transformation

1. Yesterday police have turned decorative Christmas lights back on in major cities around the country under the slogan "drinking alters reality" or something like that, in an effort to reduce drunk driving.

2. Hypermiling (what?) can supposedly save gas and cash. Tune your car to use up less fuel, and drive less aggressively. Yeah, right. One problem is, in the U.S. at least, that a certain percentage of people feel that driving an efficient car is {lame, gay, laughable, whatever}. Who the hell cares about fuel. $3.61 per gallon? What the fuck is a gallon anyway? I drink water out of 2L bottles and don't know how much that is in gallons. I have no fucking feel for how much a gallon is, even though I know roughly how much a mile or an inch or a pound is. Anyway, Google knows, almost 3.8L. So what, $3.61 for that much petrol is expensive? Bullshit, here it's over one €vro per litre.

3. Fish eat, they digest, they crap, and other fish eat their crap and do the same. ("Dirty Jobs" on Discovery). Then the second group of fish are fished out after having fattened up, and sold as human food.

3. Hyperprogramming. Processors read programs and execute them over data, chomping it up according to the programs. They crap out new data and heat. Scientists are looking for new computing models and paradigms to help decrease energy consumption.

4. Pain. As years pass, pain settles down on the bottom of a lake, where it decays into mud. From that mud, beautiful water lilies grow and shine under a crescent moon.

news

I usually read Oddly Enough just for the sake of irrelevant stuff that happens around the world.
The first article I will point you towards is, of course, about death. It seems that some Canadians have the correct attitude towards death, their tombstones engraved with witty last words. This caused me a lot of trouble. Usually when I think of some stuff that's "so cool, man!" I can't wait to have it done. So now I can't wait to die and have "Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish." written to my tombstone. That's so fucking twisted. No! And usually when I can't wait for something, time starts going faster. No. I want to live! I've got stuff to do here, God damn it!

The second one is really nice. Pure urban poetry.

And finally, it's official: you don't have to live in France! :D
___
*) I don't like France. I don't like words having genders (especially when those genders are different from my own language -- like, is this a gay fork or what?). I don't like using the plural of "you" as a mark of respect, even though yes, I'm forced to do that here also. (What's with some people here addressing their parents with the polite plural form of "you"? Is that your idea of teaching kids about family ties, parents?) I travelled on both Boeings and Airbuses and only the latter gave me an allergy from whatever they were freshening the air with. I don't like the French calling computers "ordinateurs" when "computer" is a word of Latin origin. I don't like the French Wikipedia page saying that ordinators interface the environment through peripherals such as keyboards, screens and modems. That sounds straight out of an eighties textbook. I agree it's true, but sincerely, a network card or mouse would be more widespread than a modem as of 2007. I don't like the same page describing a computer's insides in a style reminiscent of a seventies textbook. For instance, a modern bus isn't made up of address, data and control lines anymore. Hasn't been this way for at least 15 years. Oops. Let me check the real page to see if that's also written there. Nope :) And it's also more fun and informative. People don't read Wikipedia to learn that computers have a CPU and a modem. They read Wikipedia to learn about interesting aspects in the history of computing, about various contemporary achievements, to see a picture of a computer inside a watch, to see a punched card or an ISA slot and understand that's history, stuff like that. I don't like the French Wikipedia, just as I dislike all its other local variants. I don't like the French being so fanatical about their language, though the dot-berliners get first place for this. For example, the article mentioned above is about ordinateurs, but they contain cache memory, not cachée as would be appropriate French. Screw this. I also think the French Revolution is a bit overrated. I like France for using nuclear power and for having nukes and the balls needed to keep them, I don't like France for anything else. And all the new Peugeots or however they're spelled seem to be laughing at you with a dumb grin. In fact, some other new cars seem to be doing that as well. So to be fair, I should point out that bad taste is in the eye of the beer holder, and irrespective of nationality.

beauty 2

We arrived from the bar this morning just as daylight was starting to emerge.
While she was ice-cubing, I opened the window to gaze at the deep blue sky.
I saw two bats flying around. I think he was courting her :) Wonderful.

sleeplessness

i sail on unknown waters running away from the dawn
i fear the sun and its deadly rays
the cold wind takes me away into the deepest night
and there is nothing in sight.
i've been sailing for centuries, all alone,
just me and the stars
and the thick black clouds that come and go
same wind, same sea, same stars, same moon
same quiet waves, same emptiness
same search for something i know nothing of
same expectation of change
i am trapped in a dark eternal one-sided shell.

dawn

i can think of few things as glorious as the dawn. i mostly hate the sun because it's been so fucking hot around here lately, but i know that's stupid. the dawn is wonderful. it is fine to watch after a night out, after a night in, or just after waking up. it's fine to watch with someone and it's fine to watch alone. it's nice to see everything around you just wake up and come to life. it's horrible when it all gets so hot; it's depressing during winter when everything is gray and dead, and that's a wonderful feeling; whether it signals a new vibrant day or a dark gloomy one it's still glorious.
i am watching the light outside grow brighter and brighter and i am eating some yogurt that's best before my birthday.

booze

King_Alcohol_and_his_Prime_Minister :

