Happy Independence Day, Finland!

Good thing we got out of Russia when we did. Russia sucks.

Stupid imageView bug

Posting this only because I tried to google the problem and failed.

If you create your own custom ImageView, and the end result is that on zooming or moving the image only a part of if gets zoomed or moved even though the matrix is computed right, check that you haven't hidden view.getMatrix() by accident.

Yeah, silly, I know.

Beauvais

Beauvais is a small town a bit north of Paris. I always known it as the place Ryanair flies to because it's too damn cheap for CDG, and also, more charitably, as the place that has a cathedral with a famous clock. We figured that we would visit it on our way to Amiens.



On arrival we noticed in rural France, unlike in Paris, pretty much everything is closed on Sundays, and beheld the strangest structure.

It was quite lovely, and decorated as a proper Gothic cathedral should be, but it was the weirdest shape of all the cathedrals I have ever seen, and I have seen a few. It didn't have a nave. At all. Nor a spire.

Inside, it was the tallest church I'd ever seen (the tallest in existence, claims Wikipedia) - my photos don't quite do it justice - and had weird wooden things clearly keeping the walls from caving in.

 

The clocks was there too, with more faces than could fit into any picture, showing interesting things like the age of the world.



The flying buttresses outside looked very airy indeed, but clearly failed to buttress anything, and had to be propped up with huge iron beams.

Later I read up on the cathedral and learned that they never got around to building the nave in the first place, that they did in fact build a tower but it fell off about 500 years ago, that the choir caved in a bit and that it's quite a job to keep the damn thing standing. But damn, this marvel of medieval French architecture was beautiful and I wanna see it again.

More pictures here.

A health advice to self

Some years ago I tried to measure my blood pressure during an orgasm. I was at it for a couple of days, but my fine scientific experiment failed, partly because I was too preoccupied with the matter at hand to concentrate on the measurement, but mostly because a blood pressure measurement takes longer than an orgasm and I was not quite sure what kind of timing to aim for.

In any case I failed to notice any difference between my blood pressure during an orgasm and otherwise.

Recently I have repeated the experiment to see if my blood pressure rises while reading Russian newspapers. And damn, it does. Seriously. By 10 points or so. 15, if the author is a Finnish docent.

Oh well, I know what to do. Won't even be hard, since I only read it when something interesting (like Zavgorodnyaya case) is happening. Probably shouldn't read it anyway, it's much more annoying than Russian forums, and not half as entertaining.

Открытое письмо российским властям и всем остальным россиянам выражающим свой праведный гнев по поводу дела Анастасии Завгороднеей

Идите на хуй, ребята. Заебали.

Простите за мат, но без мата уже не могу.

Да, у нас здесь в Финляндии запрещено шлепать детей. Нет, за один шлепок никого не отбирают.

Да, знаю что "финский, мать его за ногу, правозащитник" рассказал что отобрали за то что девочка рассказала учительнице про шлепок по попе. Он здесь известен как деревенский идиот и патологический лгун, и в тот день когда он скажет о чем-то правду преисподняя покроется льдом и Финляндия выиграет чемпионат по футболу.

Мама ребенка рассказала о сотрясении мозга у ребенка. Если вы считаете что это бывает от шлепка по попе, это наводит на грустные вопросы о том где у вас находится мозг.

Нет, у нас забирают детей не только у русских. Вы слышите только о руссских потому что нерусскоязычные финны довольно редко ходят жаловаться на местные службы защиты детей в российскую прессу.

Вся ваша информация исходит только от одной стороны, и даже у них есть несколько противоречащих друг другу версий. Нет, вы не получите никаких подробностей от службы защиты детей. У нас конфиденциальность, и они отвечают только суду, родителям и их представителям.

У нас здесь каждых год забирают пару тысяч детей временно, несколько сот детей постоянно с их (или родительским, если им нет 12) согласием и несколько десятков без их согласия. Каждый из тех у кого забрали без их согласия готов рассказывать всем кто хочет слушать какие они белые и пушистые. Да, иногда служба защиты детей ошибается. Эти дела в конце концов решаются в суде, а не иностранной общественностью которой известна одна сторона дела.

