Monkey and Banana

Predatory Landing

2008-03-17T20:12:00.000-07:00

So I could afford to rent this apartment that I live in, and some folks chose to live in a large fancy house, paying pennies on their "mortgage". Now somehow they need to be bailed out to "save the economy". In other words, I have to sponsoring their fun along with paying my rent. And the only way to make this sound any bit fair is to claim that there was a whole lot of predatory lending. You see, they are just victims.

What a pile of crap. If some crackhead robs me in the driveway, the government will not even think of paying me for my shit. They will go after the guy, and if they catch him, with some luck I'll get my stuff back. That's the basic contract. Well when companies rob people with cheater contracts, supposedly putting the entire economy toward recession, the government should go after those assholes. Catch them, prosecute them. Put them into jail, arrest their assets. Overregulate them for a good measure. Only then you may consider bailing out all the mortgage playas. And the reality? Government is subsidizing those very same companies with supercheap loans. Methinks me is being cheated.

Jennifer Marnell is a dumb cunt

2008-03-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

This fake blond over here is Jennifer Marnell. They wouldn't let her on a fucking amusement ride so this spoiled brat decided to slim down for good. She lost just a little under what I weight myself, and she's now a god fucking celebrity. Every time I see nonsense like this it just blows my lid off. Don't you guys get it? She wasted her entire adolescence and almost entire twenties being a dumb shit who could not control what goes into her mouse. The damage to her health is irreversible and will haunt her till she dies. At the same time, millions of people took a little extra effort and stayed reasonably fit and healthy and enjoyed their lives as they could. Well, guess who's the celebrity now, you schmoes.

Don't get this wrong, I am really glad she did it. Perhaps she'll have more years to spend with her daughter. Perhaps she'll now be a happier, more confident and independent person. I just thing she belongs right there between the people who never lost control of their eating and those who are yet to regain it, period. In fact, it may be exactly the Jareds of this world responsible for quite a few pounds on your average belly.

Btw, the bitch is quite obviously on hormones. Which is probably because she had to rid of those few "last pounds", exactly what most ppl struggle with. Getting that pubic bone view may well be harder than loosing her entire 200 pounds sack in the first place. This sort of means everyone will now listen to a cheater.

Shpeak

2007-11-24T20:58:00.000-08:00

This just had to be posted :))

http://www.labnol.org/internet/favorites/how-to-learn-english-in-china/1842/

One day they will figure it out.

Ho ho ho

2007-11-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

It's an absolutely amazing day in Minneapolis today. It's clear, sunny and over 60 degrees. Windows are open, heating is off and I suspect there are must be people trying to tan. Squirrels are out, some dude is touching the paint and cutting trees on the outside of the apartment building next door, and I ran in the morning and then worked on my scoot a little. Got some coffee and hey it's already Christmas for Starbucks. Crazy fuckers. It must be this ridiculous for people down south every year I guess.

Straight faces

2007-10-16T20:51:00.000-07:00

When I first used my phone's vibration feature, it totally freaked me out. Every time it was just too unexpected. So I stopped using it - unless I had the phone in my jacket's side pocket or something. Turned out to be a good thing! Otherwise, I'd be by now like totally vibrating in a phantomly kind of ways. Now that this is "official", which means some doctor said that yup, tons of people have it also, all the news are talking about phantom vibrations and it even got into this Sunday's comics section. Comics are a big deal for me.

So Ok, I can see how this is a great little filler topic for the media. What I totally don't get is how they all manage to keep them straight faces. Doesn't everybody have the same little dirty question as I do?

Purple things

2007-10-15T19:39:00.001-07:00

I started this morning with pinkitude and Amy's story about her new very purple workbench. Just as I headed to school, there it was - one seriously purple TRUCK:

Picture doesn't make it much justice either. This is not your old lady neighbor's lil bonkers purple - this was some most flowery purple I could ever imagine, yet it was just saturated enough to be very, very noticeable.
Now try driving like a jerk in something like this ;-)

Other things are just not what they seemed to be

2007-10-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

Rammstein is one crazy ass German band btw.

Some things you just gotta see

2007-09-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

In fact I quite agree with the message, but all the emotions clearly show that tabloids and co. have clearly got their job well done. I mean, she's this person is associating with a multimillionaire. Then again, maybe this is fake.

Yes your honor

2007-09-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

Do you know why this man is smiling?

This is kinda old, but I'd rather call it timeless.

Yeay! Lets all pig out

2007-09-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

Now there's another great excuse for being fat!
Walking hard for many exercisers

The Secret

2007-09-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

So I got The Secret. Well, not that I got it, I just have the movie. Not that I wanted to. It's just it was mentioned one too many times for me to ignore it. But I am still skeptical about it. I believe beforehand this is one of those positive attitude talks wrapped in some sort of mysticism. Those all look up the wrong side of the ass. So I figured I'll watch it and then say just precisely how much I did not like it.

But as I started, it is now clear there's just too much bullshit to remember it all. So there you go. This will be interactive, I'll blog as I go. Not a problem as I am watching alone, on my laptop.

It all starts immediately. It's Ancient times, and Romans are taking over what appears to be a Greek temple of some sorts. In a hurry, somebody is copying the secret to preserve it for future generations. The dude rubs charcoal against paper placed against a carved stone plate, so there remains an imprint on the paper. He then runs away. Dude, they didn't use paper those days. Paper's from China. Greeks used fine bull's skin, Egyptians had papyrus and none of those came from OfficeMax. OK, lets just say this is an artistic interpretation.

Then they show you the folks that supposedly knew the Secret. Plato, Newton, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Lincoln, Edison. Yeah, and Einstein of course. Then come the supposed modern day adepts. Meet Bob Proctor, a "philosopher". Anyone with a blog can call themselves a philosopher. But did you ever hear about Bob Proctor? How is he useful? Or is the movie his personal breakthrough? Bob tells us right away the Secret will provide us with anything we want. Sorta like credit card but better.

Meet Joe Vitale, a "Metaphysician". Huh? Doesn't look like he did his own teeth, metaphysically you know. Comes along John Assaraf the entepreneur. What a crap. Bill Gates is an entepreneur, this dude is not even on the Forbes 400 list. Didn't they just say they can have anything they want? Then comes a line of your typical new-age style gurus of the usual kind. Starting with a visionary all the way to a Feng Shui lady. Not that I mind them, it's just unclear to me how are these people useful in a sense of say Newton or Lincoln. In fact, I would dare to say your average pediatrician saved more lives, created more happy families than these folks, and possibly makes more money.

Then they say the Secret, right away. You have to prey harder.

Well, not how they put it, but hey it wouldn't sell well. So, this time you have to attract harder. Can't wait to see what's coming. I have been already blogging way longer then the movie - it's been just a few minutes.

So, all the cards have been laid down. Now they have to prove it. Starts with a rhetoric question - why do you think is that that 1% of all people earn 96% of all money? Well, 1% is about sixty million people, and includes those people with a few hundred thousand of income or more. Remember that pediatrician? See, at some point she skipped her parties and didn't smoke that joint on her way home, didn't get pregnant from wrong people and studied late hours. Now she's in that top percent. Huh? No way! This is just because she understands the Secret. That's right, all sixty millions of them, most living in the US. Hidden knowledge, yo.

OK, they already think they got me. Now the motto. Thoughts become things, it is. My, I will like write like an entire post on this. Like, some time later.

OK, here's the box of excuses. If something bad happens, it's because you've attracted it too. Because negative thoughts get attracted also. Your fault. Sorta like devil hearing your prayers. I've heard this somewhere before.

Oh, crap. Here's John Hagelin, a "Quantum Physicist". No such things exists in the known universe. A physicist uses as much of quantum description as is necessary for her problem (notice how PC I got?) but anybody calling themselves a "quantum physicist" is either a dick or a liar. Ask your local physicist.

They say you even attract people. What about all those girls I was staring at the other day? Oh wait, did I have to come over and say something?

Fred Alan Wolf is apparently also a quantum physicist, whatever that means. I think that means he's full of crap.

Now the main dude, Bob Proctor aka unknown philosopher, says nobody knows how electricity works, as in a light bulb. Should have asked one of his quantum physicists. Oh wait. How about all those people building computers with billions of transistors, creating megawatt lasers, looking at faint light that originated billions of years ago and was thinning ever since at the speed of light? Do they know how electromagnetism works? Nah, they just probably know the Secret.

Since you cannot control your thoughts, you should control your emotions, and they will guide what ya attracting, so the movie goes. I have a strong feeling they are about to tell me I should smile more. No shit, they actually did! Wait, is this still called The Secret?

