Internet Apartheid

Continuing with an old rant.

I was installing a new computer at work. VISTA operating system.

Note: If you are a VISTA user, please turn off your computer, go to a Mac store and buy a Mac. You are a Mac user, not a PC user.

I have been using PC since MS-DOS 3.36. I have used to have every command in English. I think I had Finnish F-Prot back in the day, but otherwise I have used to have all the applications in English. One language in one computer. I like to have it neat. I have if my right-click menu (the shell commands) are in n+1 different languages.

99% of all programs are first in English and then translated into local languages. All updates come first in English, then in other languages. Therefore it is also more handy to have all the applications in English.

Today, with beautiful Internet Exploiter 7 I tried to download FireFox, update drivers and such. Of course our Führers of the internet have decided for me that I speak fluently the language of the country I happen to be currently.

It was impossible to have Live Messenger in English from MicroSoft webpage. It was difficult to find English FireFox from Mozilla site. It is virtually impossible to have English in any huge company's webpages. They think for you and rule that you need to be fluent in the language of the country you are currently in.

What if I visit China and need to reinstall my FireFox? I do not even recognize the letters, little alone find where to change the language, since there is no link saying "English".

All the big companies limit your internet experience to the country you are currently visiting thus creating a new form of apartheid.

International pages are verboten. Everyone should stay in their own countries. No travelling allowed before we have one-world language.

Look at your application window. What is the link/menu on the top right-hand side? Correct, it is Help. How is it impossible for these people to have a simple link "English" on the top right-hand corner of their webpages - right next to the search field?

Since English is the major language in IT business, there should be an option to see the page in that language. At least that way the person who does not speak any of the pre-decided languages well, that person can at least stagger towards his/her own native language.

I can hardly wait to install FireFox and NoScript. At least that way some of the less-sophisticated pages get fooled and show the page in default language (English). But the more sophisticated pages, MicroSoft webpages in the lead, decide the language according to ISP, methinks. Not according to my preferences.

Oh yes, Google has some sort of simple single-search option to change the language to English. It just every now and then decides that hey, you should search pages only from local Google, not the international Google. What if I want to have as wide search results as possible? Can I please search webpages outside the Netherlands?

Google.nl and Google.com do return different results.

And no, I do not want to buy that Dutch product you are offering me.

Change?

What Frogthroat hopes for:
Obama 322 electoral votes.

But what Frogthroat fears is going to happen:
McCain 51.3%

Google Fisting Japan

Checking something from Google maps. But hey, what's that? ...Do I see correctly? It even has the thumbnail a tad North from Palau! Go check it out.

Greetings from Africa

A friend of mine, Mr. Y went to East-Africa. He brought some souveniers from there:

After applying some vaseline, that little bulge opened up and this one came out:
Tumby fly larvae is apparently not a myth, but actually real. And it left a nasty hole:
A picture of another larva, this one is a big one:

A family portrait:
If you go to Africa, remember vaseline.

Pictures by Mr. J. All rights reserved.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.27

People are like rubber bands.
If you push them, they bounce back.
If you pull them, they will stretch.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day (again)

Ahoy there matey!

It be a fine day today, for it be the International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Oh aye, stop swabbing the deck, hoist yer Jolly Roger and join me in the local tavern to wet our whistles with grog, or are ye yellow bellied mutinous scurvy son of a dog scared? Arrr! Me throat is dry. That be it.

Blow yer man down!

Ossetia - Last Straw on the Camel's Back?

War broke between Georgia and Russia! For quite some time now they have been ruffing their feathers. When it is Georgia saying they shot down invading Russian planes, and when it is Russian planes shooting down Georgian planes. The latter was already very scary; Georgia was laying down some serious accusations.

Soviet Union, and before that Russian Empire was already uniting those areas. They have lived so long as one, which has made them so intertwined, they cannot possibly fight each other without fighting also against themselves. One could almost argue Georgian and Russian people are the one and the same people. But that is not completely true. There are very unique areas and people, but as I said they are very intertwined.

However, I try not to have strong opinions on international incidents if it doesn't affect global peace. Especialy if the countries who are violated bow down even if they are not too weak to defend themselves. But there are areas of the World that nobody cares about. Most likely because there are no merchandise, power or money to be made.

It is kind of a good thing USA is fighting war in Middle-East. USA might be hesitant to give military aid to Georgia and open one more front. The Bear of Russia still got big paws. Plus USA - Russia relationship has been a bit tense because of the missile shield. Sometimes USA makes an offer Russia must refuse. Sometimes it is Russian's turn. Even UN has had its share of gnashing of teeth. Hopefully that makes UN to try to keep NATO off from this.

I would not like to see UK joining this thing. Especially when UK has demanded something absurd from Russia already in the recent past. Not that it would not be right for UK to get what they wanted, but when it means one country must bend their own laws to do so, it is just too bold to demand.

You see, the incident might cause global unrest. I hope USA will not send troops to Georgia. Even if they would like to, in this case it is a positive thing they are already fighting a war and their currency is in decline. There must be a peaceful way. I hope UN can find a diplomatic way for this. And hopefully USA and UK keeps a low profile. And perhaps if USA announces they will delay their missile shield project Russia might calm down a bit. The power Russia and USA have behind them, I do not care who is right. If they clash, it only matters who is left.

Autovorarephilia

I got it!

It has been bothering me for a long tiome. What the heck Bernd Jürgen Brandes was?

Train of thoughts: Carnivore... vore... eater... vorare... in Italian it is "to eat" methinks. No! Munchare is. Vorare is like ... devour? Must be in Latin something more extreme, methinks... I guess it means to "hotkaista*" um... to "wolf" down something... Vorarephilia ... eaten-philia. ...devouring-philia... A person who likes to be eaten or eat someone. What was Herr Brandes then? Vorarephile, yes, but also Autovorarephile! ...Is that a real word? And thus I managed to label even him.

* Hotkaista is a Finnish word for ... um... eat in greed? How do you translate that?

Where's My CDs?!

XPSP3 stable version is out. Decided to download and install it. Then I though, why not integrating the SP3 with my XP CD with no SP.

...copied XP CD to HDD. Fine.
...extracted the files from the SP3 .exe file. Fine.
...extracted the boot image from the CD. Fine.
...slipstreamed the SP3 to the XP files. Fine.
...created an ISO file of the package. Fine.
...opened CD burning software and chose to burn the image. GODDAMN! ¤*&#§¤%€#! I'm outta CDs!

I'm even out of DVDs. Haven't burned a CD in couple of years. I guess it's time to go to a CD-r shop.

Why does it have to rain today?

Rains. On a day when I would have nothing else to do, except to go outside and enjoy the sunshine. Figures.

I guess I'll order in. Cannelloni e birra. And watch the Godfather.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.26

Q: What becomes of a person with borderline disorder if he/she eats a wrong kind of mushroom?
A: Shamanic-depressive.

My Human Right to Doubt

The Great Ape Project has a good point. More humane treatment for our relatives.

But there is a humangous risk in it. The way I think about every new change is to think a way to abuse it. The way to begin to understand security is to awknowledge the risks. In order to be safe, you have to understand how your rights could be abused.

