once upon a time i commented on shenry's blog...


"dude - so feel for ur paw... in the name of all canadians, i'd like to say that i'm very sorry.
i guess we've come to an understanding that border dudes tend to be frustrated cop wanna-be's, and i figure this attitude of "protecting" ur country and the qualified peeps in it is deffinitely encouraged from their superiors. on both sides.
my brother once wanted to go on a crazy motorcycle tour after he graduated from the local tech institute: down the coast, and then maybe a bit east, and then back up to canada. he was gonna check out area 51, grand canyon, umm... what else is there to check out? ;)
so anywho, the border-fuck asked him what he's doin', howcome he's got this big back-pack, so my bro told him, and then he was asked if he's working. "well, no" he said, "just graduated." i think they told him to pull over, and then that dude or some other dude came out of their little building and handed him this piece of paper and started telling him he's been denied entry and wont be allowed entry until he proves that he's working in canada and pays his bills, and bla bla bla. my bro was just astonished, looking at the paper he was just handed, trying to make sense of it, his trip took some planning, and now it wasnt going to happen. and the border fuck is like "look at me when i'm talking to you!"
anyways, my bro got turned around and sent back home, and hasnt had much inkling to go down south since.
recently, while crossing the border to visit phx' family, i glimpsed some kinda little poster-type thing, almost as if targeted at the border fucks, saying something about them being the representatives of their country, and so to act professional or something. maybe thats the thing to do: when one of them gives u attitude, ask to see his manager, and write to all gov't representatives above him, as far up as possible.
i seriously dislike going down to the states, and really mostly because of the attitude at the border. that and the flag-flying and ribbon-stickering everywhere. someone in china had a great idea and made millions off these new american nationalistic sentiments. they're doing canada pretty good too, but thank god we havent been hit by ribbon-sticker mania just yet. but other than that, i remember noticing how nice i thought some people in san francisco were, and i've heard from phx' mom that once people sorta got to know them, they, in general, turned out to be pretty nice too. i guess people are people, anywhere u look, but its not necessarily that governments are evil, either, because governments tend to be the mere shadows cast by big business. thank you noam chomski :)
that logic works for me: business creates the facade that government is, to create seemingly legitimate laws that create an environment that most facilitates the flow of wealth from as many sources as possible to said business. i wonder if, in their greed to harvest from ever larger markets, trans-national corporations will be the end of countries... oops! look at the european union :D i guess that will be the end of idiot border guards, and an influx of idiot mall security...
but in the meantime, there's plenty of businesses that depend on the countries they're based in for protection from pesky competition, in forms such as import taxes and duties, tax breaks for themselves, subsidies, etc. and if they can keep these convenient structures in place by making small, tax-deductible donations to political organizations, just so they can recruit more people for their cause, then why the hell not - its a very logical investment! as long as the politics game continues, government stays in place, the public's attention is on it, and not on the actual shadow-casting powers that be, and the money keeps flowing. so i guess the NAFTA problems are just the struggles between trans-national corporations and single-country based companies: the big guys want nafta, the "small" guys dont. seems to me like big corps got us little peeps in their pocket: we like the cheaper stuff they're able to provide, and we wanna work for them because they pay more, or at least got benefits or something. unless people start acting more along non-economic lines. but then i think of the fair trade coffee thing, and how corporations have adjusted to that. also - is that all the choice we have? support big business or huge? but it wasnt always like that - there was the seemingly business-less communist idea. but that didnt seem to last very long. maybe because of man's seemingly built-in sense of greed, in all its colors and shades. greed is such an ugly word - how about gathering instinct..? with the twist that jealousy provides, because even if you think you have enough, the next guy has more, and if the unforseen occurs and he survives because he has that much more and u die? i wouldnt think this would be conscious - more like a hardwired reflex which u inherited because ur predecessors survived thanks to that reflex, and those who didnt ... didnt. now, a question straight out of "Dune" - are u a human, whose mental ability has evolved to be stronger than the hardwired reflex of an animal? will you survive, or will u die?
hehe, politcs and evolution - i always seem to end up babbling about those :)
but back to paw - maybe the border fucks found it somewhat suspicious that anyone would want to go to a colder place for vacation. and there's plenty of pot up here too, so unless paw's got a killer strain and nothing else does it for him, or he doesnt want any pesticides... i also figure its good to go when its busy, so they just want to get everyone thru and be done with it.
i was also wondering what paw does out there, just being a hermit? just has enough daily chores to keep himself busy enough? or is he like writing books? just wondering what a guy would do all by himself all the time.
ok, time for beddy :) "

