Purty

Definitely spring then ey? I took this shot while working on the thesis corrections yesterday. It's damn hard to get back into the swing of things after 2 months away from the thesis. I keep getting that twisted knot in my stomach each time I pull myself towards the draft. But with the two-week deadline approaching fast, I really have no choice. The coffee's flowing plentifully and ideas for procrastination are whizzing through the mind yet again after a whole two months of abscence. Funny that.

I've been getting stuck into Robert Winston's Human Instinct. As predictable as I thought it would be, it's been quite an eye-opener. It's strange to see how much of one's action are subconsciously driven by primeval instincts. And it's a bit of a toss-up as to whether or not this subconscious drive actually excuses some of my own worst habbits. It'd be comforting to think that they are not to be ascribed to my own failure, though I'm more inclined to think the opposite. Ahh well...

It reminds me of a rather appropriate quote I found on a mate's website yesterday: "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." - Dr. Johnson. I actually had to mill that one around in my head a few times.

Till I'm done with the book tho, I'm inclined to say that what draws me to others is their passion. And I supose passion comes from very primeval drives too. But there's no way around it... people who get stuck in, get wrapped up in the heat of the moment, "go off on one", or who simply cannot stop themselves from getting involved & being touched by things... their passion reels me in, line, hook and sinker. Self-control does only so much before it starts eating away at the essence of "you".

Do we know the Belge but at all??

Well boys & girls, the procrastination queen strikes again. This time, with a wee Quiz to entertain you all during your gruelling day of work. I've looked hard for a suitable format for Blogspot and here it is. It is ever so slightly inadequate in that it doesn't store your results onto my blog for all viewers to see, so I invite you all to first take the quiz, remember your score and then to take the poll right below it, which will keep track of how people scored. Don't worry, it's anonymous ;-) I expect the usual disputes over the answers I deem correct, so feel free to argue them in the comment section. (Some people seem to know me better than myself). Enjoy your five minutes of legitimate faffing!

1. How many tattoos have I got?

2
3
None, I'm Mormon


2. At a party, I am most likely to be...

snogging some stranger
getting rat-arsed on cheap alcohol
putting the world to rights with a random stranger


3. My family consists of...

1 scarily tall brother, 1 wee sister and 36 cousins
a chimp, a pig and a carrot
all of you. AAAAAAALLLL of you *emotional twitch*


4. When I was five years old I ....

wanted to be a farmer and marry the boy with the big dumbo ears
punched a kid with Down Syndrome i/t face & then spent the next 5 days crying out of sheer guilt
All of the above


5. I am most likely to lie about...

my sexual preference
things other people ask me to lie about
the fact that I ate your food


6. I like my women...

soft & squidgy
witty & confident
straight (hetero)


7. I like my men....

soft & squidgy
witty & confident
far away from my women


8. My eye colour is

Blue
Brown
Grey


9. How many countries have I travelled to?

None. The Flemish are quarantined and not allowed to travel
13
25


10. I have never...

been given a ride on a Chopper by a big hairy biker dude
been to space camp & shaken hands with an astronaut
been in a catfight with another lesbian


11. If I won the lottery I would...

buy me girls, yachts and lots of bling
spend the rest of my days managing trustfunds for worthy causes
become all of yous'es bosses and turn evil

So how did you do?
	0-2: I'm just a stray passer-by
	3-6: I know you better than I know my milkman!
	7-10: I'm your buddy!!
	11: I'm obsessed with the Belge!
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Growing Problem

I have a slight problem.

I've grown. A whole 2 centimeters. Which now makes me 1m65 instead of 1m63. Or 5ft5 instead of 5ft4.

I realise most of you would not consider this a problem. But the thing is, I HAVE actually passed puberty. A whole 8 years ago. So there's no reason I should grow any further. Not so suddenly at least. A friend of mine suggested I may be suffering from delayed onset of Gigantasism. Another's asked me whether I tend to sleep like a bat. All VERY helpful, guys, thanks.

If I grow another centimeter, I've decided, I will go see my doctor. I can just imagine THAT conversation. *sigh*. She already suspects I'm a pathologic hypochondriac as it is.

Until an official medical affliction has been established however, I would like to state that I now no longer qualify as a short-arse. 5ft5 is a VERY respectable height indeed, and I would therefore like to request that those of you who've nicknamed me "shortie", "short-arse","wee un", "wee belge", "ickle un", "saartje", "kleine", etc... would refrain from doing so till further notice. You all know who you are.

Opportunism: The farce of the Economic Hit Man gone straight

Opportunism : noun - self-interest, self-seeking, expedience taking advantage of opportunities without regard for the consequences for others.

"Disturbing Opportunism", is what I had originally titled this blogpost. With reference to human opportunism however, that is in essence a tautology. True, opportunism is a basic instinct. Most, if not all species alive to date, owe their very existence to their opportunistic drive. Futuyma states in his Evolutionary Biology that "descent with gradual modification (read: evolution according to the Darwinistic Theory) means that new organisms can only use and modify what they initially are given; they are slaves to their history".

