Of the French Revolution
Yesterday was the 14th of July. On the 14th of July, 1789, the population of Paris, exasperated by Aristocracy and the Church, finally revolted: in one of the most famous pages of world history, the Parisiennes, helped by the National Guard, sieged and captured the prison called La Bastille.
This was the first act of a glorious Revolution that toppled the French Aristocracy and led the people of Paris to the creation of the first Republican government of their history.
Although a dozen years later the Republic was turned into an Empire by Napoleon Bonaparte, the French people had changed the Western World forever. When Louis XIV referred to himself, he was the King of France. Napoleon addressed himself as Emperor of the French.
The difference is subtle yet immense. For Louis XIV, the land mattered the most. He was the King of all the lands within the borders of France. He owned the land, therefore the inhabitants, of whom he could dispose according to his whims.
For Napoleon Bonaparte, the people mattered the most. For the fist time in Central Europe, Napoleon was not the Emperor of the land that fell within the borders of France, but the Emperor of the People that lived inside those borders. Thanks to the French Revolution, the People had returned to be the center of interest of the leaders; as it had previously been during the Roman history. Rome addressed itself as S.P.Q.R., "Senatus PopulusQue Romanus", The Senate and the People of Rome.
But what changed history the most was the Declaration of the Rights of Men, based on the Declaration of Independence of the United States, signed in 1776. A Declaration that the French people signed with but one mot in mind:
LIBERTE' , EGALITE' , FRATERNITE'
-LA LIBERTE'
Freedom. The first of three simple yet immense words. Freedom.
Freedom means to be allowed to think and speak openly, in public, and uphold your ideas. It means that no one can tell you what to do, that your desires lead your life and not those of the King.
Freedom is this blog you are reading. I am free to type it, you are free to read it.
Freedom is going out at day and at night, walking the street without the worry that some policeman might convict you because he doesn't like your face. Freedom is paramount. Freedom of speech is the first motor of culture. I tell you my ideas, freely, you answer me telling me yours, and we both grow together: my ideas enriched by your comments, and viceversa.
Freedom nowadays is often taken for granted, but it's not to be forgotten that, as it was stated during the early years of the Twentieth Century, "Freedom is like Air: you understand its importance when it's missing".
In the world the French people knew in the 1700's, Freedom didn't exist. The French fought for the ideal of being free, and today this Continent can call itself liberated. The European people are free, sometimes even more so than the Americans.
Freedom, I value above all things: there are things I won't do, like smoking a joint, and yet I still fight for the freedom others deserve of smoking their joints in peace.
Freedom must be always fought for. Those in charge don't like free people and free speech. Freedom is dangerous. It can lead people to think with their head and perhaps claim their leader is wrong. In the likely hypotesis they are right, the leader might have to stop exploit his subjects.
As Voltaire put it: "I don't agree with you, but I will fight to death to let you state your opinion". This is the essence of Freedom: being ready to fight to let those you disagree with speak their opinion.
- L'EGALITE'
Equality. For the French people of the 1700's people weren't equal. The King was best of all. Aristocrats were better than merchants. Priests were as noble as the Dukes and Archdukes. The laymen were nothing but servants. Laws differed depending on your social status. There was inequality.
But Jefferson had stated a new, immensely powerful claim: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."
Equal. We are equal. This is more than just an ideal: we are human beings. Of course some of us are beautiful and some are ugly, some are good and some are evil, some are smart and some are dumb, some are tough and some are weak. Don't think the French didn't know there were males and females in the world! But they thought, like I do today thanks to their Revolution, that what makes humans equal counts more than what makes them unequal. Despite the difference, we are ultimately similar. We suffer and we rejoice, we love and laugh and suffer and weep, we feel pain and pleasure, we eat and drink... we are all humans, and therefore members of the same great family. We are equal hence we share the same rights.
My friends, my enemies, my neighbors, and all those who live and lived on this planet, all the saints and sinners, all the lovers and warmongers, all the emperors and shephers, and every poet, musician, greedy manager, painter, sportman, beautiful and intelligent girl... every human being that was ever born in this small planet of ours is equal to us and shares my same rights.
It is an ideal the French thought worthy of dying for, and it truly is: for by being equals, we are taught to ignore the differences and stress the similarities. And by saying that, we will finally be led to realize that all living beings on this planet are equals. Because we share the same planet. We live side by side, sometimes one off the other, but in the end, we are equal.
Watch another human, and you'll see the mirror of yourself in her.
- LA FRATERNITE'
Brotherhood.
This is where the two previous ideals lead us to.
We are all free, we are all equal, and therefore we are all Brothers. The pain of one man is our pain. The joy of another is our joy. This is particularly poetic for it's not the result of some religious dogma, but the natural, rational consequence of the fact that all humans are Free and Equal. All together, we thrive on this world of ours as members of a one great human Family.
Today we take Freedom for granted, tend to forget Equality with great ease, and never ever glance at Brotherhood.
Yet, on the 14th of July, 1789, thousands of French people rallied under the ramparts of the Bastille under the spell created by these three grand ideals. The three ideals that even today the European Constitution has defined as the foundation of our Continent's culture. And they trascend the borders of Europe to extend across the oceans, uniting all the people of the world. It strikes me with awe and almost moves me, to think of so grand ideals sprung off the minds of a people that suffered for the whims of bored Aristocrats.
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Even today, the grandest ideals ever conceived by human minds.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Post Number Forty: Misunderstood
Of How Hard It Is To Make Yourself Understood
I am not typing a blog for a wide audience. Hence, being understandable by a wide audience is not - and it won't be - my aim. Nonetheless, it is extremely interesting to see from the comments I receive that making one's self understood is a lost cause.
Those who know me, already know how I tackle things. Sometimes I choose the logic, rational approach (when I am serious). Sometimed instead, I just want to have fun and mock men. I love mocking men.
Anyway those who don't know me might be led to misunderstandings. Especially because most of the things I believe and say here, are not in line with this era's zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is a German word that means, more or less "Spirit of the Time". It doesn't really translate into any other language but German.
I will give an example.
In the Twentieth Century, mostly thanks to the Americanization of world culture, it is generally believed that Lightness is better than Weight. Weight is oppressive, tasking, depressing. People think that lightness is fun, but to be more precise, they think that fun is lightness.
Mindless, easy life with no thoughts, just entertainment, is fun. Entertainment is intended to be light.
This is so rooted in the spirit of our time that almost no one ever stops and wonder if entertainment should really be light. Has anyone considered the possibility that lightness might not be fun? A lot of people go to discos, which are a very light form of entertainment (as opposed, for example, to reading a philosophy text by Immanuel Kant in German). These people are quite positive that going to a disco is fun, and it is incidentally more fun than reading a text by Kant in German. The whole industry of entertainment has been built on the conception that the lighter is the better.
But is lightness really all that fun?
I am not trying to tell people what is fun, because I am here to tell people what I think is fun for me. Whether there is general agreement on the point is not my interest: in fact I already know there is no general agreement, otherwise the world would be more like the late 1700's and less like the early 1600's.
Because, see, there have been times in history when people thought otherwise: they thought that lightness was not fun. For example, the Roman Stoic philosophers really thought that light things were not so fun. They thought it was much more fun to read a text by Aristotle in Greek than going to the Coliseum to watch the Gladiators.
The French Philosophes thought it was really a damn lot of fun to write an Encyclopedia.
Ludwig van Beethoven was convinced that music would be much more fun to listen to and to write, if it was heavy with deep meanings, passion, intensity, and emotional charge. A big change with the previous generation when the people thought that music was fun if you could dance it.
So, the fact that today we think that light things are fun, is relative, not absolute. This is critical to understand my point.
If we accepted that lightness is the only possible way to have fun, then it might seem that I am a boring person that protests against his peers because they are having fun.
This is completely, utterly and immensely WRONG.
First of all, I am a supporter of Hedonists, and insist that we have the unalienable right to have fun. Having fun is a significant concern. Making life pleasant is paramount.
What I believe is that not everyone has fun in the same way. I am positive that Izzy, Sarong Party Girl, just to mention someone I stated I wouldn't mention again, is trying to have fun. She follows her own path to enjoy her life and I am vibrantly supporting her choice, regardless of the fact that I, for one, would not have fun living her life.
Then there is the question of why lightness might be not so fun.
And here's where I go one step further, telling an opinion that might be mistaken for an attempt to tell others what to do.
Lightness is dangerous. Our world has sunk into an ocean of lightness. There's a lot of things we deem important that are in fact transient and of scarce significance. They do not really matter. Things that matter are those that last. Human beings as individuals are here for a short time. We come, we live our short life, and then we go into oblivion. I am thoroughly convinced that this short permanence on this planet must be given a meaning. Not because I like it so, but because I believe that mankind needs a meaning. Why else are we so attracted by religion? Let's leave aside those that use religion as an excuse to let others tell them what to do. Let's talk about really religious people. Those that seek an answer for the reason they are alive for and ascribe it to some God. People like them revert to religion because they feel the void around them. They feel this world is empty, and whether they realize it or not, they are squeezed by the unbearable emptiness of the world. Life in itself is such a pointless thing: think about it. Think of herds of antelopes migrating back and forth across Africa. Imagine you are an alien on a starship, one that lives for a very long time, millennia; You look down at planet Earth and see antelopes migrating south and then north and then south and then north. Generation after generation, with no other reason to do so than producing another generation of migrating antelopes.
You could look down in the same way to mankind. But men are not antelopes.
Humans have this capability to create things that outlive them. They can think and stick to ideals, they have imagination, creativity and an immense potential. A human life can mean nothing. It could just be an insignificant transient mishap. But think of what humans can do in that life.
Think of the masterpieces sculpted by Michaelangelo. Think of the music written by Mozart. Think of the words signed in the Declaration of Independence. Think of the poetry of Shakespeare.
Can you feel the power of meaning? While there is nothing wrong with some light entertainment, I insist that our life cannot revolve around light, meaningless, transient happenings. It's dangerous. For us. For our inner selves. For our innate instinct to creativity, to imagination, to do things that outlive us.
When humans are induced to lose themselves in purely light, transient things, they often feel deprived of something. They feel something is missing. They can become nihilistic, think that everything in the world is pointless, that life is just a temporary wait till we can cease to exist for good. Very often this kind of universal pessimism induces humans to self-destruction.
If you have seen the movie Requiem for a Dream, you know what I mean. The author of the book that was turned into the same named movie, believes that our dreams are doomed and we are living in a world where nothing is worth much. Struggling is pointless. Life is cruel and everything sucks, plainly.
I refuse to agree.
I insist that this pessimism is derived by the overdose of lightness. I firmly state here and elsewhere that those who dare believing in ideals, those who dare fighting, those who create, love, and make things that last, they are not going to be nihilist-pessimists.
Think of Beethoven. At age 27 he turned deaf. Being deaf meant that he had to bid farewell to music, the only thing that really mattered for him. Can you imagine how it felt for him? If you have read the Testament of Heiligenstadt, a letter Beethoven wrote to his brother when he was in Heiligenstadt, Austria, you will know how humane and how moving the desperation of Ludwig van Beethoven was. In that letter, Beethoven stated he wanted to commit suicide. He saw everything was falling apart. His life, his greatest dreams, his hopes to live a normal social life. Being a deaf in the early 1800's, and a composer, moreover, meant to be cut off the world. And he loved social life. He yearned for contact with humans. But he was terribly ashamed of telling others "would you please write that down, I can't hear you". It's not nice. It does not feel nice. It's a pain. An immense pain.
But Beethoven did not commit suicide. After writing that letter, somewhere in his soul he found the strength to say no. If destiny opposes me, then I will fight destiny.
The result of this super-human struggle is the fifth symphony. Perhaps the most famous music ever composed. G-G-G-Eb. Destiny knocks at your door. Listen to it. Listen how the drama of the first movement slowly transforms into a fanfare when we reach the fourth, last movement. Compare the feeling of desperation created by these simple four notes that haunt the melody throughout the first part of the symphony, with the brilliant, joyous C major of the grand finale.
It's Beethoven telling us how it was for him. How terrible everything felt when destiny knocked at his door and how hard it was to fight his doom, and how powerful the joy for finding the courage to shout NO. To destiny.
There's all this in the fifth symphony.
But this is not lightness. There is no lightness in this. This is weight. It is giving a meaning to your life. It is fighting off the forces that oppose you and dare. And not only he won and became a famous composer: he's probably the most famous composer ever.
Don't you also feel inspired by this example? When I hear the fifth symphony I can't help being in awe of Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was not a pessimist. He thought there were things worth fighting for.
Those who find a meaning for their life, tend to be not pessimist. And that's because humans need that meaning.
So, here's where my message becomes more "universal", that is: directed to many and not just me. When I daresay look: lightness, lack of meaning, pointlessness is dangerous. It leads to self-destruction.
Because lightness is not necessarily that much fun. Sometimes it can be terrible. Terribly hard to bear. Sometimes we just damn need some weight if we don't want to be overcome by the unbearable lightness of being
We should not end up believing that, simply because one human's life is but an insignificant thing in the eternal flow of time, it means that it is pointless, or that nothing good can come from it.
We live in a world inherited by the past generations. Some, actually many, of those humans have built architectural marvels, created artworks, chased ideals, written Constitutions and passed an immense legacy of culture, beauty, and dreams down to us.
I say, it's our duty to do the same for those that will follow us in the next generation. Let's not forget that some weight is necessary, that we are humans like those that came before us, and we can build upon what we received from them. There is an immense wealth of marvels that humans have created. We are humans. We can go on creating.
But we must never forget, that we need to attach a meaning to our life, that it cannot be all about having some light fun and reproduce. I insist: this is not what life is all about. This is what life would be all about for antelopes in Africa, not for men that write symphonies, build cathedrals, and sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
We are better than animals. We can avoid being squeezed by the Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I am not typing a blog for a wide audience. Hence, being understandable by a wide audience is not - and it won't be - my aim. Nonetheless, it is extremely interesting to see from the comments I receive that making one's self understood is a lost cause.
Those who know me, already know how I tackle things. Sometimes I choose the logic, rational approach (when I am serious). Sometimed instead, I just want to have fun and mock men. I love mocking men.
Anyway those who don't know me might be led to misunderstandings. Especially because most of the things I believe and say here, are not in line with this era's zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is a German word that means, more or less "Spirit of the Time". It doesn't really translate into any other language but German.
I will give an example.
In the Twentieth Century, mostly thanks to the Americanization of world culture, it is generally believed that Lightness is better than Weight. Weight is oppressive, tasking, depressing. People think that lightness is fun, but to be more precise, they think that fun is lightness.
Mindless, easy life with no thoughts, just entertainment, is fun. Entertainment is intended to be light.
This is so rooted in the spirit of our time that almost no one ever stops and wonder if entertainment should really be light. Has anyone considered the possibility that lightness might not be fun? A lot of people go to discos, which are a very light form of entertainment (as opposed, for example, to reading a philosophy text by Immanuel Kant in German). These people are quite positive that going to a disco is fun, and it is incidentally more fun than reading a text by Kant in German. The whole industry of entertainment has been built on the conception that the lighter is the better.
But is lightness really all that fun?
I am not trying to tell people what is fun, because I am here to tell people what I think is fun for me. Whether there is general agreement on the point is not my interest: in fact I already know there is no general agreement, otherwise the world would be more like the late 1700's and less like the early 1600's.
Because, see, there have been times in history when people thought otherwise: they thought that lightness was not fun. For example, the Roman Stoic philosophers really thought that light things were not so fun. They thought it was much more fun to read a text by Aristotle in Greek than going to the Coliseum to watch the Gladiators.
The French Philosophes thought it was really a damn lot of fun to write an Encyclopedia.
Ludwig van Beethoven was convinced that music would be much more fun to listen to and to write, if it was heavy with deep meanings, passion, intensity, and emotional charge. A big change with the previous generation when the people thought that music was fun if you could dance it.
So, the fact that today we think that light things are fun, is relative, not absolute. This is critical to understand my point.
If we accepted that lightness is the only possible way to have fun, then it might seem that I am a boring person that protests against his peers because they are having fun.
This is completely, utterly and immensely WRONG.
First of all, I am a supporter of Hedonists, and insist that we have the unalienable right to have fun. Having fun is a significant concern. Making life pleasant is paramount.
What I believe is that not everyone has fun in the same way. I am positive that Izzy, Sarong Party Girl, just to mention someone I stated I wouldn't mention again, is trying to have fun. She follows her own path to enjoy her life and I am vibrantly supporting her choice, regardless of the fact that I, for one, would not have fun living her life.
Then there is the question of why lightness might be not so fun.
And here's where I go one step further, telling an opinion that might be mistaken for an attempt to tell others what to do.
Lightness is dangerous. Our world has sunk into an ocean of lightness. There's a lot of things we deem important that are in fact transient and of scarce significance. They do not really matter. Things that matter are those that last. Human beings as individuals are here for a short time. We come, we live our short life, and then we go into oblivion. I am thoroughly convinced that this short permanence on this planet must be given a meaning. Not because I like it so, but because I believe that mankind needs a meaning. Why else are we so attracted by religion? Let's leave aside those that use religion as an excuse to let others tell them what to do. Let's talk about really religious people. Those that seek an answer for the reason they are alive for and ascribe it to some God. People like them revert to religion because they feel the void around them. They feel this world is empty, and whether they realize it or not, they are squeezed by the unbearable emptiness of the world. Life in itself is such a pointless thing: think about it. Think of herds of antelopes migrating back and forth across Africa. Imagine you are an alien on a starship, one that lives for a very long time, millennia; You look down at planet Earth and see antelopes migrating south and then north and then south and then north. Generation after generation, with no other reason to do so than producing another generation of migrating antelopes.
You could look down in the same way to mankind. But men are not antelopes.
Humans have this capability to create things that outlive them. They can think and stick to ideals, they have imagination, creativity and an immense potential. A human life can mean nothing. It could just be an insignificant transient mishap. But think of what humans can do in that life.
Think of the masterpieces sculpted by Michaelangelo. Think of the music written by Mozart. Think of the words signed in the Declaration of Independence. Think of the poetry of Shakespeare.
Can you feel the power of meaning? While there is nothing wrong with some light entertainment, I insist that our life cannot revolve around light, meaningless, transient happenings. It's dangerous. For us. For our inner selves. For our innate instinct to creativity, to imagination, to do things that outlive us.
When humans are induced to lose themselves in purely light, transient things, they often feel deprived of something. They feel something is missing. They can become nihilistic, think that everything in the world is pointless, that life is just a temporary wait till we can cease to exist for good. Very often this kind of universal pessimism induces humans to self-destruction.
If you have seen the movie Requiem for a Dream, you know what I mean. The author of the book that was turned into the same named movie, believes that our dreams are doomed and we are living in a world where nothing is worth much. Struggling is pointless. Life is cruel and everything sucks, plainly.
I refuse to agree.
I insist that this pessimism is derived by the overdose of lightness. I firmly state here and elsewhere that those who dare believing in ideals, those who dare fighting, those who create, love, and make things that last, they are not going to be nihilist-pessimists.
Think of Beethoven. At age 27 he turned deaf. Being deaf meant that he had to bid farewell to music, the only thing that really mattered for him. Can you imagine how it felt for him? If you have read the Testament of Heiligenstadt, a letter Beethoven wrote to his brother when he was in Heiligenstadt, Austria, you will know how humane and how moving the desperation of Ludwig van Beethoven was. In that letter, Beethoven stated he wanted to commit suicide. He saw everything was falling apart. His life, his greatest dreams, his hopes to live a normal social life. Being a deaf in the early 1800's, and a composer, moreover, meant to be cut off the world. And he loved social life. He yearned for contact with humans. But he was terribly ashamed of telling others "would you please write that down, I can't hear you". It's not nice. It does not feel nice. It's a pain. An immense pain.
But Beethoven did not commit suicide. After writing that letter, somewhere in his soul he found the strength to say no. If destiny opposes me, then I will fight destiny.
The result of this super-human struggle is the fifth symphony. Perhaps the most famous music ever composed. G-G-G-Eb. Destiny knocks at your door. Listen to it. Listen how the drama of the first movement slowly transforms into a fanfare when we reach the fourth, last movement. Compare the feeling of desperation created by these simple four notes that haunt the melody throughout the first part of the symphony, with the brilliant, joyous C major of the grand finale.
