message of the day (Dwr Budr Two)

last year it was Greece, this time it's Turkey. and i still want to say a big, incredibly meant 'Fuck You' to everyone throwing litter in our seas and oceans, from the smallest bit of paper to the largest amount of toxic waste. you're all responsible. Fuck You.

the stars like dust

the stars hang over our bare earth at night. we only see them from this perspective, and they are 'out there', while we are 'here'. it's all perception; nothing less, nothing more. they are small, like simple white, silvery dots on an endless, black sheet of paper. but in truth, they are not. the very ground we are standing on should be ashamed to be so small in comparison.

but we are really destroying that earth, that little lost globe for which there may not be any hope. and then it hit me: perhaps this doesn't even matter. yes, all life, or the quality of that life, may be lost. but then again, it's only this very small blueish ball in a corner of the universe, and if we cover it with ashes and bombs and pollution, then so be it. there still are so many other stars out there, and none of them will tremble only slightly when the last living thing on earth closes its eyes.

maybe none of this matters. maybe we can continue driving in our cars alone, waiting in line, in front of and behind other cars, all exhaling the dust which will bury itself in our fragile lungs - the trees of our bodies. maybe it's not for the worse (nor for the best) that we throw our garbage into our seas and oceans, for they are lost and gone already. maybe we can continue doing all those things which strike people who are not afraid to realize. maybe nothing of all of this matters, and i am a fool to try to hold on. or, to echo Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: what good is a brick to a drowning man?

maybe we can pile dust on dust, destroy and create, live in the dark, not caring about being blind.

maybe i can go on writing these pathetic little texts while knowing that i sound like a troubled adolescent, and know that they do fuck all, really.

maybe it's time we crush all trees to have more space.

maybe it's time to stop thinking.

maybe we can just leave things at that and go on living like lemmings close to the shore.

maybe i should close my eyes now.

maybe.





i hope not.

dwr budr

just been ten days to Greece. a great trip, but i just wanted to say a big fuck you to everyone who throws filth in our seas and oceans. and i'm not just talking about dumping tons of oil or polluting things on a general scale -- if you've thrown a small sheet of paper in the water you're just as guilty for messing up our beautiful seas. every bit counts. i threw some things i found in the water in the garbage can myself, but it just felt so... useless. so: fuck you. and i do mean that.

bush turned buddhist

George W. Bush vetoed a measure on stem cell research. now, i do not wish to take any position in favour of or against stem cell research, but what i would like to focus on for a second is the rhetoric Mr Bush used. he said that "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical," and that the US is "a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred." (i quote from today's The New York Times)

well...

destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is exactly what waging wars means (unless of course you're doing it not to save human lives but rather for some other, more obscure reason). and is there any Iraqi citizen out there who can still believe that the US is indeed a nation regarding all human life as sacred?

i guess all human lives are equal, but some human lives are more equal than others.

happiest hunting: update 2

from today's The New York Times, a phrase that struck me:

"The victims at Virginia Tech represent a mere tenth of 1 percent of the 30,000 gunshot deaths each year."

the quote should say enough.

happier hunting: update

just heard on the news that, in the Virginia Tech killing, not 22 (as i read in the New York Times yesterday) but 32 people were killed. and i think to myself, what a wonderful world.

happy hunting?

twenty-two people were killed in Virginia Tech, a US university. when? today. why? god knows. how? by picking up a gun, pointing it at people and pulling the trigger.

it's point, click and kill out there.

on my best days i believe in Rousseau and feel mankind's innocence radiating from our pores. sadly, more often than not we humans like to prove that Hobbes, not Rousseau had it right. homo homine lupus. this is not to say that we do not have the ability to be pretty on the inside, because i think we are. we are just so goddamn good at hiding it.

we probably can't change human nature, even though i force myself daily to believe we can - if only to continue my seemingly natural inclinations towards full responsability of every of my actions, and my abilities to do well. Amélie Poulain should not be too far away in our everyday lives.

but this post is not about changing human nature, it's about reducing the possibilities human nature has to continue the horrors it likes to impose on the world by taking away the tools to do so. indeed, i am talking about guns.

