Ah love, could you and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Shatter it to bits and
Remold it closer to heart's desire.

Omar Khayyam wanted to shatter this world and remake it closer to his desire.

Let's think about that. Say you were given the task of taking this world and remaking it. How would you best design this new world? I assume that if you are not a fucking psychopath, you would want to make it the fairest, most satisfying world to live in.

For yourself.

That is how most people would approach the problem. They would imagine a world that does not hurt them.

There is an idea in ethics called The Veil of Ignorance. American philosopher John Rawls outlined this idea, and if there was a designer of the universe, this would be the blueprint that it would follow.

The idea is simple. You put yourself behind a veil of ignorance and design the world without knowing your place in it. That is the key idea: not knowing your place in the new world that you have designed. This virtually guarantees a fair design.

If you put income inequality in your brave new world, there is a chance you might find yourself on the wrong side of the tracks and be born poor. So you would not do that. If your world allows for slavery, you may be materialized in this world as a slave, so you don't entertain that design. If the politics in your universe heavily favor kings, you risk being a serf. So in your own best interest, you strive like a mofo to get the design right.

It really is that easy.

Sam Lloyd from Scrubs does a better job than the original song. Lovely song, and a great scene to go along with that.

With lyrics like that, this is just begging to be the track of some grand D&D game, or the next Game of Thrones clone. This band does a great job on those tiny instruments, proving once again that size doesn't matter.

I've heard several tributes and covers of this song, but nobody sings the song like Iz does.

Not sure what the fuck I just watched, but by all that is holy, this has to be the most badass song ever made. The real insanity begins around 3:20. The Asian guy is just ridiculous. From the comment section, comes this piece of wisdom.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
There's always an Asian
Better than you.




Postscript: I finally figured out how they made this song. Here are the steps.

1. Take a regular garage band.
2. Give them each a kilo of cocaine.
3. Take an average audience.
4. Slow them down with some heroin, or if you are feeling cheap, ganja.
5. This song!

The Two States of Daughter

Before

After

I did not know these types of songs were also called AOR (Album Oriented Rock). I just called them rock ballads. Anyway, it's one of those songs that smells like an entire era. An era gone forever.

When people think of Colin Hay, usually they think of Men at Work and Down Under. But his composition shines through in these songs, below. You could just read out the lyrics and they would read like poetry. My favorite TV show of all time, Scrubs, used every one of these songs in the track. Game recognize game, as they say.

The comments following this video are just the funniest. Watch this video on Youtube proper (Link: https://youtu.be/XwCK1z3wT8g) and scroll down for the comments.
 

Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese, is a good movie.

Why you want to watch this movie:

1. You want to see a super suave and super smooth Harvey Keitel. Honestly, it is hard to believe that is him.
2. Robert De Niro.

This is utterly insane. And this video has one of the funniest comments I have seen ("tabs" is how guitarists ask other guitarists how to play a song.)

 

This is the best acoustic cover of any song I have ever heard. He is playing rhythm and lead at the same time. He could be deep in a solo, but the rhythm never stops. Talk about not missing a beat. Just amazing.

I can drive on either the left hand or right hand side of the road. I learned to drive a stick-shift, in a car that had its steering wheel on the right side inside the car, and I drove said vehicle down the left hand side of the road for many years.

And then I came to America, and everything got flipped around on me.

I always thought the choice to drive on the left or right side of the road was arbitrary. I did not know that it was a French versus British thing since Napoleon's time. Also, apparently there are good practical reasons for driving on the *left* side of the road with the steering wheel on the *right* hand side. Let this homeless British man educate you.

These are a couple of great videos. A scammer gets scammed, and a spammer gets spammed. Karma in email form. Very fun.

Let me get one thing out of the way first before I say the rest of this.

I am an atheist. I have no use for the god-belief. If a stranger approaches me and says, "I believe in God.", to me it sounds like he said, "I like gumballs." On an average day, those two facts, stated by a random person, create about the same number of ripples on the placid surface of my psyche.

"Really, that's interesting." I say, desperately trying not to yawn.

But some other days, I think about some of the statements made by the god-botherers. Statements that are, frankly, ridiculous.

In God we Trust.

Take that statement for instance. It's so popular, that it's on the fucking currency.

How can you trust God? God has a plan, and apparently no one knows what this plan is. How do you trust something you don't know? It's like saying, "I trust my ignorance." That sounds like something you would say after Clint Eastwood pistol-whipped your face with his .44 widowmaker and turned your brain into soft mush. Do you trust your ignorance? Well do ya, punk?

