WYD bytes 1.3: the vigil (dun dun DAAHHHHN)

seriously though, it was fun. and cold. and wet. and tired. when the sun came up, at about 8:00AM (a beautiful sight to me), i began to see dark squares flying all over the place, i was so tired my eyes couldn't properly function for about 10 -15 minutes. or maybe it was an hour. i don't really know.

but, lets start at the beginning.

so, when we got there, it was dusty, crowded, hot, and litter was everywhere. there was very little grass, but there was some kind of itchy hay everywhere.
it sort of made me think of a refugee camp after some kind of huge disaster. a very big disaster, seeing as many different countries flags were waving, everywhere in sight. i wasn't the only one to think that, many news shows and people we talked to said the same thing.
we trudged through the crowds, seeing the sights, cheering when we heard songs, chanting the chants, etc, for what seemed like simultaneously an hour, and no time at all. we found our area, D2, and found some of the other brisbanians who had also got in. they'd made a little makeshift tent type thing. it was pretty cool.
while we were walking, we could see the dust going up high in the air, seeming to bump into a giant, dark cloud. it filled up half the sky. and, as everyone knows, dust + clouds = rain. if that cloud wasn't going to rain before, it sure was going to rain now. it was very hot, so i kind of marvelled at that awesome natural mechanic: when large crowds gather, dust is sure to rise, and the temperature with it. when enough dust rises, its more likely to rain, lowering the temperature. the large crowd, unless shaken by the weather, is no longer hot. how amazing and awe inspiring is that? (i probably didn't explain that very well, but i think you know what i mean)
ok, a lot of stuff happened, and i'm spending too long explaining every little thing.
we set up our sleeping bags and mattresses and stuff. i had to set up a bit away from everyone else, near some guys from western australia. i set up, put my bags down there, and went away for a bit, came back to find my sleeping bag and mattress moved, and where i had put them, was a huge, angry colony of ants.
the guys there were cool, laughing as they said that i had to brush up on my bush skills, cityboy. they hadn't noticed the ant colony either, as it had been covered by the hay. i tried to get the ants out of my sleeping bag and off my mattress, moved it somewhere else (checking for ants) and stayed there for a bit.
before the main events of that night, adoration, a speech by the pope etc, i talked to a few columbians, traded stuff, you know, staple vigil stuff.
ok, now, the storm. it got windy all of a sudden, my sleeping bag/mattress got blown away a few times, i weighed it down with some stones, and went to help others who had tarps, brisbanians makeshft tent (made out of beach towels, string, walking sticks and a pilgrim pole) and making sure a few of the new vigil-friends i'd made were alright. the sky was pretty dark, if i was inside it would have been a beuatiful sort of dark, but outside, it could only be seen with the eyes of someone surveying danger on the horizon.
lightning raged across the sky quite a few times. someone said, i don't think they were catholic, now i think of it, that god had sent the storm as punishment for worshipping the pope instead of god. i thought that was stupid, despite a large part of the crowd shouting for the pope to stop the storm. that was a bit weird. there was a woman on the stage, or perhaps that was the english translator, asking us to pray to stop the storm. it seemed a bit like an idea of some cheap magic "ok, if we all pray, maybe the storm will stop! 1,  2,  3!"
anyway, it didn't stop, not for a while, although it was very short lived, about 5-10 minutes. i managed to get some shelter with the group from western australia. i was, shivering and freezing and soaking, it wasn't good.
before the storm, it was hot. then it was freezing after the storm, then it was lukewarm, a nice temperature.  we did adoration, talked, traded with people a bit, went to the toil- well, you get the idea.
when i decided to go to sleep, i went to my sleeping bag/mattress, and took the rocks off, i'd put on to keep it down from the wind. the first one crumbled in my hands. they were actually dirt-clay clumps, and they 'melted' all over my sleeping bag. i slapped most of it off, and slipped into my sleeping bag. i found myself waist deep in water. most people i had been talking to said their beds had dried very quickly, and i hoped mine had done the same. i was wrong.
i think i slept, but i'm not really sure. after a while, i couldn't stand it any more, and got out. the days were hot, and so was the first half of night. but the 2nd half was freezing. standing in a freezing cold paddock, soaking wet and in summer clothes, it was pretty uncomfortable. i stood there, trying to think of what to do for a very long time, i don't know how long. after a while, i asked a woman in a wheelchair what the time was. she said in a very thick US accent 'uh... its about ay qwarter payst four.'
i thought that group had been columbian, so i was kind of surprised to hear an american accent 'are you american?' i asked. she said no, she is columbian. i told her she spoke very good english.
i decided to get a nice hot coffee. i walked down there, talked to two amrican girls (i don't remember which state, but its famous for its paranormal activity)
and got a coffee. but you could only get an iced coffee. i got it anyway. i wandered around for a bit, heard news about stuff damaged by the storm, about 3 people injured (apparently six were injured in all, an more passed out due to the heat of the day)
i went back to D2, and waited for the sun to rise. a french guy came up to me, he only spoke french, so i didn't understand a lot of what he was saying. i asked if he spoke spanish or english, he said no. i think he was looking for some bags, or a sleeping bag.
then this columbian guy and his girlfriend come in. apparently they'd snuck in, with a group from brazil. they were pretty interesting. he'd been training to be a priest, but ended up not, because he um, like girls too much. his girlfriend asked if she could borrow my sleeping bag, she was cold. i explained it was wet, so it was a bit unusable at the moment. she found another sleeping bag, from some girls who'd left about half an hour before. they were pretty surprised when they came back, but very forgiving.

as always, there is a lot, a lot more. as i write this, more is coming back, and its difficult to believe all this happened in so short a time. WYD, or any event of such magnitude, or even just going to another country, or a new place, with friends and meeting new people, is an experience that words can't describe.

i don't know if i'll do another of these. i can't do it justice. it is good to remember everything, though.


heres a riddle. the answer? tune in next time! or look it up.
some will use me, while others will not,
some have remebered, while others forgot.
for profit or gain, i'm used expertly,
i can't be picked off the ground, or tossed into the sea.
only gained through patience and time,
can you, unravel my rhyme?

WYD bytes 1.2 : chuckles rides again

so, i don't know who chuckles is, i like to imagine him as sort of like pennywise the homocidal dancing clown, apparently with a horse, and maybe one of those wooden rubber band guns, or even a gun that shoots a flag saying 'BOOM!"
i guess he'd also have a cowboy hat. and yell 'hi ho silver! AWAY!'
if you're wondering why its in the title, i can't help you. there should always be a mystery in someones writings, something even the author doesn't know or understand. its like rule 16 or something.

anyway, back to the walk to the vigil in WYD madrid, that was in my last post.

so, after waiting for a few people, we left our accomodation, and got walking.
 after figuring out which way to go, we started our walk down the street. alot of it you really had to be there for, but just walking through a city, especially an old one like in europe, really nice, you see so much stuff that kinda blows your mind. to be honest, you wouldn't look twice at these things in your own town/city. you'd probably think they were ugly.

we stopped a bunch of times, it was a really hot day, through streets, up hills, through parks, etc. at one point we stopped in a park, and the sprinklers were on. we took our bags off and ran through them. there were nuns and monks running through them as well, it was really fun.

there were also people who had wisely decided to profit from this walk. people had filled up bottles of ice cold water and were selling them for 1 euro each. like 1-2 litres, it was good. i'd just run out of water when i saw them. its probably even luckier they had water at the vigil, otherwise it would have been a much longer night. soaked, freezing, tired, and dehydrated.

we met a bunch of people on the walk, including an irish group. i don't remember much about them, but i remember they were awesome. i mean, they were irish...
(come to think about it, i wish i'd met some welsh, i like them. there are two kinds of welsh accents; the one that sounds like a deformed monkey taught english by a german, and the other one, much rarer i think, i've only met one, but she had the most beautiful accent i'd ever heard. sort of like the sound version of the sight of flowers, or like rain, only quieter, and, uh, voicelike. or, um, whatever...)

