Ruh roh, politics.

I mentioned a while ago that I don't like talking about politics. That's kind of a lie. I like it, but I just tend to avoid it, because I'm not as well informed as I think I should be. I'm weird like that *shrugs*

Anyway, this is going to be one of those times were I discuss politics, since two things have been troubling me for the last couple of days. One of them is kinda serious, the other one not so much. And Pavlos, you're probably not going to like this post, if you ever read it, that is.

As far as the serious topic is concerned, you may have already heard who the "Person of the Year" was according to Time magazine. You. Yes, you. I'll refrain from making any other jokes about it, since it's been done to death already, and I can't beat Jon Stewart in his own game.

Instead, I found something a lot more interesting at the Broken Saints blog (scroll down a bit), which in turn was taken from this blog. Whaddaya know, it's quite possible that the man of the year was actually Venezuelan pres, Hugo Chavez. There's always the chance that 5 Venezuelans and/or Greeks visited the Time site and just pressed F5 on the poll page and we ended up with this result, but that's besides the point, and I'm guessing the people of Time know better than set up an official poll that allows you to vote more than once. Emphasis on the guessing part, however.

No, the point is that Hugo Chavez (not as good a guy as some people would have you think) has become so popular just because he dislikes Bush. Big whoop, everyone with a slightly lower than average IQ is not really fond of him either. And calling him the Devil, classy. Effectively, he's doing what Bush does when he refers to Bin Laden, and yet he criticizes him for his ways. Interesting. *strokes his beard*

Sure, Chavez has done a few good things, I'm not denying that. Even if he did give oil to poor people in NY just to spite the Bush administration, and/or to seem favorable to haters of said administration. And he also intervened when the Argentinian milk company Sancor (2nd biggest in the country) was about to sell the majority of its stocks to an American company the name of which eludes me at the moment. Sancor will have to export milk in powder form to Venezuela for the next 15 years, but hey, at least they'll still be in control of their company.

But to put it in a highly eloquent and articulated way, the dude ain't all that, really. I mean, he's the guy who said during one of he's speeches, "There's God, and after him there's only Chavez." (I may have slightly misquoted this, but that's the gist of what he said.)

Would you feel comfortable with having a guy like this as the leader of your country?

I've never been fond of the "lesser of two evils" concept. In some occasions, you have no real alternative, fair enough. But just because some dude gets on the Republican's nerves, that doesn't make him a hero. He can still be an ass. My enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend, he may still be my enemy as well.

Man, I wanted to say that for years.

On to the less serious thing. There's this little country to the north of Greece. The natives, and pretty much everyone else in the world, call it Macedonia. Greeks (and possibly Cypriots) call it Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM for short), so people don't confuse it with the ancient Macedonia, home of Alexander the Great, something I strangely agree with. We also just call it Scopja, which is the name of its capital, but that's plain wrong.

Now as I was walking through a local street here in Athens, I saw a map of Greece and its nearby countries in a place that was either a car rental company or a travel agency, I forgets. Everything inside that place, map included, was in English, so I'd say that their target group is tourists.

At any rate, on that map, to the north of Greece you could see the magical land of... PGDM. Be there dragons there? I can't really say. Still, I hear you ask "What's a PGDM?" Well, that's the abbreviation of the Greek translation of "FYROM". With Latin characters. So that neither tourists nor Greeks can understand what it means. If the guy who made that map ever reads this, I have this to say to you:

Good job dude, good job.