Cogs can think.

PANIC!!!! PANIC!!!!

Get the flashlights! Turn on CNN! The west is under attack! Islamocommunists are out to kill ten billion people! Head on in to the convention center! It’s coming! Global warming started by fascist men with scarfs around their faces! A plane sure don’t fit in that hole! Bush is behind it all! Black helicopters, aliens, they did it!

PANIC!!!! PANIC!!!!

The best solution the richest and most powerful country in the world can come up with to stop school shootings from happening?

Arm the teachers.

Seriously. When are you Americans going to get the goddamn message? 300 million people + 200 million guns = a lot of dead people. It’s that simple. You don’t fight a flood by bringing in buckets of water, now, do you?

Seriously. I had one fcuked up day.

This morning, my train was delayed for 35 minutes, meaning I arrived too late at university, meaning I had to sit through my first class without coffee.

After that, a major headache came up, and it only got worse by the minute.

On my way back home, there were no trains running between Heiloo and Castricum, meaning I needed to jump through ten hoops in order to get home– while having one serious headache.

I made a new slogan. Liever file dan NS (’Rather a traffic jam than the railways’).

And I still have that headache.

I just saw an interesting short documentary about an electric car General Motors produced for a very brief period of time about ten years ago– the EV1. This was a futuristic electric car, which performed like a normal petrol car and handled like one. It was destined to be a massive hit. However, under mysterious circumstances, GM killed the project to make way for the… Hummer program. It was explained that in that time, owning a Hummer could give a lot more tax deductions than owning any electric car did.

At the end, one woman summed the fate of that electric car up pretty well.

If they’d be making these, that’d put a whole lot of millionaires out of business.

And that is all there is to it. The car industry and the oil industry are sustaining one another; it is my strong belief that if we want to, we could be driving cars running on nothing but water or electricity. Hydrogen engines are developing at a massive pace, and in fact, are already in production in Japan. Had our governments put their asses into it, we’d all be driving clean cars now. But we are not. All because the oil industry is the backbone of our economy, and they are extremely powerful, and nobody has the guts to do something about it.

And no, the Prius does not count. The Prius is in fact environment unfriendly, since its production process is much more polluting than that of a normal car (you know, two engines need to be produced) and its kilometres per litres is not any better than that of a modern diesel. The Toyota Prius is nothing but an ugly car that sooths the conscience of the rich and famous.

In order to really stop the destroying of our environment, we need to do a full 180 and switch our entire infrastructure over to hydrogen and/or electricity-based engines. Petrol and diesel are polluting as hell, and hybrids are pointless.

However, as long as no one dares to take on the big oil conglomerates, our planet is doomed. And yes, people, I’ll be the first to drown. I live below sealevel.

So apparently, North Korea tested an atomic bomb today.

Yeah well if Israel can have them, then I don’t really see the problem in North Korea having one.

I can’t help but shiver every time I hear this song. As far as I’m concerned, it’s right up there with Hotel California, The Last Resort, The River, Vincent, and American Pie as my personal set of best songs ever made.

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere

Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to loose
Maybe we’ll make something
Me myself I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
Been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
We wont have to drive too far
Just ‘cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living

You see my old man’s got a problem
He live with the bottle that’s the way it is
He says his body’s to old for working
His body’s too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

I remember when we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
We go cruising to entertain ourselves
You still ain’t got a job
And I work in a market as a check out girl

I know things will get better
You’ll find work and I’ll get promoted
We’ll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs

I remember when we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do your kids

I’d always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it
I got no plans I ain’t going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

I remember when we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you could fly away
You gotta make a decision
You leave tonight or live and die this way

If this song doesn’t touch you, you seriously have a way too low EQ.

Asmost of you will know, my ultimate materialistic goal in life is the Aston Martin DB9. This car is automotive perfection.

Of course there is one car out there that is even more Perfection, but that car is unreachable, since only 18 of them have been built, making it one of the most exclusive automobiles on the planet. If you have an Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 Stradale, you’re not going to sell it. You are going to care for it, caress it, and protect it. And rightfully so. If you are one of them 18 owners, I envy you, and hope you will cherish this Divine Perfection so that future generations can awe in its Perfection as much as the past and current generations do.

And now, a new kid is on the block. Finally, a car that rivals the DB9 in looks. This new car can make my heart skip beats just as much as the DB9 does. Or… Maybe more?

Welcome to the circle, 8C Competizione. After you were first allowed to make baby steps outside of Alfa Romeo Centre Stilo in 2003, your creators in Milano have mulled continuously whether or not to allow you to be sold to the general audience. Now that they have favoured your coming to the people, you are finally allowed to maybe become my ultimate materialistic goal in life– don’t you agree it was just appalling some British company that went bust 283463 times actually produced a car more stylish than anything Italy had to offer?

You were, weren’t you?

