Her: You know: vodka grapefruit and mini-twix does not make for a proper breakfast…
Him: Oh yea? Well, waking me up for sex at 5am to kick me out of bed by 6 does no make for a proper wake-up either.
You know there are serious problems with your motivation levels when you’d rather spend the day reading up Agrawal’s [sublimely elegant but entirely irrelevant] PRIMES is in P paper than do actual work.
Much drinking and bonding with old Japanese geezers around beer and yakitori in the dark confines of Shinjuku’s seediest Golden Gai and Shouben Yokochou’s 6-seater bars. Learning outrageously offensive Japanese war songs (unfortunately forgetting most of it amidst next day’s hangover).
Going dancing in the middle of Tokyo typhoon #4. In fact a pretty mediocre Dubsteps/Drum’n'Bass party with few dance-friendly melodies and much drug-friendly excruciatingly boring bass lines (god, I hate hardcore Drum’n'Bass). Had fun with friends nonetheless. Woke up to torrential rain, earthquake shakes and some wonders about a possibly upcoming end of the world. BTW, am I the only one to have noticed how often earthquakes seem to occur concurrently with typhoons, no matter how scientifically implausible such a connection sounds? Or am I just high? Or both?
Went and saw a movie at Tokyo’s one and only Lesbian & Gay Film Festival with Eriko. Had pictures taken by the official event photographer of myself mingling at the pre-screening party amidst Eriko and her lesbian friends. Expecting to see them plastered all over next year’s official website, if not before. Not sure how that might help my style with the ladies. Not that I looked gay or anything: I was wearing that very manly embroidered white silken shirt and tight-fitting designer jeans.
House party at Klaus’ with twenty-some attendees, each speaking over 2 or 3 languages, none the same two: nearly sounds like a math problem. Ate Asparagus pizza. Examined the spirit of Japan with drunken Japanese boys. Sorta missed my last train and had to go beg for shelter in the neighbourhood.
Apparently acceptable topics for hairdresser smalltalk in Japan include: how long have you been in Japan, do you like Japanese food, do you like natto. Oh yea, also: what do you think of Japanese girls’ small breasts.
Because this phase of intense self-absorbed navel-contemplation passing off as thoughtful meditation just isn’t about to end now…
I suppose I still have ten hours (sleep notwithstanding) to acquire a motivation, snort 10g of crushed Red Bull powder and catch up on two weeks worth of revisions.
Will I ? Fuck if I know. Suspense is killing me.
Have you ever noticed how, sometime, you feel so great about life that the most catastrophic news barely manage to scratch past your happiness before slipping away unnoticed…
But then, when things have come crashing down and you feel utterly miserable about everything, inside or outside, you cannot bring yourself to care, let alone rejoice, about the sort of good news you’d been waiting with baited breath for months until then.
All that in an endlessly repeating sequence, it seems.
I think we need a name for that strangely cyclical phenomenon…
Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.
Desiring to show his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realisation, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received.”
Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth angry.
“If nothing exists,” said Dokuon, “where did this anger come from?”
Zen koan
Qualche volta, la notte, quest’oscurità, questo silenzio, mi pesano.
E’ la pace che mi fa paura. Temo la pace più di ogni altra cosa: mi sembra che sia soltanto un’apparenza, e nasconda l’inferno.
Pensa a cosa vedranno i miei figli domani…
Il mondo sarà meraviglioso, dicono. Ma da che punto di vista, se basta uno squillo di telefono ad annunciare la fine di tutto?
Bisogna di vivere fuore dalle passione e altri sentimenti nell’armonia che c’è nell’opera d’arte reuscita, in quell’ordino incantato.
Vodremmo reuscire al amarci tanto, da vivere fuore del tempo, distacati…
distacati.
La Dolce Vita
Back from London. Now I’ll be taking a break for a couple days. See you later.
I have only one ambition in life.
Well… Two ambitions, but the other one is more of a long-term goal. For now, I just want to become the first search result on Google for my given name. This in itself being a crucial step in my larger world-domination’s plot, since we all know Google controls the world already.
