Does Free Will really exist?

Some really hot data has come up recently about whether or not free will really exists, and - this is the hot part - the data suggests that free will might not exist at all.

Originally I was going to discuss this at length, but then decided not to.

Quod erad fucking demonstrandum.



"God walks on carpet bombing" - Arno Schmitt


"I´m a sensitive guy. I like to yell and scream at people" - Fisherman on a documentary

Your new Tony Maserati Video is here

That´s what the latest mail in my Spam-File says. Rather original, I thought. Not the usual, lotsa-dough, you-won-the-BMW, CHEAP VIAGRA or PENIS LARGER NOW YES stuff.
 Somewhat unexpected. Still something I would never fall for.

Just the exact opposite of the whole story in Egypt. Muslim Brotherhood trying to impose the law of Sharia? Not a big surprise. Another Dictator replacing the former ageing Dictator? What´s new?
The Counter-Revolutionists of the Mubarrak Regime joining the original, liberal opposition all of a sudden?
History repeates itself, huh?
But when the first vote came in, I still bought the whole "Oh, we´re gonna be the nice kind of fanatics!" act, swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Damn. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!

Conservative arseholes, pardon my french, never make this type of mistake. If the other guys win, they never say "Well, let´s make the best of this." or "Maybe they really aren´t the devil after all." or "Maybe they do have a point."
Liberal fuckwads and dickweeds, however, can´t seem to help to see all the aspects and all the sides and try not to condemn but to comprehend and in the end the ones who are unwilling to change in any way win, because time and again we are willing to change our ways, think differently et cetera ad nauseam et ad infinitum while the unflexible bastards are having the time of their life complaining about how "nothing ever changes." and "whatcha gonna do?"

Grrrrrblashnavoomboulaa!

Sorry about this.

So, last weeks promise was about more celebration and less pontification. Ok, time to make up on this.
I have this dress, which is striped in such a way that the pattern makes your chest look flat and your belly big.
I think that is pretty damn hilarious and damn fitting for these days. Or any days.
So, put on something silly that you love dearly, make yourself a nice stiff drink - maybe a chinese martini? - fill the tub with hot water, add some pure lavender oil, put on a japanese movie sans subtitles on your laptop, lite up some cambodian special cabbage in your pipe and just LET IT GO !

There. Is easy, ey?

This is as good as it´s going to get, no fooling.

A little more than two weeks until Armaggedon, and you´re in a hot tub, feeling pleasantly woozy, and, possibly, still wearing an absurd garment. Never mind. For a few moments, there will be bliss. That should be enough. Amen.

Yeah, it´s not much of an entry, but then again, this is not much of a blog. Just the crazed ravings of a psychotic fiend, a girlish soul in the body of an elderly souse, Just another leftover from the Summer of Love '91.

Never, never, never mind. As a true friend once told me at a time of great distress: "Don´t worry about it. It´s all on Monty Pythons anyways."

So, no matter how many times the Knight with the rubber chicken wacks you over the head, you will have to get up straightaway and yell THANKEE-SAI!


Namaste.

S.

Enough is never enough for some of us

Yes indeed. My beloved Wife is on a so-called business-outing (oh these young rascals!), which means I´m alone at home for the night and the remainder of the day, which means I´m sitting naked (nekkid!) by the laptop, sipping chinese Vodkatinis (dry Vodkatini with tangerine juice - the rage in Hamburg these days) watching my monday cartoons and smoking egyptian cigarettes. Just another monday afternoon, really.
Nothing out of the ordinary, one might say.
But in the middle of this weeks Simpson episode (grab the torrent at eztv.it, it's really good!) when I had a good laugh at some good Homer-and-the-kids stuff I suddenly realized where this Blog was heading and I did not like it.
I never wanted to explain stuff about China (free market is not equal to democracy) or why the UssR helped to keep Capitalism more humane -the Sovjet´s only working piece of propaganda was that everybody had a job and nobody starved, so we had to invent ways to keep people from starving and we also had to take care of the unemployed, make it look less bad, and in Germany which was centerstage these social security standards used to be the highest of the world, except for the scandinavian countries, but they had to work more and also the booze was more expensive and oh my god I´m right in the middle of doing it again!
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick!
My therapist was right! I do need more therapie, and, possibly, a straightjacket.
 Too bad she killed herself.
As I am writing these lines I am itching to explain to you that Germany during the Kaiserreich, which ended in World War I, was the first fully functional modern capitalist Country.They weren't the first to try -  England and  it´s rebellious little colony are the pioneers, but Germany really got the horrorshow to roll, and I´m doing it again.
Damn you Tom Robbins, damn you Hunter Stockton Thompson and damn you Aleister Crowley!

Damn your for always pontificating and damn you for tempting me into it!