Да, многие наши правила, законы и обычаи отличаются от российских. У нас нельзя шлепать детей, и у нас обычно нельзя увезти ребенка из страны если второй родитель ребенка продолжает проживать в стране и не дает разрешения на вывоз. Но я не понимаю почему для настолько многих русских такая новость что в Финляндии живут по финским законам. Те, кто не не хотят жить здесь по финским законам, могут жить в другом месте, например в России. Можно также работать над изменением законов, но это обычно получается только при достаточном числе единомышленников. Можно также нарушать законы втихаря, но тогда не стоит удивляться если возьмут за жопу.

Если вы уже живете в Финляндии и хотите переехать в Россию чтобы не соблюдать финских законов, то это стоит делать до того как вас взяли за жопу, а не после.

Финская юрисдикция распостраняется на русских детей которые находятся в Финляндии. Не нравится - не привозите или не рожайте. В данном случае это, кстати, речь идет о финских детях даже если у одной из них есть и российское гражданство. Эти дети - финские граждане, которые прожили всю свою жизнь в Финляндии. Их родители - тоже финские граждане, которые прожили большую часть своей взрослой жизни в Финляндии. Какого, простите, хуя мы должны с вами обсуждать дела живущих у нас наших же граждан? Если мы начнем пытаться вмешиваться в дела ваших чиновников в вашей же стране в отношении ваших граждан, то куда вы нас пошлете? Правильно. В данном случае идите сами туда же.

France: Paris and around

I am back from spending two weeks and a half in France.

The first week was in Paris, and for once we did not have to run anywhere. Walked around, saw a museum, went to a theater once, visited Sainte-Chapelle (can't miss it) and in general had a jolly good time. It was rather summery most of the time, too.

For once I had a local sim card with data connection. It cost me 20 euro, and was quite worth it.  Just as they say on the Internet, the employee who sold it to me claimed it would take 5 days for the data connection to start working, but the data connection was up and working the next morning.

More shockingly, the man told me to hide my Magen David, at least in Muslim areas, because it's not safe, and followed up by expressing such opinions on Muslims that I would have had to censor them out of Hommaforum if the man were a member, which he hopefully wasn't. I was not really shocked by the fact that the man had such opinions, but rather by the fact that he was telling all this to a customer whose reaction he could not possibly predict.

Speaking of which we finally went to the terrifying suburb of Saint-Denis, known for its crime rate. The historical center of this town was quite worth seeing, though, and in the subway girls in hijabs offered my parents their seats, which was quite nice of them. Apart from its crime rate, the town is famous for the world's first mostly-Gothic cathedral.

Saint Denis, incidentally, was a guy who carried his head under his arm. Must have been inconvenient, but at least now I know where that Finnish expression comes from.

Apart from Saint-Denis we visited Fontainebleau and Vincennes. After seeing the Vincennes casle I found a lot of new respect for the duke of Beaufort and everyone else who escaped from there.

I'll fucking kill the motherfuckers. Twice. And then I'll kill them again.

These times, and especially here in Finland, I'll probably get into less trouble for that than for piracy. Also, I'll   show the judge how to buy Kindle books on Amazon.fr, and after utterly failing to do so he or she will be merciful.

I just wanted to buy a book, for fuck's sake! A bunch of plays by Jean Giraudoux. I already have one, and it was kind of heavy (in the purely physical sense), and I wanted to buy a Kindle edition, which is not a fucking unreasonable desire. And Amazon.com did not have a Kindle edition, so I went to Amazon.fr, which did.

I logged into the damn site, and it recognized me, like it always did when I bought something from there, which I do every once in a while. And the I tried to buy the damn book, and it said "this title is unavailable in your country".

