Disturbia p.2

I think the idea is evident by now, so first up this time...


What a lovely lunch party !
in the European launch party for God of war II you could enjoy one of many activities by the denizens of nether years. some of the activities...

[you can] reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach.

At the event, guests competed to see who could eat the most offal – procured elsewhere and intended to resemble the goat’s intestines – from its stomach.

They also threw knives at targets and pulled live snakes from a pit with their bare hands.

Topless girls added to the louche atmosphere by dipping grapes into guests’ mouths, while a male model portraying Kratos, the game’s warrior hero, handed out garlands"

Way to go sony, thats a truly ingenious "what the hell were they thinking moment ", that aside I want me one of 'em sheep skin overalls they look nice !


The latest alter boy coloring book !
Its not the thing that this is a coloring book distributed by the church to fight the pedophelia endemic they are suffering from but the fact that the pedophile gets to have his own smiley angel ! Serves them right for such a convoluted method of fighting it, targeting the victim instead of the perpetrator, I hope i get to see a pastor coloring that page in a church near you...

Golly Jesus what are you doing !
Here is a very intriguing painting by Lars Justinen of the Justinen Creative Group, now the funny thing is how many so called religious people can never really look beyond their egos and tend to stumble into the pit that they were warned about. Its disturbing because actually people are disturbed about it rather than just getting what it is trying to say (for that look at the link) .
Remember Judas ?



Who has the oil ?
And they ask why they are troubled in the middle east ... only if we weren't cursed.

I think someone discovered an earthly worm hole !
yeah click on it and see the license plate, evidently the guy came unscathed ... now what am really interested is whether he will participate in a Russian Rollete next!
What are we exactly waiting for ?
with how distressful the environmental problems when something comes along that promises an even cheaper alternative to coal(used to produce electricity still) and based on a technology that has been available for decades barely gets the backing while some are still living in the 70's thinking of starting their own nuclear facility... perfectly disturbing. check out the link for more info ...

Honorable mention: Bhutto's eyewitness account and pictures

Another more artistic taste on the Creationism vs. evolution debate

Since his majestic tentacleness has been busy at work in yet another school debate for the infusion of meta physics into the educational system this is one brilliant video that should not be missed
Watch duality (just watch the duality one with the two versions playing side by side, if that isn't divine I don't know what is)



ENJOY!
ps. i recommend watching it on the website linked above much better there.

Catch 22 of structured financing

So - the insurance company is guaranteeing the value of the banks mortgage loans, using money that it borrowed from the bank, which the bank had to borrow because it’s got these bundles of leans insured by the insurance company. In other words, the banks are insuring their loans themselves, using the loans to pay for the losses on the loans. It’s circularity on circularity on circularity - cycles within cycles of stupidity, relying on stupidity to prop it up.

And there are people - lots and lots of them - who are falling for this as a scheme to save the banks from the bad loans.

full article

Opening windows

Earlier on, Kinzi in a comment dropped a certain term... Johari window. At the time i never heard of the term and as usual it was on the list of things to read about (its an obscure list in my mind of random curious lil tid bit for instance the etymological root of arctic is arktos, the greek word for bear. back to the subject matter)

Now according to wiki;

A Johari window is a psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States, used to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise.
When performing the exercise, the subject is given a list of 55 adjectives and picks five or six that they feel describe their own personality. Peers of the subject are then given the same list, and each pick five or six adjectives that describe the subject. These adjectives are then mapped onto a grid.

The grid is based on four quadrants based on who knows what, so you have stuff that others know about you and you don't know about your self (blindspot), others that you know about your self and others don't (facade). At first I thought it would be an interesting tool especially in teams to establish a common ground of familiarity between the team members and help then connect on a personal level which, in my opinion, helps a team operate more efficiently when you consider the other team memebers more than a 2-dimensional paper cut outs. Turns out that it also helps identify problem elements in an easy going exercise which sounds interesting.

OK so thats not exactly what I want to talk, but it served as the inspiration. Now if you notice there is a quadrant for secrets (things that you know but others don't) but what spun around in my head is that a secret is not problematic until a person you don't want to share your secret with knows about it.

After thinking about a bit more I tried to figure how would such a situation come about; First thing that came to mind is intuition and stumbling on them. For me its a big part since I do trust my intuition about things and it serves as an insight about the person am dealing with that won't be readily available otherwise. when it comes to its accuracy its relative but it always serves as an impetus for what follows.
Second thing that occurred to me, well the six degree of separation in Amman has been cut down in half. It is not that hard to learn about the life history of a person and his family in Amman, all you have to do is ask anyone. whats funny about that is usually you will be looking to gain as much information without raising any alarms.