They also got a demonstration. A little scene of some dude being afraid his bike will be stolen, so he chains it extra, and later the bike gets stolen indeed. No kidding. I had two bikes stolen from me, and I had it both ways. Then again, I probably didn't **** enough. I meant I didn't attract enough, that's what. Berkley's G., I am really sorry for making all this pun of praying.

Now they are telling me I should not loose my faith even if it hasn't worked (yet), and yes, it now does feel like Sunday indeed.

This is very much due:

Man, is this a long movie. So I am taking a break till tomorrow.

Monday

I am learning that people neck deep in delinquent bills have attracted that state of affairs. I always though this happens when you spend too much money and commit future income. It's comical this "truth" is revealed by an African American lady. Kinda racist.

Apparently the entire film will be focused around getting a swanky new car. Perhaps because you indeed cannot buy these on credit cards. This includes some gross fella pretending to drive the thing in his stinky old armchair. OK, at this point I am no longer pissy about watching this. This scene totally saves the whole movie. It is deeply imprinting on my personality just as I am writing this.

If you tell your children that you cannot afford something, this will make you broke forever. So much for kid's financial education,

Cathy Goodman says she healed her breast cancer by being ignorant and watching lame comedy. Oh I hate this part. Think of all the people who will die because of this shit. And they seem to have absolutely no restrain on this, no second thoughts. I am truly amazed you've read to this point. Please let me know if you did. Whoops. Says she didn't use radiation or chemotherapy, but wouldn't say about surgery. How many folks will have caught that?

"When the voice and vision on the inside become more profound and more clear and loud than the opinions on the outside, you've mastered your life". John F. Demartini. Nice. How come they all have uncommon last names?

OK, God's in. Had to be there. Their "quantum physicists" thinks God is mc², and I think you have to ask before you smoke it.

I am always utterly puzzled at how good religious leaders of all sorts are able to connect spiritual matters with most mundane and greedy desires. Hey folks, remember your movie is about getting cars and lots of girls. That's your central line, a pitch with actual case studies and instructions. Now you are doing the image-of-God talk! Putting this together, I am made in the image of God and therefore have the ability to get swanky cars and lots of pussy, and I totally should use it. Fucking gross. I am disgusted.

Alright, good place to be over.

Now in the next post, I will write what I actually think about the so called law of attraction. Cuz ut works for me so awesomely ;-b

Now that I am at funny videos

2007-08-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

The video is titled "Nintendo Wii Rejected Game Concepts"

Bang.

Heads are for eating

2007-08-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Even with all the due discount for the stress this girls is under, this is an awesome piece. See if you can watch this till the end. Welcome Miss Teen South Carolina!

Agloco update

2007-08-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

My Agloco account is ticking slowly, and I am quite happy how the thing works. It even shows some decent stuff. Links are plain text and quite non-intrusive. I browse from a rather small-screen Thinkpad laptop, but even on that it doesn't seem to take too much space. There was no distribution yet, and no talks yet about rolling out the IPO, so I am not quite rich yet.

Also, my plans to get real rich real fast have failed completely and miserably. That's because not a single person has signed up for my reference. Not like even those super close friends that I literally pressed into submission )). The system doesn't show me the names, but it does show me the number and that's a nice round zero right there. Damn. There goes my new laptop and the yacht.

They often tell stories about relationships ruined by somebody participating in one of those chain marketing schemes and how that person pushed the shit down everyone's throats and so on. So now I totally believe this. Agloco is nowhere as bad for two simple reasons. You don't have to spend your money and you benefit even before you get other people in, just not as much. Even with this, I was totally ignored, and maybe even avoided a little. I guess I should update my world domination plans a little.

Da nickel

2007-08-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

In my grocery I had recently picked a dollar worth of brochure about how one can find all these antique treasures in a pile of garbage. Went through it and decided to kinda keep my eyes open, thought didn't quite get the bug.

So on Friday for whatever reason I took a look at my change and there it was - a 1927 nickel:
Think about this. This is a coin straight from the Great Depression. Might have been a shiny last nickel in somebody's pocket. Might have been in somebody's first salary on their way to normality or even prosperity. These sorts of things amaze me in all the things old and antique. So that's half the collector's mindset, but I am totally missing the other half.

Anyways, I Googled it up and this is considered a 1927 nickel in very good condition. It is worth somewhere between a dollar and less than $10, and it's not like there's any rush to sell it! So now I look through all my change :)) Also, my file drawer only looks so crappy when you zoom on it.

All the things I hate

2007-08-25T19:37:00.001-07:00

I fucking hate it when people cut me with their cars and damn wave their hands at me. Waving a hand is a gesture that expresses gratitude, salutation or welcomeness. You also wave on the road when there's some sort of agreement or understanding. But what's the fucking sense of cutting a pedestrian which had a right of way with your two-ton pile of metal and then giving the dude a wave? I mean, fine. If you get there a little faster, take charge and go ahead. Warn me with a gesture. Smile perhaps. But what's up with the stupid hand wave? It's like I let it go first. No I didn't. In fact had no intention to do that. So fuck off, cuz you are cutting me and so I hate you. I don't care if you wave at me. That doesn't fix things. Go your way with a bare knowledge of me hating you. That's why you got my finger. For that fake handwave. Just to straighten things up. Did I already mention I can get a little uptight?

Porn - resistant generation

2007-08-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

Internet appears to have changed a lot people treat their privacy. In fact, there's so much stuff out there, nobody seems to care. This is privacy through obscurity. No more scandal emails going all around the globe.

So I was listening to this video and it appeared to me that perhaps there will soon grow up another generation, totally ignorant of online porn. Or, perhaps their sexually will get screwed just too slowly for anybody to raise an alarm. Like those carpets everyone loved and now they have asthma but no one is really tearing the carpets down.

Also, I love how she says "shit".

The Second Bell for the Elections

2007-08-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

So apparently naughty Carl is leaving the White House. Which means he'll now work from behind the curtains for a while. Not like they will shut the door for him anyways. What's obvious though is that he's for sale for the Republican presidential hopefuls. Yes, they will probably only contact him behind the curtains for the time being. Rowe himself will most likely be picking the most promising candidate.

What this probably means is that the election theater will start soon. The man that has hard time controlling his food intake, with his hands shoulder deep in blood will be pulling his strings again, and the lie will become truth, and the truth will become lie, and no one will notice. And I'll be throwing my bananas all around the place.

Big-Time Shit Happens Too

2007-08-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

So the 35W bridge went down. This was my best route to school, but not back home, because of freaky system of separated downtown exits. 35W was under construction, and so I normally took the residential streets, about four different routes in total. One of them was on the 10th street bridge - the smaller bridge right next to 35W.

This is where we all rushed when the news came, phones drawn. Surprisingly, given enough trials you could still get through with your call. Yes, most people simply wanted to take a peak. They didn't take any volunteers, and nobody really cared about the police. People just wanted to see. So it felt a little wrong. Well, at least this is Minnesota and nobody was fooling with the cops and did whatever they said, but the sheer size of the crowds sure obstructed the initial effort.

Other then the CIA, you could see jackets from all sorts of agencies including some weird ones like the Secret Service, police and firefighters from around the area, and sheriffs towing their patrol boats. The west side of the bridge, on top in this picture, is right at the foot of the Red Cross building were I sometimes go to donate blood. A large facility with all sorts of services and a small fleet of disaster response vehicles. They were at the scene right away as well. Turns out they've been hiding a helicopter somewhere, too.

The Tenth Avenue bridge was closed and used as a lending site for that very helicopter. Must have been somewhat unnerving experience for the pilot. Of course they needed the bridge to go around the scene. I just wished I saw the the scene for myself. So as the tape was beeing stretched, I backed up and went around, to the Stonearch pedestrian bridge up the waterflow. Teemed with a friend and tried to use a walking trail along the west bank to get a little closer. That was packed with people and behind the yellow tape, with a bunch of idle police and firefighters. They just stood there with nothing to do as they had no access to the scene. Finally one police chick decided to show some initiative and push the people completely out. We backed up and headed to the west side. As we circled around, it seemed a curtain was being put down around the scene. Any place that you could possibly see part of the bridge that landed in the water was closed and guarded by cops. That ended being a huge "detour" we had to walk that evening. Next day, much of the roads were open, but still not a single place to see the scene. They even closed a tiny pedestrian bridge down from the Tenth.

