Synchronized dogmas

Pigs or Towels?

2007-05-25T03:36:00.000-08:00

Today is a day before weekend which is right before the National Elbonian Military Day, which is a national holiday. This means that today we work only up to noon, and on Monday we do not work at all. Great news for almost all concerned - except for pigs. Why pigs?

Well, Elbonian national cuisine revolves around pigs and grill. There is no better way to celebrate a national holiday then with a nice grill - which means that today is Black Friday for pigs. They shall die in thousands. God bless their..well, spirits, I suppose, since learned theologians tell us that pigs have no souls. In this regard, they* are somewhat similar to communists, atheists, robots and foreign cars, at least according to US extreme right wing Christians.

Some elements of Elbonia are more patriotic then others, and I happen to work in just such an element. More patriotic, in this case, means that we have started with grilled pigs already today, and this whole long Friday seems to be marked by smells of grilled food, free beer and of course, our 2nd most favorite national sport, grilled pig wrestling. The rules for this sport are simple and brutal, and usually a bigger pig wins. Since I am relatively small pig, I thought that all that jazz is really not for me, and decided instead to celebrate The International Towel Day, by writing my blog, wearing towel, and loudly reciting the wonderful Vogon poetry to any unfortunate who wanders close by.

All this talk of pigs reminded my that I should remind my readers that Elbonia is not unique in her love for pigs - we share it with our spiritual neighbour, Israel. Pigs are beloved in both our countries, and we treat them with great respect, kinda like we treat our cousins. There might, after all, be something true in that ancient legend of Elbonians being a lost 23rd tribe of Israel...

Prostetnik Vogon Jeltz's immortal poem that I recite today:

"Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't!
Gashee morphousite, thou expungiest quoopisk!Fripping lyshus wimbgunts, awhilst moongrovenly kormzibs.Bleem miserable venchit! Bleem forever mestinglish asunder frapt!Gerond withoutitude form into formless bloit, why not then? Moose."

*Pigs, of course, not theologians.

Moose.

Swords and Squids (also, Swords against everything except Squid)

2007-05-24T00:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, me and a bunch of my friends (of whom a surprising number were connected with physics) went to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Don't read any further if you don't want to know anything from the movie in advance - things like this one:

The God is black, and is a women. :)

I had an enormous amount of fun watching the movie, despite the outrageous hollywoodiness* of most of the movie-probably due to some completely acid-trippy far out scenes that are probably too weird and incomprehensible for anyone that *hasn't* been on a far out acid trip. Fun! :)

Of course, this movie really wouldn't be worth mentioning if it weren't for the inimitable Johnny Depp, who is the perfect embodiment of the Hunter S. Thompson's vision of "one of God's own prototypes-too weird to live, to unique to die". Depp's portrayal of Cptn Jack Sparrow is, I admit, the only reason why I went to see the movie in the first place. His slightly swaying, constantly drunk super-lucid character, combined with by far the best lines given to any character in Pirates, are so much like what I feel most of the time, that I can not but love both him, his character and the movie itself. To misquote one of my favorite moments: "No-body move! I just dropped me brains!" :)

Coupled with that, the movie has some awesome camera moments: Apple-commercial like scenes in which Jack is pulling his ship on a rope, while stone crabs are watching, great scenes of ships disintegrating under cannon fire, Steve from Coupling, Cpt. Teach playing guitar, Legolas..er, Orlando Bloom, yes, fightin' for justice, evil chinamen, dead Englishmen, weird songs coupled with mass hangings, undead monkeys fired from cannon, dumb Englishmen, Shakespearean minor characters, dead giant squids, sword that everyone looks at (for no readily apparent reason), compass that tells the obvious, toy lead soldiers, smarmy Englishmen, Star Wars flying scooter scenes, the best squid pirate argument speech ever, 9 pieces of 8 (and no Star Trek references!!), honourable but confused Englishmen, extinct volcanoes, the guy named Larry, conversation about pirate's lack of vocabulary, Cthulhu tentacle moments galore, Englishmen being hacked to pieces by fishmen, and conversation about reasons why having fishmen as a crew leads to lack of discipline, at least 2 Nautilus moments (submarines exploding out of the sea). Also, you can see Keira Knightly's feet. They get more coverage then even squid, which to me is a sure sign of foot fetishists on board the producing crew.

