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Dont Even Think About It

Over the weekend we learned that Obama has earned a B+ for his tenure so far in Washington during an interview with the Queen of talk, Oprah Winfrey. President Obama claimed he would have had an A- if he didn’t inherit the problems he faces. While such megalomania is commonly found outside America’s borders, the last couple of months in America seems like Chavez land. In public, everyone praises Obama, yet he is polling even lower than W did at this point in his administration. Not one single point or promise made on the campaign has come to fruition. Socialized Medicine will not be realized, at least not in the true socialist form Barack wants. Climate Legislation was derailed by more evidence of falsified data, Guantanamo remains open, (and will stay that way if our sources are to believed), and his biggest promise, open, bi-partisan, and transparent government has become a parody of itself.

Lacking progress or any legislative improvments, the Obama Administration reacted the only way it knew how; Blame Bush. Honest and Reasonable Americans know that this ship sailed along with the race card long ago, but the minions and Obama’s media still cling bitterly to both. Despite over 60% of the electorate being against complete socialization of healthcare, Obama is forcing legislators to committ hari-kari for the sake of Governemnt Run HealthCare. For example, if Senator Blanche Lincoln (D)-AR votes for socialism, she loses re-election. Every single poll, internal or otherwise, supports this. Yet Lincoln is being told by her party she must. Ben Nelson (D)-NE just today was threatened with the closure of Offut Air Force Base, if he doesnt go along with the federally funded abortion clause in ObamaSorosReidStalincare. To screw with National Security over a petulant Obama not getting what he wants is something we have come to expect from the Far Left, but has he considered the additional job losses the closure would create?

Of course not. Anyone who would grade himself, much less that high, doesn’t give a damn. Anyone who would take his family to Hawaii for Christmas along with 40 reporters at a cost of close to 100 million dollars, just doesn’t care. By the way, the reporters’ trip is paid for by the taxpayers as well.

B+? Maybe on Planet Kool-Aid..

President-elect Marian Lupu failed to get the 61 votes necessary to be elected.

Moldova has failed to elect a president, meaning there is now a large likelihood that the country will have to go to a third general election in this calendar year.

After a coalition of the country’s left-leaning parties won the last election in July there was hope that the country could move out of the shadow cast by the rule of the Communist PCRM party since 2001. The previous elections in April were marred by alleged fraudulence and violent protests in Chisinau which were probably instigated by the ruling Communists.

With a mandate to restore libertarian values that any democratic nation should regard as —- and the move Moldova closer towards the European integration that its people crave, the Alliance for European Integration selected Marian Lupu as its candidate for the presidency.

However, the problem which was always likely to arise was that a new president would require 61 votes from the parliament in order to be elected. In the end Lupu polled only 53 votes, largely because former president Vladimir Voronin successfully prevented Communist deputies from voting for him by imposing a voting ban on all PCRM members.

Even before the dreaded concept of another election comes into play, the Moldovan constitution decrees that a parliament must be dissolved if a president is not elected BUT it also decrees that parliament cannot be dissolved twice in one year.

The AIE is now thinking about changing the constitution so a president may be voted by a majority of deputies, or by the electorate directly, thereby minimising the harm that can be dealt by Voronin’s tactics.

AIE politicians remain confident that the PCRM’s tactics will not prevent the election of Lupu, with Prime Minister Mihai Ghimpu saying it may not happen today or tomorrow, but “the day after tomorrow”.

Although the PCRM’s boycott may have derailed the democratic process for now, it is only isolating itself further, and disaffecting more of the electorate who want an end to the megalomania of Voronin and the inherent corruption of his regime.

For now though, it looks like going back to the drawing board once again for Moldova.

Voronin's stalling tactics have worked - for now.

Much as I hate to admit it, I’m suspiciously drawn to some songs on the recent Muse album, The Resistance. I get that it’s totally counter-intuitive to philosophise about pretentious music all day and then go home to a loud, outré, sloganeering chunk of symphonic rock, complete with time-signature changes, wholly self-indulgent guitar solos, and violently operatic vocals. But I really am beginning to love bits of it, at least.

