This has to be the coolest site ever! It is specially created for the cut hair of Britney Spears. You can now buy it for a measley 1,000,000.00$ (that's a million). I hope some charitable person buys the hair, divides it into one million tiny pieces and donates each one to a voodoo priest.

Update: their official site is not valid anymore and there hasn't been activity on their myspace page hasn't been changed from mid 2006.

A while ago I got this song from a friend of mine, it was called gruv.mp3. No id tag, nothing about the origin of the song. I thought it was nice, but it bothered me that I didn't know who the hell sang it and, of course, where I should get more. Finally, after searching for the lyrics on Google every one month or so, I finally found out who the band was.

They are called duteVino and they are from Romania, mind you. They are singing in English, though, and there is almost no accent whatsoever. The genre of their songs is something like Alternative/Funk/Jazz. Visit their myspace site to get a feel for their music.

How about some pop-rock music for a change? Of course I am depressed all the time if I only listen to sad music. Here is a nice, pop, rock, sexy, jiggly song from a Finnish band called LAB (their official site at labplanet.net is down, the band is disbanded): Beat the Boys



If you liked this, you might want to check two other LAB videos: Machine Girl and When Heaven Gets Dirty
Update:
I've gotten all their songs and they rock! This band is like a better Garbage! Original and strong. I just love their songs.

Update:
It's so difficult to find the band members without knowing more than Ana's first name and Pekka "Splendid" Laine having quite a common name. It doesn't help that they are Finnish, either. The story, as far as I can ascertain is that the members split up and went their separate way. Ana and Splendid worked on an album together that was supposedly finished in 2009, but was never released. Their new band is not called LAB anymore, but "Rain Hill", another commonly found name on the Internet, although not as bad as Lab, I guess. Their band page shows activity in early 2013 and even two songs that I cannot find anywhere for free, but their previews are pretty cool. It smells like another failed project. That is so bad.

Anyway, the links to the new band's Facebook page is this and the link to their official (and horrible) web site is this, where you can also listen to two 30 second previews.

Ok, a few days ago I wrote this post that basically said Inuyasha was a great anime and that the manga goes on further and the story is still going. Here I am telling the same thing about Berserk. The story is a cross between Flesh+Blood and Hellraiser. The anime ends suddenly at chapter 11, but the manga has reached chapter 32 and goes on. You can find the manga online here and here and here.

If you can read Japanese, here is the official site for Berserk.

Anyone who knows me knows what my stance is on this. School is something, religion is something else. There are a bunch of (traditional) ways to teach religiousness to a child, in the home as well as in church, special camps :), etc. I see no need for a religious education forcefully imposed on children inside the school, especially in a country that is not that religious. Where is the separation between state an church here?!

Yes, I know that the statistics say 85% of the population of Romania is orthodox, but that's only in name. True, active, church going religious people belong to distinct demographics like old people, some women, or people in the country side. This new surge of religion in Romania is nothing but a scam! Yes, nothing more than a marketing move.

And yet, here it is, a law that (again) makes religion one of the compulsory classes in Romanian schools. If you don't want religion, the parent must write a letter to the school requesting for it to be replaced with "moral-religious education", whatever that is.

So, what if I don't want any religion for my kid? I consider religion, especially organised religion, nothing more than a ploy to prey on human stupidity and fear. I want to raise my child away from superstitious crap. Let him watch Jesus on TV, the same as Ghost Busters!

Let me analyze what I should do in order to insure that my hypothetical offspring is not getting in school an education that contradicts that at home. First step: write the letter that places him in a special class of "moral-religious education". What that essentially does is place the child in a different group, a ready prey for ridicule or any kind of discrimination. Then he sees that in his group there are only the people that consider religion ridiculous, while in the other (larger group) there are the religious kids along with the ones that don't care about it one way or the other. So he will immediately feel the pressure of being in an apparent minority. This is a clear case of discrimination any way you put it, yet they intend to make this a law. What kind of crappy legislators do we have?! AND, after all this, I only managed to get my kid into a less religious class, probably with a priest or highly religious man as a teacher.

What would these religious people think if we were to add a compulsory "God does not exist and religion is stupid" class? They would shout much and high about discrimination and the right to choose and the local decision of allowing religious symbols or education in schools. Yet they have no problem with refusing the right to choose of atheists. Religious hypocrites? what a shock!

Here is a link to a discussion from 2004 about the legality and ethics of compulsory religious classes and their content.