Mmmmm. Keira Knightly. :)

"Mmmm! Peanut!" Cpt. Sparrow

* Hollywoodiness is when movie: has inspirational music playing in the background when some major character extolls other people to die for freedom, has scenes of impossible swordplay in improbable places, when bad people die just before they do something nasty to good people, when every major character has great teeth, when English fleet runs away after they lose one ship, when German forces retreat after losing one tank, when pirate towns look like Disneyworld sets, when major characters fight bad guys and get married at the same moment, when large numbers of redshirts die for no apparent reason, undead monkeys, evil Chinamen, magicaly regenerating ships, giant squid for no apparent reason, extinct volcanoes for no apparent reason, 50 feet women for no apparent reason, scrumping, people breaking off parts of their body due to cold, things exploding for no apparent reason, penniless Frenchmen, etc, etc.

Minister

2007-05-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

A pictorial comparison of Elbonian Minister of Agriculture with our favorite american superhero, CitizenPrime (friday post). Are they actually the same person? Their methods of work do seem comparable, as well as their choice of clothing!

A weird day

2007-05-04T03:13:00.000-08:00

Today started with, of all things, a RL pikachu lookalike (and I am not talking about my gf) on some German T-shirts. It turns out that this pikachu is an actual weirdo deep-sea octopus from genus Grimpotheutis, and not just another Elbonian politician in superhero disguise. Life seems to be stranger then fiction...and sometimes it just looks like something out of Call of Cthulhu.
The actual weirdness of the day started earlier in the morning, when my cousin and me (driving in his red Clitmobi...er, Batmobile) almost run over a middle aged hippie bicyclist who spontaneously (and suddenly) decided to use all 4 lanes of a rather busy crossroads to drive in circles, while listening to ipod thingie. The incident reinforced my belief that ipod thingies are devilish devices designed to weed out certain strains of genes from humanity's gene pool.
Which brings me to bacterial sex, a subject of some interest, which unfortunately, I never have time for. It seems to be *the* process for an entrepreneurial gene hacker/nanotech gadgeteer, especially when it is combined with the ultimate in geek niftiness, the portable DNA copier. According to wonderfully named Mr. Ugaz ("Stepped in" in Elbonian language), this truly revolutionary device (for dictators of small countries with no oil, for example) seems to work on principles akin to lava lamp - a device that enthralled and still enthralls hundreds of thousands of students who love nature.
Seriously, though, a cheap and portable DNA copier is just one step away from making a cheap and reliable Von Neumann machine factory. Since the best machines on nano-scales seem to be biological molecules (usually encoded by RNA or DNA), we only need to find a cheap and reliable device that creates cell-like environment, and bingo! we have our own nanotech factories. In a few years, we might end up exchanging DNA and RNA strands for cool new designer bacteria and cellular factory products ;)
This would be hot, if it weren't for the fact that other people wrote about it many years ago. It was also probably done in Simpsons, since it seems that every other good idea was done in Simpsons, too.
In the meantime, I was hijacked from my work by a friend who came nearby to plunder the military library-they were about to burn some old books (because that is what military libraries do - why sell or recycle when you can have a big bonfire?) and he wanted to take interesting tidbits for himself. While talking to him and his colleagues, I heard the most wonderful story about the men who managed to break his own leg while sleeping in his bed. This same person is (in)famous in Elbonian military for his enigmatic cloud of extreme clumsiness - he managed to fall under our Navy flagship while carrying extremely expensive video equipment (they dragged him out with a pole), he routinely manages to find uncovered manholes to fall into, etc. Of course, if there is a female of the species present anywhere on the scene, the results are even worse - another poor geek who probably won't breed. Because I am a small hearted person, I laughed very hard and secretly felt relieved in knowledge that there is someone clumsier then me.
Which brings me to duck genitalia. Which are weird and disturbing in too many ways.

The worst!

2007-05-03T03:42:00.000-08:00

..fantasy novel ever! :)

"Grignr threw his hands up to shield his face, and flung himself backwards upon his buttocks. A fuzzy form bounded to his hairy chest, burying its talons in his flesh while gnashing toward his throat with its grinding white teeth;its sour, fetid breath scortching the sqirming barbarians dilating nostrils. Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular, as its beady grey organs of sight glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.
Taking hold of the rodent around its lean, growling stomach with both hands Grignr pried it from his crimson rent breast, removing small patches of flayed flesh from his chest in the motion between the squalid black claws of the starving beast. Holding the rodent at arms length, he cupped his righthand over its frothing face, contrcting his fingers into a vice-like fist over the quivering head. Retaining his grips on the rat, grignr flexed his outstretched arms while slowly twisting his right hand clockwise and his left hand counter clockwise motion. The rodent let out a tortured squall, drawing scarlet as it violently dug its foam flecked fangs into the barbarians sweating palm, causing his face to contort to an ugly grimace as he cursed beneath his braeth.
With a loud crack the rodents head parted from its squirming torso, sending out a sprinking shower of crimson gore, and trailing a slimy string of disjointed vertebrae, snapped trachea, esophagus, and jugular, disjointed hyoid bone, morose purpled stretched hide, and blood seared muscles."

