No, I Can't

First up, once again, Jeremy Clarkson is my hero.

"I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families."

The reason I think the strikers are stupid is a relatively simple one.  Striking will change nothing.  Two million people sounds like a lot, but there weren't actually two million people striking.  There were two million individuals on strike, without a coherent voice.  Before you turn around and say 'their demands were simple, fewer fees and a lowered retirement age,' that's all good and well, except there is no representation.  Who will the government strike a deal with, who is their representative?  There are probably dozens of sub-unions within such a group, and none of them are worth bothering with in terms of negotiations.

The only real way to enact change, as has been proven for millennia, is with force.  Egypt didn't change (although it hasn't really changed at all) governments by petitioning local politicians to 'please, if you wouldn't awfully mind, stop being corrupt please?'  This strike is as riled as a mob in England gets, and I'm pretty disappointed if I'm honest.

Two million people milling around while enjoying a day off work is ineffective, to say the least.  The potential for change within such a small group is amazing, and was left bizarrely untapped.

Give me a megaphone, fifty thousand people and a million matches, and I will deliver unto you a change in government.  And lots of toasted marshmallows.

In other news, I found this government website that's designed to encourage hackers to out themselves.  The idea being that the government will use this as a promotional tool, recruiting anyone who can break the code.  What I actually think is happening is far more interesting; anyone who breaks the code will be seen to by Jeremy Clarkson and his shotgun.  That way, all the intelligent people in England will be dead, and everyone can live happy in a safer world.

Regarding the quiz, see the title.  It looks like hex, but I'll be damned if I can be bothered to figure out the values underneath them.  It's not even text, so I can't just copy it all into a converter.  Also, the smallest unit of hex is a nibble.  Bit, byte, tera, peta, giga, mega, kila, and a nibble.  All computing terms.  Someone had a sense of humour with the last one!

In other news, this video is of a dance that's particularly cool, from the lost travellers website.  I like the fact it's sped up, it adds something entirely new to the whole idea (namely being able to discern the change in sunlight and direction, without having to keep a fixed point of reference).  Obviously the video isn't meant as an end in itself, but it's interesting.

#EDIT#

It's good to see that igor has found a new job as the Egyptian tourist minister (or something).

Tall Versus High

So what makes something tall, and another thing high?

Apart from copious amounts of marijuana, I could only think of one thing.  If someone knows the actual difference, please feel free to stop me now.

So my theory is this:

If something is touching the ground, it's tall.  Buildings are tall, non-flighty animals are tall, as can be a flying animal if it is touching the ground.

A plane is tall when it is on the ground, but once it reaches the air it is flying high.  Much like the smoker.

So that's my little theory on these matters, does anyone know the actual answer?  (I've struggled to find the answer on the internet.)

Twenty Eyes, and the other fifty

So, I went to my Friday school today.  The observant among you may notice that today is Monday.  The very observant among you may notice that it's not necessarily Monday for everyone, some prefer to exist in front and behind my day.  It might even be Thursday somewhere, but that's awfully close to being 'discworld talk (TM).'

The point is, the Friday school are having an open day of sorts, inviting parents (they're still called parents here, not guardians like England), government officials (and other teachers) from around the place, into a pit of terror.  Normally I don't get particularly nervous for these things; so I didn't this time either.

It's really very simple.  These people are here to do a job - they're not out for murder.  Other teachers, with whom I occasionally converse, are of the opinion that screwing these events up means the end of the world.  For the native teachers, what it actually means is a retooling of prior knowledge, ensuring their practices are kept up to date.  More often than not, older teachers tend to stick to routines they formed in their younger years, and sometimes they need, at most, a refresher course.

For the ALT's it's essentially the interview for next year.  If you fail this, you're far more likely to be kicked out.  Considering they can replace you at a whim (which I suppose means yes, they are out for murder), their standards are above those held to schools in England. Unfortunately, this means the awesome half drunk/drunkard English teachers, and brain heavy science teachers are a rarity.  Such is the way of a conformist society, these traditional archetypes of sixth form learning guidance experts are in no way present in Japan.  I can understand their reluctance to expose the pupils to such bastions of knowledge as the drunk or genius at too young an age - such brilliance would surely corrupt young minds - but to deny the general population of these amazing creatures is wasteful to the extreme.  If I make it into a university, I'll report on my hunt for these elusive mammals.