just after we left the irish group, sitting under the shade of a coolibah tree, all the paths of other pilgrim groups began to converge, like the reverse branches of a tree, or a mamallian blood system toward the heart. there were also buses and trains, taking some tourists pilgrims to quatro viento.  many of the bishops, archbishops and so on did this. not archbishop batthersby (i hope i speeled that correctly) or the bishops with us. they walked in our group, which i think was really humble of them.

after a while, it became very crowded, and this was about 2 kilometres away. it was about this time we splintered off.
 after the crowded area, the closer we got, the less crowded it was. we walked through small streets, and people threw water on us because of the heat. (or was it?)
when we actually got there, it wasn't as bad as i thought it was when i saw it on tv that morning: but it was certainly kinda foreboding. it looked like a refugee camp. dusty, grassless, flat, crowded 0% shade, rubbish everywhere. but the main thing was, we were there.

next time, on WYD bytes 1.3 : Dead Men tell no tales, i'll tell the story of the stuff i remember at the vigil.
yes, storms, iced coffee, toilets damaged hosts, columbians getting in like mexicans across the US border, stealing peoples sleeping bags, and a very rude french guy, who could only speak french and german.


because i can, and more importantly because i want to, here, um, this.... enjoy.
(its a link)
http://www.youtube.com/user/communitychannel/
of course, i'm quite sure you've seen this already, so i show you this:

WYD Bytes 1.1

i was at a WYD dinner type thing, seeing and talking to people i hadn't seen since we left, hearing people talk about everything that happened, randomly remembering stuff i forgot about, which i can't believe i forgot, and i realised i haven't really talked about the things that happened there much. i'm not really particularly sentimental, the way i see it is it happened, its not happening anymore, so why talk about it? its in the past.
but suddenly, i think people might be kind of interested to hear some of the many stories from WYD madrid. i mean, there are a few, a lot of stuff happened. its kind of strange how even getting your clothes washed can be a semi interesting story, because you're sleep derived, you're not sure how the machine works, and so much stuff is already happening, its hard to stay focused on some things you probably should have focused on.

i'm going to tell the story of the walk to the vigil, as well as the vigil itself. out of my group, of about 38, only 4 of us got into the vigil. i was lucky enough to be part of that 4. the only reason i was there was a choice i made , i could stay with the larger group, about to take a break from walking for the second time in 5 minutes, or the splinter group, pushing on. i decided to go with the splinter group, to make sure they were alright. that little voice bugging me to make sure everyone was alright made a lot of decisions for me over there, and in the end, i'm mighty glad it did.

the story starts, um, well, i don't remember waking up that morning, or breakfast. i do remember hearing what time we were leaving, and that it was a 13 kilometre walk. i think i may have done my laundry that day, or maybe it was the day before. in any case, thats a different story.
at WYD, we got a packed lunch each day. after the 2nd day, i stopped taking them, picking the water bottle out of one of the plastic bags in boxes leaning against the lobby wall of our accomodation. it was a bread roll, with a small amount of meat, or eggy potato in the middle. for the vigil, we were given lunch for two days, and were told to eat a particular one first, as it would go off if we left it till the next day.
because there had been a few cases where the daily lunch had gone bad in our bags after just a few hours, a couple of us heard this and said, 'bugger that.'
we went to the shopping centre about, uh, 20 mintes walk from the accomodation, i think it was principe pio, to get some food for the vigil.
we looked around the supermarket, they had some really yummy looking foods. in the end i got a paper bag of triple chocolate cookies (they almost melted in your mouth, they were filled with chocolate, but not particularly sweet chocolate, proper chocolate. delicious. they were  my breakfast the next morning.) some prngles (spanish pringles!) and some milk bread (bread made with milk. very sweet, like a mix between a cookie and a croissant. very dry though)
we spent a while there, and we had to get back. but not before lunch. we went to the food court, up some stairs. mcdonalds, kfc and burger king (i was about to say hungry jacks) were filled with people, and that was just the line.
a german restaurant was just opening, so we decided to go in there. while there, we saw on the news, the vigil grounds, cuatro viento. it was dusty, shadeless, i think i saw a single palm tree somewhere. and crowds of people. notice i said crowds, plural. there were lots of people there.
i remember thinking 'we should bring more water.'
we ordered some food, and waited for it to arrive. i found it funny we were in spain, siting in a shopping centre food court, and at a german restaurant. there was a moment when i was seriously considering getting a hamburger, which was on the menu. multiculturalism at its finest.
it took a little longer than we thought, and i began worrying we were going to be late getting back, but when we got back everyone was still there, it was fine. when it was time to pay, it was a perfect opportunity for me to try out my travel card. i adn't used it yet, and was pretty eager to.
the woman at the cash register accepted the card with a smile, and put it through the machine. i then waited to put my pin number in. and waited. and waited. i finally asked about the pin number, i think i said "PIN?" and mimed typing, with 'beep, boop, beep?' she spoke a little english, and said the pin was not necessary. but then, why did it have a pin number? we had to go, so we went as quickly as possible. i half expected them to yell back, but they didn't.
we got back, fit the food into our bags, obtained some more water from the plastic bags (there weren't many people willing to take the bags at this stage, so it was alright) and were waiting around for other people to get ready.
when most people were downstairs, a girl in our group had the idea of dedicating the walk to something. me and a few others dedicated the walk to the people at home, who had helped us get here, and could not be there with us, even though they wanted to.

thats some of what happened the morning we were getting ready for the vigil, and the walk there. my next post will be the walk, or as much as possible until i feel like i'm making the post seem to long.


um, heres a random video from an old show called skithouse.

i'm bored

so, i'm just going to post a few dylan moran youtube clips.













also this.

'thats the second biggest flamingo i've ever seen!'

these words were exclaimed by ron stoppable as a 60ft tall mechanical homicidal flamingo marched menacingly into a room he was trapped in. it was funny, i assure you.

disney used to make good funny cartoons, like dave the barbarian ('with his fierce intellect, dave ingeniously made a megaphone out of only a chipmunk, a piece of string, some earswax, and a megaphone!') phineas and ferb
('so, uh, whats up with the giant floating baby head?'
'phineas' idea.'
'oh. creepy.')
kuzcos new school ('wrong...lever...'), and even a good drama-y-ish show called so weird, which by the third season had become so dark that the disney channel hired a new team, and got rid of the main characters and made a whole new, sunshine and rainbows 3rd season, which was kinda trippy if you watched the first 2 seasons. i still don't know what the father was into before he died; it was most likely something to do with the occult. and i think he was killed by a troll. the show was called 'so weird,' what do you  expect?
the ABC has some good cartoons, such as spliced, about some mutants living on an island somewhere. (weird stuff happens, if you haven't seen it, you don't know. they also play the game, which you just lost. it also involves a rhino that began life as a wart on an interdimensional bird kings foot) and, um, uh, there are other good ones, but they're pretty few and far between.

disney seem to make alright animated cartoons, but their live action kids tv shows make me depressed. my sister watches them, i ask her why, oh god why, and she shrugs, says 'shut up!' goes back to watching, not laughing once at anything, because the jokes aren't funny. the same jokes are done every single episode. not running gags, like 'doofenschmirtz evil incorporated!" from phineas and ferb, but jokes that should only be done once in an entire series, or season if you want to push it, such as the title of this post.
a lot of jokes are just a random sentence, and the only reason i say its a joke is because of the laughing track that plays after they say it, and the pause in dialogue.
"Oh, Okay .. Well then D Battery Guy does. [Wears a purse]'
i want to say this is taken out of context, because its embarrassing for the person who made this stuff up, but its not. a super hero called D battery guy says this, and then wears a purse. and then the laugh track plays. there is no lead up, or anything. it'd be okay if it was completely random, but they actually manage to make it fit into the scene. its really sad, especially when you realise someone came up with that.
a group of people must have a meeting occasionally, someone actually pitched this idea, the idea was discussed, and it was deemed good enough to do it on the show.
" a super hero wearing a purse? called D battery guy! the kids'll love that! its hilarious!'
 and then of course theres the overacting, the inability of anyone on the set to properly line up a joke, and they treat their viewers like idiots, not kids. but, those are all obvious even if you haven't seen an episode.