It's Beethoven telling us how it was for him. How terrible everything felt when destiny knocked at his door and how hard it was to fight his doom, and how powerful the joy for finding the courage to shout NO. To destiny.
There's all this in the fifth symphony.
But this is not lightness. There is no lightness in this. This is weight. It is giving a meaning to your life. It is fighting off the forces that oppose you and dare. And not only he won and became a famous composer: he's probably the most famous composer ever.
Don't you also feel inspired by this example? When I hear the fifth symphony I can't help being in awe of Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was not a pessimist. He thought there were things worth fighting for.
Those who find a meaning for their life, tend to be not pessimist. And that's because humans need that meaning.
So, here's where my message becomes more "universal", that is: directed to many and not just me. When I daresay look: lightness, lack of meaning, pointlessness is dangerous. It leads to self-destruction.
Because lightness is not necessarily that much fun. Sometimes it can be terrible. Terribly hard to bear. Sometimes we just damn need some weight if we don't want to be overcome by the unbearable lightness of being
We should not end up believing that, simply because one human's life is but an insignificant thing in the eternal flow of time, it means that it is pointless, or that nothing good can come from it.
We live in a world inherited by the past generations. Some, actually many, of those humans have built architectural marvels, created artworks, chased ideals, written Constitutions and passed an immense legacy of culture, beauty, and dreams down to us.
I say, it's our duty to do the same for those that will follow us in the next generation. Let's not forget that some weight is necessary, that we are humans like those that came before us, and we can build upon what we received from them. There is an immense wealth of marvels that humans have created. We are humans. We can go on creating.
But we must never forget, that we need to attach a meaning to our life, that it cannot be all about having some light fun and reproduce. I insist: this is not what life is all about. This is what life would be all about for antelopes in Africa, not for men that write symphonies, build cathedrals, and sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
We are better than animals. We can avoid being squeezed by the Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Post Number Thirty-Nine: Sex Vampires
Of the Relationship Between Men and Sex
I am fond of Gothic stories. In particular, I love Vampire stories. In the recent years, a new series of vampire stories were written by Anne Rice. Although I never read any of her books, I made an opinion of what kind of atmosphere she has created by watching recent movies on vampires. Interview with the Vampire was superb. I also enjoyed Underworld. I actually find underground goth culture fascinating.
Vampires, in modern literature, have created a sort of society, with allegiances and feuds, with subtleties and tricks. Something between Masonry and the Vatican. But all the social bonds fall apart when vampires need to feed. In the end, they are predators and they are after one thing above all: Blood.
Human males (and males of other species) have one thing in common with vampires. They have also created a sort of society, with their allegiances and their cult for the ultimate Penis deity, but everything falls apart when men need to fornicate.
The verb to fornicate, usually expressed in the form to fuck, is generally defined as a sexual intercourse between a non-married couple. Wow, there's a lot in this sentence. Sexual intercourse. Couple. Non-married.
It is generally agreed that sexual intercourse consists in putting the Penis deity inside a vagina and then move it in such a way as to create a friction with the labia and inner vaults of said vagina. This action normally requires :
1) a penis and
2) a vagina
Normally, men are endowed with only one of these requirements and this creates the first, grand problem of men. Fornication requires a couple. At least two individuals. One has a penis and the other provides a hole, preferably a vagina.
Women have a complex and refined relationship with sex. The way a woman approaches the feeling connected with sexual intercourse is so intense that it often resents poetry. Each woman feels intercourse in a different way. Some women are even afraid of that pleasure. Most men try to teach women that the pleasure they derive from sex is wrong. Some even indulge in telling them that taking pleasure from sexual intercourse is evil for a woman, that women are not meant to enjoy it. Some, especially in Africa, go straightforward mutilating clits and locking vaginas with stitches when the girls are still babies. It's called infibulation and it is the ultimate brutality of men against women.
Anyway, men live sex in a totally different way. Men rever the size of their penis, men love their leader and they measure his might by the size of his penis, but ultimately everything men do ends up in one thing: their need to put their own penis, no matter how large it is, inside a vagina, no matter whose vagina. When a woman's bladder is full, she feels the need to pee. When the penis of a man is bored, it feels the need to fuck. Sex for a man is like the need to pee for a woman.
Confronted with this desperate desire, men forget everything about leaders, masters, sexy women, power, war, evil, good, and whatnot. They need a hole and they need it soon. As soon as they have eased their need, they'll be back to the old society and its rules, but before, it's like blood for a vampire. Anything else comes second.
Men are so driven by this need for sex that they do not even really enjoy sexual intercourse as much as women do. There is no comparison between a man's and a woman's orgasm. Judging from how sex has evolved, it seems that in the human race sex has the purpose of pleasing women and calming down men.
Men find a humongous obstacle on their penis' path to the holiest of holes. Since women do not approach sexual life like they approach a toilet, sometimes they just do not wish to have sex with a particular man. Maybe they'll love to have sex with every other man in the world but one. And that one really needs to pee his sperm cells somewhere.
There are usually two possible solution for the most desperate man:
1) masturbation: that is, using his own hand to create the required friction and temporarily solve his problem. It doesn't feel completely the same, yet I have heard of men that indulge in this activity more than five times per day. Quite a feat indeed.
2) rape: that is, whether the girl likes it or not, the brutish ape will put his own penis inside her vagina, end of the story. This is usually considered very bad manners and quite heedless as far as the girl is concerned. Sometimes, even men understand it's not too nice to rape girls, especially because it could be their girl.
Their girl.
What does it mean, their girl? Certainly, men do not think they own other men, usually, but they think they own a girl. Here's what happened at a certain point of men's history.
Men needed to feed their penis with some friction, and normally they would prefer a different girl's hole each time, but it's a rather difficult task to convince a number of women to provide their holes and besides, men like to know the offsprings are theirs and not someone else's. So men sat around a table and thought: how do we get to put our penis in a hole whenever we need to feed it and at the same time stop killing each other because we fear someone else is reproducing? Then, some particularly brilliant man proposed: There's enough women for every men after all, so instead of fornicating with every girl we meet, let's put a sign of some sort on one particular girl and let's call it a property of one man only! Each one gets a hole to feed his penis and no one gets hurt. Cool uh?
It was of course a man's idea, therefore quite an imbecile one, especially because women weren't asked an opinion (maybe they would rather have more than one man around, considering the high risk they ran that one man could be an imbecile). Men didn't really care too much about women back then (neither they do today, normally) and stood up clapping their hands and chose a name for this certificate of property, and they called it marriage, and decided that it was such a good thing, that each man could have his own personal sex toy for free , that they even invoked their religions to bless the idea. They decided that it was a Divine Institution, that the entire society could be founded on this cool thing. Amazing, men thought: now they could take one girl, celebrate a marriage, and their penises would have a permanent hole to enjoy friction with.
Men established precise rules: once a girl is owned it's private property and other men can't have it. You know, it's because it's hard to get some resources to exploit and sharing what is so rare already would be disastrous. Besides, there always was that children matter, and who the father was...
Unluckily men hadn't taken into account a few interesting details:
1) girls also enjoy sex, much more than they do, yet they are not enslaved by any need to fuck.
2) knowing that a girl is someone else's property induces other men to steal it, if anything to show that man that they own a much larger penis (being the size strictly connected with blunt actions like stealing girls)
3) girls are not objects
number 3) is still impossibly taught to men even nowadays.
In order to account for points 1) and 2), men created laws to punish adultery (usually punishing the girl), instructed girls that sex is bad and evil and so on. For point 3) there's nothing to do. There's only that much a man's brain can fathom, and as we say in Italian, one can't squeeze blood out of turnips.
Nowadays, after millennia since marriage was invented, men are horrified when girls enjoy sex. They see that as a potential threat basically: a girl that plays around with her vagina is likely to be impossibly contained within the bonds of marriage. It's a disaster. They might not own her, ever. She might be impossible to tame and to instruct to give her vagina for free to one man only.
Giving it for free by the way is critical for men. Having to pay for sex feels like paying a tax on breatheable air. Can you imagine a vampire having to pay to drink blood? What's worst is that the need for blood is so intense that a vampire would pay for it, but then he would feel like shit. Men hate it when they have to pay to feed the needs of their penis. That's why they are so quick at chastizing prostitution. Not only they have to bear the pain of needing to put the penis in a vagina, but they also need to pay to satisfy this natural necessity. How evil.
Men are sex vampires.
For a standard man, it doesn't really matter how beautiful or intelligent or important his woman is. Have a look at the standard laymen couple. Unfulfilled and dissatisfied human blobs. Why? Because they got married simply because she was the only woman that gave his penis a hole for free. Sometimes men are beyond redemption. I would rather take an Oscar Wilde then, one that has the guts to seek pleasure rather than the need to pee.
Because, luckily, as well as not all men revere their penis, not all men confuse sex with the need to pee. Hedonists (a category of people which I respect a lot) seek pleasure above all, they would never have sex with anyone unless this anyone is a pleasurable person. But they would never have sex with one person only as well.
In a certain sense I am also a hedonist, in the sense that I also seek pleasure in my own way. I don't go for the excesses that are typical of real hedonists of course. But I despise immoral chauvinist institutions that are meant to frustrate life rather than exhalting it.
Personally, I am not fond of sex. I understand and appreciate those that seek it for their pleasure, but personally I find it annoying as I said somewhere else. Foreplay and other practices are much more fun. The best, in my opinion, is taking a woman to orgasm without the need to have intercourse with her. Playing with a woman's body to provide her with pleasure is almost an artistic way to enjoy sexual life. In my opinion.
I also have a very peculiar relationship with activities that others relate to sex.
I'll give an example. Whenever I was told I could, I loved to kiss my friends. I am speaking of course of French kisses. Kisses are lovely. They are sweet and intimate and not nearly a sexual activity, regardless of what everyone else believes. I love to French girls, but I prefer to kiss friends: it's a great way to tell them I adore them. But of course, most of them would disagree on this point. And I am not really the type that would infringe their rules.
But then again, this would take me too far, and it's too late, and this post is about men and their vampiric attitude towards sex. So, goodnight, and see you.
PS: There was another entry number thirty nine before. I read it and considered it disgusting. I couldn't accept I wrote it. So I made this one, which is a lot better. In my opinion.
I am fond of Gothic stories. In particular, I love Vampire stories. In the recent years, a new series of vampire stories were written by Anne Rice. Although I never read any of her books, I made an opinion of what kind of atmosphere she has created by watching recent movies on vampires. Interview with the Vampire was superb. I also enjoyed Underworld. I actually find underground goth culture fascinating.
Vampires, in modern literature, have created a sort of society, with allegiances and feuds, with subtleties and tricks. Something between Masonry and the Vatican. But all the social bonds fall apart when vampires need to feed. In the end, they are predators and they are after one thing above all: Blood.
Human males (and males of other species) have one thing in common with vampires. They have also created a sort of society, with their allegiances and their cult for the ultimate Penis deity, but everything falls apart when men need to fornicate.
The verb to fornicate, usually expressed in the form to fuck, is generally defined as a sexual intercourse between a non-married couple. Wow, there's a lot in this sentence. Sexual intercourse. Couple. Non-married.
It is generally agreed that sexual intercourse consists in putting the Penis deity inside a vagina and then move it in such a way as to create a friction with the labia and inner vaults of said vagina. This action normally requires :
1) a penis and
2) a vagina
Normally, men are endowed with only one of these requirements and this creates the first, grand problem of men. Fornication requires a couple. At least two individuals. One has a penis and the other provides a hole, preferably a vagina.
Women have a complex and refined relationship with sex. The way a woman approaches the feeling connected with sexual intercourse is so intense that it often resents poetry. Each woman feels intercourse in a different way. Some women are even afraid of that pleasure. Most men try to teach women that the pleasure they derive from sex is wrong. Some even indulge in telling them that taking pleasure from sexual intercourse is evil for a woman, that women are not meant to enjoy it. Some, especially in Africa, go straightforward mutilating clits and locking vaginas with stitches when the girls are still babies. It's called infibulation and it is the ultimate brutality of men against women.
Anyway, men live sex in a totally different way. Men rever the size of their penis, men love their leader and they measure his might by the size of his penis, but ultimately everything men do ends up in one thing: their need to put their own penis, no matter how large it is, inside a vagina, no matter whose vagina. When a woman's bladder is full, she feels the need to pee. When the penis of a man is bored, it feels the need to fuck. Sex for a man is like the need to pee for a woman.
Confronted with this desperate desire, men forget everything about leaders, masters, sexy women, power, war, evil, good, and whatnot. They need a hole and they need it soon. As soon as they have eased their need, they'll be back to the old society and its rules, but before, it's like blood for a vampire. Anything else comes second.
Men are so driven by this need for sex that they do not even really enjoy sexual intercourse as much as women do. There is no comparison between a man's and a woman's orgasm. Judging from how sex has evolved, it seems that in the human race sex has the purpose of pleasing women and calming down men.
Men find a humongous obstacle on their penis' path to the holiest of holes. Since women do not approach sexual life like they approach a toilet, sometimes they just do not wish to have sex with a particular man. Maybe they'll love to have sex with every other man in the world but one. And that one really needs to pee his sperm cells somewhere.
There are usually two possible solution for the most desperate man:
1) masturbation: that is, using his own hand to create the required friction and temporarily solve his problem. It doesn't feel completely the same, yet I have heard of men that indulge in this activity more than five times per day. Quite a feat indeed.
2) rape: that is, whether the girl likes it or not, the brutish ape will put his own penis inside her vagina, end of the story. This is usually considered very bad manners and quite heedless as far as the girl is concerned. Sometimes, even men understand it's not too nice to rape girls, especially because it could be their girl.
Their girl.
What does it mean, their girl? Certainly, men do not think they own other men, usually, but they think they own a girl. Here's what happened at a certain point of men's history.
Men needed to feed their penis with some friction, and normally they would prefer a different girl's hole each time, but it's a rather difficult task to convince a number of women to provide their holes and besides, men like to know the offsprings are theirs and not someone else's. So men sat around a table and thought: how do we get to put our penis in a hole whenever we need to feed it and at the same time stop killing each other because we fear someone else is reproducing? Then, some particularly brilliant man proposed: There's enough women for every men after all, so instead of fornicating with every girl we meet, let's put a sign of some sort on one particular girl and let's call it a property of one man only! Each one gets a hole to feed his penis and no one gets hurt. Cool uh?
It was of course a man's idea, therefore quite an imbecile one, especially because women weren't asked an opinion (maybe they would rather have more than one man around, considering the high risk they ran that one man could be an imbecile). Men didn't really care too much about women back then (neither they do today, normally) and stood up clapping their hands and chose a name for this certificate of property, and they called it marriage, and decided that it was such a good thing, that each man could have his own personal sex toy for free , that they even invoked their religions to bless the idea. They decided that it was a Divine Institution, that the entire society could be founded on this cool thing. Amazing, men thought: now they could take one girl, celebrate a marriage, and their penises would have a permanent hole to enjoy friction with.
Men established precise rules: once a girl is owned it's private property and other men can't have it. You know, it's because it's hard to get some resources to exploit and sharing what is so rare already would be disastrous. Besides, there always was that children matter, and who the father was...
Unluckily men hadn't taken into account a few interesting details:
1) girls also enjoy sex, much more than they do, yet they are not enslaved by any need to fuck.
2) knowing that a girl is someone else's property induces other men to steal it, if anything to show that man that they own a much larger penis (being the size strictly connected with blunt actions like stealing girls)
3) girls are not objects
number 3) is still impossibly taught to men even nowadays.
In order to account for points 1) and 2), men created laws to punish adultery (usually punishing the girl), instructed girls that sex is bad and evil and so on. For point 3) there's nothing to do. There's only that much a man's brain can fathom, and as we say in Italian, one can't squeeze blood out of turnips.
Nowadays, after millennia since marriage was invented, men are horrified when girls enjoy sex. They see that as a potential threat basically: a girl that plays around with her vagina is likely to be impossibly contained within the bonds of marriage. It's a disaster. They might not own her, ever. She might be impossible to tame and to instruct to give her vagina for free to one man only.
Giving it for free by the way is critical for men. Having to pay for sex feels like paying a tax on breatheable air. Can you imagine a vampire having to pay to drink blood? What's worst is that the need for blood is so intense that a vampire would pay for it, but then he would feel like shit. Men hate it when they have to pay to feed the needs of their penis. That's why they are so quick at chastizing prostitution. Not only they have to bear the pain of needing to put the penis in a vagina, but they also need to pay to satisfy this natural necessity. How evil.
Men are sex vampires.
For a standard man, it doesn't really matter how beautiful or intelligent or important his woman is. Have a look at the standard laymen couple. Unfulfilled and dissatisfied human blobs. Why? Because they got married simply because she was the only woman that gave his penis a hole for free. Sometimes men are beyond redemption. I would rather take an Oscar Wilde then, one that has the guts to seek pleasure rather than the need to pee.
Because, luckily, as well as not all men revere their penis, not all men confuse sex with the need to pee. Hedonists (a category of people which I respect a lot) seek pleasure above all, they would never have sex with anyone unless this anyone is a pleasurable person. But they would never have sex with one person only as well.
In a certain sense I am also a hedonist, in the sense that I also seek pleasure in my own way. I don't go for the excesses that are typical of real hedonists of course. But I despise immoral chauvinist institutions that are meant to frustrate life rather than exhalting it.
Personally, I am not fond of sex. I understand and appreciate those that seek it for their pleasure, but personally I find it annoying as I said somewhere else. Foreplay and other practices are much more fun. The best, in my opinion, is taking a woman to orgasm without the need to have intercourse with her. Playing with a woman's body to provide her with pleasure is almost an artistic way to enjoy sexual life. In my opinion.
I also have a very peculiar relationship with activities that others relate to sex.
I'll give an example. Whenever I was told I could, I loved to kiss my friends. I am speaking of course of French kisses. Kisses are lovely. They are sweet and intimate and not nearly a sexual activity, regardless of what everyone else believes. I love to French girls, but I prefer to kiss friends: it's a great way to tell them I adore them. But of course, most of them would disagree on this point. And I am not really the type that would infringe their rules.
But then again, this would take me too far, and it's too late, and this post is about men and their vampiric attitude towards sex. So, goodnight, and see you.
PS: There was another entry number thirty nine before. I read it and considered it disgusting. I couldn't accept I wrote it. So I made this one, which is a lot better. In my opinion.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Post Number Thirty-Eight: Haunting Unbearable Lightness of Being
Of a Train of Thoughts Induced by Lack of Sleep, and Of the Always Unbearable Lightness of Being that Triggered The Creation Of This Blog
I admit I am (pleasantly) surprised. First of all, this mail I got. On an old account, one I should shut down soon. It was telling me someone wrote a testimonial for me on my page on friendster.com. I have to be honest and point out that I open that page very rarely. I don't know why it doesn't really catch up with me. Perhaps because in the end, I am too talkative. Many things can be said about me, but certainly not that I am coincise. Well, someone said that too but he was probably on high.
Anyway, I got this testimonial notification, and noticing who wrote it, I just couldn't wait to see it.
Look, let's be straightforward, for once in my life. Who wrote it knows I am talking of her words. I'll be frank, my friend. Your esteem almost moved me. Really. I don't exactly know what is it that I have done or said to deserve so much from such an intelligent human being, but know that, for an incredibly long time (entire minutes!) you left me wordless.
And that is quite a feat. For anyone.
Then, there is the sudden "popularity" of my blog. I never really thought it could be of interest to those who don't know me already. Actually I thought I was going to be the only one reading it (and actually I don't read it). Nonetheless it seems that a number of people, whose comments evidently indicate an interesting mind behind the hands that typed them, have come here, read my words, and (with my pleasure) keep returning. I feel the urge to apologize for not taking into account the fact that more people are reading me now. I'll keep typing as if I and few others were the only readers, because that's how thoughts flow out of my mind. And if you keep returning, you will always have my warm welcome.
Hopefully, Miss Izzy, the Singaporean famous Party Girl, will excuse me if I quote her by saying that blogs are strange. Although not for the reason she mentioned in her entry, a few days ago. More precisely, for other reasons too, one of which is that they drive people close to someone else's mind, even when this someone is faraway, and never met.
Heh, what am I saying? I must be really sleepy if I can't see what I am saying: blogs are like books. Good philosophy books, sometimes, or good diaries. Or bad books, depending on who the writer is. When we open a book, a magic box of immense power, we hear and feel the words and thoughts of someone who is not near. But you need to be an accomplished author to publish a book (which is a nonsense, if you think about it). Anybody, instead, can type a blog. And read it for free. Does this equal to say I am writing a book here? No. Not really. It's just a flow of thoughts, although I admit my entries are often connected, in subtle ways.