I do not know, whether they mean they should have the same rights to live freely as we do, or same kind of right to live freely as we do. Is it human rights, or 'human rights'?

If this indeed becomes a landmark legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos, and we are still free to capture great apes and put them in the zoo, what stops me to capture you, dear reader, and put you in a zoo against your will? If they enjoy the same human rights as we do, I should be able to do the same to you as to our fellow human chimpanzees. Or are you more equal than a chimp in front of the law, if it is the same human rights law?

Don't get me wrong, I am not against animal rights. I am against demeaning our own rights.

There is a declaration that you can sign at the Great Ape Project webpages, but I will not sign that before I know for sure what kind of lawtwisters we are talking about. Same kind of rights, no problem. I am all for that. The same rights? No way. We can barely respect each other. I do not want to give anyone a chance to compare my rights to any non-Homo Sapiens Sapiens for as long as we treat any animal the way we do.

I want to know more about this, as this should be a step forward for animal rights, and not a step backwards for human rights. If you know better than I do, or do not care to read the fine print, feel free to sign the declaration here.

George Carlin: Another Dead Hero

22. June, 2008 George Carlin was taken to a hospital for some chest pain. He died at the age of 71.

I will miss him.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.25

Good girls go to Cannes.
Bad girls go straight to video. (Or AVN Awards...)

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.24

With Lockhart Dickens you can Freud Jung Kant.

Few More Hours Of Waiting...

The polls have closed. 9am GMT they start the counting. Then we will know whether Ireland will become the newest state of the proud United States of Europe.

Flickr & Deliberate Self-Dumbing

O hai. I has a flickr account. It spiik lolspeak nau. If flickr offer me an cheesburgar me quits flickr an put computar in mai bukkit. K thx bye.


What is wrong with people nowadays?! Ok, I understand that in chats you want to communicate quickly, hence the short abbreviations. But this lolspeak is just dumb. Why would someone deliberately practice to become dumber and write crappier than before? If that is "cool" (sorry, don't know the 'hip' word what to use nowadays instead of 'cool') just make it easier for you. Next time with q-tip, when you feel resistance, don't stop.

What a Waste of Bomb Threath

Today I finished my work and was planning to take the train, go near Amsterdam Arena and go to see Indy4 (No, not the Fate of Atlantis, but the movie. Crystal skull thingie... I guess there's 13 of them. Ssssh... don't tell me anything about it. Don't want to know before I see it.) Of course the train was late. So was the next one. And one train had stopped right after the station. Something was wrong.

Then I heard there was a bomb threat at Central Station of Amsterdam. I got all exited. To the city centre it is! Panic, chaos and most likely a false alarm! And I had my camera! (Plus, if something would happen, I know first aid. And as a medic in the army we kinda learned how to quickly temporary fix big holes in people.) But how to get there? Bus to Schiphol? Naw, too full and how to get to centre from there?

Finally, after 30mins of waiting, got to train that goes to Amsterdam Zuid, where I was not going. But good enough. Can switch to metro and then to tram and go to city centre. And to Central Station. My ticket wasn't towards there, but that was the only train that wasn't gonna go through city centre, thus it was moving. Got off at Zuid.

But the Dutch are sometimes so Dutch that I have hard time describing how Dutch they are. Of course there was absolutely no information why the trains were not going. But that's normal. If a train is 20 minutes late and another train comes, it is usual not to inform about it and daily there are people in wrong trains. This time it was even more Dutch than that.

Got off from the train, and of course they had put ticket check on the station. Three passages, two guys in each passage, except one of them had only one guy. I though I just explain to the guy that the trains were not going so I took a wrong train. As I was going, the guy in front of me had the same story. Boy that ticket inspector had a devilish smile when he started to ask the guy's ID. But, just the right moment for me to just wave the ticket of mine and pass. The guy was so concentrated on ... ehm ... making the other guy bend over and giving it to him unlubricated that he didn't pay any attention.

I thought that was a bit odd. Considering all trains were on halt because of a bomb threat. But I still paid my metro ticket and was going to the stop. Of course there was the metro company's inspectors! Are you friggin' kidding me? During a friggin' bomb threat they make sure no-one explodes without a proper ticket! Lucky me, I got the ticket.

I saw police officers on the pier where I was waiting, so I asked them what was going on.
- A delay, but it's over.
- Yeah, but what's the reason.
- Just a delay.
- Ok, I heard a rumour that there was a bomb threat.
- Oh, that one... yeah, just a small luggage that was left unattended but it is gone now.

Yeah, thanks for informing the public. Especially if it was a false alarm, and I would read it from tomorrow's paper anyways. I guess you can't trust anyone who's title starts with "Poli". Got to my metro, and surprise, surprise! Ticket inspectors came from the next stop! To a packed metro! Do they enjoy pain? Just what I need when I am crammed into a sardine-tin and have some lady's elbow, size of a Christmas ham, in my mouth.

And all of this because some tourist forgot his luggage on the friggin' pier when he jumped to train to Schiphol. And so very Dutch, who think they are a world-wide power, to think that someone really would like to bomb Central Station. Who? Terrorists? They friggin' live in Amsterdam and their families need the train to go to work! And what kind of message would that be? Dutch soldiers in Middle-East, so we kill a lot of tourists and our own people? Get serious.

Den Haag would be more suitable target anyways for political attack. It's not like there is any separatist movement in the Netherlands to whom an attack on civilians would be of any help.

So:
* Was late coming from work. (But that's more of a rule anyways with NS.)
* No info why the trains were late. (That is their code-of-silence at NS, so it's normal also.)
* Three friggin' times I was checked for the ticket during a friggin' bomb threat.
* And there wasn't even a bomb, but Dutch egoism since they can't see they are not as big and bad as some other countries who are the invading hordes in the Middle-East.

Plus it feels like thunder is coming, so it's moist, hot, pressurised and sweaty.

But I guess it was a good thing the threat was a false alarm and no-one was hurt. I still wanted those pictures.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.23

If your life is like dancing on roses, remember to wear shoes.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.22

Popped into my head today:

Q: When you take the trashbag from under your sink to throw it outside, what do you call that gooey stuff that drips from the bottom of the bag?
A: Naples-syrup!

7 Deadly Sins, Part 1: Pride

I feel proud. One of my photographs was selected as the Reader's Photograph of the Week.


Already a second time in a short while when my photograph has been in a newspaper.

One down, six to go.

Finnish Imago Outside Of Finland

Finnish have always been very sensitive about the image about us in foreign countries. We can't even decide anything before Sweden makes the first move. So yes, I think we have to bring out our most educated, sophisticated and wisest side out more agressively.

Like this guy.

(Yeah, I have said I don't like to linke this kind of nonsense before, I still don't, but this just shows how smart we Finnish really are.)

Children As A Tool Of Control

I read from the news today that Kate and Gerry McCann plead for European 'amber alert' on abduction. Is this the step one?

This post is not about the abduction of Maddy. Abductions should not happen. But the horror scenario I've been ranting about on forums and in real life might've taken the first step.