As it is, I already have pole position for my old ‘dr Dave‘ moniker. But, and you read it here first, I am hereby setting in motion the switch in online identity from ‘dr Dave’ to just plain ‘Dave’.
No, I wasn’t sued by the American Board of Medicine, or any equivalent local institution. Beside, that Honorary Ph.D. in Curse Removal and Sexual Healing from Kinshasa’s University of Black Magic is all but legit.
However, crazy as the idea may sound (I have a hard time believing it myself), I might one day not too long from now be a bona fide doctorate student: it is likely that my honorary ‘Doctor’ title would by then confuse many people (not that it hasn’t already) which was never the intent. Hence the shift to unambiguous, simple, likable ‘Dave’. I’m guessing there are only a couple millions of us out there, someone has to be the one.
So, how are we doing on the Google front? Well, guess what: not so fucking bad!
Six, if you count them, six people (or things) are standing in the way to intercontinental online stardom.
Of course, I could rely on the quality of my content, my shining bright personality and ever-increasing public appreciation to slowly climb to first place. But I know better.
Instead, I have devised an infallible 6 Steps Program that shall shortly take me there, whence I will finally be able to rest and contemplate the world at my feet, laugh and move on from that Internet fad once and for all.
Please allow me to develop. Note that for obvious reasons, I cannot allow my now mortal enemies any extra link publicity and you will therefore have to Google their websites for yourself. Do it while you still can:
So, apparently, “The Blogosphere is in deep mourning” and It has consequently decided to stop writing about Its cat for a day, “in honor towards” the latest US shooting craze victims. All that with shiny, yet appropriately sober, webtwozero buttons, because the Blogosphere likes nothing like an easy cut-n-paste mirror-effect logo to put in Its sidebar.
While some might be prompt to point at a culturally self-centred inconsequential web fad with vaguely nauseating marketing overtones, I won’t.
In fact, let’s take it one step further!
As of today, Tuesday, April 17th, the official death count for the ongoing Darfur genocide clocks in at a little over 400,000.
By my own calculation, and using the ongoing rate for online death commemoration, this gives us a mere 33.2 years, which we will round up to 30, for simplicity’s sake.
And it is therefore with great pleasure that I hereby introduce the 30yearBlogSilence initiative. Forgive me if I haven’t got the shiny web buttons ready, but feel free to set up a website for it.
As for the starting date, I think right fucking now is probably a good time: go ahead, I’ll be right behind you.
I promised (a long time ago) we’d talk about the other strong contender in the upcoming French presidential elections: Ségolène Royal, so here we go.
A couple years ago, when Angela Merkel was on the verge of becoming the first female Chancellor of Germany, I remember reading an article from a German magazine (der Spiegel I think it was) candidly asking if one could not consider voting for her specifically on account of her gender. The gist of their argument was that, electing a woman to such an office was in itself a considerable social advance, possibly overshadowing any measure either candidate could ever enact once elected.
It is a bit of a provocative argument, but still worth considering. Especially if you have your doubts about the effective influence of this election’s outcome on important matters of economic or international policies.
However, the comparison between both women ends there. They are from slightly opposite sides of the political board and, under their common gender, are perceived very differently by partisans and opponents alike. Angela Merkel, while I am not well-versed enough in German politics to give an extensive appraisal of her skills, is a very capable, respected politician. There is not the slightest suspicion that she may ever have relied on her gender as a prop to get by, quite the opposite: I remember reading people emphasizing her “butchy” manners (equally unnerving, as chauvinist clichés go, but at least not in the way you may expect).
The problem with the current French presidential race is that it has become extremely hard to tell whether one’s impression of a candidate is somehow attuned with reality and verifiable facts or just the result of widespread journalistic bias. Of course, this is a problem everywhere: Fox TV and other Murdoch-style news outlets do a much worse job at imitating journalistic integrity than most French media. In France, the bias is usually more subtle: few media (outside of those ostensibly labeled as following one party or the other) will directly slander their political opponents. It is more of a meticulous, careful selection of the news they report on and the tone they adopt, so as to finally envelop each politician in a caricatural persona that fits a specific political intent.
I do realize I just described the way politics and media work everywhere in the world, the thing is: the ratio of perceived versus actual personal and political traits here is simultaneously very high and rarely acknowledged by most people, it seems.
