The grim period

I recently decided to start a diet to lose some weight. This comes upon a decision that I have been contemplating for sometime. I do strongly believe that women are so disgusted by men who are not in shape that they will tell you anything to reject you if you decide to approach them.

Stereotypes? Yes my friends, it's all about stereotypes and we can't deny it anymore. It will be lying to ourself sating that women do not put look and beauty at the very first spot when judging a man to be their mate. We cannot do it any longer because times changed and today we live by aesthetics only, or for the most.

Sense of humor, intelligence, culture are a thing of the past for women, what they want now is a figure that the media portray for them in a tailored fashion for their needs. Who to blame exactly?

Ignorance first because it allows people to become so fucking brainwashed by anything that sounds or looks cool. Second are the fashion and tabloid magazines that for many decades have poisoned the women's thought just answering a questionnaire titled "How good are you in bed?". Also how quickly fashion designers convinced women that seduction is going out dressed half naked or dressed like prostitutes.

Third achievement is TV fiction that created pre-packaged emotions/behaviors to be fitted by those watching from home. I always thought if Desperate Housewives or MTV's teenage shows had an impact on the female population, and they did, with dismay and delusion the answer is positive.

Emancipation? A thing of the past that another generation fought for nothing or for few rights that are now being not entirely protected. Why? Because women won a battle believing it was the war. The illusion of having triumphed over man's tyranny forever was just an illusion and the latest generation of women does not want to fight because still believes that the past victories are still echoing in this century, but they aren't.

Me and the opposite sex

The opposite sex is impressive, very, like a lot. Why? Because it is something that cannot be described with simple words, it's a phenomena that lives mutating on a daily basis. The more I try to be myself with women, the more I do the wrong moves.

I do not understand girls who are afraid of men who are correct, honest and gentlemen; I can't.

For some universal misfortune you cannot act towards women in the honest way, you have to be sneaky, rude and ultimately be an asshole; only then you can achieve the goal of conquering her heart. But the sad thing is that there are no half measures to this. No compromise at all. You are either a woman's friend because you act honestly or you get them by being different and out of your routine.

This fuels people to become rogues and alienate them self and others. If you are successful into seducing a woman you are directed into a path where your persona will eventually return to it's original mellow human status and chances are she will break up with you because you are not the men you used to be. You are not anymore the pretending-asshole-misogynist man that women likes so much!

Bloody September!

Summer is over yet? I hope! The month of August was for half of it shit. After spending two weeks in an island full of fucking retarded drunken kids and having spend 2000 Euros on that vacation, I'm pissed enough to forget this vacation as soon as possible. I might be bothering because I snore at night, but Nikky is a spoiled kid that can't keep half promise in his hands.

I can't wait to restart work, those two weeks were a drain for my wallet and my patience, beside some other great fucking news where one of my students is temporary suspending lessons due to lack of funds from his company. Just great!

It will be a sloppy fall, for sure!!!

I rather work this summer...

It's already August and I pissed! Nothing against this month or the weather, but because I could have spent this month working abroad in England or Ireland, instead I'm sitting at home doing nothing, absolutely nothing while everybody is either leaving for vacations or is about to.

I thought that following my clients/students direction would end up having everything planned and set for some free time or this nice opportunity to go abroad for at least two weeks, but instead it turned out a complete disaster.

I waited until the last moment to decide which days to take off from work so I would work with my grup of students 'till the very last day of July so everybosy would be happy to leave for summer vacations, instead it happens that their holidays are scattered from half July through mid September. Great, fucking great!

This prompted me to wait for their decision because I was over zealous about the whole situation and I missed the opportunity to work for those two weeks abroad, leaving me with the whole month of August with that extra income that I needed, especially in these shitty times of crisis where money is never enough.

Anyway, after this load off my shoulder I have to face friends to decide where to go spend the holidays since I do not want to spend anymore time at home and I desperately need some time at the beach, any beach with sun and salt over my skin and eventually a decent tan.

At the very last it's me and my best friend Nikky who are leaving for the island of Ios in Greece (south east of the mainland).

After struggling with his indecisions over destinations, days, personal problems and preferences, I manage to reserve the very last two spots on the flight, two weeks of sea and fun. I hope.

