Education!

One thing that really vexes me about education in general, and the teaching of history in particular, is that most of it is absolute codswallop through and through.

Take the Marathon, for instance. Every kid is taught at an early age that the Marathon is based on the distance that a messenger ran from the battle of Marathon to Athens to tell the people there of their victory over the persians, upon which he fell down dead from exhaustion.

It never fucking happened! It's simply not true, there is no way around the fact that it is absolute nonsense! There was no such messenger, no such run and no such death!

And how about the earth being round? Every kid is taught at an early age that everyone thought the earth was flat up until Columbus proved that it wasn't.

Utter claptrap! At least for the last 2000 years people have commonly known perfectly well that the earth was more or less spherical. The reason why Columbus was initially laughed at was because he thought the world was much smaller than it really was, and everyone knew that. If he hadn't discovered the West Indies, him and all his crew would have starved to death, and his contemporaries knew that. They knew perfectly well that one could, in theory, travel to India across the Atlantic ocean, but in practice, it wasn't doable due to the immense distance. Columbus was in fact just an idiot who thought the distance was much smaller.

Now what about the V-sign? Nothing to do with archers wanting to show the french that they still had their fingers, or whatever. Do you know what it means?

FUCK OFF!

So, stop corrupting history, stop teaching bullshit to the kids, or I will come to your house and shove a copy of the collected works of Herodotus up your candy arse!

Around the next dream!

So, due to large amounts of popular demand, here comes the next dream of note:

It all started out with me and a buddy of mine staying over at an old friend's place, a friend who for some reason were really bloody annoyed by our presence there. Apparently, we had disturbed him in his sleep, so we were just lying in our bed (yes, that's singular, don't ask me why!) and pretending to sleep when he came and checked up on us in a rather foul mood.

Next thing I knew, we were visiting my buddy's girlfriend, and somehow some kind of argument erupted, and my buddy took his leave of us, and I was left at gunpoint from my old friend, who wanted me to come along outside and get into his car. Noteworthy is also the fact that at this point, the girlfriend of my buddy was in cahoots with him. I had also picked up a nice little rock with a fossil in it that I asked him if I could keep, upon which he took it and threw it on the ground to break it, but I still picked it up, and since he had discarded it, it would not be considered theft if I took it as my own, which I then did.

Now, me never being one to enjoy being threatened with a gun, I took the chance as he was stepping into the car to make a run for it. Fortunately, he was a very short guy, so buy crouching down, I stayed out of his view since he couldn't see over the cars that were between us.

As fast as I could, I ran around a corner, then yet another corner, in order to lose him. At this point, I decided to run into one of the apartment buildings to try and evade him in there, as I knew he was driving around trying to find me. It just so happened there was a hospital in that particular building, and instead of asking anyone in there for help, I ran down to another floor and out of the building, only to manage to sneak into yet another one at the same time as the guy with the gun arrived on the scene, thus he never spotted me, and I was relatively safe.

But, still wanting to evade him even further, I continued moving away from where I thought he was, and I came to a big road, which I tried unsuccessfully to cross. Then a lady came up and spoke to me, but what it was she said isn't told in this story.

Moving further away from the town center, I realized I could use my cellphone to call my buddy for help. Problem is, he was very depressed, and refused to help me since he wanted to stay loyal to his girlfriend, who was, as was explained earlier, working together with the jerk with the gun. He also told me his mother was on antidepressants, something I thought made sense, and that she was so addled by the drugs that the two had had sex, which somehow made their relationship so special that he couldn't possibly help me out.

Hey, stop rolling your eyes, this is my dream!

I had now arrived at a very beautiful suburb to the city I was in, and I tried calling my cousin to get a lift home. Problem is, I had no idea what city it was, only that it was somewhere in the vicinity of Stockholm, so I tried asking a classmate from high-school, a girl who I had once had a big crush on, but she acted all dismissive, and just told me that the name of the city was "Vanessa".

See, that made sense, didn't it?

Well, that's all she wrote, fortunately no more happened after that, because I'm getting tired of writing it down! Ha!

Dreams and yet dreams!

Finally, I have in the scope of three nights had a grand total of two dreams actually worth mentioning, IE aren't boring as all hell.

Here's the first one:

One day, I was out skiing, on a reeeeeeeaaaaally steep slope, and was trying to make sure I was actually on my feet rather than on my nose. Now, making an absolutely logical and completely understandable transition, it was all of a sudden the year 2012, and the world was going to hell in a breadbasket!

What this means is essentially that the ground itself, still on the ski-slope, was moving, heavily! 'twas all going in waves, which made it somewhat tricky to keep going downhill, seeing as how the concept of "Downhill" was instantly redefining itself. To add to the interestingnessicity, there was a monster, a big one. It was running down towards the fleeing people (on skis), and it was quite scary to behold.