"guns don't kill people, people do." true. but people can kill more easily when they have access to guns. take someone who's absolutely pissed off at the world. put him in an empty room, alone, and he'll be mad, mad, mad, but do not much more. now put him in that same room, add some bystanders and give him a loaded gun in his hand. see what i'm driving at? see what he'll be driving at?

"it is our right to carry guns, as based on the Second Amendment!" well, maybe it's in the Constitution. good for you. but if, year after year, the abuse of guns is shown and starts taking on desastrous proportions (take, for example, the city of Philadelphia - and i'm not talking about a nice Springsteen song, i'm talking about shootings on a regular basis), then maybe, just maybe, the Constitution might be wrong.

now don't shoot me for saying that, all i mean is, why hold on to your 'rights' if so many people abuse this 'right for freedom' and turn it into a 'right to kill'? is it ever, ever right to kill? and if so (i'm not saying yes or no because the question might be too big to handle right now), is it then ever right to kill just for the sake of killing? to kill blindly? to take away sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, lovers, grandchildren, grandparents, friends, just because you feel like it - or rather, just because you can? because the only thing you have to do is pick up a gun?

one madman can do only so much damage with his fists. that same madman can kill 22 people with a single gun. and some people live in a society with madmen, mad either in their ability to kill or their approval of those tools that help kill. grand theft auto, a game based on violence but nothing more than a game (reality, trust me, is much worse), put it correctly: the "ammu-nation" indeed is here.

a conventient truce

saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. i knew much of it already, and i disliked the parts of the film that were more or less Gore-propaganda, but still... made me think again.

perhaps we're not all God's little creatures, perhaps we are. does not depend on whether there's a god or not, but on what the belief of certain people is. but toss and turn any way you like, be there millions of gods or none, we're all in this mess together.

i remember some of the final images of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and dream of a world in unison.

why are we still busy doing the very things that destroy us (either actively or passively, i.e. by doing nothing at all)? even if our opinions differ so much, then can we not, just for a relatively short period, stop discussing and focus on the tiny blue speck we are living on, and which is dying?

how can you not love planet earth? in this huge universe (or multiverse, believe what you will), there is not one place which is home to everyone we know and see but earth. sure, my house is not yours, but everything is relative. everyone else in my house can call this house "my house" as well. everyone in my street can call this street "my street". we're all on this planet. it's our planet.

i once wrote that it's all so deceptively simple, and i think this is once again the case.

i don't know who i address now (anyone and no one in particular), but please, ignore my often melodramatic or cheesy phrases in this post, and let's just begin right here, right now. you and me. the others will follow.

christian poltergaysts shouting misguided battlecries

okay, i was just reading a New York Times article about concerns regarding a group of Christian youths called BattleCry, who are suspected of representing strong anti-gay policies. i wont go into the details, but one thing struck me, and that was that one of its founders, a man called Ron Luce, said that he had seen surveys from which can be inferred that in general, gay people are much more unhappy. therefore it is probably a sin and out of pure love (shame i cant do my "oh the irony"-voice in these written words) they want to show gay people that there are other ways possible, that they are mislead, that they can be conducted towards happiness. for homosexuality is harming people just like lying or cheating does (Luce's words - no kidding).

well

1) it is unsure what surveys Mr Luce is pointing to, it is even unsure whether these surveys actually exist, but...

2) if they exist, and they prove that, in general, gay people are less happy, then this is just because of groups like Luce's! i mean, OF COURSE you are unhappy if your sexuality is still regarded as a biblical sin and if there are groups out there who wish to change parts of the essence of your being. my word, the stupidity in those claims, the stupidity in human beings.


sorry, just had to ventilate all of this. a sadness post about this could be "people running in circles and walking over other people's feet while doing so".

ps: the article can be found on http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/us/09battlecry.html

stealing like prometheus, or simply avoiding sisyphus's pains?

suicide is a very difficult issue. we try to steer people away from it, and often quite rightly so. we don't want to lose someone, or we think we can help that person, etc. but officially prohibiting it, in the form of euthanasia is, i think, quite wrong.