This is true of all candidates and works in either direction: I previously mentioned how Ms. Royal’s opponent, Mr. Sarkozy, is hyperbolically depicted by his opponents as some neo-fascistic brute, which is simply inaccurate: for all his sitting on the conservative right side of France’s political board, he objectively ranks left of both Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair on major issues and policies, yet any topical discussion with your average Frenchman will invariably veer into Godwin territories (unless your interlocutor is pro-Sarkozy, in which case he will hail the man as a savior of all things righteous and law-abiding in a society crumbling under the weight of rampant youth crime and illegal immigration). I dislike the man and his knack for populist securitarian rhetoric, as much as the next freedom-loving fool, but he is no Benito Mussolini, not even a Georges W. Bush.
But back to Ségolène.
What do I think of her?
When I hear Ms. Ségolène Royal talk of her projects, when I read her interviews, watch her answer questions or simply humor journalists with unsubstantial banter, all I see is one incredibly unseasoned, incompetent, borderline-stupid politician with the stuck-up delivery of a grade-school teacher and the mien that goes with (you really expect her to slap you on the wrist with a ruler at any moment). I see shameless use of her image as a maternal figure, I see a candidate who has suddenly emerged to the forefront 10 months ago and won her party’s primaries, not on a solid program, but on account that her pleasant looks, relative political freshness and high poll ratings, made her at the time the most serious contender to beat Nicolas Sarkozy.
In a word, I see practically every single misogynist stereotypes about women in politics made flesh.
Now you understand why I might be questioning my own perception through the French media. This is all depressing and ever so slightly suspicious. But unfortunately I still think this is not all made-up impressions and journalistic bias: she is that incompetent.
Seriously, is anyone still reading this?
For the couple tenacious lost souls still around, here is the perennial pointless “Oops, has it been a month already?” post. Insert usual excuses here.
Unfortunately, I cannot even promise you any improvement for a while (possibly two whiles and a half, depending on how things go). However, more as a way to remind myself than anything, here are a couple things I may (or may not) devote a post to, in the (very) near future (OK, I’m typing some of these as I type this):
Alright, now that I’ve made a bunch of loose promises for new content, I will be going back to actually writing it.
Guess what this year is?
Why, you’re right my friend, this year is French Presidential Election Year !
In May of this year, to be exact, the French will vote to elect a new Président de la République.
Under France’s current constitution, the president controls the executive branch and has power over foreign and domestic policies. Unlike the US, however, he can (and often did, over the past 20 years) end up with a government from the opposite party, as the National Assembly has the power to vote the Prime Minister (and his ministers) out. The President can decide at any moment to dissolve the Assembly and call for a new election (which he traditionally does as soon as he is elected, I think, unless such an election is already scheduled).
Thus you have a Janken-like circular structure of power, where the President still holds an advantage, being the only immovable piece of the game (5-year mandate and a pretty good immunity from prosecution, as Mr. Jacques Chirac will tell you). At all times, and regardless of the Assembly’s majority, it is customary for the President to keep his role of representation abroad, along with final say in matters of foreign policy (not unlike the POTUS). Domestic policies are his, only so long as his party holds the majority at the Assembly.
Anyway, enough with the boring talk about French political institutions. On to the only thing we may care about: Who will it be?
The answer, with a fairly high rate of certainty: either Nicolas Sarkozy (”Sarko” to his fans and enemies alike) or Ségolène Royal (”Ségo”, to same).
Wherein the author unabashedly stares at his navel while describing in painfully boring details his past and current academic endeavours under the guise of introducing some of the topics bound to become a fixture of this blog.
As morbidly obsessed faithful readers of this blog may remember, I made a decision 18 months ago to go back to school and try for one of these fancy post-graduate degree in Compooter Thingies.