meandering thoughts

i sometimes think of a person's dna as a sort of switchboard, where different traits are either ON or OFF. same for traits of character. but some traits of character are controlled directly by genes that are on and off. maybe even all. some traits, of character or not, might be controlled by a single switch. some traits might be the result of a specific sequence or combination of ONs and OFFs. one such switch, or combination of switches might be the willingness to co-operate. or maybe thats a combination of relatively low agression, and an ability to recognize the benefits of working together versus working alone. thanks to those, we're able to live in societies. being able to learn by example is probably very important. maybe it wasnt even as lucid a trait as being able to recognise the benefits of working together, as needing to work together - for survivial. and all of a sudden, what no one individual was ever likely to reach, a diverse pool of people did attain. sharing of resources, pooling of efforts, parallel processing... would we have gotten this far if our agression was turned up much higher? (yeah, maybe it's more like an array of dials rather than switches...) if we were all agressive and no one was meek, how could the power of many ever be harnessed? or all meek and no agressives. there might be no direction, because no one would feel like imposing their will on anybody. maybe societies are something like pyramids - people who wont take direction from anybody either end up at the top, or die in the process. then people who just have a tendency to impose their will, but will take it up the ass for a time and with benefits. they control people with yet less drive behind their will. that way, a BIG push can be made in one direction. sheer brute force works ok, but greater yields seem to occur when ur underlings actually somewhat agree with u - that way they truly do push in the same direction as u. enter propaganda = public brainwashing. or the brainwashing of the public. the public being the masses with something of an opinion? a direction? a few fiascos in that department, and the name propaganda gets enough bad connotations that it must be renamed to public relations. a little stick and a bit o' carrot and the donkey hopefully runs more or less where u want it to. which might be towards a precipice, but all u can see is the paradise on the other side of it. oops!

wow - this is different

these guys must have been blotter artists in the 60's

http://homepage3.nifty.com/kazano/gallery/index_e.html

the company christmas party was too much of a blast. i think i have to figure out how many shots to allow myself per night. also, what fucked me over, or what contributed to fucking me over, was the fact they ran out of tequila and so i switched over to vodka. stick to one type of alcohol tommy! would 10 shots be a good limit? i'm lucky i've got good friends and a great fiancee. they took care of me when i've obviously had enough, got me a cab, put me in it, somehow found out where i live and told him, as well as got him not to fuck me over. you hear stories about asshole cabbies all the time, i even know this girl who was almost raped by one. maybe i just cashed in some good karma that night, who knows. the dude didnt even fuss when i had to get him to do an emergency pull over so i could toss me cookies. maybe 7 shots would be a better limit. phx took really good care of me, and deffinitely tried, even when my conscious self wasnt there anymore, just the primal sub-conscious. i've heard about people lapsing in and out of consciousness after severe physical trauma, reverting to their mother toungue, but even my mom, when in the emergency ward when she had that concussion, was able to sorta communicate in english. i thought i would always be able to, no matter what. and it didnt even take a concussion to prove that theory wrong. the lights were on, but there was nobody home, so i guess the home automation system had to take care of things. so 7 shots sounds like a good number. and NO pot when drinking heavy! that was just stupid. actually, that was probably what ultimately did me in! my drinking do's and don'ts learning curve is pretty horizontal... :(

is marijuana prohibition any different than the old alcohol prohibition?