Here is a quote of my post on a certain forum on 2006:

This is so beautiful way to make people to trap themselves - children. We can introduce a (RFID) chip which is 'only' a passive one, that can be activated to locate a missing child when radio signal hits it. (You can already have this kind of chip on your dog.) Just to protect the children from being lost, kidnapping, etc... The children grow up with the chip in the hand and it is easier to introduce a similar chip, but with credit capabilities. It is easier to get a parent to get a chip on child's arm to protect the child than to get the parent him/herself to get a chip to pay his/her bills.

We are used to having chips in the products we buy, that trigger the alarm should we nick the product from the store. If you buy any program, you have to nowadays register yourself in order to get any support. Windows checks wether your copy is legal when you enter their website. More and more small invisible/transparent control and tracking devices are introduced into our lives, some of them to prevent illegal activities, some of them to make our life 'easier'.

Before all of this we first got a bank card, then a credit card, a library card, Tesco-card, AH-bonus card, a driver's license, a social security card, an ID-card, what have you - this is the situation today. When we get introduced a combo-card (perhaps approximately at the same time as the passive chip), with all of this in one, it will make it easier to handle. Only, this will bring an issue. What if someone steals it or if you lose it? How about that chip? Then you can pay your bills, borrow your library books, open your doors, start your car, etc. with just a touch of a finger. And why not? You are used to have the passive locator chip in your hand anyways.

Now, with either active or semi-active chip, which draws the power from either kineticly from your movements or directly from your nerve system, you can even set up a little electric field around your skin. You cannot see, feel or notice it in any way. It doesn't interact with your current electrical devices, but what you can do is you store the data you want to show to other people. To connect into someone's chip, you just simply need to touch the skin of another person. From your reader, which can be for example your watch, you see the data the other person wants to give out. For example in a club you touch a pretty girl's hand while walking by and you can read what languages she speaks, is she single, what type of guys she likes, etc.. (Less human interaction and less 'failures' in it, you can see if the girl can potentially be interested in you even before you say one word to her.) Of course for police or doctor, who would have higher authorization to view more detailed information, the doctor could see your medical status and police could see your prior criminal offences. This field, or the RFID in combination of your thumbprint could be used to pay, borrow, open, etc. with just a touch of a finger.

Not only they can see where you shop, what you shop and when you shop, it will be possible to see and even control where a person is at any given moment. Control - if you have your personal ID embedded into you and you can open your car door, why wouldn't be possible to lock a door (even just) for you as well? A similar system for cars is in use today in few places. You have your chip on your windshield and when you drive past a toll bridge, it automatically detects your card, charges your bank account and opens the gate. This means that for example in Singapore they already know where people's cars are at any given moment.

Effective control is disguised as security. Most effective control is the type people demand upon themselves.

Ok... I will stop now and go to put one more layer of tinfoil into my room...

I was a bit agitated while writing this, so nevermind the all out crazy stuff and the parts that are figment of my imagination. Just think about the core-point.

And if that Amber-Alert comes to UK, where pets already have to have RFIDs, it takes only one media campaign where any famous person blurts out "but our pets are better secured than our children"...

Although I am not trying to say that this Maddy case wouldn't be horrible, I am still saying that this can be abused. If this kind of Amber-Alert turns into Red Alert and RFIDs go under the skin, with this media hype no-one is going to say anything against in the fear of being labeled as a supporter of child abduction.

Freedom Of Speech Is Stronger Than Privacy In Finland

(This is a small referate of my Finnish rant.)

Finland has just decided there's no need for privacy.

Our Foreign Minister sent couple of text messages to a girl. When he was interrogated for it by the media, he paniced and denied the whole thing. Mistake, yes, but is denying a small flirt in his private life with a woman really big enough mistake to let him go? There are bigger mistakes in Finnish politics that led to no-one's dismissal.

The woman was an erotic dancer. So she was employed and she pays her taxes. As long as the job is legimate, should it matter what the job is? Better an erotic dancer than a CEO of a large international company. The latter would compromise the integrity of the Minister's position. Even two politicians dating would be scary thing to hear, especially if they are in different parties.

FM Kanerva used his work mobile to text few text messages. 200 SMS' is hardly excessive. If I join my mobile phone company's some music plan, I would get 200 free SMS' per month as an extra. Big deal. Mr. Taxman knows he has the mobile and charges him because they expect him to use it for his private calls, too.

Many of the messages were during the evening or during the night. So he didn't even spend company time to send those.

He has a woman he lives with, though. But as the text messages didn't lead to anything sexual, it is not so immoral he would have to be fired. This whole discussion about faithfulness should be between him and Elina, the woman he lives with.

The Finnish media has been quiet lately when it comes to news. First the domestic "news" side was full of our PM's woman adventures, now it has been completely stacked with the ex-FM's text messages. Finnish people have become more and more like Brits and the Americans. We do not care about real news. We want a show.

And of course media has no morals anymore. People want gossip, media sells gossip. It's not like they do this for charity. Too bad the private side suffers. Private things like this should not be published. Especially if the other side does not want that. I do like freedom of speech, but I'm not talking about that now. I'm talking about ethics, which were wolfed down by the freedom of speech.

The people want a show so badly, it gives the media the power to get even our Forgeign Minister fired.

I hope there's no more sex scandals in Finland for a while. I want to read some news for a change.

A Fit(na) Over Nothing

Geert Wilders has now released the anti-islam infomercial "Fitna" on his political party's, PVV, webpage. I watched the Google video version and I must say that is a disappointment.

The muslim nation is of course angry. Geert has repeatedly said the Islam religion is violent and demands blood of all those who oppose them. To show Geert is incorrect, the muslim nation has calmly and peacefully burned Dutch flags, treathened the Netherlands and EU with punishment and has put a death-penalty on Geert.

How can Geert publish such lies that Islam is a violent religion? Islam is the last one to come from the three branches of christian religions. Israel has never killed anyone who doesn't deserve it. In Christian-God's name there has been no killings over nothing. The crusades were just peaceful recruitment rallies. Therefore it would be amazing if Islam as the youngest of them all would all of a sudden turn into violence.

Although the rest of the movie is muslim people - including imams - calmly explaining that muslims should peacefully kill non-muslims, there is one thing that might justify even some anger. He has no respect towards copyright laws!

In the beginning and in the end there is a picture of Mohammed by the Danish artist, Kurt Westergaard. It is the original artist who has the copyright in the first place. Therefore this is something that might enrage Danish.

Other than that, the movie contains basically parts of Quran and what some imams and other muslim-leaders have said. This cannot be why muslims are burning flags. This is their religion. Maybe not all of it, but at least a part. Geert was careful even with the ripping of the pages. He does not show he rips a page off of the Quran. And the ripping sound, he explains, is from a telephone book. If this would've been anti-christianity infomercial, he probably would have no problems ripping, peeing on and finally burning Bibles.

The movie was a bit American infomercial-like. People who do not like Geert's ideas might say it's propaganda, but I don't see any specially different from every other point of view made nowadays. For me it was a big disappointment. I've read the news and I've seen the responses from some extremist-muslims to many many things so there was nothing really shocking and nothing really new. The movie itself probably doesn't make people think that much. I hope the media hype and the reactions do. But I doubt that, too.