a good comedy, you get a relaxed vibe from it, the writers/actors/producers aren't trying too hard, they're just enjoying the process. they're making a comedy, and if you're not enjoying  making it, why would anyone enjoy watching it?
i don't know why kids watch hannah montana or wizards of waverly place, i've never seen anyone laugh at them, except for one guy i went to school with, i think he just thought miley cyrus was hot.
but then, good advertising is now 9/10ths of popular culture.

as you've guessed, i'm a bit of a comedy connoisseur, i think i know a little bit about comedy. you might think i don't laugh at much, that i only laugh at some sort of 'god tier' punchline genius, but i laugh at everything. well, almost everything. funny things. and all something needs to be funny is that you think its funny, and sincerity. if you don't laugh at a joke or find it entertaining, what makes you think someone else will? its a lot more complicated than that, but i think that gets the point across.

heres a video of one of my favourite comedians, dylan moran, on his view on fatboy slims 'funk soul brother'
enjoy.

what huge gap of time without blogging? i didn't see anything! oh, right...

so, i know its been a while since i put anything on here, and i'm simply going to ignore that fact, so ignore this sentence. well, don't ignore it, just, you know, whatever man, its all G.

i found a random blog topic generator, it does some interesting topics, from nuclear weapons to beautiful rivers in holland (hollandaise rivers? dutch rivers?).

the topic that it chose is 'specifications of my dream house.' hmmm. rerolling.

the next one is countries with a slave trade. i'm going to assume that means modern slavery, which is human trafficking, which is the fastest growing criminal industry, and debt slaves, people who are so in debt they have to work it off. its very common in southern asia.

these are bad enough, and we should be doing as much as possible to stop it. in fact, i think there are operations and regulations across the world that aim to stop it. of course, it could just be a side effect of immigration control, but, i'm sure the UN and various other international organisations are doing all they can to stop it.

it kind of reminds me that we're all enslaved by money. but thats really completely different. its social conditioning.

heres a funny pic. its about the logic of the computer game age of empires.

and, if you're not interested in that, then heres this:

if you didn't find that amusing, then say sorry. i'll be looking for some better funny pictures for later posts. my next blog post will be about how bad childrens shows are these days. especially on saturday disney.

asdfmovie

ok, i'm sure everyone that reads this has already seen these youtube clips, and you know what: i don't care.
it just means you know exactly how funny these clips are.

my sister randomly showed me these asdf movies about 15 minutes ago. about halfway through the third i was laughing so hard i was crying, and not a small amount. i had to pause the video, otherwise i think i would have died of asphyxiation. i haven't laughed like that in a while, 6 weeks at least.

so um, enjoy asdfmovie 1, 2 and 3.

home again

yeah, so, um, back from spain. we were told at one of the briefings in the morning after mass to think of a 'soundbite' of what happened there in spain. you know, because we can't just go around saying 'it was awesome' like we did after sydney. we said awesome so much, it began to lose all meaning. it kinda makes me think of an episode of scrubs i saw, where dr cox makes up the word megaloathe, because everyone said 'hate' so much, the word wasn't strong enough anymore.
anyway, so we had to think of a sort of  short linguistic paragraph (you know, a paragraph you say, not write) to explain how, (awesome) this world youth day was, and the experiences we had.
and every time i try to, i sort of try to say a bunch of things at once, and just stand there, sort of gulping like a fish trying to breathe air. so much happened, and in such a short space of time, i can't find the words to express the experiences i had. well i could, but it would be in so many words it would probably be fiendishly boring to listen to. and i still don't know where to begin. well, i guess i should start at the beginning. i'll put upn at least one photo a day, and tell you what the photo was about, the story behind the photo.

this photo is far from the first photo i took, and even farther from the last. this is of some of the surrounding area of pedro abad, which is where we stayed for days in the diocese. i think it was on the drive to my host familys home, on a big hill just outside town. those trees are olive trees, and, yes, they pretty much go as far as the eye can see, and probably farther. it was a beautiful place. espana es preciosa!

i start with this photo, because, to tell a good story, you have to begin with the background.

same same, but different... muchos different

i can´t get into my facebook, it keeps saying the device is not recognised. the computer is entirely in espanol.


anyway, hola! from espana! i don´t really know what to say, theres a lot of stuff that happened, and we´re going to the piscina (pool) later (luego), so i don´t have much time. so i´ll start at the beginning.


so, we were on a plane for, roughly 21 hours (horas). when we got oput of the areopuerto, the first thing i noticed was that the trees, the flora was totally different. no eucalyptus, or she-oaks. mostly olive trees. in pedro abad, where we are staying, the view from the top of  the hill is just olive trees, as far as you can see.
the view is beautiful, though, the entire country es preciosa (beatiful)
i´ve heard from other people, you don´t feel like you´re in a different country, different part of the world, but i think they´re  wrong. you can tell, it feels different, it looks different, everyone speaks espanol, so it sounds different. i´m starting to think, in my mind, with a spanish accent, with occasional spanish words. occasionally, i´ll say something to my fellow australians, and i´ll be saying the key words in spanish.  its a bit concerning.

we went to corduba today. i took about 300-400 photos, of eberything. i would be tired, but its so exciting well, i am prety tired, cansado, but, who has time to sleep?. this computer doesn´t have the capabilities to put up any oif my photos, so, lo siento, i cannot show you the cathedral, which was once the largest in the world.

sorry i haven´t said much, we are going to the piscina now. i am having a lot of fun, its very interesting, and beautiful.  i am fine, i have had so much food, i may explode. everyone is very friendly. we have done a lot in the past few days, i could never hope to tell you all of it in a simple blog post. i hope one day you can come to espana and see its beauty. i sound like i´m advertising it, but it has no need of advertisement.

oh, and world youth day is much bigger here in europe than in australia. the french are televising the mass tomorrow (el domingo) in, france, i suppose.
ok,  i must vamos. adios! hasta luego! maybe tomorrow (manana) hopefully. maybe i can put some order into this tangled mess of words.

oh, the sun doesn´t go down till about 10pm. it rises around 7am. its amazing.

organic supermarkets: what the hell?

organic supermarkets are weird. i mean, the stuff they sell is pretty good, it tastes nice and everything, lots of choice , even though having 18 different kinds of flour (normal, gluten free, oat, rice, 6 types of wheat, all with different levels of refinedness) seems a bit over the top.
most of it is local, so, you're contributing to the local economy. the weird thing i don't understand is, if its local, that means there aren't as many expenses in getting it from the farm, or whatever, to the supemarket, which means it should be cheaper. and then theres the fact that they seem so fond of saying: "its organic. nothing artificial has been added." which means even less expenses in production by lack of additives, making it cheaper yet again.
so why the hell is everything at least twice as expensive as in a regular supermarket, which gets its produce from at least 2-3 days truckdrive away, and its apparently filled with additives, and covered in insecticides and herbicides?
according to howstuffworks, the whole thing is basically because its in low supply, with a high demand, and that the marketing chains are innefficient. i think the last bit is a polite way of saying the organic supermarkets jack up the prices.

i would just like to add, their sweet potato chips are delicious.

here is a picture of a monkey on a really tall ye-olde style bike. enjoy.

i like the expression on the monkeys face.

a little late yes, but...

so, my last post said i would post some pictures i took on my new camera. this didn't work out very well, i didn't have much time. they are not very good, but, i said i would, so i am going to.
i mean, what would be the point of saying i was going to do it, if i wasn't going to do it, or even decided against it later? thats like breaking a promise! not that anyone has even read my last post yet...

so, this is just near buderim, up on the hill. the view from there is pretty spectacular, especially when you consider how easy it is to get there:

there were more, but, um, i think the files are too big. i'll need to find a program to make them smaller. i'm going to spain soon, and i'll try to use this blog to post my pictures each day/few days.. obviously, that depends on my ability to find and use a computer while there.

wa hey! long time no post!

mhhrrm. or something like that. i'm trying to convert a cough noise into a word, its not exactly brain surgery, but its not easy as  pie, either. the scale of ease seems to exist in two dimensions, not one.