So with all the effort, I saw the tails of the bridge, that very school bus and the crushed train up close, but not a glimpse of that piece of the bridge that fell first and was now in the river. I think this is done quite on purpose. The question is of course, what's the point? Perhaps to prevent people from seeing the cars being lifted, to postpone the final announcement of the fatalities count. Perhaps by the time they have to announce final count, some famous chick will go to jail and the attention will have shifted. To me though this is rather disappointing. This is local event, happened next door so to speak, in a place I see everyday, and the only way for me to "witness" it is through some news program. That is, there are no witnesses, even though so many people will still feel they have witnessed the events. That sorta kills the whole concept.

FedEx Officially Sucks

2007-07-31T17:59:00.000-07:00

So this happened again. I bought stuff online, and I wanted it quick. The only delivery option was with FedEx. A week later, I got worried and tracked the package. There it was, supposedly delivered twice, total bullshit. Sure I wasn't home! But there was no tag on the door whatsoever. So I couldn't leave a note to the delivery person, nor did I know this was already the time to start calling the bastards.

You see, this is the fourth time I am "getting" stuff with FedEx in the past three years of so, in fact to two different addresses. Each time the same story happens. After a while, a ghost courier appears at my door and makes a note of attempted delivery, but "forgets" to slap on the sticker. Nobody gets to see the event, just the online notification. Mind you, they don't send any emails, you have to remember to go check it yourself. If I am too late, I have to go to this place in the far suburbs. If I catch it early enough, I can be spared the two hour trip. I call their helpline and talk to some Indian half a globe away. These folks have absolutely no clue how the whole system works, and will never release you your local station's phone numbers. If you are good at explaining, they will tell you some address and let you go pick your package. This last time, after a while of telling same old story, I was asked the door tag number. They just don't get it.

In fact, I had never had this sort of trouble with any other carrier, be it UPS or the Postal Service. Neither did I have trouble when ordering with FedEx to my work. So the only conclusion I can make is they are cheating, simply letting simple folks down and paying attention to large customers. These assholes should call themselves Little-Joe-Can-Pick-His-Shit-Himself, not a delivery service. So from now on it is my complete boycott of FedEx, whenever possible.

This just in:
FedEx drivers pass their worktime smoking dope under bridges.

Storm in the glass

2007-07-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Lindsay Lohan has been arrested again. Chasing, crashing other cars, completely wasted and with drugs. She says she is not guilty, apparently because it does not count if you can't remember. She also says she did not drink, but she is saying this after checking out of a rehab. Diagnosis seems rather easy, the chick is spoiled to the bone, sorta in the Paris league. These are celebrities, it appears OK to take their pictures when they clumsily fall down or show them without their underwear, but somehow it is not OK for the media to perhaps say these are spoiled little cunts with not much of a personality beyond their screenplays and perhaps we should all take some learning. How would that be more obscene then showing Britney's motherly twat? Perhaps neither reporters nor the audience for this kind of stories think in these kind of categories, or even has a clue. Now that's a problem, because you see the stories are on the frontline CNN coverage.

YouTube is Growing

2007-07-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or the YouTube folks are getting quite advanced? That or the advanced folks are jumping in. Anyways, things are not just cut and paste anymore, but they are still very funny.

Come Here My Son

2007-07-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

California's were the real party is, and now some are getting the bill. LA catholic church will pay half a billion dollars to settle child abuse claims, bringing the total payments to two billion dollars in the past fifty years.

Now when I see this sort of money I cannot help but reach for my little imaginary calculator. Google shows there are about fifty thousand catholic clergy in the USA, a number that didn't change much in the past fifty years. That means at twenty bucks a pop, each one of those fifty thousand men could have it every single week for the past fifty years. Whatever that twenty bucks thing is, that is.

In fact, they could have invested the money. If they did, they could have had it every other day, and still keep the money. Now that's the power of compound interest. So if you are ever to start a child abusing organization, crunch some numbers beforehand.

Half a billion is an enormous number, and you'd think now that their image is damaged anyways, they would fight as much as they can for the money. How come they keep losing in courts? I understand it that the vast majority of evidence are just words from the victims themselves, but they keep losing. Does this mean there's some much more raunchy evidence everyone would love to know? Or something is wrong with the court system as well?

Animal Planet

2007-07-15T07:33:00.001-07:00

Here's another excursion into the animal kingdom, weird animals department. It looks distinctly phallic, breathes up its ass, and can literary puke its insides out, then grow new ones. It goes by the name of sea cucumber and I wish more weird things like this were taught about in my schooldays.

They Are A-Changing

2007-07-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

There's lots of hype about internet and wild visions about its future that just aren't really gonna happen. Same thing happens with all sorts of technologies. First vaccines brought hopes that all the disease will be gone real soon, flight to the Moon - that we'll soon inhabit other planets etc. In fact thinking what's really feasible is quite an exercise. So I usually just take all such bs quite easy. But just for today I am on the dreamers side. Think of something wild and a little weird, but no porn. Say, a cat that loves to swim and play in water. Then type "swimming cat" into google's video search, and vuala there it is. Isn't how I found this, but quite impressive nonetheless. Now I will go and do something usefull.

Don't make the angry men angry

2007-07-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Now I know why Dick Cheney is such an angry man after all.
It occurred to me he must be banned from most places online with a nick like that!

Ha ha

2007-07-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

So much for the prison fashion.

Can't help but notice that this would never be possible with a centralized government. Think of all the antipink protests breaking out.

27

2007-07-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

Well, it had to happen one day, didn't it. In fact, twenty seven doesn't feel bad at all. Twenty five and six were really bad. You know, quarter life crisis, or whatever, you name it. 26 was actually much worse then 25, cuz 25 kinda looks round and not too late and 26 means you are past 25 and things just got worse anyways. So fuck 26. I actually am really happy about my birthday, though it really did seem a one way street the last couple times. So great. I also lost my house key.

Britain Under Siege

2007-07-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

And their new prime minister will not yield to the cowards! How fucking original. These people need a reality check. And the last thing that Brits need is yet another war-waging PM. True, attacks may actually be linked to Gordon Braun becoming the new PM just a few days ago, but then again I am having this enormous deja vu thingy.

Clueless

2007-06-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

Heard of the GodTube yet? This guy got to be subversive.

Hmmm

2007-06-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

Is it just me being such a sicko? This is an advertising in my area Rainbow grocery store.

Pillpoppers

2007-06-23T14:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a beginning of an article on modern pain killers:

You've got achy shoulders from carrying the kids, the groceries, or your incredibly heavy handbag. You look for the right pill to pop, but what should you take? Aspirin? Ibuprofen?

That's right, pain killers are for everyone! And if you get a tiny little muscle pain, that's your license to go take some medication. These same people that will say they would hit the gym if they weren't that busy, will run to their medicine cabinets the moment they happen to inadvertently get some exercise. This is the picture drug companies try to sell us. Pop a pill and be happy.

Yet anyone suffering from even modest headache knows that the fever pills you manage to pop over the days, the more stable the condition will be. In fact every bottle of painkillers will say about the same thing. At the same time drug manufacturers seem to play the double game by advancing the cause for painkillers with examples of some severe disease but then advertising painkillers for most innocent cases. And the CNN? Yeah, these got a McDonald's straw for their backbone. And the people? Well, people suffer from autoimmune and inflammatory disease more then ever.

Dream Jobz

2007-06-23T07:19:00.000-07:00

Smoking fields of hemp being subject to so many jokes, life as always turns out way then then the dreams. Firefighters turn out not only die saving people, but sometimes have shitload of fun on the job. And yes, they took off their masks :)

Firefighters inhaled as ton of pot burned, chief says

Mosquitoes No More

2007-06-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

Since nobody signed up for Agloco curtailing my plans to get rich fast, I'll blog about mosquitoes. Mosquito is considered Minnesota state bird, vastly populating and fiercely owning the land of ten thousand lakes and counting. There are in fact fifty species of the thing. This has a positive effect of people camping out ridiculously early, but otherwise is quite a nuisance.

Well the good news there are no more mosquitoes in Twin Cities. Maybe we just ran out of them. Or more realistically they got poisoned out after all. We won, they lost. My guess is that poison efforts were ramped up after the West Nile Virus kicked in a few years ago. Either way, there were barely any bugs last year. This spring had early signs of being quite buggy but now they are all gone. While there often wild oscillations in bug populations, this seems quite extreme. So the guess is they got kicked out.

And the most entertaining thing? Nobody noticed. Most people will have to think if you point this out. Little annoying things get noticed only when they are there and doing their business. There's a life lesson in this. Now I know why some people act like they do and just will never stop.