I would recommend that Geert removes the picture of Mohammed. Although there are several images of Mohammed in arab-worlds, it is clearly blasphemy for a western-pig to make or show an image of the prophet. If a picture of Mohammed has to be there, rather use a picture by a muslim-artist.

Most importantly we must stop Geert. He is a constant reminder that there are people who dear to think even those things that are not allowed for us to think. And foolishly he even excercises his right of an opinion. If this goes on, people might start to think there is something called "freedom of speech".

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, Author, The Friends Of Voltaire, 1906.

Liquid Ban Explained

The reason for the strange liquid ban on airplanes may be explained now.

ThruVision has developed a camera that can read the electromagnetic radiation of objects and can show shapes through clothing as far as 25 metres.

A small bit at the end of the article mentions:

This electromagnetic radiation is a form of low level energy emitted by all people and objects.

These are able to pass through clothing, paper, ceramics and wood but are blocked by metal and water.

The system works by collecting these waves and processing them to form an image which can reveal concealed objects.

They are blocked by metal and water? There's already metal detectors at every airport. The liquid ban starts to make sense. They must have developed that for years, so the knowledge of a device-to-come has also been there.

Life Is Winning!

It's noon. And I can already think! Might be that my first day at the new job is not going to be a sick day! Yay!

I think I need to stay low today. Still got sour throat (maybe there's a frog inside?) and a head full of fluff. Otherwise I start to be ok.

I have slept most of past 3-4 days now, so it would be worrying if I wouldn't be feeling better.

Just reading my friend's blogs, and noticed the huge winds here have a name. The storm "Emma" is wiping Europe.

Very good name for the storm. Since the real Emma I know reminds me of Neil Young's lyrics...

"You are like a hurricane. There's calm in your eyes. And I'm getting blown away."

Great Way To Finish My Employment

My second last day in this company. Off to newer and better opportunities. Starting in a new company on monday. (Could've kept a holiday, though...)

So now I need to clean my desk, move personal files away from computer, delete work-related... Can't be off, no matter what.

And yesterday evening got a friggin' fever. No voice coming out and head is like a huge cotton ball. It's nice that our "airco" is not really airco. It just rotates the air inside the company. There's been so many people sick in our company lately that I'm sure it's just some rotated bacteria or something. Nice.

It came in couple of hours. 8PM I was fine, 10PM I was in fever. Weird thing.

And my head is full of fluff.

Sorry Sir, But You Are Too Smart To Be A Police Officer

While searching for something I came across with couple of news articles from late 90's. It seems that you cannot be a police officer in US if you are too smart.

Explains a lot.

Walkers Contain Trace Amounts Of Alcohol

Apparently some Muslims have criticised Walkers' crisps when they found out it may contain trace amounts of alcohol. Walkers use alcohol during the manufacturing process to extract some flavours. Crisps themselves most likely do not contain alcohol anymore, but in trace amounts.

They claim that even if it is trace amounts, it has to be printed on the package.

What kind of hypocricy is this?

If we count trace amounts, they themselves sell alcohol to muslims every day. Trace amounts, but I've seen it done.

They sell bread. How do you rise bread dough? Put some yeast in it. What does yeast do? Expands the dough. How? By fermenting sugars, producing carbon dioxide. And as a side product, also alcohol.

They sell cheese. And I've seen a muslim eat cheese! When cheese is aging, there's a trace amount of alcohol produced in the cheese.

They use vinegar in salads. Um... D'uh... Vinegar is produced from ... wine. And where do they get their vinegar from? Can you even have halal-vinegar?

Is eating ripe fruits also forbidden? Although it takes a long time for a fruit to ferment, even just ripe ones may contain trace amounts of alcohol.

I've seen muslims buying xylitol and sorbitol chewing gums. Which alcohol are we talking about? Ethanol? Sorbitol? Methanol? Xylitol? ...any alcohol with -ol? Or is it only ethanol which is bad? If so, why only that alcohol? Didn't their book only prohibit drunkenness, not alcohol itself?

Do they brush their teeth with western toothpaste? Have you looked at the ingredient list? How many -ol ending chemicals can you count? (Mouthwash and aftershave can be found alcohol-free. Difficult, especially mouthwash since they put sorbitol and/or xylitol to most of them.)

I haven't seen even one sign on halal-shops where they warn about bread! And it is clearly rised with yeast.

WWIII?

"If the EU works out a single position or if NATO steps beyond its mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will be in conflict with the U.N., and then I think we will also begin operating under the assumption that in order to be respected, one needs to use force." - Dmitry Rogozin, Moscow's ambassador to NATO

Interfax

Peasoup (Vegan, I guess.)

I made peasoup the other day. Accidentally it became vegan. Easy peasy. This is how:

About half a kilo of peas, peeled. (Not the individual peas, but as in, take the peas out of the shell.)
A huge biologically grown carrot. (Or 3 smaller ones. Or 6-7 thin small early carrots.)
About quarter kilo of lentils
0,5 large onion would go nicely if you have one (I didn't have)
White pepper
Freshly ground pepper mix
Bunch of parsley
A table spoon (and then some) of Mustard
Soy milk (just a splash)
Water
Couple of Vegetable bullion cubes (I think they are vegan stuff?)

Blend the carrot, add peas but blend a bit less. (I like it chunky.) Put in pot. Add lentils, splash of soy milk, a cup or two of water, spice it up and boil until carrot is cooked. I made it quite thick. Add more water if you want it more soup-like.

Done.

Joe Lajoie

Yo whazzup!

I don't normally post links, but every now and then one must make an exception. This is such time.

I woz just chillin' wiv mah honkies, playin' gin, drinkin' juice. Me bro gave me a shout. I says "Yo, whazzup mah cracker?" - He says "Yo, you gotta check diz won out, b." The mofo sent me a link.

Y'all gots to check it out.

John Lajoie - Everyday Normal Guy

YouTube
MySpace
FunnyOrDie

And just noticed. He has a scetch about the same thing I ranted about today.

Western Cencorship

(Continuing/summarizing an on-going rant from few Finnish forums... Those who are familiar with my rants about modern media, there's most likely nothing new for you here.)

In west we have tried several ways to cencor information. Total block has worked before, but in the age of satellite television, internet and the possibility to purchase newspapers from all over the world makes total block ineffective. Silent agreement between media works somewhat and blocks thought-triggering news in most parts.

The best solution, the new opiate for the masses, is the overload of information. I read today from Violent Acres about the problems of choosing what to do if you are given a choice-galore. Read her post, so I don't need to give so long introduction to the issue I'm about to address.

In a nutshell, making choices is difficult when you have an unlimited amout of them. Just choosing your breakfast or a drink in a bar seems to be the most difficult thing for some people. We haven't been coded to understand so many. In the course of our evolution, our brains have evolved too big, too quickly. We can't cope with them.