But I am writing a book after all. A fantasy novel. But that's another of my fixations, fantasy, and nobody deserves two fixations on the same day.
Hadn't I loved English so much, my blog would be in Italian. This means that no one would probably enjoy it unless they were fluent in Italian. But then again, I do love English. Many things happen by mere coincidence. Human beings find it very hard to accept that, very often, there is no reason why things happen. They just do happen. Or actually, there is a reason in the sense that whatever happens is always the result of something else that happened before and triggered a chain of consequences. In this neverending game of causes and effects, our brains, or more precisely, living things, are the chaotic element. A micro-current flows through the synapses of a certain brain of a certain living being, and triggers an unpredictable and unforeseen action, which in turn activates a flow of consequences that branch throughout the spectrum of possibilities. Sometimes I entertain myself thinking of what would happen if something apparently insignificant never took place.
During the early centuries of the glorious history of Rome, the Gauls came very close to razing the city. Their plan was to attack at night and catch the Romans by surprise. But geese (I mean the birds, yes) on the Capitol (which is the main hill of Rome and not the Congress in Washington DC) were disturbed in their sleep by the approach of the Barbarians and their quacks waked up the Roman soldiers. The plan of the barbarians failed, and Rome was saved. By quacking geese.
Absolutely beautiful. If there hadn't been geese on the Capitol Hill that night, I would most likely not be here today. I would not even exist. It makes quite an effect to think I owe my very existence to a quacking goose. But it makes much more an effect to think that somehow, everything that happened after the geese woke up the Romans actually led to some of the most beautiful pages of human history: the pages that tell us of the Roman civilization.
Those who started reading my blog only recently, in my opinion are missing the best entries. Why is this blog called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"? It was the topic of my very first post. Those who wish to know, should have a look, perhaps.
When I started typing this post, I wanted to mention the fact that I do not believe in God. Then I realized I did it already, in my post number two. Perhaps I should start reading back my old entries. Lest I start repeating myself. Not that I don't normally repeat myself.
I once talked about my blog with a Russian girl I adore. I know she wouldn't agree with most of my writings, especially about Art, although of course I am not going to change my opinion on what Art means. Her opinion, anyway, counts a lot (although not hers alone). I tried to explain then, what this blog was all about. Why I am typing it. What I am trying to do by typing it. I thought it would be very easy to explain, but then it turned out it wasn't. I had to think about it seriously before realizing this is an exploration. I am probing my own mind, in the same way I loved to dissect and analyze pretty much anything I've come upon. If a pattern exists in everything, then a pattern exists in my mind too.
There are certain milestones, in my way of viewing the world. One of them is weight. I need it. I crave it. I yearn for it. I do not gain pleasure from lightness. Perhaps it's a limit, but I am proud of it in my own way. We live in a world where light, inane things seem to be what counts the most. Buying the newest trendy wear. Going out dancing. Having mindless fun. No thinking. No fusses. No hidden meanings to find. Just instant satisfaction.
Don't you feel it's void? I do. My own experiences at the Disco were tragic if not melancholic. First of all, few things I hate more than dancing. Especially because I *really* can't stand disco music. Much less loud disco music. I am that boring and proud of it, yes. So I sat by the counter and watched them, and thought about them. Them, the people. The Saturday Night youngsters that paid more than they'd probably milked out of their parents in one week, to be there and dance. The loud, ultimately empty music. So loud they were numbed by it. Their minds devoid of everything. Emptied. All that existed was the mind numbing sound, the dance, and the hope of taking a girl home and have sex. Mindless sex.
Then I understood them. In the empty world we live, the world of brand new SUV and soft-porn pop videos, the world of grades and exams, the world of social restrictions and mind-boggling threats, these people were just trying to flee, to evade, to find a way out. To clear their mind and stop thinking. To just go there and dance and let the music daze them bringing them to the verge of being dancing machines.
For a split second I almost envied them. I would find no pleasure in this empty replacement for a vacuous void. Then I realized I couldn't envy them. Instead I felt there was a melancholic lack of weight in the world. I suddenly knew why most of those very dancing guys and girls end up taking ecstasy and then something else. And then something tougher than that. And at the end you find them half-dead on the corner of a decadent building in the peripherals of our civilized capitals. They are squeezed not by weight, but by the unbearable lightness of being. This lack of weight is so destructive of humanity, that we almost feel the urge to fill it. Because if we don't, what's life worth?
But then again, I am repeating myself. I know already that I, for one, feel a desperate need for weight. Just that. I love thinking. I love being induced to think. I love reading things that make me think. I am perhaps a thinking machine. And then I love typing my thoughts.
And so the people get convinced that, for sure, they aren't dealing with a normal person.
But that's what I love the most of myself, after all.
I admit I am (pleasantly) surprised. First of all, this mail I got. On an old account, one I should shut down soon. It was telling me someone wrote a testimonial for me on my page on friendster.com. I have to be honest and point out that I open that page very rarely. I don't know why it doesn't really catch up with me. Perhaps because in the end, I am too talkative. Many things can be said about me, but certainly not that I am coincise. Well, someone said that too but he was probably on high.
Anyway, I got this testimonial notification, and noticing who wrote it, I just couldn't wait to see it.
Look, let's be straightforward, for once in my life. Who wrote it knows I am talking of her words. I'll be frank, my friend. Your esteem almost moved me. Really. I don't exactly know what is it that I have done or said to deserve so much from such an intelligent human being, but know that, for an incredibly long time (entire minutes!) you left me wordless.
And that is quite a feat. For anyone.
Then, there is the sudden "popularity" of my blog. I never really thought it could be of interest to those who don't know me already. Actually I thought I was going to be the only one reading it (and actually I don't read it). Nonetheless it seems that a number of people, whose comments evidently indicate an interesting mind behind the hands that typed them, have come here, read my words, and (with my pleasure) keep returning. I feel the urge to apologize for not taking into account the fact that more people are reading me now. I'll keep typing as if I and few others were the only readers, because that's how thoughts flow out of my mind. And if you keep returning, you will always have my warm welcome.
Hopefully, Miss Izzy, the Singaporean famous Party Girl, will excuse me if I quote her by saying that blogs are strange. Although not for the reason she mentioned in her entry, a few days ago. More precisely, for other reasons too, one of which is that they drive people close to someone else's mind, even when this someone is faraway, and never met.
Heh, what am I saying? I must be really sleepy if I can't see what I am saying: blogs are like books. Good philosophy books, sometimes, or good diaries. Or bad books, depending on who the writer is. When we open a book, a magic box of immense power, we hear and feel the words and thoughts of someone who is not near. But you need to be an accomplished author to publish a book (which is a nonsense, if you think about it). Anybody, instead, can type a blog. And read it for free. Does this equal to say I am writing a book here? No. Not really. It's just a flow of thoughts, although I admit my entries are often connected, in subtle ways.
But I am writing a book after all. A fantasy novel. But that's another of my fixations, fantasy, and nobody deserves two fixations on the same day.
Hadn't I loved English so much, my blog would be in Italian. This means that no one would probably enjoy it unless they were fluent in Italian. But then again, I do love English. Many things happen by mere coincidence. Human beings find it very hard to accept that, very often, there is no reason why things happen. They just do happen. Or actually, there is a reason in the sense that whatever happens is always the result of something else that happened before and triggered a chain of consequences. In this neverending game of causes and effects, our brains, or more precisely, living things, are the chaotic element. A micro-current flows through the synapses of a certain brain of a certain living being, and triggers an unpredictable and unforeseen action, which in turn activates a flow of consequences that branch throughout the spectrum of possibilities. Sometimes I entertain myself thinking of what would happen if something apparently insignificant never took place.
During the early centuries of the glorious history of Rome, the Gauls came very close to razing the city. Their plan was to attack at night and catch the Romans by surprise. But geese (I mean the birds, yes) on the Capitol (which is the main hill of Rome and not the Congress in Washington DC) were disturbed in their sleep by the approach of the Barbarians and their quacks waked up the Roman soldiers. The plan of the barbarians failed, and Rome was saved. By quacking geese.
Absolutely beautiful. If there hadn't been geese on the Capitol Hill that night, I would most likely not be here today. I would not even exist. It makes quite an effect to think I owe my very existence to a quacking goose. But it makes much more an effect to think that somehow, everything that happened after the geese woke up the Romans actually led to some of the most beautiful pages of human history: the pages that tell us of the Roman civilization.
Those who started reading my blog only recently, in my opinion are missing the best entries. Why is this blog called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"? It was the topic of my very first post. Those who wish to know, should have a look, perhaps.
When I started typing this post, I wanted to mention the fact that I do not believe in God. Then I realized I did it already, in my post number two. Perhaps I should start reading back my old entries. Lest I start repeating myself. Not that I don't normally repeat myself.
I once talked about my blog with a Russian girl I adore. I know she wouldn't agree with most of my writings, especially about Art, although of course I am not going to change my opinion on what Art means. Her opinion, anyway, counts a lot (although not hers alone). I tried to explain then, what this blog was all about. Why I am typing it. What I am trying to do by typing it. I thought it would be very easy to explain, but then it turned out it wasn't. I had to think about it seriously before realizing this is an exploration. I am probing my own mind, in the same way I loved to dissect and analyze pretty much anything I've come upon. If a pattern exists in everything, then a pattern exists in my mind too.
There are certain milestones, in my way of viewing the world. One of them is weight. I need it. I crave it. I yearn for it. I do not gain pleasure from lightness. Perhaps it's a limit, but I am proud of it in my own way. We live in a world where light, inane things seem to be what counts the most. Buying the newest trendy wear. Going out dancing. Having mindless fun. No thinking. No fusses. No hidden meanings to find. Just instant satisfaction.
Don't you feel it's void? I do. My own experiences at the Disco were tragic if not melancholic. First of all, few things I hate more than dancing. Especially because I *really* can't stand disco music. Much less loud disco music. I am that boring and proud of it, yes. So I sat by the counter and watched them, and thought about them. Them, the people. The Saturday Night youngsters that paid more than they'd probably milked out of their parents in one week, to be there and dance. The loud, ultimately empty music. So loud they were numbed by it. Their minds devoid of everything. Emptied. All that existed was the mind numbing sound, the dance, and the hope of taking a girl home and have sex. Mindless sex.
Then I understood them. In the empty world we live, the world of brand new SUV and soft-porn pop videos, the world of grades and exams, the world of social restrictions and mind-boggling threats, these people were just trying to flee, to evade, to find a way out. To clear their mind and stop thinking. To just go there and dance and let the music daze them bringing them to the verge of being dancing machines.
For a split second I almost envied them. I would find no pleasure in this empty replacement for a vacuous void. Then I realized I couldn't envy them. Instead I felt there was a melancholic lack of weight in the world. I suddenly knew why most of those very dancing guys and girls end up taking ecstasy and then something else. And then something tougher than that. And at the end you find them half-dead on the corner of a decadent building in the peripherals of our civilized capitals. They are squeezed not by weight, but by the unbearable lightness of being. This lack of weight is so destructive of humanity, that we almost feel the urge to fill it. Because if we don't, what's life worth?
But then again, I am repeating myself. I know already that I, for one, feel a desperate need for weight. Just that. I love thinking. I love being induced to think. I love reading things that make me think. I am perhaps a thinking machine. And then I love typing my thoughts.
And so the people get convinced that, for sure, they aren't dealing with a normal person.
But that's what I love the most of myself, after all.
Post Number Thirty-Seven: Cosmic Rhapsody
Of my Fixation with Science
I spent a long time in University, for various reasons, majoring Physics. Taking for granted no one among my readers is going to take me for a normal person, I won't digress on what my peers think of me for the simple fact that I chose to major Physics. Physics is very much like a part of my inner self: the human attempt to find a logical path lurking beneath the chaotic superficial appearance of reality.
We have been lucky to live in a universe where natural phenomena can be described through mathematics. If you think about it, mathematics should be a consequence of the way our mind works (when it works), and it should come as an astounding marvelous surprise that equations can predict the course of natural events. I have no intention to waste my (and especially your) precious time digressing in the old argument whether God exists or not and whether He created the world or not. Personally, I shall be honest: I don't care if God exists or not. I have no reason to believe the Christian God (as described in the Bible) exists for real, and I admit that a different kind of God (a-la Immanuel Kant) could exist, or could not as well. Anyway God is not the point here.
In fact, what I am concerned with in this moment, is that I can tell you precisely how long a stone will take to fall from my hand to the ground. I can even tell you what kind of curve a missile will draw in the sky before falling on the head of the next enemy of the American interests. I am not going to tell you this by watching in a crystal ball or uttering magical syllables. I will just write down a few equations and there you go: I give you the answer. And it's gonna be right (unless I make likely mistakes while computing of course).
We live in a universe where, for some incredible coincidence, mathematics are not just a puzzle for absent-minded nerds, but a tool to describe the effects of natural phenomena. Isn't that amazing?
Of course, the charm of this fascinating universe was completely lost in the University, where everything gravitates around grades, exams, tests and whatnot. Things that have little to nothing to do with the natural phenomena we should be studying.
Italian teachers are perhaps unique in the world.
More than 1000 years ago (no typo, I mean one thousand years), the University of Bologna (central Italy) was founded. More or less in the same century another University was founded in Pavia, 60 kms south of Milan, a city that back then was the capital of a local relatively powerful kingdom. Our millenary tradition of University should guarantee for an immense amount of experience, grounded on centuries above centuries of scholarship. In fact, the University of Bologna is the ancientmost in Europe, and I presume in the world too.
Nonetheless, the Twentieth century brought a new form of evil upon our schools: a philosopher known as Benedetto Croce. Let's put aside the fact that he was the official philosopher of Fascism. He also believed, for some reason, that science and art are "inferior" to literature, and that practice is inferior to theory. As a consequence, our Universities were shaped by Mussolini according to the infamous "Riforma Gentile", a plan of Reformation created by Gentile, a Fascist minster, and based on the theories of Benedetto Croce. You can imagine the consequences. Especially because, after that Reformation, no one ever thought of reconsidering it. Well, until we got the present dwarf dictator, Berlusconi. Berlusconi believes that Universities are a sort of business company and they should be led accordingly. What was bad has become worse. But I would rather avoid discussing this kind of things in detail. My stomach is not strong enough to stand the laws imposed by Berlusconi and his bunch of gangsters.
It will suffice to say that the experience I had in University was so disappointing that, despite my natural passion for science, I just couldn't swallow the lectures and especially the teachers.
I spoke so much about these inanities, that I totally forgot why I started typing this post. It certainly had to do with the fact that I spent a long time in University, but unluckily I have no idea what it was supposed to be about. And the fact that I use cryptic titles doesn't help much.
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on my reader's disposition towards my posts) I have many interests, and a number of fixations I keep mumbling over and over again. My fixation with science has deep roots, perhaps the deepest if we don't consider classical music (Classical Music, I can say, has been a part of me since I was born).
I usually like to mark my entrance in the world of science with the day when I was given "Cosmos", a book by Carl Sagan. I presume it's widely known in Anglosaxon countries. In Italy it was almost unknown, especially because the TV program didn't go on air in the country (still thanks to Benedetto Croce's philosophy, yes). I had smallpox and I was trapped in bed. It was the year 1981 and one of my mum's pupils (my mum is a pianist and teaches piano at the Conservatory of Milan) decided, out of the blue, that I had to read Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Yes, in Italian. I might be not normal but I can assure you I spoke no English at 7 year old.
The reading was mind boggling. I admit I didn't really get the whole idea. In fact I read that book again. Five times to be precise, before I turned 12.
There was something with how Carl Sagan wrote about science that just made me dream. I don't know if you ever read anything by Carl Sagan. If you did, you know what I am talking about. It's poetry. Scientific poetry in a way, however this might sound as an oxymoron. Saying that I loved the book is a ridiculous way to put it. Ludicrous. I love an amazing number of books, but I haven't read them five times in five years before turning 12. And I read Cosmos another 4 times after the age of 12. Last time I read it I was 24 and fully aware of its meaning. But not a jot less in awe of that starry vault upon my head.
Incidentally, when I was reading Cosmos for the eighth time, I was also studying Immanuel Kant during my final year in High School. I never truly appreciated Kant's approach to philosophy, but I could never forget his statement: "I live my life with the moral law inside me, and the vault of the starry sky above me". Especially the second part. For sure, when Kant said that, he was feeling the same I did when reading Cosmos, and went out at night watching that starry sky above my head. I couldn't say it any better.
I am fascinated by space. That's why I love *certain* science fiction (that excludes completely the movie Alien, its sequels, its prequels, its latest apocalyptic epiphanies and anything remotely resembling it). In fact, my ideal science fiction show has always been Star Trek. I was desperately fond of Spock when I was young. I actually am STILL desperately fond of Spock.
But Star Trek is another of my fixations and I don't think any of my readers deserve more than one fixation per day, so I will give this post a break. Besides, I am just blabbering. I typed a lot considering I don't know what I started this post for after all. And, what counts the most, I am hungry: and since food isn't going to get cooked by itself and even fixated idealists need to feed themselves, I really think I have more mundane activities to dedicate myself to.
This much, to say: sayonara.
Note: Considering the popularity of Bozzetto's cartoon "Italy and Europe", I placed a link to the right. In case someone missed the post.
I spent a long time in University, for various reasons, majoring Physics. Taking for granted no one among my readers is going to take me for a normal person, I won't digress on what my peers think of me for the simple fact that I chose to major Physics. Physics is very much like a part of my inner self: the human attempt to find a logical path lurking beneath the chaotic superficial appearance of reality.
We have been lucky to live in a universe where natural phenomena can be described through mathematics. If you think about it, mathematics should be a consequence of the way our mind works (when it works), and it should come as an astounding marvelous surprise that equations can predict the course of natural events. I have no intention to waste my (and especially your) precious time digressing in the old argument whether God exists or not and whether He created the world or not. Personally, I shall be honest: I don't care if God exists or not. I have no reason to believe the Christian God (as described in the Bible) exists for real, and I admit that a different kind of God (a-la Immanuel Kant) could exist, or could not as well. Anyway God is not the point here.
In fact, what I am concerned with in this moment, is that I can tell you precisely how long a stone will take to fall from my hand to the ground. I can even tell you what kind of curve a missile will draw in the sky before falling on the head of the next enemy of the American interests. I am not going to tell you this by watching in a crystal ball or uttering magical syllables. I will just write down a few equations and there you go: I give you the answer. And it's gonna be right (unless I make likely mistakes while computing of course).
We live in a universe where, for some incredible coincidence, mathematics are not just a puzzle for absent-minded nerds, but a tool to describe the effects of natural phenomena. Isn't that amazing?
Of course, the charm of this fascinating universe was completely lost in the University, where everything gravitates around grades, exams, tests and whatnot. Things that have little to nothing to do with the natural phenomena we should be studying.
Italian teachers are perhaps unique in the world.
More than 1000 years ago (no typo, I mean one thousand years), the University of Bologna (central Italy) was founded. More or less in the same century another University was founded in Pavia, 60 kms south of Milan, a city that back then was the capital of a local relatively powerful kingdom. Our millenary tradition of University should guarantee for an immense amount of experience, grounded on centuries above centuries of scholarship. In fact, the University of Bologna is the ancientmost in Europe, and I presume in the world too.
Nonetheless, the Twentieth century brought a new form of evil upon our schools: a philosopher known as Benedetto Croce. Let's put aside the fact that he was the official philosopher of Fascism. He also believed, for some reason, that science and art are "inferior" to literature, and that practice is inferior to theory. As a consequence, our Universities were shaped by Mussolini according to the infamous "Riforma Gentile", a plan of Reformation created by Gentile, a Fascist minster, and based on the theories of Benedetto Croce. You can imagine the consequences. Especially because, after that Reformation, no one ever thought of reconsidering it. Well, until we got the present dwarf dictator, Berlusconi. Berlusconi believes that Universities are a sort of business company and they should be led accordingly. What was bad has become worse. But I would rather avoid discussing this kind of things in detail. My stomach is not strong enough to stand the laws imposed by Berlusconi and his bunch of gangsters.
It will suffice to say that the experience I had in University was so disappointing that, despite my natural passion for science, I just couldn't swallow the lectures and especially the teachers.