This was supposed to be a celebration of the final days, a decent way to go down, a final salute before all is lost, and all we get is nagging, hindsight and boring speeches?
Oh no.Nooooooooooo!

Ok. Time out.

We obviously need to rest and regroup here. To look on the bright side, this entry is not a complete loss.
It does contain the recipe for the Chinese Vodkatini, so you got something to raise your status at the local speak-easy or Fluesterbar, as we say in Hamburg. (Actually, it´s not ue but the u with the little dots on top, but your codepage can´t handle it. ü ä ö <- See? Dotted u,a and o.)
Never mind. Go out, buy some dry Vermouth, triple distilled Vodka and some tangerines. Fill the shaker with 3 parts vodka, 2 parts dry Vermouth and 2-3 parts Tangerine juice. Add ice, stir, sieve into a Martini glass.
Squirt some Tangerine peel at the surface of the drink. Add one marschino cherry if you are a lady or a poof.
Enjoy.

Counting down

Well, it´s been a while, hasn´t it? Israel has actually sent a declaration of war to Hamas via Twitter (No fooling! Check it out!) and I assume their relationship-status on Facebook is currently on "It´s complicated.", thus fueling the hopes and anxieties of the Dystopian-Mystical Community. Just the other day I received an Email asking for my professional opinion concerning the correct time-zone for the end of the World on December 21. Mexican time? Greenwhich time? Oriental? Occidental?
Now, to some people these are really important quetstions! Will the world end before I get to finish my birthday party on the 20th? Should I wait until the rest of the world has crossed the dateline before I slaughter the lamb and smear its blood on me?
All those questions. Never mind that it never says anything about the end of the world in those Mayan Texts. What it does say is "End of Calender", nothing else. But never mind that.
What all of you are waiting for is, of course, an explaination for my prolonged absence.
In a nutshell, I just couldn´t stand the whole presidential election nonsense anymore and just kind of switched myself off. I really wanted the whole damn thing to be over, one way or the other. Even when Romney got so lost in his own speech that Obama happily encouraged him by saying "Please continue, Governor." I did not enjoy it. On the one hand it felt like a lazy cat playing with a stupid mouse, and on the other hand one was painfully aware of the fact that almost half of the voters were behind this sad excuse for a politician. So, finally, one night my brain began to hurt as I sat down to type out another column and I realized that I just couldn´t do it anymore. Watching the Daily Show had become a substitute for watching the news for me, which in turn began to feel like cheap comedy. I mean, isn´t it scary to think that an aging comedian like Jon Stewart is one of the most important and intelligent political commentators these days? I spoke to several Expat-Americans a couple of weeks ago who felt exactly the same, with one of them even saying that the only news he was watching these days was the daily show and maybe Bill Maher every once in a while.
Typical behavior for american liberals, all well adapted to their environment and therefore no big news you might say.
Yeah, I guess so, to a certain point that´s true.
Just like you could say that it´s no news and no surprise that Foxnews has become the
21st centuries Version of the Reichspropagandawochenschau of the US.
The big difference is that none of the watchers of Foxnews think that it´s a joke, even though they are fed nothing but crude, cheap lies, while in the liberal camp the problem is that the fantastic humour of Jon Stewart is based on the greatest joke of all, the truth.
So, you have stupid, but intense people having their fears and anger fueled on one side and intelligent, mellow people who can see the truth and think its very funny on the other. Plus, the angry people own and love guns and still think it´s ok to do things if god´s tv-guy tells you it´s ok to do it, while the other side tends to shy away from all confrontations on the enemy´s  turf and prefers to withdraw into virtual liberal habitat cocoons instead, leaving the playingfield to the bad boys club.

Ugh, my brain is starting to hurt again. I was still going to explain why Capitalism has nothing to do with political freedom and how the demise of Soviet Communism damaged social equality rights in the western world and later discuss the example of modern, so-called open market China.

I hate cliffhangers. But what´cha gonna do, ´ey?

Yours Sincerly,

S.


Quote of the week:
                                 -"Burma!"
                                  -"Why´d you say ´Burma´?"
                                  -"I panicked!"

                                  Graham Chapman/John Cleese


 

Lowering the bar

Hi-Ya Friends! Ke Aloha nô!

Don´t you just love the Hawaian Language? Aloha means both hello and goodbye, and I can´t even bloody begin to tell you all the things Mahalo means. Just Google it, lay back and explode with joy, nô! Or contact Starchild Alias JupiterOnKâui Alias Beloved Astrid, and she´ll set ya right up.