just got to thunking, is all. i dont think its very different, except perhaps for the length of duration. also got to thunking that if "fighting" the prohibition doesnt seem to be doing much good right now, then probably if things simply continue developing in terms of cannabis' popularity, there will be no one to prosecute in a generation, because the majority of the north american population will be smoking at home and with friends by then. just hope marc emery doesnt have to wait that long...

so the first un-happy tears have been shed over the wedding. very nice. i'm one of those classic cases of the dude being stuck between his mother and his... other woman - wife, girlfriend - what have you. fiancee. that, plus culture difference. phx wants a small wedding, mother thinks she's obliged to invite a bunch of ppl whom she knows, but phx doesnt. phx had a set idea of what things were gonna be like, and doesnt really want it any other way. i agreed with phx about keeping the expenses down, but since its turning out that our parents are gonna be paying for most of it all, if they wanna invite some more ppl, then why not. to me, its "the more - the merrier". to phx, she wants a small wedding. i'm easy going, and i guess i just didnt have a strong opinion about what its all gonna look like, so what do i care if there's more ppl - at least it would be a bigger wedding! :)
but i guess its a bit of a struggle of the wills here - phx and mother. i guess both are strong minded, but i guess mother ceded, since she noticed it was quite a big deal. i'm just thinking - what the fuck?! this isnt supposed to be a stressful thing. i'm going from one strong-willed woman to another, but their approaches to things are different. well, phx doesnt make me work in the garden yet :)
so i feel like smoking up, but dont wanna be an escapist, so i'm sitting here feeling pretty crummy. if i have a couple drinks, my head is gonna hurt tomorrow morning. my family and phx dont mesh too well. i guess she always feels outnumbered and stuff, but is not always easygoing, so she gets stressed out/pissed off, and then that puts tension on me, to mediate between her and the family. it was like that in spain, and here sometimes too i guess. its these people that are picky eaters, they're picky about more than just food. they dont like this and that, hard to bend their barriers, expand their horizons. in some respects. i dont know tho - i know a guy that doesnt like tomatoes, but he seems pretty lax about everything else. maybe its just girls then? my stupid bitch ex was pretty set in her ways too. maybe its me bringing these things out in my gf's? maybe i'm too open, easy going, or whatev? maybe used to getting my will bent, so i dont have very firm walls within which to brace up? phx just stormed around the bedroom, then into the can, and growled something about the typing noise keeping her awake. i just had to tell her to get some earplugs. guess maybe its better to vent a bit at a time than just go all out after the pressure is just too high. i donno, i dont think i blow up at people. maybe its the trait of a pussy. fuck, just when u think things are going awrite. well, i guess there's always gonna be shit blowing up in ur face. maybe i just gotta accept that and work on solving these things? channel my tension/pissed-offedness/whatever to solve a problem rather than just reacting to fire with fire? its kinda hard, and its tempting to just go off the deep end, but maybe i should act like the adult i unfortunately am forced to face that i am.

i donno, i must be bi-polar or something, i get so friggin pissed off and depressed recently. maybe its that seasonal affective disorder, but its really getting to me. i hate my job, hate the cold, hate the driving in this town, hate not having time, i feel tired all the time, i dont wanna do anything, but theres so much to be done...

feelin' a'ight :)

maybe cause i only worked like 3.5 hours at my side job tonight, with no precipitation, and hardly any cold. poor phx is not feeling very well these days, feeling so tired, nauseous, puking, not eating much, head aching... i wish i could do something to help her with it... but she endures it all, because it is our baby... i feel so grateful for her, and i know she will be a great mommy and wife :)
its still such a novel idea, but i guess nothing will really change, other than the formality. well, with the baby there will be changes. but somehow, since finding out she's pregnant and then asking her to marry me, seems to me like my love for her got a boost, got rejuvenated. i'm very glad this is all happening :) i guess i kinda wish we had a bit more time, but what the hey - its all that much more exciting :)

i love my babies! :)