Passive Income with Agloco

2007-06-17T22:49:00.000-07:00

Agloco is a company trying to pinch a few bucks out of the internet advertising money. The idea is to gain ground by sharing the revenue with their subjects, and that means with you and me. The idea is not new, and quite similar to the infamous AllAdvantage. I knew of people making thousands dollars with AllAdvantage back in the dot-com days. These were all cheaters, creating countless accounts and referring these to themselves, and running bots to click links day and night :) AllAdvantage was wasting money on these dudes, and went all belly up.

What's new with Agloco is that they seem to be quite aware of this problem. Times have changed, and there are no wild investor money to throw around. On the other hand, internet advertising has matured. There's a lot more services to be advertised, and advertising technology has been perfected by Google and the likes.

You can earn passive income by signing up and installing Agloco's viewbar. It is a narrow strip similar to the window's taskbar, spanning the length of the screen. Did you notice it in the screenshot? It shows some information and the dreaded advertising. The good news is, your income does not matter on whether you click anything or not. In fact, it does not even matter if you have the taskbar on all the time.

The entire profit is divided equally. That means the best strategy is not to cheat, as that maximizes your profit-to-effort ratio! One can earn at most five browsing hours per month. So if there's ever a moment you feel you are wasting your time online, well you might as well launch the program and earn your credit.

Once you have the credits, you automatically get a share of the entire revenue produced by all members, and even company shares. There's also a referral bonus, just like in affiliate programs. This is perhaps why the word is spreading fast through the blogs. I had signed up by a referral myself.

The company is young, and the viewbar was launched just two weeks ago. So if there's ever a good time to jump on this, then that's now. Even if the thing is not going to fly, you'll get something before they bust. It is commonly observed that pioneer companies will often disappear just to clear the way for successful projects built on their experience. Yahoo did not invent email, Google did not invent the web search, and Windows was by far not the first operating system. It may well turn out that this project will live, and you'll have extra money every month without having to sacrifice a part of your life for it.

Registering Blog with Technorati

2007-06-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

... is easy! :)

Technorati Profile

Twin Future

2007-06-16T21:13:00.000-07:00

Having twins is a random event, an occurrence at the early stages of pregnancy. Twins are as unlikely to have twin children as anybody else.

It occurs to me that in our world of families with very few but accurately planned children, having a hereditary trait to be give birth to twins would be highly beneficial, in a plain Darwinian sense. This would effectively force families to have more kids then they "planned". As for the religiously inclined children-factory style families, this is a way to produce more kids faster. Single moms that never go or go too late for another baby will end up having more offspring as well.

With current social system in place, it appears that we are setting ourselves for totally cool future where everyone has a twin! That would of course require that there be a genetic feature allowing for such a trait, not environmental stuff like artificial conception.

But The Memory Remains

2007-06-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

Picked this from Wonkette. Let's just hope they did some heavy cherry picking. Still, somehow this is not surprising.

Bush and Pope Meet, Annihilate Each Other

2007-06-09T18:45:00.001-07:00

Well, not really. Whatever. These CNN pics made me realize that President can't see without reading glasses, but is well couched in body language rapport building. Both to be expected but still.

Cards Mess

2007-05-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

Just got a Discover Card replacement. Had it activated and asked why in the world did they send it to me. The customer care dude told me that's "security update". Total nonsense. Either they wanted to promote new features, or they messed or lost their records, or got hacked. Well, that's one expensive way to promote new features, could just send a letter, so that's two left.

The funny part is, this card has a different design. Discover takes pride in offering lots of different card images, and having me select a layout and then in a year send me a different, lame and generic card "update" really does not sound like a good marketing move.

On a completely unrelated note, US Bank is completely down and does not even allow internet payments. They are only left with web page standing. Customer care says they are "on maintenance".

This brings up an old issue. If large banks actually do screw up, will we ever know about it?

Funny Things

2007-05-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the winner for the most idiotic product name ever. I just wonder what were they thinking. And yes, that's toilet paper.

Stoozing Update: Money Transfer

2007-05-17T21:22:00.001-07:00

The check from the credit card has cleared, and the funds were available today, just one day after the deposit. Since I had transfer scheduled with Emigrant Direct, which is my favorite online savings account, the money are already in New York. Emigrant Direct blocks funds for a while, obviously as a security measure. They are earning money already, but I cannot yet buy into a CD. Yeah, and I kept fifty bucks in my checking to pay the first minimum payment. This should be one percent, and that's $35. I will be paying a bit over the minimum and will later look how did that show up on my credit history.

$toozing

2007-05-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

Stoozing is turning a buck by loading zero-APR-low-transfer-fee credit cards and tucking the money into a good savings account. So you get free credit, use it to earn some interest and then pay the card when introductory period is about to expire. I am about to try this out.

The idea has been around for a while, and a couple years ago you could get really good deals with hefty credit limits and no transfer fees at all. I was then still in debt and nobody wanted to give me good limits anyways. Now I got out, and have this card that actually makes it possible.

Is stoozing cheating? Well, in finance lingo this is called arbitrage, and financial institutions do this day in and day out to each other, whenever they can. Arbitrage implies that certain actions can be taken to make profit without risk at all, and signifies an imbalance in the economy. When such conditions arise, scavenging on them restores the balance, and so this is essentially a healthy process.

Cheap credit card balance transfers from the days when the federal interest rate was non-existent and higher savings interest rates reflecting on new conditions in the economy are precisely in this sort of profit-promising imbalance. People are abusing these transfers en masse, and I actually have a friend who earned over half a grand on this last year alone. The result is that the cards are now coming with a much higher transfer fees.

It used to be that the transfer fee is something like 3% of the balance, capped at hundred dollars of so. These caps are now going up quite quickly, and often there's none at all. Sometimes the percentage for the fee is as high as 5%. But if you get an offer with the transfer fee capped at a good level, you can still play the game!

That's exactly what I got, an HSBC MasterCard with 3% of transfer fee, but no more then $100. Minimum payments are just 1% of the balance. The person at the activation really wanted me to transfer some stuff to them, even if to my checking account. So there, they got it.

I have a low limit - $3600, and I am taking nearly all of it to my Emigrant Direct account, making about 5% a year. This means at my best I will net $75 or so, but hey, I got to start with something!

Tommorow Comes Today

2007-05-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

So back to last Wednesday when I had my first coffee in a month. It did not feel too strong, neither did it feel tasty. It was my office coffee machine after all. I later went to Starbucks, but that did not taste too good either.

I did not seem to get much "high". Except later that day I could not hold it any longer, went ahead and bought self this scooter I was going to buy for a while now. Then in the evening I was so overwhelmed I went bicycling downtown and found this trail, going under the highways that cut off poor folks up north, all the way south to the lakes that I could smell but not see 'cuz it got so darn dark. Quite freaky experience. I managed to get out into some strange neighborhood. Ten in the evening, similarly looking raws of houses, and not a single sole in the streets. Barely any cars, too. I am still to dig out the map and find out how I got there.

So I guess that was a bit too big a coffee jolt for one time there. I used to just down these with no visible consequences. Anyways, my lovely new scooter is exactly the reason I was not posting recently. I was taking it everywhere around town, and I am really enjoying it.

A Month Without Coffee

2007-05-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

It has been about a month that I did not drink coffee, or any caffeine per se. The withdrawal was pretty tough, but given that I was dumping this stuff down my body for years without a break, it was much milder then expected. Everything was over in less then four days of sluggishness and a couple bad headaches. I don't even remember it now as something hard.

There were no special effects waiting for on the other side. It simply felt OK, nothing special. I am prone to headaches and the first couple weeks I often had a mild headache with a feeling that a 'bad one' is about to start, but a Tylenol was always enough to quench this, to quite a surprise. Even these headaches went away after about two weeks.

By the end of the month I started to get a sense on my caffeine-free self. The biggest surprise was to find that I can breathe, actually. Breathing through your nose is a wonderful feeling, but it was something becoming ever more impossible for quite a few years now. This was April, the top allergy time, and I went around with perfectly unclogged pathways, feeling great and quite happy about it. I have no clue why this has happened and never heard of any connection between coffee and allergies. Add to this that I usually have my coffee completely bare, so no link to say creamer.

I also noticed a better "pump" at the gym, something that is reported in medical studies and something that I was looking for. Not big of a deal, then. What is a bid deal is that I am going to the gym again, after quite a long break.

I did not lose energy, in fact I think I was more steady, motivated and also more strategic about what I am doing, choosing my priorities, avoiding getting stuck with some stupid little perfectionism. You get a good view on the things, instead of digging yourself all the way in. That, and the absence of coffee "crushes" certainly makes the days much more enjoyable!