Why, for fuck's sake, why? Does Giraudoux object to Kindle editions from the grave? Do those plays contain some French secrets that make it necessary to sell them to foreigners only as paperbacks? Do huge crowds of Americans stampede to buy the French version instead of buying their own, more expensive version? Oops, I forgot: there is no Kindle version available in the US.

Yeah, I have a shitload of devices with Kindle, and I have considered setting up another account where I claim to be a Frenchwoman who just happens to have a Finnish credit card. Maybe I will, yes. But then again, murder is a lot more satisfying, and piracy is both faster and cheaper.

Prometheus (major spoilers)

Saw Prometheus yesterday. Oh dear...

It's not that I regret seeing it, or that it was boring. In that way, it was OK. But it was facepalm all the way. I mean the concentration of morons not only outdid all major US and Finnish parties and their conventions, it outdid Suomen Työväenpuolue STP, and they have more candidates than brain cells.

Must admire the spirit of the protagonist though. After finding the aliens who created humans and then decided to kill them all with a horrible biological weapon, losing her colleague and boyfriend (one person) to contamination, being impregnated by the alien and betrayed by her crew, performing a caesarean abortion on  herself with a help of a fancy gadget without even taking her underwear off (was there ever a woman anywhere who had an abortion with her panties on?), and finding out that one of the aliens is still alive, she is still quite in the spirit of scientific discovery. I would probably be more in the spirit of killing the damn alien and nuking the whole installation from the orbit. Of course maybe that's why she is a two-for-one archaeologist and biologist, and I washed out of scientific discovery 15 years ago, and nowadays write Android apps for a living with no chance of ever going to a planet with evil aliens.Notes to self:

- If I go to another star system to meet the aliens who have created us, it might not turn out to be all about hugs and puppies,
- Taking my helmet off on another planet might not be a bright idea, even if the gas concentrations are OK,
- If I am a very old person trying to get a key to immortality from the aliens, telling my robot to bring random stuff to my spaceship and infect random people with it might not be the best survival strategy,
- Little worms crawling out of my eyeballs might indicate a serious health problem. Maybe even a contagious one.
- Waking up a hostile powerful being after all its coworkers died trying to develop weapons to wipe out the humankind? Might not be a good idea.
- In a scary situation running away from my party and getting lost is a bad idea. If I happen to be the person who has mapped the area in first place, and still in direct video contact with the ship that has that map, it also takes a bit of effort.
- If I have to watch my coworkers from the aforementioned ship, I should not abandon my post for the sake of a sexual intercourse. Not even if the guy is really cute, and the coworkers being watched relly aren't.
- If I am a biologist, and even if I am not, I probably shouldn't try to pet an alien creature that looks like a pissed-off cobra.

Dialog

A rabbi got beaten the other day in Berlin. He was just walking in the broad daylight with his 6-years+old daughter, and 4 men of Arab descent attacked them. It's kind of hard to fight 2 against 4, especially is one of the 2 is only 6 years old.

"Reminds me of my grandmother's story of how she was 6 and some Polish officers were torturing her brother right in front of her and how she was ashamed at not quite having the firepower to kill them."

"He teaches religious studies at a Jewish school and has pushed for years for dialogue with Christians and Muslims," said Levi Salomon, the spokesman for the Jewish forum for democracy and against anti-Semitism.. Well, it looks like he got some of his dialog. Or monologue, anyway.

Lovely Thursday

8:30: Alarm clock. Blaah!

8:31: What is this horrible stench?

8:32: Surely could not have farted like that? Human farts don't usually smell of burned rubber, even if one drank a really weird beer last night.

8:33: Did the coffee factory nearby accidentally roast rubber instead of coffee?

8:34: OMG! Something is on fire!

8:35: Whatever it is, it's not inside my apartment or within my field of vision when I stick my head out of the window. Maybe should have a cup of tea and a shower.

10:30: At work. Reading emails. Turns out the smokers in the staircase B managed to set fire to the balcony. The fire was put out by the personal effort of Eeva from the board of our asunto-osakeyhtiö, and now Eeva is calling a board meeting to decide on summary executions... I mean, banning smoking on staircase balconies. Yay! I was totally for the ban from my day one in the board, and that was 5 years ago.

