"Als ob man einem toten Schaf die Augen eindrückt"?
 -- Kristian Köhntopp über das Schreibgefühl von Atari Tastaturen 

Therefore Tor appeals to me, a lot: no logs. decent crypto. grass-roots. hard to subvert completely. Good.

So in an attack of unwarranted altruism I'm doing my tiny bit to improve this bloody place. (mind you, with limited bandwidth and not as an exit router just yet, cause I want to monitor that experiment a bit longer before I extend the service)

What a lovely way to begin the week!

However, György Palfi is Not Dead - and I heartily endorse his film Hukkle to anybody who likes subtle films. It's really, really nice. His second film, Taxidermia, is pretty cool as well but quite a bit further into the odd realms of the universe.

Due to an incredibly gross and dirty bit of rule all properly dated mails get an extra 3.6 added to their score. *kablam*!

Botch/Fix: edit /usr/share/spamassassin/72_active.cf, and change the regexp for FH_DATE_PAST_20XX to something that doesn't fire in the near future (like 20[2-9][0-9]). Don't forget to sa-compile if you use compiled spamassassin rules.

Some other pics taken last Friday and Sunday:

I named them the Howler Monkey family: Mr. Monkey loses it, big time, every single bloody weekend without fail and shouts and screams at his family. It's always something simple that drives him into a door-slamming screaming rage, like the kids not filling the dish washer or leaving some of their toys on the lawn or the like.

Mr. Monkey is a great specimen. In his rage he completely loses command of all human language: his vocabulary gets reduced to precisely four items: "fuck", "shit", "mate" and a fourth word which rotates depending on what enraged him this time (toys, dishwasher, money, whatever). (You might say he's a prime Australian specimen; he never loses his focus on mateship.)

How he manages to make do with just those four during his five to ten minutes of outrage is beyond me, but he does. True to his name he's loud enough for everybody around to participate passively. Oh joy!

Mrs. Monkey isn't much better - but more petite, hence less volume.

And the little Monkeys (three of them) - well, let's say they follow their parental guidance well. The Big Monkey (fem about 11) is loud, brash and talks back to her parents - it's no surprise that she seems to be the trigger of these parental shitstorms quite often.

The Middle Monkey (fem about 5) is an absolutely horrible brat. A prickly, take-no-prisoners egotist, throws a screaming tantrum whenever the universe doesn't rotate around her (=very often).

The Little Monkey (male under 2) isn't totally spoilt - yet. But he is catching up, learning that throwing tantrums and screaming at the top of one's voice is an accepted means of social exchange (and I don't blame him; in that family it'd take a retarded saint to stay quiet).

It's said that parents get exactly the children they deserve, and the Howler Monkeys seem to reinforce that. (Which is quite unfortunate for these kids, as they can't pick their parents.)

De Brülloffn san ja so a nettes Ehepaar!

Nobody knows why, how and for whom it works, but for me it does.

Still thin (of course) but instead of hard-to-see fine hair there's more and properly sized stuff. Not bad, says my vanity.

But (just like in Asterix) there are downsides: never before have I had to shave my earlobes regularly, shaving just below/outside of the eyes is now an annoying necessity as well, and I really didn't need any hair on my back above the shoulder blades.

Of course begga^Wbaldies can't be choosers!

The comments on that post are also quite fun to read (ranging from 'politically correct', dimbulb outrage to realistic cynicism).

The interesting thing about the story: There never was any evidence of anything nasty beyond them having written down fantasies; there were no threats, nothing.

Orwell called that "thoughtcrime", and so would I. Yet another reason why I'm not about to visit the UK anytime soon.

"Lepa sela, lepo gore" feels like the Serbian version of Catch-22. Very nasty, humorous, unflinchingly direct and I liked it a lot (as far as one can 'like' war-themed films that weren't shot through a pink matte filter and with the regisseur on tranquilizers). It's been criticized as being overly pro-Serbian, but I think that as far as its story goes it shows all the combatants simply similarly mad (and what multi-ethnicity civil war isn't mad...).

Another film from that unhappy corner of the world just outside of home is "Grbavica" which I think is at least as good - but lots darker. It covers life in post-war Sarajevo. No gore - nevertheless not an easy film to watch but really, really worth it.

Less strong (and more mainstream), but still quite good was "Savior". The storyline is a bit odd, starts slightly superhero-esque but that doesn't last too long and fortunately the american financiers didn't insist on some kind of cotton candy happy end - which would have ruined the film.