Addiction hits again

2007-05-03T02:48:00.000-08:00

This is my 7th day without EVE...it is getting really really hard...tribbles...nooo...

So I went back to the roots of my space addiction - science! Ever since I was a small kid, I wanted to be a "space scientist". For a very brief period it almost happened - but then I decided to return to Elbonia, and this dream of mine stayed unfulfilled. Still, I try to keep up with news from my favorite field. I understand that technicalities of orbital mechanics are not fun reading for everyone, so I shall just post pictures. :)

Also, fresh from Jupiter! A storm is brewing! Is it yet another yachting championship for Dwellers?

More Denial

2007-05-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

For those who don't like numbers, just read the second part of the paper. Also, report on the subject that is very similar to the one being taught in our own Elbonian schools.

Denial

2007-04-30T06:19:00.000-08:00

I am not bashing on religion, per se. :)

For no particular reason at all

2007-04-30T06:09:00.000-08:00

..other then withdrawal syndrome from my addiction: EVE

Elbonian Defense

2007-04-30T03:38:00.000-08:00

This Monday is an interrupt in my long weekend. Since tomorrow is a state holiday (Elbonians traditionally celebrate International Work(ers) Day by not working)*, vast numbers of my countrymen have decided to take a day off and just enjoy one really nice, relaxed and long weekend. Unfortunately for me, due to bureaucratic difficulties in moving various multicolored pieces of paper throughout the system on time, I actually have to work today. This is not too bad, though, since the rest of the firm's employees don't have to work, and so I have zero work to do.

I decided to catch up with the news.

First thing that I saw was that our own Minister of Love held a joint (meaning, Air Force, Navy and Army) military exercise for the benefit of an elementary school class (in Elbonia, class is about 40 kids). This is slightly strange, for two reasons: a) the exercise was held in Elbonian capital, which has no sea, and b) it was held *in* the capital itself, in military depot/garrison in one of the suburbs, instead of the more usual approach to hold it in the nearby swamp, err, field exercise complex. The apparent reason why the exercise was held at all, was because of our Minister's son, who had to bring his parent to school to tell about his work. Our beloved Minister decided not to give a speach to a class of 10 year olds, but instead opted to bring the school to his work. His son is now officially the coolest kid in his school.

According to the people in flats neighboring the base, the show was not too exciting - no military policemen fell out of the helicopters (like the last time a public exercise was staged).
How much did it cost? Well, far less then an U.S. day in Irak, and actually comparable with the cost of a day for our Elbonian troops in Jerka Jerkastan.

I say, money well spent.

All the other news were full of eulogies for our main opposition party leader, who died last night. Since in times past he was a leader of communist party, declared atheist (after meeting Pope John Paul, he decided he was "only" an agnostic), then leader of the social-democrat party, I found it rather strange that most of the articles focus on how he "accepted the faith", even though there is no evidence for it (he recently explicitly stated that he is not a believer). I mean, what the heck?! When did our Elbonian Catholic Church manage to hijack our newspapers?!
I suppose that many famous deathbed conversions originally started up as a story in religion-influenced newspapers..;)

Shaking my head, I surfed some more and I found out about recent interview of our Minister of Economics (the chubby guy-his team wore "Cho" T-shirts) who showed his complete ignorance of not only economics, but also the professional jargon. He managed to get an interview on TV after which everyone who knows anything about economics probably started to sell his government bonds and move their stock portfolios into other countries, like Hrbia and Crotoboltavia, who seem to have marginally more competent ministers (even though most of them had at some point of their past been unsuccessfull premiere league soccer club managers, crime kingpins, warlords, war crime suspects, state monopolists and local firefighting society presidents, kinda like our minister himself).

This was the moment I decided to just go away and watch some undead seafood instead.

* Traditionally, we all go out to a park and eat charity bean soup.

Bruce

2007-04-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

I spent my last weekend wallowing in my geek roots - visiting local SF convention (SFerakon). I had great amounts of fun, even though the "grown up" parts of my brain were stopping me from engaging in some of the more outrageous activities (like SFerakon Survivor, an activity that looks like a weird younger brother of Fear Factor and Edward Elizabeth Hitler's idea of a nice dinner). Guest of Honor was Bruce Sterling, who was awesome, even up close and personal, even though he is generally an unpleasant person. So why awesome?

