A broken Greg is useless

Some people may have various complaints about the program that I’m going through. Most of these I don’t pay any attention to, but there is one that I’m not to crazy about. My Information Technologies Management class is being taught by another graduate student. This grad student who I will call “Greg” has no dots in teaching (fans of White Wolf would understand the reference). There are several problems with this. First Greg has just explained to us that he has been grading our papers strictly and that despite the complaints there have been a handful of people that have turned in excellent papers. The rest of us are average, because after all most people are average. This goes against some basic facts, all of us are enrolled in a difficult post-graduate program which in turn makes most of us at least a little above average. I’m not being arrogant here, but he is belittling the entire group by calling us average. Second, the scores have been average because he has scored our papers with a couple really high grades and a lot of very low scores. The problem with the scores has been that there haven’t been sufficient comments to understand the grade. This is best exampled by the fact that almost all of us have been getting our papers back and throwing it right in the trash. A grade is just a number unless we all know how we got the grade and as far as we all know he is picking a number out of a hat and handing it to us.

There is another tough weekend for me, our business plan is due for class. The entire business plan isn’t actually due for two more months for the university but one of our professors is grading it and decided that we needed to have it in Tuesday. Also two finance tests, Japanese, and of course another couple of IT papers. Here I was planning to relive my youth my going to the beach all day, and watching Robotech all night.

Mazzzuabzuub hear my prayers

This weekend I have been spending a lot of time praying to Mazzzuabzuub the Mesopotamian god of Finance for her guidance on my Finance final yesterday. This marks the unofficial end of Hell Weeks, I have a another Finance midterm next week then I’m clear for a while.

I have become semi-obsessed with the show firefly. I watched the movie Serenity and thought it was just amazing, now I’m making my way though the shows. This is one of the best science fiction show ever and I’m really upset at Fox now for canceling this show. I’m even more upset than the entire Fox News existing thing. From what I understand Fox never really gave this show a chance. The movie won the viewer choice Golden Tomato from the Rotten Tomatoes website and the Firefly series is really selling well, I can only hope now that Fox wises up and puts the show back on the air, or lets someone else do it.

Last night it rained like crazy. It was the first time that I have seen lighting and hear thunder in Hawaii. It rains a lot here, but I had not realized that there was never thunder and lighting. I guess it is one of those things that you just realize after the fact.

Hell Week

Hell week is almost over. This week I have had a midterm, two presentations, and 4 different papers due. I then have to redo a presentation by tomorrow because the professor kept on changing the parameters of the assignment, so all of us in the class need to redo it. This pisses me off because it is a waste of my time, I pay for the time and now we two classes that are going to be wasted because this guy can not make up his mind about an assignment.

Other than that the news is the Vice President in the United States shot a guy in the face. The average amount of birdshot in a 28-gauge shotgun (a sissy shotgun, the larger the gauge the smaller the gun 28-gauge is the smallest) is 300 pellets. The guy got blasted with about 50 of them. If Dick was training for Iraq he needs to improve his aim.

Not much else going on here, just a lot of homework and staying indoors (it is cold here in Hawaii, in the 70s).

The one good thing is the work on Bolshevik Studios is progressing along. Bolshevik Studios is the business design that me and three others are working on to build a computer game design and publishing studio. I have really gotten into the project and am excited about how it is turning out. After this upcoming Monday (Finance final) I’ll have a little better time to enjoy the island.

Muslim Hooliganism

For those of you that have been keeping up with the news lately you may have noticed that large groups of Muslims throughout the world have been protesting, killing each other, and burning down embassies over a political cartoon that was printed in a Danish newspaper. What a bunch of ignorant fucking tools. I’m not talking about all Muslims but only the fools who are protesting this cartoon.

First, this entire problem came about when there were a group of pilgrims that were trampled at the Hajj. People in Saudi Arabia that wanted to learn more on the next morning’s newspaper didn’t, they instead learned about a political cartoon from Denmark from months before because the government of Saudi Arabia didn’t want to talk about it. It obviously worked, people stopped talking about how the royal family of Saudi Arabia cannot protect people who make the religious pilgrimage and instead they began talking about how the Europeans and Americans are a bunch of ignorant fucks.

Second, the “looks lovely in a dress” president of the United States has repeatedly made claims that the fundamentalists hate the “West” because they hate freedom. Many people share my view that this is bullshit, it is because of the economic conditions of the dictators of these countries keep and out support of these regimes to keep a sable region to suck the oil dry. This tomfoolery the last few weeks is making some people change their minds. Political cartoons is not only a means of expression in Europe, it is throughout the world. This is including Muslim newspapers who have decided that they would print cartoons about the holocaust. Only .1 % of the population of Denmark is Jewish. There has not been much talked about this after European newspapers offered to publish those cartoons.