According to Desmond Morris hard-wirings in our brains are mainly evolved to ensure the survival of the species. (I will not go into a debate wether the meaning of life is the survival of the species or the gene. Read Richard Dawkins if the latter interests you.) We do not need to know wether we eat sweet & sour chicken cantonese style with fried rice, or salami pizza. We need the nutritiens. Our brains are not ment to deal with these kind of questions. Our brains are ment to determine wether something is edible, if the member of the opposite sex is a good mating partner, if the member of the same sex is a competitior and/or threath and wether other species pose a threath. All aiming for the survival.

Herd behaviour our species demonstrates makes the herd stronger. Like lions who hunt in packs to ensure there's zebra meat for the cubs. A group hunts more efficiently than a single hunter. And like the zebras who have the stripes - while they stand out against the brown background of savannah when they are alone, in a running group the stripes makes it difficult to see where one zebra ends and another one starts. Like them, we have small herds. You recognize your friends in a group photo quicker than you can determine that you don't know the person who is a stranger to you. Even in a city of millions you have your small "village". Your gym group, your friends, your colleagues... they form your "village" and you'll recognize those quicker in the mass. It is virtually impossible to teach your brain to recognize everyone in your city.

How does this relate to something I call "western cencorship"?

Like Violent Acres was saying, multitude of choices confuses us. Puts our brains to sleep. Workers do not take retirement plans from their companies when they have too many options. Cancer patients give up treatment because of the multitude of treatment plans. Brain can't cope with it.

Best place to hide things is right in front of your eyes. I do it deliberately in the art I make and in most of the texts I write. They are full of hidden references and usually the art I create tries to look normal at first glance, but there's something odd when you look closer.

If newspapers won't print something, people will find it out from somewhere else. It is much more efficient to post the information among a hundred non-consequential entertainment news. We are being emotionally dulled with the correct behaviour and way of speech and our senses and ability to make choices is impaired by the multitude of choices.

Due to the vast amount of lawsuits by idiots, companies have developed technical jargon to disclaim all responsibility from what is part of natural selection. You all know about the infamous hot-coffee-in-lap -lawsuit. Just read the EULA of the company-x desktop manager that is free and is included in the other download of the free software you are about to download. There's some weird stuff in some of those EULAs. If I invent something and file a patent for it, no, your company will not get the patent just because I did some background research with your company's search engine. Do you know what specific program I'm talking about? Didn't think so. Who reads EULAs anyways?

Same goes with media. You go to movies, see 25 minutes of commercials, 20 minutes of trailers, and the standard 90 minutes of Rambo IV with mindless violence. You go home, watch news with less violent images of war, hijacks, robbery and cruelty, again commercials. Buy this or your lawn will be grayer than your neighbour's. Then a sitcom about some random people living life where their biggest problem is which shoes to wear. Buy this product or your face/hair/nose/lips/whathaveyou is ugly and you won't get laid. Now it's time for some Reality-TV! Get this plan or your future life is in jeopardy. And now the latest news of your favourite pop-star! Ah... brain needs rest. Watching people live their lives in TV is easier than living your own.

Hiding the important news in between the commercial brakes, sitcoms and enterntainment news is very efficient way to cencor.

When you overload the brain with 8 types of breakfast müsli, 52 different ties to go with 12 different suits and figuring out which shoes to wear wears you out before you even leave the house. In city you cannot escape the bright ads, catchy commercials, out popping stands, colorful billboards and flashing displays.

You're exhausted before you are even at work. In corporate world you have to suppress all your emotions, be professional and talk this synthetic language so you won't offend anyone. You notice you start to listen to the individual words people are saying and how they say them instead of what they are saying. You have 8 memos waiting in your inbox when you arrive, you read 20 of them during the day and there's 6 left when you leave at the end of the day. One of them was important. Which one? Can't remember what any of them said.

In this kind of world it is very easy to get confused. Product you buy has not only instructions how to use the product, but also what you should not do with the product - accompanied with legal information in the language of law jargon. Even your microwave popcorn has several steps how to make the popcorn, illustrated - just in case if you don't know how to read.

All the instructions everywhere is confusing, and make brains obsolete. You don't even need to know how to use a lighter anymore. Not using your brains will dull them down and you are incapable of making your own thoughts. The little free time you have consists of useless information and it is difficult to find the usefull among them.

We are being dumbed down so we can process less and at the same time we get more and more information about everything. We cannot see what is important anymore. More importantly, we cannot sort the data anymore. This combined with the fact that we expect kids to behave as rationally as adults should behave is making this more effective. Just recently I ranted in my Finnish blog about schools. The behaviour of kids is scrutinized for anything abnormal. In United States it is concidered abnormal for kids of 6-years old to hug or to show any kind of affection.

In Finland there's a huge debate about bullying in school. All kinds of quarrels are concidered as bullying. Testing the limits and finding the hierarchy is part of growing up. It gives tools to handle bullies in corporate world. Kids in Finland are not getting this due to the fact that even the smallest school incidents are headline news after the 7/11 school shooting. Not that bullying should be tolerated. But instead of making a local, separate incident a nation-wide debate it should be dealt with within the school. Teachers cannot teach the kids how to handle bullies nor should they tolerate it. But over protecting is working against the kids. When the kids don't have tools to handle the "real world" it is more easy to control them and make them virtually slaves.

When these kids grow up they have no tools to handle negative sides of life and they are unable to show affection, but they've been forced to make multiple decisions affecting their lives even from ground-school, they are overwhelmed by the real world.

Not only it is easy to control people, they won't find the relevant information even if you put it plainly in front of their eyes.

Stalin would be amazed by the efficiency of our cencorship and method of control.

Nightshift

It's 2AM and I'm half way in my work this shift...

Perhaps I'll finish before 5.

Be home before 7.

Then sleeeeeeep.

Update at 4:09. It looks like we're finished with our work before 5!

Getting Addicted To A Website

I mentioned recently I opened a Facebook account. Some of my friends spend way too much time in there. And they started nicely. They added an application, then another one. Then spending most of the time updating it.

Nope. I have no problem with that site. Never gonna add any applications. Checking if there's any news from friends every now and then. (Which reminds me, maybe I have to remember to check it before friday, if there would be a party or something.)

I also mentioned earlier I opened a Flickr account recently. That is getting out of hand. My beer intake is suffering, since the beer I opened yesterday is still almost untouched on my table. I need to cough more, since my lungs are healing as I don't smoke that many cigarettes when looking at the pics there. My legs are hurting because I'm walking a kilometre after a kilometre with my camera.

Damn you Flickr! I want my vices back!

Fear Of Fellow Men

I was having a walk around a lake yesterday. I saw two small islands, and decided to visit them. As a Finnish person I'm used to freedom, which is difficult to understand in modern western society. As many countries advertize themselves as "the land of the free" although they are anything but, we have to redefine freedom, or invent a new word that has the same meaning as the old word, "freedom".

Without giving it much thought, I started to walk straight forward to the shore and after few trees and bushes I bumped into a fence. With barbed-wire on top. Ok... I go around it. After 300 metres, there was a prison complex. They don't call it a prison complex, but a combined gym and swimming hall. People pay for someone to imprison themselves in a small room where they walk in this device without moving at the same time when I walk around the prison complex completely free, and can enjoy the little nature Amsterdam can offer. Same physical effect, but mental effect... that's different.