Well, he managed to future shock us. :)

Imagine this: a room full of Elbonian SF fans - most of them young, some of them Trekkies, about third of them are either science students or scientist, the rest is usual mix of SMOFs, SFoldster/burnouts and wandering outsiders. All of them think that they are cool, in touch with technopulse, living at the edge of today's imagination, proud in their utter geekiness. Zoom on the speaker: early 50ties red faced, grey haired potbellied glasses-wearing geek, talking with nasal Texas drawl about 20db louder then is actually needed. He looks unhappy and annoyed*, and is taking it all out at us - by subjecting us to each and every one of our favorite SF fantasies (that we never before though of as fantasies) and systematically destroying them.
When I say destroying them, I am being nice: he takes our cherished ideas by their neck, twists them around, cuts them into little pieces, jumps up and down on them, digs a hole, throws them in, pisses on that and drops a huge tombstone on top. When he kills an idea, it stays dead.

At first I was shocked. Then I looked at the audience and saw that unforgettable "deer in headlights" stare on their faces, and almost burst out from laughter. It was so funny! All these ubergeeks being geeked over by a 50+y.o. nerd from Texas (who probably voted republican ;)!!
He was especially nasty towards anything that (in my opinion) smelled of fairy tale new ageism - things like singularity, AI, religion (quote: "if you believe in that, you might as well believe in holy trinity and transubstantiation", which made some people very angry :), and impending golden age brought to us through technology. He also seems to have a red button thingie about climate change - very vehement against people who don't believe in it - almost funny to watch while he elaborates all the bad things that are going to happen, whatever we do. Somehow, though, he still managed to come off as an optimist - world *can* be saved, if rich people decide so. Which is something I find incomprehensible (probably due to not being rich) - why would someone who built his business empire by taking advantage of global commons (our biosphere), decide to repair the damage? That person, after all, isn't going to have problems finding clean water, air, etc. - being rich means that you have access to resources denied to the rest of the population. But I digress.

After Sterling's panel, we all walked out feeling a bit like being hit by a near-light speed proton stream. He held two more panels in the coming days, and I definitely felt old and out of date by the end of it - though still determined to catch up. :)

I am not yet ready to go and visit Mount Fuji, I think....

* Possibly due to not being served enough beer while being harassed by very 20th cen. sf nerds. I do remember that he didn't listen very closely to questions we asked him, but then again, he heard it all, so many many times before...:)

Why Cathedral?

2007-04-11T06:03:00.000-08:00

Well, one of my reasonably close friends (meaning, reasonable *and* close) is a freelance artist/industrial designer. His works range from designing shampoo bottles to making bronze microcast objects to re-creating historical statues on new-built lakes (as weird as it sounds). The problem that he has is that he very rarely actually gets paid for his work. The last case is, of course, connected to the Cathedral. As long as two years ago, he was preparing a multimedia project for one of Cathedral's outer towers, on order from No.2 guy in our unofficial Church hierarchy (ie, the guy with money who was not an archbishop). The project was pretty huge and promised to bring substantial profit for my friend. Well, he worked pretty hard, and when he completed most of the project documentation, he gave it for review to that same No.2.
Few weeks ago, I was reading a newspaper, and in it was a 2 page article about a new multimedia project planned for the Cathedral, in which my friend's name was conspicuously absent. Not only was it absent, but another name was mentioned as an author, a name of a female architect who is known to be close to the current major of my city. The details of the project were the same as those that I knew about from talking with my friend, so it obviously wasn't some other project ordered parallel with this one.
I asked my friend about this, but he refused to talk about this.
It seems that the complete project was shamelessly stolen by Church, and given to others. I suppose that this is also a way to finance the rebuilding of the Cathedral. :/

The Cathedral update

2007-03-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

It is now 17 years since the beginning of the restoration of the cathedral, and it finally dawned on some that rate of limestone melt is higher then the rate of cathedral restoration. A flurry of fund raising ensued, such as selling of restored church property in the historic district of town to new shopping/office centre being built by local general (who escaped to Austria when it was discovered that he may have taken a few bags of jewels when he left his office in Elbonian MoD few years ago), or prisoners gathering used PET bottles for recycling (about 12 bottles for a US dollar). Somehow that did not raise quite as much money as was needed, so more radical solutions are contemplated. Current church officials are talking about opening a restaurant/beerhouse in one of the old defensive cathedral towers. Supposedly it will not only bring money for the restoration, but will also attract young believers back to the church.
If you think that this is slightly weird, you should know that famous elbonian Cathedral of Đakovo has a chimney sticking out of it.