10:40: Bugger. One of the backend interfaces doesn't work and I have no idea what's wrong with it.

10:50: The evil coffee machine from yesterday is still there.

13:30: Gotta go to the customer's office. On the way there managed to express some social paranoia to the coworker. I don't think that the conversation is much enjoyed by either party but I feel better. Should've done this 6 months ago, I suppose.

14:00: The customer appears to actually like the application. I am still bothered by the non-working interface.

15:00: Back to the office. The coffee machine is still evil. The interface too. Give up on the interface, do some other work that needs to be done.

17:30: The interface did not work because of a typo in the namespace. Now I really feel silly.

18:00: Argh, argh, it's so late and I have stuff to be done before 9!

19:15: At home with the car (the car is actually outside, not in the apartment). Realizing that the monitor that I was gonna take to sortti-asema arose from the dead.

19:30: Gotta get to Anu's and Wouter's place. Kinda out of gas, though. Where is the gas station, where?

19:55: Fuck. You can't drive through Tapiola center anymore. Gotta find an alternate route.

20:15: Where the hell am I? Where? This is Tapiola's other, mysterious dimension.

20:20: They are throwing out WHAT? My car needs another dimension to fit all that in. Good thing the monitor arose from the dead and is not in the car.

20:25: Managed to fit the monster table in.

20:29: The last chair doesn't fit in in any dimension.

20:30: Violent disassembly of the chair. Violence is a solution to many problems.

20:40: Finally found a gas station. Hurrah!

20:45: No way we are gonna make it from Tapiola to Konala in 15 minutes.

20:55: Made it with the whole 5 minutes to spare.

21:00: But where does the paint go?

21:05: Hurrah! Made it out of the sortti-asema, and the monster table is gone.

21:06: Oh no we didn't. What's this gate and why is it closed?

21:07: AAARRGGHHH! Gonna spend all the night in the wilderness of Konala without any dinner!

21:08: Found a guy to open the gate.

22:00: On my street. Now where is hell is a parking space?

22:20: Here we go.

22:21: Does it always have to start raining as soon as I get out of the car?

22:22: IRC, a glass of vinho verde, a cup of tea and the remains of a snail risotto improve the mood substantially. The car is safely parked and has gas in it, the interface works, the customer seems pleased, the monitor seems alive, my friends are rid of the monster table, we are finally gonna ban smoking on staircase balconies, and tomorrow is another day. (A much better one, as it turned out.)

Weird scooter

Saw a really weird scooter in Stockmann. (by scooter I mean a kick scooter, not a motor scooter). It had 3 wheels and was sort of V-shaped. I asked the saleswoman what it was for and she said that you are not supposed to propel yourself by pushing off the ground, like in a regular scooter, but by rotating your butt. Then she tried to demonstrate. Then I tried. Then she tried again. We rotated our butts like two helicopters but the damn thing just wouldn't move an inch. And now for some reason I still find myself wanting to buy this miraculous device, and wishing to find out how it works. So, my dear readers: have any of you tried to ride a scooter like that, did it work, and if yes, how?

Vengeance (spoilers)

Read Vengeance by George Jonas. That's the story of Israel's operation Wrath of God - revenge on the terrorists who massacred Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. This is the book that the movie Munich was based on, and quite a bit more interesting than the movie. More details, some of the such that I would consider them unrealistic if I ran into them in a role-playing game.

A note to self:

If I ever choose the retain the services of an assassin, even a reasonably decent and upstanding assassin, I shall not:

1. Try to force him or her to work after he or she decides to resign,
2. Steal his or her back pay,
3. Threaten his or her child.

I find it incredible someone would do all that to an assassin. In fact I can't imagine doing all that even to a gardener.

Yes, I realize that the book was written based on the personal account of Avner (the assassination team leader), and by the time it was written he was pretty disgruntled, but if I had an assassination team of my own, I would certainly make sure that the leader and the rest of the team are pretty damn well gruntled.

