I figure it's only a matter of time now before we'll be seeing the follow-up article in the papers:
"Al-Quaida recruits headbangers and fathers"
I for one, will be paying close attention to the number of moslim-fundamentalists that attend the rock festival that I'll be visiting next month. If I see anything suspicious, I'll notify the intelligence service right away. I advice you all to do the same.

Super heroes

Is this the age of super heroes? Reading the papers I must come to the conclusion that it is so. Every week mythical arch-villains with comic-like names such as 'Chemical Ali', 'Doctor Germ' and 'Mrs Anthrax' are defeated by Captain America in his quest for freedom in the world. Captain America's opponents are evil to the bone. As his trusted sidekicks explain, the evil villains are "killers whose only faith is hate". and who have "no purpose, no meaning other than to strike out in rage". these are grim characters indeed and we are lucky that Captain America is there to face them head on. So nevermind the legitimacy of this war, Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Nevermind the rebuilding of Iraq and the safeguarding of it's citizens. That is boring and does not do well on TV at all, so why care? I say we just ignore them so we can enjoy the adventures of Captain America battling the Butcher of Bagdad, intimidating the Infidels of Iran and hunting the Heathens of Hezbollah.

I wonder if the white house has already sold the movierights?..

Smell the roses

We spent so much of our time looking for or working towards that something special. The perfect job, the perfect house, the raddest new graphics adapter or whatever it is that makes you tick. All this in preparation for that ultimate moment of being 'there', wherever that may be. And so we focus on the important stuff, 'cause we must stay sharp if we are ever to attain the ultimate state of being. Our goal, in the center of our focus, becomes ultimately sharp and detailed. The rest, cast away to the perimeter of our vision, becomes blurry and vague.

Of course being human means never being truly satisfied, so whatever your current possesions and achievements, there is always something more to strive for. And so we spend our lives focussed on something that is not yet there. Never looking to the beauty of the here and now. Faster and faster we go towards the glimpse of happyness on the horizon. Running on the railroadtrack hoping to reach that point in the distance where the two bars of iron meet. And then, usually at the age of fifty I am told, we pause and look over our shoulders. We look to the journey we have made and after three deep breaths we squeeze our eyes and focus on the horizon behind us. And to our dismay we discover that the bars of the railroad meet in the beginning of the track and frantically we run back, hoping to find the spot where they meet, wich we apparenty missed.

And so at the end of our lives we will have returned where we started long ago. We won't remember where we've been because all that time we focussed on that spot in the distance, never looking to the beautifull things to our left and our right. And when the breathing seizes and our soul rises up through the sky our vision expands and we look at the track only to see the bars never meet.

The great dungeon master in the sky

Usually thursdaynight is the night I do Tai Chi. Since it's been rather busy at work lately, I go straight from the office to the deli in the shoppingmall nearby to get me a quick bite and then straight to Tai Chi. I didn't really feel like going today though, I was rather tired and so I just stepped into the car and drove home. So I took a left turn at the intersection and turned on my radio. After about five minutes, halfway through the six 'o clock news, I heard there was a shoot out right in front of the deli where I would have been eating my sandwich!

It makes me wonder why I took that left turn towards home in the first place. Was it coincidence? Was it fate? Fate sounds nice of course, but the longer you think about it, the less attractive it gets. I like to think that I drove home because I wanted to. It was my choice. I might just as well have been going to that deli if I felt like it. But that's not possible with fate now is it? We can't have me going to the deli risking a bullet in the head while fate planned for me to live untill five in the morning on march 15 2036. So with fate, out goes our free will and life becomes a bit like a movie: You are there, you see, hear and even feel what happens, but you do not have any influence on what happens next. You can try of course, like when watching that thriller and you scream: "Behind you, you stupid girl, look behind you!!". But she's not going to turn around while the psychopath sneaks up behind her. You know he'll get closer first. Hiding in a dark corner of the alley when she stops because she thinks she's hearing something. And then, when he finally is close enough and slowly raises the butcherknife, she'll turn around and scream righ before he kills her.