I went past the prison, following the barbed-wire fence. Saw a double-fenced area for children. The bastards should be locked in, I guess.

After a long walk I managed to get to the end of the fence. And saw a small plank, about 150 metres long, going to the nearest island. And the fence was going through the water to the island. From the prison complex's yard there was a bridge going to the island, I saw. Although it had a gate at both ends. Walking the plank wouldn't be smart either. Not only because I could fall into the water, but the fence also blocked the way.

I came to thinking. What are these people afraid of? That I break in to the gym from the back door and use their facilities for free? If I could walk the plank, swim around the fence, hike through the island, climb over the barbed-wire, swim to the shore and break in, would I really need the gym or the swimming hall?

Why was the water fenced? Do they think I'm gonna nick the water? And why the planks were placed that far away? So that I cannot take a boat, load in a propane tank, go next to the metal fence and cut through the steel pipes just to get to a gym?

Why all the security? Why the fences? These people are not going to use the acres and acres of land anyways. They prefer to imprison themselves into small rooms, instead of any resemblance of nature. The gym doesn't need all that space.

I'm sure these people feel safe only when they go from the gym to their anti-theft cars, drive home to their prison, close the steel vault-door behind them, go to their sleeping chamber, lock all the five locks and barricades the chamber door.

The lack of nature makes Dutch fear anything natural. Shallow country makes what kind of people?

Somebody Put This Guy To School!

I was having a walk yesterday evening with a friend of mine. I don't have a watch, and my mobile phone is configured that I have easy time to put my alarm and I still make it to work, but it's nowhere close to the correct time. He got a bit hungry, so I suggested these filled sandwitches. But the shop closes at 20:00. We were late. Of course. For couple of hours, in fact. In front of that kiosk was Ali and Silent-Ahmed leaning to the wall. (Names invented.)
Silent-Ahmed stayed leaning to the wall silently, but Ali jumped forward and started to push drugs. "Coke, coke... Good quality. Some coke?"

I said naw, me no use drugs. "You can test. Look, good quality." He started to push the bag with some white stuff inside into my face. No man, I don't do any chemicals. Get away. "You can test. Look look." He started to bite open the bag.

Damn. Somebody get this guy to school. He was a teenager. He shouldn't be pushing drugs on the streets in nights. And waving bags of drugs openly on the street is not smart anyways. I'm a total stranger. How did he know I wasn't an undercover cop?

Where are this guy's parents? Do they know what this guy does in the nights? Do they care? Why isn't he doing his homework?

...Ach... This morning they had the ticket inspectors at Metro and of course I had to search for my ticket and missed my metro because of that. Mass transit should be free anyways, and higher tax on people who own a car within city limits. And now my snuss is leaking.

At least I got couple of nice pics in the morning.

European 112 Day

Today is the European 112 day.

Be safe.

Visit European Emergency Number Association (EENA) for further information.

Also, it's 18th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison.

Some Sort of Stroganoff

Some sort of Stroganoff. At least Russian influenced food.

Potatoes
Flour
Water
Paprika powder
Freshly ground pepper
Dill
Chives
Parsley
Beef
1 and a half onion
5-6 gloves of garlic
2 drops of After Death
3 huge beetroots (boil them, save the water)
Juice from beetroot (boiled down boiling water)
Splash of vinegar (gives the nice shine you see in the pic.)
Smetana
A whole bunch of pickled cucumber
Butter (No, margarine is not going to work. Use butter and go jogging, you lazy couch-potato.)
Oil (Ok, I give you a small break here.)
Tomato pyre - I used one small can. Tomato is not the point, so you can leave this away, also.
1 table spoon of mustard

Put beetroot to boil immediately.
Steam some potatos when the sauce is half way ready - or later. Young enough so you don't need to peel them. (Peeling - bad, Vitamines - good.)

Take a pot or a jar or any container. Chop garlic, pickeled cucumbers and herbs, toss them in.
Fry the onion in plenty of butter in a large enough frying pan to make a sauce in, toss the onion in the container.
Cut the beef in small pieces. Fry in the same pan. (You can use oil now. But don't wash the pan. We want all the flavour.)
When that's done, add more butter and throw a fist full of flour in. Mix until it's brown. Add water and make the base of the sauce.
Throw the contents of the container in. Also the rest of the spices and the 2 drops of After Death, mustard and tomato pyre.
The beetroot juice should be thick enough to be thrown in. And a splash of vinegar. Now it starts to look like Stroganoff. Let it boil on slow fire.

Chop the beetroot and the ½ onion. Put some oil on a new pan, heat and toss them in. Add some freshly ground pepper.

When all is ready, serve with some smetana. And a shot of vodka before and after the food.

I didn't do it now, but a quick aperitif if you have guests and they are hungry:
Pickled cucumbers, cut in half lengthwise.
Some honey on top.
Chopped onion, raw, on top of the honey.
Ground some pepper on top, add salt if there's salt-addicts around.
Put some smetana on the side.
Done in 5 minutes and tastes great. Especially with a shot of vodka. (Which I didn't have either.)

Lego In Amsterdam

I saw this loading zone being built for a month. When they finished it, they filled it with Lego bricks. I don't get it. They are not there for weight since they don't cover the whole are, but only to stop from entering the loading zone. Why is that? Perhaps they need to work on it some more? Weird.

Addiction Does Not Automatically Mean A Problem

I smoke cigarettes.

I have an addiction to it. And I have a problem with tobacco. But they are two different things.

I have an addiction. I probably will be the nastiest person you know if I don't smoke the whole day. But it is not a problem for me. I smoke this special tobacco. Rolling tobacco. And smoke it with these certain papers. It's a hustle to go around the town to find that brand of tobacco that has no chemicals. After a while the other brand available (which would be cheaper but doesn't taste as good) would be suitable, but can be found in even fewer shops where I buy mine. Yet, I always go to the shops, buy about 5 pouches of it, and smoke for one and a half to two weeks from it. I always have a lighter and papers. Never run out on me own.

And since I do enjoy smoking, too, I do not wish to quit. At least, not yet. So smoking is not a problem for me. Sorry, I know this is completely wrong thing to say, since in the modern society I should be ashamed of smoking and all the time repeat the mantra to my friends "I'm going to quit next week." No, I won't. And yes, I do know they are bad for me.

But I also do have a problem with it. The people close to me have not yet grasped the idea, that they actually sell these in shops. I do not have a Tobacco Fairy waving her magic wand and all the tobacco I need just magically appears in my pocket. I actually have to pay money for the tobacco and the accessories. Still every day I have quadrillion people coming to ask for papers and for tobacco. My lighter can't be found after 4 people have asked to borrow it when they go for their cigarette break. If I'm in the smoking break, I don't mind. If I'm working, and you borrow the lighter for your break, and never return it, and I don't remember to ask it (never have to - I have my own!) back, and I go for my break and have to wait until someone comes in I get very annoyed. I do have a problem with that. A huge problem.