Slap bang in the middle of the album lies the seven-minute long, multi-part leviathan that is “Unnatural Selection”. It opens with Bellamy phoning in a drawl over the kind of church organ that hasn’t been acceptable since Origin of Symmetry. From this innocuous opening emerges a slithering beast of a riff that recalls “New Born”. This somewhat pummelling passage eventually morphs into a rather baroque chorus that invokes memories of Bach, albeit interwoven with some background chanting resembling a football-terrace chant. Eventually, the song collapses into a gloriously decadent waltz, replete with woozy guitar licks and a Hammond organ that has somehow escaped out of a 50s horror film. When that passage is fully spent (and my, Bellamy has a lot of nonspecific wailing to get through), the baroque riff breaks through once more for a final showdown, this time with ten times more multi-tracked vocal harmonies and half a dozen more guitar overdubs.

And you know what? It’s marvellous.

Sometimes, Muse play up their theatricality until it just sounds ridiculous, but when they get it right, every disparate element of their schtick can fall into place perfectly, with a careless swagger than ploughs through any idea you may have had of decency. The lyrics may be meaningless nonsense, but when Bellamy is busy waking up the residents of Lake Como with his pair of bellows, it’s hard not to admit that he sounds like he’s having a good time. And, more to the p0int, that you’d be a bit of a killjoy not to have a good time yourself.

this wind keeps telling me, “stay home”
i bought a lovely capely shawl thing
it is black
in the shadow, it looks like wings.

here’s what it looks like in the laundry room.

blurry on a dork.

soon, i WILL get a new camera.
for christmas.

joe’s friend sent him a bottle of home brew in the mail.

here’s how it arrived.
now THAT’s usin’ yer noggin.

it’s too windy so i am not going to go see romeo & juliet, afterall. and today was/is the last day.

i don’t even want to go to the thrift store like i had planned.

Well when you find Matt Bellamy playing a full song on a huge organ you just have to post it. This is priceless I can help but to feel I missed out. But thank goodness for Muse Fans and Youtube.

People are a Country’s most valuable asset. They don’t make great pets for Dictators, Communist or Fascist though. The Will of the people eventually becomes an overwhelming Force that is about stoppable as a Locomotive. Socialist, Marxist and Monarchy’s exist as long as the People will allow them.

Oh, the lengths that a few Elitist will go to put their fellow Human Beings into Bondage to satisfy the Narcissistic/Megalomaniac Demon.

In the ancient and multicultural Babylon, people of huge diversity and from numberless nations, all lived together. Opposite to this way of life in the classical ancient world 5 ½ thousand years ago, the Christian/Old Testament tradition tells us about God’s punishment of the human arrogance, which denied any longer to follow the natural language that the creator had spoken by developing this, our world.

Genesis 11:7-9(King James Version):

7Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

8So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

From here we get the heritage of a myth with seven themes about Babel, containing Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylon system, City of Sin, Semiramis, the Tower, Apocalypse and linguistic confusion. All used not to tell the historical truth concerning Babylon but the truth about a civilization that needs the Babel myth in order to understand itself.

What has all this to do with language learning in Second Life (sl) anno 2009?

At BABEL Language School, we try to bridge the gap between the cultural identities through the use of visual material both in classrooms and through the use of archetypal impacts in the environment such as our animals, but also through a new and open architecture which leads the thoughts forward to new possibilities in an enlightened world.

On one side: The creation of new virtual worlds (vws) is time expensive and object to a particular critic of giving up too many former ways of human communication, arguments similar to the day when the TV appeared. Some enter the caveat that vws push to the megalomania of putting our real world’s rules and laws out of order.

On the other hand: The use of virtual worlds has the likeable aspect of being democratically and geographically reachable. In sl for our avatar it’s also possible to achieve new horizons of personal existence, to get a new range of socializing competencies, which is build on the picture of the avatar in the corresponding part, a kind of alternative and supplemental identity; in a way “homo virtualis”.

