Of clouds and silver linings.

For the past few days, I've been thinking of writing a long-winded rant about something I came across on the Internet...s. It's related to two things, World of Warcraft and complete, undeniable stupidity. Two things that are anything but mutually exclusive, at least as far as the people playing WoW are concerned. I should stop being so cryptic, this "something" is a thread from the official WoW forums, a place I've called Purgatory a lot of times in the past, and I stand by that description, the people posting there are often a perfect example of humanity at its worse.

But you know what? I decided I won't discuss it here, I won't even mention the subject of that thread. Why? It's really quite simple. There's so much stupidity in the world already, there's no reason to perpetuate it more. Like Neil Gaiman said in that awesome book of his called American Gods, we're better off not knowing the details some times. There was a thread in the official WoW forums, and the people in it were being stupid. That's all you want, no, that's all you need to know.

I'm serious, I refuse to talk about the thread, or even link to it. I try to keep this blog lighthearted, and the stupid things I mention here have to be of the funny-stupid variation, not the soul-destroying one. If you're a glutton for punishment and/or pain, go read God Mode or something equally as dumb. Or watch the trailer from Uwe Boll's latest "masterpiece", you will be spending your time in a much more productive way if you do that. The trailer is NSFA by the way, not suitable for anywhere.

And yes, that would be all. I find it self-defeating to spend your time on things that destroy your brain cells. I dunno about you, but I like mine. Hell I even keep them in shape with Brain Training! (tm)

Anyway, I'm ranting again so I'll head straight to my real point in this post; sometime even the most seemingly useless things end up giving us something useful. I'll continue this in a second post because this has gotten way too long for one post.

PS

I may have sneaked in a link to the, by now infamous, WoW thread to satisfy the curious ones out there, but consider yourselves warned and follow it at your own peril. I'm not responsible for any emotional (or even physical) scars you may get while reading it.

PPS

I really need to start making shorter posts, I keep losing my train of thought every so often, 'pologies for that. But whenever I'm blogging it's always a stream of consciousness thing, so it can't really be helped either. *shrugs*

Random stuff - The return!

You know what they say, sequels don't live up to the originals. But it had to be done, because some people would have you think I never update this blog. Which is an outright lie, I update bi-centennially!

Anyway, I found two things today that I thought I should share with the rest of the world.

The first one is Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator. What does it do? Well, it does exactly what its name (subtly) suggests; it creates automated complaint-letters. It's just awesome. An example:

I am not writing to agree or disagree with Rabbi Jeremiah QQ. Stoned V. What I have to say, however, regards Rabbi Stoned's conscious decision to control your bank account, your employment, your personal safety, and your mind. To begin at the beginning, Nature is a wonderful teacher. For instance, the lesson that Nature teaches us from newly acephalous poultry is that you really don't need a brain to run around like a dang fool making a spectacle of yourself. Nature also teaches us that I would like to comment on Rabbi Stoned's attempt to associate sensationalism with cannibalism. There is no association. My intention here is not just to place blame where it belongs -- in the hands of Rabbi Stoned and his noxious encomiasts -- but also to shine a light on Rabbi Stoned's efforts to bamboozle people into believing that the health effects of secondhand smoke are negligible. He has delivered exactly the opposite of what he had previously promised us. Most notably, Rabbi Stoned's vows of liberation turned out to be masks for oppression and domination. And, almost as troubling, his vows of equality did little more than convince people that his tracts defy common sense. Do I blame society for this? No, I blame Rabbi Stoned. He is not only immoral, but amoral. Implying that Rabbi Stoned acts in the name of equality and social justice is no different from implying that Rabbi Stoned can be trusted to judge the rest of the world from a unique perch of pure wisdom. Both statements are ludicrous. Okay, there's no reason for me to be officious, so I'll leave you with this concept: Rabbi Jeremiah QQ. Stoned V's cuckoo fantasy fits neatly into his heartless model of society.

You can choose how many paragraphs your letter should have, I chose one in mine to keep it short. The results are usually hilarious and I can think of a lot of situations where I could use this (mainly for trolling the official World of Warcraft forums, though). It's not without its faults, however. I've seen a few typos in every single example so far, and while I can overlook that, the main problem is that the end result always suffers from the "wall of text" um, effect. I guess that's kinda the whole point of this, but walls of text hurt my eyes.

Edit: Okay, this is just golden. While even I haven't read it all, I don't have to either. I just know that a thread like this would gather at least 10 pages of angry responses at the official WoW forums (A.K.A. Purgatory). Shame you need an active account to post there, I think it's time to make some phone calls...