I have decided that I will come back to drinking coffee, perhaps as a social or rare activity, and today was the first time. I will write about the nuclear consequences of that decision tomorrow.

CNN: College student shoots roommate, kills self

2007-05-06T17:35:00.000-07:00

Another dude shoots somebody on a college campus, kills himself. The learning from this - don't throw your roommate over the edge - is already known to any surviving college graduate. Another learning - vote republican if you don't want this ever to stop - hasn't even started to sink in.

You cannot rent a car from most places till you turn 25. You cannot get a large credit if you are too young, and the insurance really stings. Kids are immature and therefore not reliable, the truth that American capitalists have learned long time ago, and it's time for this to soak into publics minds.

If you think this is something connected with the modern age, consider that Romans did not consider a person fully adult till the age of 24, in fact discouraging alcohol consumption under that age. Diluted wine that was, and they could not even drink and drive. It you want to seem hip and think that this is an age-old misconception, NMR studies reveal that certain regions of the brain, those in fact responsible for judgment and decision making, stop forming by about the age of 25, about the last stage in the chain of brain development. So you can have a smart, caring and compassionate smooth talker who is utterly immature, as any happy parent will confirm you.

People live much longer these days, and so the premise of the second amendment - to have enough armed people to possibly form militia in case of a military coup - can still be satisfied if the gun-legal age is upped. You'll still have enough citizens able to bear arms even if the age is set at 25. That seems like a golden number, after all these years. I would also hope that those truly crazy like that Korean dude, will by that age have had enough incidents and have been diagnosed or got police records, preventing them from getting firearms anyways.

In Minnesota, "Children 13 years old and younger must be supervised when handling a firearm". That's fucking right. After 14 they can hunt on their own, given a certificate. OK, I went hunting with my dad when I was younger than that, and in fact learned a whole lot about firearm safety from those days. Then again my dad was not an abusive alcoholic. I would never imagined wandering around with a rifle on my own. Are you aware of the age in your state for children to kill without supervision?

A juvenile, that is a kid, in Minnesota can posses a hunting rifle starting age of 16, before he has a chance to legally smoke a cigarette, and can have a gun or assault rifle at 18, before she had her first bear. Hunting is a tradition, and a way for middle-aged parent to look cool in his kid's eyes, a family value. But c'mon, what's the deal with assault rifles at eighteen? You cannot buy them, but you can still inherit them. When was the last time you talked to eighteen-years old? Oh did they even unplug their earphones?

God Wants Your Ass Dead

2007-05-06T17:18:00.000-07:00

Genetic signature found for heart disease, and yes, white kids are overwhelmingly likely to have the mutation, while the African Americans mostly don't have it. Even when they do, they don't get the heart disease. This unambiguously proves that God is black.

Looking at it the other way, nobody is looking into genetic signatures for black people's health problems, and come tomorrow, there will be no research findings laying the grounds for new medications.

French Get Real

2007-05-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-leaning presidential candidate wins over empty-headed socialist Segolene Royal in presidential race. The right-leaning in France means somebody willing to allow people to work over 35 hours a week without extra-taxing them. Not like he will be able to do a lot, presidents in European states range from ceremonial puppets to a max of foreign-policy setters.

Really, this is all because he got some hot daughers, while Segonlene just got some dildo son. Much like in America, you must have decently looking blonde daughters to get elected. Hmmm. Come back for the analysis of the presidential-hopefuls based on this solid criterion.

PC Dominos

2007-05-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

They have a point, actually :) Nobody seems to have made any lasting conclusions.

Iraqi Mined School

2007-05-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

A mined school was discovered in Iraq. The building was still under construction, and the bombs were apparently planted as this place was being built (story). The official explanation now is that some assholes planned to blow the entire girl's school once the classes started. Bombs were well hidden between the walls and mined into the floors, really meant to sit there until one wants it up in the air.

What they are missing is that a new school's opening in Iraq is such a wonderful photo op! Both for Iraqi and American officials. Would make nice pics in conservative media showing "the true progress in Iraq", as they like to put it. The place was set up to blow the whole thing at once. I would not be surprised if this was really a mouse trap set for the likes of John McCain visiting for a little publicity.

So maybe what we are dealing with are not some crazy psychopathic nutcases, but rather thinking and calculating psychopathic nutcases, which is exactly what psychopathic nutcases tent to be. They should be treated as such, promptly and in an efficient manner. This is a problem for the White House, because they would have to depart from their one-bomb-fits-all strategy and start thinking, but hey that's a prohibited word. It is now becoming ever more evident that Iraq is America's single largest hope-based initiative ever.

Debt Free, For A Week

2007-05-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

I am just about to write a check for fifteen hundred and eight dollars, add 95 cents. This is what remains of my credit card debt. I had it under control for more then a year now, in zero percent accounts, opening new cards when the old ones were about to expire from the intro period. I paid big if I could, otherwise just dollar a day, in a kind of a calendar ritual. My credit ranking grew quite a bit, but I almost got burned again this winter when I went abroad and got stuck for two month. You know the drill.

It wasn't always this easy on me. I never had too huge a debt, perhaps because I missed my first payments even before I had a chance to get big credit lines. It was about three and a half grands at its peak, and stayed there for long time while I struggled to catch up with payments and all sort of fees, periodically forgetting to send a check, causing another avalanche of penalties. I dived on my checking account and got three hundred of them, on small purchases totaling less then a hundred. I didn't even open the letters, waiting for the next paycheck to come. Well the bank didn't wait and closed my checking account. I was maxed on my cards, nobody would issue me another, and the rent was due. I borrowed from my roommate and had about six hundred outstanding on my closed bank account. Add the bills and my split-the-bill balance with my roommate and the total would be about five grands.

It is now about five years since I first didn't pay the full balance on a credit card, and I never got out of it. Living with an out-control debt is quite different then normal, and living happily is quite impossible. I plan to write about this, but at this point I'll just write down the check and go mail it before it's midnight. These are the tax money I am sending. Wish me good luck.

Let The Nutjobz Die

2007-05-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

This dude is the Kansas City mall shooter. He was nuts and an alcoholic. He had minor violations and certainly little respect in his community. He also was forcefully hospitalized after reported suicidal. Precisely the same way as the VTech shooter. He was older and recently quite his job at that mall's Target, similar to NASA shooter.
One has to wonder if they were on pills. What about the kids from high schools? Should the medical records be made public in case of felonies? Wait for big pharma to go nutz to protect their turf.

The Meltdown

2007-04-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

White house is on the run for cover. Someone's got to be a scapegoat for the Iraq war, and they just happen to lack the volunteers. That's right, the time has come, and looming elections may be the cause. Republicans lost both House and Senate over Iraq and their own little indecencies, and while the president remained in his office, they, his majesty's devoted puppies were thrown off to the sidelines. Merely distancing didn't work at elections. Now they are ready to bark.

Republican presidential hopefuls are not going to run on the "cut and run denial" strategies. Even if they manage it, their ranking will be sinking from day one in the White House. They need a reset point, somebody to blame for going there in the first place.

Finally, the media knows people are bored. They need a new story. And yes, they do go with the approval ranking. And yes, they are terribly guilty themselves. Finally, even democrats seem to have regained their bite.

Alberto Gonzales scandal and looming Paul Wolfowitz girlfriend/hooker scandal are taking huge chips off the invincible administration, but these seem to have been merely a warm-up.

Condi The Terrible is being subpoenaed by Congress to explain developments leading to the Iraq war. She so far refuses. Dennis Kucinich tries to impeach Dick Cheney for misleading the nation, yes, for going to Iraq. George Tenet wrote the book spreading the blame as far from his pity ass as possible. Come thinking about it, it takes some time to write a book. Former chief spy has been preparing. When some folks from intelligence wrote a four pages long open letter accusing Tenet of basically being a coward, CNN puts the news on the front page, giving enormously long and multiple citations including the statement known to any kindergartener the world over - drum roll - Saddam hated Osama.

It was this very CNN beaming into nation's televisions bullshit campaign fed to them by the administration. These were the same people repeating that Saddam is essentially bin Laden's ally. These very same people never went ahead and aired what they or their analytics must have known rock hard. Saddam Hussein has always perceived Osama bin Laden as a major threat. He always feared an islamic revolution.

The fact that everybody is so energetic at finger pointing will only speed the things up. Once the republican crowd feels the weakness, everybody will be on lookout for a political opportunity. I cannot wait for the heckuva fun this will be. Wont fix Iraq though.