So referring to the title, I was watched by three teachers from the other elementary school I work at, three women of unknown origins, a man who is head of the school district (of course it's a male manager, don't be misandristic) and a motley crew of unknowns.  I assume the unknowns are known to someone, otherwise they made a mockery of the formidable school defenses (consisting of a barricade to cover the entrance, and more lockable doors and windows than a greenhouse).

These events are always rehearsed by the school teachers involved, to point of boredom (in my case at least).  This particular lesson was planned for two months before the fact.  Let that just sink in.  A forty minute lesson, two months in the planning.  The Japanese teacher involved is the nicest woman in the world, but she has no confidence in herself.  She is apologetic for everything, even when I make a mistake it somehow becomes her fault.  I know a lot of people who are annoyed by this kind of behaviour, but it really doesn't bother me.  Helping this kind of person achieve something is a pleasure, and in this case it was fun to act with her in this particular charade.

I didn't help her nerves by messing up the introductions however (it was a three pronged attack plan, I introduce myself, the Japanese teacher introduces herself, then the kids introduce themselves to each other, except I forgot that last part.)  I apologised profusely afterwards, but the damage to our working relationship may well be permanent.  If not our partnership, then her blood pressure will certainly never recover.

Anyway, after a few stumbles (all on my behalf) we finished the lesson.  Who knows how it was perceived at large, and indeed I will never know.  The objective analysis of lessons, and the results thereof, are privy only to the higher-ups.  As if that kind of thing would be useful to the teachers involved.  That's just heretical.

Then again, Japanese sensibilities are somewhat frail, so criticism would likely result in hari kari all over the place - and that could get messy.

Why Life is so Frightening

So I was trawling the web, and pulled out this fantastic article.  (Check out the pie graphs at the bottom of the page).

It's from a fake religious website, created to illuminate the masses as to the demons present in religious worship.

They do a pretty good job, but the religious nutjobbery on display paled in comparison to the dire writing.  I understand that it takes effort to write that badly, but I damn near stopped reading several times, because more than a few sentences require re-reading.

If it teaches you nothing, let it teach you that religion is bad, m'kay?

I just had to e-mail the team playing on Sunday in the representatives match - I can't play on account of my entire body falling to bits, and primarily consisting of fat anyway.

This, immediately after I was sent a link to all the cool shit they get, all the pictures that are taken of them and their presence on local TV and in the papers.

Now my body chooses to destroy itself.  Thanks.

To illustrate how bad it is, my right forearm is half the size of my left (muscle wastage moves particularly quickly in Japan, apparently) and my legs have disappeared.  I am looking for them, but I don't know where they are; only bone is left.

I am extremely fat around the middle too.  The fattest I've been since I was a kid.

All things considered, I'm in the worst shape I've been in for a long, long time.

It's going to take months to get back into sport.  Months.

#edit# As an edit, check out this article from the very same site.

The number of people who think this site is real... simply astonishing

Headphones

I just washed my headphones for the umpteenth time.  Previously, the left ear had stopped working (presumably due to all the washing) so I assumed they were about to give up the ghost.  I usually go through headphones like diabetics go through insulin (that's a lot of headphones, in case you were wondering).  This pair have lasted me a fair while, more than a year now, in fact.  They went extremely well with my Sony Walkman (MP4 Edition) because both were seemingly indestructible.  I broke the mp3 player, took the back off by accident, went swimming with it in my pocket and generally abused it - but it kept on ticking.

In fact, the only reason I don't still have it is rather annoying - I broke the locking switch, which meant it was permanently locked in the 'off,' mode.  The electronics withstood a beating; the centuries old switching technology was the first thing to break.  Typical.

Anyway, I plugged my headphones into the computer (expecting a shower of sparks) and found that now left and right are fully functional.

What?

In unrelated news, the BBC are up to their old habits again.  Their insistence on hiring 'experts,' who label everything material as merely 'stuff,' and equating this 'stuff,' with human beings, more specifically our size, simply undermines any respect the organisation once had.

They could at least throw in a few 'things,' here or there.

Besides, I can't relate to this 'stuff,' being measured in people.  Apart from being macabre (I'll have a humans worth of pork, please) it is incredibly boring.  I want all my 'stuff,' to be measured in dragons, from now on.  I want 1/58th of a dragon of wood to make my new patio, please.

Grow the hell up please, BBC.