one important argument for not allowing euthanasia is that human beings have no right to do so, that we cannot claim the lives God gave us, especially because God gave them to us and that therefore they are His. man cannot laugh in the face of God and claim the ultimate power over his life and kill himself. but some problems arise here.

to begin with, should this idea really be the same for atheists? yes, one could say, because if there is a God He/She accounts for all creatures, including the atheists. but what makes the opinion of a christian more valuable of that of an atheist? and even more so, should religion really intermingle with governmental decisions?

and what about us not laughing in God's face by making the decision of life and death? people who prohibit suicide are, by doing so, deciding over other people's lives. even more so, they are often the same kind of people who will help kill people by waging wars, by reducing health care, by increasing poverty, by making all kinds of decisions that have such a profound impact on lives that those politicians are becoming pretty God-like themselves. so what's this? we can't decide over our own lives, but we can decide over other people's lives?

and are we not forgetting something? let's see. i am over 21 years old, so that means that i can smoke, drink or drive in most countries. i don't do the first two, but suppose i smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. even though i can't do it in many public places any more, i can still smoke away in the privacy of my house, or out on the streets. moreover, many of the tobacco companies have got strong (financial) bonds with governing bodies. so that means i cannot choose a calm death in a hospital environment when i am suffering too much (be it mentally or physically), but i can slowly but surely kill myself with lung cancer - which is very painful - and buy my little suicide-packages at the newsstand right around the corner. it's the irony of life, i guess. either that or the folly of man.

one final thought: let us never, ever underestimate other people's pains, be they mental or physical. we cannot feel what someone else feels, and if someone cannot bear the state he/or she is in, it is horribly cruel to force that person to go on, even if he/she does not want to. oh, and by the way, i am not simply a European attacking those naughty Americans. i am not simply interested in getting involved in some US-bashing; my concern is about our entire globe and every human being in it. aint i the noble one.


ps: long live the music of chance. i had been thinking about these things on my bike earlier this day. the minute i came home, my mp3-player played Anne Clark's song Self-Destruct, of which the first words are "Suicide is an urban disease".

hi, jack

saw United 93 last night. very good. and very, very scary. the adrenalin was rushing through my veins as if it would change a damn thing. but even if i could produce all the adrenalin in the world, it would never make a difference.

why can't we all be friends? "now surely, you're being naive. it's really not that simple, you know." yes it is. we're just making things difficult. difficult for ourselves, for each other, for a whole globe of anonymous beings who we harm by acting like we do. i don't care what god you like - or rather, i do care. but i don't mind. either our gods are the same and then we shouldn't pester each other with how we call Him/Her/It, or our gods are not the same and then we shouldn't try to take things into our own hands. our gods, if we believe they are so powerful, can work it out themselves. if we can't even believe that, then where is our faith.

let's keep things simple. it's the only way to keep afloat. whatever you believe in, whatever your race, whatever your whatevers, if you are kind to me, then i will be kind to you. aye, there's the rub. i should reverse that. better: if i am kind to you, then please be kind to me. to soften the sharp edges of this world, kindness should be a starting point, not a goal. it is a means, and no "if" should be included in that proposition.

yes, i am stating the obvious. no, things are not being depicted simpler than they are. for things are what they are, we just tend to change them into something worse.

insomnia = not in somnia

(beware, i'm going to whine a bit)

discrimination, that's the word. every day has been divided in a way that we get up early, work until the sun is setting or has set (depends on the season or on your dedication), we eat, do something else and go to sleep before or around midnight to get up early again. im not protesting against any possible dullness in the succession of days - making every day worthwile is something you have to do yourself. what i do have problems with, though, is the "early" part.

due to some evil plot to undermine all other possibilities, we live in a daytime-oriented world. schools start in the mornings and so do most jobs. make sure you run your errands in time because shops tend to close when it gets dark (there are some exceptions, but these are rare, and more expensive as well).

but there just are people whose body functions best on a different kind of schedule. their hormone boosts reach their summits around 11pm or later and as such this is the moment when they can move every mountain in sight. getting in bed at around 4am is then not so strange, and getting up at around 12am even less so. but when trying to live in a 'normal' society, this is simply not possible. either you sleep only three hours a night, or you go against your nature and try to fall asleep at around 11pm.

