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Swamp

Confessions of an Academic Pseudo-Giraffe
31.7.05  
WMD
(images from antibushbumperstickers.com)

Hasn't it been fun to witness such an illuminating example of mass deception put to practise?



Hasn't it been such fun to see how simple mass distraction can be used with extreme efficiency to cover up mass deception?



Isn't it fun to see in such gory detail how true mass destruction works?



Isn't it such fun?
26.7.05  
Click here
Someone I know fairly well just opened a little website here. So far it is not linked anywhere, so whoever follows this link may become the first ever visitor.
24.7.05  
This story is one of the most bizarre and tragic immediate consequences of the London bombs. I think it's apropriate to add that the British police did not just shoot this innocent Brazilian - they shot five bullets in his head while he was lying on the floor. And he was simply on his way to work, on a morning like any other. Another strange fact is that, for a couple of days after this public execution, the victim (who was then still a "suspect") was unanimously referred to as "an Asian man". Judging on the picture, he could perhaps pass for an Arab, like lots of South Americans and at least a billion other people. I suppose the guy could have theoretically come from somewhere east of Cyprus. Hence the Asian label. Quite legitimate, don't you think?

From a wider perspective, this "regrettable incident" has to be seen as a direct consequence of the War on Freedom that George Dubya officially launched four years ago (though I seem to remember he had some different, absurdly misleading name for it). If the establishments of Dubya and Bliar think nothing of killing thousands of innocent civilians abroad, a few more at home cannot possibly mean much.

On a related note, I would very much like to see an end to the intellectually dishonest, nationalistic and populist rubbish that these leaders of the English-speaking world deliver when they talk about the causes of terrorism. "They hate us". "They hate freedom". "This was an attack on the values we hold dear". Absolute bollocks. Statements like that only aggravate violence and result in more corpses - like the hundred or so who just died in Egypt - because the terrorists feel a bigger and bigger urge to drive home their real message. Sadly, the zeitgeist favours those who avoid thinking. Bush's fellow murderer and apparent kindred spirit (partner in fundamentalism) Bin Laden put it well last year when he asked Bush to explain why, if the bombers hate freedom, they do not attack Sweden. Maybe he has read some European history and found that Sweden hasn't attacked anyone for quite a while.

If a bomb were a speech act, none of the ones we've seen in recent years would have said "We hate what you stand for". None of them have been statements at all; instead, they have all been requests. Imperative instead of declarative. They have said, "Change your policies". And the requests have been delivered using the only method available to these people. It would be very healthy to dump the pompous populism for a while and acknowledge these messages as what they are. No one should be labelled a supporter of terrorism for voicing the self-evident fact that the continuing attacks, however cruel, have reasons.
22.7.05  
Three quarters
A month ago (see the 21.6. post) I was puzzled by the enigma of the unofficial school uniform that made its presence known among male students with sudden and surprising consistency. As chance would have it, I now find myself the owner of such a pair of compromising, 75 percent legwear. For an unspecified reason, my brother happened to have a pair unfit for him, so I got it for free. The trousers in question feel quite comfortable in less-than-hot and more-than-cold temperatures; perhaps I should start calling them compromise pants. The name might take off, since apparently people haven't been able to decide what to call them yet. Capris, flood pants, clam diggers, cropped pants... I really think a standard name would be useful. Even people like me can adapt to unexplainable changes in the fashion force-fed to us if the new dominant paradigm has an understandable name. It's a completely different question where these things came from and why. Women's capris, I understand, were launched in the sixties, but men's three-quarter pants are a very recent phenomenon. Some guru just had an idea, I guess, and decided to make a profit. And I'm afraid the why-question is irrelevant, as it so often is.

While I'm at it, could someone write a critical history of men's swimwear? Maybe someone already has, I need to check. Why do men in certain parts of the world use almost exclusively shorts in leisure swimming, while in others the self-evident choice is basic skintight brief trunks? I prefer the latter, and I would like to know why anyone would want to swim in loose knee-length shorts. What's the idea behind it? You just have ten times the necessary amount of wet fabric against your skin. Or are both of these curiosities (compromise pants and swimming shorts) just expressions of a neocon belief that baring skin is a sin?
20.7.05  
One of those timeless places

This is the spot where I learned to swim about 25 years ago. One of the 187, 888 lakes in Finland. The water is rather deep and the bottom very muddy, so my father had to improvise. He tied one end of a long leather strap around my torso. As I swam around the pier, he stayed on it and, whenever necessary, pulled upwards just enough to keep me on the surface. Full security combined with minimum direct help (minimum being synonomous with enough). Not a bad principle for a parent, really, now that I think about it.
18.7.05  
It's quite wonderful how the hard-boiled detective genre, whether taken seriously or not, provides a perfect venue for sarcasm. The philipmarlowes of this world seem to deliver half their lines in a thoroughly mocking sarcastic register. The following extract is from Squeeze Play, which Paul Auster wrote in 1978 under the pseudonym of Paul Benjamin. The book was not published until three years later. Auster calls it "an exercise in pure imitation".

"A Jew-boy shamus from the big city," he said.
"That's right," I answered. "I come from a long line of rabbis. All those people you see walking around in the funny hats and long beards are my cousins. At night I sprout horns and a tail, and every spring at Passover I kill a Christian baby to use its blood in a secret ritual. I'm a Wall Street millionaire and a communist, and I was there when they nailed Christ to the cross."
"Shut the fuck up, Klein," he snapped, "or I'll break your goddamn neck."
13.7.05  
Swamp sport with lousy food
To properly appreciate this piece of news, see some background here, here, and here. On the fascinating sport of swamp football (compare with world championships in wife carrying, air guitar, and sauna), see a good little summary here.