Columbine Lives On

2007-04-29T17:58:00.000-07:00

Three dead at a mall in Kansas City. This will take the pressure off the Koreans, but certainly does not help the issue. These things are happening fast enough for a perpetual mourning, and of course nobody really asks why this happens. Everyone's busy being respectful to somebody not sure who. For example, one of my friends has a personal theory that mental illnesses of all kinds tend to get exacerbated in the spring.

Manhunt

2007-04-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

Just saw a shoplifter at Target. I was picking toiletries and staring at hundred-bucks toothbrushes as I noticed this simple-looking casual-dressed dude staring at the side shelf. I had much more to stare at, but he wouldn't go away, peaking at a choice of about ten odd items. Then he produced a walkie-talkie and said "... OK I got ...", pulling something from the shelf. This dude clearly needed a better training.

What he was really doing was a discount-store type James Bond thing. He was peaking at and hiding from another dude, two aisles away along in his sight. He was the security. By then I broke the hundred-dollar toothbrush stupor and was painfully trying to find antiperspirant, running between the aisles. You just never find these things when you actually need them. This is when I heard the security dude say "... he put something in his shirt ... OK now he put something in his pants ... " and indeed, that's what the fella was doing. The black guy, perhaps in his late teens of early twenties, in typical black-guy attire, except the pants high enough to actually move around. His moves were casual and plastic, and even though he wasn't particularly hiding, you wouldn't tell right away that he has been stuffing himself up.

The security guy was quite tense. It is strange that he had to air every move instead of just following all the way to the checkout. Now at any cost he had to avoid scaring the fella. He was just doing his job, but from the gaze in his eyes you could tell he was on a hunt. It was white guy hunting down the black guy, twenty-first century way.

In a completely unrelated development, I noticed that organic kiwis have much longer hairs.

Did You Fuck Her?

2007-04-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

The fallout from the 'D.C. madam' scandal started today with some dude Randall Tobias resigning from his post. While we'll never know how this started, this is the season opener of one of the best scandals to hit the D.C. so far. Everybody's happy to learn some of the republicans are not gay. Funny enough, nobody is mentioning the family implications of this. Will the big shot's wifes dump them or are they in it for the money?

Ann Coulter Has A Humster in Her Head

2007-04-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

Listen to the crazy bitch say "twelve days a week".

Second Try

2007-04-24T20:52:00.001-07:00

An Earth-like planet was finally found in Libra constellation, and not too far, in a sense that it's actually not completely off the books.

New 'super-Earth' found in space

Questions are already asked about possibility of discovering life there. How lame. The question is not whether there's life, the question is how do we get it there.

Second Try

2007-04-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

Year 2020

2007-04-24T18:15:00.000-07:00

Applicants must present two bionics IDs and have at least five Google ID Level A hits.

Double

2007-04-23T21:42:00.000-07:00

It was a sad day on 22nd - birthday of one of the first of the bloody dictators of the twentieth century, Vladimir Ulyanov aka Lenin. He killed mercilessly, draw the country into a civil war and terrorized the population. He broke up the Russian Empire and established communists' rule in what became the Soviet Union. He said he was ready and willing to sacrifice half the population if that helps to establish communism for the other half. Got pretty good at the former, but failed with the latter, nearly returning to pure capitalism with what was called NEP (New Economic Policy, that's right), once the country ended on a brink of the final economic collapse. Numbers died during his rule. Backbone of society, down to school teachers, craftsman and small owners, priests of all variety were killed or incarcerated and then killed anyways. Richies fled the country. It was during his rule that Stalin began to rise to power, and eventually took over from Lenin. It was his regime that spawned bloody regimes all over Asia. That Korean shorty is his distant though impotent political relative. After he died, Lenin's brain was preserved, sliced thin and carefully studied for signs of communistic greatness by the very regime that he had created. His skin was stuffed and placed for warship in a Red Square mausoleum. You can still come to Moscow visit the great leader of Russia, any day. Macabre communist motto went "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, and Lenin will live forever"

Just in that line, I was surprised to observe a couple on the bus, wearing buttons with Lenin's picture on Sunday, obviously celebrating the occasion. I also previously ran into hardcore socialists, praising Lenin as a near superhero. To them, he's just a political leader, with his own mistakes and one of the great leaders of their movement. They show no judgment or knowledge about his rule. They use the fact that this was all in some far-away country to excuse him from his doings. They use the fact that he was opposed to Stalin's becoming the ruler to whitewash his action and distance him from his own doings. Hmmm think for a moment here, one dictator not so happy with someone else taking over.

American socialists with their praise for Lenin are a grand example of people lost without the least bit of a sense for humanity or compassion for the humankind. That's what really makes them not so special, after all. There are so many politicians and their followers claiming themselves full of morale and shit, but lacking a very basic respect for their fellow human beings. It just doesn't show.

On a brighter side, Sunday was also the first month since I started my blog.

13 People Indicted In $3 Million Credit Card Fraud

2007-04-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

That's right, a group of just thirteen people are accused of stealing three mils by producing fake credit cars. Waiters scanned customers' credit cards and then passed this to the ring leaders to make the cards. It occurs to me that this is a very small number of people for quite a chunk of money - sounds better then a bank robbery! Modern technology brings us a highly efficient crime.

Earth Day

2007-04-22T09:33:00.002-07:00

Use your bike today :) In case nobody noticed, Google has a reminder right there for you
Despite being unphysical, nothing screams "melting" better then an iceberg with receded underside.

Iceberg means ice mountain, from Norwegian. Wont be too long before there's a Cali slang word for these things.

The Great Move-In Generation

2007-04-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that all the futuristic images of the super-duper green living that are being propagated as the vision for our future are as useless as the grim variety of the baked-and-smogged supercities if we don't act.

As we fail to meet our energy demand, one of the things that will have to change is where and how we live. Hours-long commuting will have to go rather soon. People will have to move closer to work or work remotely. Well it's not just any place where you'll be moving in. You'll be moving in with other people. That's right, creating living space requires enormous effort and energy. That means moving back in time - to the times when there were such thing as two-person house.

So this got to be the image to get the lazy America moving. Crowded living room, no personal bedrooms, and forget those long showers. It's either this tomorrow or go greener today.

Driving Visitors

2007-04-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

I installed Google Analytics script into my blog and see how many people stop by, and from where (that information comes from your IP address which can be located down to about a city). The first shocker is that I get visitors from all across the globe and from all over the North America. No major cities in the US, just a single hit from Los Angeles.

No one really comes back, and I conclude that they come with blogger's "Next Blog" feature or something similar. In fact when I use it a lot myself, I get a spike in visitors. Looks like a way to give a little boost to traffic! I wonder how did you get to this page yourself.

Greenest Of Them All

2007-04-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration's unparalleled financial, international and domestic commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is delivering real results.

EPA Administrator Dave Johnson

That's right, bushies are trying to hijack the environmental issue. How could he physically open his mouth and say this bullshit? On the second thought, that's a white house appointee right there. If they spend a day without trashing some rule protecting our planet, that's unparalleled commitment right there. Sort of like a day without a pretzel.

2007-04-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus was partially evacuated for a bomb threat today. No bomb was found. Talking to people who guarded the police line, the rumor is that this was there were five bomb threats across the nation yesterday alone. That's right, maniacs from across the country are vastly stimulated by all the attention the VT story has got. There's not a mention of the bomb threats on any TV network.

There is however a mention of Cho Seung-Hui's final video. It is not on YouTube yet, but you simply got to go and watch it on CNN's front page. See how this dickhead compares himself with Jesus. Christians will scream that this proves that he was touched by devil, or some sort of bullshit like that. What this really illustrates is that Christians tent to be crazy, certainly not less than the average folks. Which they would deny 'cuz that would put an interesting light on all the divine revelations. Oh never mind.

This Week's Best Video

2007-04-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

This one's from Wonkette.

2007-04-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

The Virginia Tech was not a nerd, but a plain-out psycho. He wrote plays so sick that he was removed from his class and taught one-on-one by his English teacher, as told by the CNN. What an utter bullshit.

As the story goes, the teacher informed the University administration, but they said the dude was protected by the first amendment. Nonsense, they just did not want to deal with it. He was not writing it elsewhere, he was writing this as a class assignment. Class assignments are graded. Why couldn't he collect D's in his courses and drop out?

Instead, she went for the trouble teaching him one-on-one, so that other students would not get terrified by his crap. He'd sit there in sunglasses and give her one-word answers. What is this some fucking kindergarten? If the student refuses to perform, is not learning and his presence in the classroom does not benefit anyone else, that student moves on to try himself elsewhere, perhaps with greater success. That's what's called a college dropout.