I spoke so much about these inanities, that I totally forgot why I started typing this post. It certainly had to do with the fact that I spent a long time in University, but unluckily I have no idea what it was supposed to be about. And the fact that I use cryptic titles doesn't help much.
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on my reader's disposition towards my posts) I have many interests, and a number of fixations I keep mumbling over and over again. My fixation with science has deep roots, perhaps the deepest if we don't consider classical music (Classical Music, I can say, has been a part of me since I was born).
I usually like to mark my entrance in the world of science with the day when I was given "Cosmos", a book by Carl Sagan. I presume it's widely known in Anglosaxon countries. In Italy it was almost unknown, especially because the TV program didn't go on air in the country (still thanks to Benedetto Croce's philosophy, yes). I had smallpox and I was trapped in bed. It was the year 1981 and one of my mum's pupils (my mum is a pianist and teaches piano at the Conservatory of Milan) decided, out of the blue, that I had to read Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Yes, in Italian. I might be not normal but I can assure you I spoke no English at 7 year old.
The reading was mind boggling. I admit I didn't really get the whole idea. In fact I read that book again. Five times to be precise, before I turned 12.
There was something with how Carl Sagan wrote about science that just made me dream. I don't know if you ever read anything by Carl Sagan. If you did, you know what I am talking about. It's poetry. Scientific poetry in a way, however this might sound as an oxymoron. Saying that I loved the book is a ridiculous way to put it. Ludicrous. I love an amazing number of books, but I haven't read them five times in five years before turning 12. And I read Cosmos another 4 times after the age of 12. Last time I read it I was 24 and fully aware of its meaning. But not a jot less in awe of that starry vault upon my head.
Incidentally, when I was reading Cosmos for the eighth time, I was also studying Immanuel Kant during my final year in High School. I never truly appreciated Kant's approach to philosophy, but I could never forget his statement: "I live my life with the moral law inside me, and the vault of the starry sky above me". Especially the second part. For sure, when Kant said that, he was feeling the same I did when reading Cosmos, and went out at night watching that starry sky above my head. I couldn't say it any better.
I am fascinated by space. That's why I love *certain* science fiction (that excludes completely the movie Alien, its sequels, its prequels, its latest apocalyptic epiphanies and anything remotely resembling it). In fact, my ideal science fiction show has always been Star Trek. I was desperately fond of Spock when I was young. I actually am STILL desperately fond of Spock.
But Star Trek is another of my fixations and I don't think any of my readers deserve more than one fixation per day, so I will give this post a break. Besides, I am just blabbering. I typed a lot considering I don't know what I started this post for after all. And, what counts the most, I am hungry: and since food isn't going to get cooked by itself and even fixated idealists need to feed themselves, I really think I have more mundane activities to dedicate myself to.
This much, to say: sayonara.
Note: Considering the popularity of Bozzetto's cartoon "Italy and Europe", I placed a link to the right. In case someone missed the post.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Post Number Thirty-Six: Freedom
Of the Celebrations for the End of Fascism
In 1922, Benito Mussolini took power in Italy and transformed the young nation (Italy was unified in 1860) into a dire dictatorship. Mussolini's folly led Italy to WWII on the side of Nazi Germany, until on April 25th, 1945, the Allied forces and the leftist rebels, united, liberated the country.
During the Fascist era, Italians knew no freedom, nor peace. Incidentally, 2005 is exactly 60 years after the fall of Fascism. The City Hall of Bergamo, a nice town in the North of Italy, hired the cartoonist Bruno Bozzetto to celebrate the return to Freedom. Since I have noticed the last cartoon by Bozzetto met some appreciation from my readers, I'll be glad to link to another, although this is not hilarious. I actually find it very poetic.
I would like to dedicate it to all those that just don't fit in the narrow space others have drawn for them. That includes me, incidentally.
So, to all those that seek Freedom, here's the link to Bozzetto's cartoon:
http://www.bozzetto.com/libert%E0.htm
Note: Captions are in Italian. Here's a translation:
"La Libertà" : Freedom
"La Libertà va sempre conquistata" : Freedom must always be conquerred
In 1922, Benito Mussolini took power in Italy and transformed the young nation (Italy was unified in 1860) into a dire dictatorship. Mussolini's folly led Italy to WWII on the side of Nazi Germany, until on April 25th, 1945, the Allied forces and the leftist rebels, united, liberated the country.
During the Fascist era, Italians knew no freedom, nor peace. Incidentally, 2005 is exactly 60 years after the fall of Fascism. The City Hall of Bergamo, a nice town in the North of Italy, hired the cartoonist Bruno Bozzetto to celebrate the return to Freedom. Since I have noticed the last cartoon by Bozzetto met some appreciation from my readers, I'll be glad to link to another, although this is not hilarious. I actually find it very poetic.
I would like to dedicate it to all those that just don't fit in the narrow space others have drawn for them. That includes me, incidentally.
So, to all those that seek Freedom, here's the link to Bozzetto's cartoon:
http://www.bozzetto.com/libert%E0.htm
Note: Captions are in Italian. Here's a translation:
"La Libertà" : Freedom
"La Libertà va sempre conquistata" : Freedom must always be conquerred
Post Number Thirty-Five: Italians and Europeans
Of the Difference Between Italians and Europeans
Bruno Bozzetto is a renowned Italian cartoonist. His sense of humor often tends to sarcasm but never fails to crack me up. He made this short flash cartoon about the difference between Italians and Europeans, giving a perfect portrait of what life is like in Italy. Long ago I was asked to link to this cartoon on my blog, so here you are: Follow the link and enjoy the cartoon
http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html
Bruno Bozzetto is a renowned Italian cartoonist. His sense of humor often tends to sarcasm but never fails to crack me up. He made this short flash cartoon about the difference between Italians and Europeans, giving a perfect portrait of what life is like in Italy. Long ago I was asked to link to this cartoon on my blog, so here you are: Follow the link and enjoy the cartoon
http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html
Post Number Thirty-Four: Beautiful Life
Of the Beauty of Small Things and of the Pursuit of Serenity.
When I start typing a post, normally, I know what I want to talk about. So I choose the title first, and type the post later.
Today, I will let my thoughts out freely without choosing a precise topic first. Possibly because I am in a conflicting and thoroughly contrasting mood. It's a mixture of melancholy and awe, amazement and nostalgia.
Where to begin from? I suppose it doesn't really matter. Two nights ago I indulged in watching American Beauty (the movie with Thora Birch and Kevin Spacey) for the second time. I am insanely fixated with movies (and books). This I stated already before, in my previous post on fixations. If you have seen American Beauty, you know what it's about. I will give my interpretation of the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, perhaps you shouldn't read further since I am going to spoil much of it.
Kevin Spacey plays the part of your typical American bourgeois. He's married and has a teen age daughter. He is sad, unfulfilled, disappointed. He doesn't have sex with his wife, doesn't talk to his daughter, who in turn hates him to the verge of hoping for his death. The reasons for this man's disappointment is that he is trying to live life the way others expect him to.
Then, the sight of an alluring blonde cheerleader, clicks something in Kevin Spacey's character's mind. He begins to live the life he wanted to live. He drops his job as a journalist after 14 years of career and gets an employment in a fast food, as waiter. "I want the least possible responsibilities" he tells the employer. He starts living his life. He chases his dreams and desires. Certainly, he's no more fitting in the kitsch ideal of American family.
At a certain point, a new character moves in the neighborhood. A former Marine soldier with scarce social life, who hates gays and tries to raise his only child with "discipline". This child, a teenager involved in selling drugs, in my opinion represents the director of this movie. First of all, he goes around with a videocam always in his hands. Second, he's the one that tries to tell the audience what's the hidden meaning of the movie. Because everything has a hidden meaning.
In a strikingly poetic scene, a paper bag is showed dancing in the wind among withered leaves. There is a surprising beauty and a nostalgic atmosphere in this simple sight. Yet it proves the point of the movie. There is a hidden beauty in all things, and most of us deny this beauty because we can't perceive it, because we waste our precious life in the attempt of appearing as something we are not.
In a certain sense, American Beauty reminds me of another movie I have seen, and loved a lot: Coffee and Cigarettes. Ok, true enough: I hate coffee and cigarettes. I drink tea and do not smoke. Anyway, most people think that coffee and cigarettes are pleasurable, and the movie uses them as a "symbol" of what is pleasant. In the last, most poetic scene, two elders talk by a table, drinking a coffee.
One is literally dreaming. He lifts the cup of coffee imagining it's champagne. His toast is to Paris in the Twenties. That is, lightness and pleasure.
"Let's drink another coffee", the dreaming elder says
"We don't have time, it's about time to go back to work", the other answers. This other elder is all about duties and responsibilities. He insists to go back to work, don't waste time pleasuring yourself with coffee.
But the dreaming elder drinks his cup of coffee.
And dies.
There really is no way to explain this concept with words. It's like a Zen story, a Buddhist parable. What are we running after? Why can't this elder drink his last cup of coffee?
He died with pleasure in his lips (literally). Because he did what he wanted to do, in the end.
Ok, I wasn't expecting to mention her again, but isn't this ALSO the story of Sarong Party Girl, Izzy? Chastized like Kevin Spacey's character for living her life the way she likes it, and therefore not fitting the general idea of "good girl" that Singapore's government tries to hammer into its people? And the people that offend and insult her, are just like the old man telling his friend not to drink his cup of coffee because it's time to go back to work. Why denying him his last moment of pleasure? After all we are all going to die, whether we like it or not. If we died right now, would we be pleased of how we lived our life? Would we die with a smile on our lips?
Because this is the concept. It's not about how you obeyed your boss and stuck to your duties and therefore came to the end of your life with a certain sense you did what you had to do. It's about dying with a satisfied, pleasant, light smile on your lips. The smile I presume appears on Izzy's lips when she's doing what she enjoys the most. The smile that appears on my lips when, instead of rushing in my office like everyone else around me, I stop for a second and look north to the astounding profile of the snow-capped Alps, which I can see from the parking lot outside my office.
Most people are unfulfilled and disappointed with their lives. Maybe they think otherwise, but in the end they are not doing what they wish. This is ultimately sad. And they live on because they know everyone else is in the same condition. But when they see someone, in this world, is blissful, this they can't accept. I perceive the way certain colleagues of mine find it annoying that I am never stressed or disappointed at work. I like what I am doing. I like my peers. I like the Alps outside, I like my life, even if I bet most people would hang themselves rather than living my life. I don't do what people expect from me. I do what I feel right for me.
I feel peaceful. Serene. I don't desire happyness. That's an extreme, I dislike extremes. Besides, happyness is transient. What I desire is to be serene and calm in all those moments when I am not plain happy.
This is perhaps the reason why I find Buddhism so resonant with my inner self.
How many of us really realize how beautiful is a paper bag in the wind?
There is a Zen story I like to quote every now and then.
A man was chased by a tiger. He ran through the jungle and suddenly he reached the edge of a cliff. Losing his balance, with the tiger still after him, the man fell off the cliff. As he watched the ground below, he saw another tiger waiting for him at the end of the fall.
He looked around, and saw a flower growing on the slope. How beatiful that flower was!
This Zen story is again about the same topic. Dying with a smile on your lips. Perceving the beauty of a flower while you are falling off a cliff after being chased by a tiger, aware that another tiger is about to eat whatever remains of you after you hit the ground. Of all this fearsome perspective, what matters the most is the beauty of the flower. Because the beauty of a flower can fill our heart with an immense joy.
The flower can be something else for everyone. I see the beauty of the flower when I sit in front of the city hall in Stockholm, Sweden, and watch the calm lake Mälaren and the vast green woods that cover the islands of the city. Because Stockholm is a city among woods. A park city. When it rains in Stockholm, you can smell the scent of a forest while walking in the streets. It's beautiful. It's charming. It feels my heart with a sense of serenity that I miss all the year round.
But someone else can find this bliss in sex, or in a butterfly, or in the people of the world, or in a teardrop, or a shining star, or the light at dusk. There is so much beauty in this world, so much charm, that we should be thankful for passing by to witness it. Why wasting it? Why pretending it doesn't exist?
Why letting life stress us and why letting others tell us what kind of life we should live, forgoing all the beauty of the world to just be "one of the many", something others will call normal and won't consider worth of anything more than a passing glance?
I would feel so empty, if I were "normal". Luckily, of all the people I have met, no one ever called me a normal person.
I love classical music, books, thoughtful movies, the Sindarin language, the plants of Stockholm, the British people, emancipated girls, the profile of the Alps, the foam of the Mediterranean, the scent of woods, the starry sky above my head, the courage of Thomas Jefferson, the skin of Jessica Alba, the mind of my Singaporean friend Viv, the charm of my Russian friend Tatiana, the smile of my Italian friends (incidentally almost all my friends are females - which is the proof that men and women *can* be friends). I love monuments, I love the sound of an organ and chinese tai music, I love the painted glasses of Cathedrals (no matter how I despise the local priests), I love dusk and night time (I am a creature of the winter dusk, as most tell me). I love graveyards in Scotland with mist and glaring tombstones. I love Japan and its culture. I love China and its charm, I love the woods of Norway and the castles of England, the Tour Eiffel and the Coliseum. I love Romans, I love Greeks and butterflies. I love animals. I love cats and lions, tigers and elks. I love the feeling of a morning breeze in Finland.
How could I be stressed in a world where there is SO MUCH to love?
I wonder if anyone would dare read so far. I guess this is quite a boring entry. But I don't type for my readers, I type because I feel like typing.
I was saying at the beginning that I was feeling amazed. Well yes. I really didn't expect to discover something I found out no longer than 60 minutes ago. I found another comment from Izzy, in my blog. Considering that my blog is probably the last thing a normal teenager would like to read, I felt somehow proud that that teenager, instead, still drops by. As usual ever since Viv mentioned Sarong Party Girl on her blog, I paid a visit to Izzy's musings, and ... well, there was a link to my blog...
Well, if you are reading here, thank you Izzy. I am glad you appreciate this blog enough to consider it worth a link on yours. I presume this means that a lot of people will see the link and drop by to pay me a visit. I expect most of them to flee in terror. I'm of course going to love those that won't.
Today, I have decided not to spit poison on anyone. I often complain about Americans, about the Church, about our stupid dwarf dictator. If I do that, it's because in the end I just wish people were serene. I know they could, they just don't see the point. You know why I am so angry with the Italian government, why I am so ashamed of being a citizen of this Medieval dictatorship? Because I love Italy. I love it so much that it makes my heart bleed to see it reduced to a land of idiotic girls and zombified apes.
I think I have said enough. And I have chosen a title for this post. I bid my readers goodbye and see you in my next post.
Au revoir!
When I start typing a post, normally, I know what I want to talk about. So I choose the title first, and type the post later.
Today, I will let my thoughts out freely without choosing a precise topic first. Possibly because I am in a conflicting and thoroughly contrasting mood. It's a mixture of melancholy and awe, amazement and nostalgia.
Where to begin from? I suppose it doesn't really matter. Two nights ago I indulged in watching American Beauty (the movie with Thora Birch and Kevin Spacey) for the second time. I am insanely fixated with movies (and books). This I stated already before, in my previous post on fixations. If you have seen American Beauty, you know what it's about. I will give my interpretation of the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, perhaps you shouldn't read further since I am going to spoil much of it.
Kevin Spacey plays the part of your typical American bourgeois. He's married and has a teen age daughter. He is sad, unfulfilled, disappointed. He doesn't have sex with his wife, doesn't talk to his daughter, who in turn hates him to the verge of hoping for his death. The reasons for this man's disappointment is that he is trying to live life the way others expect him to.
Then, the sight of an alluring blonde cheerleader, clicks something in Kevin Spacey's character's mind. He begins to live the life he wanted to live. He drops his job as a journalist after 14 years of career and gets an employment in a fast food, as waiter. "I want the least possible responsibilities" he tells the employer. He starts living his life. He chases his dreams and desires. Certainly, he's no more fitting in the kitsch ideal of American family.
At a certain point, a new character moves in the neighborhood. A former Marine soldier with scarce social life, who hates gays and tries to raise his only child with "discipline". This child, a teenager involved in selling drugs, in my opinion represents the director of this movie. First of all, he goes around with a videocam always in his hands. Second, he's the one that tries to tell the audience what's the hidden meaning of the movie. Because everything has a hidden meaning.
In a strikingly poetic scene, a paper bag is showed dancing in the wind among withered leaves. There is a surprising beauty and a nostalgic atmosphere in this simple sight. Yet it proves the point of the movie. There is a hidden beauty in all things, and most of us deny this beauty because we can't perceive it, because we waste our precious life in the attempt of appearing as something we are not.
In a certain sense, American Beauty reminds me of another movie I have seen, and loved a lot: Coffee and Cigarettes. Ok, true enough: I hate coffee and cigarettes. I drink tea and do not smoke. Anyway, most people think that coffee and cigarettes are pleasurable, and the movie uses them as a "symbol" of what is pleasant. In the last, most poetic scene, two elders talk by a table, drinking a coffee.
One is literally dreaming. He lifts the cup of coffee imagining it's champagne. His toast is to Paris in the Twenties. That is, lightness and pleasure.
"Let's drink another coffee", the dreaming elder says
"We don't have time, it's about time to go back to work", the other answers. This other elder is all about duties and responsibilities. He insists to go back to work, don't waste time pleasuring yourself with coffee.
But the dreaming elder drinks his cup of coffee.
And dies.
There really is no way to explain this concept with words. It's like a Zen story, a Buddhist parable. What are we running after? Why can't this elder drink his last cup of coffee?
He died with pleasure in his lips (literally). Because he did what he wanted to do, in the end.
Ok, I wasn't expecting to mention her again, but isn't this ALSO the story of Sarong Party Girl, Izzy? Chastized like Kevin Spacey's character for living her life the way she likes it, and therefore not fitting the general idea of "good girl" that Singapore's government tries to hammer into its people? And the people that offend and insult her, are just like the old man telling his friend not to drink his cup of coffee because it's time to go back to work. Why denying him his last moment of pleasure? After all we are all going to die, whether we like it or not. If we died right now, would we be pleased of how we lived our life? Would we die with a smile on our lips?
Because this is the concept. It's not about how you obeyed your boss and stuck to your duties and therefore came to the end of your life with a certain sense you did what you had to do. It's about dying with a satisfied, pleasant, light smile on your lips. The smile I presume appears on Izzy's lips when she's doing what she enjoys the most. The smile that appears on my lips when, instead of rushing in my office like everyone else around me, I stop for a second and look north to the astounding profile of the snow-capped Alps, which I can see from the parking lot outside my office.
Most people are unfulfilled and disappointed with their lives. Maybe they think otherwise, but in the end they are not doing what they wish. This is ultimately sad. And they live on because they know everyone else is in the same condition. But when they see someone, in this world, is blissful, this they can't accept. I perceive the way certain colleagues of mine find it annoying that I am never stressed or disappointed at work. I like what I am doing. I like my peers. I like the Alps outside, I like my life, even if I bet most people would hang themselves rather than living my life. I don't do what people expect from me. I do what I feel right for me.
I feel peaceful. Serene. I don't desire happyness. That's an extreme, I dislike extremes. Besides, happyness is transient. What I desire is to be serene and calm in all those moments when I am not plain happy.
This is perhaps the reason why I find Buddhism so resonant with my inner self.
How many of us really realize how beautiful is a paper bag in the wind?
There is a Zen story I like to quote every now and then.
A man was chased by a tiger. He ran through the jungle and suddenly he reached the edge of a cliff. Losing his balance, with the tiger still after him, the man fell off the cliff. As he watched the ground below, he saw another tiger waiting for him at the end of the fall.
He looked around, and saw a flower growing on the slope. How beatiful that flower was!
This Zen story is again about the same topic. Dying with a smile on your lips. Perceving the beauty of a flower while you are falling off a cliff after being chased by a tiger, aware that another tiger is about to eat whatever remains of you after you hit the ground. Of all this fearsome perspective, what matters the most is the beauty of the flower. Because the beauty of a flower can fill our heart with an immense joy.
The flower can be something else for everyone. I see the beauty of the flower when I sit in front of the city hall in Stockholm, Sweden, and watch the calm lake Mälaren and the vast green woods that cover the islands of the city. Because Stockholm is a city among woods. A park city. When it rains in Stockholm, you can smell the scent of a forest while walking in the streets. It's beautiful. It's charming. It feels my heart with a sense of serenity that I miss all the year round.