And don't comment that I am too nice to lend everything and people will abuse me if I'm too nice. Don't, because I can't come and whoop your donkey. And I haven't hit anyone since I was a minor.

Today it seemed that everyone was out of everything. Suddenly the whole World was depleted of tobacco and related accessories. When I got home from work, I had no papers, small crumbs at the bottom of my bag, and no lighter. No one person is abusing me. But little streams make rivers. I always have, so people must've noticed that and they know that if they are in need, I always have. When a hundred people come, then I am abused. Not by one, but by many. I don't care if you smoke weed while you work. As long as it doesn't affect my work. I do not do that. I'm there to work. But I want my cigarette breaks. The stuff you do with several of my papers is your business, but don't depend on me every day. Get your addiction sorted. Mine is. And I want my lighter back!

A side note: I just put my MP3 player in. I had it at my friend's place a while ago. I do not update my player, since it works, so I do not need a wall charger for it. I forgot my player to a friend's place. Got it back and it has been played with. Had to format it. Lost my music. Then had to put it in a wall socket. Which I don't have. And none of the shops close by. So I bought one. Plugged it in. Got it working. Or so I thought. Now my fruit company program forces me to update before I can put music in it. Thank you. I have all the automated things off, but with this one particular fruit company no automated thing is ever completely off. So after the update I need to put it in the wall socket again. And I just started to write this, because I was planning to put music on it and go for a walk to cool my head. After wasting time for getting the tobacco, because it was the fifth shop that had the brand I smoke, I hoped to go home and get my tripod and go. And during the copying I was planning to write this. So even longer delay. Who wants to walk when there's light anyways?

50 Years Of Lego

Happy 50th birthday, Lego!

I went to check the Lego pages, and noticed under products a new series, Vikings. Under that section was five different sets. All are Vikings fighting Norse mythology monsters. Nice, uplifting toys. (I wish I had them when I was a kid.)

Interesting characters:

Fenris Wolf - Nice little doggy, Loki's son, who grows so large that in Ragnarök he kills and eats Odin.

Wyvern Dragon - Some sort of Saxon dragon. Can't think of any story in Norwegian mythology of anything Wyvern.

Nidhogg Dragon - In Norwegian World-Tree or Tree Of Life artwork, Nidhogg was the serpent who lives in the roots.

Midgar Serpent - Norwegian Ouroboros. Archenemy of Thor and has three fights with him. In the last one, during Ragnarök, Jörmungandr (Midgar Serpent) bites Thor venomosly just before it is killed. Thor takes 9 steps before dying himself, too.

Fafnir Dragon - Dwarf king's son who turns into a dragon and steals a lot of gold. Fafnir story is pretty much the same as Nibelung and Beowulf.

Stop Playing With Computers And Read!

I've been way too lazy reader lately. Have to make a mental note:
1a: Turn the computer off every now and then before midnight.
1b: Read your books. They won't bite. As a matter of fact, they are missing you.

I don't know wether it is a good or bad thing, but instead of turning my computer off, I made a desktop background image to remind me. In the style of Despair, Inc. At least this way I'll remember there's a bookshelf as well.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.21

Wa talking with my housemate again. Again the discussion took a weird turn in a form of one-liners. He said something stupid about love, and the first thing that popped in to my mind was:

Hard core love can't be stopped with a court order.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.20

Modern day motivational ad's tagline:

Release your explodential!

(Works for IT, Office or Car commercials. Or breakfast cereals... Or innovative camera technic... Well, any modern commercial.)

Got Lost On My Way Home

My small pocket camera and me were going home. But I took the wrong ferry to round Ring A10 in Amsterdam and ended up at the rings of Saturn instead.

Here's the pictures.

Joking with Ronsu about these pics:
Me: It's easy to find adventures in your neighbourhood if you just have a good imagination.
Ronsu: Yeah, just like friends, too.

Google Doesn't Like Foreigners

I wrote about the new language thing in programs. Where programs determine for you what language you want to install your programs in. Google has been very very annoying, but they have at least that "In English" button that you have to press constantly. It's missing and/or not working in Blogspot.

Now I was writing a post and was unsure of one word. So I decided to press the spell checker. I don't do it often, but when you need it, it's helpful. Have been working fine. Now almost all words were wrong? Ah... It's checking it in Dutch. Let's change the settings. Blogspot always changes my preferences to Dutch for no apparent reason. What? My settings are in English.

I'm Finnish. I live in the Netherlands. Google doesn't support that. They want that people stay in their own countries. They are very socialistic towards people who stay in their own countries and do not even try to write in foreign devil's language and lose their nationality.

I have no option to change the language. People move around, you know. People may still continue to write in the language they started the blog. I should have some option to choose the language I speak, write and read.

I checked the help. "spell checker wrong language" - three hits. Two contained no replies. One had a link to a blog where there's major changes in the settings of the browser. I do not do that for Blogspot. I want to choose my language with settings inside Blogspot.

Can I friggin' please speak English?

Let's Party Like It's 1929!

The stock markets have been falling around Europe and Asia. Still waiting for yesterdays reports for USA. Let's not call it Black Monday. We already have had couple of those. Something snappy. Something catchy.

Ragnarok Monday!

But we can all party like it's nineteen twentynine! (Again.)

I'm Their Bitch

[expletive deleted]

*plenty of f-words*

I finally cave in. All my friends are in Facebook. Had to open an account. F! FFFFFFFF!

Don't even bother to try to add me as your friend if you don't know me in real life. I won't answer.

LinkedIn has a purpose.

Dear Pope Benedict XVI

If I daydream about things that cannot be proven at my work, I get fired. I understand that in your job that is exactly your job description.

However, the recent schizophrenia about Harry Potter books is confusing. First it was good, now it's evil. I am going to let you in on a little secret.

Although you have never seen your boss, nor heard from him, you belive you have a boss. Even though you never got a message from him that you didn't need to decipher wether this is a random incident or a memo from your boss, you still need to believe in your boss. That's fine. I cannot dispute that fact. Believing in it is your job security. But living your life in this kind of belief may compromise your judgement, and therefore I am compelled to inform you:

Magic does not exist.

Harry Potter cannot fly with a broom in real life. There are no spells and witchcraft. In the books you have to use your imagination to make Harry fly and in the movies it is only special effects. You can find out more about special effects if you check for example Industrial Light And Magic's webpage. (Please note: The "magic" part in ILM's name does not mean they do real magic.) You cannot gather mana and you cannot wave a magic wand and do miracles. Doing miracles is the sole right of your boss, if he exists. Also, there are no Dementors, nor Basilisks. No Thestrals nor Griffins. They are figments of J.K. Rowling's imagination. The milestone in Alchemy, the philosopher's stone does not exist either. You cannot convert lead to gold without the help of science. And our current level of science doesn't even work that well. We can create lighter atoms from heavier ones, like Uranium and Plutonium. And we have the basic knowledge how to convert hydrogene into helium. But we can't even get the latter one to work sufficiently. So don't be alarmed for the philosopher's stone and converting lead to gold either.