Our Cathedral

2007-03-07T04:08:00.000-08:00

My town was a proud owner of the Europe's most magnificent Romanic cathedral until the unfortunate earthquake in the last half of the 19th century. Church and city fathers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to rebuild the cathedral and make it bigger, better and older, by rebuilding it in (neo) Gothic style. Since money was scarce, they used the local stone quarry which produces a distinctive yellow tinged soft stone. Needless to say, 20th century car industry has not proven a great friend to soft yellow limestone (acid rains and such), so most of the Gothic lacework on the cathedral melted away. Despite the fact that because of its half molten appearance, our cathedral stopped being a run-of-the mill neogothic thingie and started to look like Gaudiesqe Sacrada, our infinitely wise church and city fathers decided to restore it back to its (non-original) neogothic yellowstone splendor. Since money was scarce, they decided to use the local stone quarry with its yellow tinged limestone.

The proud card owner

2007-03-07T04:04:00.000-08:00

My repeated petitioning to get a security card so that I could pass through the building unhindered was rebuffed with various bureaucratic excuses (same ones that prevent them for giving me lunch in official restaurant) and thinly veiled accusations. I decided to embark on a voyage of revenge, and so I picked up security cards from all my colleagues that recently left for 6 month vacation in Jerka Jerkastan (wonderful country full of good intentioned people immortalized in such movies as "Team America", "9-11" and others.). I shall hold and use these security cards, security cards that rule them all, security cards that find them, security cards that bring them all and in darkness bind them!
.. until they finally relent.
Truly, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The doors update

2007-03-07T03:58:00.000-08:00

My office has one of those high security doors which can only be opened with key card, keys, tv-camera phone-like-device in the office, and anyone leaning hard enough on them. This last bit was a bit worrying, so someone in the hierarchy called the company that installs these doors to come and take a look at it. So two weeks ago, a grey haired guy appears and starts to take our door apart. Since we only work in the office, and he was, strictly speaking, working outside our office, everyone decided that he was Somebody Else's Problem. This grey haired guy continued to fiddle with the door until lunchtime, when he explained (to random person passing by, in this case, me) that he has to call other guys, and that the problem is going to be solved tomorrow. The door could not be closed any more.
Next day, three more persons appear and start fiddling with the door (mainly trying to slam it close as hard as possible to see if that would lock them). After some time, they gave up and left saying that they need to call the chief master repairmen guy, who is going to come tomorrow and definitively solve the problem. The door still couldn't be closed.
The following day that grey haired person appears again, starts to fiddle with the door. After slamming it really hard a few times, he proclaims (to the random person passing by, in this case, again me) that the problem is in the tiny delicate spring mechanism in the lock, probably broken because "someone was slamming the door too hard". He takes apart the lock, starts shaking his head, puts most of the pieces back together and leaves.
Nobody else appeared next day, or ever after.
The door still can't be closed, and as added bonus, anyone who tries to open the door is left standing with the door handle in his hand.

The chairs update

2007-03-07T03:57:00.001-08:00

Sometime between my posts a bunch of boss creatures appeared in the office, demanding to see the chairs in the back room. Some confusion ensued when they discovered that all the chairs are in red leather, instead of just the boss-intended ones. After this, some other people arrived and took all the chairs into the hallway in front of our office. One of my bosses appeared, and decided to take as many chairs as we needed for our office, and paperwork be damned (a sure sign that this particular boss is close to retirement). The others are still in the hallway in front of our office, and, I suppose, they still don't officially exist.

After a long pause

2007-02-28T03:22:00.000-08:00

I am more or less back. As always, RL has a tendency to jump at us shouting "Aaargh!" when we least expect it. For the last few weeks I have been wrestling with increasingly bizarre series of incidents that strengthened my dogmatic convictions about human stupidity (vaster then the Universe), evils of multinational companies (IKEA as Satan's servant on Earth), incompetence of various home repairmen (the law of conservation of broken things in the house), office space (staplers as the ultimate tool in office wars) and general theory of disorganization (number of levels of hierarchy is proportional to the number of levels of confusion at the bottom). But more of that later! :)

I am glad that at least some chose to ask me things about blog (such as: Who am I? or: why are there no new posts?), since I like knowing that people read it. So, thank you! :)

My thought of the day revolves around the new book by famous Elbonian Admiral Baado, ex chief of military intel, in which he explains in great detail the connections between Americans, New Atlantis, French Revolution, Bolysheviks, 2nd meeting of AVNOJ in Jajce and coming of the Antichrist. A must read for those who are "in the know".
The book's name is, of course, "The Attack of the Clones".