Review of 'Manufactured Landscape', 2006

When in 2004 I watched the documentary The Corporation on TVO, I immediatly felt overwelmed with sadness and rage at the same time. The amount of information that the three-hours documentary made in Canada is massive, crude and true. It gives a glimpe of our impact on this planet from a different point of view, the poin where you can watch the entire big picture from far away and remain amazed.

In 2006 photographer Edward Burtynsky started to takes picture around the world of places on this planet affected by us humans. There is a compelling beauty that mixes at the same time with horror when watching landscaped carved by men to obtain recources like oil, diamond or coal to make rich only a very small percentage of people. This beauty is described as a majestic work of years of modification of our land to our advantages. These advantages are extremely lucrative but are a threat to the population on Earth because of the dire consequences that come along.

Abandoned mining towns that were the highlight of the 60s or 70s or rivers beds reshaped to divert water to factories that pollute rivers, etc. It's this kind of scenario that we forgot it existed.

The documentary takes snapshots of the Chinese factories and its workers, many are female, producing and assembling our goods inside warehouses big enough to have rows and rows of workers going as far as your eye can see. The massive labour that China has is incredible and strong, very strong and the Burtynsky explains his experience watching piles of recycled materials being scavanged by women of all ages in search of rare materials to collect.

There is a dune of metal scraps made mostly by iron and tin, these women wear masks to avoid breathing the fine poisenous dusts that the metals produce while being moved. Also another massive pile of circuit board that seems coming from computer motherboards is being disected to extract materials like gold and silver; the rest of the stuff is burnt and washed away into the nearest stream of water polluting rivers and the nearby villages where these people live and work.

As I watched for the second time this documentary I thought how guilty the western world is. We demand massive production at the lowest costs from countries like China that have their way to keep up with our demand by polluting the planet at an incredible rate. All those picture of China where there is a constant haze or fog are what we sell and buy in Europe and north America, from toys to clothing. The camera shots give a sound image of what really happens to the land that we take for granted, some of them are quite impressive for being landscaped that only sci-fi movies can describe; like the mining town in Pensilvanya that Burtynsky visited.

Manufactured Landscapes in a reminder of our need versus the rest, it is also a true statement of the impact that the industry has without stopping for a second, in fact the economy never sleeps, and you can see it as thousands of workers tirelesly continue to assemble all types of products that will eventually get exported with the typical “Made in China” label attatched to it.

It is a good flick, I personally liked it also for its electronic soundtrack that plays on a low volume with sad tones throughout it.-

Directed by	Jennifer Baichwal
Produced by	Nick de Pencier Daniel Iron Jennifer Baichwal
Starring	Edward Burtynsky
Release date(s)	2006
Running time	90 min
Language	English French

Take example from a solid title: Age Of Empires 2!

I had the demo in my hands over ten years ago, I slipped the CD inside and installed it during the Christmas holidays where I had all the time of the world to devote to it. The demo came from a magazine and after reading the contents, my eyes were ready to spot the 'Launch' button on the screen.

The images printed were large and detailed on the 6 pages features of the upcoming title 'Age Of Empires 2', which meant a history jump from the Greeks, Fenicians and Romans all the way through the dark ages. The graphic was way better than the first edition, the u

nits had more historical details and the name of every unit was so accurate that deserved extra playing time.

AOE2 was a title that set the milestone in historical RTS games, Microsoft was also publishing strategy-war games titles like "Close Combat" in the middle of the 90s; until the crowd of faithful players saw that the direction taken by the gaming departments of Bill Gates was right.

Somehow the American gaming industry was leading the charts with great titles that few could compete with. The historical constest was high and when Microsoft published 'Age of Mythology', giving itself an upperscale image of knowledge of the RTS field.

This title blew my mind! Ensemble Studios, the manufacturer of the title, had a game where history and myth would mix with centaurs, gods, legends and cyclopes battleing in campains on existing land.

But the extra boosting feature that both titles had, was the editor program that allowed you to create maps, missions and campains of any size and difficulty with a range of costumizations that is hard to find now. This games gave PC and Mac users a huge kick into the future with exclusive contents that console games cannot have.

I truly wish that game developers can look back at AOE2 and its similars, to understand that there is a player base that is old and intelligent enough to play with these types of titles still.