Finally, to keep this short, the “West” has embraced the value of freedom of speech. This means we allow the Nazi party and KKK to speak their views. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims are allowed to spew their poisonous beliefs on the internet and television. This is not a perfect system, but it is something that I believe in and many others do as well. Yes, we may be ignorant because this freedom of speech allowed for the printing of a blasphemous image (though similar images have been printed throughout the world, including several Muslim countries those will be ignored). So label use culturally insensitive. We have a value of free speech here, and demanding that we punish the ones responsible for that free speech, and requesting that we change out laws to not offend Muslims anymore; well that is culturally insensitive too. So in all respects our two groups are even.

What is upsetting though is that European governments are calling for a “voluntary code of conduct” to prevent future problems. Don’t do this. Free speech is out value and it is coming under attack from the outside from people who don’t share this value. Here is an easy analogy, a person who tells me that they are offended by the tattoos that I have doesn’t make me remove them or decide to not get new ones. I shrug, try to understand their view, and then I am almost a 100% going to reject their view. So my opinion free of charge to Europe, ignore it and don’t do anything. If we start calling for “codes of conduct” and offering apologies it is telling them that threats, burning down embassies, and dictator-sponsored rallies can change us. This shouldn’t work, we should just shrug and ignore it.

ESPN does not need to cover the Pro Bowl

Well the Super Bowl is done and now it is time for the last hurrah for professional football until the draft, that would be the Pro Bowl. The Pro Bowl is played right here in Honolulu and that means that ESPN is here, they arrived last night so they could broadcast from Waikiki Beach. Fuck them.

They are taking up all the parking here, parking for people who live in Waikiki like me. So now I don’t only have to worry about tourists who are too cheap to pay for their hotel parking, and the general lack of parking; but now I have all sorts of ESPN trucks that are taking up parking with a permit from the city.

The fucked up thing, Aloha Stadium where they play the Pro Bowl is not even near Waikiki, it is on the other side of the city. And they have a huge empty lot where ESPN can park all their shit. I understand that when in Honolulu that you need to see Waikiki, heck I did after arriving here, but I can not figure out why ESPN needs more than fifty semi trailers parked all over.

Republicans drink human blood at their gatherings

My bug bite is a little better today which is saying that there is little change, but there is still burning and it hasn’t gotten numb yet.

Some news from the Middle East though. Saddam Hussein is boycotting his own trial he didn’t even show up. This is a tactic that someone should try in a famous trial in the United States, Kenneth Lay. Like Saddam he should refuse to go to his trial and send a list of demands such as having theme music piped into the court room every time he walks in and having the trial in a country where they allow the shenanigans that he pulled. We can even put him on trial with Saddam what they did isn’t that different. Both ruined million’s of people’s lives; Saddam by killing and torturing their family members and Kenny by taking away their pensions, jobs, and all their savings. I guess they are not exactly the same Saddam wasn’t buddies with the administration.

In other news from the Middle East where they print cartoons mocking the Jewish-Christian god daily, the fundamentalists and the Saudi Royal family are upset about a political cartoon that poked fun at their god. This cartoon was printed in Denmark last September, but like a good free press the European papers have decided to spend a day printing political cartoons mocking the religion even more. The fundamentalists are not taking this standing down, “The publication in Denmark of the images last September has provoked diplomatic sanctions and threats from Islamic militants across the Muslim world.” Yes, they are going to place sanctions on Denmark and because all the Islamic militants ‘export’ are terrorism and fundamentalist Islam Denmark has successfully secured itself against them. Good work, who would of thought that printing political cartoons would shield your country from terrorism?

Not going out like a sucker

What a week in news in the time that I have been hibernating the last few days. Hamas wins an election in Palestine and decides to promote tourism by promoting the lives of suicide bombers. Iran is still trying to make a nuclear weapon. Bush is still spying on you. The State of the Union, Oscar nominations, and Pat Robertson sounded like he was having a homosexual relationship by telling everyon that he has been "enjoying" Jesus. Oh, and people are still having sex.

The most important news though is that Samuel L. Jackson got his own Hollywood star. This is long overdue, the Simpsons have a star and they are not even real. We all need Samuel “bad motherfucker” Jackson. If he was our president he would be in the front line just like the kings in the years past (can you imagine Charles riding a horse into battle?). Every one of out enemies (I’m looking at you Pat Robertson) would be shitting in their pants. Really this is long overdue because Samuel L. Jackson is the only reason to see any movie even the movies that he doesn’t make an appearance.

A word about the State of the Union speech, it was really bad. He is trying to highlight that we are too dependent on oil, but he’s said that in the past and done nothing about it. Just like AIDS in Africa, another issue he has brought up in the past that he has done nothing about it. Bush did indicate that he is planning to continue spying on you though. An interesting note about that, he announced that he was going to continue changing the nation to a 1984 model and there were people standing applauding him. I was watching on CNN and they zoomed in on Hillary Clinton during this and she was shaking her head and I swear she said “bastard”.

Right now though I have some kind of bug bite on my leg, there is a softball sized lump on my leg it is a combination of red and purple with black lines that indicate where my veins are. It burns too, that is how I know it is working; when my leg goes numb I know that I’m in trouble.