Why did they keep him? That's because the college system has been completely pussified. The faculty are pussies, the students are pussies and of them biggest pussies and the engine of it all are student's baby-boomer parents.

Faculty are supposed to represent school's academic and moral backbone. Imagine a University in which each professor has a "veto" right - he or she can expunge a student from the school, with no cause, once in his or her carrier. Or make it once in a decade. Or add the condition that that professor must have had that student in his/her class. Now imagine that was your school. Puking already? That's because you a total pussy, as well. With all and any explicit and implicit limitations (peer pressure first of all), this would mean that students have to have some self control, and the sole thought of that is unbearable.

Similarly irresponsible was the administration, not ready to deal with the problem and hence not ready to be held responsible for its decisions. Similarly the professor, with all my condolences, was simply doing a sort of damage control and trying to just get this guy through, quite unsuccessfully.

C'mon, admitting a mentally ill person to a university is the same as taking a physically disabled person on a sports team. Utter nonsense, that is. That's what "dis-ability" means. You can certainly be a fulfilled individual, but you are not able to do just any activity. For example, epileptics should not play certain computer games or risk severe attacks.

2007-04-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

The shooter's identity is known, and he's a foreigner. South Korea named Cho Seung-hui was studying English and yesterday he went ahead and killed a bunch of people. It is interesting how the White House is on board of all this. Asians will undoubtedly be hated for this, even though there certainly are no school shootings in Korea. That's because everybody hates nerds.

For A Little Relaxation

2007-04-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

Here's an amusing clip, I first found it on Daniel Thompson's blog. Instruments are 3D animated. The motion literary makes them come alive, and that's your original meaning of the word!. They did it so well, each instruments' character stands out - and that's quite a deed.

Your Friend Will Take You Down

2007-04-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

Be afraid, be very afraid. Here's a piece from a mass email sent out by a vice pres of a big ten school, titled "Today's tragedy at Virginia Tech":

Unfortunately, the best planning and preparation in the world are sometimes not enough to prevent random acts of violence. That is why it is so important for students, faculty and staff to pay attention to their friends, their surroundings and observe appropriate security protocols. If you observe potential risks to safety and security, please don't hesitate to report it to the University ... Police Department by calling 911.

That's right, this morning's bloody massacre is a "random act of violence", and that's your fault. You haven't been watching your friends, buddy, and you did not obey the "security protocols", whatever that shit might be. Watch them. Be suspicious. Be formal. Obey. Only police can help. You cannot prevent it. You may not think.

Fuck that shit. I have a friend at Virginia Tech. Is this his friends who did it? Did he not not obey some fucking protocols? Go shoot yourself.

Deadly shooting at Virginia Tech, 33 dead

2007-04-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

Virginia Tech woke up to gunshots this morning at quarter past seven. An account of the story is on CNN. The horror of the people barricading themselves from the shooter must have been unspeakable, and so the sadness of the parents and the loved ones. Read on once you have digested the story.

The suspect was a stereotypical Asian nerd gone postal (perhaps after pulling an all-nigher?):

"He was, I would say, about a little bit under six feet tall, young looking, Asian, dressed sort of strangely, almost like a boy scout, very short-sleeved light, tan shirt and some sort of ammo vest with black over it."

Isn't this story a little deja vu? Yes, even though this is the record shooting so far. The tech college kids are ahead of the high-schoolers, and of college shootings an Asian pinhead is ahead of them all. Nothings special in all this. Thirty tragedies is as bad as twenty. Extensive media coverage will bring attention of the future psychos. "Nucular" safety measures in schools and now perhaps at universities across the country will help to spend the money but wont stop future killings. America looses its memory and forgets its way. The way to dig down to the cause, to remedy if the cause cannot be fixed, and at all times to remain efficient and sincere about its goals.

After all these years, there is no explanation of why this happens. No studies are made public, there isn't a good public discussion. All that's said is "the boy had a good heart, we would never imagine; wait now that we think about it, he was a little wacko". Perhaps the truth is just too hard to swallow. What's even harder to swallow is the public that does not demand the answers and just tugs along - till the next time. If this incident gets a wider attention, some stupid PC story will be made up to make us happy. After that, it will be PC-illegal to question the cause of the shootings at all.

People seem unwilling to join about the cause. They either feel guilty or take it as entertainment. To help raise the awareness and keep the memories alive, there really got to be a ribbon for this. So that was my take on it.

Simulation at fingertips

2007-04-14T16:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a peculiar video about computer simulations integrated with an awesome video interface.

In fact, tailoring special physics courses to computer game programmers has been an issue for a while now. They would do the stuff similar to this video, but mostly in gaming environment - trying to make it as [un]natural as possible. It will be great when this will become a mature technology. Too bad that people that are actually expected to know their stuff will be tempted to use a toy simulation like this. I call this toy simulation because the actual scientific computing involves quite complicated algorithms for unsolved problems, highly tuned for efficiency and usually ran on a supercomputer or a cluster. Fancy software but no fancy interfaces there.

Relevant for everyone is the part where the computer guesses the shapes and special marks to interpret them as certain objects and properties. It may well be that the way is being paved for a better computer interfacing, of the sci-fi movies sort. Toshiba's TablePC technology may turn out to be an early bird for these. Goodbye keyboards?

2007-04-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

Just got from a panel at the U - "Do Organized Religions Suppress Women's Rights?". The panel didn't really work coherently, and there was little common ground to be found, and little discussion on the subject matter. Most everybody simply cited some great equality passages from their scriptures and named fictional important women figures in the religion's history.

Muslim chicks clad in linens head-to-toe boldly claimed Islam does not oppress women's right whatsoever, that's all a thing of the past. You could literary see how submissive and immature these women (girls?) were. Apparently they just don't get it.

The only standouts and perhaps the only true believers there sure enough were two Christian chicks from the "Women of Virtue" organization. Both are converts. Suzi Sunderman is a self-described former lesbian of the butch variety. Juliane Moch was a hardcore bondage fan. They sat at the center, a blond and a brunette, with hair of the same shoulder length, identical style jackets and t-shirts and a hint of being overweight on their bodies. They are the same now, faceless stamps of a cristian identity model.

No big surprise they found what they wanted in Christianity. Jesus was obviously gay, and those trips to the lake with a bunch of dudes look really fishy now that the "Brokeback Mountain" is out. The whole crucifixion is plain hard-core BDSM.

Neither of the "virtual" ladies was able to get the questions read out by the host, and had to write them down first. They've obviously been emotionally disturbed for most of their lives. Still they were bold enough to preach to the perfectly stable audience. Feeling of a superiority so Christian indeed.

The dirty secret they did not know about was that they could not preach to the sane audience. Both tried the standard Christian approach of telling their very own and very personal, though not very original, sin-fast-and-find-Jesus and live-happy-thereafter stories. The story breaks, they cannot find the words and there's no real emotion coming through. That is all because of a dirty little thing - they let a shadow of doubt and criticality into their minds - they actually tried thinking about their faith, if only for a moment. The room is full of people of various religions and of outright atheists. Audience meets them with straight faces and they cannot help but start thinking who are these people and what you can say to convince them. That's the trap right there - they reflect on their own beliefs, and you just don't do that if you want to remain a Christian. Certainly you got to shut down your brains completely if you want to preach.

I'd wish this was a start for the virtual ladies, but I doubt it will, and that's just too bad.

Coffee Experiment

2007-04-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

It is the second consequent day of the coffee experiment, and it's starting to feel real. A sense of missing something really important in life, a very personal and irreversible loss - and I am only doing this for a month! I am sluggish and feel really inefficient, and a puny voice in my head says I really should get on top of things. Just have a cup. I'm keeping far from coffee shops and coffee machines of any kind.

A dull pain in my knees and the lower back, but just the right side. I think its my kidney. I fell asleep during quite an interesting talk today, and with my head bending backwards over my back launched a headache. Must have looked really funny. That's two tylenols down, no caffeine.

I am starting to eat more, and that may be a problem. Still it looks like I am making it. The withdrawal peaks somewhere between days 3 to 5, and I am somewhere at 2½, with Monday hiatus. Once you get to this point, you gain momentum and feel really determined to make it.

2007-04-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

I had a coffee-free Sunday past weekend. I like coffee and have been drinking it in various forms for a long time now. The problem is, I've got to the point of drinking it instead of water. Evenings have long been a taboo - that's the best thing I've ever done to my day rhythm, but other then that I would use any opportunity to down a dose. Limiting did not work. I had to stop drinking my office nearly-free nearly-coffee, and that meant taking from home - cold, vented and often forgotten, or buying from Startbucks - but I have a much better use for the buck.