The single-player era is slowly fading because in front of the global connectivity that gamers are evolving into; MMOs are the latest and hottest titles that shadowed the rest. But at a cost: the single player game had that direct contact with the player and a direct feedback that would envolve the quality of game type and software. Now MMOs are doing the opposite: diverting the real software issues that can affect game quality for multiplayer drama that real life wouldn't even coinceive. Developers seems to be confused over what is the real deal between costumer/player and softwatre quality. The "experience" is the tool that developers and publisher uses to distract from many bugs and errors made in their software, making the game a commercial strategy rather than a satisfing product.

Spore Vs The Sims2

I recently bought a copy of Electronic Art's game Spore for PC. Yes I do use Windows and the reason of that is because I don't have a budget for a Mac and because if I had one I would only use it for less than its actual capacity. Spore caught my attention in 2006 when there was a huge hype around it: you can create life from the primal soup stagen, aka Abiogenesis.

The game looked to me sort of childish and very colorful, but until I finish the game I cannot make afinal statement of my experience, so I started to make my small cells which eventually developed into something bigger and from the water I switched to the mainland, then to a more organized state were tribalism and war were the main issue.

Spore has a date in years that begins since say ONE and you will eventually end up wondering the universe in the year 4 billion. It is a game of pure science, there is little room for screationism and religion, it is about you and the concept of survival of the fittest. Like Darwin said "It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the smartest, but the one that adapts better to change. ...".

Then i went back to playing The Sims 2 with my family and its troubles, where babies are born out of a stork or a magic FX and where you always strive to achieve the perfect family condition with a successful working father, a beautiful homemaker mother and two kids (usually a boy and a girl) that are the best students in school.

Through the years the gaming industry is letting those old concepts slide away in favour of newer ideas that appeals to the the public,  we ought to see The Sims 3 and all its load of new fun; bu my question still remains to where does faith or reason lies among videogame creators. 

Do you remember Black&White? That game where you play the part of a god that decides life and death of the population that you created? But isn't MAxis and EA Games all about craetionism and being God?

Like Sim City and al its sequeld, you decide the faith of a city and of its citizens, you can create and destroy with a few click of your mouse.

I had much fun choosing the destiny of my cells, from nothing to space invaders, my civilization became something I never thought, with the fun included of wiping other planets just for the sake of it!

Also when playing Civilization IV for PC, I do remember the excitement when first laying my capital and major cities while worring abou other civs expanding, a feeling of religion/science rushed into my head wondering which god would have taken my decision or if even this planet went through the same faith.

While I keep playing both game I can only understand my creations and my decision ad a virtual-god that gives life to a simulatied, yet real enough, civilization that will soon either defy the cult of continue to believe into science and theroies behind.

The spring

The weather is fair, it has been fair this year with a nice autumn, a regular winter and now the spring is making bloom all the plants, the scenario is marvelous. Today I'm on vacation for little over half a week and I missed the travel opportunities on the internet, damn!

I wanted to leave but like I said before the prices were outrageous just to stick around here in Europe. So I'm hoping to move to the seaside for this weekend to breath fresh air, I need to unplug from the city, I haven't been on vacation in over a year and working a lot got me more stressed.

It is not entirely a work related stress, but more of what's around; traffic, dealing with morons, driving among morons, talking with morons... you do the math. Getting from on place to another is taking more and more time each year that goes by, like when you have to get from your place to the highway, it will take more time than the actual trip once you enter the ramp. 

There were days where I had to drive for 20km and the whole distance takes normally 15 minutes, but the hard part it to get out of the city where the morons attack you with their sunday-driver style or other morons that are so careless that they will probably smoke while filling their tank at the gas station. You can't find a compromise, it's always about excesses, fuck!

Anyway, I wish happy Easter to every one, take care and have fun!!!

To work is to breath

Back in March I was searching for some airline deals when all the suddenly I found a cheap ticket to Tokyo. My brain was steaming, you can never find such a low price from Italy to Japan, the cheapest regular ticket has an average price of 750 Euro. The deal was with Alitalia with quite an interesting formula where you had to book the ticket before March 9th, but you could have moved your departure up until the end of June.

I was ready to take-off right away without any doubt, I would have reached for my suitcase and quickly stuffed the essential. Going to Japan isn't something that you can do every day, so I thought that it must be an awesome experience that you gotta share with one of your friends at least.

