It gets funnier and funnier

Just look at these two guys. One's just returned from Iraq and the other one has been to a rhethorics training. At least, that's what they say. They are both rueful and sorry for the Iraq war taking so long. Blair is quoted as saying "I think it's easy to go back over mistakes that we may have made, but the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination by our opponents to defeat us." Oh yeah... funny they didn't think of that in the first place!
What the fuck where they expecting? That the Iraqis would just lay down and roll over, waiting to get it up the rear pipe while the "allied forces" are raising their flags?

There was a time when I heard a speech Blair while he was running for prime minister in the UK, and I thought to myself, wow, what a guy! He's smart, he's a good speaker, hell, he'd probably make a good politician!

I was way too naive back then to realize how right I was... He became the PERFECT politician. A lying son of a bitch rat with about as much spine as a mudworm.

The other one ain't bad, either! Listen to this: "Bush shared some of his regrets in how he handled the war in Iraq, namely that he wishes he hadn't told the terrorists to "bring it on" or that Osama bin Laden was "wanted dead or alive."

I was rolling on the floor, laughing my ass off when I read that! You know, when I was still in primary school, there was this guy, small and not the brightest light in the room, and once during a school break he was heard to tell the school bully, who wanted to copy his homework, threatening to beat the guy up if he didn't provide the work, "Yeah, right! Bring it on!"

Guess what? He got his sorry ass whacked so badly he couldn't sit still for a week.

Remind you of something? No? Lemme help you with another brief anecdote. This one really happened. On one of my business trips, flying back to Europe from the US, an elderly lady was sitting next to me, and we got to talking. She was originally from the US, and she'd been living in a big European city for 30 years. She had the brightest blue eyes I can remember and she must've been a hottie 50 years ago. Despite her high age, she made a very bright impression on me.

But I digress. At one point during our chat she asks me what my political views of the US were. I carefully replied, that I wasn't a big fan of the current US government. Boy, was she relieved! She then went on to tell me that the father of her daughter's husband went to high school with the daddy of G.W. Bush - yup, that would be the former CIA boss & president of the US, the one who invaded Iraq the first time around. She quoted her daughter's father-in-law as repeatedly saying "Mr Bush wasn't the brightest light in the room!" That merely made me smile at her, and my softly mumbled "Like father, like son!" earned me hard laughter from this old lady.

But it's not really like you didn't know, right?

The article from which I stole the few quotes above contains another screamer:

"I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted," Bush said, adding that he has learned how to express himself in a more "sophisticated" manner.

Yeah... the "bully" probably misinterpreted it.

And I'm already very much looking forward to more sophisticated statements!

I'm shaking my head as I write this... and listening to "Die another day" by Madonna, can only quote again:

"Sigmund Freud -Analyze THIS!"

While it's fresh...

Okay - I went to see it yesterday. My first thought?

THIS IS WHY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS SHITTING BRICKS!?

To quote Ray Nagin's immortal words: You've got to be fucking kidding me!

I've hardly ever seen a shallower movie! Did I say in my last post that I would go to see it because of Hanks? Forget it! He played as if he were wearing leg irons - and, funnily, the same was true for Jean Reno! It became clear to me as the credits rolled: Executive Producer: Dan Brown. He must've stood there during the takes with a loaded gun, or else actors such as these would've run circles around the guy! But no, they were both trotting along the plot, which was even more predictable than in the book, as if they were driftwood! I mean, I can't really be the only one who knew after about a third of the book that Sophie was Jesus' great-great-great-ad infinitum-granddaughter! Can I?

Oh, the chick... Audrey Tautou has beautiful eyes, and looks pretty hot, too, if a bit anemic and bulimic, but she can't act. I didn't buy her cryptographic skills. Not for one bloody microsecond.

The only performance worth mentioning was - NOT Paul Bettany as Silas. Ian McKellen played a believable and funny Sir Teabing, but that was about it from the actors. I kinda liked the historic flashbacks blended into the running film, but that was about it from the originality.

Apart from that? Forget it.

Millions of Catholics can let out their collective breath. Fuck it, this blog is more blasphemic than either the book or the movie.

Been there, read that...

Chances are, so have you. Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" was one of the most successful books in recent years, catapulting a formerly unknown author to unexpected heights of fame. Another case before that was Joanne K. Rawling, the stupid cunt... The one thing that Brown & Rawling have in common is that they both have mediocre writing skills. The one difference between them, is that Brown is an arrogant S.O.B. As soon as the first articles came out, which kinda picked a few "facts" from the book and started proving them right, he jumped right out in front of the cameras and started making innuendos at the contents of his book - what with, it was all well researched and based on facts, while still being a work of fiction, but then again, not fiction, really, but, you know, you have to build your own opinion, and who knows, it might still be true... What a prick!
O well - I guess he's earning good money with it, the more opaque his comments about the factuality of the book, the better it would sell.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying it's a bad book. It's a good, light read, a page-turner, as they say. It's just that Brown can't write worth shit... His characters are transparent, boring and predictable, no complexity whatsoever, the plot is predictable as well, which is the worst thing that can happen to a thriller - loses all the thrill.

But I digress - I wasn't meaning to really write about the book or Brown, or JK Rawling, the stupid cunt, for that matter. No, I'm on a rampage again against one of my favorite all-time enemies.

You've guessed it.

The Catholic Church is having a field day in its comments about the book. Just one of the comments (again showing that the Catholic Church is a bunch of below-average-IQ dicks with a severe lack of self confidence) was blabbed out by Joseph Dias, general secretary of the so-called "Catholic Secular Forum" (whatever the hell that may mean...). He said (quoted without his or the BBC's bloody permission): "You can't make fiction on a religious figure."

