it's a rant!

According to Yahoo, searches for "Osama bin Laden" went up by nearly 100% after U.S president Obama announced that he had been found and killed. Those numbers weren't really surprising. It was sort of 'duuh' information, really. More disturbing, the fifth most popular search was "who is Osama bin Laden?"

66% of the latter searchers were young teens. 34% didn't even have that feeble excuse. I suppose it's possible that this was a logical way to find out more about the guy, beyond 9/11. At least I hope so.

If you happen to be one of those people who conducted that last search, and what I just mentioned was not the reason for it, then I regret to inform you that you are stupid. Actually, stupid might be too mild a word. You are the poster child for birth control. No, that's also too mild... You are the nr1 reason why someone should invent a time machine. That way they could travel to the past and neuter both your parents before you were born. If I was going to say this to anyone else, I would probably have some minuscule concern of hurting their feeling. I'm relieved by the thought that you're most likely to dumb to get the insult.

Seriously, just when you think you've seen the absolute bottom of human stupidity, there's a whole stupid underground garage.

Napoleon or whatever

Added: And then, once I woke up properly, I realized that I've written Haiti half of the time and then Tahiti the other half. See, this is why I don't get up early. Sometimes I kinda feel like I should. It's a bit like having breakfast - I don't want to, really, but I feel obligated to from time to time because that's what society seems to expect. But I don't like it and it makes me do strange things. But hey, if Tahiti ever has an earthquake or makes a deal with the devil (whatever happens first), I'll just change it back to Tahiti and re-post. And I promise to never again wake up at 5am, think to myself: "Oh my, I can't sleep. What shall I do? I know! I'll blog some!" Anyways, do read. It should be perfectly safe now.

I was determined NOT to write anything about Haiti, because that’s what everyone’s been doing lately, and I want to be unique, dammit.

But I can’t seem to restrain myself any longer. By now we all know how reverend Pat Robertson has been buzzing around in the media, talking about how Haiti brought this earthquake upon themselves because back in the day they had all gotten together and made a deal with the devil. See, they wanted to get out from under the heel of the French (“Napoleon the third, or whatever.”) They all all got together and asked Satan to get the French off their backs and Satan said “Yeah, okay.” Then the Haitians revolted and kicked the French out, all because Satan believed in them.

I’m curious, though… How did they all “get together,” exactly? I mean, it’s hard enough to set up a lunch appointment with the girls. Our boss has been trying to arrange a staff meeting for weeks, with no luck what so ever. And we’re only five people working there. There’s around 200000 people in Haiti. Not sure how many they were under French occupation, but I’m pretty sure there were more then five. Did they have unusually large football stadiums back then? How did they plan this extraordinary meeting? It’s not like they could fire off a txt message to everyone saying: “Meeting with that Satan dude at the freakishly big football stadium at 8:00pm, Tuesday. Be there or be a Frenchman's pony!”

I believe in keeping an open mind when it comes to philosophy and religion and mathematics and stuff, but not to the point where your brain falls out of your head and goes rolling down the street. Just sayin’

Curse of the plastic bags. Or whatever.

Today I had an adventure. Grocery shopping does qualify as an adventure when judged by The Hellholian Scale of Excitement. Besides, when you’re living with Pooch, who has a habit of licking things that should not be licked and developing farts that smell just like the circus, a change of air might not be such a bad idea.

There I was, puttering around between the isles, my little, blue plastic shopping basket in one hand and my shopping list in the other. Ten minutes later, I had worked up quite an impressive selection of items, some of which I needed but most of which I simply wanted. And deserved, dammit.

“Would you like a bag?” the cashiere with the dead eyes asked me, after she’d finished the laborious task of ringing up all my groceries.

“No, hidden inside the dark bowels of my coat, I have more arms than an army of octopuses and would have no problem carrying a million things home,” I thought. I didn’t say that, of course, because I am a polite and civilized sort of person. In stead I simply smiled and said “yes, please.”

So the woman yanked out a plastic bag from underneath the registery, where it lived with its family and friends inside a little cardboard box, dumped it on top of my small mountain of groceries and then she quickly got up and disappeared through the plastic doors in the back of the store, labelled “staff only!!!”

That’s right: three exclamation marks.

I’m not entirely sure what sort of math went on inside her head to make her think that said mountain was going to fit inside a single plastic bag. It is, after all, exactly as big on the inside as it appears to be from the outside. It’s a typical, run-of-the-mill plastic bag – not the bloody starship Enterprise.