On one side: We are bound to national and cultural vanes and, as stated in one society, we as good citizens are expected to make contributions to our society. We can’t carry out and maybe not even capture multiple ways of living as they are found on our planet. So, language borders prevent us from taking too much irrelevant information into account, which would weaken our mental health.

On the other side: The world of art has inspired to follow up the myth of Babel in numerous paintings and sculptures; the world of music has prompted pictures of people with their joy and sorrow, photographically documented world wide; and the world of music and opera have always given us common references and motivation to explore the other and to get together again. Virtual Worlds can help us to achieve that end result with language learning being one of the ways how we can explore these possibilities.

Este señor despeinado de la foto es Boris Johnson, el alcalde de Londres, poder latente representando el ala más a la derecha del partido tory, periodista y editor, personaje esperpéntico en sus actos e inmensamente popular en la sociedad londinense y británica. De más esta decir que Boris lo que quiere es ser Primer Ministro (y todo el mundo lo sabe, y muchos lo quieren también).

Pero por ahora, este hombre educado en Eton y Oxford pero con pinta de campesino de Devonshire, es el alcalde de Londres, y como quiere dejar una impronta de su legado aprovechando los Juegos Olímpicos de 2012, ha decidido que quiere construir esto:

Es una torre de 120 metros que parece un tótem soñado por alguien con demasiadas pintas de ale encima y un ego descomunal. Los irónicos conciudadanos de Boris la llaman Piffle Tower (sí, suena como “Pifia Tower”) por motivos que otro día contaré (dan para un larho post) y estaría en la zona del Parque Olímpico, cerca del estadio de Wembley. Boris quiere así dar la réplica a París, construyendo su propio monumento icónico de metal. Y conociendo la perseverancia y famosa cabezonería del alcalde, es bastante probable que consiga edificar lo que se convertirá en la cosa más fea del skyline londinense. Y es que esta ciudad sabe mucho de construcciones polémicas: el ridículo Picadilly Circus, el inestable Puente del Milenio, el inútil Millenium Dome…y quizás dentro de poco esta torre, con un tamaño directamente proporcional al ego del superlativo Boris Johnson.

Pre-Amble

Thanks to some kind words, I’m picking off where I left off.

Revelation

This morning after a very peculiar dream I woke up crying.

Last night, on a date, the first real date since my previous relationship of three years. Every date I’d ever been on always ends with me harboring contempt for the woman I am with. Whether it be because I disrespect their intelligence, consider them to be a phony, or to be perfectly blunt see them as a shrew. Last night that certainly was not the case, due mostly in part to the fact that we spoke online at length over the past five days after she was introduced to me at the show on Monday. Throughout dinner and as we walked through the shopping mall to kill time before the movie and I was very much on the fence. At times she seemed aloof, which I find to be a horrible attribute, but I sensed it was more out of nerves than anything else. But when the lights went down at the movies, she rested her head on my shoulders and I melted with a feeling I’d never felt before. I won’t get into any details of the “dance”, but they’re dynamic as they are unimportant to the narrative that needs to be told.

From a purely biochemical point of view, I am bi-polar. I this has been confirmed by several medical professionals and I have spent a lot of time in hospital while said professionals tried to figure out how to get my mood under control. But I’ve also known most of my adult life, with particular clarity within the past couple of years that my biggest battle is a psychological complexity. I am very successful in managing my moods by being consistent with my medications, and living a scaled back lifestyle from many my age. That being said, I live with a reliable anguish that cannot be treated with a medicinal cocktail, which brings me back to the sobbing this morning.