no ma'am, we're not lazy buggers doing nothing but sleeping all day long (you may live when we're still asleep, but we live when you're already asleep). we're not stubborn maniacs and we don't think we are vampires. we are simply night people, built to live on different hours than you. it is time we fought back. it is time the discrimination of our kind ended. it is time we establish a second society, built to last every night! hurray!

nightcrawlers, unite!!

lonely laughter

slowly but surely, the subjects for humor are diminishing. slowly but surely, these subjects become more and more loaded with people's emotions. certain believers find it their duty to defend their gods from humor, as these gods apparently are not strong enough to do it themselves, or have not invented that humor at one certain stage in their creations. no laughing with certain groups of our society. no laughing with icons. no laughing here, no laughing there.

in the end, the only thing we will be allowed to laugh with, will be ourselves. by that time, it might be useful that we learn some self-relativation skills to be able to do so...

burning bush

did i ever say: Bush sucks?

well, here goes: Bush sucks!

and, we're really back now

just heard Saddam will receive the death penalty for mass murder.

i never liked death penalty, but this event leaves me with one question: who will ever put Mr. G.W. Bush on trial for mass murder?

indeed, no one. the horror, the horror.

my eurovison

a couple of weeks ago, some friends invited me over to watch the Eurovision Song Festival. it must have been more than ten years since i had last watched it. i did find it funny, though. at least in the beginning. the more the show progressed, the more songs i saw, the more i started to feel disgusted by the industry that promotes the creation of such empty, soulless, emotionless music, so devoid of creativity or originality. but i soon remembered not to be too much of a snob. it is true that i just do not really belong to the intended audience of that musical show, and that i watched it only because i had been asked to (and it was a fun evening, by the way). tastes differ.

but soon my thoughts again took a walk, and i could not shake off certain ideas. the Eurovision Song Festival is something which should unite the countries of Europe. nice idea, but is a competition really the way to do this? now, all we get is disgruntled not-winners and angry people because "country x will always vote for country y" (hey, didn't we know that in advance?)

aren't there better ways to 'unite' our European soul? if we consider the amount of money spent on this show, we must be aware that of the perversity of it. my country (Belgium) alone spent € 60000 on a dotation for our participant. thousands of euros more were spent on clothing, airplane tickets, etc etc etc. isn't that just a bit ridiculous to spend on a participant of a contest? i mean, only one of them wins, so that i don't know how many people go home empty-handed, but they have cost us A LOT of money. and the winner gets a lot of comments as well. we must be able to do something more constructive. how about a Eurosolidarity Show or something? i mean, if all the money now spent on each and every artist can be combined and added to the amount of money the hosting country would spend on a stage, commercials, light, the show, etc, we have a very strong basis to start with. if people all over Europe would then be prompted to donate money as well, we could do something useful with it, like divide that money over all countries and help poor people get along. there is still so much poverty in Europe, even in my own 'wealthy' country, that there is a lot of work to be done. and the money now spent on the Eurovision Song Festival could then be used to aid those in need. for all we have now is a contest which disappoints the participating countries, which leads in no way to a 'union' and which has poorer people feel completely left in the cold - and rightly so. if you receive a couple of hundreds euros every month through wellfare because you are too weak or too old to work, how sad and bitter it must make you to see hundreds of thousands of euros spent on something like this? i do not see the 'festival' of it all.

a history of violence

in the news recently: a group of boys threw a jacket over a young invalid boy's head and started kicking/punching him. "happy slapping" it's called, and there is no point but to slap and do it happily.

heard from a boy yesterday who got attacked by four other guys who wanted nothing really but to make fun hurting him. grrreat fun indeed. ho ho ho.

i abhor violence. but when hearing about those things, something shortcircuits inside my brain. i get past any moral issues of pacifism and feel nothing but an intense urge to hurt those people doing these things. smash their faces. kick them in the stomach. bury my elbows deep in their eye sockets. and then there is the eternal confusion. am i no worse?

