Journal

20090514

by Dennis••1•Posted inJournal

.: Violence Toward Women
Last weekend, my sister and I had a short conversation about violence toward women by men. IN the course of this conversation she mentioned that Tyra Banks had made the statement that there was no situation that warrants beating a woman. That struck me as rather sexist and self-serving coming from a woman and it reeks to high heavens of lipstick-feminism. Any situation where physical violence is used but not in defense is objectionable, regardless of the gender of the aggressor or victim. Everyone has a right, perhaps even a duty to defend themselves from physical harm, and that doesn’t change just because the aggressor is a woman and the victim is a man. Blanket statements like these are probably what contributes to the growing number of abused husbands all across the civilised world. There’s no nobility in being beaten by your wife and not striking back. Honestly, I can recall at least five occasions in as many years where I saw a guy being pummeled in the streets by a furious or hysterical girlfriend wile they just stood there and took it. People let it happen, too, thinking that he was a man and they didn’t need to help. In two vivid occasions bystanders were laughing at the situation! The frustration of being in public was evident on the faces of both guys in question. They were simply too afraid that if they’d strike back they’d become the target of repercussions from the bystanders. However fucked up that would’ve been, it would’ve been in completely in line with my expectations.

In short; if you come to me and throw leather like a man, prepare to be treated as one. Equal rights, equal beatings.

.: Juno Reactor
When I discovered Juno Reactor a few years ago, I had finally found a group that really pushed all the right buttons. They had just releasedBeyond the Infinite, and it was right around the time when AudioGalaxy was big. (If you remember that, you’re probably, like me, slowly turning grey. Here’s looking at you, Eva!) Before that, they’d released Transmissions, which was good, but still a little unpolished compared to Beyond.Bible of Dreams followed, which I liked, but Beyond stayed my favourite. Then it all went rapidly downhill; Shango and Labyrinth started homing in on the World Music genre more and more, and it moved further away from the Goa-Psy I liked so much. And now, with Juno releasing Gods & Monsters recently, I am struggling to find a single song that I’d listen to on continual loop for a couple of hours, let alone the entire album. It still has enough that I keep coming back with every new release, it’s just not as captivating any longer. For a moment it raised the question of whether it was me who had changed, but some deliberation with my audiophile friend (read: Veed) had me convince it wasn’t me, but Juno.

.: Bitter Altruism
Having discovered the kryptonite to my emotional well-being was a step in the right direction, but salvation lies in a lasting solution and not just in the understanding of the cause. I guess I am past the denial phase and have recognised that there’s a problem and have even made strides towards learning how to recognise the situations in which it occurs, but changing my behavior is still far beyond my reach.

In essence I often take responsibility for things that I shouldn’t take responsibility for, whose responsibility isn’t even mine. As a result, I accept tonnes more stress than a lot of other people, and not even in areas that such dedication and effort will yield me anything except being taken for granted. I’ve been trying to keep track of how often it happens where I overreach my responsibility, or I guilt myself in doing something for someone I care about that I really don’t want to do, and I have to say, that shit’s happening a lot! I’ve grown so numb to my own unhappiness, having been brought up with the idea that things that need to happen need to happen, no matter how much you minge about it, and it is taking an awful lot of effort even recognising the situations in which I compromise myself.

Marco used to make fun of Eva for her selfishness, saying that she was a classic product of a family where she was the only child. But he was right, she has clearly defined limit of crap she is willing to take from, and things she will do for others. In essence, if I am on one side of the spectrum, then Eva is on the other. There’s a lot that I can learn from her ways of doing business, and however rejectable the thought is, I have no real choice since what I have been doing has yielded me little in terms of respect, money and emotional well-being. (Though that might well have something to do with how I went about it.) What have I got to show for it? Nothing? Then change the gameplan. Easier said then done, of course, since you hardly ever teach an old dog new tricks, but I believe I still have some adaptability left in me! I just hope I won’t overdo it and turn into an asshole.