The thing is, they always give you one -1- plastic bag, regardless of how much crap you’re hauling with you. If you want more, you have to specifically ask and carefully outline how many you think you’ll need. I momentarily forgot this, and ended up standing there with 80 bucks worth of groceries, a tiny plastic bag and the distinct feeling of just having screwed myself over.   

I bet they all just sit in their little staff-only area, stuffing their faces with chips and watching the little surveillance screens to see how the customers try to work out this little equation. Well, I wasn’t going to be their lunch entertainment. I stole a plastic bag, I did. Hell, I stole TWO.

Thus my life of crime has started. You gonna do something about it, mate? I have a pooch with flatulence and I’m not afraid to use it.

 

I recently watched a documentary on plastic surgery among the hopeful wannabes in Los Angeles, because there’s nothing like the madness of others to make you feel good about your own life.

I doubt that I’m in any danger of ever feeling the urge to live in La-La Land, but I still had to do some philosophising on the issue, cause I’m… well… me. And I can never resist a little good old-fashioned philosophising. You know that by now if you’ve been paying attention.

LA is probably the worlds biggest chop shop. Only it’s got a twist. In stead of the cars going out with all new parts, their drivers do. A great, big masquerade where the masks don’t even come off at midnight. It’s got to be strange living in a city where you have no idea what anyone really looks like.

Just imagine: Miss Perfect Barbie meets Mr Buff Hunk. They fall in love, have their fairy-tale wedding. Nine months later, everyone’s shocked when Princess Plastic starts popping out babies who look like a cross between Bert and Ernie.

I doubt that I’m in any danger of feeling the urge to move to the city of angels, but if I did, I suspect I’d be to creeped out to ever date anyone ever again. My love life would be deader (if that's a word) than it ever was back in Little Hellhole. And I actually declared it dead and buried it there. Tombstone and all.

True joy and all that crap

My internet connection is gone. Vanished. I don’t know where it went. Maybe it’s off skiing in the mountains along with all the good, little Hellholians. It’s what people do around here. I’ve never been able to understand why.

Anyways, I am now hoping for a little man to come fix my connection. I’m just not sure on when he plans on showing up. Then yesterday morning, the doorbell rang. I knew immediately that it couldn’t be the upstairs-people. They’ve never figured out the intricate workings of my doorbell. It’s complicated. A button on a wall. Oooh. The upstairs-people just knock. Which I figure is a good reason to pretend I don’t hear them.

But I digress.

The doorbell rang, and I thought it had to be the internet-fixer-man. Who else could it be? So I hurried to answer the door, completely forgetting that I had make-up on only one – 1 – eye. That eye did look damn good, but still…

As the door swung open, I expected to see your standard, run-of-the-mill handyman type of a person standing outside. Instead I found myself staring straigt at the latest issue of The Watchtower. An overly cheery woman with a strangely far-away look in her eyes was peeking out from behind it. “Would you like to learn the path to true joy?” the lady asked.

“No, not really,” I said and closed the door in her face. I know the path to true joy already. It’s for me to get my internet connection back and waste some time surfing.

ARGH!

Today I have been lucky enough to spend loads of time with someone who makes me want to commit murder. The kind involving axes and/or bathtubs filled with toasters.

Murder is the slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of murder: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether they fell by one kind or another – the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers. If I kill this person, I’m sure it’ll be either excusable or justifiable. If someone else does it for me, it’ll be praiseworthy. It will be to me, anyways. There’s a hint in there somewhere, you know.

I’d even get you a lawyer. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

A special kind of stupid

Today (as well as every other day lately) I was followed around by the sound of complaining stomachs. It happened first in my math class. I sat at my desk, trying to understand a formula that might as well have been in greek (actually, I think it probably was in greek), when a deep, roaring sound made it's way towards me from somewhere on my left. The noise persisted, making it's presens known every five minutes or so, right up until recess.

Now, you might think that this would be a good time to go get something to eat, but you'd be wrong. After the break, the sound was back, more grown-up than ever. And it brought friends. Growling noises now came from every corner of the room. It was almost like something I once heard on Animal Planet.

And the phenomenon kept repeating itself throughout my day. From mathclass to the coffeebar to the lectures in philosophy. Growl, growl, growl. Why don't these people eat? Do they forget? Because it takes a very special kind of stupid to forget something like that. Once or twice is (maybe) permissible, but when it becomes a daily thing... It's the very same kind of stupid that led to the invention of such things as the motorized picnic table and the insomniac helmet (a gigantic contraption that you strap onto your head, and it gives you a head massage to help you sleep). Or maybe they can't afford food? But they don't really strike me as being poor, either.

So I guess that just leaves stupid...