To quote a post below the article: 'Congratulations for your contribution to the great dumbing down of society. Was this article originally destined for the CBBC website?'

Defending the Little Guy

Normally, I would watch news like this, and sympathise with the little guy.  In this case, Iran and Iranians are being forced out of Nuclear aspirations by the rest of the world - while we all use oil like it's going out of fashion.  Although oil has ceased to be fashionable, and keeps getting more difficult to come by (expense is a byword for ease of procurement, in this sense) the Iranians are being told to keep using oil, coal and gas to generate their power.

Let's say, as a bi-product of producing cleaner energy, Iran got hold of some nuclear weapons.  Let's just pretend that's what would happen, for a moment.  Iran loses all sense and bombs america.

What will happen?  Well, now the americans have developed missiles that can travel at mach 5 (this is an old article, but the successful tests have been replicated recently), it won't be long before they wedge a nuke onto it. So the leaders in Iran blow up Manhattan, then the americans destroy the entire middle east.

Maybe that scenario is somewhat drastic.  Let's run the simulation again.

Iranians blow up New York, americans annihilate the middle east.

No, you see, no matter how you play it out, there isn't going to be a microbe alive in Tehran, let alone a person.

Russia and america have all the nukes, so why can't the rest of the world?

Before you start saying something along the lines of, 'oh but Iran is a bad place and they're dictators and whatnot,' let's look around the world.  If you want to punish criminals and criminal behaviour, why don't we place embargoes on every single politician in England, and then work our way to america.  Lock up everyone who makes more than a few millions dollars a year, because there isn't a chance they didn't obtain their wealth legally - then make your way to Europe, where those at the helm of the union are lining their pockets illegally.

When you've enacted that period of cleaning, go find Sepp Blatter.  Put that crook in prison.  Someone, please, do that soon.

Then put Formula one in the hands of someone who doesn't suffer psychotic breaks whenever anyone talks about holding an american F1 round.

Then, when we've cleaned out our own rubbish, let's 'fix,' Africa.  There's a whole continent of dictators and despots hanging around there.

After that, the whole world will be infinitely better, and we can get to work on 'helping,' the middle-east.  There's naivety, then there's claiming we romp around the world murdering civilians in other countries for their own good.

But I digress - this was originally supposed to be about video games.

So the Iranians who play this game complained about it being a game, depicting what is going to happen to them in a few months.

My point would be this: obviously america is a psychopath who has Iran in its sights, so stop playing games and bloody run away.  Especially if you think that battlefield 3 will affect public opinion, because you know, we're all dumbasses here.

I was also asked to write something for a little book the sixth year teachers are making for their kids, as they're moving on into their new schools at the end of this year.

I wrote this, with the expectation that none of them can understand English.  I wrote it in the hope that some of the more curious (and frankly, more intelligent) students will ask what it means, and the teachers or parents can then translate for them.

I hope this year was fun for everyone.  English can be difficult, but it is important.  We don’t learn English to study for tests, we learn English to speak to other people.  If you meet new people, you will learn about yourself, Japan and the world.  I hope you will grow!

I enjoyed this year, and I hope you did too!

Don’t stop smiling!

J Sam J

Well, No More Sports

So yesterday I went down to the Tokyo Gaijin rugby club.  They had a friendly match, and afterwards was a trial for the representative team comprised of the best from our league.  The idea is that this team would go on to face a team from another league.  I was expecting a reasonable level of ability from this team (being as they were, the cream of the crop) but the level was rather confounding.  People really don't enjoy tackling, so every break came from poor defence rather than solid attack.  It was faster paced however, and that is more enjoyable to both watch and play in.  I would have liked the opportunity...

Anyway, I went down to the club with a niggling hamstring injury, hoping to prove that I wasn't arrogant, expecting to waltz into the select team - and hoping to prove that Tokyo Gaijin were
my primary team.

What ended up happening though, was me ruling myself out of contention for at least another month.

In short, I pulled my other hamstring.  It was foretold by the club old boy, who said, "if you try to nurse a hamstring, you'll do the other one."

He was completely correct.

The problem is simple: if I don't turn up and rest the original hamstring, it would have been fine for the select game, but I wouldn't have been able to play in it.

If I go down, I risk hurting myself further but at least show willing.

I don't know if that's a bonefide catch 22 situation, but it's certainly how it felt.