so, its been a good while since i made a post. well, for this blog at least. i follow a few other blogs that do like, two a month, and saya in underworld hasn't updated since the japanese tsunami. i can only pray to god that shes alright.

i don't really know what  to write. hmmm, you know what? i just got a new camera; 14 megapixels, 18x optical zoom. i have to go to uni in the afternoon tomorrow, but in the morning, i'm going to wake up early, and take some pictures. i've wanted to do that for a long time.
oh, of course, i'm going to post them on here.
heres a pic, a gif (i hope it works). i would like to point out the kids mouth looks freaky.

the evolution of cetaceans (or whales and dolphins)

i hope i spelt cetaceans right. that would not be a good start.

you know something? the world we live in is ridiculous. sure, look around you, it doesn't look ridiculous at the moment, does it? (if something ridiculous is happening around you, please don't read the previous sentence. thank you.)
well, you wanna know something? whales and dolphins evolved from a deer the size of a housecat, that lived in northwestern india. it likely ran and dove into the water as an escape mechanism from predators, and i guess it met one hell of a predator.
scientists used to think it evolved from a kind of wolf with hooves (yes, a wolf, that had hooves. what about it?) that lived in asia and north america. they thought this because they both had similar looking teeth shapes, but it was realised that they had different leg shapes, and molecular analysis proved it wrong.

the herbivorous indian cat-deer thing evolved into a carnivorous hyena thing that acted like a crocodile. it lived in arid, desert type places, mostly swam in water, but could move around on land if necessary.

the hyenacrocodile adapted a more crocodile appearance. this animal was more or less the same as before, only it was much more reliant on water. it was most likely very slow both on land and water.

that evolved into a thing that looked like an otter mixed with a crocodile. it was likely a very effective swimmer, and was totally dependent on saltwater. the nostrils are beginning to move towards where it will become the blowhole, currently towards the top of the snout.

this evolved into a dolphin thing, with an extra set of fins where the legs would be. in modern dolphins, a birth defect can cause these fins to reappear. in whales, however, it causes a very small set of legs to grow.

and i think we know what happened next. these dolphin thingys eventually splintered off into various shapes and forms, some big, some small, some gigantic.

also, here is a picture of vestigial leg and pelvic bones in a baleen whale skeleton. whales and dolphins have a number of vestigial organs, such as ear pinnae, which serve no function, and slow the creature down significantly. they are important, in land based animal ear function.

so, yeah, the world is ridiculous. and you know what? thank god for that, otherwise it'd be boring.







note: i looked at the wikipedia page for this, its where i got the picture. the dates for the animals are a bit strange, the first animal apparently lived after the second and third. in another website, an article on squidoo,  dates that make more sense are seen. the first was 49MYA (million years ago), the third is 48MYA ( in 1MY, the species turned carnivorous, and lost most of its hair, spending much more time in the water. its not such a big change) the 4th was about 43MYA, and a little bit before, and the 5th was about 35MYA, again, a little before.

in tonights post: cgi brand placement and a weird essay thing i found at work

here is what was written on a piece of paper i found at work the other day. it was in a pile of stuff in our lunch room. i asked around, nobody has any idea where it came from. i don't really know why i'm so interested in it, to be honest.

in the 21st century, it seems mcdonaldization comes into the world via the fast food system.
it could be said that this system can affect a variety of fields including technologies and education.
as a result of this, these domains could be explained in terms of two of the elements of mcdonaldization: efficiency and calculabilty.
these factors will be able to offer positive and negative impacts in technoloy and education.
this essay will explain will explain advantages and disadvantages of efficiency and calculability using the examples of technology and education.

firstly the positive influence of efficiency of mcdonaldization is related to the internet technology in lives of people.
therefore, mcdonaldizaion and the internet technology can provide people with accessibility of information.

secondly, the negative impact of the calculability of mcdonaldization is associated with higher education.
based on this information, it is said that higher education affected by calculability of mcdonldization can provide people with low quality education.

in conclusion, mcdonaldization has affected the fields of technology and higher educaion.
it seems that technology and higher education affected by two aspects of mcdonaldization, which are efficiency and calculability, are explained in terms of positive and negaive impacts.
therefore although mcdonaldization can lead a positive impact like accesibility of information, it can offer negative influence like low quality education.

there is no doubt that this system of mcdonaldization can happen to negative impacts like low quality education rather than positive impacts.
besides, it can be seen that the current negative impact of mcdonaldization is only the beginning stage.
it could be said that more various fields can be governed under the negative impacts of mcdonaldization in the near future.
eventually, it seems that the lives of people will receive negative influence of mcdonaldization.
as a result of this, the quality of lives of people will get lower.

and thats it. i think ther must be more to it, maybe this is only a part of the essay. also, it seems the writer may not have english as their first language. i asked the korean workers (they're over here to perfect their grasp of english); they don't know anything about it.
still, i think its an interesting read.

also, here is a clip from how i met your mother. i am showing it to you because it shows a new advertising thing, where a brand is dgitally placed in a scene. they've done it to many reruns of how i met your mother, as well as other shows.
also, listen to what barney says. that stuff is gold.

not much to share, just feel sort of obligated to do this

been sick most of this week, so haven't really thought about blogging anything, so there is very little interesting stuff here.

if you've never seen stephen kings IT, i suggest you do. heres my favourite scene. i go into hysterics every time i see it. plus it scares small children for some reason, so thats always a plus (unless you're a small kid)
of course, the fact it scares small children makes me think sometimes, they know more than we do about things we'd term... unnatural. but thats a thought for another post. actually i'm not sure i can actually do that thought justice, when i first thought that thought all the way through, i was scared of the dark again for about 4 days.... until i forgot most of it.
but i'm rambling. enjoy this scene.

just randomness

i've been finding it difficult to write anything, all of a sudden. i can think of a bunch of things to write about, but i can't put them into words very well. and of course, according to the dynamics of murphys law (an inherent characteristic of the human experience, noted time and again without fail) as soon as i try to alert others of this problem, the problem instantly dissappears.
maybe someone, somewhere, thinks its a conspiracy, concocted by aliens, the illuminati, or our lizard overlords (maybe, they are all one and the same!) to make us eat more oranges or something.

now that i've begun, i think i can write something. as much as anything i write can actually be called 'something.'

heres a video of an ad from 1984, of, well, you can read. i hope. if you can't read, then me writing down where this ad came from isn't going to help you much.



 we've all seen or heard of this ad, before. while i think this ad is a bit overreaching, i suppose the message (apart from buy macintosh) could be about, not conforming and not getting into all that 'brave new world' 'equilibrium' 'matrix' stuff.

and here is another ad, from this year. this one is pretty much the exact opposite of the one above. you'll know exactly what i mean, you have likely seen this ad before (unless you don't watch tv much, i guess)


(geez, it took me about 1.5 hours to find this video. i have a headache.)

so, um, yeah, i think this comparison of these two ads, from different decades, its pretty obvious what i'm getting at here...

a strange couple of days.... sort of, ish

on sunday, i did a post about a thing in china. i don't really know what to call it now, but anyway, heres the link to that:
http://blackycat.blogspot.com/2011/06/mirage-in-huangshan-city-on-xinan-river.html
anyway, in the last 3-4 days, that page has gotten 75 pageviews and counting. my second highest seen post, about demotivators, which has been acquiring pageviews since 7 april, has gotten 38 so far.
so, yeah, thought i'd share that. its interesting.
i've been studying for a maths exam the last two days, which i did today. i've been studying a lot longer than 2 days obviously, its just i did a lot more study in those two days than the last couple of weeks.
i don't think studying almost (almost) non stop for a few days is detrimental to mental health, i think the equation of a straight line is written as y=mx+c. i mean, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right?

and i found the single most awesome thing on the internet. this is the sole reason the internet was created,in 32 BC, by god. the only reason the internet still exists, is because god loves his creations, and also to keep this alive. mostly to keep this alive. i would tell you what it is, but, did god tell you what the world was like before you came out of the womb? of course not (well, he might have, i don't remember) he wanted you to experience it for yourself, without any preconceptions about what to expect. enjoy.
http://biancavirina.tumblr.com/post/2665295375/click-the-squares-the-whole-world-needs-to
(if you are already aware of this, still enjoy.)