So this Sunday I just did not start my dripper, and went without coffee for the whole day. Sounds easy enough, but now that I think about it, I probably did not have a coffee-free day in at least five years. That's right, not a single day!

It felt OK, slow and even a little lethargic, perhaps a little disoriented. I was still enthusiastic enough to go out and later watch a movie, and make plenty of calls. Nothing like a withdrawal, really. It hit me in the night, right in base of my skull, strong enough a headache to wake me up. So Monday morning was Excedrin (that has plenty of caffeine by itself, so that broke the abstinence) and a whole lot of coffee. Today, I did it again, and I'll keep the pills ready and my fingers crossed.

2007-04-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, my page was visited by the first three visitors. One from Virginia, one from Neuenwege in north-west Germany, and one from Manila. This is quite an amazing demographics. While these people probably got here by some sort of a random blog pick and are unlikely to come back, welcome nonetheless! You are the first visitors to my page other then myself :)

2007-04-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

The sailors are happily back home, and now we know they've been tortured. Here's how serious they are. Notice their brand new uniforms. These guys seem to change their clothes as often as fashion models. Well, see how angry they've been while in captivity. Looks like dudes simply got scared shitless that they'll have to stay in Iranian prison with a bunch of hairy locals, and were ready for anything. That scared without anybody extinguishing cigarette butts on their asses, not even being piled naked or made to masturbate in front of the camera. You know, the innocent, Abu Ghraib kind of stuff.
Now the British are trying real hard to suck at least a little bit of heroism out of this story, but it just does not fall together. These kids are no braver then your average janitor, and may have sold out, too. They really should have hired Carl Rove for this. Pretty show with heroic freeing of the soldiers by a special unit, complete loss of memory and the chick that only remembered she was ass-raped would immediately follow. Sounds familiar?

2007-04-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

A story is breaking out about Citibank giving kickbacks to universities for advertising the company to the students as their 'preferred lender'. Amusing part in it all are the student loan stories that will inevitably pop out. Rachel Sullivan from a CNN story has amassed a 100 grand debt, and yes, she "partially" blames the Citibank. Really, this is your typical phony college gal, with all the gadgets and cheap makeup. She must think frugality stands for a kind of perversion, and you can bet she hadn't yet tried that one. What is really needed is an ugly chick with tons of debt and skin problems. That will break the ice!

2007-04-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

See that chick? That's right, of the British sailors-being-released. What's she's really thinking is "man, I wish I knew and lost some weight". This undoubtedly proves she's not in the conspiracy.

2007-04-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

Decomposing bodies smell like vanilla. While it is not clear how much and after what time, it is quite clear how full of shit the catholic church is. All kinds of it, including mummy remains kind of shit. BBC link

The story is about Joan of Arc's remains, which in fact turned out to be pieces of a human and cat mummies, perhaps Egyptian. It's sad how much hypocrisy this story keep reveling throughout the centuries. Joan was burned as a witch, for fun of the crowd. It shows just how much the church was ready to use its claimed connection with god for purely political reasons and not a tad more. These days, churches claim they have bigger, ehmm, stronger, ehmm better family values and what not. Yes, that and a connection with god.

Joan was canonized whopping half a thousand years later, made into a saint by the same church that burned her for witchcraft. Not only did they not give a shit for burning people alive just to get rid of them, they did not give a shit to admit to doing that. They went even further. They burned her for fun and profit, and they canonized her just because the chick went so well with the crowd. Somebody really wants to be popular, huh?

To give more grounds to the canonization, some crap was presented a century ago to be her unrotten remains. These are then declared sacred and people think somehow being associated with these will help them heal, which is your textbook example of neurosis. I just wish it turned out to be a mummy's dick in that jar.

The sad part of it all? It took more then half a millennium for this turn. And nobody will make a connection with today's most popular schizophrenics.

2007-04-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

Just watched "the girls next door". The movie's great, should have watched it the day I got it. I was reluctant because the whole story of the school senior wanting to be a politician and how he's all determined and then faces the porn girl next door dilemma blah blah blah sounded too much like yet another Hollywood story of highly conscious losers. You know, taxi drivers who keep never forget their plan for the whole life and strip girls saving for retirement, that is when they turn 25.

This movie's just fine - everyone's as immature as they should be, but additionally Elisha Cuthbert is awesome looking and playing. Ironically, the dude does become more like his hero JFK. He's just eighteen and already has questionable connections with women and businesses that look more like mafia clans.

Feel the love the sweet Jesus

2007-03-30T07:57:00.000-07:00

So some artist made a chocolate Jesus statue, right in time for Easter. There goes Easter Bunny, in disgust, out of the window. You'd think Christians of all kinds got to be real happy for that, but the Catholics are raving mad.

To make things a tad more artistic, Cosimo made his Jesus completely naked, and then specifically used milk chocolate, not just any. Go get a bite of sweet lord!

BBC puts this gruesome image on its website:

whereas the actual artist's page has this much more decently looking piece of lord (click on it to see his wiener) :

Their country's a four-letter word anyways

2007-03-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

This stuff with British sailors held by Iran really smells funny. Besides all the worries about the sailors, the real problem is that it smells, well, of war, and big time.

Timing is perfect. Image is perfect. The moment you think about it all seems quite awkward.

So far, the main stated reason to bully Iran was its escalated enrichment program, but all this nuclear bullshit wasn't really clicking with the public. If they tried to use it as a cause for war, everyone would be reminding them of fishy evidence they used for trashing Iraq. Valerie Plum's scandal really nailed this one down - just weeks ago.

UN security council wasn't gonna buy it either. They once approved a borderline resolution for Iraq, and US didn't bother to ask the second time. Now the Council are all on their guards. No resolution regarding Iran will have a clause for any military action, not even if its limited to throwing satellite-guided cucumbers.

The cause with sailors is all different. These are real people, and they need real help, now. Their families are struggling, and the government is obliged to help. The British government itself is on its own, no one is really helping them out. United States seem uninvolved, just expressing due condolences. This is a perfect image, one you want to feel about.

There it went, a Security Council resolution resolution urging Iran to release the prisoners. It has to click really loud in everyone's head now. You see, many the greatest wars started with a claim of a small, local provocation, and were "just responses" to actions involving death of perhaps a few people.

Remember there are presidential elections zooming in in the US. Also Tony Blair really got to go, any day now. The faked evidence used to launch the pre-Iraq bullshit campaign was fabricated, then handed to British and then handed back as legit information from one of the allies, really a kind of money laundering but with information. These two governments are bound together, I wouldn't be surprised the chiefs got commemorative tattoos on their asses. "Never forget" kind of thingy.

With all this in place, things start to look really screwed up. If that's the scenario, then the sailors really got no chance, and that's sad. I just hope the public will slap the administration early enough so they don't even think of trying.

Water huggers

2007-03-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

So it was world water day on Thursday. Topic broke some media, and our newspaper devoted quite some space to it. There again and again, I saw the same idea, often implied and even said explicitly. It goes like this:

Drinking water supply is low in the developing world, in East Asia and Africa. Many people there live without proper sanitation and soon will be left without drinking water. It is therefore non-conscientious to abuse and run down water supply in America.

This same idea was also being sold to me by some decently educated people, one in fact from India. Now you'd think how retarded does one have to be in order to fly to America and not notice you are flying over the Pacific. Even lamest of the water-protection punks is supposed to carry at least a remote understanding that there's such thing as the world ocean. In K12, it's on all the Liberty pictures, and one story everyone has to learn is that Columbus had to sale across this thing.

The thing with oceans, is that you see, you cannot drink them. They are saline. Yet they are huge. In fact most of the planet is covered by oceans. Only tiny bit of water is fresh, and of that most is stored in polar ice caps. Oceans separate the continents, and that's why Chinese are not jumping the borders along with Mexicans. So we cannot really share. Water on the continents is the water evaporated from the oceans. Their surface is much bigger, and they are much closer to say the coast of Africa then some tiny lake in the Midwest. There is no such thing as global fresh water supply.

While we should take care of our waterways and water supplies, we'll have to do it of completely egoistic motifs. We like it that way. That obviously goes against the grain of quite some people. They just need a "higher" cause to justify them going hysterical.

Keeping the oceans clean and abundant with life is of course a global cause, but somehow it doesn't stick with the public. Maybe that's because they aren't really conscious these things even exist.

Happy BD!

2007-03-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hoila this is my blog's zero's birthday then. Hmm. Let the rage begin!