The second thing for today is a short but very funny video. As promised, there's a streaming version up now, or if you wish, you can download it here. It's a NSFW vid though, so careful where you watch it. If you don't know what this is, it means that this video is perfectly fine to watch at work if your first name is Pavlos.

While I was sleeping...

It's sorta funny (and I am using the word "funny" in a very loose sense here), if people were to ask me what I've been doing for the past couple of days, my answer would be "Uh. Sleeping", and it's true.

I guess it's what I get for dealing with deadlines the way I do. Whatever the deadline is for (article, university paper, anything) I work on it for short periods of time, but leave most of the work for the last few days before the deadline expires, in which days I forgo everything, social interaction (what's that again?), watching movies or TV, or for that matter generally doing anything, even sleeping. It comes with being Greek, I presume. So the result is that after a deadline is over, I end up sleeping for a good two days.

Anyway, the catching-up with the world part that comes after that is usually no big deal, I mean it's just a couple of days for Christ's sake. But on rare occasions, you get some really weird shit, so weird that I have to question whether I've actually woken up, or if I'm still dreaming, in which case I start worrying about the condition of my unconscious.

I mean, a 29-year old child molester tricking two other child molesters into thinking he's a 12 year old boy and having sex with them? Who comes up with that stuff? Seriously, if this was the plot of a TV show, we'd dismiss it as nonsense. Sure, the guy in question shaved his body and used make-up in order to look younger but... An adult's body looks nothing like a child's. And that's all I'm gonna say on the subject because, quite frankly, it grosses me out. This whole story's still just absurd though. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but this is pushing it.

Then again you get stuff like Hilary announcing that she'll be running for Prez in 2008, which is something you knew it'd happen eventually, at which point I was sure I had woken up. I'll be rooting for Obama however, because a man with such a skin color, and a last name and middle name ("Hussein") that evokes such negative feelings to Americans, running for President? The dude must have balls of steel. Go Obama!

But then you have to hear some even weirder things again. Quick question, which do you think is the neighborhood with the highest crime rate in the world? You have five seconds... go!

WRONG. I don't care what you answered :P. If you haven't heard this story before, there's no chance you got it right, nuh uh, I ain't believin' ya. Because, you see, the neighborhood with the highest crime rate in the whole world (aren't italics just great?) is...

The Vatican.

I'm not joking. 341 civil and 486 criminal criminal cases in 2006, out of a population of 492! As the article states, that's 1.5 cases per person. Not a bad average, no? I find the whole thing just hilarious, I don't know.

Anyway, speaking of... numbers, let's check out a new all-time low percentage.

Hey, hey, GWB,
How much lower could your approval rating be?

That's right, 28%. Keep it up George, and you'll beat even Nixon! Honestly, I do wonder what it would take for this 28% of people to, you know, not approve of monsieur Bush? I mean, that is, assuming they are familiar with the meaning of the word approve and all that. Okay, now I'm just being a dick, so I'll stop.

So those are the most interesting things that happened while I was in hibernation for the past few days. Oh, and apparently some dude took a piss on his Xbox 360. I swear, stuff like this never happen when I'm conscious. (Edit: Hellfire and brimstone, the pics in the thread died :(. This is why imageshack sucks kids, never use it. No I didn't save the pics, why would I? Ew. The story is true though, I saw the pics. Kinda wish I hadn't. Oh and scroll down a bit in that thread to see the Van Damme .gif, it is made of pure win.)

New Veronica Mars episode coming up tonight! Hopefully it will be worth the wait. Heroes' return last night was good, but a bit too slow for my taste.

Oh and as of today you can leave unregistered comments, unlike before, because people were bitc... commenting about it. I doubt this blog will attract spammers anyway.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes... in the Constitution.

Over the past few months, people here have been getting worked up over the discussion of a possible amendment in Article 16 in the Greek constitution. In its current form, the article states the following:

"University level education is provided exclusively by institutions which are bodies corporate of public law and fully self-governed. The said institutions are under the supervision of the State and entitled to financial support."

So basically, non-state universities that do exist in Greece are practically not fully recognized as such here, especially by the Greek government. I don't want to get in to too many details on this, I'm quite frankly tired of the conversation, each side has some valid points, but in the end it doesn't really matter much. If the EU wants this, or any other law, changed, it will happen. I keep thinking the EU will turn all EVIL OVERLORD OF DOOM on us one day, but for now they still seem pretty benevolent.