The Third and last thing that occurred to me is to ask the person about what you are thinking about, the gutsy option. Usually i would say this is the most honest and better option out of all, since you don't have to beat around the bush.
The problem and the reactions that occur from it is what is problematic, people tend to not mind sharing their public information but as soon as you step on a private only topic a red flag will be raised. Since it will raise the question of how did you find out about it, rarely does intuition and stumbling upon them fly as a plausible answer since the person would have invested a great amount of energy in safe keeping that part. That usually starts to fester issues of mistrust.
Then the second logical path would be "why are you so interested in knowing that ? you want to black mail me or something?" which, I'd like to think, is rarely if ever the case. Non of us are really that important to be worth blackmailing.

So since the reaction will be mostly negative if you do go about the direct path the best way is to take the indirect one and drop hints about it candidly. Till the trust level reaches a certain point that he/she is willing to confide in you.
Though honestly if that level is never reached it really doesn't mean that you are not trust worthy, it might simply mean that somethings are better left off from the conversation.

I kind of lost my point along the way, the thing is that brought all this up is just how small Amman is and people by nature are curious. those two options combine for a lethal combination is that if you ever confide to anyone the news will travel like fire in august.
So happy secret safe keeping and enjoy life.

ps. nope don't think about that you know who you are :P muwahaha

Abrupt fall season finale review

Given that the Fall season has been cut short by the writers guild strike this warranted a preemptive season finales to most of the shows, so here is a review of things so far that will be edited in case they change their mind.

Just for the record I fully back the writers guild strike and it is their right to do what they did and they better answer to their very reasonable demands and allow us to enjoy our shows. if you are interested in reading more about that read here


Heroes Season 2:
Verdict:watchable (orgasmic on the last 4)
Actually if anyone benefited from the strike it's this show, after a train wreck of a premiere and plots stretching too thin with the introduction of not 1 not 2 but 8 main characters, in 6 separate plot lines. The people were losing interest and losing it quickly. then comes the strike and they decide to clean up the mess that they started and try to recapture the glory of the first season.
And Boy did they do just that, the final 4 episode were heart racing adrenaline on TV, we all knew someone had to die because they can't maintain that many characters for the story to be meaningful (highlight for spoilers) but why did they kill Nikki, what do they have against Mika. Even though I didn't see Nathan's death coming and i thought that Partman should have captured the assassin atleast ... oh well things are finally shapping up for the individuals to group up and stand against the corporation. on the other hand did Adam serve only as a detour to the plot to get us watching syler whacking some heads off again ?(spoilers end) we'll have to wait and see whats going to be happening in Volume 3.


The Secret Diary of a call girl:
Verdict:must watch
that was one of my favorite shows and a pleasant surprise, hailing from the UK with the sexily matured Billie Piper in the lead as a sassy call girl and her escapades in the sex workers world. It is both hilarious , avantgarde and only something the brits are gonna make.





the IT Crowd season 2:
Verdict:watchable
just as hilarious and qwarky as the first season, and it even warranted Maurice a cameo in nickelback's rockstar music video. Since am not that good at conveying comedy here i'll just leave it at that both "work outing" (Ep. 1) and "moss and the German" kept me cracking up for so long that i thought I'll need an inhaler


Dexter Season 2:
Verdict:orgasmic
(on going but finale should hit us soon during the next week)
Can we say Amen for the heartless serial killer(though he is most certainly discovering one) and for the writers for pulling through a remarkably well written season that both developed all the characters, and even incorporating "the secret" and making fun of it. The introduction of Lila was amazing, she is one of the most intriguing and blazing characters to hit the screen in ages, she embodies the spirit of Eros in every meaning of the word. I hope he doesn't kill her


Prison Break season 3:
Verdict: touch it with a 10' pole
I honestly think it lost its sparkle and lost any interest I had in it after they did something very stupid with the plot and (spoiler)killed off Sarah, i kept on watching to find the twist and hoping for the twist but that evaporated eventually and i lost interest(end spoiler) so its most definitely going to be off my to watch list.






Weeds Season 3:
Verdict:orgasmic
I already attested my love to Nancy Botwin, and having some evangelical religion thrown into a cali community proved to be interesting to say the least, and did I mention that Mary-Kate blew me away with her depiction of Tara, a pusher with a religious motif of spreading love !
so we get beatings, gangs, a foot fetish porno, lesbianism, mammograms, ghosts, flying poop, ingenious usage of crosses, more milf weed and much much more. now what show can touch on all that and remain funny and not get serious about it.