As it happen, my original bachelor was mostly centered around Mathematics and Physics, two sciences that turned out to make for infinitely more entertaining conversation topics than university majors (also, it was sorta interspersed with half a dozen other totally unrelated course of studies). Having come to develop uncontrollable rash-like allergic reactions to the mere mention of either topic, it sounded wise to shift the focus of my academic pursuits over to a slightly different major. Hence Computer Science, or to be exact: Artificial Intelligence (which is, to paraphrase some guy, as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes). As for the “going-back-to-university” thing altogether, it was mostly motivated by the pointed realization that, of the entire spectrum of available jobs, university student was the one I was most happily fitted for: After being a corporate droid for many years, a beach bum for another couple, I figured being paid a [rather mediocre] salary to work on cool research projects while learning semi-interesting things, sounded like a very fun way to pass time before retiring to a desert island in the Indian Ocean. That and the possibility that I may one day be responsible for the enslavement of humanity under the cold, merciless dominion of superiorly intelligent thinking machines.
A landslide in the House and – be still my heart – some good chance of a Senate win (despite Mr. George “macaca” Allen’s partisans best efforts to “guide” voters to the correct polling location)…
As the Democrats now prepare to regain control of the Legislative branch, let’s wish for a mutually beneficial cooperation across party lines, an era of prosperous bipartisanship with the best interest of all constituents at heart, where the winners can look past petty disagreements and work along with the losers and… and… mwahahahaHAHAHA… Right.
Bury them. Tear their electoral balls off. Declaw, spay and neuter the lots of them. Let congressional hearings rain. Open a can of Check’n'Balance whoopass on their collective thieving ass. Time to scrub the place clean.
And when it’s all over, don’t forget to unplug Cheney’s cryogenic night-preservation chamber on the way out.
Don’t mind me saying so, but I would make one incredibly bad lawyer.
When I argue my cases, I can’t stay on track, I digress into oblivion, and whenever possible, jump on the most hyperbolic formulations, usually for my sole petty amusement, at great cost to the convincing potential of my arguments. Also, while I certainly love spending hours dissecting the law, I tend to focus on its spirit, and shun its letter altogether; a luxury I understand no sane lawyer could ever afford.
Yet, I have opinions (bet you hadn’t noticed), and I sometimes discuss them. I sometimes even discuss them with actual lawyers, pretty eloquent [French] bloggers at that. A while back the conversation wandered over to the topic of intellectual property. At the time, I did a pathetic job of exposing my somewhat moderate, if slightly provocatively formulated, views on the matter…
Then recently, while reading up on entirely unrelated matters, I stumbled upon a small text by Mr. Jefferson that happened to sum up most perfectly the essence of my thought on this.
The most basic courtesy would call for me to write this post in French, as I am after all reporting and threading on a discussion I had in French, but the quoted material is in English and there’s been a real dearth of pompous highbrow rants on this blog, so I hope my original debater will overlook this unforgivable faux-pas and not hesitate to respond in whichever language he may prefer… Anyway, here is what this famous American communist close to my heart, had to say on the topic of intellectual property:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
“The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”. Edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, 1905
I probably haven’t actually blogged on this blog in a good few months. Semi-witty three-liners and pointless factoids aside, content has been sparse lately. Here is at last one good reason for all you two readers still checking this page to bitterly regret that blessèd old time.
Today we are gonna rant. And we ain’t gonna rant on any topic either. We are gonna rant on US Politics. Can I get a hell yay, brethren?
Considering how long I have kept shut on that particular topic (not for lack of things to say, mind you), you better grab an umbrella, because I have a good year’s worth of rant spittle ready to come out. For similar reasons, I have opted to ditch my usual pointless attempts at structures and grand outlines and will just lay a few random thoughts as they come.
Let me start with a small story. A memory. My own belated September 11th, 2001’s “Where were you on that day?” recount.
As the cliché now goes, I remember perfectly what I was doing that day when it happened. I was sleeping. When my girlfriend’s phone woke us up: her best friend, attending Columbia university a couple blocks down from the WTC, was absolutely breaking down, trying to tell us what had just happened. We got up, went to the living room TV and saw on CNN as the first, then the second, towers went down live, amidst the usual empty buzzing of clueless newscasters. By then my two roommates were also up and watching.
But my strongest impression of this event, wasn’t this very morning. Sure it was tragic beyond words, yet I could not help but think all along, that 5,000 people dying an unfair and horrible death somewhere in the world is not such an exceptional event…