For as long as I can remember, my mother took me to every single fucking specialist in my hometown to figure out what was wrong with me. It had always been obvious to everyone around that I was certainly a peculiar child. I’d struggled with practical things where my peers seemed to strive and I had a idiosyncratic nature in a world of ardent normalcy. Most were content to acknowledge this and move on, but my mother was on a mission from God to figure out why I was weird and to construct a world that fit just me.  I’d seen countless phyciatrists, occupational therapists and councillors, who time and time again would have me take tests that were designed for me to fail. I have poor visual-spatial skills compared to most of the population. With this in mind, a few times a year I’d go to the clinic and make feeble attempts at putting puzzles together which everyone knew I couldn’t do, and made my stomach turn at their remarkable complexity. This, so I could get an aide, devoted just to me to help me out when such challenges arose in class. When I was 11 years old, I wasn’t because actively cognizant of it, but it made me feel like a retard and I found it to be humilliating. My classmates and some teachers would question me point blank why I needed this person, (who certainly cost the school division at least $30,000 a year) when I seemed to excel in school in certain subjects, especially English and Social Studies. But when you’re 11 years old, your parents and doctors possess absolute intellectual authority, and if the say it is, it goes.

One of the amenities that was extended to me included a special seminar to “educate” my classmates about my shortcomings and to give them stern warnings not to mock me for them. The weird foreign kid was included in the speech as well, but upon reflection I believe he was there only so I wouldn’t feel singled out. I’m sure they had that in mind when they hired the aide. That being said, boys will be boys and hearing no from a teacher has never been much of a deterrence.  The continued to rip on me relentlessly, until one day in the 8th grade after I beat the shit out of one of them in the forest after shop class with everyone watching. The last year and a half year of junior high, not only did the teasing simmer right down, but several of them voiced their respect for me.

As I entered high school, my mental health began to deteriorate due mostly impart to the chemical imbalance which was going untreated. As a result everything began to fall apart, including my relationships, my hygiene and made my real life struggles even more significant including my ability to keep a binder organized. Scholastically, several of my teachers would tell anyone who would listen that I possed legitimate gifts, due mostly to the contributions I made in class and the quality of work that was actually handed in. Despite all this, my mother would hassle the administration to get me access to the resource room so some ladies could teach me how to stay organized. So during many work periods I was cooped up in this room while my friends were playing cards, smoking up in the underpass and making out under the bleachers. And for me, the optics were wretched. The students in the room were comprised of kids with severe cerebral palsy,  Down Syndrome and kids that were just burn outs. And the more time I spent in that room, the more I believed I was of their ilk. As a result, as you can imagine, I’ve developed something of a complex.

Now this being said, a parent fighting for a better world for their offspring, even if the persuit is misguided. But what hurts at my core is the imbalance of it all. My mother has spent very little time trying to prove what’s wrong with me, but almost no time at all trying to learn what’s right. I’d always had an explosive temper at home, and have since become incredibly contrite about it, almost to the point of superfluous guilt. One night, I was performing as Hamlet in one of the high school productions. I gave an incredible performance which received broad praise and thunderous applause for. I was on cloud nine as it was a rare resounding victory during a period of falling courses and stints in psychiatric hospitals. Fueled by this feeling, I asked my parents what they thought. My father is a very reserved individual and expressed that it seemed to go over very well, but knowing his nature this was clearly genuine praise. My mother on the other hand said that I was “just acting like I do at home when I get angry. I fizzled like a shrunken cock. From that day forth I lost my desire to perform on stage and would go on to resent those who were successful at it and received praise for it. Now, I’m still unsure if she said this becaue she feared it was symptomatic of my illness and didn’t want me to get sick, or if she just didn’t want me to get too proud.

Years later, I brought up these feelings of inferiority and she more or less threatened excommunication if they were to be brought up again. This past year I graduated one of the most respected media programs in the country and was singled out by one of my instructors as being a particular asset to the school. While my mother expressed genuine pride that I had graduated, she had never gone out of her way to compliment any one accomplishment I made that led me to graduation floor.

As my previous relationship ended and I began to explore other romantic persuits, it had become clear that these experiences had fucked up with the way I view women. I don’t crave women who are attractive, I crave women I deem to be attracted to me. When pleasing a woman in bed, I don’t do so to make her feel good, I do so because her screams are affirmations that I’m doing a good job. When I chick is pleasing me, I always imagine her motive is that I am a phenomenal, exceptional specimen and she is thrilled to be in the throes of passion with such an enigmatic god like genius.