Reaper Season 1:
(ongoing)
Verdict:watchable
My light hearted fun, plus I like sock he's hella cool every work place needs a "sock" to make it a much better world. So parents sell his soul to the devil and now he's his lackey, and boy does the devil like to mess up things. So you capture the souls with vessels, my favorite was the pigeon now think how would that work ! supernatural comedy, kind like Buffy before it started to get too convoluted.

Honorable mention, supernatural (for being consistent and a good filler) & Claymore (which has been the best anime series i've seen in a long long long time)

ps. links to torrent files and search are on the title.

Disturbia p.I

eh ... as usual I like to disturb my self from my comfort zone on weekly bases, so thats the summary of the things that disturbed me during this week...




Mr.Benedict XVI encyclical where he discussed atheism and equates it to hopelessness and stalinism, not only have you proven time and time again that you are a bigot and have no semblance of credibility of the comparative religion degree that you hold. I would have atleast thought you(and the whole catholic church under your hands for that matter) can come up with a better argument than a 13 year old catholic boy surfing the internet and set out an example of tolerance and love to all(rather than the conditional one you set) ... so much for spreading the message of Jesus. and whats that about forbidding the thought of "images" of god (Ex 20:4) while your churches are littered with portraits of him . I guess you're just horny :P


seriously ? a bear called mohammed ? REALLY NOW, is that uproar called for ... yeah, true islam is real peaceful, i just wish someone would tell me whats true these days


if this was satire it would have made me reluctantly put up a smile, sadly it was meant literally. It definitely brings back memories of religion classes in school when were told that sickness on earth will deduct from our bill that we will have to foot in hell, how nice eh ? no wonder I preferred biology class when it gave a reason and said it just happens.







Why ? ! seriously it isn't even aesthetically pleasing which is the whole point of it, na ? well I guess I like that I still have decrees curbing me from getting one even though I like em.


Really who the hell in their right mind would buy this stuff ! I guess only the ones that want their children to be "from the womb to the war". Never mind placing it on their Christmas tree, and beside the point that a fetus embracing a machine gun is an image that disturbing doesn't even begin to describe.

Grrr... ENJOY!
h/t:stumble(zuza fun blog), daily irrelevant and Greta's blog

Of monkey spheres and Gaia

You remember the first time you met a teacher of yours outside of the school walls. the flabbergasted sensation you felt that these people actually HAVE A LIFE and are not shoved into school lockers in the after hours ? (not my line ... from here but not creative enough to come up with my own point proving 2 liner)

The fact is we still do that no matter how old we get, beyond the few dozens of people that we interact with regularly the rest of humanity is reduced to one dimensional bit representation of labels. They are no longer human, they are our politicians, garbage men ...etc.
That served us well back in the day when we were solely dependent on the hundred or so people in our pocket of the community.

Abu khamees was having a hard time so I don't mind him raising his prices till he gets through with it, I better clean up that oil spill in the street before 2il hajeh 2um jom3a passes by on her way to market and hurts her self. those sentiments actually were common place, and even though we had rules and we were still tempted to break, them the repercussions of our actions had a tangible weight that will hinder us. They simply will hurt people that are real to us.

Alas, industrialization had to kick in, and the image of goody spewing machinery was forever ingrained in our psyche. people started adopting the motto of "it's non of my business" more and more and who can blame them. it is human nature to simplify our lives, and its certainly far easier to think of Nike the "nice" sneaker maker rather than the 21 year old Filipino single mother of 3 that gets paid 5 cents on the pair to make them.

That ability that we have developed to attempt to simplify infinitely complex matters is the bane of humanity, we are quick to jump the gun to paint the world in our adopted version of a 2 framed cartoon. It is far easier to paint every homosexual as a vile misguided fudgepacker, or to just judge every Jew as a stingy big nosed bigot who is bent on the subjugation of gentiles and specifically Arabs. We honestly can't be arsed to bother getting to know each one of them and make up our own opinion so we adopt the stereotype and go with it having faith in our monkey sphere's dogma. Even the mere mention or attempt, "god" forbid, of painting them in a more human picture is highly offensive to people.

So on comes the information age, it systematized the manipulation of people through the exploitation of our simplicity. Efficiently mobilizing hordes of yay sayers that will nod after you without a second of hesitance. For after all we placed our trust in those "holy grails" of the system for they have transgressed beyond our petty little mistakes and follies. "the president has sex ! how presidential of him", "foreign Zionist agents are behind every bad thing that happened to the Muslims, its for real I heard it on the Al-Jazeera". That schism of Us vs. Them will inevitably lead us to conflict, for we are no longer able to maintain our contact with in our sphere. whether we like it or not our modern lives depend on more people than we are able to comprehend.