I made sure that I had a week to stay away from work, then I immediately called my buddy Nikky and he was quite surprised of my proposal to head east of the planet. He immediately said ok, but the only thing he had problems with were taking days off work, which he unfortunately couldn't take. I knew there that the Japanese option was fading because my best friend was bounded and didn't have days to spare. 

I proposed Japan to Andrea and he was half estranged and half shocked by my proposal. He asked me why Japan, and I replied that it was an opportunity to see a totally different civilization, culture, language, faces; an opportunity to see in person what's happening on the other side of Earth. Him too couldn't join me in my 'expedition' to Asia, taking days from work isn't easy anymore, and you are propelled to skip so many opportunities because in the back of your mind you keep thinking about your work, your tasks, your appointments, your comoing salary and why you can't climb the ladder.

I find mankind continuosly bounded by work and by whatever orbits around. We spend so much of our life working to buy food, pay our infinite bills and what remains in our hands it little or nothing; we work to barely arrive at the end of each month asking ourself why working so much is the only oxygen we can breath?!

How many times have you heard "Sorry, I can't I gotta work!" or "I can't take any leave from work..."? We don't even have to think when someone is asking us to take one or two days from the job, we will automatically answer that we can't because our bound to it is stronger than us.

Does work give you freedom? Is it the only source of wealth? Why do we have to work to produce more than we can spend or consume?

OH YEAH!!!

Trucks gone wild...

A story of real piracy

Ever since that live press coverage in July of 2000, where Lars Ulrich and James Hatfield declared that music sharing was inammissible and that Napster was the problem of the 21st century, I understood that the internet was going to be the biggest enemy of Metallica and others artists on the same position about P2P. But wait, that's not everything because little time after that press conference artists like Madonna and Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit), signed along with other musicians a statement of solidariety towards the mp3 sharing over the internet. That was probably the very beginning of the global confusion that today still exists on what is legal and what is not.

I live north west of Milan, Italy, in a town of roughly 60,000 people. Piracy in this country is on a different level because it's not only the single internet user downloading files, others have their hands in this like organized crime frou south of Italy, China and Africa. This is a story of how pirates are born and how pirates live here, but there are many different pirates.

- From the mid to the end of the 90s me and my friends (the teenage years) were crazy about when the latest album of U2 or Rolling Stones was out on the shelves of music stores, we spent what is now 15 to 25 Euros of our allowances to buy what we believed into. We would spend endless hours listening the same songs, but we knew that of those 13 album tracks maybe only two or three were the best one. The remaining tracks of the disc/tape weren't that great, but we didn't care because we would always trust our favourite artist to do better in their next album, unfortunately it wasn't the case.

Allowance after allowance me and my buddies realised that the costs of the albums kept constantly rising (minimally but continuosly) and concert tickets weren't cheaper either. Occasionally we had a shirt of Guns n' Roses, Queen or Iron Maiden to show off, but those tees had a serious price too and occasionally we would look back and say "Dude, we just spent over 100 Euros for one ticket, one t-shirt and their latest album! Fuck!!!".

Now that we are in our late 20s we still don't have money to spend for our favourite artists, our salaries aren't strong enough to let us buy extras and we re sorted to downloading and burning those amazing tracks only for our stereos. If you walk into yor record store and buy one or two albums you just spent what you earned in one or two hours of work; it's not probably going to change your life but it is another expense on top of the other bills, only considering a monthly purchase.

To claim that something is legel or not takes time and knowledge. Laws are written in order to set standards among people so they can have a guideline on the civil and penal aspects of society, but music labela and majors are dictating the policies on what you can and what you can't do, so they suddenyl decided that they have that knowledge over anything else to make something legel or illegal and to call you a criminal. What I don't understand is that the majorities of the songs that are shared via internet are tracks that already received their royalties long time ago, got shares of merchandise revenues as well with those of concerts. So why do we have to pay again and again and again for something that has already been paid? The answet to that is simplae: GREED!

Piracy is a broad word that is now describing god knows how many kids and young adults that use P2P software, but they only do it to listen their favourite artists; record companies aren't out to bust those who sells DVD copies online of the lastest flicks, those who are making out of it a lucrative business. That is illegal, that were the focus should be diverted, not towars kids that are an easy pray.

I do see now in my country that immigrants from Africa sell illegal DVD copies for dirt cheap, they got movies that are still playing in theaters, porn movies, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 games in the parking lot of many electronic stores; how hilarious. Sometimes they stop me and ask me if I want to buy something and I tell them that I can get that from the internet for free, they smile and laugh and they understand that I'm not interested and they walk to the next guy getting out of the car.