Then of course there's "No Man's Land", which feels like Catch-22 played out in three rooms: a trench, a bunker and the outside. More nasty humour, not as bleak as the previous films. Personally I found it more long-winded than the previous but still very good. (But the Dutch movie about them sitting on their hands during one of the major massacres was better.)

"Welcome to Sarajevo" is great, but I think it could have been darker and then would have been even better. I don't think it showed the horrors of the siege clearly enough, or maybe not well enough for me: I prefer a film that's hard to watch but powerful over an "easy listening" happy film. For example, in my book "Lilya 4-ever" wins over "Come and See", which in turn wins over "Saints and Soldiers".

Finally, the recent film with the most impact for me was "Vengo". A very lean, clean, beautiful film about Andalusia. The story is very Spanish, a deadly feud among families and their men, and it's beautifully filmed. But the music is what makes it extra-special (it won a Cesar) and includes beauties like a mix of sufi and flamenco (complete with some whirling dervish dances). Of course everything ends pretty tragic, but that's certainly part of the magic. Very much recommended, if you are (like me) allergic to hollywood garbage.

Today is also the sixth anniversary of moving into this house. For lots of Australians six years in one place is three lives ago; many deal with houses like crab shells: too small, ugly, whatever? then let's molt^Wmove and forget the old carcass. The housing industry obliges by mainly offering shoddily built disposables. *sigh*.

ebay without JS works fine as i need none of the "advanced features" (read: time-wasting blinking gadgetry that make thing less usable).

"works", that is, with one major exception: sorting search results. Selecting sort criteria now officially requires that you allow all of ebay to run JS (and advanced search doesn't expose most of the more useful sort criteria, like "price + postage"). obviously i can't have that!

oddly enough it's "JS to the rescue!" (ebay javascript = evil bloat, greasemonkey javascript = pocket tool bliss)

my greasemonkey script here restores non-js search criteria: find the unrelated search option and popup trigger elements in the page and add the search option links as normal list back to the trigger. then make it look good: the final extra gimmick uses the fact that gecko-based browsers honor the CSS class ":hover" for anything, not just anchors, so my script then makes sure the sort option list only shows up when you hover over the current sort criterion.

share and enjoy!

*ahem*

and now for something...completely...different.

(ahoy, captain bligh! more moronic politics, *pleeeeease*!)

Austria, on the other hand, always manages to find new excuses for not even prosecuting the lying bastards.

So which place is more sophisticated, cultured, decent?

Suppose I'm sorta lucky, the wiring loom is ripped apart but not totally wrecked, and the motor bearings seem to have survived their chewing exercise without damage.

Here's the latest version: source code and updated manual.

It discusses the mess and mindset that contemporary MBAs represent. Food for thought (*bwuahaha* - thinking, what an outdated notion, we've got leadership instead!) for my employer's vPHBs, oh yes indeed.

So I've got the choice between convenient and wrong, or inconvenient and right (according to my personal universe of values).

Simply caving in and being suitably cowed to let Them do whatever They want would, of course, make my daughter and hence me happier - but only for about 2 seconds:

I am neither a criminal nor a shipping container!

and I refuse to be treated and tracked that way. Nobody and nothing has the right to do that to me, neither my 'own' country nor anybody else.

I cannot accept this kind of demands, and so I don't visit the US or the UK anymore (apart from lots of other Garden Spots I never wanted to see anyway).

So, will I personally make a difference? *bwuahaha* Not bloody likely.
Does that deter me? No.
Does my insigificance suggest conformance as an acceptable solution? Hell no!
Am I a fool? Likely, but no bunch of governmental thugs deserves my blind obedience and I'm very much in agreement with H.D. Thoreau in this matter.

But of course trying to be steadfast and true to my personal values feels to Conny not much different from me not wanting her or finding her unimportant. Neither of which is the case.

But what is more important, my universe of values or her happiness? Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

I choose my values. Sorry, Conny: you can be happy without me visiting you in your place, but I can't be content with serving as a silent, conformist gear wheel.

So far we've managed to soften the sting of this conviction of mine by my sponsoring her to visit me instead. So far this has worked out ok. But will she ever understand me making my stand in this?

Nevertheless I see less and less travel ahead of me, and/or extensive sanding paper sessions when I have to renew my current passport.

Governments and human nature suck. If only humanity was evolved enough for anarchy to work...

Horricle + Sun = the horror, the horror.