On the other hand we developed an insatiable thirst for information, the societies of alienation drove us to want to connect on an emotional level to revered figures. who's at a better position to feed that addiction than our medias, they don't challenge us any more they just shove us full with what we want to hear and sensationalize on our emptiness. Or you can just run to the other side and actually try to check up on everyday people and what they are going through, like for example hearing the stories of rape victims in Sierra Leone, or Sarudzai Gumbo the kid that was found weighing only 36 pounds, disfigured by cancer and aids and left to rot not because of the neglect of her family but because her country failed her and many others like her. The world is riddled which such tragic bed time stories coming from Iraq, gaza, from home to the ends of the earth.

Albeit, they are just that stories. we feel our 5 minutes, if so, of sorrow and pity and move on in our rainbow bright reality that we are blessed with and go parading that we pulled a lever claiming that we have changed the world and did out part by participating in the charade we call the elections. After all I can't give up my "coach" bag just because some unlucky bastard happened to be abused while making it, anyways its their own ignorance that made them do that job in the first place anyways.

Time after time getting hit with such stories & attitudes might awake an archaic notion of empathy in us, but alas we feel helpless to do anything and we are left to spiral into our own helpless depression. Only to be caught back in the cycle, being told that the latest cure is the magic elixir that holds the key to our happiness .

Honestly speaking if the world and us as people "hold the course" we might usher in our extinction way before the prophesied Armageddon, hell we wouldn't even need any divine intervention to get to that point. the idea that we have been bestowed "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" is partly to blame for where we are now. The disposability of earth makes us care less of the footprints that we leave behind, for its non of our business. After all why should we hold any attachment or care for this earth if it is only a transient place in the greater plan of the universe. so a little global warming is just sensationalist mania for god has bigger plans, meh.

We don't have dominion over anything, we are just a small part of Gaia. Albeit the most damaging and selfish part, so far. As part of the biomass we hold it to our self and to our planet to wake up from this slumber of apathy, we are certainly not as helpless as we like to think. we have just grown accustomed to the leisure of our life that we forgot to look closely at where it has got us and the only thing we have been taught to do is to ask for more, more more more, more hate, more fighting, more food, more bling, bigger better stronger faster. Neglecting the effect of our debauchery on us as people and on our planet that has been generously harboring and trying to correct our ignorance and cope with.


I am not asking you to pray for Gaia, if you managed to make this far, am not asking you to worship her, and not asking you to be a hippie, or turn into a cynic tree hugger.
All am asking you is when you want to drop that wrapper in the street rather than holding to it till you reach the next bin is to think of what impact it might have on your surrounding(I used to do that thinking am creating a job and helping unemployment). when you buy the next buzz item at the store. think of who made it, where and what they might have been through. Never take the simple side of things and don't let anyone simplify it for you, read, learn and try. Try to not remain a pawn, shake off your shackles and stop fooling your self that you are removed from all the chaos going around you and try to make your impact. for no matter how small it is, even if is picking an anime instead of a disney movie just because their Modus operandi doesn't align with yours, then you are starting on the path no matter how silly that sounds.

For the times coming ahead of us are not going to be smooth sailing in any sense of the term, and if there is anything we can do about it we need to do it now. Drop your schadenfreude and adopt mudita.
Some might say am "bestowing my wisdom" on you, hell we all belong to varying species of hypocrites. So yes I am hypocritical in a sense, but am trying to find my path I'll let you know when I do. On the other hand don't take my word for it, or anyones for that matter, go and try to find things on your own and do what you think is right in your own heart.

Mount the Pixelated revolution

Poem by Anon

Counterfeit emotion
Thats what I thought for the longest I guess
Whirlpool of motion
Something stirred in me causing a mess

A moth drawn to the fire
Fluttering ever closer that it burns
Enjoying the pain of immolation
Bound to meet Icarus's fate in the end

Mesmerized by the affliction
Out of body experience is what I felt
Watching myself asunder
Unfamiliar blood blushing my veins

The abyss of devotion
This sense of attachment is what i don't get
Senseless belonging
The reciprocation of which i won't get

Egregious acceptance
My bosom is wide open for you to rape
Embracing expressions
Having you near me is all I necessitate

Serendipitous acquaintance
The stars must have been aligned when we met
Perpetual nebulousness
I wish I can see me through your heart so I can rest

Beleaguered by your strings I falter
In this game of fate I forfeit
Words on the tip of my tongue dissever
Your loss is a throe I won't tempt

Counterfeit emotion
I only wish that was it
Whirlpool of motion
Words have new meanings that I wish to forget

- Anon

sorry for the lack of proper posts lately can't really help it but atleast I happened to rediscover poetry lately.
ENJOY!