i feel like a bit of a loser getting on my blog just to bitch, but i guess i need some sort of outlet.
just everything sucks. too much to do, not enough money and time to do it, and it all sucks anyways. i cant just think positive, i get into these fucking downers. feels like an uphill battle. maybe its late and i've been working late most evenings, and its winter so theres a lot less sunlight, and its cold, and all my clothes are dirty, and the appartment i keep referring to as a fucken pit, and my car is just overloaded with shit, and i keep hauling stuff to and from it numerous times a day, and i cant just slow down and do one thing at a time because i'm getting married and have a child on the way, and i dont wanna drink to relax because i'll feel like shit tomorrow, an dont wanna smoke pot or do acid because phoenix is gonna get upset, and besides, i have a feeling it would just get me into a downer tomorrow or the next day, i havent even done my taxes for last year, let alone this one, and my mom's computer is a pile of shit that i just dont have enough knowledge to deal with, but she wants the goddam pix from spain burned onto a cd, and my car needs a coolant flush, and the fucken side job just wont go away, but its my way to a decent engagement ring, and probably wedding bands, and i'll have to get an appartment or townhouse soon, and theres too much garbage and filth all around me and i dont have the time or energy to deal with it. fucken showering is a goddamn chore now - i used to love showering! i guess i'll have to jus try and somehow engrain in myself positive thinking. dont get down about shit - just deal with it. easy to say - brilliant idea from the shower by the way - but for some reason i just keep getting these downers every now and then. fuck. well, i think i feel a bit better, but also somewhat ashamed for being such a loser and blogging about my stupid shit so people can read it. what am i really trying for tho? if overpopulation doesnt kill us - well, it wouldnt be overpopulation itself, just die of lack of resources of some sort, or a resource war, or we'll over-toxify the planet, or nuke the place...
and here i was - getting all giddy about listening to terence mckenna talk about marshal mcluhan and his clever ideas about language, writing, printing, reading and media - instead of digging in for the fucken apocalypse. my shoulders hurt from all this typing. fuck it.

for those of u who dont read my fiancee's blog... thats right - i'm engaged! :)
AND i'm gonna be a dad! :D
but before that i'm gonna be a husband :)
and before that i'm gonna get my bibi an engagement ring. and i guess thats what i'm working at these days. i'm hooking up a dude with all kinds of security goodies for his jewellery warehouse, actualy just installing them, and he's gonna hook us up with a nice engagement ring at cost or below. but until that gloroius day, i'm gonna werk like until midnight every nite it seems, then get up at 6:30 am and go to werk...
but every now and then i think about how i'm gonna be a daddy, and a husband, and my heart lightens up :)
ok - i keep falling asleep in front of the comp. i think its time to hit the hay.

congrats welcome! :)

tomek

well, i was gonna post about what a shitty night it's been, how what was supposed to have been a stupid 2-3 hour side-job finish-off turned into an over 5 hour stupid clusterfuck until 12:40 am that i still have to go and finish off tomorrow, or die trying, while having to call my parents to tell them that unfortunately their moron son cant come to celebrate their other son's wedding as he'd promised, because he has to work another 3-4 hours to try and finish this stupid job which will probably end up paying under minimum wage, judging by the amount of hours its taking. i drove home yelling at myself about how unbelievably, ridiculously, extravagantly, fucken flamboyantly idiotic this whole thing was. it just rates above and beyond anything ever before, at all, and has set a brand new, astronomically unattainable standard of... of... there's just no proper word in the english vocabulary for this kinda thing just yet. but here's a few markers, just to point toward the general nature of this: idiocy, stupidity, brainlessness, braindeadness, retardation, unfitness for survival, un-human-worthiness, time waste, ...

well, i feel a little bit better now. man - that was incredible. just so stupid. ugh...
and then i get home, shower, and read on phx' blog about how she's still hemorrhaging about my brother's email, and which has now spread to doubts about our relationship again. why me? i change lanes in morning traffic, and my lane immediately starts slowing down, and my until now slow lane starts speeding up and everybody gets ahead of me. i'm sure my car will break down tomorrow, and i'll try to fix it in the rain, and get sick, get fired, get sicker, krista will leave me for an acid dealer, my parents and brother will die, and so will i and dogs and cats will shit and pee on my grave, and my name will be deleted from all records by some freak virus, and so all this pain will have been in vain, and that's the end. fucken bullshit.