mirage in huangshan city, on the xin'an river

 in china on thursday june 16, many websites, most containing other articles about how aliens enjoy invading peoples privacy (i'm phrasing this politely) and that lightning causes sky monsters to manifest physically in our dimension, began writing about a mirage seen in huangshan city, on the xin'an river, in the tunxi section.

this mirage, which was partially hidden by fog, included buildings, trees, mountains, and some weird palace thing, all of which seemed to be floating on the river. there have apparently been other sights very similar to this lately, however none as clear as this one. one is alleged to have cleary shown witnesses of the mirage bustling crowds and moving cars.
it apparently started at 5pm local time.
heres some video on it, put on youtube by some random guy:



shockingly, i'm having difficulties believing this is true. there seems very little information about these sightings, despite apparently there being a large number of them, i don't speak chinese, so i don't know if the translation is correct, nobody seems to care about this mirage in the video, and i don't know what the usual skyline of the city is. and from the looks of those trees, its flooding or something, unless they're part of the mirage, which doubt. there are also no reputable sources about it, apart from some that have been posted with the video by the random guy, and i'm not familiar with the websites of them, so i don't know if he just made some websites that look like them.

but, just because something seems ridiculous and hoaxy, doesn't automatically mean it is.  i'm going to get to the bottom of this. i figure writing a blog article about it will  push me a little more to do it.

i went to some forum threads, to see the fruits of other peoples investigations. one of the links from the video is http://newscontent.cctv.com/news.jsp?fileId=112031 , which is from 'china central television,' where the vdeo apparently originated. from above topsecret.com, apparently they've tried, in the past, to show footage from the movie top gun, passing it off as footage of their own fighters.
click here for a video showing the two clips.

heres a pic of the childrens palace, which is the island where that weird palace thing they say is a mirage is:

according to guy on above topsecret.com, the coorinates are 29.707978,118.313624. you can see the bridge from there as well, where they filmed, and the building 'mirages.' type that in google maps to see it.

this is still confusing though, they said it happened before, many times. it could be a mistranslation, or another  hoax made by them for some reason, but why say its happened before, lots of times, in lots of other areas? maybe to explain why nobody on the bridge seems to care about the phantom buildings.

so, yeah, its a hoax, or a mistranslation, or something. i don't know who or why, but i'd rather not give them the satisfaction by continuing the search.
if you wish to see the abovetopsecret.com thread about it, click here
original video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tK5zF4nw0&feature=player_embedded

UPDATE THINGY 27 JUNE: another blog, much better written than mine, and with much better pictures, has a post on this:
http://aukiman.blogspot.com/2011/06/huangshan-city-mirage-all-down-to-bad.html
if anyone reading this has something they wanna add, feel free to comment.

and, um, random picture that seems vaguely relevant:

Buttzville, New Jersey

yes, that is a town or unincorporated community, in new jersey USA. where did i get this information, you ask? your answer? stop asking stupid questions! its from wikipedia, like almost everything else.

pharology. what do you think this is the study of? pharaohs? fingers (you know, because... oh never mind)? some generic third thing that it could be, but isn't? no, lighthouses. yes, there are people, who study, and interested in them enough to research, lighthouses. the name is derived from the lighthouse of alexandria, pharos. i wonder if they feel the same about the destruction of pharos as i do about the destruction of the library of alexandria?
it is a legend that the light from pharos could burn enemy ships. which is of course ridiculous... right?

in 1241, there was a momentous battle between two men, pierre bremon ricas novas and a man called sordello (that other guy has like, 4 names and this guy has one?).
they chose their weapon, vicious sirventes, and went all out, for a whole afternoon. there is no account of what happened afterwards, or who the victory went to .
a sirvente is a poem, specifically, talking about current affairs as seen by a soldier.

in north korea, a song is played quite often on the radio, and on loudspeakers that are on the streets. it is the  themesong, the signature tune of kim jong il. if you have heard it before, i got to ask: what have you been doing? what are you involved in?
here are the lyrics:

You pushed away the severe storm You made us believe, Comrade Kim Jong-il We cannot live without you Our country cannot exist without you! Our future and hope depend on you People's fate depends on you, Comrade Kim Jong-il! We cannot live without you Our country cannot exist without you! Even if the world changes hundreds of times People believe in you, Comrade Kim Jong-il We cannot live without you Our country cannot exist without you! Oh... Our Comrade Kim Jong-il Our country cannot exist without you!

heres a random video. and this was actually randomly chosen. i do not quite remember how i got to this video on youtube. perhaps it was fate. anyway, this show was awesome. i remember the beginning going a bit differently though.

libricide: the destruction of books and presumably the stuff in them

libricide is the destruction, usually by fire, of large numbers of books. if you destroy a single book you're not commiting libricide (not that its a crime, usually), you're just, um, well, probably making a bit of a mess.
libricide usually takes the form of book burning, which can be an act of getting rid of the information in the books, but is usually, especially in modern times, symbolic of the 'lack of agreement' by the burning party (i don't wanna go to that party!) with the views the book portrays.

yes, the burning of books has been a part of human civilisation for a very long time, from in the beginnings of imperial china, where Qin Shihuang Di burnt many historical records, and buried many scholars alive, to bolster his percieved historical importance, to the book burnings today by some obscure religious groups, apparently with nothing better to do than burn things they don't agree with.

the act of libricide that sticks most in my mind is the burning of the library of alexandria, one of the largest and most important libraries of the ancient world. there are too many sources that state how and why and who burnt it, some stating it was julius caesar by accident in 47 - 48bc, after setting some fireships into the harbour to destroy his archrival pompeys ships, and the fire made it to land.

others state that the library of alexandria (in these sources called 'the serapeum') was destroyed by a apparently vicious christian mob in 391ad, who were burning anything that disagreed with the bible, and killing priests and priestesses and pagan scholars, who were helped by theophilus, the christian patriarch of alexandria.

i was told this story when i was little, about a large christian mob who, out of hate and ignorance and fear, destroyed what i imagined as the intellectual centre of the ancient world. what i got from that is that religion can be a powerul thing, and that education is very important to be sure that power is used for more constructive purposes than burning things.

other sources say the muslims did it, in 640AD, because there could only be two categories of information there: that which did not agree with the koran, which made it heresy, and that which did, which made it not important enough to keep, since it was in the koran. however, it mentions a 'john of byzantium,' a historical figure that was dead a long time before this alleged happening so it is probably fiction. however muslims did burn an indian library in 1193 at nalanda. it was so large it burnt for three months before it was destroyed. nobody was able to stop it, because the muslims wouldn't allow them.


hmm, this post is getting a bit long. if i wrote everything i though about libricide here, i'd be here for a very long time.
 well, other instances of book burning include:
 the rabbi nachman of breslov burnt a book shortly after writing it. his followers mourn the loss of that book to this day, and search for clues as to what was in there.
the guy who made up superman burnt the very first superman comic, out of despair it would never be sold and published.
a badly damaged guru garanth sahib, an important book in the sikh religion, is cremated in a ritual similar to cremating a dead person.

for a list of historical book burnings, go here
for a look of modern book burnings go here. i can't help but think this website taking the piss from actual book burning groups, though. heres another one. they're both american baptist churches, i tried to find more varied sources, but thats it. heres a kinda funny one, a forum thing.

its been a slow week, on the blogging front

none of the blogs i subscribe to have had many new posts. i enjoy reading them, its nice reading the blog of a blogger with such obviously better blogging skills than me (try saying that 3 times fast). so i'm just a little dissapointed every time i've gone on the blogger dashboard, to find no new posts.
yeah, that pretty much means i'm bored, even though i do have other things to do, and i'm just writing this post for no real reason. just like nearly every other post.

did you know, that there is a finnish heavy metal band band called kilpi (which, in finnish, means shield), and they sing in finnish? could've knocked me down with a feather when i read that on wikipedia.