Oh? You can't?

Brown proved otherwise! You pretty well fucking can! He did! Who says, he can't? And who is "you"? He's obviously one of the fuckers who think that the whole world belongs to his 2000 year-old fisherman's club. Sounds like his reality check bounced badly. He added that the Christian community has been tolerant in relation to the book-release of the Dan Brown epic, but an audio-visual medium would have a more serious and a more lasting impact.

Beg your FUCKING pardon!? Tolerant? Where? When that book came out, the bloody pope himself made stupid comments about the book, there were discussions on whether to put the book on the fucking Index, right next to Hitler's "Mein Kampf"!

Talk about tolerance... yeah, right!

There's more, though. The same guy then goes on to say "Tempers are already running quite high and there's no way of saying what could happen if the movie is released."

Are you, Mr Dias, by chance trying to... threaten us!? I'm hearing something like, if you don't take some kind of action against that movie, the members of the Catholic Church are going to behave the same way the Muslims did when those caricatures were published... Ah... just to imagine, thousands of Catholics out on a bloody rampage, burning Dan Brown voodoo puppets, all the books he ever wrote, denouncing the US where he comes from, claiming the approximately $300 million dollars he made with the book, for the lawyers they need to defend themselves against the claims of sexual harrassment, burning New Hampshire flags, bombing the publishing house... It sounds almost enticing!

It seems to me like the Catholic Church is pretty much profiting from the whole goddamn (hell, how I love blashphemy!) mess! Nobody talks about them, unless there's a major scandal onto which they can jump and add their useless comments. They're requesting - yeah, you read that right, requesting! - government action against "anti-Christian" films!

What in the name of holy-fucking-everything is "anti-Christian" about a fucking fiction book or movie!?

The same guys who get enraged about the Muslim community's reaction to the publishing of Mohammed caricatures, are now screaming bloody murder at Dan Brown's book & movie, not really noticing the irony of the situation they're putting themselves into.

My girlfriend put it bluntly. There's a saying in German (no, I'm not from Germany, but I speak the fucking language), which translates to something like "A dog will bark, if you kick him!"

How true. One of the biggest dogs in the world has just received a major kicking, and it's barking so loudly, the papers are covered with the fecal matter it's shitting itself with, the internet news is boiling over with the story, everyone is happily jumping in and offering their useless opinion (yep, even me).

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've got a movie theatre reservation for Sunday. I'm going to watch it for one reason: I want to have some good suspenseful entertainment, I like Tom Hanks (as an actor, you jerk, what did you think!?) and I want to switch off my brain for a couple of hours - not for the rest of my life, like oh-so-many members of the Catholic Church obviously did five minutes after they were born...

Oh, by the way, I have a number of suggestions for the Catholic Church. Here's a couple of books/movies which might come in handy, once the novelty of Dan Brown has worn off:

- Monty Python's "The Life of Brian"
- Monty Python's "The Holy Grail"
- Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" (yeah, I know there was some slight outrage about that, but nowhere near enough!)
- Michael Moorcock's "I.N.R.I"

And for those, for whom The DaVinci Code didn't contain enough conspiracy theories, read Umberto Eco's "Pendulum of Foucault". If you don't get the irony of that one, you may as well put an end to your sorry lives.

Oh, and don't forget wintermute's "The Catholic Church - Major Clusterfuck or Moronic Dumb-And-Dumberer-Society?" That's a decent read, too...

Use(less)net

Sheesh... I just looked back to see for how long I've been involved with the internet, and fuckin' hell, it's been since something like 1991. That would make this year my 15th anniversary, right?

One of the things I remember most vividly was my first encounter with the internet, which was Usenet. I was thrilled at the thought of being able to freely exchange opinions, knowledge, jokes and other (in)significant stuff with complete strangers all over the world. Of course, one of the first newsgroups I encountered was alt.tasteless, and boy, did I feel at home there!















That was at the technical university I attended, when an internet connection cost a five figure amount in most European currencies. After leaving university, I lost access, until after a few more years, the internet arrived at the company I worked for by then. Of course, I tried to go back into alt.tasteless, to see if any of my old buddies were still up and running, but there were only a few, and access to the newsgroup was limited and intermittent. Oh well, another newsgroup, called alt.tasteless.jokes had to fill in, and I spent quite some time there, flaming newbies, assholes and other scum, after a while becoming somewhat of a regular.

Since about two years, I've dropped out of atj for the most part, because IMNSHO the trolls and assholes have won it over.

Oh well, I thought - there's bound to be some USEful groups there, too, after all, it's called Usenet, eh?

Found some on photography, cryptology etc. And guess what?

Useless. Boring. A fucking waste of time.

These newsgroups (and I think they may well constitute a representative sample) are so full of people who are so full of themselves. I'm full of myself, too, but I don't bother other people with it. (Yes - not even you who may be reading here, it's your own damn choice, right?)

There's this one guy on sci.crypt - he (obviously) has been writing for like 9 years, and he rambles on and on about what scientific discoveries he's made, how his knowledge is going to shove the world into a maelstrom of chaos - an obvious nutcase. You'd think people would just ignore and/or killfile him.

Guess what?

That's right - instead of just looking the other way, they ENCOURAGE the moron, replying to him over and over again, telling him that he's full of shit. The only one successfully ignoring anybody at all is - HIMSELF! He successfully ignores all the people who reply to him, and keeps droning and rambling and ranting...

Hundreds of seemingly intelligent people... and they get baited EVERY FUCKING TIME!

Goodness fucking gracious, I most sincerely do hope (although I should know otherwise) that people posting on Usenet are NOT a representative sample of the population of this planet.

But, dear inclined reader, you and I know better, don't we?