what does my vengeance do, achieve besides the proof that my moral (and heartfelt) ideas of abhorring violence lead to nothing when it all comes down to "real life"? i am - from the comfort of my living-room, i admit - very much convinced that i would be able to kill someone, out of pure anger and rage, in an attempt to shatter each and every bone inside his/her body, should he/she hurt my girlfriend, for example.

am i then really no worse? is violence really that much a part of my own life, my own being? and is this something to accept, something which is nothing but an element of the conditions i am born with as a member of the homo sapiens (sapiens) clan? or should i try to ban all of these feelings, these sensations, as vengeance is nothing but a sweet-tasting destructive and empty bitterness? does being a part of mankind mean being a violent entity, or is it rather possessing the ability not to do so? is being myself an opportunity to culturally oppress those genuine and true feelings of violence inside of me, or is it an instinctive duty to embrace them?

choice (peace, or annihilation)

in Afghanistan, that "liberated" country, a man is awaiting trial. he will probably be sentenced to death. he converted to christianity yet was reported by his islamic family. i could go on and on and on about this, about how injust it is, about how these things have nothing to do with religion and respect for each other any more, but i will not start. i hope these words from Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange will suffise. not that they will change the world.

"When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."

stay car-tuned

right, that does it. freedom of speech is one thing, respect for the things we believe in is another. sure, i am not a muslim and thus it is easy for me not to condemn cartoons depicting mohammed (is the writing of this word another form of depicting?), but still...

i think the basis for any belief or religion should be that it enrichens our lifes. of course we can't all believe the same thing, but that's just how the cookie crumbles. a sense of idealism is great as far as religion is conerned - without hopes and dreams the world would crumble as fast as previously mentioned cookie would.

of course people are offended when you do exactly the opposite of what they think is valuable. that's only natural and i understand that it is no fun being made fun of. or at least, having the things you believe in, the things you value being made fun of. and it is another instance of freedom of speech that you can say you do not like such a thing and try to explain that making cartoons of that kind actually hurts people in the essence of their personal worlds.

but hurting people because the things you think are right are offended in this way, is so so so wrong. though i can feel the most warm-hearted sense of respect for those people who try to state their problems the way i mentioned in the previous paragraph, i can feel nothing but pure disgust (a strong word, i know that) towards people who do it the way it is done right now. i can have no respect at all for those who value their individual belief system over the lifes of other human beings. after all, a human life is the most precious of all, whether that life adheres to hinduism, the islam, buddhism, christianity, jewish faith, the scientology church, agnosticism, atheism or whatever. i think that hurting other people to "defend" your faith is a centrifugal motion in relation to the essence of that faith. there is no religion that preaches to hurt other people, there are only people who make their own versions of religion in order to use it as an excuse to do the things according to one's own principles, not according to that of the religious system. and this is a disease which not only affects the islam. (take one good look at the bible belt and ask yourself how such a thing is possible, how such dogmatism can rise out of the beautiful fundaments as laid out in the Bible. and how, for god's sake indeed, can you justify being a christian and at the same time sentencing people to death penalty?)

and then another thing (sorry for those who are already very bored by now, but this thing has got me going). have we so little faith in our belief systems that we feel the urge to protect them at any cost? do we esteem our own belief so low that we think it can be fundamentally disrupted by such a thing as a cartoon? and do we esteem our own powers so highly that we can assume that arrogance that leads us to start acting ourselves in the name of a Lord of any kind? where is the faith in a Final Judgment (a christian thing, i know, i know, but i'm writing on impulse here - ed.), in a Lord who can take action by His/Her/It own hands?

but anyway. believe what you want to believe in (for all clarity: im a steak of agnosticism myself, with a light dressing of buddhism), but make sure your belief does what it is supposed to do: make this world more bearable, more tolerable. do not, in any way, use your belief to add to the sometimes almost unbearable heaviness of being. and if problems arise, try to explain things in words. believe in the power of your belief to survive. but no more killing, no more hurting. please.

biggus dickus

what is all this fuss about cartoons and mohammed anyway? it's The Life of Brian all over again. "He said Jehova!!!"