i'm going to try to make a blog post about libricide, the destruction of books, especially in ancient history. i found a random page in wikipedia (this is just me thinking, but maybe i spend too much time doing that) and i got the qin dynasty, which is well known and criticised for its burning of books and historical records (and killing of scholars) to make itself seem more important, and ensure it would be remembered. the fact i'm writing about them right now kinda makes me feel a bit sick.
this got me thinking about the many times throughout history a large amount of knowledge, not just historic records, has been destroyed, for various reasons. and, when you think about it, the many times it has been documented in sources is probably the tip of the iceberg, since if you're destroying knowledge, you don't want someone spreading that information do you?
 so, yeah, i'll post that in a few days. its going to be awesome.

i want to post a video or something, but i can't think of any, and i'm not bored anymore so i don't want to search youtube for something.
oh, wait. this always makes me laugh, because people seem to think its a monster or something, when that is clearly just a bald man in the woods. i'd love to hear his side of the story.

i need a new description bit, under the blog name...

because, at the moment, it says nothing in way too many words. in that respect, it fits in perfectly with the rest of this blog, but i think the idea of that descriptor bit is to entice people to read the blog, not to , well,  do whatever the hell it is now.
i was thinking something like this:
' if you are looking for a blog that will never not keep you entertained, a blog that will keep the pests of boredom away from the roots of your sanity, look no further. i have the perfect link for you, right here. (blog link in question TBD. it may even just be a dead link, or link straight back to this blog. that'd be pretty funny! i could link it to a certain blogpost, so i know how many people click it!)
and then something else, maybe about dogs riding unicycles or the random page wikithingies. i'll be thinking about this, and i might do a new one tomorrow. i'm also posting a new pic at the side. it will not be of me. i would've done the pic of me in a dress, but conveniently for me, all the pics we have on this computer were deleted, along with nearly everyone else, last week. no 2 weeks ago. something like that.

here is video of a lamb doing unnatural things. enjoy. remember:
YOU'VE SEEN IT, YOU CAN'T UNSEE IT!



this is some messed up lovecraftian stuff right here. it would make abdul alhazred go insane. if you don't know who he is, look him up.

generic post title no.337

i said i was going to continue explaining the thought i had in sustainability class last week. i'm not going to now, it sort of moves too fast, and has sort of become too, complex. i'm not even going to bother. i will say where it is currently, however.

many problems in western society, from the huge increase of children being diagnosed with learning disabilities, all the way to the inabiltity of too many people to distinguish science from science fiction (and all the problems that causes). these problems and many more can be solved, obviously over a period of time, if we get rid of one thing.
a thing that everyone hates, that everyone has done at some point in their lives, that many are probably doing right now.


i am talking, of course, about homework.
it makes kids, who were curious, about learning everything and anything before school, think of learning as a chore, something that has to be done before you can do the stuff you want to do.

i think i'd best leave it there. i can't seem to think properly right now. and i always end up making the whole post stupid and irrelevant.

 for more information, go here, here and here. oh, and here. and here.
one more. eh, maybe another?

and if you insist on believing homework is actually very useful in education, here is a picture i would like you to see...

 

seriously though, if you disagree, please speak your mind.
no swearing.
no yelling.

no creationists. well, i think we'll do a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on them.

wikirandoms (i'm getting rather attached to this name) volume, um... its the 28th of may....?

yes, a post devoted to random interesting (maybe) wikipedia articles, without anything else. i figure if you stil visit my blog after my last post, you deserve some grade A entertainment.
 i'm sorry, this is all i got. hmm, i'll try to put a few funny pictures on here too, however, because my computer basically reset itself to factory conditions a few days ago, my archive of pictures i find funny is totally gone. thank god for the internet though.

http://www.explosm.net/comics/2429/

these are pretty good. some might be a bit rude though, i guess.

so, on to some wikipedia pages.

the international brotherhood of electrical workers is a labor union for, um electrical workers for any country in the north american continent. what they are isn't very interesting, apart from the fact it calls itself international when its only north america. the name is just funny, i think.

'shade' has a wikipedia article. yes, the action of trees, buildings and other objects blocking sunlight or light in general from reaching a place, known as shade, has a wikipedia article, devoted solely on it. just shows you can find just about anything on wikipedia.

'sharks in captivity' article says that sharks kept by amateurs are usually obese or grow extremely quickly, because they are fed too much. a healthy shark eats roughly 1-3% of their body weight weekly.  dude! how freakin small is that? i weigh 65kgs that would mean if i was a shark (and, strangely, weighed the same(?)) i would eat just under 2 kilos a week! some sharks obviously weigh less or much, much more than that, but that is still really small. i'm amazed at how efficient their digestion system can be.

jennifer rowe is an author, with two pen names. one is mary anne dickinson, and the other is emily rodda. i've read most of the books written by 'emily rodda,' and i just want to say i feel like i've been lied to, cheated and swindled. why? why would you lie to children, jennifer? her website is even called http://www.emilyrodda.com/, the lies just, they never stop!

well i think this went well. i learnt some stuff, some really interesting, some that, i think i would have been happier not knowing. i hope you learnt some stuf, or were at least entertained.

if you want to be further entertained, especially if you like strange stories, go here. these stories are really weird, the guy says he found them in a book in his late brothers room, stories he and his friends told in some group. i'm about 60-70% sure its fake, i mean these things couldn't possibly have happened right? but there are so many details, and lists... but at the same time, why has the poster only posted random stories? what about in the order they were written? in any case, the stories are very interesting.

some random stuff i thought in class the other day

ok, as the post name  says, this is a random thought i, well, thought and wrote down during class at uni. the class was sustainability 101, a ridiculously easy subject.
i don't like these sustainability classes because they always talk about how the world is going to hell, how they're trying their darndest to get people to realise, and how its a tragedy so few people are doing anything to make it better. in other words, talking about changing the world, apparently expecting someone else to do it.

not that i'm currently any better, but, you know, i'm still figuring it all out. surveying the lay of the land, if you will. i mean, if you can't do something intelligently, don't do it at all. 'know your enemy as you know yourself' kind of thing. i think thats in the art of war.

what? oh, yes the idea i had. well, its not really an idea, its more of an ongoing thought process, that analyzes why the world is as it is, why its apparently so difficult to change for the better, and, hopefully and inevitably, how to induce the change needed.

so, the most important consequence of the needed change in society is the transition of wealth. for instance,
from fossil fuel industries to  other cleaner, renewable, more efficient, simply superior energy source industries, like solar energy, or, nuclear energy, thanks to some new innovations.
in other words, from industries from the past, to industries of the future.
obviously the older industries, with the money and power, are doing everything they can to stay on top, because they want to stay wealthy.
and then of course theres the eternal industries, like food or medicine, that seem controlled by avarice, the love of riches.
in order for change, this apparently overriding drive to stay wealthy in the wealthy has to be alleviated. its like some odd addiction. it needs to stop being addictive. it is a human made part of the world, therefore it should bend to our will, we should not bend to the will of money.
therefore, the question i'm asking, why is money, why is wealth, so desirable? what makes it 'addictive'? i can only think of four, but i'm sure there must be more. i will say them in the next post to do with this.

there is alot more to this thought process than just this, this is only step one. i'm kind of surprised  i need so many words to even barely explain a small amount of it. i'll do another post about this. maybe another 8 or 9. not back to back, this must be very boring. i'll do some more 'wikirandoms' (shut up, i'm trying to think of a proper name for it!) between them.

we're still here. random wikifacts, anyone?

so, the rapture thingy didn't happen (as far as we know), and the ball of life keeps rolling around the world. hmm, bad metaphor.
while i'm not surprised that the rapture didn't happen, and so i don't really feel anything about its lack of happening, i am happy that the family radio people didn't end up doing a big mass suicide - jonestown type thing. yet at least. apparently they had no 'plan B,' and a lot of people (counselors) want to make sure they can cope in a non-post rapture world.

because life goes on as usual, here are some more random things about the world, which still exists, from wikipedia, which also still exists.