This is how it happens: a guy has two or three computern at his place inside one room, he got his desktops towers with at least two DVD/CD burners that are continously working all day and there is a pile of empty disks 3ft tall waiting to be burned with everything is new. On the other side of the room there is another pile of empty slim DVD cases and on the other side a laser printer that isejecting all kinds of movie, game covers to be inserted into the cases. This is the operation on only one person who usually has many contacts with the underground crime, usually mafia or camorra, with a financial aid to cover the expenses; then the same person will offer poor immigrants the task to sell everything. They set up territories, like medium/big size department stores, hardware stores, electronic stores and four to six men are spread evenly around the parking lot surface so theycan easily spot who's coming and who's leaving.

The division of terrotories in important because they are not alone, there are others doing the identical job, and others like gypsies that only beg at street light; they are very vicious when their territory is invaded. Sometimes there are confrontations that end with bruises, black eyes and in the worst case a knife stab anywhere it landed. The friction between these "sellers" is big because profits can be high as much as 1000 Euros per group per day and nobody wants to loose a crowded parking lot or a busy intersection with long red lights.

During the winter we occasionally have open markets and flea markets downtown the biggest cities with folkloristic thems, there too you can buy illegal copies of movies, game and so on mainly by Chinese people. Not all the time the police steps in, only if who sells them is by him/herself in a corner of the square or on the sidewalk, they ask for ID and then tell they guy to pack up and leave the area. The next day he/she is still there to sell his merchandise again, the cops will turn an eye blind or ask again to leave, but they do understand that they can't patrol the street only to make sure that the guy doesn't come back.

In those open markets there are many titles you can buy, but if you dare to buy any of those products you know that you can get a lemon and forget to have your money back. It is part of the black market that Italy faces, not only with music, movies and games, but also with fashion sunglasses, purses, belts, wallets, etc. The market has high prices and people cannot resist the impulse of the purchase, so they will find alternative ways to get to their object, this means that they will resort to buy, copy or download something that isn't original.

A pirate, that's what is written on your forehead today, this thanks to the sport of lobbying/nagging inside each parliament inside each country of the western world, from north America to Europe. But the solution used can be compared to applying a bandaid over an internal bleeding, it is not working because record companies wants their laws applied and enforced by police. Now rather than later because everything is moving online and less is stored at home, that's why YouTube is te main target, silenced videos, tv shows cancelled, songs taken away. The music industry knows that when everything will be online it is going to be impossible to obtain royalties anymore, much like trying separating the sugar from your hot coffee.

For the delusionals: BSG ain't far from here!

Battlestar Galactica is over, one of the best TV show I witnessed in my life

concluded in March of 2009 with an epic final episode that brought many issues

to attention. The series features an everlasting struggle between humanity ingenuity

creating AI vs uber Cylon bots understanding what it takes to face destiny.

The fiction that was crated to amuse our eyes and brains was good enough to poke

our intellect and to face a possible future of our own. Why? Because BSG describes

a civilization outside out solar system that reflects our planet! They face the same issue

that we have, yet they are overwelmed by their creations and their future is in the deep

cold space vacum.

BSG isn't about fiction, it's telling us that we are what we are and creating artificial life

can pose a threat to ourself. Why? Because we don't know boundaries and we keep

seeking the unknown. Life without blood but impulses into circuits is what it's all about,

the attention is focused on "OUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES"!

From humans to cold chrome cylons to skinjobs, the actions taken by each of them

had their conquences because free-will is applied.

Humans decided to move out from Kobol, planets were colonized, they created artificial life

that could understand better than their creators,mayhem generates as humans are nuked

by their crations; humanity is in space escaping extintion.

We risked many times a total wipe out, yet we are keen to forget it because history

has alienated us!

What happened in BSG is a vision of what can happen to our kind, to our planet, simply

because our political values can overthrown our humanistic priciples; and we can find ourself

with rocks and stones in our hands.

Felloship, problems, love and hate is a wild ride that totally reflects our species from a planet

into bunch of lost space ships. Life is all about one quarter to the other, from one deck to the

next one. Forests, rivers and mountains are a thing of the past that is missing from the whole

scenario.

Banks know best!