On the other hand, life could be more like a roleplayinggame. God is the Gamemaster and he prepared this fabulous campaign. He's got all the detais worked out, all possibilities taken care off. It's going to be the best campaign ever! But then come the players and within five minutes the gamemaster is miles away from the story he planned. "No you stupid bitch, not the apple, you're not supposed to eat the apple, I need that later on!" But, as I am sure every gamemaster knows, she will eat that apple. So what do you do when you're the Gamemaster? You wing it! Sure, not everything will go perfect, but when things go wrong we'll just do what gamemasters do and say it was intentional. Players fall for that way to easy you know, and apparently so do we. It makes perfect sense to me now. God must be so happy I'm having a quiet evening at home. It gives him a little extra time to prepare tomorrows session.

Saddams billions

"Son, daddy needs some cash for the hard times to come. Why don't you go to the bank and get me one billion dollars."

How do you handle that? Any idea how much space you need to transport that? Can I take the Porsche to get it, Should I take the van or maybe get a big truck or multiple trucks even? These are difficult times and difficult choices must be made in a split second. On TV a million usually fits inside a briefcase, so a billion would be like a thousand briefcases then right? Ok, so lets say I take the truck and go downtown to the bank:

Clerk: "Number 374"
Me:" That would be me"
Clerk: "Hi there mr. Qusay, what can i help you with today?"
Me: "I'd like to make a withdrawal of one billion dollars"
Clerk: "How would you like that Sir?"
Me: "Errr. Well 7.500.000 bills of a hundred dollars, 2.000.000 twenty dollar bills ..... aaaaaannd lets see ... 500.000 ten dollar bills then, that should do it I think."
Clerk:" Just a moment Sir"

4 hours later...

Clerk:"We put it all in your truck Sir, good luck with that"

Then what? Do you trust the clerk? I mean, maybe he just took a million, who will know? He is looking at you with an overly friendly smile, so the bastard must hiding something. the question is, where did he put it? Not in his pocket of course, that would never fit. Counting the money sure as hell isn't an option. No choice then but to shoot the bastard, that will at least take that stupid smile of his damn face...

So now we have a truckload of dollars and we need a place to hide. A place where you can buy weapons, re-establish your political influence, anything really if you have the dollars. After all, dollars is all we have left and we have plenty off 'em. So what place would that be then? Well we all know where everything is for sale for the right amount off dollars. Tha land off ultimate kapitalism and oportunity, the land of the filthy rich and shameless. We will go to the USA!!!

I'm not doubting the location of Saddam for a second. He's in texas. Qusay and him became members of the National Riffle Association of course, wich will protect their rights to keep pretty much every damn weapon they wish. No more weapons inspectors, no more UN, no more sanctions. The US can have Iraq and install an all american government for all they care. They'll just buy the next election and own Iraq AND the US at the same time. I just wish I could see the look on Bush' face when he finds out why he lost his re-election.

Template works

The template works a little better now, although I'm forced to make it fixed-size on 800x600 now. Somehow the width and heigth get screwed up whenever I enter percentages in stead of absolute pixels. I'll live with it for now though, it looks decent.
Today was a nice day so far. I got a good nights sleep yesterday and I find that does make a tremendous difference. I'll probably conveniently forget my newfound knowledge when I'm busy ranting in some forum tonight and be cranky and tired again tomorrow. If only there were stores where you could buy discipline. I'd get me a truckload. I mean, they say there's this little voice inside you that tells you what's right and what's wrong, I think they call it conscience. But all mine seems to do is convince not to start anything and be lazy so I can feel bad about that when I go to sleep. Sarcastic little bastard that conscience of mine. Maybe I'll get a new one at that store where they sell discipline.

Starting up

The regular Blogger stoically refused to post my pittyfull attempts at a original opening-post so I thought I'd try the new Blogger-beta. At least now I know it's bugged, so it won't frustrate me as much. first thing to do is to make a decent stylesheet for this little corner of mine. I must say who-ever made the default templates sure was a messy worker. These things look terrible (codewise I mean, not esthetically). I tried to incorporate the stylesheet I use for the Magisters Tower for this site, but conversion was a real bitch. It's pretty close now, I'll leave it the way it is for now. The only thing to do now is to get rid of that stupid blue margin in the top left corner picture. It's not there in my design-preview, but it does completely destroy my design in the actual view of the site. Must be something with the add's I think. Ah well, tomorrow is another day, good night.