the flat earth society is an organisation that seeks to further the belief that, as the name suggests, the earth is flat. sort of a hockey puck, surrounded by ice. for further proof on how serious they actually are, their current president is daniel shenton. they had a magazine, my two favourite article names are:

"Science Insults Your Intelligence" (Sep. 1980)

"World IS Flat, and That's That" (Sep. 1980)

also, juttejitsu is a martial art specialising in what is essentially a policemans hitting stick. i think they're batons. it would make sense for police to have compulsory training in it. someone with skills can disarm a person without harming them at all.

look up 'the neverything', a series of short films released on the internet. it sounds, um, fascinating. ish. if you don't find anything by typing in 'the neverything,' type in 'lovely by surprise.'

colin A. ross is a canadian psychiatrist who claims he can shoot beams of energy out of his eyes, that can cause a speaker to emit a tone. he wrote many scientific journals supporting this claim, some of which actually got published. despite admitting he had rigged the speaker to a biofeedback machine which responded to eyeblinks, he still insists his eyes have paranormal power.

may you, dear reader, enjoy the time you have in this world, because, as we all know, you never know when you may have to leave. and, um, you know, all that jazz.

so, 21st of may.... allegedly the rapture. so... what do we do?

i think the title pretty much speaks for itself. so, some guy from american radio reckons today is judgement day, the rapture, apocalypse now, whatever it is. if you believe it, as the people who gave their entire life savings to the guy who said it do, what are you actually going to do?

in my opinion, you can't just have a big party, try to cram as much stuff as you can into the time you think you have left on this world, because you're rushing it. you can't enjoy your favourite beer when you're thinking about the end of the world, and all the stuff you want to do before it ends. it'll just be a hollow, irrelevant experience. and then of course, if you meet god, and you're chugging down a beer, with, like, seven cigarettes in your mouth, how are you going to defend that? short answer: don't try to defend yourself against god. i can't see it ending well.

and praying seems a bit redundant now, seeing as you think you're about to meet the being your prayers go to. why call someone on the telephone when you're about to meet them face to face? unless, you wanted them to bring ice cream or, forgive you all your sins. but, asking god to forgive you your sins this close to judgement day also seems a bit hollow.

the only good way i can think of spending the time before rapture is enjoying nature, the grand artistic masterpiece of god. taking a walk in a park, a botanical garden, going for a bushwalk, etc. the zoo is a possibility, but, you have to really think about zoos. animals, kept in little reserves, for the primary reason so that people can look at them? i mean zoos do a lot of good for the animals, but its still a grey area morally, especially before the rapture.
dear god, i'm sounding too much like a greeens party advocate. please forgive me.
anyway, you'd just stay calm, don't rush, you'd think you kinda literally have all the time in the world, and enjoy the marvels of gods creation, while it is still there.

if you aren't sure what in the hell this post was talking about, here is an article that tells you why some people honestly believe the rapture, or something, is on today.






its ridiculous, i know. i mean, everybody knows the biblical flood refers to the flooding of the black sea, after the last ice age ended, in 13,000 BC!
hey that rhymed! say it out loud. it sounds kinda trippy. or maybe thats just me.

interesting stuff about antichrist and a creepy nursery rhyme

i found this article on cracked.com, about five things that have been misconstrued in modern culture about the bible. i knew most of them, i mean, minimum research in anything about history or religion will tell you this stuff. what i didn't know was that the 'antichrist' is just a word for someone who doesn't believe in christ.
i'm gonna go ahead and say this doesn't mean if you're a buddhist or a muslim, you're an antichrist. because buddhism and islam are just another religion, and all religions are the path to god, you're only an antichrist if you're an atheist.
and i think that should suit atheists just fine.
i guess the thing that we all think of when we think of the antichrist is actually the false prophet. he is a person meant to 'look like a lamb and talk like a dragon.' i gotta admit, the idea of a person like that scared the hell out of me.
yes, the sight of a person who literally looks like a lamb, and talks like a dragon, would make me require probably frequent sessions with a counselor, and some sort of antipsychotic.

but of course, it means someone who looks innocent and pure and all that, who can talk as though they had a fire in their belly, with passion, fury and inscrutable logic. you know, you can't, um, scrute it. unscrutable!
but, i find the idea of such a person, ominously named the false prophet, a little scary. i mean, how the hell do you fight that?
maybe this is what people think of when they make those horror movies, where some evil creature has possessed an 8 year old girl who goes around killing and insulting everyone she meets, telling them about eldritch horrors, and nobody tries to stop her, because shes an 8 year old girl, why would she hurt anybody? and when they find out shes fully evil, BAM! dead.


onto other things..... here is nursery rhyme i heard some chick at uni say. its really, really creepy. you can find a wikipedia article on it:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,

Had a wife but couldn't keep her;

He put her in a pumpkin shell

And there he kept her very well.

if you don't understand why its creepy, just think about it...

why would peter, the pumpkin eater, put a wife he can't keep in a pumpkin shell?





because hes a pumpkin eater, of course.

dichloroacetic acid

i said in my last post that this post would be about dichloroacetic acid, and the claims that it can be used to cure cancer. all the information i put here comes from wikipedia, but i'll put some more sources down the bottom for to corroborate with.
UPDATE/EDIT THINGY 19 MAY 2011: this post is getting a lot of views, especially by people who seem to be looking for ways to make dichloroacetic acid. if you need to search on the internet how to make it, you most likely don't know how to administer it, you probably don't know how to be sure it actually is DCA, you'll most likely kill yourself or whoever it is you're trying to treat. therefore, my advice to you is: don't make it yourself, if you manage to buy it from somewhere, tell a doctor, get his opinion before you ingest it, probably in one of the many ways it will kill you. remember, the word 'acid' is in the name. don't be a freaking idiot.

before i totally bore you about the facts of dichloroacetic acid, here is a picture outlining the basics of how DCA kills cancer cells. i am going to explain this in greater detail, and show that this is actually real scientific fact, not some science fiction pseudoscience.

the first website i went to was, surprise, wikipedia. its just where everyone goes to get a general idea about any subject. and, unlike other online encyclopedias, the content is usually totally up to date. when michael jackson died, i'm sure there were millions of people trying to be 'the one' to list him on wikipedia as deceased.

but i'm getting off track. the wikipedia article has a lot of big sciencey words that might leave some people confused. all that you need to know about its structure is that it is basically acetic acid, but with 2 hydrogen atoms replaced with chlorine. because the actual liquid is highly corrosive, only the salts are used as medicine. they have been made as early as 1864.
known side effect include a change in the way you walk, damage to peripheral nerves, and neurotoxicity. all these effects are easily reversible.
it does not occur in nature, although it does occur in small quanitites in chlorinated water.

it is used widely to treat lactic acidosis, which is a low pH in body tissues and blood, which means they are acidic, which is also accompanied by a build up of lactic acid, which is the reason your muscles hurt when you do plenty of excercise. 'feel the burn' and all that.
it treats the condition by changing the energy processes from glycolysis to oxidation, cellular respiration, in the mitochondria.
and thats essentially how it destroys cancer cells. because, in cancer cells, the mitochondria are, or at least were thought to be, damaged and unable to work, therefore they use glycolysis to make biological energy. the mitochondria also regulate the apoptotic response, where the cell kills itself, which can be for a variety of different reasons. the shut down of mitochondria causes the cell to become immortal, and whatever shutdown the mitochondria makes the cell 'go rogue'. it quickly performs mitosis, no matter what the other cells around it are telling it to do, creating a cancer tumour.

because it uses glycolysis to get its energy, a buildup of lactic acid is produced, which burns through other cells and allows other tumours, splinter colonies, to grow in new parts of the body.
but the dichloroacetic acid turns the mitochondria back on again, and i guess they're like
'woah, what the hells going on, man?' and make the cancer cells kill themselves.

it sounds, and is, so simple. its beautiful, really, as to how simple it is.

of course, while it has been shown to be an effective agent against most cancers, it has been found that it actually increases the mitotic rate, and decreases the rate of apoptosis, of some forms of cancers. so in some cases it could cure, and in some cases it would make things much, much worse.