My mom, the nature lover

"I don't think there is a lot of birch pollen here. Might be linden or maple or whatever. Are you allergic to them?"

"Like I know what they are..."

"You must know maple. It has leaves like that."

"Wow, that looks sort of like the Canadian flag, doesn't it?"

"Look at the exotic bird! Wow, look at the tail! It's long and kind of bluish!"

"It's a magpie."

"So that's what they look like! Haven't I seen one before?"

"Yeah, last year in China."

"Look, look! That dog stretches, just like a human! I didn't know they could do that!"

For those who don't know: she has lived all her life in places that had both maples and magpies. And dogs, too.

What do the following organizations have in common, once again?

The previous one is here.

The list is as follows: Arabikansojen ystävyysseura, Aseistakieltäytyjäliitto, Helsingin Sadankomitea, Helsingin yliopiston Sitoutumaton vasemmisto, Irakilaisten pakolaisten kv-federaation Suomen osasto, Irakin naisten yhdistys Suomessa, Irakin ja Iranin työväen kommunistisen puolueen Suomen osasto, Kommunistinen nuorisoliitto, Loviisan rauhanfoorumi, Lääkärin sosiaalinen vastuu, Maan ystävät, Naiset rauhan puolesta, Naisten kansainvälinen rauhan ja vapauden liitto - Suomen osasto, Pand - Taiteilijat rauhan puolesta, SKP, Sosialidemokraattiset nuoret, Sosialistiliitto, Suomen demokraattiset lakimiehet - DEMLA, Suomen kristillinen rauhanliike, Suomen rauhanliitto - YK-yhdistys ry, Suomen rauhanpuolustajat, Vasemmistonuoret, Vihreät nuoret ja opiskelijat.

These are the groups that have organized the big demonstration against the war in Iraq in Helsinki on 15.2.2003.

Now I decided to find out how they feel about the current carnage in Syria. Judging from their web pages, they don't give a flying fuck, except for Arabikansojen ystävyysseura who at least mentioned it. Not that really I blame them, I don't either, and I don't see what the Green party or the people who are against the conscription have to do with foreign wars anyway.

Back from Germany

Been on a much-needed vacation (you know you really need a vacation when you passport picture starts crying after looking at you). Berlin and Cologne, primarily, but also Potsdam, Dresden, Lübeck, Hamburg, Aachen, Düsseldorf, Koblenz and a bit of Rhine valley on day trips.


Sorry about not visiting any of my German friends, and not-German friends living in Germany. It was just not possible with my parents on a mission to see all Germany in two weeks.

Germany is still very pretty. Rhine valley especially so.

Berlin is not pretty at all, ugly as hell in fact, but a very pleasant place to be in, pretty much the only place in Germany where I just want to hang out and not look at the historical monuments. German architectural neo-Classicism sucks ass. OK, let's face it: everyone's architectural neo-Classicism sucks ass. There is just too damn much of it in Berlin. Still loved the city, though. Especially Prenzlauer Berg and Hackescher Markt. Gonna visit there again.

Potsdam was pretty but blah. Dresden was much lovelier than its pictures. Lübeck was just as lovely as the pictures of it. Whatever I saw of Hamburg was nuce, but I didn't see much. Cologne has the loveliest cathedral ever, and really nice romanesque churches, and a small but very pretty old town. They also have a philarmonic hall build underground by some morons, and people telling other people not to walk on top of it during concerts - I am not kidding. Aachen was great, Düsseldorf old town nice, and Koblenz good too. The Rhine valley was wet, and so, I suppose, was the Rhine.

Saw our local relatives. They have changed a bit, especially the one who was 2 hen I last saw him, and is now 26. Was nice to get reacquainted.

In Germany trains rarely ran on time, and waiters forgot to bring stuff all the time. I am surprised - it didn't use to be like that. Also, they are somewhat short on internet, very few free public hotspots. A local SIM card helped a bit.