Anyways, an exciting week and a lot of good games for all of ye Dystopians out there !(and Counterdystopians as well)

China is gearing up to take on Japan, the Bundeswehr discovered a Nazi amongst their ranking Officers (Oh no!) and finally Turkey rang the NATO´s alarm bells by viciously retalliating against Syria after yet another disoriented shell accidentally landed in Turkey, only this time it killed a mother with three children. And some guy, whatever, mother, 3 children. Ka-blamm. Can ya say GODBOMB? Hallebaba.
 NATO recognized this infraction of the integrity of a member (namely Turkey, in case ye got the alz..alzmeyer? alz...homer?) and assured Turkey of a lot of potential support, you know, should they need it, just give a ring, treaty says and all, North Atlantic and all of that shit.
And, of course, really hoping for this to just pass and go away. Up until now we could at least pretend to want to intervene in Syria, but darn, those sneaky Chinese and Russians wouldn´t let us. But now, it´s a bloody NATO case. What´cha gonna do? We could pull out the old Cyprus card (bear with me) and say (really, bear with me, I´m going somewhere here!) that we do not want to piss off Greece again. Because, you see, when Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, Greece was already a part of NATO, and we all know that NATO pretended to be on the Toilet the whole time and didn´t offer jackshit to Greece, as Turkey was also a member of NATO.
The whole mess was left to be sorted out by the UN, and if you were on the loo, too, well, then you´ll have to google the rest of the mess on Wikipedia.
So, to cut a long story short, we could try and say that turkey has still got an open debt with NATO and tell'em to sort it out by themselves this time. Or we could argue that Syria isn´t anywhere near the bloody North Atlantic and leave the rest to the lawyers.
Because we really, rea-hee-hee-heely do not want to get involved in that mess down there.
Not because it really is a religious war between different sects of Islam, that´s the case in most of those places , like the Sunnites and the Shiites in Iraq, only this time it´s the Sunnies and the Alewites. Big Woop.
Not because all of us already have enough shit on our hands. That never stopped us. And also not because our other interventions in Afghanistan or Iraq went terribly sideways from day 1. No, it´s simply because there is no oil or other type of resource or any type of strategic advantage to be gained here. To keep it Simple&Stupid, ain't no Dollar to be made, so screw it.
This, by the way, is also, in a Nutshell, what the whole silly China and Japan Biz is all about. It's not about some desolate Rocks in the Pacific, it´s of course about the fishing grounds and the other deep sea resources surrounding them rocks. Quelle surprise, excuse my french. Sela.
And the Nazi in the German Army, currently on duty in Afghanistan? Oh come on, did you really think any thinking, easy going, smooth type of a person would ever voluntarily sign up for the Nutjob of Nutjobs? Of course there´s Nazis in the Army, and not hippies. It starts with the hairdo and ends with the senseless killing of unknown  people in far-off places. Who do you think will most likely be attracted to this kind of Job?

Exactly. The Nutjob. And the Nazi, why, he's the Primo of Nutjobs.
Quod erad demonstrandum.
Tune in next week when we will turn Wine into Spaghetti and also prove beyond a doubt that Jesus invented Karate.

Ke Aloha nô, me ka mahalo kâua.

A burning man

Much to my surprise I just watched an interview with the Monarch of Jordan, Abdullah II. bin Hussein. The King spoke a rather pleasant outside version of Oxford, UK English. In his answers you could feel that old, often misunderstood, time and again unsuccessfully copied but never mastered art of british imperial understatement. Don´t try and tell me that you really understand understatement; even if you are a Brit, you may own the bloody thing, but that don´t mean you understand it, as my friends from the old home would say. Nobody understands it.
Never mind, all of this is completely besides the point. This man, carefully choosing his words, watchful eyes and a face that would put even a veteran poker player to the test, yet with an Aura of ..... damn it! I have to admit that I, for once, can´t find the proper words to describe this ruler of
the constitutional monarchy of Jordan, the home of the ancient city of Petra, the greek word for stone. Petra is the famous city that was carved into a canyon, a city of stone indeed. If you never heard of it, you should seriously google it. It´s amazing.
Rambling, again. Ok, with an air of benign authority the King reminded me - and anybody else who happened to be watching, that the so called Arab Spring started with a young man in Tunesia setting himself on fire because of the desperate economic situation of his country. The King carefully proceeded to say that the original spark which started the civil unrest in the Arab World was nothing that was limited to this region, but a world wide crisis of finances gone awry.
He added that really there was no Arab spring, a phrase coined by the western media. Let´s face it, we were all caught by surprise when Arab countries went into chaos and religious rebellion without us bombing them first, nice and proper.
No, the king said that it would take 10 to 15 years for this process to complete, and that it would be different for each and everyone of these countries, but that it all started not because of a sudden hunger for liberal values and western style democracy, but because of our so called world wide financial crisis.

To quote Roger Waters "Oh Maggie - Maggie, what did we do?"

Yes, friends, the edges are getting rather frenzy. Sela.