the cancer applications of dichloroacetic acid (lets just call it DCA from now on, yeah?) have been known since at least 2007.

and there have been a number of deaths by people who have somehow managed to get DCA, ingested it, and died, because of course they self medicated. all of the side affects of the drug are reversible, but that doesn't mean they're not dangerous.

huh, thats actually, pretty much everything you need to know about DCA, all from wikipedia. of course, its stupid to only use one source when researching this sort of thing, so here are some other websites that have, probably the same information on it.

the official DCA/cancer cure website. likely to have plenty of bias, but undoubtedly a good place for any answers you seek.

another, i think its a blog or something, where i first heard about this thing. its where i got the picture above.

and, probably the most important article that shows this whole thing is actually real, is an article from newscientist.

also, type dichloroacetic acid into google scholar, you should find lots of scientific articles about it. all information in them are real. they are peer reviewed. they are as accurate as anything written by a human being can be. and usually really boring and hard to read.

random wikipedia infobytes (4?) and maybe other stuff

wow, its been a while since i posted anything.  i've been doing assignments. usually they would not stop me doing this, but it was very difficult writing 7000 words on what happens to a plant when it catches fire.

i have also decided that a new post each day is not necessary; only a few people see each one, so leaving each post on top for 3-4 days gives it ample time to be seen. as usual, i am constantly thinking on ways to improve this blog, and can't help but share my ideas with whoever manages to read it. i like to think i am working with the viewers of this blog to make it as good as a blog written by me can be. if you have any suggestions or anything at all to say about the blog, put it in the comments.

ok, now for some random, hopefully interesting (and correct!) information about the world we live in, brought to you thanks to the good people at wikipedia. which means you, i guess. so give yourselves a pat on the back for being awesome, and... stuff!

the top listing album in the first week of 1966 was herp alberts tijuana brass "whipped cream and other delights."
i'm not sure i really want to know what the other things are, but maybe i'm looking at that with modernised eyes. i'm currently trying to get herp alperts tijuana brass' 'green peppers' to play in the background on this blog, but there doesn't seem to be an app for doing that.

an interesting thing about the KGB, the soviet secret service: they had an 'active reserve,' which means people who work undercover, doing certain jobs, like a scientist, or a journalist, a doorman in a hotel, translators, telephone engineers, and janitors and stuff. they are all undercover KGB agents in their own country, who have to write a report on everything they've seen and heard of any importance each month.
they were refered to as 'the eyes of the master.'
the article also states that the numbers of these agents increased after the fall of communism.

i got 'agriculture' by clicking random page. if you have some experience clicking random page, you'll know how amazing it is to get such a broad topic. i just felt i had to share.

a 'prestopped nasal consonant' is a sound, used actively today in some languages, produced by the nose.
I kid thee not.
 behaving linguistically like a single consonant, it seems very similar to a snort. i'm guessing this is what a 'snort of derision' is reffered to in the phonetic world.

my next post, hopefully in about 3 days, will be about dichloroacetic acid. it has been claimed by canadian scientsits to be a cure for cancer, and pharmaceutical companies are accused of not wanting to fund this cure because it cannot be patented.
being a denizen of this world, i wouldn't be surprised if a genuine cure for cancer was lost to the murky shadows of indifference because people weren't able to profit from it, but i think its best to do more research, and while i'm at it, i'll post it on here for anyone that wants to see. i do the research, so you don't have to, but you probably already did, if you're actually interested in it.

i'd like to say about it now, however, before i do proper research, that from the knowledge i have attained from uni about cell biology, and i did a course solely on that, the science behind it seems genuine. ingenious, even.

random wiki pages, 7 may edition

by pressing 'random page' on wikipedia, you can find some real interesting stuff. of course, it is worth noting that once you see something, you can't unsee it. i just saw the album cover of marilyn mansons 'mechanical animals' album, and never has that bit of wisdom rung more true.

i also read about a tea room franchise, called the dobra cojovna, which began in the czech republic, in the communist era. it was illegal there during the communist era to import tea (for some unfathomable, ungodly reason), and a small group would gather together to sample and enjoy different teas, from all over the world. after the velvet revolution, they opened this tea shop, which soon turned to a franchise, spanning across europe, and the united states.  apparently they have a very diverse range of teas, even for a tea room, and the staff are specially trained in the art of brewing and perfecting tea.
this just shows, if people have a true passion for something, nothing can keep them from that.

apparently theres a town called fairy, in texas. i'm serious. don't believe me? look it up.

in breton mythology, a creature known as the bugul noz (night shepherd) lives in the woodlands of brittany, a french province. he is the last of his kind, and is extremely ugly. he calls out to people to stay away, because he does not want to scare them. all creatures avoid, due to his ugliness. he is said to be kind and gentle.
ah, the french. they have their priorities in order, at least. now whether or not thats the right order....

did you look up the fairy town in texas? i know right, unbelievable!


and over the easter weekend, in steylerville, johannesburg, a shapeshifting creature has been seen, for the second time.

two men were walking out of a tavern, when they saw a man. they went over to talk to the man, as they got closer, they realised the man had no head. at that point, the headless man turned into an angry dog, roughly the size of a cow, and chased them. the monster soon turned its sights on another group of people on the road. that group stated that the creature turned into a giant monkey, and quickly dissappeared.

the creature had been sighted by many people in the town for a month before this sighting, most notably peering in the windows of the church during a service, and by mourners attending two seperate funerals.

a news article about it is here.

most of the comments below say that the people there are all drunk or on drugs, but from the sounds of it, there does seem to be something going on in that town, that i don't think drugs could be behind, except perhaps ergot, that occurs in bad bread, but usually causes hallucinations of being attacked by a giant hairy homonid. ergot has been the cause of people thinking they are werewolves, and people thinking they have been attacked by werewolves.

more info about ergot. i didn't read much of it, if it doesn't make sense, tell me, i'll try to find something simpler.

yes, that is a picture of barack obama, and i'm assuming kate, on a unicorn.  it was made by jubilations on deviant art. after the matters of business in the last few days i think there needs to be more pictures of obama doing peaceful things. admittedly this is about 5 steps too far in that direction, but what are you going to do? 

speaking of the death of osama bin laden, here is a video of people celebrating that in america. i'm not comment on it, i just think its worth sharing.

oh yeah, and i was going to do a story, from norse mythology. the story of otr, the way i remember it at least, is my favorite. it occurs just after thor and odin meet loki, and declare him part of the aesir.

odin, thor, and loki were walking home from some, you know, amazing adventures, somewhere, and one night as they were getting ready to make camp, have a rest, thor got out his fishing rod and went fishing in a stream nearby.

soon he was getting a bite, and caught a reasonable sized fish for him and his companions to eat. as he was going back to odin and loki, an otter ran up and stole his fish, jumped into the stream and paddled to the other side of the river, and lay against a tree, eating the fish greedily.
needless to say, thor did not like this. he yelled, he screamed in rage, and threw his trusty hammer, mjolnir, at the otter, killing it outright.

using his god-aesir powers, he went across the stream, collected the otters body, went back to odin and loki and told them the story. loki skinned the otter, because otter pelts had magic powers, and i think they ate the meat.

a few days later, they came across a castle, and wanted to stay the night, replenish their supplies, drink some ale, all that stuff. they met the king, who told them over dinner about his eldest son, otr, who liked turning himself into an otter and eating freshly caught fish, who had dissappeared a few days ago.

at this point, i always imagine loki and odin looking at thor, who looks back at them, who looks back at the king, and says 'um...uh...what?'

because the king is not allowed to kill them, because they are his guests (i don't think that usually stopped them in those days) he demands the otter pelt be filled with yellow gold, and covered in red gold, whatever that is.

they do this, but one whisker still needs to be covered, so loki gives up his ring, andvarinaut, which creates gold for the wearer, but is also cursed, whomever owns it shall die horribly. the debt is paid, and the gods are allowed to leave.

oh, and i think loki hadn't had the ring long enough for the curse to work on him. just want to point that out. i think the king ended up eating his other son and killing himself, but that might be another story...