I know it is easy to mix up the fictional books, but remember this rule of thumb: Your book tells that it is real. J.K. Rowling has never tried to tell us that Harry Potter really exists. She says the character is fictional and as a matter of fact the book can be found under the section called "fantasy". Please try to separate your book from other books that do not claim to be true, but in fact honesty tell you they are fiction.

While I'm at it, I will hereby inform you that Smurfs don't exist either. So no worries about Gargamel making a magical potion out of Smurfs. There's no Saruman and no Merlin, nor Wicked Witch of the West. Mickey Mouse is an animated character who had been drawn to wear a wizard's apprentice's clothes in Fantasia.

For me Smurfs, the Bible and Discworld books are as fictional. But Smurfs and Discworld have less writing staff. I would recommend that stick to one fantasy land and discard the fear of others. If you play Dungeons & Dragons and immediately after that Nethack, you might mix up characters, as Cacodemon and Floating Eye are actually the same character. As a player that would make a small difference in real life, but as your job is to prove one fantasy-world exists, I would stick to only one, if I were you.

If you have irrational fears of other fictional characters, please do not be afraid to seek help. There are professional people who are trained to deal with people with this kind of delusions.

Some Sort Of Carrot-Casserole And Sauce

We didn't have any potatoes. But we had carrots. How to replace potato with carrots?

Carrot-Casserole

Something from carrots... I know! In Christmas we eat carrot-casserole. Why not making mashed-potatoes meets carrot-casserole thingie?

Ok, something like ... couple of carrots less than a kilo? Some broccoli, the rest from the fridge. Steam them. Use about 6-7dl of water. Add some dill. When the carrots are soft, mash them. Use the water to boil about a cup of rice. Boil until the water is gone. Mash the rice, too. Add about half a litre of milk and couple of eggs. 4 gloves of garlic, spices, like white pepper and basil and such. When it's a mush, add in buttered (oiled if you're vegetarian - milk replacement comes later - and instead of eggs, I guess some corn flour works?) oven tray and in ... somewhere between 150 and 200 decrees of Celsius in the oven, until the milk has been absorbed. About an hour I'd say.

Sauce

Big onion. Chop, fry. Add about half a kilo of minced beef. (Potato and/or swede or broccoli or whichever hard veggie you wish can replace meat for veggie stuff. Consistency should be quite hard, though - so no boiling the broccoli too much, you hear?) Spice it up. Pepper mix, white pepper, paprika powder, cinnamon, parsley, chives... what have you. Cinnamon is one of the key ingredients. Add some of that. When it's fried, put it aside. Add butter (or oil if you are vegetarian.) and flour. Do not clean the pan in the mean time. We want all that flavour. When the flour is brown, add water.

Take a sip of beer, and pour some beer in. Chop the rest of your yellow, red and green paprika you find in the fridge in the mix. The couple of red chilies you have left, chopped in to the pot. And about 4-5 gloves of garlic. A tomato pyre can in. Oh, we just used the last of the milk and we have no cream... Hm. Oh, some coconut milk that my housemate didn't use when he made curry yesterday. Let's use that. I guess this goes quite well in the casserole, too, if you don't want to use milk.

A splash of beer, some more spices and a tiny bit more of cinnamon (but don't over-do it), and that's it. Food is ready.

Wow?! That was actually quite good! Have to do this again some time.

Crosses

I went to take the trash out last night and noticed I got stuck in a comic book.
I took a picture of it:

I think it's time to open a Flickr account.

In the morning when I came home, I noticed Ronsu / Ephelant was still doing the same song:

Ronsu Was Doing Music (Again)

My housemate Ronsu was doing some music - again. Too concentrated to even notice I took a picture of him.

Multibillion Weapons Deal Between USA And Saudi-Arabia

In the 80's the gallant people of Afganistan had a CIA funded group called Muhajeddin fighting the evil Russians. This group later became al-Qaeda and is a very bad group nowadays. Now that Iraq's resources have been secured, Iran seems to be the next logical evil. To fight this evil USA is making a new advanced weaponry deal of $20 billion. If it would be any other country I would be careful to accept this kind of weaponry, as history has taught us that if you are a friend now and buy weapons, you might be evil later and because of the weapons the seller has an excuse attack.

It also helps if Saudis would bite the hand that feeds by, for example, following Saddam's 2001 example and accepting Euro, which is so evil that Saddam was put in the same group as some Saudi attackers.

But in this case it may not be so. In the case of those Saudi attackers, the blame was on another country. Middle-East is far away and one can easily mix up Saudi-Arabia with Afganistan. As I said, this new deal may not be dangerous for Saudis. They do own several percentage of US economy and it would be dumb for a country to attack its own economy. And I don't believe Saudi-owned companies manufacture margarine, so in oil and weaponry fields the percentage may be even higher.

It is only natural to secure oil reserves, if a country is highly addicted to it. That's why there is no interference for example in Mogadishu, where oil cannot be found in such masses. There is no government there and it is ruled by several clans. Yet, there's no massive bombing-for-peace operation. Middle-East has a lot of oil and sending troops to secure the oil may cost lifes, it is safer to ship enormous amounts of weaponry there and let them kill each other out. When they are weak enough, it's easier to control.

This is not morals, nor approval of actions. Merely observations of the actions. All we need now is the politics to justify it all. Luckily the reasons can be made up also afterwards.

Thank You Afrika!

I made some African-style food today.

Sweet potato, fried green banana, rice, white fish and tomato-chili sauce.

Fish:
Chop a handful of red chili in tiny pieces. (I removed the seed, as they are bitter.)
Add a lot of Blair's After Death sauce. (To get the hotness you miss when you remove the seed.)
Soak the fish in it and let it stay a while.
Fry it last.

Leave fish out for vegan food. Works brilliantly without.

Tomato sauce:
Handful of red chili. Without seed.
Add Blair's Possible Side Effects. Just few drops. (I used only 4-5 drops.)
Backbag full of tomato. Peeled.
I cheated. I used also a bit of tomato pyre.
Had some paprika in the fridge. Threw that in, too.
Spices. (Pepper mix, garam masala -the Indian stuff, kurkuma, cinnamon, stuff like that.)
4 gloves of garlic. This one is not that garlicky.
Flour.

Boil until it's sauce.

Green banana is just fried in oil. Sweet potato and rice are boiled. (I steamed the potato.)


And you eat it with your hand. Make a cup with your fingers and use the thumb to make the food in a ball-kinda-form.

Echt lekker!

Buy My Anti-Capitalist Product

Lego

I like Legos. Haven't played with them for ... I don't know, 20 years?

A friend of mine had a houseparty. I went there right after work. I start my work usually a bit earlier than others, so I finish an hour before the rest of the city finishes. I went directly to my friend's place. No-one else was there yet.

But there was Legos.

A lot of Legos.

I made a castle. Had to. If you have almost unlimited amount of Legos and they have been sorted that gray and blue blocks are in one box, misc in one, space Legos in one and so on.

It was cool. When the other guests arrived, they had funny faces. A guy, almost 30, is playing with Legos on a small children's chair.

I didn't care.

I like Legos.