Most of my pursuits professionally employ varying degrees of megalomania, and socially I am always putting on a show. I’ve known, like many other in the entertainment business, that I do this because I think people could love what I do, but never who I am. And this morning something occurred to me. I don’t know if this is accurate or just clouded in emotion, but I often sense that my mother, the one person where love is supposed to be fluid and unconditional loves me because I am her son but not because she loves who I am. Anytime I become over animated in conversation, she alleges I’m doing so because I’m sick, and of course sickness is bad and must be fixed.

There were moments last night where this woman made me feel special like I had never felt special before. The were a little fleeting and I don’t know if they were genuine but cautious, tactical or she just has fun stringing boys along.

When I got home I was more or less in a good mood. I woke up this morning after an odd dream and found myself yearning for the feeling of when this woman was holding me in her arms. But then I began to question the sincerity of these gestures and a fear I’ve always shelved become confronted me like a loaded freight train, that no woman could ever love me. A lot of the repressed emotions about my mother came rushing back and I cried my eyes out for a good 10 or 20 minutes. I happen to be residing with my mother for the time being and when I made my way downstairs she chastised me for not putting her hand held phone on the charger and left one of her regular passive aggressive notes on the table.

I can’t think of an appropriate way to punctuate this tardy entry, so I’ll just leave that as a cold ending. I’ll let you do the math.

ds.

Can’t Beat ‘Em (even though you have super majority power)? Silence them! So says the White House, showing more than just shades of their Chicago-style political backgrounds, as they tried to ban Fox News from the Press Pool today.  The Administration invited everyone in the Press Pool, but specifically tried to exclude Fox News,  to interview the Pay Czar, (Czar now seems an appropriate title in this administration) Kenneth Feinberg.

I thought the previously started “War on Fox” was pathetic, and dangerous, enough, but now they are attempting to completely freeze them out and, for all intents and purposes, censor the citizenry’s news. Thankfully, the other networks stood up for Major Garrett and for Fox News and didn’t allow it to happen … yet.  I am going to assume that this was based on principle and good will, but as Allahpundit says, it was partially due to avoiding an unwanted precedent:

if they had acquiesced in this freezeout, a precedent would have been set that would have been eagerly used by future Republican presidents to close them off too. And don’t think they weren’t all keenly aware of it.

Commander in chief? More like Cuckoo-Pants In Chief. For reals. I wish I was joking, but I’m not. He has moved beyond narcissistic and egomaniacal into full-on megalomania.  Dear Michelle Obama:  For the first time in MY life, I’m actually AFRAID of my President.  I agree with Dan Riehl, who also has a “first time in my life” moment:

For the first time in my life I’m actually uncomfortable knowing that this guy has control of our military and Federal police forces. If he thinks he can simply shut down a member of the press on a whim, how long before he goes full Chavez?

Speaking of Chavez, sound familiar?

Chavez wouldn’t answer a question from FOX News analyst about his lying “brother” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Instead, he attacked the “stupid people” from FOX News and called them “poison.”  Chavez also said, “The smell of sulphur has been replaced by the smell of hope.”

Chavez is not too fond of opposition news organizations.
In Venezuela the Marxist leader recently shut down 34 independent radio stations.

No more mincing of words out of fear of looking wing-nutty; some will think that no matter what we say, much as they accuse us of being Raaaaacist any time we merely disagree.

If it walks like a Marxist and censors like a Marxist? It’s a Marxist. Just sayin’.  (and add another reason that I’m so ticked at Obama; he forced me to use the term “just sayin’” and I swore that I never would!)  Well, to be fair, either Marxist or horrifically incompetent and unfathomably delusional.