Been to a wine festival in Cologne. Lots of nice sweet wines, dry wines didn't impress me. Neither did the beer. OTOH, all the weird shandy-type drinks in Berlin were a really pleasant surprise.

Gonna have some shandy now.

Toulouse shootings

I wanted to write something not-too-cynical on the Toulouse shootings, and I totally failed. But not writing anything at all feels pretty bad too.

 When I was much younger I wondered why so many Jewish people grow so cynical when they grow older. Nowadays I use the word "experienced".

 Last September I wondered if there still is a temple somewhere where you don't have to go through a metal detector, and whether it would be nice to visit one. I guess I got my answer.

 Also reminded me of a Mark Steyn's post where he says that almost every time any terrorism-like trouble is going on, somebody named Mohammed is involved. Although, to be fair, I do recall some trouble last summer where the only person invovled was named Anders.

Hey, check this out

Bäckman has published my translation, without any attribution of course. Rimma's original capitalization disappeared though.

Rimma Salonen's appeal to the Russian people

This is a translation of Rimma Salonen's appeal to the Russian people. The original is here (SAFKA's blog), in Russian, text and video, posted by Johan Bäckman (people should know their heroes). The capitalization is Salonen's, and so is, obviously, the content and the degree of sanity.

Rimma Salonen and Johan Bäckman were both running for Eduskunta in 2011 (Suomen Työväenpuolue STP), getting 16 an 36 votes, respectively.


I would like to ask for help from Russia, and in particular from the "Young Guard", because the situation with my child in Finland has not improved for three years, but quite the contrary - the child is still being isolated from the mother, and I am being openly blackmailed by limiting my contact with my son, Anton. Convinced of the bias of the Finnish justice, I have no illusions about my possibilities of resolving the issue through legal channels in Finland. The President of Russia has repeatedly emphasized that Russia will protect its citizens, wherever they are. Anton and I are citizens of Russia, trapped in a hopeless situation, my son was smuggled away from Russian, depriving the child of its mother and a happy childhood. I am asking the Young Guard to help me to restore justice. I am very grateful to the activists of the Young Guard for their support, and I hope that together we can defend the rights of Russian citizens and legal right of Russian mothers and children to family life.

On April 12 it will be exactly three years since the tragedy of my Russian family. This day was like the first ring of a bell. With the theft of Anton a terrible process started all over the West. They started to steal Russian children in all the countries.

Today the Russian mothers from Germany, Norway, New Zealand, France, and many, many countries turn to me. Anton became a kind of symbol - the tragedy of the Russian families in the West.
3 years ago the third world Hunt for Russian children started.

Russia's strong and clear position on this issueis necessary for the salvation of Russia's future - our children. First of all, in order to stop this wanton outrage of the western child services, under cover of which the worldwide battle for the healthy Russian genes is being waged.

For 3 years I've been in mourning. For 3 years I've been struggling. 3 years ago was a tragic day for the whole of Russia. If today Russia does not wake up, then the tomorrow they'll steal your child, and yours, many children, every child. Who among Russian children will be next - that's the question.

The process of stealing Russian children under any pretext is gaining momentum in Finland. No one is wondering WHY anymore, but everyone is afraid that their own son or daughter will be next. This is the PLAGUE of third millennium. This is a disaster. It is not enough just to talk. One should scream!

We, the Russian mothers, are being kept on a leash in the West. The child services of all the countries are spying on us. Guards and child wardens are following us. Why? Because the demographics of western countries are falling. And putting one Russian child in prison automatically attaches a lot of relatives to that country. Today the West is using Russian children to even out the demographic collapse.

Vladimir Putin has recently said that Russia is one of the few countries in the world that has managed to stop the demographic decline, even out the situation, and there has even been some growth. But this does not mean that Russia should throw away its wealth - our new generation, our Russian children who are being stolen in the West.

As a Russian mother, I appeal to the President of Russia and the Russian people - to turn their faces towards the children born in mixed marriages, to protect them from the ALIENATION from Russia. To see in our stolen children the golden gene pool of the nation, to intergrate them into the Russian people.