The decline and fall of work

i just happened upon what looks like a chapter out of a book online, and its a pretty wicked read :)
at first it just screams some of the feelings and thoughts i've had about work, having put them into words. and how! and then it goes further and talks about things i didnt know about and havent thought of. cant say i agree with all of it - seems like in some instances substance was sacrificed for the sake of flare - but the flare is largely what makes me like it - kinda like terence mckenna :) enjoy!

recently i've been thinking about the movie "7 degrees of separation" or somethig like that. i've never seen it but i've got the idea that its about how everyone is separated from anyone else in the world by a max or average of 7 people - meaning, i know a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy that knows the president, or something like that. i thunk of it because i found it kinda cool that i know a guy whose nephew plays in the NFL for the florida team - whoever they happen to be. and then i thought how i also know a guy whose aunt used to be married to a guy who was a drummer for bob marley for a while. funny enough, same guy has an uncle who either IS like a world renowned crickett superstar or he has another nephew who is - dont remember exactly anymore - i was told after a few mojito pitchers and some smoke. both famous dudes are related to my friend by marriage though, because he's white as my ass :) but he's a very cool dude, so let the record show that the similarity of pigmentation of my friend and my posterior has had no detrimental effect on my friend whatsoever. man, i'm starting to write weird - must be late. then i know this dude who used to run a hair salon with a buddy, which was really only a front for their drug superstore. then i kinda know this chick who went out on a date with samuel l. jackson. i know dudes who used to hang out with biff naked when they were all small time hardcore rockers. she got big, but they still supposedly chill occasionally. seen a few NHL stars around, worked in some of their houses when they were being constructed. my buddy's gf used to babysit for one of them. etc etc
so i know ppl who know ppl. hehe - too bad i dont know any celebrities personally :) but its an astoundingly small world sometimes. like my ex gf in toronto, turned out to be a longtime friend of a buddy of mine from accross the country. or my brother's ex gf like 2 or 3 years later met up and dated my bob marley related friend. shit - i think that guy must be the best 'connected' yet. damn, i think that must be right. apparently he did some work at a place that belongs to the richest man in china - then they hung out a bit - dude is supposedly a sweetheart. i wondered out loud to my friend whether the nice rich old man got rich because he was a ruthless businessman in his youth, and now that his hormones have chilled out he's nice and everybody likes him. but lets not kill yet another ideal and hope he's always been nice and thats one of the keys to his astounding success :)
ok - time for beddy. but i gotta rent that movie. or borrow it from the library :)

20 random things

i've just been informed that i'm a little shit-fucker. and that i'm mean.
who do u think said it? :)
whoever it was, they said they dont like me anymore and i didnt get to write ahead of time that they were gonna throw a paper ball at me :(
i dont think i'm mean. i mean, i have the potential to be, but i dont think i ever really am anymore.
but anywho, here's 20 somewhat random things...

1. vodka used to be my hard liquor of choice, but i think i like gibson's whiskey better now.

2. i used to say that given the choice between dropping alcohol or pot from my life, i'd say i would drop alcohol without hesitation.

i was just informed i bought the barbed wire of toilet papers :)

3. after screwing around in college for a year and a half and then just sitting at my parents home for a year i finally went to a technical institute for 2 years just to get some kinda profession, to have something to make a living from while i figure out just what i'd like to study. that was 5 years ago and i still dont know what and where to study. i have too many interests - just like 10 years ago.

4. my last big purchase was the tv i guess, but the last REAL big one was the trip to spain.