Sleep disorder induced thingie

2007-02-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

Elbonia is having another grey rainy day, which means that my Net connection is almost as slow and patchy as my morning mind. In vain hopes of finding a brain stimulant, I stumbled through the stairwell to the coffee machine, dodging boss-creatures and ignoring door-waiters, but to my surprise and horror, the coffee machine was spectacularly out of order, with pools of slowly congealing brown liquid spread all over the carpet. A horrified witness gibbered something about coffee exploding through the paper cup jammed just inside the machine dispenser while someone was shaking the whole machine, probably caught in instant coffee-deprivation rage when he discovered that his hard earned coins did not produce immediate gratification. Dodging boss-creatures and ignoring door-waiters, I stumbled back to my office.

Dejectedly searching for some other way of waking up, I found out that fatherhood affects dendritic spines and vasopressin V1a receptors in the primate prefrontal cortex, through the mechanism possibly connected to either its diuretic properties* or modification of male sexual behaviour and aggression, while also finding out that arginine vasopressin is present and active in suprachiasmatic nucleus, part of our brain that regulates circadian rhythms. I also found out that DARPA is spending about 100 million $ a year on sleep-related research, in hopes of finding a way to make soldiers "less dependent on sleep", while also contemplating civilian spin-offs for people "who need an edge". Methods used to achieve that goal range from low-power DC pumped through subject's head, changing magnetic fields from a MI, to certain legal and experimental drugs (Modafinil, Ampakine CX717 ). On the way I also stumbled on an ethical questions arising from afore mentioned research - namely, if poorer cognitive environment actually diminishes our minds (or stops their development), then such poverty is not only a social dimension, but also a condition that undermines our biological basis of being. Should we not then spend more effort on changing such conditions?

At approximately this point in my readings my boss came in and asked me to go and get him some coffee from nearby caffee, since he accidentally bumped the coffee machine in the morning and it mysteriously stopped working.

Quote of the morning:

"The viability of postsingularity economy of scarcity is indicated by the transition from an indirection-layer-based economy using markers of exchange of goods and services to a tree-structured economy characterized by optimal allocation of productivity systems in accordance with iterated tit-for-tat prisoner's dilemma."

7th Sister of Stratagems of the Clade of Critics, Criticizing a leader of a rebellion.

* A very bad attempt at a peeing joke.

The Day

2007-02-14T05:40:00.000-08:00

.. since today is exactly two years from the infamous "Breasts" incident, I want to thank Red Verne of Doom for saving me from fate worse then (some) death(s) by unforgettably pointing the right direction to me. Thank you! :)

P.S. This may be considered a public way of saying the dreaded words* by some of the more acute readers.

* "I love you"

Friends again

2007-02-14T03:11:00.000-08:00

When I was first expressing thanks to all my friends, I thought I would just list the first few that were floating in my mind's temp.reg, but that produced some unwanted problems. Some of you wanted to know which of the listed names corresponds to you, some wanted to know whether they are on the list, and some wanted to know why they aren't on the list. Since it was not my intention to publish an actual complete list of my friends (almost impossible, not in the least because I can never remember all of them at the same time - some of them are such memorable characters that my mind floats back to "reset" mode whenever I think of them :), I was baffled by the response. It seems that in order to calm the spirits I shall have, after all, to atempt to list all my friends (that I can currently remember) and that I dedicate this blog to :
(in no particular order)
Mary Shelly, Strom, Big Ktulu, Princess K, Bloodhimir, Amandanmanregge, Gorak, Tsushima, Monacococo, Red Dwarf, Mika the Coyotte, Bukva the Terrible, Morning Twinkle Star, Tango Beast, The Wife of the Tango Beast, Toma the non-Aquinus, Toma's Legs, Birch the Petrodollar, NetAtommathethician, 90days of Hell, Various Majas, Mario Pilatus, Calligraphy Mario, Ana the Tooth (not faery), Wishy the May, Princess Faith, Princess Adriatica, Jean the Gun, Pretty Juanita, their awesome parents and family, Nicko the Music Acid Barbarian, "Excuse my French" Sasha, Furious Orlando and his pointy shoes, our saintly Kathy the Shirt Maker, Download Sasha the Dwur, The Airing Monster, her Calvinia, Denis the UberAccountant, his MiniMe, Sergei the Potato, Marko the ATO king, Black Anne de Fiume, Ogloolga the Smile, Mon the PolPolice, Maruxa the Invincible, that girl that once told me that I was pretty, her sister, the german girl I once met in an airplane, Exploding Mountain Yan, Laconic the Winnipegian, absolutely hyperactive New Zealander and his yellow car, Pretty Sailboat port and her Ivan the Bowling Master, Thomas the (rustic)Wolf and his Estonian crew, Aleksandar of Tashkent, that tango girl from Prague, the whole Slovak tango scene and their beer, French Canadian Bean Soup, Beamy the Scott, 7 virtues of Naomi, remember Rachel, cute tall blonde Dakotan girl who went to medical experiments with me but whose name I forgot, Denise the brasilian pelusch, the Red Verne of Doom, Ewa From Another Dimension, Ana the extremely competent handler of Denis, Hadgina Hadjiya, Velvety Michele (who is, despite his name, a very hairy guy), Bruno "the Grampa", Hrvoje "Birds strikes from behind", Hetero Materialbitch and his close followers, $s, Gliding Luka the Incurable Romantic, Krešo "But, I love you!" God's gift to women, Paula the Blonde, Lucky Oma the Multitasker, Blonde Physics Chick, her Norwegian roomate, Sam Teacher of Croatian Blonde Pilots, Dogsled Amanda, Fluffy (mmmm), all the wonderful UND professors led by unforgetable Granny Lang and prof. Pooch, ND groundhogs (sorry for the machetta incident! Really!), Capt Allen (of Space Command), all the unfortunate Grand Forks children who had to listen to my rambling descriptions of Elbonia as a land of easily available alcohol and topless chics, all the religious missionaries that I terrorized into submission with my impromptou physics lectures, Father Ty, Gorak's red car and its smelly milkshake incident, Green Mill and it's free chicken wings Long Island Tea Thursday specials, Yasmine the chinese florida chick, my amazing blonde sister Didi, all the Native Americans from the Turtle Mountain reservation who taught me ice fishing, horse riding, potato gunning, pretending to be Russian while they shoplift 50 pound bags of dog food despite having no dogs, rabbit hunting, tax evading, wonderful native cuisine and trading anything not nailed down, and once again this wonderful ND family who took me in as if I were one of their own despite my obvious religious shortcomings and abysmal chess skills.