UPDATE: Linkiest Links! Thank you John Hawkins and welcome Linkiest readers!

much is being revealed to me about myself.

things that are not exactly what i want to have revealed to myself about myself. hm.

did i even take pictures of anything but myself?
i went picking apples in an orchard, and ate a freshly picked granny smith. didn’t bring my phone with me on that little excursion, but i still have fond memories to keep locked within the hidden chambers of my heart. i always seem to love things more in retrospect.

i forced myself to eat salmon today just as a matter of principle?
and i drank some aloe vera juice mixed with simply lemonade.

went to cabela’s for the first time and got a new hat. it’s forest green like my new jacket.

sorry to make you O.D. on photos of me. i am self obsessed.
(joking)

there were lots of cool photo ops in cabela’s but oh noooo
guaranteed you don’t bring your camera, you’ll stumble across all the amazing photo opportunities.

ok, bored of doing this now.

I feel a certain ambiguity about embattled billionaire Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Clearly he’s a raving megalomaniac who controls the Italian media and its government, a self-important ass who crushes all who opposes him, a corrupt seventy-three-year-old man-ho who sleeps with teen-age actresses.

Here’s a recent quote from him, found in the British Guardian’s web site:

“I am, and not only in my own opinion, the best prime minister who could be found today,” he told a press conference. “I believe there is no one in history to whom I should feel inferior. Quite the opposite.”

The problem, he explained, was that “In absolute terms, I am the most legally persecuted man of all times, in the whole history of mankind, worldwide, because I have been subjected to more than 2,500 court hearings and I have the good luck – having worked well in the past and having accumulated an important wealth – to have been able to spend more than €200m in consultants and judges … I mean in consultants and lawyers.”

Shocking.

And we all remember with horrified disbelief Mr. Berlusconi’s congratulating America on electing Barak Obama, who, he pointed out, was “young, handsome and tanned.” Later on he explained that it was “a great compliment,” accusing those who called him a racist idiot of lacking a sense of humor. And he recently said the same thing again about Michelle Obama after meeting her at the G20.

Michelle Obama declines the opportunity to give Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a big ol' hug.

In June of this year a Spanish newspaper published pictures of naked men and women mingling at Berlusconi’s villa. It turns out that one of the naked men was (now former) Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who admitted he was there but claimed that the photographs were doctored by European Socialists. I wish I had made that up, but it is the truth.

And of course Mr. Berlusconi was seen cavorting at the same villa with 18-year-old actress Noemi Letizia. And when his wife announced that she was seeking a divorce because her husband was openly boinking everything in a skirt, he said, “Veronica [his wife] will have to publically apologize to me, and I don’t know if that will be enough.”

What an idiot. What a bully. What an obnoxious jerkface.

Now here’s where the ambiguity comes in. On one level the man is a total ass, and as an enlightened 21ist century male I despise everything he is and everything he stands for.

On the other hand I totally admire him and everything he stands for.

That’s because I’m a guy. I possess a guy’s brain.

“Gosh,” my guy brain says, “he’s dating an actress who’s fifty years younger than he is? And he openly frolics with naked starlets and Czech Prime Ministers? That’s frickin’ cool!

“What would it be like if the guy who gave me my job review knew I could have him arrested if I didn’t like the outcome? I mean of course I would never actually throw him in the slammer for giving me a ‘needs improvement’ on my people skills, but both he and I would know that I could. Heh heh heh.”

That is, I’m afraid, how guys’ brains work. A part of us longs for the good old days before Women’s Suffrage, Dr. Phil and Public Radio, when a man could be as obnoxiously arrogant as he wanted. No matter how we pretend otherwise there’s a certain part of us that purely admires a man with the courage to be as big an ass as Mr. Berlusconi.

Recently the Italian courts have stripped the Prime Minister of his self-declared immunity from prosecution, so perhaps at last he’s going to get what’s coming to him. On one hand I think that the world will be better if one of the great countries of Europe isn’t run by a horny old billionaire Froot Loop, but on the other hand my primitive guy brain is going to have to find a new role model, and that won’t be easy.

Say. What’s Bill Clinton up to these days?

Hammer Update

Former House Whip Tom “The Hammer” Delay has at last exited from Dancing With the Stars, citing stress fractures in both feet as the reason for his withdrawal. Readers of this column know the real truth, of course: it was my withering criticism of his creepy booty-shaking that drove him out of the competition.

You’re welcome, America.