Anyway, Article 16 isn't really my main interest in this post, so I'll just say this. I can't help but chuckle a bit whenever I hear all these people talk so passionately against this change, saying it's going to be bad for public education and will only benefit the financial elite, etc. Sure, it's a valid point of sorts, though whether or not our public education can be any worse is definitely up for debate.

Anyway, I keep getting carried away. My point was this: It's funny how people here act like Greece will be the first country in the universe to allow the existence of non-state universities. Really, people. Come on, keep up. It's been like this in other countries for years. And for those that just stumbled in this blog, I graduated from a non-state university. But, I've also spent a year in a state university, so make of that what you will.

Heh, turns out I couldn't help talking about Article 16 after all. I guess it can't be helped since it affects me on a personal level.

But as I said earlier, that wasn't the point of this post. No, my point is about a possible amendment in another article that isn't discussed in news reports by random people all day long, and one that is probably a lot more important, Article 24.

The main part of Article 24 states the following:

"The protection of the physical and cultural environment constitutes an obligation to the State. The State must take special preventive or repressive measures for the conservation thereof. A law shall regulate matters relating to the protection of forests and forest areas in general. Any change in the land uses of public forests or public forest areas shall be prohibited, unless the agricultural use thereof or any other use be beneficial to the national economy or dictated by the national interests."

The most interesting part is the last sentence, and especially the last words. Essentially, the Greek government can change the description of an area from "public forest/public forest area" to whatever else, so that it's no longer protected by law.

Now the current government was trying to make such a change in Article 24, a change that would mean that 40.000.000 square meters of forest area would no longer be protected by law, unless my math is off, which I doubt it is. This isn't just a small forest near a beach that a corrupt politician wants to change into a summer resort. This is a big fucking part of Greece, essential to the entire eco-fucking-system. 'Scuse my language, I get all emo'd up with subjects like this.

At any rate, this change is apparently so big, that even a change in Article 24 is not sufficient in order to remove the protection over the area in question. I don't want to get in to too many details, but these parts of the land are protected for a reason. Selling them off to the highest bidder would not only mean that the ecosystem would be destroyed, but it wouldn't even help the country's economy (if that can ever be seen as a valid reason to mess up the environment we live in) since the people who would buy the land would use it for their own profit*. So we're in a lose-lose situation here.

What I find most frustrating is this discussion wasn't mentioned in the media at all, until last week, and the Parliament was supposed to vote on this change this week. People have been recycling the same nonsense over Article 16 over and over for months, and we weren't even informed about Article 24. Of course, Article 24 and environmental issues generally aren't as catchy as young students getting their panties all in a bunch (oops, so much for playing nice in this post), but come on. We never even heard about a possible constitutional amendment a few days before it almost came to pass? That's retarded.

Luckily, in the end the Parliament voted against the amendment in Article 24, so it seems for now the forests are protected, and I can stop being so angry. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some trees to hug.

*Want To Sell: [Broken English]. Please Send Tell. Poor quality guaranteed!

This post is pretty messy and I'm using some strong words, sorry 'bout that. Next time I'm making a long post, I'll make sure to log off MSN first.

The Constitution quotes are taken from http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/gr00000_.html, I'll probably make proper MLA quotes tomorrow, or the day after, mainly for kicks.

Four "ch"'s in "Changes"? Huh.

Random stuff.

God, I love these highly descriptive titles.

This'll be a quick post, because I'm drowning in article deadlines and I'm feeling so goddamn tired lately. Tired enough so I can't do anything decently since I space out after a while, but not tired enough to sleep for a while. Grrr. Anyway, enough whining for one post.

Here's something I found in my mailbox and thought it was sorta interesting and somewhat funny. Edutaining, if you will. The Meatrix. Basically, it's a short documentary made in flash, but with animal characters reprising roles from, you guessed it, the Matrix.

It's almost worth it for the bull called "Moofius", but it does bring up some interesting points as well. It's mostly stuff you've heard before, about the horrible conditions in which the animals that end up in our dinner tables live, and how big corporations are destroying, well, everything and yadda yadda.

Still, it has animals with anthropomorphic characteristics as protagonists, so this makes it a modern fable, of sorts, right? A modern fable, with Moofius.

And then there's this huge list of jokes that the kind people of Games Radio have collected, and trust me when I say it's huge. Sadly, the jokes are all in Greek, so those of you not familiar with the language are kinda screwed. Sorry!

But if you can read Greek, check it out. Given that there's so many jokes in this file, there's bound to be at least a few you'll like. Do ignore the first one if you're not into surreal humor, though. Σοβαρολογώ! /Greek