But someone else can find this bliss in sex, or in a butterfly, or in the people of the world, or in a teardrop, or a shining star, or the light at dusk. There is so much beauty in this world, so much charm, that we should be thankful for passing by to witness it. Why wasting it? Why pretending it doesn't exist?
Why letting life stress us and why letting others tell us what kind of life we should live, forgoing all the beauty of the world to just be "one of the many", something others will call normal and won't consider worth of anything more than a passing glance?
I would feel so empty, if I were "normal". Luckily, of all the people I have met, no one ever called me a normal person.
I love classical music, books, thoughtful movies, the Sindarin language, the plants of Stockholm, the British people, emancipated girls, the profile of the Alps, the foam of the Mediterranean, the scent of woods, the starry sky above my head, the courage of Thomas Jefferson, the skin of Jessica Alba, the mind of my Singaporean friend Viv, the charm of my Russian friend Tatiana, the smile of my Italian friends (incidentally almost all my friends are females - which is the proof that men and women *can* be friends). I love monuments, I love the sound of an organ and chinese tai music, I love the painted glasses of Cathedrals (no matter how I despise the local priests), I love dusk and night time (I am a creature of the winter dusk, as most tell me). I love graveyards in Scotland with mist and glaring tombstones. I love Japan and its culture. I love China and its charm, I love the woods of Norway and the castles of England, the Tour Eiffel and the Coliseum. I love Romans, I love Greeks and butterflies. I love animals. I love cats and lions, tigers and elks. I love the feeling of a morning breeze in Finland.
How could I be stressed in a world where there is SO MUCH to love?
I wonder if anyone would dare read so far. I guess this is quite a boring entry. But I don't type for my readers, I type because I feel like typing.
I was saying at the beginning that I was feeling amazed. Well yes. I really didn't expect to discover something I found out no longer than 60 minutes ago. I found another comment from Izzy, in my blog. Considering that my blog is probably the last thing a normal teenager would like to read, I felt somehow proud that that teenager, instead, still drops by. As usual ever since Viv mentioned Sarong Party Girl on her blog, I paid a visit to Izzy's musings, and ... well, there was a link to my blog...
Well, if you are reading here, thank you Izzy. I am glad you appreciate this blog enough to consider it worth a link on yours. I presume this means that a lot of people will see the link and drop by to pay me a visit. I expect most of them to flee in terror. I'm of course going to love those that won't.
Today, I have decided not to spit poison on anyone. I often complain about Americans, about the Church, about our stupid dwarf dictator. If I do that, it's because in the end I just wish people were serene. I know they could, they just don't see the point. You know why I am so angry with the Italian government, why I am so ashamed of being a citizen of this Medieval dictatorship? Because I love Italy. I love it so much that it makes my heart bleed to see it reduced to a land of idiotic girls and zombified apes.
I think I have said enough. And I have chosen a title for this post. I bid my readers goodbye and see you in my next post.
Au revoir!
Post Number Thirty-Three: It's a Matter of Style
Of the British Reaction to London Bombings
Sometimes I am recalled to the real world by the most unlikely chain of events.
In the past two days I have thought about typing a word or two on the Brits and on why I love them, but then I was distracted by various activities, most of which rather mundane.
I was now indulging in one of my fixations, that is women. In fact, I was considering how flawless and close to perfection Jessica Alba's skin is. Her body would be very close to my ideals if only she wasn't so petite. Had she somewhat broader shoulders, perhaps slightly larger bones... but the skin is perfect, or very close to perfection. And her muscles very elastic and flexible. Lovely, but something is missing... Anyway, seeing that she is not perfect enough, I jumped away from her pictures and moved on to Viv's blog, one of my favorite pasttimes after all. That reminded me of London, and I can't just let time go by without praising the Brits.
It has been said by Winston Churchill that the days when the powercrazed Nazis bombed London were the most glorious days for England.
Now I know what he meant.
How do people react to fear?
Let's go back in time.
When Saudi Arabians (SAUDI ARABIANS: heard this name? S-A-U-D-I A-R-A-B-I-A-N-S) attacked New York City (probably for fun) they toppled the Twin Towers. Americans reacted by screaming and shouting and rallying in cathedrals singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah" and showing off their muscles. Then they caught the occasion to invade Afghanistan and build an oilduct through that nation. Later they invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, had no weapons of mass destruction, and was pretty much minding its own business posing zero threat (ZERO THREAT: heart this concept? Z-E-R-O T-H-R-E-A-T) to the USA.
Fear, screams, panic and some rich bastards that caught the occasion to invade innocents leaving the responsible terrorists in peace. Nobody invaded, attacked or reprimanded Saudi Arabia. Still, almost all the terrorists on the planes that toppled the Twin Towers were Saudi Arabians. Osama Bin Laden is Saudi Arabian. Saudi Arabia has declared war against the Usa. Hello? Republican dickheads? Anybody home? It's SAUDI ARABIA, your source of oil dollars, that is attacking USA, not Iraq and not Afghanistan. No way trying to talk to the deaf. Americans are convinced it's been Saddam Hussein.
Maybe tomorrow Bush will tell them it's been China. Or North Korea. Or Iran.
It's been Saudi Arabia, anyway.
Pathetic. I am sorry for the American people. No one deserves the evil multinational companies that plague America.
Now terrorists (Saudi Arabians?) attacked London.
The next day, life was going on as usual, almost as if nothing had happened. No scenes of panic, no rallying in cathedrals singing "God Save the Queen"; I have seen people with stitches talking quietly at the news as if they had no bruises.
The Brits cannot be scared off. They do not lose control. The Brits are not afraid of the bombs that exploded in London. They are not panicking.
This is precisely what I esteem and admire in a people. One of the things I find most annoying in Southern Italians is the way they think they have to stress, uselessly exaggerating their emotions. Crying and shouting for any stupid reason.
In front of pain and disaster, the Brits haven't been shaken at all. They are back to their lives, keeping their emotions well hidden within their heart, which is where they are supposed to stay. The terrorists have lost their battle in England because they can't bring terror in London. The Brits don't react to fear. They have a dignity that most other peoples (Italians for example) do not have.
After this terrorist attack I understood how it must have been in London when the Nazis exploded V2s on the city.
Simply, the Brits were unshaken. They kept living, reacting with their undestructible dignity against brutality.
Incidentally, a people that knows no fear will not fall prey of dictatorship. In fact, Britain is the only country in Europe that never knew extremist dictatorships. There has never been a British Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pétain, Stalin.
I am in awe of the British people and their reaction to bombings. The Brits don't go on the street shouting and screaming and *pretending* to be suffering. They suffer in silence, with British dignity and honor.
Thank you, British people, for this lesson of dignity. I mourn your dead in silence and honor the Union Jack, and wish you to stay British forever.
We all should learn from them.
Sometimes I am recalled to the real world by the most unlikely chain of events.
In the past two days I have thought about typing a word or two on the Brits and on why I love them, but then I was distracted by various activities, most of which rather mundane.
I was now indulging in one of my fixations, that is women. In fact, I was considering how flawless and close to perfection Jessica Alba's skin is. Her body would be very close to my ideals if only she wasn't so petite. Had she somewhat broader shoulders, perhaps slightly larger bones... but the skin is perfect, or very close to perfection. And her muscles very elastic and flexible. Lovely, but something is missing... Anyway, seeing that she is not perfect enough, I jumped away from her pictures and moved on to Viv's blog, one of my favorite pasttimes after all. That reminded me of London, and I can't just let time go by without praising the Brits.
It has been said by Winston Churchill that the days when the powercrazed Nazis bombed London were the most glorious days for England.
Now I know what he meant.
How do people react to fear?
Let's go back in time.
When Saudi Arabians (SAUDI ARABIANS: heard this name? S-A-U-D-I A-R-A-B-I-A-N-S) attacked New York City (probably for fun) they toppled the Twin Towers. Americans reacted by screaming and shouting and rallying in cathedrals singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah" and showing off their muscles. Then they caught the occasion to invade Afghanistan and build an oilduct through that nation. Later they invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, had no weapons of mass destruction, and was pretty much minding its own business posing zero threat (ZERO THREAT: heart this concept? Z-E-R-O T-H-R-E-A-T) to the USA.
Fear, screams, panic and some rich bastards that caught the occasion to invade innocents leaving the responsible terrorists in peace. Nobody invaded, attacked or reprimanded Saudi Arabia. Still, almost all the terrorists on the planes that toppled the Twin Towers were Saudi Arabians. Osama Bin Laden is Saudi Arabian. Saudi Arabia has declared war against the Usa. Hello? Republican dickheads? Anybody home? It's SAUDI ARABIA, your source of oil dollars, that is attacking USA, not Iraq and not Afghanistan. No way trying to talk to the deaf. Americans are convinced it's been Saddam Hussein.
Maybe tomorrow Bush will tell them it's been China. Or North Korea. Or Iran.
It's been Saudi Arabia, anyway.
Pathetic. I am sorry for the American people. No one deserves the evil multinational companies that plague America.
Now terrorists (Saudi Arabians?) attacked London.
The next day, life was going on as usual, almost as if nothing had happened. No scenes of panic, no rallying in cathedrals singing "God Save the Queen"; I have seen people with stitches talking quietly at the news as if they had no bruises.
The Brits cannot be scared off. They do not lose control. The Brits are not afraid of the bombs that exploded in London. They are not panicking.
This is precisely what I esteem and admire in a people. One of the things I find most annoying in Southern Italians is the way they think they have to stress, uselessly exaggerating their emotions. Crying and shouting for any stupid reason.
In front of pain and disaster, the Brits haven't been shaken at all. They are back to their lives, keeping their emotions well hidden within their heart, which is where they are supposed to stay. The terrorists have lost their battle in England because they can't bring terror in London. The Brits don't react to fear. They have a dignity that most other peoples (Italians for example) do not have.
After this terrorist attack I understood how it must have been in London when the Nazis exploded V2s on the city.
Simply, the Brits were unshaken. They kept living, reacting with their undestructible dignity against brutality.
Incidentally, a people that knows no fear will not fall prey of dictatorship. In fact, Britain is the only country in Europe that never knew extremist dictatorships. There has never been a British Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pétain, Stalin.
I am in awe of the British people and their reaction to bombings. The Brits don't go on the street shouting and screaming and *pretending* to be suffering. They suffer in silence, with British dignity and honor.
Thank you, British people, for this lesson of dignity. I mourn your dead in silence and honor the Union Jack, and wish you to stay British forever.
We all should learn from them.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Post Number Thirty-Two: Dickheads
Of the Role of Chemistry on the Mind of Stupid Men.
The fact that a number of bombs today killed dozens of innocent, possibly Muslim-supporting, Brits might seem to have little to do with testosterone, but in fact, as in many other human disasters, chemistry played a major role in this.
Bombing innocents, blowing their bodies off, blasting means of transports in a capital, is profoundly illogical. That is, illogical for those endowed with a brain. This means that the majority of people out there is cut off already. Especially men. Men don't have brains, they have penises, unless they are very, very lucky.
What does killing accomplish? There are 10 million people living in London. They are probably scared today, many of them are pondering revenge against the Muslims. Because they are certainly taking for granted it's been the Muslims (unless someone wondered if it was Chirac protesting for the Olympics). Somewhere, some (male) person is watching the news and feels gratified for the scenes of horror and fear that are being broadcast. Then, maybe the next day, the Brits will bomb another village in Iraq. Bomb here, bomb there, kill this, kill that. Nobody sees that the problem is rooted elsewhere.
Let's be frank: men are bastards. Some of them are filthy rich bastards and most are filthy poor bastards. The filthy rich bastards (usually in charge of multinational companies based in the USA) like to exploit and wreck the filthy poor bastards. The filthy poor bastards would just like to switch roles with the filthy rich bastards. And so on, forever, in an endless cycle of exchanged stupidity and irrationality.
There is one word to describe the filthy rich and the filthy poor bastards alike: dickheads.
It's not just profanity. It's what they are: people whose dick replaces their head.
In my ideal world (and I live off ideals) the United Nations is a supernational government in charge of every nation in the world. People are free to do what they wish with their life (including having sex on the street, drink alcohol at the age of 4, marry their gay lover, adopt 200 lesbian daughters, smoke joints, and revere freedom). Wealth is distributed reasonably equally (that is, pretty much everyone has what he needs to survive decently and nobody really has too much). Religions are abolished and humans are fully rational and peaceful.
It's my ideal perfect world. Of course, it's impossibly done, but it's not THAT FAR from the Netherlands. The Dutch are the best people in the world and they don't even know it. Their prince is gay and they didn't even notice it.
I love the Dutch. Really. I wish I had a Dutch girlfriend.
Why isn't the world really like the Netherlands? Mostly because of men and their testosterone.
Men and women tend to be different in at least one important characteristic.
Have you ever tried putting a large number of women together? It doesn't take long before they start scratching at each other and bite. Each woman, deep within herself, wants to be the only one. Somehow, women seem to be self-centered, obsessed with other women, disappointed to share the world with others. A woman is the center of her own world, and another woman is a potential enemy. Nobody can hate women more than women themselves.
The way women hate each other is subtle. They steal each other's boyfriends, they make nasty jokes to humiliate their peers, they are able to hold a grudge for an entire lifetime.
Men are not like that.
Put a large number of men together and they will look for a leader. Men are basically pack animals. They move in packs, act in packs, and follow their leaders. Being the leader is everything. Men want to be the one that leads all the others. Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Ceasar, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, they led. The others followed. Men revere blunt, selfish behaviors. Men fight each other and test their muscles. They respect the strongest man in the pack. They accept whatever the leader says and are ready to kill in the name of the leader. They are able to kill people they don't hate only because the leader told them to do so. Men are pack animals.
But how do they choose who the leader is? Led by their testosterone, they search for the most masculine traits. The biggest, toughest, most brutish ape is the leader. And who is the most brutish ape? the only ape that can challenge and beat the old leader. Men are apes. They are pack apes. Gorillas and chimps have the same obsession for leadership.
Men like to show off their power because it proves they are the leader.
There is one thing women will never really understand: a man doesn't want the most beautiful, sexiest girl for themselves because she's special. They want her to show other men they are better than them. A man will feel inferior if his girlfriend is uglier than another man's.
A man doesn't want to be rich. A man wants to be RICHER than his peers.
A man wants to be TOUGHER than the others
A man wants to be more ruthless, more daring, more dangerous, more blunt, more offensive, more evil, more selfish, more brutish than other men so they will revere him and adore him, and they will follow him, and he will be they leader and they will be the pathetic zombies to dispose with.
Echoes of this manly attitude are everywhere in man's history, and male philosophy (think of Nietzsche's superman). Nazi hyerarchs were doing nothing but responding to their most natural masculine instincts when they persecuted the Jews, the untermenschen, the "under-men". Men are naturally Nazi. There is nothing more natural for a man than being a filthy Nazi bastard, obeying the filthy Nazi Adolf Hitler and persecute the Jews. Nazi is male. For a man, Nazi is good. Nazi is heaven. Nazi is the ultimate paradise, the reason to live, the essence of life.
That is, for a man led only by his lowest instincts. Men led by testosterone.
Men do not know that their pursuit for power, wealth, women and the likes are actually induced by the amount of testosterone in their blood.
Still, if you ever go to male's public lavatory, you will see how men peek at each other's penises while they pee. It's because they can't help it. The ultimate manliness is the size of their penis. Girls don't give a damn about the size of penises. A girl can be contented with any size. It's men. They are obsessed with it. Because in the end, the apish side of man knows that the larger the penis, the manlier the man. Men are obsessed with the fear of finding someone with a larger penis because in the end, whatever they do, he will be the leader. Some monkeys choose their alpha male just by watching each other's penises. Men do the same.
That's why men are so intolerant of being insulted for their penis' size. It's where their manliness resides, their leadership, their power, their feeling of superiority.
Women can't understand that (luckily) because they don't have a penis.
In the end, all the evils of the world, all the injustices, the inequalities, the lack of democracy, the persecution of women, originate from the obsession men have for the size of other men's penises.
Once a man rationalizes that being a leader is basically testosterone-induced bullshit, he becomes free.
When someone honks at me on the highway and zips away surpassing me at 200 kmh while I obstinately stick to the speed limit, I know he's just trying to tell me his penis is larger than mine. That's really the whole point. He's showing me he's the leader. And if I were like other men and I let my testosterone led my mind, I would accelerate and zap past that man to show him that, damn it, MY penis is at least seven inches longer than his. Luckily, knowing that it's all testosterone, I don't give a damn. In fact, I don't care about other men's penises, because I am not looking for a leader. I am not a pack animal.
The American Republicans are so obsessed with their penises that they are beyond the very concept of gay. Have you noticed how right-wing men revere muscled soldiers? Ever seen pictures of Fascist Youth or Nazi Supermen? Large, muscular, blunt: precisely what men like. Men like men, they are gay. Republicans in particular, they are tremendously gay. They love muscular men and keep their wives home cooking food and making babies.
It is known that gays have a larger amount of testosterone in their blood than the average man. Surprised? I am not. Soldier loving Reps are gays, just they don't know it. They love their leader. If they were free of their social restraints, in the woods, they would pay respect to their leader by letting him introduce his vast, immense penis into their tight asses.
Isn't that the meaning of showing their middle finger after all?
I wish girls understood this simple thing. Of course, the standard girl is attracted by the leader guy, the one that is most manly. In the eyes of other men, the one with the largest penis.
Luckily not all men are gay and obsessed with penises. Usually, scholarized left-wing intellectuals free themselves of the slavery of testosterone and penis size. You can recognize these men easily: they don't give a damn about the size of their penis. They don't try to drive at 350 kmh. They don't want the most beautiful girl around to show her off to other men. They don't love leadership. Very often they are Communist or Socialist.
Some societies are led by women. One of them is Sweden (where 66% of the Parliament is occupied by female politicians). Another is Holland (the Queen is a woman). These societies tend, in general, to be socialist. England being a notable exception. England is always an exception, but they don't really count. They are different. And I like them, the Brits I mean. The Scots, more, and the Irish a lot, but those islands are inhabited by cool people. Even when their female leader is a crazy liberist called Margaret Thatcher. Going to war with Argentina for some rocks in the Atlantic. Very manly: to show that the size of British penises is way beyond the comprehension of Argentinian people.
Being rational means to understand you are led by the size of your penis, you are obsessed by it, and you realize you hate being led by it.
I am so wary of letting testosterone lead my life that some friends of mine call me a lesbian. Because how can I be a man when I don't show a hint of natural manly behavior? Well, perhaps I am not a lesbian (sadly) but I think I can agree with those that call me androgynous.
It's because I don't act upon the biddings of testosterone. When men stop letting testosterone drive their actions, they become androgynous in the eyes of others.
So what's this London bombings about after all? Behind all the hatred, all the injustices, all the religious zeal and whatnot, there's just one thing. Some people really want to tell the Brits: "Look, our penises are larger than yours". Just what they tried to tell the Americans when they toppled the Twin Towers. Just what the Americans tried to answer when they toppled everything standing in Iraq.
If only you knew how I hate men and their dicks.
In my ideal world men are androgynous, women are strong and emancipated, and penises are inside panties. They are used to pee and to please women. And this ideal world cannot be achieved in my lifetime, because men have penises that don't want to stay inside panties.
Because they want to be the largest.
We live in a penis-led world where only a few islands of peace can be found, wherever men have been overruled by women.
Hail to the Penis, the great mastermind, the leader of all men.
The fact that a number of bombs today killed dozens of innocent, possibly Muslim-supporting, Brits might seem to have little to do with testosterone, but in fact, as in many other human disasters, chemistry played a major role in this.
Bombing innocents, blowing their bodies off, blasting means of transports in a capital, is profoundly illogical. That is, illogical for those endowed with a brain. This means that the majority of people out there is cut off already. Especially men. Men don't have brains, they have penises, unless they are very, very lucky.
What does killing accomplish? There are 10 million people living in London. They are probably scared today, many of them are pondering revenge against the Muslims. Because they are certainly taking for granted it's been the Muslims (unless someone wondered if it was Chirac protesting for the Olympics). Somewhere, some (male) person is watching the news and feels gratified for the scenes of horror and fear that are being broadcast. Then, maybe the next day, the Brits will bomb another village in Iraq. Bomb here, bomb there, kill this, kill that. Nobody sees that the problem is rooted elsewhere.