We still pretend like this is happening to someone else, when we publicly discuss what to do about Syria, as if we ever had or now have any control over this civil war. All we do know is that the opposing  sides stem from two different sects of the islam. Hallebaba, what a surprise, Abrahams best friend is once more involved. But the point is, we do not have any power or influence over these wars, and there are more civil wars on the verge of breaking out all over the world, like in Greece, in Portugal or in Spain for example.
And I´m just naming the ones that have already seen massive civil unrest over the past few months, I don´t even want to think about the potential of unrest in places like Russia, Lithuania or the US. Or bloody Germany, for that matter.
No.
Wait.

Hmmmm.
So, bear with me here. What if, theoretically, the Nazis came back to power in Germany and casually provoked England, ridiculed America, threatened Poland and nuked France?
I think it´s safe to say that everybody would be really upset about most of this and kinda glad that it was just France getting nuked. And then we would finally have a common enemy again, and a familiar one, too, one that we can all agree upon, DER DEUTSCHER NAZISCHWEINHUND!
I could spend the entire war tucked away in my panic room, reading Zettel´s Traum and drinking my neighbour´s Brandy. I might even publish an Anne Frank style diary later on, only I wouldn´t end up dead in a Vernichtungslager, but with a bad headache and a rather annoyed neighbour.
Sounds like a plan.

Tune in next week when we will use a fascists uprising to better the world.

...does it get any better...?

Apologies and Libya

I want to apologize for leaving y'all standing in the rain without a even as much as a note from me, while the news were exploding with violence, doom and embarrassment, the latter for Mr.Romney. Those darn camera-phones!
But let´s not stray from the subject, which is my sincere apoplogy for not being there for you. On the first day of the muslim riots I unfortunately received an obscure Email suggesting that my poem about the dystopia to come was the sole cause of all the religious unrest in the muslim world. I immediately retreated to the security of my panic room, expecting a horde of raving and jabbering assassins to kick down my door any minute. After a few days in solitary confinement I finally received a message from my wife, saying that my poem didn´t cause any civil or religious but rather digestive unrest in some of my readers and also that we didn´t own any type of panic room and that what I was mistaking for a panic room really was our neighbour´s winecellar. This did explain the rather unusual supplies of the room, consisting mainly of wine, old brandy, ritz-crackers and quite a disturbing collection of pornography. Since I agreed not to mention the latter to his wife, my neighbour only ground his teeth after seeing the amounts of brandy and wine that I had consumed and refrained from calling the police.

So, Libya. Did any of you ever wonder how things went after the killing of the Colonel? One moment the news were filled with the civil war in Libya, then they killed the Colonel, and then? Zilch. Nothing. Nada. Not even one bit of news. Who's in charge now? What about the tribal rivalry? Who´s in control of the oil? What about the Colonel's family? I´m pretty sure they killed his sons, but whatever happened to his daughter? And, more importantly, what happened to all his money?
So, for the most part I was glad to get any type of news from Libya. Obviously, the people of Libya are far from happy, and not just because of that silly video. No, there has to be more to this attack on the embassy, since the authorities were not sure whether the attacks were related to the video or just an unrelated attack commemorating the attacks of 9/11, which in turn suggests an atmosphere of general hostility in the country. Which, of course, is not much of a surprise.
Another question that remains a mystery is the correct spelling of the Colonel´s name. Gaddafi was the first version I ever saw, back when Reagan decided to bomb Libya. The american media insisted that it was Ghaddafy, which looked distinctly more mysterious than the german version. Some german newspapers suggested that it really was Khaddafy, but that version never stuck. Then, with the arrival of Al Quaida it suddenly was Quaddafy, and even Al Quaddafy but the latter turned out to be a mistake by a drunken editor at the ------- Network(deleted at insistance of the editor). One Blogger from Athens insists up until today that everyone has got it wrong and that the Colonel wasn´t even a Libyan but a greek con-man named Stelios Kontos, but I will not perpetuate any such rumours by spreading them even further, so please do ignore that last bit.
Still, after that single bit of news about the dead diplomat it became quiet again and nothing else transpired from the desert lands. An american diplomat was brutally murdered, for crying out loud, and there isn´t even a hint of a reaction from the White House, apart from a few empty phrases? The US have bombed places for a lot less, Libya amongst them. Unfortunately it is virtually impossible to assess the situation in the country with the news focussing on the rest of the muslim world. Again I find myself writing down a lot of questions with no answers. But I never promised you any answers. I only set out to describe and maybe even celebrate the last days of the Western Liberal World, no more and no less, and this is exactly what you are getting. And if you still have any doubts about the dystopian character of the whole bloody mess, well, then you obviously haven´t been watching any news lately. Maybe you decided to spend some time in your panic room. Maybe you don´t have a panic room, but still decided to spend some time there by yourself.
Don´t worry about it. It´s ok.
I understand.