.: Gone Back to Kung Fu
Yesterday, I went back to Kung Fu for the first time since I injured my shoulder. My facination with Kung Fu has definitely dried up, perhaps because my fascination for purer combative arts took over. The exercise is still enjoyable enough, but I can’t take it seriously anymore. Looking back, I probably lost the love for it quite some time ago, but I was stubborn and kept plugging away. Now that I view it as a way to keep active, and as a way to maintain some flexibility (necessary for BJJ!) I am as much more at peace with it. As an exercise it I still not even a fraction as soul-destroying as hanging out in the gym is.

So yeah, I might have lost the passion and love for it, but it still beats the alternatives. Well, perhaps I will take up boxing as an aside to the BJJ, but that’s something to contemplate. Swimming is still an option, if I can find a good time to go — which is hard not living in Amsterdam anymore. So BJJ it’ll remain, and perhaps I will pick up a few classes of gi-BJJ soon, too.

[SR] Leaving Technosis Jones

by Dennis••2•Posted inJournal, RPG

Richmond Power Station, Philadelphia, PA, USAIt’s late in the day when you leave Technosis Jones, the autistic, wild-eyed, conspiracy-obsessed anti-technologist who, ironically, helped scan you for tracking devices. The large, spacious storage unit that was his habitat, hermetically sealed from the evil influences from the outside world, was a strange juxtaposition of techno-fetishism and fear. Amid the many devices, both large and small, both familiar and alien, the countless spare parts littering the ground, bunched up on tables and in boxes, labelled and stacked on one of the hundreds of shelves, were the militant messages of the Genetic Purity Council. Posters, ironically framed by coils of loose wires and fiber-optics, illuminated by the neon glow of trideo projectors and the harsh light of computer screens displaying news, ambient pollution levels and diagnostics information of one of the many devices, warned of the dangers of cybernetic augmentation, cyberpsychosis, and the plans for the technological enslavement of the world’s population by the global, social elite. Pamphlets, depicting very graphic images of augmentations gone wrong, extreme cases of cybernetic rejection and supposed cybernetic experimentation on unwilling, human subjects, were boxed and ready for distribution at public cybernetic clinics, hoping to dissuade people from opting for their elective cybernetic surgery. Yes, Jones seemed to be a brain-washed lunatic whose rejection of the thing he loved so dearly fueled his nervous frustration. Either that, or he’d been up awake on Cram for the last six days. Regardless of the cause of his behavior, it felt liberating leaving that chaotic place, however necessary the visit had been.

The automated food processing plants and hydroponics farms around you belch out large clouds of hydro-heavy fumes as they lumber away like stoic giants. The terraced landscape is dotted with these facilities all the way to the west, where Tacoma starts. In the north-west, through the smog, you can spot the contours of Seattle downtown, visible only due to Auburn’s elevated situation. The illuminated roads and highways all seem to lead towards downtown as it lay at the center of everything in the sprawl. Like a heart lays at the center of the vascular system. It was like resting a heavy marble in the middle of an outstretched sheet of soft concrete, glass and steel, causing a deep depression, the sprawl stretched out around downtown, and everything rolled towards it, sooner or later. For now, however, you decide that this industrial park might be a good to place to lay low for a while.

Catastrophe bounds away like an excited feline, desperate for some action and excitement, searching for a suitable place to rest, away from questioning eyes and loose lips. Years of squatting and couch-surfing developed in her a keen sense of awareness attuned to the hidden and abandoned places in the sprawl, and she quickly returns, having found a facility who’s chimneys do not exude any exhaust fumes, a giant who’s bowels lay silent and dormant. With a gental nudge of the GM Bison the main gate’s flimsy lock was forced and the gates opened. The grounds around the facility, an amalgamation of sickly weeds, tall, yellowish grass and cracked concrete, were clear and allowed easy navigation into the catacombes of the building. It was dark, cool and moist inside, like a cavern. The soft wind rushing through the corridors reminded you that this leviathan was asleep and filled you with a sense of isolation. Every sound, every cough and every step was magnified and echoed several times over. Almost all of the interior had been stripped, leaving only the large, immovable machines, conveyor belts, chains, pullies and hooks around to corrode. Stairs, ladders and walkways zigzagged everywhere between platforms, balconies and landings. This place felt abandoned and neglected and for the first time in a long time, you guys felt like you might be alone.