5. my brother is in azerbaijan right now, getting ready to get married to a girl he met and "dated" online for about a year or so, whom he hadnt met in person until a few weeks ago. they wanna have one wedding in azerbaijan and one in poland - which is gonna be my next big expense. too bad i wont be able to catch the one in azerbaijan tho.

6. i used to have a beverage can and bottle collection - i dont know how many hundreds of each i had anymore. i sold most of them for what turned out to be pennies, but kept the more interesting stuff at my parents place.

7. i now live like 8 or 9 time zones away from where i was born. my brother is now directly on the other side of the planet from me.

8. i've owned a dodge omni, then an oldsmobile toronado, now i drive a talon, and i also have another dodge omni now :)

9. i'm starting to dislike snowboarding more and more - the hills are still focused on skiers, and so the flat stretches just kill me. plus the ridiculous prices, the fog, flurries and other visibility impediments, icy slopes, too many people, blah blah blah...

10. i've started to suspect my grandfather might have been something of a spy. just dont know for whom.

11. my last name has 13 letters. only one of them is a vowel.
hehe, just kidding :)

12. i still have a little plush-ish doggie that i got when i was a baby, but to which i became much more attached when my real dog died. i named it "bacek" (little shepherd) after the real dog.

13. my real dog died because he got really sick from getting a cold from being tied up outside in the cold and somewhat wet, because i walked my brother with him to the bus stop, and when i got back home i realized i lost my key and couldnt find it, and then it was time for me to go to school, so a neighbour offered to keep my dog in her yard, spotted me the bus change and some paper and a pen. it was winter and snow was on the ground. i found the key later that year, after my dog died.

14. i have stupid regrets that come back to haunt me every now and then. i used to be really bothered by this pretty silly one about having inadvertently burned part of my brother's kids magazine centerfold cutout toy thingy. still kinda bugs me. these things used to get pretty bad, and it seems like they finally started triggering something like a tourette's response when these regrets get a bit overwhelming - my head might twitch to the side, or i might say something like "fuck off!", "stupid fuck", "asshole" etc. but i'm happy to say its subsided considerably.

15. i am more nervous about running into the guy who used to be my friend and with whom my ex gf of almost 3 years started getting involved when she was still with me, and to whom she's now engaged, than about running into her, and i think it is because i'm more physically intimidated by him than her.

16. i can make waves with my belly like, um... a belly dancer :)

17. no matter how interesting i find something, as soon as it becomes something i have to do, or something of importance, i tend to get apprehensive about it and go and get occupied with something else, usually something completely useless and unproductive.

18. i'm kinda afraid i may be a coward. i dont think i've ever made an important decision in my life - fate just sorta seems to have put me into situations and places, and all i had to do was just to take the opportunity, not even that - just go with the flow, play the role. i guess being passive like this is quite conducive to determinism. which might just be the actual, true state of things.

19. the only actual important "decision" that i can think of having made is deciding that god probably doesnt exist. but i still havent told my family. i dont know how i ever will.

20. i started this feeling somewhat positive, but finish feeling pretty down, and i think the decline started with the story about my dog.

time to get groceries.

a friend of mine is trying to force me to take some action towards bettering my future. he wants me to get my life on track. he wants me to figure out what it is exactly that i think i want - do i want riches and dont care what i do? do i want my work to do something for me in a non-materialistic way? what would i like to do for a living? how much money do i want to be making? when to retire by?