Fortunately, I managed to evade it, as it came crashing down and knocked itself out in a somewhat cartoonish moment of awesomeness. Next thing I knew, in another brilliant transition, I found myself in a small shack, together with a few people, among them my beloved, hiding from a horde of the undead who, naturally, are bound to appear whenever the end of the world is taking place.

Now, of course we are trying to avoid getting bitten, or even scratched, because that would turn us into the undead, but we were also trying to kill the buggers at the same time. So, first there was a whole shitload of them, then there were suddenly just a few. The obvious flow of thought for me and my girl was whether we should shoot ourselves in the head right away to avoid turning into two of them.
Noteworthy is the fact that I got scratched by the knife of one of the undead, but decided that it would not turn me.

But achieving consensus on an important matter, we thought that the best course of action would be to intentionally get infected so we would in fact become undead ourselves, this because we at least wanted to spend some more time together, and even though we knew that our bodies would rot, we would still be together so that our love could flourish for awhile longer. That is thusly what happened, I got a cut in my left little toe and we both went somewhat brown-ish, we were clinically dead, but still up and about as if nothing had happened. We weren't zombies, just dead people who were still alive...kinda...

Apparently, some entrepreneur of considerable standing had the idea that we undead folks would make for utterly superb labour, so we were quickly shipped off across a body of water to some kind of labour camp, where we worked with taking apart boxes in order to win the favour of the boss.

Sometime around then, I noted that we could commit any crime we wanted, because as we were clinically dead, we couldn't be convicted of anything. I then felt for my pulse, and found it, which is rather weird when you think about it.

At this point, my left thumb was starting to seize up and hurt quite badly, because I was starting to feel the onset of rigor mortis. One of my co-workers adviced me that I should drink some water, which indeed helped, though the milk I drank made me feel sick to my stomach. I also felt some mild pain in my joints as they all started seizing up as well, which was expected by now.

Next thing I knew, I was on the beach with a higher ranking worker, with some amazing area-of-effect gun, that he left me to use when he went to do something or another, and I fired it at some invaders from another camp who arrived on the beach by boat.

After that, me and the mates from the camp took a joyride through the countryside, in what closely resembled a LEGO world! I noted that it was amazing that everything could be destroyed, as described by one of my mates, and I thought that made it an excellent video game!

At the end of it all, we were racing along, and trying to kill the people from the other camp who were pursuing us!

...and that's about it!

Okay, that's a whole lot of text, I think I'll write about the other dream sometime later, 'cause right now I can't be bothered!

Enjoy!

Music!...and some other stuff...

So, about this concert with Deep Purple I went to a couple of days ago...

This bothers me greatly, because there was nothing really wrong with the concert itself, they were brilliant. In fact, those old geezers beat out most modern act by a fair margin, they seriously rocked like all hell.

But the problem, see, was the opening act. They were some kind of swedish rock band called Attack. The creepy thing about them was that they were pretending like we were all supposed to know them, acting like they weren't just a bunch of middle-aged creeps who were never any good in the first place, and clearly just got worse during the last 20 or so years.

Only funny thing about them was the drummer, because when the others left the stage and he just tried to fire up the crowd on his own, he did a much better job and everyone seemed more at ease without the three other idiots around.

Fortunately, the idiots finally abandoned their attempts to...do something or another, and left the stage clear for the arrival of the ones we actually bloody came to see! I mean, how fucking pretentious do you have to be to just stand there and waste the audience's time like Attack did?!

Anyway...

Let me tell you this; every single word your parents have ever said about just how brilliant Deep Purple are, out of which you believed absolutely nothing, is completely true. Sure, they are old, but they've aged much more gracefully than any of the other oldies, like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.

Of course they included a whole line of classics; "Space Trucking", "Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming", and my personal favourite "Wasted Sunsets" in an awesome rendition. I actually though that last one was too much to hope for, but I suppose I got lucky this one time, which will probably have some pretty severe repercussions in the future...

And christmas is drawing closer by the minute, so maybe me and my beloved can conjure up some christmas spirit this coming weekend. Myself, I feel that christmas is the most romantic time of the year, and guess what ghosts and ghouls, this year I have a girlfriend! Hell yeah!

Ehm...what was I saying? Oh, right, about christmas...

I think we can cook something up, and I have a feeling this'll all be a winter to remember, not just for me but for my very significant other as well.

In other news, the commonly held opinion about the accelerated global warming is simply a load of bullshit.

http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2009/11/27/betydelsen-av-climategate

Y'know, this is exactly what I have been saying all along, literally. I have endured alot of crap because I have advocated a wait-and-see stance on the matter, and have urged those who make claims about global warming being a bomb ready to blow any second to actually look up the facts themselves instead of just saying "Oh, but any serious scientist agrees that...".

Well of-fucking-course they do, because you and every other idiot out there automatically considers any scientist who disagrees with the generally held opinion to be not serious!

Now people will instantly want to defend them, saying this is just a situation involving a few rogue scientists and nothing that affects the bigger picture. Here's the problem with it; it fucking does affect the bigger picture.