(By the way, there's a great air guitar clip from Conan O'Brien's show on the Air Guitar USA website.)


Berlusconi stew and chicken à la Chirac served at Finland's swamp soccer event

12.7.2005 at 12:47

As the fifth swamp soccer world championships get under way on Friday in Finland's remote Hyrynsalmi, the contestants are sure to face a fearful mountain of washing at the end of the weekend, but never fear: at least the will not go hungry, for they will be served by Ristorante Berlusconi.

The around 6,000 swamp footballers are to enjoy dishes such as Berlusconi stew and chicken legs à la Chirac, named after the Italian and French leaders who have recently joked at the expense of Finnish - and, in the case of the latter, English - cuisine.

"Our championships restaurant is surely the worst in Europe. Berlusconi stew has some sort of kebab meat and the Chirac chicken legs are, in the French style, as small as possible," Jyrki Väänänen, head of the games and the 'Swamp Baron', told the Finnish News Agency (STT) on Tuesday.

The organisers of the championships were originally planning to have a frog dish named after the French president. However, Mr Väänänen was sorry to report that the scorching temperatures of late had not been good for frog hunting.

Furthermore, the prospect of the famed weather forecast frog, used by the Hyrynsalmi Frog Professor, ending up in the pot did not bear thinking about, said Mr Väänänen.

The organisers have had to curb the number of players as the capacity of the peatland venue is limited.

A total of 25 foreign sides are to compete for glory. Parallel to the world title, the swamp soccer champion side of the British Isles is to be known on Sunday.

/STT/

I have to sympathize with this little tongue-in-cheek protest. I cannot remember ever having French food that was better than mediocre. All the wine must numb the taste buds of the world's culinary snobs. As for Italy... well, anyone can make pasta.
12.7.05  
Know your enemy?
It's funny where the story of a man rolling a rock uphill can take you. I googled Sisyphus to find a few details of the myth and discovered a blog that just kept me reading and reading for more hilarious stuff. It just proves the old rule that unintentional comedy is the best comedy. It was like a drug. Then I followed a link further and found more of the same manna. I don't even know whether these people have passed their teens, or whether they have ever left their home town of Backbush (I forget the state - I'm sure it's considerably southwest of Boston and one of the U.S. states that legally kill their own people), but I was already fantasizing of participating in their "conversations". Here are the links:

A blog by a raving American blood-thirsty right-wing nationalist
A blog by another raving American blood-thirsty right-wing nationalist

I'm not sure what so fascinates me about these ignorami. Perhaps simply the fact that thinking (I'm using this adjective in its neurological meaning) beings exist in an ideological location so remote from my own territory. Until five years ago, when the cowboy-in-chief suddenly appeared on TV, I thought they were just products of mediocre but imaginative science fiction. I think it is a bit like having a documentary on serial killers or hard-core porn stars on TV. There's always a certain temptation to learn more about these people.

But honestly, there's more to it. I believe anyone seeking a cure for aids has to start from learning how the virus operates. Quite simply, as the sad start of this millenium has shown, these simple-minded "prophetic dualists" (= religious individuals who see the world as a battlefield of absolute good and absolute evil and nothing else) are extremely dangerous: the direct consequences of their blind actions make life hell for millions of people. Unfortunately the disease spreads fast; It doesn't take much brainwashing to convince a hundred million flies that shit is good.
5.7.05  
The beast and his red herring
The first U.S. president with a swagger just announced that his administration will never accept any environmental treaty that resembles the Kyoto Protocol in any way. The implicit reasons for this refusal to act have remained unchanged:

1. Reduction of pollution is incompatible with the founding principles of the Great American Profit-Making Machine.
2. By refusing, on all issues, to co-operate with foreigners less prone to warmongering, the puppet can still wear the strong leader mask in front of those at home who have no access to (or no interest in) impartial news channels.
3. Free rides are, you know, kind of fun.

Nothing new, of course. He said it very succinctly a few years ago: "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption"
(speech in Trenton, NJ, Sept. 23, 2002). What Bush means by a Kyoto-style treaty is, quite simply, an agreement that puts limits to emissions. Even more simply, any environmental treaty. Because such contracts are generally not conducive to economic growth, and more importantly, to the growth of growth.

Consistently, Bush and the decision-makers who pull his strings have put forward the idea that as an alternative they are "investing heavily" on clean energy research. The favoured example seems to be the development of hydrogen fuel cells. Very good, but that will take time. And the same kind of research is being carried out in countries all over Europe and Asia that have paid for their ride on the Global Train by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Finally, numbers reveal the depressing relativity of the phrase "heavy investment". The Bush budget for 2006 cuts funding for environmental protection hugely (6 % from 2005) and earmarks $260 million for the
Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. I'm pretty sure they use more than that to prevent condom use in Africa. How about military spending? 419.3 billion for the branch that really should have changed its name to the Department of Offense long ago.
1.7.05  
... ja yö pitenee
Netti on tälläkin hetkellä ihan väärällään immeisiä, jotka odottavat intohimoinen sydän kurkussa, mitä minä milloinkin haluan sanoa. Luin juuri kyseisen faktan ikkunan takana pelehtivän oravan huulilta. Johan itsetunto koheni. No, täytyyhän toiveet täyttää ainakin jollain tasolla. Hohhoijaa, mitäs on mielessäni viime päivinä liikkunut. Muun muassa seuraavaa:

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