While that may be true enough for organisms such as the lovely, yet highly opportunistic, Duckweed, a slightly different reasoning surely ought to be employed with respect to human beings. We needn't be slaves to our historic imprints. We are after all endowed with one of the most magnificent tools one could ever hope to possess: a brain capable of reaching levels beyond our most primeval of instincts. Which is why I find unabashed displays of human opportunism both unsettling & deplorable, to say the least. The seed for this mornings blog-rant is none other than the publication of :

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins.
Mr.Perkins spent years working as an Economic Hit Man (EHM) for the US government. An EHM is a highly paid professional, who helps countries like the US to cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.

The general idea is to offer large loans to countries in need, so they can re-build the necessary infrastructures in an attempt to recover from whatever economic, military, natural or humanitarian disaster it was struck with. This loan is conditional: all the restructuring projects need to be assigned to American companies. In essence, this means that the money for the loans provided by the US never actually leaves the US economy: it flows straight back into US companies. But the country that receives the loan is nonetheless ordered to repay it at a cut-throat rate. These loans are cleverly calculated beforehand, so as to ensure that the country will be unable to keep up with the repayments after a mere a few years. It is then that the US comes up with strict demands: in return for leniency, the US gains control of that country's voting behaviour in the UN, the US gets permission to build strategic military basis in that country and gains a certain level of control of valuable resources such as oil. Countries like Iran, Colombia, Ecuador, Afghanistan etc.. have previously all had to succumb to these tactics.

After years of being a well-paid rogue EHM, Mr.Perkins finally decided it was time for a bout of guilty concious and decided to write a book exposing the whole EHM business. While I would generally applaud any book aimed at exposing the greater evils of this modern age, I cannot help but feel utterly digusted. When asked for a justification of his own actions and his part in this fallacy, Mr.Perkins states: "I wasn't fully aware of what I was doing back then, I have finally woken up to the reality and it is time the world does too."

Mr.Perkins meanwhile, is being hailed as the new face of the "OtherGlobalist"-movement. Slightly ironic, to say the least, and it makes me wonder about the levels of intelligence of the people masterminding this very movement. Regardless of the validity of his message, it begs the question why Mr.Perkins, if he truly did experience a change of heart, does not simply distribute his writings freely on the web for everyone to see. If his aim is indeed to provide correct info to the people who are entitled to such knowledge, free distribution surely is the most appropriate method. It seems, however, he is adament on yet again lining his own pockets off the back of the atrocities he helped to effectuate in the first place.

On his official webpage, Mr.Perkins depicts himself as a changed man. A forerunner of the renewed fight for change. In his "What can YOU do?" section, he cleverly suggests: "Offer study groups about Confessions of an Economic Hit Man at your local bookstore or library, or both." Hm... I do wonder who this would benefit more? The global situation? Or Mr.Perkins's salesnumbers? Next up is "Let your local and national TV & Radio networks know that you are interested in seeing Mr.Perkins in their programs". Although one would do well to manipulate the power of media for the advantage of a worthy cause, in this instance, it all has a flair of self-professed heroism. A simple read through transcripts of previous interviews confirms this.

While the validity of his message remains untouchable, and despite my own interest in the matter, I will refuse to buy this book. It is easy to display a guilty concious after more than a decade of sheer corruption and immorality, when that display of concious comes sided by hero-status and tremendous financial benefits. Opportunism, Mr.Perkins, in its most pejorative sense, would appear to be the defining word of your existence thus far.

Back

Allright then. I'm back in flatland, back within wireless internet reach, and once I've settled back in, I shall update my blog. After a week in Snowy Scotland and Windy England, Flatland feels like Aruba. Bring on the bikinis!

Toy Cab

I had the most random taxi-ride last night. My mate Ryan rang us a cab home after a few drinks in Hanley. Hanley is pretty damn rough & random at the best of times, so I generally expect just about anything, whether it's being stabbed, flashed or harassed by a bunch of drunken chavs. But this I did not expect.

You know how little kids make vroom vroom noises when playing with toy cars? They mimick the acceleration, squeak when they break etc...? Our cab driver kept doing those noises as he was driving. Ryan suggested maybe he was breathing funny, but I'm having none of that. The frequency of his "breathing" went up quite markedly each time he accelerated and then down once the acceleration had kicked in. There's some REALLY random people out there, I tell ya.

Chaos

Dear lord is that the time. It's like the last few weeks FLEW by, albeit in a rather chaotic fashion. I somehow find myself back in the UK. To summarize, my last two weeks were spent on:

- my new temp job, which is already doing my head in, but I supose that's why it's a temp job. No sane person would ever chose to do that fulltime. Regardless of how well it pays.

- a rather haphazard dating experience, which I'm still not sure I know how to comment on. But if you could see my facial expression you'd probably wet yourselves.

- two drunken nights out with friends, which I do know how to comment on, but shall refrain from doing so for the sake of keeping up the level of both my credibility and reputation as a sane, mature and well-balanced grown up. If there's no dodgy picture evidence, the incident never happened, is what I say ;-)

- rather intensive e-bay session to flog off all my earthly belongings. Well, the disposable share of it at least ;-)

And so now I'm back in the UK, to meet with my Prof and discuss the thesis. Part 1 of that meeting has just finished and it's manageable, thankfully. Fingers crossed for tomorrow. The brain's gone all mush now though, so I am about to retreat to my mate's place for a brew and a whiff of student living. I will be in the UK for another week. Bring on the cream eggs and roast dinners!