The events of the last several days leading up to Joy’s assassination and Delta V’s death at the hands of enemy fire had seen you running, and even though, physically, you had managed to get some rest, mentally there hadn’t been enough time to digest things. There was a lot of interest in the information you carried – information that you extracted from the neural override buffer between Joy’s synaptic accelerator and her skillwire I/O. The data found there were financial records of purchases made by a company called Silverlight Investments, between March of ’57 and March ’58, some 147,000 records in total, all purchase orders for the stocks of a long list of companies belonging to Fuchi North America; WolfWare Inc., D.S.A. North America, Alphacom, PharmaCom, Omni Matrix Technologies, Benedict Holdings, Tribeca Transportation, Revlon Cosmetics, RJR International, the list goes on and on. Leading the cash back to its source, you found that Silverlight Investments was offered a large influx of capital by a private equity firm called Semaphore Investment Group, a subsidiary of Cambridge Holdings, which is a small subsidiary of Villiers Holdings, Richard Villier’s private stock project outside of Fuchi Industrial Electronics. Villiers was buying up his own companies and consolidating it under his sole ownership. And that was information worth paying for, worth dying for. Mikhail is interested in buying it, and now it seemed that Richard Villiers’ kid brother Darren was also interested in meeting the runners. Bennett would probably pull through, but he’d be off the grid for a while as he recuperrated. Mase had become increasingly morose following the injuries he sustained several days previous, you were one driver short, and a trigger man short a few sandwiches of a picknick.

Each of you have been paid for the job you set out to do, but things escalated beyond the scope of the initial run, and now that money doesn’t seem to carry you that far. You are realising that with great risk comes great reward, and it’s a mantra you’ve all gotten comfortable reitterating to one another. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. And you have promises to keep and many more miles to go before you sleep. Miles to go before you sleep.

Jits Motivational Posters

by Dennis••1•Posted inJournal

I recently found another Jiu Jitsu motivational poster. I already had this one, which I found hilarious due to the fact that it portrays Wanderlei “The Axe-Murderer” Silva and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, both in their prime. And the one below is awesome because, well, because. :)

Twitter

by Dennis••0•Posted inJournal

I have opened a Twitter account, though not to actually update any of you with the banalities and trivial things of my every day existence — no, I have the Facebook status for that, which I just can’t get into either — but rather just to stay informed about the banalities of others. It seems like the more accessible the Internet becomes, the microscopic the level of detail we share becomes. From sharing research data in the eighties, we went to sharing and maintaining personal websites in the nineties. Now we’ve gone to sharing our day to day thoughts with the introduction of one of the most horrible, over-marketed, sloganised concepts ever attached to a good piece of scripting; Web 2.0. And new we are getting to a point where hour-to-hour (and with some obsessed individuals, even minute-to-minute) updates are in demand. “It’s like sending an SMS to the world,” someone told me. I think regular SMS is a pain in the arse, considering the device used will allow you to talk to the person instead of sending a 140 character message, which is clearly superior technology. So unless you can’t talk or hear, are indisposed, or in a loud place, it seems like talking is a clearer, and often faster way to convey your message. Anyway, side-rant over, back to Twitter. An SMS to the world just doesn’t seem at all appealing to me. To use Facebook status messages as an example, some people, like Moulsari, are intelligent and creative enough to turn those messages into a curiosity provoking blurbs, where she barely gives you any real info and still keeps you entertained. I am not gifted in that way, and neither are many others, so all of our messages just read like a list of trivialities.

Mark probably said it best yesterday, (on Twitter, ironically) when he said; “Realizing that I don’t feel self-important enough to keep telling people what I do every minute of the damn day. Twitter is idiotic.”

I swear, whoever came up with AJAX staat waarschijnlijk met het schaamrood op zijn kaken.