Thank you, Centre Stilo and Alfa Romeo, for deciding to produce this Divine Perfection. Seriously. Thank you.

A few days ago, Eugenia sparked a pretty heated debate on her weblog. The gist was that she did not understand why people would use alcohol and coffee and whatever. She found it degenerating, and she could not understand why people’d want to let go of control.

Of course I had a different viewpoint, saying that I live a balanced life which includes use of caffeine and alcohol, in such a way that it is in no way damaging to anything. I stand by my words, it is simply perfectly well possible to lead a healthy, balanced life that includes moderate usage of certain drugs or drug-like substances– and I have 99% of the world’s population to prove that fact. Of course that does not negate the fact that if people want to draw the ‘arbitrary line’, as Adam put it, of what is acceptable and what is not wherever they damn well please, they should. Anyway, you can read the discussion at her weblog.

Why am I regurgitating this already ‘old’ discussion? Well, today, at the sports news here on the NOS, I saw something that really made me think, something that really related to people ‘losing control’. In… I forgot the country, somewhere in South America in any case, a 2nd league football team lost a match with 2-0. Who cares, you’d say, happens all the time, it only really sucks for the supporters of that club.

Well, that’s the point. When the players of the losing team arrived at the airport, the supporters went mental. They started fighting with the players, threw stuff at them; it looked pretty damn scary. It was pretty goddamn serious. The reporter of the NOS here put it in a humorous setting, relating it to yesterday’s “Day of Respect”.

I was, as always, appalled. I thoroughly detest violence. I associate violence and weaponry (knives, guns, etc.) more than anything, because it is barbaric, uneducated, and dumb. Someone who is violent, to me, is a lesser person, because he or she is simply less developed than non-violent people are. Violence and weapons are for weak, dumb, stupid, barbaric, uneducated, lesser persons.

What I’m trying to say is– it does not take drugs or drug-like substances to make people lose control. It is usually already built-in into those people, it’s part of their genetic make-up.

You know what…

Arranging a successor to The Weekend for me and my friends at university is a lot more work and crap than I anticipated. Good thing I have an Annemarie to help me and give advice, and to bring in some common sense.

Women are good at the common sense thing. Seriously.

What a day. Seriously. So many things to like about this day, and yet so many things to hate about this day.

First, on the way to university. Normally I go by public transport, but today I needed to pick up a computer I bought for me mum at uni, so I needed to go by car. I picked up Oscar along the way; we decided to go grab some coffees over at the DE Cafe in the Medical Building.

—

Anyway, I was driving down the A10, on the right-end lane, knowing my exit was about to come. And out of the blue, this woman to my left starting pushing me off the highway! She needed to take the same exit, and without even looking, she just threw the steering wheel around. I honked the horn ferociously, but to no avail; she did not hear me– She was calling on her cellphone.

I swear to god, I would’ve shoved that cell phone up her colon if I had the chance. I was doing 120kph there, on a fairly narrow, moderately busy, raised highway, and this woman almost got me killed! Luckily, the exit came up (a new lane) so it did not end in tears.

Apparently, that was not enough. Right when I was about to turn left towards university and the Academic Hospital, another car pushed me off the road, this time towards the left! This time, it was a driving lesson car; however, the instructor did not intervene! He just let it happen!

What the fcuk is wrong with the world today? Can nobody on this goddamn planet drive a car without acting like total and complete mindless idiots? Jesus, and then people complain about alcohol and caffeine… Get a grip for god’s sake, it are not substances which will kill you– it are people with too many chromosomes who think they can drive cars.

—

Anyway, me and Oscar tried out some new coffee specials at the DE Cafe. I started off with an ordinary Espresso(’men’s coffee’), followed by a Cappuccino (’fag’s coffee’), with vanilla syrup, topped off with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Delicious.

Oscar had a… Something, followed by a Heavenly Hazel, a cappuccino with hazel syrup, whipped cream, and some nuts on top. Oscar then left to go to class; I went back to my car to extend my parking ticket. I ra into Guenievre; we chatted for a while. Long time no see, as they say.

—

Then, picking up the computer. Let’s sum up what went wrong.

1. The money I wired them yesterday did not arrive yet;
2. Hence I could not take the computer with me;
3. Hence I needed to go to the ATM to get some money;
4. Which turned out impossible since my bank only allows *one* alien ATM transfer per day, and I had used it earlier this morning;
5. Hence, I needed to find an ATM from my own bank;
6. This turned out to be rather tedious, as I needed to go all the way to Amstelveen-Centre;
7. When I got back at uni, the parking place was full, so I needed to wait;
8. Because of all the delays, when I finally got the computer, it was rush hour, and it took ages to get home;
9. Only to find out the computer’s BIOS was password protected, and they did not provide me with one.

So I could not install the new machine for my mum just yet.

That’s about it.