Now you know why I didn't want to make a complete list!

Tuesday(s)

2007-02-13T01:58:00.000-08:00

Today is an actual work day in Elbonia. By late yesterday afternoon, all the bosses have gotten a clue about things that were supposed to happen last week, so today they charge hither and thither trying to make their unwilling subjects perform various onerous duties. Since no one has an "it is Monday for Higher Power's sake!" excuse today, and it is still too early in the week for kids to get sick (thus granting sickness leave to their parents), people actually do have to work. It is depressing. Even local weather detects Tuesdays, and rains most often on them*.

To prove my thesis, today I phoned to my colleagues working in the wonderful country of Jerka Jerkastan (which is about three and a half hours ahead in time, and thus perfect for finding out about weather, but not far enough that it could be used to find out the winning lottery numbers), well known for its nice and sunny climate, amazing beaches that go on forever, and local inhabitants who are almost as religious and almost as well armed as average North Dakotans. I asked my colleagues questions about the weather, and of course, it is raining there too. They said that it was raining there for the whole last week, and that it felt like a really really long Tuesday. Not even the occasional rocket (launched by the well meaning locals who sincerely believe that this is the fastest way to find out the Truth about their religion) could dispel the gloom of the long, dark, world-wide Tuesday, they complained.

Them being true Elbonians, rain did not stop them from a having a traditional light lunch.

*When it doesn't fall on Rain God (Rob McKenna), of course.

More Office Space

2007-02-12T06:50:00.000-08:00

As you might have gathered, the organization of which I am a small and insignificant part, is not really known for its great management. For example, I work in an office of about 12 people, 3 computers, 4 desks and exactly 3 chairs. Whoever arrives earliest grabs the free chair, while the rest of the bunch then dejectedly wander around the office, pretending to work. This is, understandably, quite difficult, since most of their work requires computers. Some of the more adventurous go out for coffee, but that means confronting the infamous door problem, and because of the positioning of the coffee machines, braving the accidental encounters with the boss subclass*. This is to be avoided at all costs, since all the bosses have chairs, and thus suppose that everyone else has them too, and therefore that everyone else should be working and not drinking coffee. Needless to say, most of the bosses come from Crotoboltavia.

If you think that this situation is absurd, heh, you also need to know that my office has a small storage room at the back. This storage room is completely filled with expensive looking red leather chairs. Of course, we are not allowed to use them, since they arrived without anyone signing any papers, and therefore, they do not exist.

*Boss subclass is also recognized by their more expensive but less well tailored suits and mirror glasses with expensive writing on them.

Monday Shmonday

2007-02-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

Life in my home country of Elbonia is strange and mystifying, especially when it relates to work habits of us, native Elbonians. If you listen to us speak, we spend enormous amounts of time working, usually for incompetent bosses imported from neighbouring country Crotoboltavia (world famous for its ancestral Elbonian wild mountain tribes and such fashion statements as white socks with suits and black shoes). If you actually visit Elbonia, you are going to find that all the coffeehouses seem to be full of the people, all the time, and that all of them claim to be on a short coffee break from their incompetent Crotoboltavian bosses. Of course, although incompetent, Crotoboltavians are crafty montagnards and quite often spend the whole day searching for their employees - usually by going from coffeehouse to coffeehouse themselves.