so i guess i want to be able to do whatever i want. i want freedom, independence. for work, i'd like to do something that i'd be excited to get onto. i now know that i dont want to be wet and/or cold at work, but i dont mind the fresh air and mobility. i'd like to be able to do my work from anywhere in the world, and/or travel a lot to see how ppl live in different places, check out the achievements of cultures and individuals everywhere. i'm thinking translator, architect, designer?
i've worked in security for 4 years. i know a bit of stuff, some of the finer points interest me. i've recently realised i like drilling into metal, screwing bolts and nuts, threading - but somewhat precision work. i guess i like details. one thing thats keeping me in security is that i now have a bit of experience and so get paid ok. thats 2 things. i guess i could get into it. but would i be good? would it be fulfilling? maybe, but i'd never know if languages might have done much more for me.
so maybe i should continue within security, trying to learn as much as possible, but keep eyes open for more learning opportunities, better working conditions. but i'd like to get to a place i guess, where i'd work more freelance, do cool little projects that would be rewarding, learning experiences, and very profitable, so that I could then re-route a lot of time to going back to school (after some self study first, maybe), and really exploring all the aspects of language/communication, and then being able to narrow down my interests and doing more and more interesting stuff. and if i like it better than security then i can change fields.
another thing i wanted to play with is t-shirt design and producing, maybe even a wider variety of clothes. maybe i could do this sorta on the side of security. see if it flourishes.
or maybe some different types of design.
i dont think working on my car could ever turn into more than a hobby, but i'd deffinitely like to learn more about this hobby and become more proficient at it. it would also be cool to build remote controlled and AI robots. i like electronic gadgets and would like to work more with them, get more experimental, create.

hehe :)

in spain, creativity seems to abound wherever you look. even traffic signs get embellished ...
:)

-props to my habibi for finding this pic for me :)

taggage

i've been tagged

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

here's the sentence:

life sucks. (Tuesday, January 18, 2005 posting)


ha! this is hilarious :D

i'll try and put tags to 5 ppl's blogs soon.



g'nite! :)

i'm tired

back from eurotrip

so we're finally back from a 3 week crazy trip mostly to spain. it was deffinitely packed: on the way to spain we had a half a day layover in london so we blitzed thru some of it. then got a hotel, waited an hour and 15 minutes for a pizza delivery. fucken retarded. the worst thing about london is how un-fucken-believable expensive it is - things cost at the very least twice as much as they do here, and from there there is no ceiling. 80 pounds for a cab from london gatwick to downtown london - PLUS like 7 pounds i think to be able to drive into the london core. thats like over $170. i could probably go to fucken seattle for that. and the retarded pay-per-minute internet machine at the airport just blocked gmail, so i could only check my hotmail account. but once ur in london i guess there's things to see. but it was still just crazy.
then to spain. people smoking everywhere. well, in london too. stupid designated smoking areas that the smoke simply drifted out of - completely retarded. man, am i on a negative trip eh? :)
in spain and portugal - the road and highway signage was "inadequate" - often there was no signs, and when they were there, they were tiny and right at the turn u need to take. and confusing as hell - a huge sign above a highway that ur on, with up to 10 different highway signs and 2 cities - all going in ur direction - all these highways on one road? plus they've been changing their highway denomination system, so even the maps wer just piss poor, and even the newest ones werent well updated. they've been on this change for a couple years! the spanish just dont give a shit. often rude customer servie. half the stores were closed for vacation. 90% bathrooms had no toilet paper - especially annoying for girls. timers on lights in all public areas, sothe light would turn of like 3 times while ur taking a shit. everything in public areas was sticky - in england too - i guess they just wipe stuff down semi-anually. kitchens in bars etc close at like 2 or 3 pm or something - so u might be able to get a cold sandwich only. but the coffee was great - espeially in portugal - strong and delicious. but they dont even fuck around with brewing the stuff - they just do espresso, with steamed milk if u want coffee with milk - which eliminates the need for big coffee cups. but - no coffee to go other than starbucks - which tasted like piss compared to the 1 Euro coffee u could get at any bar - which, at an average of 2 bars per city block, makes a shitload of bars. and the starbucks sizes are all messed up too - theres no tall, grande and venti, there small, medium and large - and the small is tiny, the medium is like a tall, and the large is like a grande - there is no venti. and it costs 1.5 times as much as here. forget about burger king and mcdonalds - they cost maybe twice as much as here. thats why there's precious few of them there.
of the cool stuff: i got to spend some time with my 81 year old gramma, who, when asked how old she is says she just flips the digits and says she's 18 - she's hilarious :) got to hear her sing some old folklore and military songs, got to hear some wartime stories, and some stories from her lomg and hard life. grampa is still a mistery - he wont explain why he left for like 40 years, where and when he was born, what he did before and during the war, and recently he added more questions to the mix revealing that in the 50's he went to portugal and the canary islands. must have been while his wife was trying to feed her 3 daughters with no money and a broken wrist in the city. we're starting to figure he was a spy. he is quite intelligent.
ok - time to take a shower and back to dusty old construction. i'll continue this later ;)