Also aiding in my downfall: not visiting the gym in a month in order to rest my hand.  When I went running after the bike crash (the root of all my physical problems over the last month or so) everything swelled up; especially but not limited to my hand.  It hurt a lot too, so I decided that I'd refrain from physical activity until it was fully healed.  It's X number of weeks on since that, and while movement has returned, the pain remains (I have a lump in my hand, presumably a mangled mass of blood and muscle).  This hiatus means my body is not ready for physical exertion when called for, and much like couch potatoes the world over, I am roughly similar to granite, flexibility wise at least.  I'm also like a leaf, in that I tear easily.  Like leafy granite, then.

I am teetering on a line between devastated and incredibly frustrated - I was damned either way so it was out of my hands, figuratively speaking, but the outcome is still unsatisfactory.

On the flip side, I can tot up the non-human damage.  Kiss forty quid goodbye (train fare, food, drink) along with eight hours of my life (three and a half hours to get there, four and a half on the way back (I got lost, the line I wanted to get branches out like a Christmas tree, because that's, you know, the logical way to build a train track) double parentheses, wahoo!) for the grand total of five minutes rugby and two busted hamstrings.

Not the best return on an investment, although with those losses I could work the markets like a seasoned trader.

The upshot is simple; I will end this half of the season (they split it between the Winter breaks) on my ass getting fatter, like everyone else at Christmas time.  But without the Christmas dinner.  On the plus side, that means no horrible vegetables like broccoli or brussel sprouts.

Dungeons and Geeks

So I've been listening to a random podcast, focused on the rather well known board and dice game of Dungeons and Dragons.  People who played this game were the original geeks.  I don't know when the game was invented, but it must be around the time computers were starting to become useful and geeks latched onto both.  Computer games weren't popular until much later - however the dungeons and dragons style numbers game is perennially popular.  There are lots of games that roll magical random (as random as computers can be, which they can't) numbers to determine myriad statistics within the game.

I've never played dungeons and dragons, and I've never really wanted to.  Listening to these guys play doesn't really change my views, but it strikes me that for a solid game, fixed to a physical board with real dice it has an amazing amount of variation.  Anything you want to do can be done, which is incredible considering that nothing is actually being done.  The freedom, in essence, is juxtaposed with the simplicity.  As things become more complicated, they become more constrained, with games at least.

This is only an issue because I've started playing Skyrim, a free-form game set within the same ruleset as dungeons and dragons (it's 3D, but everyone has numbers attributed in the background).  I've noticed that as this game is touted as being a build your own adventure, it falls far short.  The problem is that there are rules.  For everything.  I can do an amazing number of things, like pickpocket people, rob their houses, save maidens, kill dragons, but I have to obey the game rules, which often pulls me out of the world.  For example, if I want to rob someones house, I have to make sure the doors are closed, otherwise they'll see me.  Even if there isn't a person within five miles.

It also helps that the people playing DnD on the cast are absolutely hilarious, whereas I'm by myself when I'm playing games, and I'm nowhere near as funny.

That's the obligatory nerd portion of this months blog complete.

And in keeping with the geek theme:

How to Break a Leg and Influence People

I've not broken a leg, don't worry.

I played rugby on Sunday, with a massively bandaged right hand.  It looked like I was beginning a particularly unusual mummification process - particularly gruesome considering I'm still alive.

I didn't re-hurt that particular area, but what I DID manage to do, was get a massive headache.  I was holding one of the little opposition players off the floor, when someone belted me with a forearm to the face.  This put me out for a few seconds, and besides from the image of a big, fat, wobbly forearm coming towards my nose, I remember not much of anything for the next ten minutes or so.  Apart from the headache.  I also scored a try at this stage, apparently.  Buggered if I can confirm it though, so let's all pretend it happened.

That try aside, I scored two others; definitely.  One was from a sublime pass, I was standing extremely flat (as I'm wont to do in Japan, the defence holds off for far too long, allowing a head of steam and certain gain-line advantage) and one of the defenders chose to shoot out and try to nab the ball in mid-air.  He failed, I walked a few feet over the line.  It was all very easy, thanks to a sublime pass.

The other came from a break from the halfway line.  I pushed away from the would-be tackler, ran outside the covering defence, scooted past the full-back (at this point I had slowed down somewhat) with about four cover defenders pushing me ever closer to the line (this was deep into the second half, and I'd been causing them troubles for about sixty minutes, whenever I got the ball there were four shirts in front of me).  I dived, dobbing the ball down one handed while flying through the air superman style, lest one of them try to tackle me partway through.  It was worthy of a television replay, alas none was forthcoming.