Most people drawing conclusions on the subject are doing so based on hearsay; they've heard someone say something about some unclear figures, and they are basing their opinions on that. A smaller category of people are the ones who have actually looked at those figures themselves and draw conclusions based on them, not on hearsay about the figures.

At the top, however, we have a small clíque of scientists who actually gather and compile all the data that everyone else uses to draw their conclusions. It is these people who have been pulling the wool over the eyes of the general public by manipulating the numbers.

And this is naturally easy to do; we all like to think that "Numbers cannot lie!", which is true, numbers can in fact not lie.

People, however, have no problem whatsoever with lying. People can enter whatever numbers they like into the statistics, and the general public will trust those numbers to be accurate.

In this case, they weren't, time to own up to that fact!

The Twilight Zone!

Since my love hadn't heard of this fantastic phenomenon, I feel somehow obligated to spread the word of it to the world.

See, The Twilight Zone is the brilliant brainchild of the genius Rod Serling. The concept is that of a long series of short movies, each telling the story of some person in a very peculiar way. It is most commonly referred to as science fiction with a message. More often than not, it touches on the subjects of redemption and personal enlightenment, with many supernatural elements, but in a way that doesn't get preachy.

Myself, I'd call it very very discrete and subtle horror. It's nothing like regular horror movies, where there is gore and monsters jumping out in front of the camera. It's much more subsued or subsumed or some other word like that; many episodes leave you with a kind of eerie feeling, like there is just something very wrong, relying more on a disconcerted feeling than on fear. It also contains quite a lot of twist endings, you are lead to believe something throughout the entire episode, then it's turned on its head at the very end.

The best example of this is ironically enough not an episode of the series at all, but rather a movie that I believe most people have heard of; The Planet of the Apes, that is, the original, not the remake. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows that it was in fact Rod Serling who wrote the screenplay for the movie, so it plays out like an episode of The Twilight Zone, especially the ending.

Here's the SPOILER for those who have already seen it, everyone else should skip this part!

At the end, the protagonist is riding away with his girl on a beach. Suddenly, he spots something that makes him fall to his knees in despair; the ruins of the statue of liberty, showing that he had in fact traveled not through space, but through time, and human civilization had destroyed itself, which allowed the apes to rule the world.

That brought me a particular feeling of it all being so wrong, like the world wasn't working the way it was supposed to, and that is precisely what many episodes of The Twilight Zone does.

You are reading this post, thinking it to be just another amusing anecdote in the life of a normal human being. But what you don't know, is that you have just checked into a hotel, that rest forever inside...The Twilight Zone!

Wedding...n' shit!

So, was at a birthday celebration yesterday, had a whole lot of fun with the relatives, but couldn't shake the unmistakable feeling of missing my dear Maria way too much!

Seriously, I can't conceive of time going any slower than this, why the flying fuck does it have to inch along at a pace that would make a snail go "Eat my dust!"?
Just another 11 days of waiting, but it's still too bloody much! I want my girl now!

Furthermore, have been appointed toastmaster at the wedding of my cousin, so in essence, I'll be running the whole freakin' show! I just thought I'd be introducing the speeches, at most, but it turns out I'll be in charge of just about everything and the kitchen sink apart from actually marrying the two. You know, planning speeches, games, keeping track of the catering, constructing the building we're gonna be in, inventing cold fusion, that kind of stuff.

Doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to it, though, it just means I'll have a whole lot on my plate that weekend.

Oh, did I mention I miss my girl enough to drive me crazy?

Exam!

Sat for about four hours and wrote an exam today, starting 8:15, which was a seriously major pain in the rear.

However, something I noticed while doing it was this; the longer I sat there, trying to force the figures to make sense inside my head, and trying to force the same figures down onto the paper into something resembling written language, I caught myself taking the piss more and more.

First, it was very small, maybe a "!" at the end of some sentences to make them sound more direct and forceful, but as I wrote down the second to last bit, I was sitting there making a simple graph of trade relations, then making an arrow pointing to one intersection of curves and writing "PROFIT!...for both" next to it, as a means of illustrating that it was at that point that two countries would both enjoy a profit.

On the last paragraph of the last question, where I was supposed to sort 6 suggestions out of 8 according to their economic viability and stuff, I basically just wrote "So, yeah, it costs too darn much, but it makes the cut because it's a good idea, that unfortunately relies on the wisdom of man, which is roughly as reliable as Stevie Wonder's eyesight!", then put down the pencil and went home.

Thank god there's no more school until monday!


Also, I'd like to add a little appendix to my advice on how to survive horror movies, and it goes like this:

Listen to advice you're given!
If someone says "Don't spend the night at Haunted Mansion, 23rd Murderous Maniac Boulevard, Zombiessex", chances are doing so would be a fucking awful idea!
If someone says "Don't trust anyone!", you can be fairly sure you're not supposed to give your blind trust to that middle-aged fellow telling you he knows a perfect hiding spot in the middle of Serial-killer Woods!