Gloria in Excelsis Dev

Rémy: Contrary to belief, the 20th century wasn’t that bloody. It’s agreed that wars caused 100 million deaths. Add 10 million for the Russian gulags. The Chinese camps, we’ll never know, but say 20 million. So 130, 145 million dead. Not all that impressive. In the 16th century, the Spanish and Portuguese managed, without gas chambers or bombs, to slaughter 150 million Indians in Latin America. With axes! That’s a lot of work, sister. Even if they had church support, it was an achievement. So much so tha the Dutch, English, French, and later Americans followed their lead and butchered another 50 million. 200 million dead in all! The greatest massacre in history took place right here. And not the tiniest holocaust museum. The history of mankind is a history of horrors.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338135/

www.wisdombook.org

I’ve first seen it at http://anitzirc.blogspot.com

“Gufi’s Country”

• Gufi – king in the Land of the Blind, pretends to be blind as all his servants
• Lulu – jester; can see with one eye and mocks his king for keeping his kingdom in blindness
• Iola – kings’s daughter; must get married and take the pesky buffoon off the king’s head
• Robderoua – hero, saves the day by bringing the colors back in the castle, fucks the bride

Overall the play was AWESOME! Bravo to all puppeteers once again and many thanks to Matasari 17 for hosting this.

Even though it’s just a kid’s story, in front of a mature audience it brings shaded everyday questions to light. Like ‘am I really who I am or am I just societies puppet’. Of course, it all goes away after a beer or two but that moment, that moment  of incertitude still itches a blind spot in our mind.

IMDb link

An intresting article about lucid dreaming from the blog of Tim Ferris.

Use your Brain

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/achimh/3573701032/

"Donate blood in blood bank, not on this road"

As I see it now people can be split in two groups: those who are indifferent, and those who are different. Relative to the ‘give life – give blood’ statement. I’m not sure about their parity but I could bet a finger or two it’s hugely in favour of the group formed by indifferent people.

Thanks to the cry for action of a friend, who had a friend who suffered an almost fatal motorcycle accident, I somehow instantly made up my mind and joined the blood donors group. How do I feel? A bit dizzy, but happy with my decision. And now that I’m familiar with the process I’ll do it again after the legal time of 70 days passed. Of course I’m not fond of needles and the sight of blood summed up with the fear of pain makes me a bit jumpy but let’s please not forget we all have the innate and educable ability to consciously control our thoughts and emotions.

On the other hand I’m quite amazed by the replies to the forwarded message for help. Maybe 80% of recipients totally ignored it. I mean totally. Other 10% had reasonable justifications not to do it at that moment, and the rest said things like: “I don’t support stupid people / adrenaline junkies /  motorcycle freaks”. Of course we agree to disagree and I don’t question their motives. I only think they see only one pixel of the whole picture. It takes days for the blood to be tested and distributed in hospitals. They would have helped the community as a whole, not a certain individual whose decisions in life should be none of our concern. The sooner we change this mentality the better. As the demand for blood is huge, hospitals seem to be asking the relatives of the sick to come up with donors (often even paid for this!) in exchange for the transfusions. I feel this is not the way it should be.

Donating blood should be instilled in our minds and respected as a sign of maturity and a casual social conduct performed at every few months by healthy grown ups, regardless of what one thinks about the morality of a certain receiver. Next time it may be your loved one to need it. Bo-hoo!

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthieu-aubry/521587520/