Let's be frank: men are bastards. Some of them are filthy rich bastards and most are filthy poor bastards. The filthy rich bastards (usually in charge of multinational companies based in the USA) like to exploit and wreck the filthy poor bastards. The filthy poor bastards would just like to switch roles with the filthy rich bastards. And so on, forever, in an endless cycle of exchanged stupidity and irrationality.
There is one word to describe the filthy rich and the filthy poor bastards alike: dickheads.
It's not just profanity. It's what they are: people whose dick replaces their head.
In my ideal world (and I live off ideals) the United Nations is a supernational government in charge of every nation in the world. People are free to do what they wish with their life (including having sex on the street, drink alcohol at the age of 4, marry their gay lover, adopt 200 lesbian daughters, smoke joints, and revere freedom). Wealth is distributed reasonably equally (that is, pretty much everyone has what he needs to survive decently and nobody really has too much). Religions are abolished and humans are fully rational and peaceful.
It's my ideal perfect world. Of course, it's impossibly done, but it's not THAT FAR from the Netherlands. The Dutch are the best people in the world and they don't even know it. Their prince is gay and they didn't even notice it.
I love the Dutch. Really. I wish I had a Dutch girlfriend.
Why isn't the world really like the Netherlands? Mostly because of men and their testosterone.
Men and women tend to be different in at least one important characteristic.
Have you ever tried putting a large number of women together? It doesn't take long before they start scratching at each other and bite. Each woman, deep within herself, wants to be the only one. Somehow, women seem to be self-centered, obsessed with other women, disappointed to share the world with others. A woman is the center of her own world, and another woman is a potential enemy. Nobody can hate women more than women themselves.
The way women hate each other is subtle. They steal each other's boyfriends, they make nasty jokes to humiliate their peers, they are able to hold a grudge for an entire lifetime.
Men are not like that.
Put a large number of men together and they will look for a leader. Men are basically pack animals. They move in packs, act in packs, and follow their leaders. Being the leader is everything. Men want to be the one that leads all the others. Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Ceasar, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, they led. The others followed. Men revere blunt, selfish behaviors. Men fight each other and test their muscles. They respect the strongest man in the pack. They accept whatever the leader says and are ready to kill in the name of the leader. They are able to kill people they don't hate only because the leader told them to do so. Men are pack animals.
But how do they choose who the leader is? Led by their testosterone, they search for the most masculine traits. The biggest, toughest, most brutish ape is the leader. And who is the most brutish ape? the only ape that can challenge and beat the old leader. Men are apes. They are pack apes. Gorillas and chimps have the same obsession for leadership.
Men like to show off their power because it proves they are the leader.
There is one thing women will never really understand: a man doesn't want the most beautiful, sexiest girl for themselves because she's special. They want her to show other men they are better than them. A man will feel inferior if his girlfriend is uglier than another man's.
A man doesn't want to be rich. A man wants to be RICHER than his peers.
A man wants to be TOUGHER than the others
A man wants to be more ruthless, more daring, more dangerous, more blunt, more offensive, more evil, more selfish, more brutish than other men so they will revere him and adore him, and they will follow him, and he will be they leader and they will be the pathetic zombies to dispose with.
Echoes of this manly attitude are everywhere in man's history, and male philosophy (think of Nietzsche's superman). Nazi hyerarchs were doing nothing but responding to their most natural masculine instincts when they persecuted the Jews, the untermenschen, the "under-men". Men are naturally Nazi. There is nothing more natural for a man than being a filthy Nazi bastard, obeying the filthy Nazi Adolf Hitler and persecute the Jews. Nazi is male. For a man, Nazi is good. Nazi is heaven. Nazi is the ultimate paradise, the reason to live, the essence of life.
That is, for a man led only by his lowest instincts. Men led by testosterone.
Men do not know that their pursuit for power, wealth, women and the likes are actually induced by the amount of testosterone in their blood.
Still, if you ever go to male's public lavatory, you will see how men peek at each other's penises while they pee. It's because they can't help it. The ultimate manliness is the size of their penis. Girls don't give a damn about the size of penises. A girl can be contented with any size. It's men. They are obsessed with it. Because in the end, the apish side of man knows that the larger the penis, the manlier the man. Men are obsessed with the fear of finding someone with a larger penis because in the end, whatever they do, he will be the leader. Some monkeys choose their alpha male just by watching each other's penises. Men do the same.
That's why men are so intolerant of being insulted for their penis' size. It's where their manliness resides, their leadership, their power, their feeling of superiority.
Women can't understand that (luckily) because they don't have a penis.
In the end, all the evils of the world, all the injustices, the inequalities, the lack of democracy, the persecution of women, originate from the obsession men have for the size of other men's penises.
Once a man rationalizes that being a leader is basically testosterone-induced bullshit, he becomes free.
When someone honks at me on the highway and zips away surpassing me at 200 kmh while I obstinately stick to the speed limit, I know he's just trying to tell me his penis is larger than mine. That's really the whole point. He's showing me he's the leader. And if I were like other men and I let my testosterone led my mind, I would accelerate and zap past that man to show him that, damn it, MY penis is at least seven inches longer than his. Luckily, knowing that it's all testosterone, I don't give a damn. In fact, I don't care about other men's penises, because I am not looking for a leader. I am not a pack animal.
The American Republicans are so obsessed with their penises that they are beyond the very concept of gay. Have you noticed how right-wing men revere muscled soldiers? Ever seen pictures of Fascist Youth or Nazi Supermen? Large, muscular, blunt: precisely what men like. Men like men, they are gay. Republicans in particular, they are tremendously gay. They love muscular men and keep their wives home cooking food and making babies.
It is known that gays have a larger amount of testosterone in their blood than the average man. Surprised? I am not. Soldier loving Reps are gays, just they don't know it. They love their leader. If they were free of their social restraints, in the woods, they would pay respect to their leader by letting him introduce his vast, immense penis into their tight asses.
Isn't that the meaning of showing their middle finger after all?
I wish girls understood this simple thing. Of course, the standard girl is attracted by the leader guy, the one that is most manly. In the eyes of other men, the one with the largest penis.
Luckily not all men are gay and obsessed with penises. Usually, scholarized left-wing intellectuals free themselves of the slavery of testosterone and penis size. You can recognize these men easily: they don't give a damn about the size of their penis. They don't try to drive at 350 kmh. They don't want the most beautiful girl around to show her off to other men. They don't love leadership. Very often they are Communist or Socialist.
Some societies are led by women. One of them is Sweden (where 66% of the Parliament is occupied by female politicians). Another is Holland (the Queen is a woman). These societies tend, in general, to be socialist. England being a notable exception. England is always an exception, but they don't really count. They are different. And I like them, the Brits I mean. The Scots, more, and the Irish a lot, but those islands are inhabited by cool people. Even when their female leader is a crazy liberist called Margaret Thatcher. Going to war with Argentina for some rocks in the Atlantic. Very manly: to show that the size of British penises is way beyond the comprehension of Argentinian people.
Being rational means to understand you are led by the size of your penis, you are obsessed by it, and you realize you hate being led by it.
I am so wary of letting testosterone lead my life that some friends of mine call me a lesbian. Because how can I be a man when I don't show a hint of natural manly behavior? Well, perhaps I am not a lesbian (sadly) but I think I can agree with those that call me androgynous.
It's because I don't act upon the biddings of testosterone. When men stop letting testosterone drive their actions, they become androgynous in the eyes of others.
So what's this London bombings about after all? Behind all the hatred, all the injustices, all the religious zeal and whatnot, there's just one thing. Some people really want to tell the Brits: "Look, our penises are larger than yours". Just what they tried to tell the Americans when they toppled the Twin Towers. Just what the Americans tried to answer when they toppled everything standing in Iraq.
If only you knew how I hate men and their dicks.
In my ideal world men are androgynous, women are strong and emancipated, and penises are inside panties. They are used to pee and to please women. And this ideal world cannot be achieved in my lifetime, because men have penises that don't want to stay inside panties.
Because they want to be the largest.
We live in a penis-led world where only a few islands of peace can be found, wherever men have been overruled by women.
Hail to the Penis, the great mastermind, the leader of all men.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Post Number Thirty-One: Sarong Party Frenzy
Of a Singaporean female
Let's be frank. I can't keep out of other countries' business. It's probably because Italy is such a devastating mess, such a disappointment, that I prefer to look elsewhere. Or maybe because I have friends across the planet worldwide, I don't see them as foreigners but just as people, and what happens in their lands somehow has to affect me too. Or maybe because I am curious and need to know things others don't mind about. Or all these things together.
It's not really important. While reading my friend Viv's blog, I encountered her musings on a certain "Sarong Party Girl" I had never heard about. I didn't really care too much about it at the beginning, but then I realized this Sarong Party person was a big thing in Singapore, so I just had to know what the fuss was all about.
Apparently, "Sarong Party Girl" is a Singapore-born young girl (presumably in her late teens), who likes to talk about sexual topics and post pictures of her naked body on her blog.
I paid a visit to this blog to read what she was talking about. I didn't look at the pictures, whether you believe it or not. I have seen many naked girls already, in pictures and in reality, and no, however young and exotic (for a European), peeking at another one is not going to excite me enough for me to bother. I was much more interested in knowing what she was talking about. As it seems to me after reading few paragraphs at random, this girl is definitely emancipated, and this is probably why there's so much fuss about her.
Ok, from my own point of view, girls are free to do as they like with their body. If they wish to post naked pictures of themselves they are most welcome to do so. Not that I care to watch them, but if it makes them feel better, I am not going to stop them. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the fuss is more about the topics she talks about than the pictures. And the way she discusses about sexual matters made me think she's quite intelligent, actually mature.
It also made me understand, incidentally, that Singapore is very much like Italy: proud and quick to condemn girls as soon as they are emancipated.
Really sad. I find it even easier now, to understand why Vivien (my friend in South East Asia) feels the need to come to Europe every now and then. I would feel castrated in a society that finds so much interest in insulting an emancipated girl for her courage to speek tongue-in-cheek.
Probably, Singapore is, like Italy, sexually frustrated. The whole country, I mean. Italians are very sexually frustrated. They are so frustrated that most Italian men are actually gay and they don't even realize it. You understand a man is a frustrated gay when he is particularly intolerant against gays and likes anorexic girls with undefined curves. Italian girls tend to the "Velina" model. It is impossible to explain to foreigners what a Velina is. It must suffice to say that a "Velina" is a young, smiling, very slim girl whose only desire is to dance and pride herself of her own lack of culture (=brain). Girls like this represent the typical model of the typical Italian girl (that is not to say all Italian girls are like that, of course, but a great number wishes to become like that). Girls like this also represent the frustration of the feminine gender. I find them revolting.
Guys who like girls like that are brainless zombies divided in two categories:
- gay zombie
and
- etherosexual zombie
The first of course includes all those Italians who are gay but do not accept this fact. Declared gays are not included.
The second group includes what little remains.
Zombies of both categories lurk in Italian cities with only one thing in mind: sex and related topics. They are produced in great numbers in countries where the majority of girls are irrationally ashamed of sex, their naked body, and such. Italy is such a country.
I am beginning to believe Singapore is another such country.
Sweden is not such a country. In Sweden, nakedness, sex, sexual topics and such are usually considered normal. They are part of the normal essence of their society. In saunas, men and women enjoy the heat together completely naked. It is my intention to show Vivien when she comes to Malmoe, that most people go to swim naked, in perfectly public areas with no way to conceal themselves. Because, in fact, they never thought of a reason to conceal themselves. What's wrong with naked bodies?
In Sweden, no one would notice Sarong Party Girl. All girls talk about sex. Ok, it is TRUE that Sarong Party Girl talks about sex with wit and maturity. She's smart, no doubt. Most people in the world are not smart, regardless of where they are born.
In Italy, Sarong Party Girl can't really exist. But then again, it couldn't exist in Singapore as well so I presume that somehow, some day, we will have an Italian Sarong Party Girl and I will welcome her with joy. Unlikely to happen soon because Italian girls are not simply sexually chastized by the state but, more fiercely, by their obscene, medieval, repulsive religion, the evil, diabolic Catholicism.
At least Singapore is not Catholic.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, here's the thing.
I see no reason to talk that much about Sarong Party Girl. She's just a normal girl talking about things that every normal girl should talk about. Sex, politics, drugs, emancipation, the length of dicks and whatnot, what's the problem? They are topics. There are no forbidden topics. Nothing disconcerting, nothing to be ashamed of. I often think about the concept of shame, and I have come to believe it's idiotic. Really.
Most people would be disappointed to see, say, two naked lesbians indulging in sado-masochist practices in a public place.
Well, have you ever really wondered, rationally, WHY so?
Is there any RATIONALE behind shame? I can't find any. We have been told certain things are not to be done in public. Well, why? In which way are they going to physically affect me?
In the happiest country of the world (the Netherlands), prostitution is legal. Nobody screams and shouts at infamy because their oh-so-pure infants saw a naked prostitute behind a shop window. What's so infamous with a naked woman? Don't those oh-so-pure infants see the breasts of their own mother every time they need to feed?
What's this fuss about sex? In most societies (unaffected by the ever-diabolic evil of the Christian Church) sex is made in public, discussed in public, publicly performed in rites.
During the celebrations dedicated to the goddess of Spring, in ancient Rome, dozens of girls had sex in the streets of the capital to lose their virginity on the day dedicated to the deity. Why are we so stupidly, inanely ashamed and irritated by sex?
Why are we drooling like imbecile dogs just because a Singaporean girl has published naked pictures of herself? Are we (men) ever going to wake up from this general stupidity.
I actually applaud the courage of Sarong Party Girl. She challenged the customs of her own society, which is never easily done and often a reason to be chastized by people that think they know everything about right and wrong.
I just wish a girl could post naked pictures of herself in peace. And talk about whatever amount of sex and related topics she feels like talking about.
Personally, I have nothing else to say about this, so I won't mention Sarong Party Girl(s) again in the future.
Enjoy and live your life, people. And reconsider shame.
Let's be frank. I can't keep out of other countries' business. It's probably because Italy is such a devastating mess, such a disappointment, that I prefer to look elsewhere. Or maybe because I have friends across the planet worldwide, I don't see them as foreigners but just as people, and what happens in their lands somehow has to affect me too. Or maybe because I am curious and need to know things others don't mind about. Or all these things together.
It's not really important. While reading my friend Viv's blog, I encountered her musings on a certain "Sarong Party Girl" I had never heard about. I didn't really care too much about it at the beginning, but then I realized this Sarong Party person was a big thing in Singapore, so I just had to know what the fuss was all about.
Apparently, "Sarong Party Girl" is a Singapore-born young girl (presumably in her late teens), who likes to talk about sexual topics and post pictures of her naked body on her blog.
I paid a visit to this blog to read what she was talking about. I didn't look at the pictures, whether you believe it or not. I have seen many naked girls already, in pictures and in reality, and no, however young and exotic (for a European), peeking at another one is not going to excite me enough for me to bother. I was much more interested in knowing what she was talking about. As it seems to me after reading few paragraphs at random, this girl is definitely emancipated, and this is probably why there's so much fuss about her.
Ok, from my own point of view, girls are free to do as they like with their body. If they wish to post naked pictures of themselves they are most welcome to do so. Not that I care to watch them, but if it makes them feel better, I am not going to stop them. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the fuss is more about the topics she talks about than the pictures. And the way she discusses about sexual matters made me think she's quite intelligent, actually mature.
It also made me understand, incidentally, that Singapore is very much like Italy: proud and quick to condemn girls as soon as they are emancipated.
Really sad. I find it even easier now, to understand why Vivien (my friend in South East Asia) feels the need to come to Europe every now and then. I would feel castrated in a society that finds so much interest in insulting an emancipated girl for her courage to speek tongue-in-cheek.
Probably, Singapore is, like Italy, sexually frustrated. The whole country, I mean. Italians are very sexually frustrated. They are so frustrated that most Italian men are actually gay and they don't even realize it. You understand a man is a frustrated gay when he is particularly intolerant against gays and likes anorexic girls with undefined curves. Italian girls tend to the "Velina" model. It is impossible to explain to foreigners what a Velina is. It must suffice to say that a "Velina" is a young, smiling, very slim girl whose only desire is to dance and pride herself of her own lack of culture (=brain). Girls like this represent the typical model of the typical Italian girl (that is not to say all Italian girls are like that, of course, but a great number wishes to become like that). Girls like this also represent the frustration of the feminine gender. I find them revolting.
Guys who like girls like that are brainless zombies divided in two categories:
- gay zombie
and
- etherosexual zombie
The first of course includes all those Italians who are gay but do not accept this fact. Declared gays are not included.
The second group includes what little remains.
Zombies of both categories lurk in Italian cities with only one thing in mind: sex and related topics. They are produced in great numbers in countries where the majority of girls are irrationally ashamed of sex, their naked body, and such. Italy is such a country.
I am beginning to believe Singapore is another such country.
Sweden is not such a country. In Sweden, nakedness, sex, sexual topics and such are usually considered normal. They are part of the normal essence of their society. In saunas, men and women enjoy the heat together completely naked. It is my intention to show Vivien when she comes to Malmoe, that most people go to swim naked, in perfectly public areas with no way to conceal themselves. Because, in fact, they never thought of a reason to conceal themselves. What's wrong with naked bodies?
In Sweden, no one would notice Sarong Party Girl. All girls talk about sex. Ok, it is TRUE that Sarong Party Girl talks about sex with wit and maturity. She's smart, no doubt. Most people in the world are not smart, regardless of where they are born.
In Italy, Sarong Party Girl can't really exist. But then again, it couldn't exist in Singapore as well so I presume that somehow, some day, we will have an Italian Sarong Party Girl and I will welcome her with joy. Unlikely to happen soon because Italian girls are not simply sexually chastized by the state but, more fiercely, by their obscene, medieval, repulsive religion, the evil, diabolic Catholicism.
At least Singapore is not Catholic.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, here's the thing.
I see no reason to talk that much about Sarong Party Girl. She's just a normal girl talking about things that every normal girl should talk about. Sex, politics, drugs, emancipation, the length of dicks and whatnot, what's the problem? They are topics. There are no forbidden topics. Nothing disconcerting, nothing to be ashamed of. I often think about the concept of shame, and I have come to believe it's idiotic. Really.
Most people would be disappointed to see, say, two naked lesbians indulging in sado-masochist practices in a public place.
Well, have you ever really wondered, rationally, WHY so?
Is there any RATIONALE behind shame? I can't find any. We have been told certain things are not to be done in public. Well, why? In which way are they going to physically affect me?
In the happiest country of the world (the Netherlands), prostitution is legal. Nobody screams and shouts at infamy because their oh-so-pure infants saw a naked prostitute behind a shop window. What's so infamous with a naked woman? Don't those oh-so-pure infants see the breasts of their own mother every time they need to feed?
What's this fuss about sex? In most societies (unaffected by the ever-diabolic evil of the Christian Church) sex is made in public, discussed in public, publicly performed in rites.
During the celebrations dedicated to the goddess of Spring, in ancient Rome, dozens of girls had sex in the streets of the capital to lose their virginity on the day dedicated to the deity. Why are we so stupidly, inanely ashamed and irritated by sex?
Why are we drooling like imbecile dogs just because a Singaporean girl has published naked pictures of herself? Are we (men) ever going to wake up from this general stupidity.
I actually applaud the courage of Sarong Party Girl. She challenged the customs of her own society, which is never easily done and often a reason to be chastized by people that think they know everything about right and wrong.
I just wish a girl could post naked pictures of herself in peace. And talk about whatever amount of sex and related topics she feels like talking about.
Personally, I have nothing else to say about this, so I won't mention Sarong Party Girl(s) again in the future.
Enjoy and live your life, people. And reconsider shame.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Post Number Thirty: We, The People
Of why I celebrate the Fourth of July (in my own way)
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [...] That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government [...]"
Today is the Fourth of July, 2005 AD. The Fourth of July, 1776 AD, fifty-six men reunited in what became known as the Hall of Independence in Philadelphia, PA, signed a chart that changed the course of history and politics.
Among these men, particularly notable were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock. Franklin, in particular, was a scientist. Jefferson, a biologist and philosopher. All of them were sons of an era that we, as human beings, should be grateful to.
The era was that of Enlightment.
The Enlightment is also known as the age of Reason. The laymen of course were not particularly versatile in reasoning (they never were and they will never be in the course of history). Those who were remarkably Reasoning were the philosophers. Where were they coming from?
