Maru's Mun Journal

Do I really want to buy the new Apocalyptica album? On half the tracks, some idiots I am supposed to know about (but don't; none of them is either Ville Valo or Tarja, whom I'd like to hear work with Apo!) are singing, or rather, metal-growling for a better leopard-stuck-in-foundry effect.

Three or four of the tracks I just briefly listened to pieces of at Amazon sounded like one wants an Apo track to sound.

Perhaps I'll buy just those and disdain all foundries and leopards.

Pity about Apo, though. They used to be very good. And nice, friendly people.

Putting the online edition of what may have once been the most prestigious newspaper on the planet behind a paywall (hoping that old reputation would finally make people shell out the money) seems to have failed abjectly.

Not only does nobody read it, the articles can no longer be deep-linked, quoted with a reference, or listed on the page of the freelancers that wrote them. Signals can no longer be boosted. Behind that paywall, a newspaper goes back to being what it was before the advent of the internet: - a monolithical entity talking to itself, instead of part of the worldwide web of professional news sources and bloggers that process and amplify breaking news and background information. And yes, each of us is a part of that.

Only The Times no longer is.-

Are we missing it at all? Will we quote it again when it takes down the paywall?

I never quoted it much; I recently tried to because that's where quote from the snarky statisstics professor came from, but when I got to the paywall, I simply turned back and found something else to link to. Cursing the paywall as I went, and writing off the Times as a potential news source...

I wanted England to win!

Now the vuvuzela terror will go on...

There was this trendy alternative French* couple going down to the train when I went to work just now, he with long bunched-up dreadlocks, she a bit older, thin as a rake, and with harem pants, carrying backpacks. The usual 'globalised anti-globaliser' type people, you know the kind I mean?

When I came down to the platform, I saw them again, having some sort of drama with the train going to the airport. He was inside, she was outside holding on to the door, pleading toward the front of the train where the driver had stuck his head out, and two big burly uniformed guards were coming.

'Uh-oh,' I thought, 'he caught the train, she didn't, and he doesn't know our trains well enough to stand in the door and block it until she'd have caught up.'

The guards had almost reached her when the door-button went green again
to indicate it would open. She finally noticed, pressed it, there was her bloke, and she---

--- leaned in and snogged him.

Then, she stepped back, the doors closed, the train left, she waved madly (the guards all the time lingering to see whether she would do more random things, for which I don't blame them at all), and then, she proudly went up the escalator again.

I stood there, cursing quietly, going 'WOMEN!!!' and 'Fuck me in chocolate, I did not just see this!!' in utter consternation.

WTF?? This woman just stopped the train to the airport for what, for one more last kiss?

There are women who think that their emotions are more important than an entire trainful of people catching their planes? And who actually act on that incredibly distorted perception of reality?

To say nothing of 'straight privilege'. Let me not even start opening that particular can of worms.

Fuck them all.-



*I had heard them talk; she had said 'extrèmement' in quite a sharp tone of voice when they passed, so I guess she was issuing instructions.

I saw this pissed-off Bavarian lederhosen dwarf while I was wandering around in a trendily run-down commercial district looking for that kendo party. It was too damn hot, and the promised cloudburst had gone away again.



When I found it, it was a trendy white loft full of scary, sportsy strangers, there was no music, and all the food was already gone. So I told the Nazgul I was very sorry, but no, and left. Instead, I went to the nearby beer garden 'Villa Flora' where everybody was totally ignoring the huge flatscreens full of football, and had a nice pint (which you see here) while fanning myself with that little purple fan from Verona, and cooling down.

Then I went home. There were drunken football orcs in the train. I will have to avoid going out much in the next few weeks.

Americans are American.

Somebody did that in crackchat the other night. Somebody else linked to news items of 'Brits are still the same people as the ice age hunter-gatherers' and 'pre-Roman inhabitans of Britain might have been Germanic' -- I did rant about 'Celts are now Germanic argh argh argh'? --and I went 'I am a linguist here, what counts for me is what language people spoke'.

Somebody (I know who, but won't say as not to embroil her in unwanted debate) replied to my pronouncement with a quiet 'American'.

I felt like going 'YES THAT EXACTLY WHAT SHE SAID!!' but refrained, later pondering that it's true for me as well, whose family is undoubtedly German since 1640, with an undoubtedly Slavic name. We spoke German all the time, we lived in German speaking territories, we married generations of women with German maiden names...

And, yes, while the language is called 'English', there is shading that will clearly identify Irish, Scottish, Welsh, American, Australian, and Indian.

Its a roughshod definition, not much better than 'Europe is everything that was Christian at some stage in the Middle Ages and nowadays takes part in the Eurovision Song Contest', but I personally prefer it to great ponderings of 'race fail'. If you want to sort people by race, you can only fail, see South African apartheid...

In mostly unrelated news, essayel and I just pondered that a World Problem Solving Comittee made up from random members of both our flists would have a much better chance at actually solving the current problems of the world than the people who are in charge of it now. **votes for 'Somebody' up there to be in charge of the race problem subcomittee**

First, the Germanic tribes were suddenly all Celts.

Now, the Celts are suddenly Germanic...

**shakes head**

For me, what counts is the language people speak, as evidenced by old place names if we're talking historic tribes. What's so difficult about all this?

By the way: Farsi (=Persian) is an Indo-European language. Persians (and Kurds, the former Medes), are not Arabs. The languages aren't even structurally related.-

Advertising on Web 2.0 sites is not meant to sell whatever shit it pretends to be about. Nobody ever orders a Muslim bride, clicks on that idiotic weight loss link with shrinking!chick on, or wants that insanely giggling deathday oracle cast for themselves.

If you want to sell services or products, you go via Google ads, in either direction.

These annoying ads are MEANT to be annoying like hell, and their real purpose is to sell paid accounts, which make those ads go away.

It works, too.-

Theoretically, anybody who wants to be vaccinated, can be.

But: the panic spread on the TV news has led to such a run on all the GPs etc. that do it (hospitals and central health authorities don't!), one can't come by it at the moment.

Of course, all that artificial panic is probably just meant to incite the chronically vaccine-wary Germans to get inoculated after all. When I said as much on the phone to the nurse/assistant at the office of the the doctor my colleague who lives near here has recommend, she said all that panic was 'bullshit'. Yep, that's the right word to translate 'Schwachsinn' with.

Calling a few other doctor's offices has brought up zilch, of various shapes, too. So I guess I'll call that same office again at the end of next week or so to see if they have new doses of the vaccine, because somewhere that has a nurse/assistant (notoriously very soft-spoken, bland & submissive) with an attitude that allows her to say 'Schwachsinn' on the phone to a stranger? I think I like a place that where people with attitude and independence can work.

If an Arab bloke who legally married four women at home comes to California with his wives, which three of them does he have to give under prop. 8? Is the one he married first his legal wife there, for all bureaucratic purposes, and the others just girlfriends he can't even talk to the doctor about if one of them goes to the hospital to have a kid, and there are problems? Can he choose? Is he required to leave three of them at home for his stint of doing whatever in LA or wherever?

Sorry, this just jumped into my head.-