i'm tired and feel like puking. i want to shut off the wants of the world around me. i want my way. pot or alcohol dont deal with the problems that make me feel like this, but they can ease the symptoms so soothingly...
i always forget that i probably only need a few minutes with a distraction, not focusing so much on my disomfort, and i'm much better :)
thats my theory on how pot and alcohol do their magic - they "dilute" the chemicals in the brain that let me think, making me a little less efficient, because less focused, and/or perhaps its the screening process - thoughts which are not driven by a high priority impulse are not weeded out as efficiently anymore - i get distracted, derailed from an obsessive train of thought. the priority loses its priority. tension dissipates. the realisation seeps thru that life can be beautiful.
i wonder if everybody is downer-driven. things have to be at the very least bi-polar - we must be motivated by bad things to avoid those bad things, and by good things to seek more of those good things. pretty blind process. i think we give ourselves too much credit when it comes to free will. the brain is just a convenient mutation of the nervous system. a complication of it, a turbo-charger on an engine inevitably bound for self-destruction. we'll just get there faster. we're a pest colony thats just too greedy for its own good. we keep inventing ways of taking more. and the less there is to take, the more aggressive it'll get. a healthy degree of aggresion in the individual will be more and more often the ticket. i wonder if society will wind tighter and tighter, the more docile portion of the population continuously being fucked out of existence. the ratio of competition versus co-operation will keep growing... but on the other hand, i wonder if we're actually heading in completely the opposite direction. the solitary, ultra-aggressive alpha-male is every now and then beaten by one who has a different trait, or set of traits to make up for his somewhat more mediocre aggression - smarts of some sort, charisma, pheromones, killer smile - whatever it is that makes other people like him. he harnesses the power of many "lesser" individuals - he's the politician. i guess there has to be some kinda balance between the push and the pull, the stick and the carrot - kiss babies, kill the competition. but nothing is static. things keep moving around and changing - until a new way of being for a system is found. all the different ways that people on earth can and have lived circumscribe the limits of how the human can live, as limited by the environment. and we have an impact on our environment - like any self-respecting life form would :)
but even that environment has limits on how much it can be changed, and although we can probably reach this limit - i dont think we would survive it. Terence McKenna pulled out from somewhere this theory that the earth is like some sort of embryo or otherwise a somewhat alive in a fringy sense "organism", and part of its "growing" or "becoming" (conscious or not) was the ocurrence of life-supporting if not outright life-spawning conditions, where all the life that has sprouted up since, is but a subsystem, not unlike all the friendly bacteria we have living inside our bodies, doing whatever it is they do, with the end result of us functioning well. its symbiosis at best. u lose some of them or have an imbalance - u might get diarrhea for a bit. but one of you survives, while their population is decimated. or maybe this is not nearly the end of the road yet. maybe all the flora and fauna is but the base of a huge pyramid-like support system for us... so we can make something really worthwhile and produce and network enough electronics and gather enough data, until we have wrought an "artificial" super-intelligence out of the earth's minerals. we've been messing around with what the earth is made of forever - working the earth, farming, mining, refining, building, shaping - that was just practice. we're starting to get better at it, so we can do finer work with it, until we build the earth a brain out of itself, out of its minerals. we might not recognize it for what it is until its too late. look at the internet. are we just blindly performing our function? here we are, thinking we're the shizznit. in the meantime we're a horde of blind slaves pushing huge rocks around, not realising we're being made to build a pyramid.
time for beddy - its 12:48