The real trouble started with ten minutes left.  I once again broke through the midfield (having started at fullback I was moved to outside centre), beat everyone with the full-back to go, decided to ship it onto the winger who wasn't anywhere near me.  My only option was to push a pass backwards fifteen feet, where despite a valiant effort, he was nabbed by a defender.  A couple of phases later and I was ready for an inside ball, except, and I don't know why, I blew my hamstring.  It exploded like a drag racer, I was short of disengaged pistons, but it felt quite terrible nonetheless.  Why it should happen so far into the game is anybodies guess.  Oh, and this was five minutes after I landed badly on my right wrist while I was diving at a try scorer to be.  He was definitely going to make the line, but I was running as fast as possible and wanted to exact some revenge for being punched, beaten, kicked and generally done ill to.  So I did.  Childish, yes.  Worth it?  No. Now both wrists hurt.

I'm deliberately leaving the bad play until last, and as such, the last good thing to come from the game was some of my tackling.  I stopped at least three definite scoring opportunities, one with a tackle that was perfectly legal, leaving the attacker winded.  While he was on the floor making like a grounded fish, I dived onto the scrum half (at this point there were two defenders and fifteen attacker) which was perfectly legal, as no ruck had formed - causing him to spill the ball backwards, allowing my team to catch up and, eventually, poach some possession.  I was particularly proud because milliseconds prior to the tackle I had slipped, causing me to be on one knee during the impact.  As I rose onto my feet, the natural forward momentum and position I'd adopted were perfect.  One of those lucky flukes that works, I suppose.

Now the bad - my first take at full-back was as inauspicious a start as is possible.  I took the ball up, not realising my entire team expected me to kick.  I took it into contact with no one there to help.  They inevitably got the ball, shipped out it to the backs and scored.

Looking back, it was bloody stupid to run it in, let alone where I eventually chose to do so.  I should have taken it onto the wings and let a few of them tackle me, allowing me to release an outside player.  Or kick it.  But kicking is no fun.

Other bad things - I gave away about forty eighty bajillion million penalties.  No matter what I did, it was wrong.  I was pinged for not releasing the tackler (I was on my feet, had let go, did a theatrical hand waving ceremony to prove that I had let go while jumping back over the tackled player, picked the ball up and ran off, (no one else was there) only for the whistle to go).  I then tackled a chump, deciding not to let him touch the ground.  In doing I again came foul of the referee for something.  I don't know what this time.

Then, after another break (they happened all over the place, made by any number of players) I was a cog in the passing machine, taking a tackler out of commission, passing backwards to the next person.  Except it was forwards apparently.  It was only forwards insomuch as backwards is forwards in the southern hemisphere.  But we are not in the southern hemisphere.

The one that makes me chuckle is the tackle when I got a forearm to the face (no broken nose, amazingly, although it is sore.)  I had the player in the air, forearm to the face, went down, penalised for not rolling away. To be fair, I didn't roll away.  To be fair, I didn't do much of anything.

So in summary, it was a game of mixed outcomes for myself.  I scored a few, our team lost.  I made some great tackles.  I busted every part of my body.  My running broke the gain-line.  I was penalised more times than everyone else on the pitch combined.

It was lots of things, and interesting was certainly one of them.

I Relented

I went to the hospital.  It took about 35 minutes to see the doctor, 10 for an X-ray, 10 minutes waiting, then another ten waiting to be billed.

I don't know how much it cost, but I doubt it'll be over thirty quid.  I understand I'm setting myself up for a colossal fall with that estimate.

I don't have any broken bones (I'm made of tempered steel) but the doctor noted some interesting things.  I have pieces of hand floating around in there, just like I have pieces of foot floating around in my right ankle.  They restrict movement in my right ankle, but the extra pieces of bone in my hand don't seem to do anything.

I am rather pissed off at having to wait at my middle school, my boss let me out early to get to the clinic so he's recouping the hour I had off, as if I were at home relaxing, not getting my hand beaten up left and right (the doctors caring hand was not evident).

The other interesting thing of note, is that I have massive fingers.  When he looked at the X-ray he all but whistled under his breath.  Fat bones, apparently.  This adds to my belief that I am actually an Xman in waiting.