History is grounded upon history of course. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe was precipitated in the Dark Ages, and it took the continent 1000 years to finally emerge from its stagnation, mostly thanks to the contribution of the Arabs. As Europeans attempted to re-discover civilization, the ever-opposing force of the Catholic Church, afraid of losing its power and its wealth, increased its pressure over the population, creating institutions such us the Inquisition to condemn those who sought freedom of thought. Then, in the middle of the 1700's, thanks to a revolution started by the scientific discoveries of the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, philosophers, in particular French philosophers, began to Reason.
They actually began to use their rationality to analize things, giving birth to modern Europe and its revolutionary civilization.
In an era when people had the guts to fight for their ideals and turn them into practice, a number of wise and intelligent men living in the English colonies overseas, deeply influenced by the theories of French masterminds like Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, revolted against the British motherland.
Just think of it, in our cynical, depressed, inertial world. Think to a group of poorly armed idealists that embraced their muskets and dared challenge the greatest Empire of the world. Think of how desperate their effort was. Think of how small the chances to win. In the likeliest outcome, Benjamin Frankling, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, George Washington, would be hung for treason.
I always feel a thrill of pride, of admiration, of sincere awe, when poorly armed people, the Weak, dare challenge the Strong, the Empire. Isn't it like Luke Skywalker battling the Death Star? Isn't it like little Frodo struggling to destroy the Ring against all hopes? The Weak, driven to despair, have nothing to lose and become daring. They dare.
They were inspired by beliefs that 50 years ago were unconceivable: that men are "equal" (equal? When the Church spent so much time explaining they are NOT equal, that some are good and some are evil and some will go to Heaven and some will not, and that the Pope and the King have much more rights than the laymen?)
That men have the right to liberty? Liberty? The RIGHT to LIBERTY? In an era when Kings put people in jail for the simple pleasure of doing so? the Right to Life?
Do you realize how revolutionary, how incredibly daring these words are? What kind of demotion of the established governments they would imply, were they to be taken seriously?
Fighting for ideas like this in the 1700's is not simple bravery. It is awesome. It is an example for all the people of all ages, especially for those that never dared challenge the established beliefs.
Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. And Jefferson, Franklin, Adams.
They challenged the Empire. They fought the immense forces of the Brits. They sought and found help in the French people, to whom so much they owed.
They fought, and against all odds, they won.
The idealists, the people that dared upturn the rules of what so far was the only possible concept of civilization had it their way.
In Congress united, the People of what became known as The United States of America declared their Independence by signing a chart, on the 4th of July 1776. A chart that stated the right to upturn governments. The right for the governed to decide who's in charge and whether it's for the good of the people or not.
The right for the governed to revolt against the government, to upturn it.
The right to Revolution.
The American Revolution is not just an American thing. The American Revolution is the first, awesome manifestation of what Reason can accomplish if only people dare to trust it. It is a proof that ideals can be put into practice, that they can become the foundation of a new course of history. The American Revolution is a beacon for all those that believe in Reason.
It didn't take long before the French companions of the newly created American people started their own Revolution. It must not be forgotten that Thomas Jefferson contributed to the Declaration of the Rights of Man signed in Paris after the French abolished Monarchy.
The World was about to change. Western civilization was about to change.
We recently signed a 500-page "European Constitution", most of which has to be changed and was rejected for its lack of attention on Welfare, but in the part we should be proud of, it is stated that Europe grounds its history and philosophy on The Greek/Roman Antiquity and The Enlightment. The two, greatest moments of glory of this continent, when Religion didn't cast its obscure darkness on the mind of people. When superstition was fought by our greatest minds. When Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire lived and changed history.
When the culture of Europe led the greatest minds of the United States to challenge the Empire and win. To sign one of the greatest, most daring documents of the world's history.
The Declaration of Independence.
This is why, even today, when the USA have turned into a shadow of what they were meant to become, when cynical people forget the importance of fighting for the ideals, for Reason, when bald dictators try to topple the very foundations of European democracy, when everything seems to be precipitating in a turmoil of Darkness, of Superstition, of Despair and Obscurantism, still, I dare recalling the 4th of July 1776. Because if we, the People of this Western Civilization of ours, managed to challenge the establishment once, and again, we can't be doomed. We will rise again, when the time comes, for the next revolution. Because Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire and Jefferson were human beings like us, who lived in a dark age like we do today, and still they dared. Still they lived. Still they fought. Still they signed the Declaration and the Rights of Man.
The American Revolution, as much as the French Revolution, make me proud of being human. I am thrilled by the words signed in the Chart:
The Triumph of Reason.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [...] That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government [...]"
Today is the Fourth of July, 2005 AD. The Fourth of July, 1776 AD, fifty-six men reunited in what became known as the Hall of Independence in Philadelphia, PA, signed a chart that changed the course of history and politics.
Among these men, particularly notable were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock. Franklin, in particular, was a scientist. Jefferson, a biologist and philosopher. All of them were sons of an era that we, as human beings, should be grateful to.
The era was that of Enlightment.
The Enlightment is also known as the age of Reason. The laymen of course were not particularly versatile in reasoning (they never were and they will never be in the course of history). Those who were remarkably Reasoning were the philosophers. Where were they coming from?
History is grounded upon history of course. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe was precipitated in the Dark Ages, and it took the continent 1000 years to finally emerge from its stagnation, mostly thanks to the contribution of the Arabs. As Europeans attempted to re-discover civilization, the ever-opposing force of the Catholic Church, afraid of losing its power and its wealth, increased its pressure over the population, creating institutions such us the Inquisition to condemn those who sought freedom of thought. Then, in the middle of the 1700's, thanks to a revolution started by the scientific discoveries of the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, philosophers, in particular French philosophers, began to Reason.
They actually began to use their rationality to analize things, giving birth to modern Europe and its revolutionary civilization.
In an era when people had the guts to fight for their ideals and turn them into practice, a number of wise and intelligent men living in the English colonies overseas, deeply influenced by the theories of French masterminds like Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, revolted against the British motherland.
Just think of it, in our cynical, depressed, inertial world. Think to a group of poorly armed idealists that embraced their muskets and dared challenge the greatest Empire of the world. Think of how desperate their effort was. Think of how small the chances to win. In the likeliest outcome, Benjamin Frankling, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, George Washington, would be hung for treason.
I always feel a thrill of pride, of admiration, of sincere awe, when poorly armed people, the Weak, dare challenge the Strong, the Empire. Isn't it like Luke Skywalker battling the Death Star? Isn't it like little Frodo struggling to destroy the Ring against all hopes? The Weak, driven to despair, have nothing to lose and become daring. They dare.
They were inspired by beliefs that 50 years ago were unconceivable: that men are "equal" (equal? When the Church spent so much time explaining they are NOT equal, that some are good and some are evil and some will go to Heaven and some will not, and that the Pope and the King have much more rights than the laymen?)
That men have the right to liberty? Liberty? The RIGHT to LIBERTY? In an era when Kings put people in jail for the simple pleasure of doing so? the Right to Life?
Do you realize how revolutionary, how incredibly daring these words are? What kind of demotion of the established governments they would imply, were they to be taken seriously?
Fighting for ideas like this in the 1700's is not simple bravery. It is awesome. It is an example for all the people of all ages, especially for those that never dared challenge the established beliefs.
Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. And Jefferson, Franklin, Adams.
They challenged the Empire. They fought the immense forces of the Brits. They sought and found help in the French people, to whom so much they owed.
They fought, and against all odds, they won.
The idealists, the people that dared upturn the rules of what so far was the only possible concept of civilization had it their way.
In Congress united, the People of what became known as The United States of America declared their Independence by signing a chart, on the 4th of July 1776. A chart that stated the right to upturn governments. The right for the governed to decide who's in charge and whether it's for the good of the people or not.
The right for the governed to revolt against the government, to upturn it.
The right to Revolution.
The American Revolution is not just an American thing. The American Revolution is the first, awesome manifestation of what Reason can accomplish if only people dare to trust it. It is a proof that ideals can be put into practice, that they can become the foundation of a new course of history. The American Revolution is a beacon for all those that believe in Reason.
It didn't take long before the French companions of the newly created American people started their own Revolution. It must not be forgotten that Thomas Jefferson contributed to the Declaration of the Rights of Man signed in Paris after the French abolished Monarchy.
The World was about to change. Western civilization was about to change.
We recently signed a 500-page "European Constitution", most of which has to be changed and was rejected for its lack of attention on Welfare, but in the part we should be proud of, it is stated that Europe grounds its history and philosophy on The Greek/Roman Antiquity and The Enlightment. The two, greatest moments of glory of this continent, when Religion didn't cast its obscure darkness on the mind of people. When superstition was fought by our greatest minds. When Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire lived and changed history.
When the culture of Europe led the greatest minds of the United States to challenge the Empire and win. To sign one of the greatest, most daring documents of the world's history.
The Declaration of Independence.
This is why, even today, when the USA have turned into a shadow of what they were meant to become, when cynical people forget the importance of fighting for the ideals, for Reason, when bald dictators try to topple the very foundations of European democracy, when everything seems to be precipitating in a turmoil of Darkness, of Superstition, of Despair and Obscurantism, still, I dare recalling the 4th of July 1776. Because if we, the People of this Western Civilization of ours, managed to challenge the establishment once, and again, we can't be doomed. We will rise again, when the time comes, for the next revolution. Because Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire and Jefferson were human beings like us, who lived in a dark age like we do today, and still they dared. Still they lived. Still they fought. Still they signed the Declaration and the Rights of Man.
The American Revolution, as much as the French Revolution, make me proud of being human. I am thrilled by the words signed in the Chart:
The Triumph of Reason.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Post Number Twenty-Nine: Bloody Hot
Of the Bloody Hot summer in Bloody Polluted Milan
It's summer. Officially so. If it were just a matter of season names, I wouldn't complain, but it's also a matter of heat. It's torrid, humid, hot and outrageously sunny. It's 32 degrees out there. For those of my readers that aren't familiar with Celsius degrees, 32°C equals to roughly 90F. Ok, 90 might seem a lot but not that much. After all, there are places where temperatures range in the 100's. Well, if you believe so, you should come to Milan in this season. It's not only 32°C or 90F as you prefer. It's also 90% humid. It's also still: no wind, no breeze, not a leaf moves. It's polluted. So polluted that the sky doesn't look blue but gray, with a hint of brown. Add that there is no sea, no lakes, no rivers. No water, in fact (agriculture is in crisis already). It's crowded with bloodthirsty mosquitoes (whose bites I am allergic to) that mistook my arms and any other visible part of my body for an airport. And, if you think that after all this is not so different from NYC in August, just add that we don't have air conditioning. The thermometer in my bedroom indicates a bloody 33 degrees in this moment. All I have is a fan, and it does little more than blow hot air against me. Luckily, I have air conditioning in the office. It pays to have a job sometimes. Not only in the literal sense, I mean.
Look: I hate the summer. I hate long, sunny, hot days when night comes too late and lasts too little, I hate to wear as little as decency allows me to and still feel so hot that I wish I could tear my skin off and let my bones refresh (because, as everyone around me knows very well, I am a skeleton covered by an extremely thin film of extremely white skin - other fanciful addenda like "muscles", "tendons" and such do not seem to belong to my genetic pool). On my right arm, a damn mosquito has left two different marks: one is approximately 7 centimeters wide (or 3 inches). The other instead is growing as a protuberance of scary size. This, because I am allergic to their bites. In fact, I hate mosquitoes hardcore. To hell with biodiversity! I once read a book written by a Nobel Prize that happens to be clearly insane, he was protesting a race of spiders insisting that eight legs and six eyes are too much of both. Well, I tell you, six legs, two eyes and a bloody sting to suck your blood off your veins is too much already. I would be extremely happy to squeeze the last mosquito and bring their useless species to extinction. Unluckily I was told there are hundreds of billion mosquitoes in the world and I tend to get tired very quickly during the summer. I would probably give up after killing the first two or three billion.
When I try to imagine the worst feelings of the world, they all begin with a sunny summer day. I am slightly photophobic. For those who never heard this word, it means that my eyes are slightly over-sensitive to light. Direct, intense sunlight makes my eyes burn and cause the explosion of capillars that make me look like a frenzied vampire. Not that I have anything against vampires. In fact, I love vampires. Vampires are gorgeous: only thing is that I am not one. I just look like one, which scares the wits off most the people I meet without giving me the pleasure of sucking them dry.
I am not particularly fat. In fact, my weight is appropriate for a girl my age and my height. That means, a normal girl, not one of those revolting anoxeric skeletons that surround me in this country. In fact, girls I am attracted to tend to be athletic, with nicely shaped biceps and shoulders, straight backs, fit legs and generally toned body: a-la Jennifer Lopez. Precisely the contrary of the generally appreciated type in this bloody hot country. I like self-sufficient, independent, intelligent, witty women with a taste for their good health and no need for a man at their side. I like them self-confident, courageous, strongly feminist and emancipated. I love them talking face to face to men as equals, proud of their selves, uninterested in gossiping about other girls and much less men. I like girls with guts.
Italians, instead, like Adriana Lima.
Adriana Lima makes me vomit. I hate her. I hate her stupid face. I hate her stupid TELECOM ads (I also hate TELECOM but that's another story). I hate how she looks like a sulky teen. I hate her poorly trained body, I hate the pictures they portray of her. I find her utterly annoying, disgusting, revolting, whenever I see her on TV (and it happens often) I feel the urge to zap to another channel. It's the same urge I feel when I see the face of the Pope. It's not just her. By the way, I don't know her. I only know her body and how ads portray her, and this is what makes me puke. Perhaps she's an intelligent girl (I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt an intelligent girl would sell her body like that, but then again, who knows?). I hate that girls plan their aspirations on the revolting model of Adriana Lima. Sometimes I wish the Telecom ads showed a more athletic woman (Jennifer Lopez?) meeting men in a bar and blasting their balls off with Kalashnikovs or Uzis. A bit gory but I would have a damn lot of fun watching it.
Whatever.
I will close this post because it leads me only to feel worse. Not only I am hot but now I am thinking to that horrendous creature Adriana. I'd better go watch Kill Bill. I need blood now.
Sayonara, amigos.
It's summer. Officially so. If it were just a matter of season names, I wouldn't complain, but it's also a matter of heat. It's torrid, humid, hot and outrageously sunny. It's 32 degrees out there. For those of my readers that aren't familiar with Celsius degrees, 32°C equals to roughly 90F. Ok, 90 might seem a lot but not that much. After all, there are places where temperatures range in the 100's. Well, if you believe so, you should come to Milan in this season. It's not only 32°C or 90F as you prefer. It's also 90% humid. It's also still: no wind, no breeze, not a leaf moves. It's polluted. So polluted that the sky doesn't look blue but gray, with a hint of brown. Add that there is no sea, no lakes, no rivers. No water, in fact (agriculture is in crisis already). It's crowded with bloodthirsty mosquitoes (whose bites I am allergic to) that mistook my arms and any other visible part of my body for an airport. And, if you think that after all this is not so different from NYC in August, just add that we don't have air conditioning. The thermometer in my bedroom indicates a bloody 33 degrees in this moment. All I have is a fan, and it does little more than blow hot air against me. Luckily, I have air conditioning in the office. It pays to have a job sometimes. Not only in the literal sense, I mean.
Look: I hate the summer. I hate long, sunny, hot days when night comes too late and lasts too little, I hate to wear as little as decency allows me to and still feel so hot that I wish I could tear my skin off and let my bones refresh (because, as everyone around me knows very well, I am a skeleton covered by an extremely thin film of extremely white skin - other fanciful addenda like "muscles", "tendons" and such do not seem to belong to my genetic pool). On my right arm, a damn mosquito has left two different marks: one is approximately 7 centimeters wide (or 3 inches). The other instead is growing as a protuberance of scary size. This, because I am allergic to their bites. In fact, I hate mosquitoes hardcore. To hell with biodiversity! I once read a book written by a Nobel Prize that happens to be clearly insane, he was protesting a race of spiders insisting that eight legs and six eyes are too much of both. Well, I tell you, six legs, two eyes and a bloody sting to suck your blood off your veins is too much already. I would be extremely happy to squeeze the last mosquito and bring their useless species to extinction. Unluckily I was told there are hundreds of billion mosquitoes in the world and I tend to get tired very quickly during the summer. I would probably give up after killing the first two or three billion.
When I try to imagine the worst feelings of the world, they all begin with a sunny summer day. I am slightly photophobic. For those who never heard this word, it means that my eyes are slightly over-sensitive to light. Direct, intense sunlight makes my eyes burn and cause the explosion of capillars that make me look like a frenzied vampire. Not that I have anything against vampires. In fact, I love vampires. Vampires are gorgeous: only thing is that I am not one. I just look like one, which scares the wits off most the people I meet without giving me the pleasure of sucking them dry.
I am not particularly fat. In fact, my weight is appropriate for a girl my age and my height. That means, a normal girl, not one of those revolting anoxeric skeletons that surround me in this country. In fact, girls I am attracted to tend to be athletic, with nicely shaped biceps and shoulders, straight backs, fit legs and generally toned body: a-la Jennifer Lopez. Precisely the contrary of the generally appreciated type in this bloody hot country. I like self-sufficient, independent, intelligent, witty women with a taste for their good health and no need for a man at their side. I like them self-confident, courageous, strongly feminist and emancipated. I love them talking face to face to men as equals, proud of their selves, uninterested in gossiping about other girls and much less men. I like girls with guts.
Italians, instead, like Adriana Lima.
Adriana Lima makes me vomit. I hate her. I hate her stupid face. I hate her stupid TELECOM ads (I also hate TELECOM but that's another story). I hate how she looks like a sulky teen. I hate her poorly trained body, I hate the pictures they portray of her. I find her utterly annoying, disgusting, revolting, whenever I see her on TV (and it happens often) I feel the urge to zap to another channel. It's the same urge I feel when I see the face of the Pope. It's not just her. By the way, I don't know her. I only know her body and how ads portray her, and this is what makes me puke. Perhaps she's an intelligent girl (I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt an intelligent girl would sell her body like that, but then again, who knows?). I hate that girls plan their aspirations on the revolting model of Adriana Lima. Sometimes I wish the Telecom ads showed a more athletic woman (Jennifer Lopez?) meeting men in a bar and blasting their balls off with Kalashnikovs or Uzis. A bit gory but I would have a damn lot of fun watching it.
Whatever.
I will close this post because it leads me only to feel worse. Not only I am hot but now I am thinking to that horrendous creature Adriana. I'd better go watch Kill Bill. I need blood now.
Sayonara, amigos.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Post Number Twenty-Eight: The Day of Infamy
Of the disgrace that fell upon Italy and of the petty powers that rejoice for it.
American citizens and a significant number of human beings worldwide alike, remember with a mix of sadness, disconcert, fear and downright pain, the day when President Roosevelt, in front of the Congress reunited, declared the 7th of January, 1941 the "Day of Infamy".
In those days, the word Infamy was designated to indicate treacherous attacks from foreign forces. Nowadays, Infamy acquires a new meaning, one that goes far beyond the effects of a World War, one that puts at the stakes the very future of the women who have, or will have, the disgrace of being born in the speck of land called "Italian Republic". A small boot-shaped country that extends across the Mediterranean and that, geographically speaking, belongs to the European continent, although its culture shares little to nothing of the enlightment of its European cousins, vehemently suggesting that this small nation, usually known as "Italy", has become a stranger in its own continent; Italy, like a shipwreck, has sunk deep into a black hole of folly, obscurantism and mysoginy, fueled by the hatred embodied by an organized society of gangsters.
These gangsters, these criminals, these mysoginists, have names and surnames, and shall be revealed further on in this mail. But since first things must still come first, even in the barbarian, uncivilized lands of Italy, I will report the facts now, so that readers will know what I am talking about.
It is very hard to choose a starting point. The disgrace I am addressing now is the result of years of criminal subtleties and cruelties, performed by a number of agents that belong to several gangs (some of them disguised as political parties). A significant few of the actors of this bad drama are now (with my greatest relief) dead, but others have taken their place, carrying on the same misdeeds, all intended to one purpose only: negate the Italian people its right to be civilized, its right to be European.