Update 11 Oct 2009: A new anime started, continuing the InuYasha story, although some people seem to not agree with the interpretation of the manga. It is called Inuyasha Kanketsu-hen (or Inuyasha Final Act) and it starts where the first anime ended. Having just seen the first episode, I must say that I can barely understand what is going on anymore. There are so many characters and I don't really remember how they cam to be as they are now. So my recommendation is to read the chapters of the manga from about chapter 360. Here is another link where you can read InuYasha chapters online: Inuyasha on OneManga.

A while ago I've seen the Inuyasha anime series and fell in love with it. But at that time I didn't have a blog and I also thought that most Japanese anime is that good. As written in my review back then, I was soon crying for more episodes when it ended. I got a bit upset, too, because the series didn't end anywhere. It just stopped!
But, even if it is something obvious, I never thought about searching for the Inuyasha manga! Yes, the anime is based on a manga series that is, as I write this blog, ongoing and (almost) close to its finish. And you can read it! Free! online! :)

Ok, here is the link: Read on!

Heh, I knew this link for a while now, but I accidentally stumbled upon it. It is a male (and lesbian? :) ) only, female breasts oriented site . I've warned you!

Have fun!

The basic animation is taken from the jumping breasts JJ1 site - it seems the site is down.

Also, here are some happy breasts from some other site: Cheer up page

Today Orange Romania had organised a concert in their brand new "Concept Store". A Concept Store is exactly what it says it is, a place where they sell you an idea, the idea of buying and using Orange phones and subscriptions. Therefore everything that takes place in that store is directly linked to image and marketing.
Well. today they blew it, royal style. 15 minutes before the start of the concert (Coma was going to perform, they are this extremely cool Deftones meets Linkin Park via Tool band) they announced that the concert was not going to take place due to complaints from the neighbours. What actually happened is that some greedy idiots thought they could get some money from Orange because they lived right above the Orange Concept Store. Well it didn't work, but the funny thing is they announced the cancellation of the concert after keeping tens of fans out in the cold while watching them through the glass doors of the place. And these were only the ones that got there earlier. I got there about 30 minutes before the announced hour for the concert so I was amazed to see a couple of suits staring at us from the other side of the glass and doing absolutely nothing about it. Then the cancellation news came.
The band members were devastated, the fans disappointed, Orange made complete fools of themselves. But will this ever reach the news? NO! There is no rape or murder involved, no political scandal. Just a few ordinary teens were completely stepped upon in the name of Orange Corporation Choppers!

Caught in a desire to be more scientist-like I've borrowed the book "I Am a Mathematician" by Norbert Wiener from a friend of mine. While being a rather old book (written in 1956), it was exactly what I was looking for: a book that described in layman's terms what the life of a true scientist is like and how he thinks.

I think the book itself was rather boring, but the world described and the way this guy was thinking really opened my eyes to things I wish I understood in my early teens. He sees, for example, the way sciences come together in one big thing called science. Even if he was a mathematician, he worked in physics, psychology and electronics, because he saw the way they worked together, not as separate unconnected subjects. He was thorough, focused and science minded. He went to the beach and thought about equations to define the movements of waves as they break against the shore.

My conclusion is that it is a wonderful insight in the mind of a scientist. It is not a popular science book, it is an autobiography, so it might get a little boring, but it also puts everything into context.

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"Hey!", you will shout, "You are Romanian, what do you know about the American mind?". And you would be right. I don't know much about the American mind, but I do know what I see on the news and in the movies. And three movies I've recently seen opened my eyes even more.

First of all This Film Is Not Yet Rated talks about the MPAA and the way they enforce the ratings on movies. You might think that is not so important, but each rating brings with it a different possible audience size. There is a huge difference between the last two ratings R and NC-17 because an NC-17 movie doesn't get picked by distribution companies, nor does it reach into theaters.

What does that mean? It means people in the entire USA see nothing but what the MPAA deems "decent". Statistics show that in the last 50 years they mostly rate R violent movies, no matter how violent, while NC-17 are films which involve sex or even the manifestation of sexual pleasure. Do you think that has any connection with the fact the average American is a violent and militaristic puritan? Interesting enough, the MPAA "council" is completely secret. Movie directors get answers like "your film is NC-17 and we don't tell you who we are and why we rated it like this". Also, check out how the MPAA is financed by the biggest 7 film studios in Hollywood, which own 95% of all movie industry in the US and belong to conglomerates that own 90% of the entire US media!

Another interesting fact is that in that council there are two religious representatives, which brings me to the next two movies: Jesus Camp and The God Who Wasn't There.