Today we have a chance to rally Russia to protect the Russian children who are languishing in the dungeons of the western child services, practically the juvenile prisons of the West. The West is doing everything today to make the Russian children forget the Russian language, the religion of their ancestors, the great Russian culture.

My Russian Anton is a symbol of Russian children imprisoned in the trunk of the juvenile system of the West. A Finnish trunk is showing Russia today what the West has in mind for the Russian children - a prison with no windows and doors. A mobile box for the demographic material.

Our children born in the West are talented and unique, unlike the robots and sex dolls, mass manufactured on an assembly line in the West. That is why Russian children are taken from Russian motherstoday: to erase the the Russian individuality, Russian originality and Russian progressiveness.

The West only wants the demographic material - units in the cells of the demographic tables. All that the states want is to get one more line, head, or being at any price. The battle for the demographic unit is killing the souls of Russian children. Being the mother of Anton, I want to testify - to tell about the terrible Argameddone - the global battle between good and evil, which you are witnessing today. This is the battle for the souls of our Russian children.

The whole "civilized" world is against Russia today. Almost all countries in the world are hunting for Russian girls and boys. This Armageddon is the battlefield for the future of mankind.

Stealing Anton from Russia showed the world that the West is not only not ashamed to steal our children, but that the West has turned the theft of Russian children into PLANNED alienation of Russian biomaterial.

According to the media there is a state plan in Norway, according to which every year 3,000 children have to be TAKEN AWAY and ALIENATED from immigrants without a trial. Extremely. Just because there is the plan. Communes and municipalities in the west are competing with each other, who will take the most children away from the Russian mothers.

And the leaders of the countries call the mayors on the carpet, to reproach them for taking away too FEW children last month or last year. This is what I ran into here in the West.

The theft of Russian children in the West is covered by the veil of SUPER SECRECY. If the mother turns to the media for help, she will be crucified, all contact with the child will be forbidden.

This secrecy and alleged privacy of the FAMILY have been invented in the West in order to conceal the crime. There are no family issues - there is the international HUNT and THEFT of Russian children.

I believe that I will live to see the day when this HUNT will be called a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. That there will be a new Nuremberg trial. And the people who stole my son will stand the trial and will receive punishment.

But right now my goal is to be heard. I am pick up a BELL. I want to warn Russia of the trouble that is coming from the WEST, about the PLAGUE OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM, which is coming from the north and from the south. And the name of the plague is HUNT for RUSSIAN CHILDREN.

Today I want to testify - MY BELL TOLLS FOR THEE. For every Russian. Because now any Russian child can become the second Anton Salonen! There is only one cure for this plague - join our hands together.

Dear Russians! Dear President of Russia! Dear Russian mothers and fathers! Dear Russian people! I, Rimma Salonen, am asking you today to JOIN OUR HANDS for our children, for the most precious thing we have.

Russian people are a great power. The goal of the West is to divide us and to sow discord. But we have a cement which unites us, we have a treasure that we are destined to protect. That is our Russian children.

Today, the West started a battle for the Russian children. And only we - Russian mothers and fathers - can protect them. Our strength lies in Unity. Our strength is that we have joined hands and stood in a circle, defending our children with their bodies and souls.

The Third World HUNT on our children has already begun. And it began with the theft of my Anton. But Russia will withstand it. Hand in hand we are invincible.

I guess this qualifies as an outdoor sport...

My grandma always used to say "everyone else is a normal person, but something always happens to you!"

I remembered her words on a number of occasions, most recently fifteen minutes ago, when I was running around my roof underdressed, barefoot and with a fishing rod.

It's not my fault, really. The upstairs' neighbor dropped his towel on my roof, I promised to get it, and the fishing rod that my Israeli relatives left in my place last summer came in very handy (also for self-defensive anti-bird violence), but why do those things always happen to me?