I could very well begin from the year 1974, when I was born. In those days, Italy was a civilized nation, and the gangsters did not disguise themselves but acted as their name suggests: openly shooting and bombing public places to kill as many innocents as possible. These gangsters were usually right-wing agents acting upon the biddings of the right-wing government to scare the people and induce them to abandon every hope of changing the nation's histerical laws. Nonetheless, a law was proposed to legalize divorce (which wasn't legal in the country before) and, when asked to vote, to express their opinion about this law, millions and millions of Italians rushed to the booths to vote for legalized divorce. Then, in 1980, the same millions and millions of my fellow citizens, in the name of civilization and the rights of women, struck another blow against the millenary obscurantism of the nation voting for the legalization of abortion.
Those were the days, when one could be proud of being Italian. Being Italian meant to have the guts to challenge the establishment, to fight for women, to protect the rights of women against the criminal assaults of the most evil, diabolic gang ever created by human beings: the perverted Catholic church. Nowhere in the world there exists a more obscurantist, a more fanatic, a more narrow-sighted and narrow-minded gang of self-appointed religious clerics, than the diabolic Catholic church. Not even the most perverted, drugged, insane televangelists of some remote location of the fly-over zone of the USA can hope to be vaguely dangerous as the Catholic church. They are evil incarnated, an organization bent to one purpose only: to crush humanity under the weight of their diabolic credo, inspired by hatred and a determination to abolish free will.
Hatred is the key to understand the Catholic church, its fiendish agents and demons, for their insane, unspeakable, neverending hatred against women, which they deem responsible for all the sins of the world, mounted to unbearable levels when Italian women voted to legalize abortion. They swore to make them pay, and being a millenary institution, they had no fear to wait for the right moment to strike back. Like a vile viper lurking under the shadows of a hidden crack, the Catholic gangsters led by their boss, the Torquemada-esque Cardinal Camillo Ruini, waited for the right moment to exact their revenge against women, and the right moment came at last.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Italy forwent its previous democracy in exchange for dictatorship. The self appointed dictator of Italy, the bald dwarf known as Silvio Berlusconi, organized a peculiar sort of coup-d'etat based not on military occupation but on brainwashing through the immense power granted him by his the owner of each and every mass media of the country. After enslaving the population to banality and stupidity, after taking control of all the broadcasting companies, the banks, the magazines, the insurance companies, and so on... and after unprecedented attacks against the few judges that didn't swear obedience to his whims, Berlusconi took the power, taking with him his coalition formed by the following parties:
1. The Fascist Party (yes, Mussolini), disguised by its new denomination "National Alliance"
2. The Northern League, a Nazi-friendly party which started off as a secessionist group, further degenerating in mere racism and anti-European propaganda
3. The Christian Democratic Union, a group of Catholic ayatollahs that originate from a fanatist Papist group called "Communion and Liberation", whose only purpose is to impose the law of the Bible to Italy
In order to remain undisputed dictator of the country, the bald dwarf Berlusconi needed to comply to the various requests of its greedy allies, creating laws that would please each of them. So, Berlusconi abandoned Europe and married the anti-European propaganda of the Northern League, promoting its barbarian drift (among other things, Northern League members hallucinate about their being Celts, sometimes even Vikings, though they don't seem to know the difference). Berlusconi sold our ministry of foreign affairs to the Fascist Party secretary, in exchange for another ministry sold to the Northern League (although technically allied, the Fascist Party is critically opposed to the Northern League, mainly because the Fascists uphold the superiority of the Aryan Italian Race, while Northern League fanatists claim their belonging to the Master Aryan Celt Race, which they deem superior to the African Italian Race).
But the greatest disgrace for the country was the selling of our laws to the demons of Christian Democracy. The criminals were controlled by the ever-present Ayatollah Camillo Ruini, the contorted, twisted-minded, corrupted, diabolic REAL ruler of the Catholic Church: the man whose obscure designs and manuevers led to the election of Adolf Hitler Ratzinger as Pope Benedict. The viper knew it was its time to bite, and it bit, spitting its venom into the veins of the once civilized Italy. To please their leader, the Christian party members promoted and forced to sign an infamous law, known as "Law 40".
Law 40, which deals with artificial insemination, simply put, is the revenge against women that the evil Cardinal Ayatollah Ruini was awaiting. He savored this moment for years, and at last he had what he wanted on a silver plate.
The details of this insane, Torquemada-esque law, are here detailed in brief:
1. Artificial insemination cannot be practiced upon any living being excluding sterile married couples
2. Artificial insemination must not be chosen by a doctor, regardless of his professional opinion about it, if he hasn't tried already any other therapy, again regardless of its possible cons in the specific case
3. The doctor that finally chooses, upon proving all other therapies uneffective, the artificial insemination, cannot create more than three embryos with this technique
4. The three embryos must be ALL injected in the uterus of the mother. This is not kidding. ALL THREE EMBRYOS must be injected AT THE SAME TIME in the uterus of the mother. This, because:
5. It is forbidden to freeze embryos created via artificial insemination
6. The mother cannot revoke her consensus to have the embryos injected in her uterus in any case. Once the therapy is chosen, a woman must complete its cycle
7. The mother does not have the right to know whether one or more of the embryos carry genetical disease. In any case, genetically diseased or altered embryos MUST NOT BE DISCARDED, but NONETHELESS IMPLANTED in the uterus of the mother.
8. Research on embryos, aimed to find treatments for incurable diseases such Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and such, is forbidden. Creation of embryos for this purpose is as well forbidden.
9. Embryos are granted the state of citizen of the country, therefore sharing the same rights of the mother from the very moment they egg is fertilized
10. The artificial insemination can only be performed using sperm cells and eggs of the married couple. Sperm cell and/or egg donation is expressely forbidden.
Any human being who doesn't live in the Middle Ages will see by himself (I prefer to say, by herself), that this is not a law: this is a revenge against women. This is an outrage, a diabolic plan to deprive women of the status of human being. Three embryos implanted at the same time? No chance to discard genetically altered embryos? An obligation to carry on the pregnancy of a diseased embryo without even knowing it? How can this be a law? How can this law be signed and included in the agenda of a European country? How can Italy still call itself part of Europe? The Northern League promises riots to oppose the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. I wonder why Turkey doesn't oppose the inclusion of Italy in a civilized union that includes their millenary civilization. This law 40 is not a law, it's an act of pure hatred: the hatred of the evil mastermind that conceived it, that is the vile viper Ruini, who then passed it on to its political agents in the Parliament to promote it and bestow it upon women.
The democratic forces of this country, which still exist, in a disorderly aggregated coalition, promoted a referendum to abolish this law. It was the occasion for democracy to strike back at the infamy. Those who wanted to keep the law as such would simply have to vote "NO". Those who wanted to change this law, must vote "YES". That easy
But Cardinal Ruini knew he had another bullet in his gun. For a referendum to be valid, at least 50% + 1 of the population must vote. In a now infamous public speech, aired by all the television companies of the bald dwarf, the dictator Berlusconi, Camillo Ruini did not invite his fanatic followers to vote "NO" in the referendum. He invited them to NOT VOTE.
He chose to exploit a technicality to bring the referendum to a failure.
A representative of the Vatican state told Italian citizens what to do of their law.
Tell me, my foreign and luckier friends, what would happen if Canadians told American what the have to vote for? What if the Vietnamese told Singaporese which laws they must pass? What if Namibia told South Africans which president they must elect? What if any leader of any foreign state would tell YOU what to do?
But Italy is no normal country. Italian politicians of the dictator's coalition greeted with joy the intrusion of the Cardinal Ruini in our national affairs. The highest personalities of the State, the Catholic fanatist President of the Chamber of Deputees joined Ruini telling my people that he, the second most important institution of the nation, was not going to vote. Berlusconi the dictator of course, didn't vote.
To no avail the leaders of democratic parties cried at the intrusion of a foreigner agent in our politics. They were accused and chastized, publicly, on Berlusconi's many TVs.
Cardinal Ruini knew how to play his cards. He created a committee called "Science a Life", truly a gang of fanatic Catholics that received enormous amounts of money from the bottomless chests of the Vatican's treasury to promote the NOT-VOTE policy.
Some of the sexiest women of the country, a number of renowned Nobels, personalities of the agonizing culture of this nation, all united to save the Referendum. They implored my fellow citizens to vote, to let women keep their rights they gained at the cost of much sufference. To let research further its effort to ease mankind from some of its direst genetical diseases.
At the same time, the diabolic Ruini used his puppet Adolf Hitler Ratzinger, to promote his own view. DON'T VOTE, he kept suggesting, whispering in every ear, poisoning the mind of millions.
What about the outcome of the Referendum?
Italians voted to erase this foolish Law 40 on the 12th and 13th of June (a date chosen by the government with a reason: Schools are already closed and most Italians are on holidays already, so they wouldn't come back home to vote).
Of the millions asked to vote for the rights of women, to protect the future of their wives, their girlfriends, and their daughters, only 20% obeyed and did their duty.
80% of the shameful mass of idiots that share this land with me, complied to the biddings of the Cardinal Ruini.
The law is now approved. Approved by the non-vote of the Italian people. Today, we are watching the day of infamy. The day when Italy forwent its civilization.
We look back to the Middle Ages, to the Inquisition, to the Catholic obscurantism, and we know it's now a lot closer to us. I am only glad for my sister, who will soon move to Sweden, and who uttered the following, sad statement:
"I wouldn't let my children be born in Italy. I don't want my children raised in this land. I am ashamed of Italy".
Those of us that know what future awaits women, which destiny Ruini has designed for them, can't but be ashamed of Italy. Shame on Italy. Shame on its people.
Shame on all of us.
American citizens and a significant number of human beings worldwide alike, remember with a mix of sadness, disconcert, fear and downright pain, the day when President Roosevelt, in front of the Congress reunited, declared the 7th of January, 1941 the "Day of Infamy".
In those days, the word Infamy was designated to indicate treacherous attacks from foreign forces. Nowadays, Infamy acquires a new meaning, one that goes far beyond the effects of a World War, one that puts at the stakes the very future of the women who have, or will have, the disgrace of being born in the speck of land called "Italian Republic". A small boot-shaped country that extends across the Mediterranean and that, geographically speaking, belongs to the European continent, although its culture shares little to nothing of the enlightment of its European cousins, vehemently suggesting that this small nation, usually known as "Italy", has become a stranger in its own continent; Italy, like a shipwreck, has sunk deep into a black hole of folly, obscurantism and mysoginy, fueled by the hatred embodied by an organized society of gangsters.
These gangsters, these criminals, these mysoginists, have names and surnames, and shall be revealed further on in this mail. But since first things must still come first, even in the barbarian, uncivilized lands of Italy, I will report the facts now, so that readers will know what I am talking about.
It is very hard to choose a starting point. The disgrace I am addressing now is the result of years of criminal subtleties and cruelties, performed by a number of agents that belong to several gangs (some of them disguised as political parties). A significant few of the actors of this bad drama are now (with my greatest relief) dead, but others have taken their place, carrying on the same misdeeds, all intended to one purpose only: negate the Italian people its right to be civilized, its right to be European.
I could very well begin from the year 1974, when I was born. In those days, Italy was a civilized nation, and the gangsters did not disguise themselves but acted as their name suggests: openly shooting and bombing public places to kill as many innocents as possible. These gangsters were usually right-wing agents acting upon the biddings of the right-wing government to scare the people and induce them to abandon every hope of changing the nation's histerical laws. Nonetheless, a law was proposed to legalize divorce (which wasn't legal in the country before) and, when asked to vote, to express their opinion about this law, millions and millions of Italians rushed to the booths to vote for legalized divorce. Then, in 1980, the same millions and millions of my fellow citizens, in the name of civilization and the rights of women, struck another blow against the millenary obscurantism of the nation voting for the legalization of abortion.
Those were the days, when one could be proud of being Italian. Being Italian meant to have the guts to challenge the establishment, to fight for women, to protect the rights of women against the criminal assaults of the most evil, diabolic gang ever created by human beings: the perverted Catholic church. Nowhere in the world there exists a more obscurantist, a more fanatic, a more narrow-sighted and narrow-minded gang of self-appointed religious clerics, than the diabolic Catholic church. Not even the most perverted, drugged, insane televangelists of some remote location of the fly-over zone of the USA can hope to be vaguely dangerous as the Catholic church. They are evil incarnated, an organization bent to one purpose only: to crush humanity under the weight of their diabolic credo, inspired by hatred and a determination to abolish free will.
Hatred is the key to understand the Catholic church, its fiendish agents and demons, for their insane, unspeakable, neverending hatred against women, which they deem responsible for all the sins of the world, mounted to unbearable levels when Italian women voted to legalize abortion. They swore to make them pay, and being a millenary institution, they had no fear to wait for the right moment to strike back. Like a vile viper lurking under the shadows of a hidden crack, the Catholic gangsters led by their boss, the Torquemada-esque Cardinal Camillo Ruini, waited for the right moment to exact their revenge against women, and the right moment came at last.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Italy forwent its previous democracy in exchange for dictatorship. The self appointed dictator of Italy, the bald dwarf known as Silvio Berlusconi, organized a peculiar sort of coup-d'etat based not on military occupation but on brainwashing through the immense power granted him by his the owner of each and every mass media of the country. After enslaving the population to banality and stupidity, after taking control of all the broadcasting companies, the banks, the magazines, the insurance companies, and so on... and after unprecedented attacks against the few judges that didn't swear obedience to his whims, Berlusconi took the power, taking with him his coalition formed by the following parties:
1. The Fascist Party (yes, Mussolini), disguised by its new denomination "National Alliance"
2. The Northern League, a Nazi-friendly party which started off as a secessionist group, further degenerating in mere racism and anti-European propaganda
3. The Christian Democratic Union, a group of Catholic ayatollahs that originate from a fanatist Papist group called "Communion and Liberation", whose only purpose is to impose the law of the Bible to Italy
In order to remain undisputed dictator of the country, the bald dwarf Berlusconi needed to comply to the various requests of its greedy allies, creating laws that would please each of them. So, Berlusconi abandoned Europe and married the anti-European propaganda of the Northern League, promoting its barbarian drift (among other things, Northern League members hallucinate about their being Celts, sometimes even Vikings, though they don't seem to know the difference). Berlusconi sold our ministry of foreign affairs to the Fascist Party secretary, in exchange for another ministry sold to the Northern League (although technically allied, the Fascist Party is critically opposed to the Northern League, mainly because the Fascists uphold the superiority of the Aryan Italian Race, while Northern League fanatists claim their belonging to the Master Aryan Celt Race, which they deem superior to the African Italian Race).
But the greatest disgrace for the country was the selling of our laws to the demons of Christian Democracy. The criminals were controlled by the ever-present Ayatollah Camillo Ruini, the contorted, twisted-minded, corrupted, diabolic REAL ruler of the Catholic Church: the man whose obscure designs and manuevers led to the election of Adolf Hitler Ratzinger as Pope Benedict. The viper knew it was its time to bite, and it bit, spitting its venom into the veins of the once civilized Italy. To please their leader, the Christian party members promoted and forced to sign an infamous law, known as "Law 40".
Law 40, which deals with artificial insemination, simply put, is the revenge against women that the evil Cardinal Ayatollah Ruini was awaiting. He savored this moment for years, and at last he had what he wanted on a silver plate.
The details of this insane, Torquemada-esque law, are here detailed in brief:
1. Artificial insemination cannot be practiced upon any living being excluding sterile married couples
2. Artificial insemination must not be chosen by a doctor, regardless of his professional opinion about it, if he hasn't tried already any other therapy, again regardless of its possible cons in the specific case
3. The doctor that finally chooses, upon proving all other therapies uneffective, the artificial insemination, cannot create more than three embryos with this technique
4. The three embryos must be ALL injected in the uterus of the mother. This is not kidding. ALL THREE EMBRYOS must be injected AT THE SAME TIME in the uterus of the mother. This, because:
5. It is forbidden to freeze embryos created via artificial insemination
6. The mother cannot revoke her consensus to have the embryos injected in her uterus in any case. Once the therapy is chosen, a woman must complete its cycle
7. The mother does not have the right to know whether one or more of the embryos carry genetical disease. In any case, genetically diseased or altered embryos MUST NOT BE DISCARDED, but NONETHELESS IMPLANTED in the uterus of the mother.
8. Research on embryos, aimed to find treatments for incurable diseases such Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and such, is forbidden. Creation of embryos for this purpose is as well forbidden.
9. Embryos are granted the state of citizen of the country, therefore sharing the same rights of the mother from the very moment they egg is fertilized
10. The artificial insemination can only be performed using sperm cells and eggs of the married couple. Sperm cell and/or egg donation is expressely forbidden.
Any human being who doesn't live in the Middle Ages will see by himself (I prefer to say, by herself), that this is not a law: this is a revenge against women. This is an outrage, a diabolic plan to deprive women of the status of human being. Three embryos implanted at the same time? No chance to discard genetically altered embryos? An obligation to carry on the pregnancy of a diseased embryo without even knowing it? How can this be a law? How can this law be signed and included in the agenda of a European country? How can Italy still call itself part of Europe? The Northern League promises riots to oppose the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. I wonder why Turkey doesn't oppose the inclusion of Italy in a civilized union that includes their millenary civilization. This law 40 is not a law, it's an act of pure hatred: the hatred of the evil mastermind that conceived it, that is the vile viper Ruini, who then passed it on to its political agents in the Parliament to promote it and bestow it upon women.
The democratic forces of this country, which still exist, in a disorderly aggregated coalition, promoted a referendum to abolish this law. It was the occasion for democracy to strike back at the infamy. Those who wanted to keep the law as such would simply have to vote "NO". Those who wanted to change this law, must vote "YES". That easy
But Cardinal Ruini knew he had another bullet in his gun. For a referendum to be valid, at least 50% + 1 of the population must vote. In a now infamous public speech, aired by all the television companies of the bald dwarf, the dictator Berlusconi, Camillo Ruini did not invite his fanatic followers to vote "NO" in the referendum. He invited them to NOT VOTE.
He chose to exploit a technicality to bring the referendum to a failure.
A representative of the Vatican state told Italian citizens what to do of their law.
Tell me, my foreign and luckier friends, what would happen if Canadians told American what the have to vote for? What if the Vietnamese told Singaporese which laws they must pass? What if Namibia told South Africans which president they must elect? What if any leader of any foreign state would tell YOU what to do?
But Italy is no normal country. Italian politicians of the dictator's coalition greeted with joy the intrusion of the Cardinal Ruini in our national affairs. The highest personalities of the State, the Catholic fanatist President of the Chamber of Deputees joined Ruini telling my people that he, the second most important institution of the nation, was not going to vote. Berlusconi the dictator of course, didn't vote.
To no avail the leaders of democratic parties cried at the intrusion of a foreigner agent in our politics. They were accused and chastized, publicly, on Berlusconi's many TVs.
Cardinal Ruini knew how to play his cards. He created a committee called "Science a Life", truly a gang of fanatic Catholics that received enormous amounts of money from the bottomless chests of the Vatican's treasury to promote the NOT-VOTE policy.
Some of the sexiest women of the country, a number of renowned Nobels, personalities of the agonizing culture of this nation, all united to save the Referendum. They implored my fellow citizens to vote, to let women keep their rights they gained at the cost of much sufference. To let research further its effort to ease mankind from some of its direst genetical diseases.
At the same time, the diabolic Ruini used his puppet Adolf Hitler Ratzinger, to promote his own view. DON'T VOTE, he kept suggesting, whispering in every ear, poisoning the mind of millions.
What about the outcome of the Referendum?
Italians voted to erase this foolish Law 40 on the 12th and 13th of June (a date chosen by the government with a reason: Schools are already closed and most Italians are on holidays already, so they wouldn't come back home to vote).
Of the millions asked to vote for the rights of women, to protect the future of their wives, their girlfriends, and their daughters, only 20% obeyed and did their duty.
80% of the shameful mass of idiots that share this land with me, complied to the biddings of the Cardinal Ruini.
The law is now approved. Approved by the non-vote of the Italian people. Today, we are watching the day of infamy. The day when Italy forwent its civilization.
We look back to the Middle Ages, to the Inquisition, to the Catholic obscurantism, and we know it's now a lot closer to us. I am only glad for my sister, who will soon move to Sweden, and who uttered the following, sad statement:
"I wouldn't let my children be born in Italy. I don't want my children raised in this land. I am ashamed of Italy".
Those of us that know what future awaits women, which destiny Ruini has designed for them, can't but be ashamed of Italy. Shame on Italy. Shame on its people.
Shame on all of us.
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