Strong Beer,
WINES,
RUM, GIN,
BRANDIES,
WHISKIES,
COMPOUNDED
LIQUORS.

a wide disaster

A few evenings ago I was leaving the university building after a long, hard day, with the clear intention of heading home, eating an extra-large pizza and a can of tuna, complete with artificial lemon juice and some stuff labeled "pizza seasoning" which I use because I can no longer find my favorite "Indian seasoning" in the stores.
As I was stepping down the stairs, the mild, cool spring air hit me in the face like a thunderstorm. I was deafened by the gentle sparrows' chirps. The brilliant, yellow-red sunset somehow looked dimmer than usual. It was dark gray transparent clouds disguised as a bright sunset. The sky was all black. And the moon was eclipsed. It had a dark red glow, the exact color of coagulated blood.
I started walking towards the subway station which is half a km away. The damn Polytechnic, besides being the coolest university in Bucharest, and having the greatest campus, is situated exactly between 3 subway stations and either way you cut it, there is no optimal way of reaching it without using either 2 subway trains and one trolleybus or 1 subway train, 1 tramway AND 1 trolley. Despite its apparent length, this last option actually seems optimal, minus the fact that it costs about 5 beers a month more. This without taking into account the new RFID chips they put into surface transport cards that track your every movement. The cameras in the subway seem more friendly.
So I started walking towards the subway, and I was struck with fear! I looked around me, there was absolute quiet, except for the thunder enveloping me. I looked up, the skies were clear, except the black clouds I was talking about. And the birds were singing. Grindcore. Then I knew something was going to be very wrong.
I cautiously descended inside the station, knowing it was the safest place to be in case of an earthquake, airstrike, whatever. But then it occurred to me, it was the least safe place in case of a terrorist attack. This did not happen until I saw a box of flowers. What was a box of flowers doing in a subway train?? Well, this is a good opportunity to review Valentine's Pay.
Here in Romania, before Valentine's Pay got imported from America, we used to have an ancient tradition called Dragobheteh or something like that, don't know exactly how to spell it for you. Only problem was, nobody knew or cared about it. So when Communism fell and its great achievement, the Bucharestian Subway remained, they imported Valentine's Pay from America to try and westernize us. But then traditionalists got pissed off and a few years ago they started shouting, like, hey dudes, you know, we got our OWN Valentine's Pay on Feb. 24th, and it's traditional, which by supreme divine logic also means it is absolutely respectable and intangible. But hey, I just touched it! It's like, when a movie comes out in America, we have to wait a few weeks for it to hit the cinemas here. So we download crappy copies of it, filmed with a hand camera in some American cinema. So here in Romania, it's like having to see Valentine's Pay -- Ultra Exciting but Crappy Preview on Feb. 14th, and then going to the cinema to see Valentine's Pay -- Full Experience Widescreen Surround Sound on Feb. 24th. (I hate the whole widescreen idea. If I ever make a movie, it will be a rational multiple of VGA resolution. Period.) But wait! There's more! :) Here we also have a so called Martzishor on March 1st, which is also highly traditional but, unlike Valentine's Pay Official Premiere, it's a popular celebration and has been so since immemorial times. So what are we supposed to do on Valentine's Pay Reloaded? Give a crappy object called a Martzishor, which is some kind of traditional piece of artistic handy crap, to each female school colleague or co-worker. And when you thought it was finally over, there comes Valentine's Pay Revolutions on March 8th. Which is Woman's Day. Now this is somehow more acceptable than the other 3 days and has a somewhat higher philosophy, it's the day you give your mom a nice gift, but apart from this this, you should probably also spend as much cash as one week ago on flowers for all your colleagues. Which I gracefully avoided this year on both dates by skipping school. So let's summarize: (ignoring the weak autoformatting that I don't care to fix right now)

Feb 14	Valentine's Pay Imported
Feb 24	Valentine's Pay Local Opening
Mar 01	Valentine's Pay Reloaded
Mar 08	Valentine's Pay Revolutions

There you have it. FOUR days demanding heavy spending in less than a month. This is not about love, respect, or other superior concepts, it's about cash and social pressure.
My last girlfriend, I bought her a spiked collar for Valentine's Pay, and she liked it. That was cool. My current girlfriend, I now buy her beer. That rules. Everything is as it should be :D

So. I was holding tight to the safety rail as the train was galloping through the tunnel, and then I notice that crate full of flowers with no apparent owner around. As the train was entering a station, I was nervously looking around trying to identify who owned that crate. I visualized myself asking everyone around me "excuse me, is this your crate?" "sorry, do you know whose crate is that?" and then shouting "WHO OWNS THIS CRATE full of flowers?!", pushing the big red alarm button and dashing towards the front of the train, seeking cover behind a panel. But the doors opened, two guys got up some 6 meters away, took the crate and left. Yeah, they were selling flowers for Valentine's Pay. Probably on the black market too.

I got home and everyone was all right. Some news about a quake somewhere far away, but not the 200kilodeaths that would have qualified it as top disaster of the decade. I was going to say "century", but then I remembered people die in mass quite frequently on this planet. So there, no premonition, just sleep deprivation and a coffee overdose. God damn it, it's 4 am again.