The final interesting thing comes from his analysis of my radiation.  He showed me where the bruising was, a dense enough bruise will show up on X-ray, apparently.  There were some particularly interesting dark spots, showing exactly where the bruising was.  It was uncanny, that there technology.

Oh God, I Hope Not

Just read the title of this piece by the BBC.

Pop music and drama are devoid of merit and value, that is why they exist; they're not here to make a statement.  They can be quickly churned out for audiences who refuse to question the tripe they're watching/listening to.  The mistake people seem to make about Korea, is that their pop and drama are products they create because they want to feed a market.

The fact is, this is all they can create.  Pop music spawned rock, metal and post-rock from those, all sorts of things subsequently developed from the combination of other genres, creating a vast array of music for all tastes.  Korea can only make one kind of music, because the people themselves are devoid of everything that makes an artist.  They're just crap copies of us, twenty years ago, devoid of any discernible taste.

If people in London are actually listening to that shit, get out of the country.  Get out now.  Run for your lives!

AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!
the pop-zombies are coming to eat our brains!

Rugby

I stayed away from the rugby this weekend, focusing on eating and sleeping (to heal my injured hand, of course.)

I haven't been to the gym in three weeks, and I'm honestly getting bigger around the middle.  This hand is a bigger injury than I first thought, and particularly annoying because it's bicycle related, not even rugby...

The various teams I play for have been trotting along without me, the Tokyo Gaijin just released this detailing their recent exploits, comings and goings.  I get a mention in there as well.

This coming weekend is a special match for one of my friends in this prefecture.  His friend died when he was in school, and they both played rugby.  Around this time of year they play a match in his memory.  I don't think it's a fixture scheduled around the anniversary, it simply coincides.  I'm definitely going to be playing in it - I'll just dose up on painkillers and hope for the best.

Every day it gets better, just not as quickly as I'd like...

Damnit

I received shipment of a book today.  Written by a certain Terry Pratchett (name possibly spelt incorrectly) whom I adore as a writer, thinker and conveyor of ideas.  He shapes our current world into the humorous  (one that dates back many years, beginning with the origins of the discworld), showing the stupidity of politics, war, religion and all manner of humanities foibles.

I could wax lyrical about the man for an eternity.

I won't, but as a tribute to the man, and how much I appreciate him:

I received shipment of a 320 page story (in the small form factor, paperback) at midday.  It's now nine O'clock, and I just finished it.  Pyramids is the title, and yey, verily, it was good.

Actions speak louder than words, and I feel my actions today are a mark of genius writing.

How To Look Stupid

Normally, this title would be reserved for me.  Whether it's falling off my bike, walking into a post (usually groin first) or saying 'I love you,' instead of 'one pineapple please,' (often in Japanese, but sometimes to a very pretty grocers daughter) I'm fairly confident I could fill a thousand pages with ways to make yourself look stupid.  I do it regularly.

This post is something else entirely.  I read this (warning: it's very long) post by a game creator, who recently wrote this post for a gaming website.  I recommend reading both before continuing, or at least getting as far through them as possible.

I now have a confession to make.  At first, the original article made me rage.  It made me so angry that I had to stop halfway through (I've since finished it, through gritted teeth and much fist waving).  Not because the men were acting stupid, childish or immature, but because the woman involved was being so pathetic that it made my heart rate increase, my blood boil and any other metaphor related to anger.

When you examine the article, far from being a feminist superhero, she is actually a controlling, manipulative wench.  Here is why:  Her flowing tears were nothing to do with 'being objectified.'  She was expecting her boyfriend (whom she deliberately hides as being her boyfriend until the latter stages of the article, for dramatic effect) to jump into the fray to save her dignity/honour.  When he didn't share the same expectations as her, and didn't tell the idiot to shut up, she ran out of the room crying.  As exuberant feminists tend to do, she then examined the various relationships involved, checking to see if they were still worth her while.  If they don't defend my honour, what's the point in friends - that's exactly what she is saying.  Of course everyone is inherently selfish, and relationships of all forms are merely ways to improve ones own standing, physically, mentally or socially, but she expects the rest of the world to carry her views about life; when no one else does, she will cry and huff and puff and make everyone recognise their own mistakes.  Whether they want to be reformed or not, they will damn well accept it.