Jesus Camp is a pretty famous documentary, because it was mostly comprised of filmed video footage and there were almost no comments in it, yet it spun a lot of controversy. Fundamentalists praised it and so did Anti-fundamentalists and atheists alike. It showed how children are entranced and then conditioned to believe in Creationism, to actively oppose abortion (when they are children), to support Bush and to think that they must act as soldiers that bring America back "under God". This camp teaches the Pentecostal religion, maybe only an extreme version of it, but what is majorly important in this religion is the Rapture. The Rapture is the second coming of Jesus, which will quickly take all true believers to Heaven, then end the world. Maybe even reformat the hard drive. 22% of Americans are Pentecostals who believe Jesus will come during their lifetime. Why wonder Americans don't really care what happens to the Earth? A major Pentecostal preacher is a weekly counselor for the White House and, interviewed in this movie, said that if Evangelicals vote, they determine the outcome of US elections. Pretty scary stuff. Even more scary is the fact that they are a big religion with between 40 and 80 million adepts and no one can do anything about this child brainwashing that they do in this camp (and a lot of others, I guess). David Byrne, from Talking Heads, said in his blog that he saw no difference between this camp and the extreme Muslim madrases training people to blow themselves up.

The God Who Wasn't There starts off like an atheist movie that proves most of Christianity is copied from other older religions, including details, and that average common sense makes believing in a religion like this kind of stupid. The special effects and direct attacks against religion made me think that this is an extreme in itself. Atheists turned anti-theists and throwing everything they have at poor people that believe stuff like that. This until the guy admitted he was a Christian Fundamentalist until the age of 15, when he actually decided everything he was taught under threat of eternal damnation was plain stupid.

OK. Back to the main point. Now I understand more about the American Mind. I understand how a nation that created the ideas of secular state, individual freedom and freedom of faith can also be hard ass conservatives, God fearing and warmongers in the same time. How most American morality is ridiculously naive when concerning sex while in the same time the US is producing the most adult content in the world. I realize why some of the Americans I talk to are really smart and funny people and others sound like rednecks from old Westerns, why US science is the most advanced in the world while in the same time regulated by people following 1st century morality.

Therefore I highly recommend seeing these films. Eye openers.

This is not one of John Saul's best books, but then again, when you say John Saul you say cliche book. All his books contain some sort of drama, usually concerning children, always in a backwater town or suburb, always playing the child in danger, family connection, deep instinctual fears, etc. But some of them are more interesting than others, me liking science related books more, even if I almost always relate to the mad scientists and their evil creations than to the pseudo-moral rednecks that fight against them. This one is plain boring.
The Perfect Nightmare is about a child abductor. He goes for young innocent girls, he takes them into a makeshift playhouse and "plays" with them. Being a mass production book, it presents some brutal violence, almost no sex at all, even if it hints towards it, and the first and largest part of the book is simply puffed with the actions and fears of the people left behind which are mostly average boring people. This makes the book average and boring. The murderer himself is not something truly original, neither is the way he is portrayed.
The ending of the book has a catch, but after reading 90% of it, it doesn't really has any effect. Bottom line: not even for John Saul fans.

I have found this very cool game while browsing the net. While I personally hated Sonic games, I found this one strangely interesting. The minimalist design probably did it for me. Anyway, check it for yourselves.

I know it's bad taste, but it was too good not to blog about it. I just had this vision of this school bully, pushing kids around, hitting and scaring them. One day, one of the kids fights back and kicks the bully in the nads. So he crumbles to the floor, but then tells everyone how that attack was unmanly and cowardly and then beats the crap out of the kid.

The same thing happened with the 9/11 thing. Two every important American items, symbolically destroyed to show the otherwise almighty US that they can be hit, even by the little people. It hurt like hell and it made everybody angry, but it also made the point.

The vision of the twin towers, as giant testicles (with small sperm inside?) felt hilarious to me...

Agent Smith from Matrix once said "I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it" and that made me like him instantly.

He described perfectly how I feel whenever I exit the subway or bus at Unirii and go towards the tramway 32 station. It's only 100 meters, maybe 150, but you have to fight your way through a river of people, a lot of them smoking, then wait for the green semaphore light a long time while smelling all kind of interesting flavours, then try to get in the tram without being rubbed away like a pencil trail by people who don't really care if they touch you or not.

If you are lucky enough and it's winter time, maybe before some holiday or another, you get to smell the homeless people who decide that either it's too cold outside and camp in the tram, either that you have to give them a holiday present and start begging and singing and other things which basically mean they also move or crawl, thus evenly smearing the air with their fetid stink.