To know God's plan, you have to know his mind. What if he changes his plan? If you say that he cannot change his plan, then he is obviously not all-powerful. Hell, even I can change my plan.

Attend. Saying that God cannot do something removes free will from the very thing that supposedly gave you your own free will. Saying that God is compelled to do good runs up against a little philosophical problem called moral agency. Look it up.

Let me put it in terms that even the most feeble intellect can grasp. You do NOT know with certainty the mind of your own fucking spouse, who you have lived with for fifty years. Once in a while, she surprises you by running away with the pool-boy and half your cash. And you think you stand a chance of knowing the mind of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deity who gargles up universes at the drop of a hat? Wouldn't that make you a bit god-like yourself, you pathetic tosser?

OK, let's pretend that you know God's plan is good. Every day the sun is shining, birds are singing, and the Great British Baking Show is on the telly. And then, pow!, a fucking tsunami kills a bunch of dogs, moms and kids. Even if the overall plan is good, it is undeniable that the intermediate steps are fucking *terrible*.

Knowing what God will do next is like predicting the outcome of a coin toss. A coin toss is a random event. Saying that you trust God is like saying you trust that the coin will turn up heads the next time you flip that fucker. Only idiots say this, and even they wait to say this until they are high on something.

There is a colloquial word we use for random events: luck. When the outcome of a random event goes in your favor, you have good luck. When it goes against you, you have bad luck. God's next move is a random event to you. Hence it is indistinguishable from luck.

So the next time you are in your church or your temple or wherever the fuck Zoroastrians go to waste their time, just substitute the word "luck" for "God" in your stupid mumblings and prayers and the sentences you form will be equally sound.

"I trust God." is the same as saying, "I trust my luck."

"God will get me through the day." is the same as saying, "Luck will get me through the day."

"God will punish evil." is the same as saying, "Luck will punish evil." Actually why leave this last bit to luck? Why not get off your god-bothering ass and take care of evil yourself, the best you can?

Here endeth the sermon. Go in peace. And may luck be with you.


 

The Crook and the Idiot

It is far better to be ruled by a crook, than it is to have an idiot in charge.

You gradually realize this after working for some time. Some workplaces are nice. They have good culture, good policies, and good people. If you happen to work in these nice places, this message will not move you and you will not understand. But meanwhile, in another part of town on the other side of the tracks, there subsists workplaces that are utter shit-holes. And in these festering shit-holes, sometimes the boss is a crook, and sometimes the boss is an idiot.

Prefer the crook.

On the face of it, this goes against intuition. The crook will do bad things. Yes, this is true. The crook will do bad things. But here's the thing. You know this. His actions have limits, and you can prepare yourself to deal with them.

The crook will do bad things. Even terrible things. But he will never ever hit the button that says, "Warning! Do NOT press this button. This button will blow up absolutely EVERYONE."

You do not have this guarantee with the idiot.

Stupidity is limitless. Prefer the crook.

I finally came across a movie I could not watch. This is coming from someone who is a jaded soul. I have watched some of the most debauched gorefests without flinching. I even sat through The Elephant Man, which has one of the most heartbreaking lines in cinema, when Joseph Merrick screams at his tormenters, "I am not an an animal. I...am...a...human being." The Elephant Man comes close to being unwatchable. Yet I sat through it.

But I switched off this movie.

The movie is The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, based on a true story, and directed by Werner Herzog. I'll let Wikipedia give you the Cliff Notes version.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man, wearing a black overcoat and top hat, who feeds him.

Did you get all that? This really happened to someone. A child spent seventeen years in solitary with a fucking toy horse. The first scene of the movie shows the boy playing with the toy horse. And when I say "playing", I mean sitting on the stone floor of his prison (because his legs had atrophied from disuse), and moving the toy back and forth in a small arc (because, chains). Other than the monster who kept him chained and fed, that toy horse was his nearest connection to another living thing.

Werner Herzog is a master. He proves that you don't necessarily need million dollar effects  and pyrotechnics to push someone over the edge. A simple scene does the job just as well.

That toy horse did it for me. That is as far as I got.

The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully.

-- Russian Proverb

In the 1983 movie War Games, the computer figures out that there are some games that are impossible to win, and the only rational thing to do is to not play at all.

We are not in complete control of the games that we play and sometimes the choice to "not play at all" isn't an option that is available. So if you are compelled to play a game that is unwinnable, what is the next best strategy to follow? The next best strategy is to play in a way where you are oblivious to the outcome, and winning and losing matter equally.