The continuation on Kotaku is almost incidental - her hyperbole filled rhetoric is not dissimilar to my own; it's based on opinion and skewed world-views, nothing more.  (Aside from her incorrect usage of misogyny (I can kind of understand it, it's sometimes misused even in mainstream media) belying the actual philogyny in her argument.)  Two things strike me - first, philogyny is underlined as being a misspelt word.  This means the powers that be determine hatred of men to be far less important than the hatred of women (the penalty for which is death, no compromises) and the wikipedia article I linked to philogyny is orders of magnitudes shorter than the antonym.  Equality for all!  Especially women.  Orwell is correct in any application of equality involving more than one group.  It will always be the case, I suppose.

Kotaku is a gaming website, written by a couple of interesting people, a couple of average writers, and a couple of morons, (generally changing positions when the mood takes me) but I never feel the need to go home crying when one of the morons starts saying things I don't like.

Instead I write a blog post about it.

Woah, hold your horses there sparky.  She did the same thing!  You are no better than her (directed at me, a strange sentence to write).

Except I didn't project my own insecurities onto my boyfriend in the form of a monumental guilt trip, while mislabeling a group of people in an attempt to tarnish an entire gender.

Also - stop trying to ruin my video games, you dumb bint.  Also - try a sports bra next time.

Thank you for your time.

(Towards the latter stages of this post, the rage became unbearable and I started writing random nonsense.  Couldn't help myself.)

Cool Stuff of the Week

So I've come across two small things this week.  The smallest things amuse me, hence why the internet meme creation association (I assume there to be a secret cabal where the creation of funny pictures is a high priority, (the IMCA to those of us with an 80's cult classic dance bent)) has my lifelong patronage.  I love encountering the unexpected.  In todays world, where I can accurately guess the outcome of at least 85% of movies after ten minutes, it's refreshing to encounter brilliance in unexpected ways.  The fantastic thing is that prior to the internet, very small groups of people would direct the flow of television and movies - media in general.  Now, one person takes a picture in India, another adds a funny caption in England, a third in Germany photoshops (yes, photoshop has become a verb, (to shop)) in a shark with lasers, and the fourth posts it onto an american board.  Forget unified medical systems, funny pictures is what the internet is good for.

Sheer brilliance.

So anyway.  The two amazing things I done saw.

The first is this.  The pilots evidently forgot to put the wheels down.  Why is this amazing?  Well, due to hollywood, I've been conditioned to think that a plane landing sans wheels, will explode upon impact, usually sending Bruce Willis flying out of the window.  What actually happens is far more interesting.  I don't know how much this plane weighs, but there's a lot of weight resting on those engines.  The casings don't break, collapse or even deform (noticeably, obviously there will be deformation to some extent) enough to send pieces of the interior flying.  I wonder if the turbines are generally okay inside the engines?  Do the blades shatter?  Do they gouge tracks in the casings?  What's the deal with that?  To be honest, I assumed the engines would sheer, essentially forcing the plane to bump over them like errant tyres on a racing car (a sight I've seen at least a dozen times in formula 1, but can't find the correct search in youtube).

I'm genuinely impressed with how well the aircraft coped.  Let's not make the false assumption that landing on anything other than arrow straight, perfectly smooth tarmac will result in the same outcome.  They also emptied the fuel tanks by flying around a bit, before landing.  Is it even a landing?  Landing implies a sense of normality.  I think this is more of a controlled crash, but the outcome appears to be favourable.  I wonder if they can ever repair that plane?  It's probably a junker now.  The same question goes for the runway, the amount of crud kicked up behind the plane suggests there would be three distinct ruts present on the tarmac now.  I guess it could be an auto-guidance system for all arriving planes, the wheels fall into the groove as it were, and are directed to the end of the runway with no pilot input.

The second thing that impressed me, is something I can't show you.  Cans in England have become thinner and thinner, presumably to save on the cost associated with metals the world over.  Cans in Japan however, don't seem to be following this trend.  More accurately, the cans of a specific brand of green tea are so thick that I can't crush them.  In no way am I able to flatten the can.  End on end, or sideways - both are impossible.  Admittedly, with my right hand out of commission I'm not using my strongest hand (I can crush with a force of 81kg's on my left, 84kg's on my right (my local gym recently had a competition to see who had the strongest grip, when I left I was about 8kg's more than the next best; when I came back I had been replaced by someone who was 5kg's less than me.  Foreigners not included, apparently.) but the extra 3kg's won't make much of a difference in this case.

I don't know what it's made of, but it may well be adamantium.