Some of us are lucky, and work for government companies, agencies, departments and the rest of the metastasizing kafkian apparatus of state. For us, the whole work question is quite irrelevant, especially when compared to really important issues like whether the weekly allotment of toilet paper arrived, who bought which of the daily newspapers (and of course, coordination issues for prevention of duplication of effort when buying or reading the same), whose turn is it to spend time and patience convincing the corner coffee machine to produce some liquid almost totally, but not quite, different then the coffee you asked for, etc, etc..

For example, I recently transferred into a new office, quite a bit higher up in the hierarchy of government. This office is part of a highly secretive and paranoid part of state apparatus, witch uses staggering security measures (quite alien to our easy-going Elbonian ways) such as security cards for opening doors, no coffee machines* in hallways and actual internal camera system. Because this is a secretive state apparatus, all the employees are required to wear suits (or for women, whatever haute mode is current) and black mirror glasses, which makes them highly inconspicuous in the middle of the military complex where the offices are situated. It also makes them highly inconspicuous on any public event which they, by the nature of their job, have to attend. To remind my foreign readers, in Elbonia men traditionally wear sweats, white socks and black leather jackets in public.

There also seems to exist a slight problem with the security cards for all the exterior and interior doors. These were part of a system inherited from previous inhabitants of that office building - a local HQ of an UN peacekeeping mission. This ancient technology (early 90s) in the meantime lost all of its accompanying manuals, most of the security cards themselves as well as the means to make new ones. So this secretive group of government officials is forced to wait around entrance and interior doors until the lucky card-bearer appears, all the time, of course, acting inconspicuously. Some enterprising individuals have in the mean time discovered alternative means of opening doors - it seems that card readers sometimes react positively to various pieces of colored paper, personal ID cards, and in at least one observed case, a briefcase.

You can imagine the scene: a small group of suits waits around entrance to an old building, pretending that they are just passing by or smoking a cigarette, while all the time watching actions of an unlucky individual who tries to open the door by waving various implements at it. When the door opens, everybody rushes in, while from the opposite side their mirror images try to rush out. Confusion ensues, confusion resolves, the doors close with ominous click, while one last unlucky late individual (running at breakneck speed) hits the door and slides down semiconscious, starting the whole cycle again.
Repeat the scene on every interior wing door.

* This problem was solved by putting all the coffee machines in the stairwell. Of course, that solution just compounded the problem with doors.

Friends

2007-02-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

We all do weird things for our friends. For example, we wake up at 2 a.m. in the middle of North Dakota winter, ride out 40 miles to the nearest "Danger: Moose Crossing" sign and then proceed to take it off with your trusty Swiss knife, all the while contemplating the joys of -40C local temperature, just because your crazy Russian friend has his birthday tomorrow, and you know he appreciates little things like that.

Since I am going to do similar things for my friends here in the wonderful Klein bottle space of blogosphere, and because taking signs off the Internet highway can be dangerous, I decided to take liberty with their names and just plain invent them all over again. Also, I am not going to be consistent with them, since lying is difficult enough without trying to remember exactly what we lied about and when and to whom. So, hello to Mary Shelly, Strom, Big Ktulu, Princess K, Bloodhimir, Amandanmanregge, Gorak, Tsushima, Monacococo, Red Dwarf, Mika the Coyotte, Bukva the Terrible and the rest of the vociferous and highly brain endowed bunch that I am privileged to know and call friends.

Introduction

2007-02-09T05:24:00.000-08:00

Everyone who knows me, knows that I like to talk. A lot. Actually, quite often they refer to me as "The voice that we hear in our heads whenever certain subjects are raised", much to their annoyance. Since being a disembodied voice in the heads of other people is usually reserved for God(s), Demons and Voice of the Wife/Mother, I concluded that a new method of communication is in order.

I envisaged that new method as something that would connect pictures from my mind with the voice of David Attenborough, while having the same impact as Richard Dawkins would on a religious conference. Unfortunately, Google still isn't capable of giving me such an aid - their tech support claimed that it was a good idea and maybe they'll think about it sometimes in the next century. Dang it, foiled again, I thought! But of course, as we all know, evil geniuses never give up! I shall use this inadequate tool to plot the destruc....er, express my reasoned opinion on various issues that conform to my master pl..er, various issues that I like to comment on. There.