Dear Lord

Dear Lord,

You have a unique chance to make more believers, uphold the public order, relieve the burden on the French taxpayers and release a whole bunch of police officers home to their partners, children dinners and friends. Please arrange for Mohammed Merah to be raped and eaten by a herd of wild boars, preferably simultaneously, within the next hour.

While you are at it, could you also do to him the Unspeakable Thing that I read about yesterday, and the one I read about today, too.

Yeah, and thanks for the nice weather!

Traditional values

Liberia, where homosexuality is already illegal, is currently trying to increase the prison sentences for it. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, last year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is very much against decriminalizing homosexuality. "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve. We're going to keep to our traditional values," she says.

That's funny. I thought Liberia's traditional values were civil war, rape and cannibalism, as well as its traditional place in the last ten countries as listed by Human Development Index.

A former president of this highly traditional country, Charles Taylor, is currently in Hague on trial for murder, rape, torture, mutilation and cannibalism.

Of the other fine politicians of Liberia, Prince Johnson is known for torture and dismemberment, Roosevelt Johnson is known for sponsoring Joshua Milton Blahyi (also known as General Butt Naked), Joshua Milton Blahyi is known for human sacrifice, eating children's hearts and playing soccer with people's detached heads (yeah, and being butt naked).

I understand that next to all these dignitaries Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has never committed a violent crime or at least been caught doing so, totally deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

Seriously though, there is some point in her Nobel Peace Prize. She managed to criminalize one traditional Liberian pastime: raping everything that moves, and a lot of things that don't move fast enough (like babies, for example). Yep, they banned rape in 2006. Before that it was kinda traditional.

Americans got a little taste of traditional Liberian values a couple of years ago, when a 8-year-old Liberian girl was raped by four boys aged 14, 13, 10 and 9 and was thereafter disowned by her parents, Hemie and Wedeh Dio (currently on trial in Arizona for 7 unrelated counts of child abuse).

But it's a good thing the president is standing up for the traditional values. I mean, Liberia is so fucked already, imagine how it would be if homosexuals were allowed to have sex!

Don't use fake email addresses, people

Before you use a fake email address, even one that sounds fake, such as foobar at somepopularprovider.com, stop for a moment and consider that that address might belong to a living, breathing, malicious person with a penchant for practical jokes.

I just go to the bars to have fun

Henry Laasanen's latest masterpiece where he, among other things, disapproves of women who go to bars just to have fun, gave me an idea:

There should be some visible badges for the men who disapprove of the whole idea that women go to bars without being interested in getting picked up. Most women won't give a shit anyway, but the polite ones like myself will immediately see that the man doesn't want to hear "no, thanks, I am not looking for anyone right now" and instead of that will say things like "I came here looking for someone to have sex with. No, sorry, you do not fit my requirements, so I'll continue looking for someone else now if you don't mind".

Twilight (spoilers)

Read the Twilight books recently (haven't seen any of the movies). Can't really understand the hype, neither the positive nor the negative one.

The books have some interesting premises (such as the vampire character having a fairly normal and supportive family), but are fairly badly written. The author appears to have learned something by book 3, and books 3 and 4 are considerably better than 1 and 2.

She has for example learned that in a romance story there should probably be some sex, or at least some thoughts about sex, at least if the romance story is written in the first person, and by the middle of the third book Bella actually starts thinking about having sex with Edward. That's about a year and a half into their relationship. Considering how attractive she finds him at the first glance, it would have taken me about what, 300 milliseconds or so to start having impure thoughts?

They don't get to have sex until book 4.

As fantasy the books are readable, as romance they suck. OK, I am not a very experienced romance reader, but I should get at least some idea why the protagonist likes the guy she likes.

That said, I don't quite understand all the critique based on the fact that Bella is not a fighter unlike Buffy's characters. How could she be a fighter in that world? Vampires in the Twilight series are a lot harder to destroy than in Buffy, and Bella does not have any supernatural skills.

And one thing that surprises me in all the vampire fiction: how come none of them ever work for the Red Cross?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Will I ever get all the glitter out of my... well, everything?