Subject: Get your Youth Back
"Lose weight while you sleep..."
That is how this wonderful email starts out. How did I make it this far, and why even spend the energy writing about it at all?
While I sleep!
I mean seriously folks, am I really supposed to fall for this amazing offer or what?
I guess some people do, otherwise I would not be receiving this spam email in the first place.
Still, I wish they would leave me alone and quit clogging up my mailbox with such junk.
Jerks.
His claims that he was getting closer and closer to the truth were wearing on me more quickly that I had expected. When I compared his situation with the past, it did not seem to me that he had gotten any nearer to the supposed goal he was pursuing. In fact, compared with that very same period long ago, one could honestly say that he had actually distanced himself sufficiently in the completely opposite direction. Hard to believe but true. Blinded by these claims of getting closer and closer, he had unknowingly made an unintentional about-face and was headed in the wrong way. He had missed his objective by a mile, skirted off of it, and flung himself away without even realizing it. Like a truck driver rumbling all his tonnage over a poor passerby without even noticing the slight bump in the road which indicated quite subtly the crushed bones and flattened skull. I felt uncomfortable in this awkward situation, for it was up to me to set him straight or else. As a friend and close companion, my duty spoke to me and now was the time. What made it even more difficult was that by approaching him honestly with this uncalled for predicament, I was risking our longterm relationship in a way that made me hesitate yet another day. The days would pass and then I would feel more and more pressured to speak. But for now, a balanced and honest silence was the better path to take.
The sound of freshly fallen snow when you walk on it issues a gentle and relaxing mood. Although the early morning sky has been darkened somewhat, there is this fluffy carpet wherever you look. You feel thankful that nature has lit up the ground by laying this entrance way at your feet to guide your steps.
Later on the very same day...
The painful feeling of hard sleet slicing across your face as you cycle into town becomes nearly unbearable. Although the wind is not blowing exactly against you, the side-wise bursts of wind feel like whips against the exposed left cheek. You wonder how it is possible that nature can seem so peaceful one moment and in the next transform into a howling beast.
This population clock projects that the world human population is just about to reach the 6.4 billion mark.
One wonders where on earth (excuse the pun) all these people are going to fit. It sure is getting kind of crowded around here, don't you think?
The Dutch are unbelievably squeaky clean when it comes to washing their windows. Everywhere you look, you see shining perfectly transparent windows with not a single smudge or particle of dust. I spent a large part of the afternoon attempting to achieve this mysterious art of perfection, but I failed terribly. Streaks all over the place and dried up leftovers of spotted droplets. I do not know how they do it. Rubbing and re-rubbing does not help either. Oh well, while my windows may not be perfectly transparent and pristine, they can honestly be referred to as clean, at least in the technical sense.
Every year around this time of the winter season, when the air becomes extra dry and the temperature suddenly drops from one day right on to the next, the skin of my hands and fingers gets all chapped. Cracks and crevices form at various and unpredictable places, especially on or near the knuckles or places where the proper bending and stretching of skin is required for normal motion and gestures. In Dutch they call such a crack using the word "kloof." Interestingly enough, the word "kloof" also means canyon, chasm or rift which is a good description for the microcosm fissure which has formed various painful chaps and chapping points on my hands. Sometimes it gets so bad that these "kloven" open up even deeper and start to bleed, thousands of desperate red blood cells oozing out and escaping to who knows where. I look closely and inspect the situation, almost as if I am flying in my own personal Cessna airplane, arching low along the flatlands and then at a slight angle along the places where the cliffs open up. Yes these are the many cracks of my hand which are opening up, and I am gazing down into the canyon of my skin. The microscopic world has much in common with the amazing beauty of nature's uncertain landscapes.
For the last day or so I have been suffering an extreme bout of intense debugging you-know-what #$@! frustrations of the higher aggravating kind.
A very very bothersome bug in my program has been hiding deeply somewhere in my code. For some weird reason, the value of a certain parameter is popping up as a "01" string variable, rather that the expected value '1' as in a normal down-to-earth good ol' integer.
What is going wrong?! Drats.
This may seem like something unbelievably trite, but it is messing up my web analysis reporting tool, meaning that duplicate entries are appearing all over the place (one with the value of "01" and the other with a value of '1') when they should be adding up to one and the very same thing.
Some weird idiosyncrasy the way the Perl handles the concatenation of strings and integers I believe.
I am getting closer and closer, and I am almost there. Too bad it is taking me forever to figure this out when there are so many other more important matters I need to tackle before next week.
The C.G. Jung page has been redesigned and it looks really impressive. Just the right balance of colors and graphics that would make even Mr. Jung himself feel very pleased.
Not only is there a good slew of articles and papers, but the discussion forum is also an interesting place to visit.
Among others, you have the following forums from which to choose:
An interesting essay you might like to read is called On Life After Death by C.G. Jung.
Highly recommended, so please visit.
So tell me, what are those big black objects over there drifting across the sky? They appear vague and somewhat blurred, and because it is difficult if not impossible to pinpoint their exact position, I cannot tell whether they are off on the horizon or closer by. Please, wouldn't it be nice if there were some kind of answer? Large objects, small objects, those inbetween. Skimming and dancing as if that were meant to be.
There was this guy again, and he was telling me a bunch of stuff. You see, at first he gave me the impression that he knew what he was talking about, like he was some kind of expert or something. Certainly the gestures he made with his hands combined with the staring look of concentrated determination made me think even more than I normally would. The ironic thing was when later I was told that there are many impressions which when taken out of context at a later moment in time seem more important than they in reality were and are. Makes a lot of sense when you sit down and think about it, like right now.
A couple days ago, some disgruntled Dutch teenager walked up to a teacher at a high school in Den Haag and shot him through the head. Killed dead just like that. The papers announce that:
'Murat teleurgesteld in Van Wieren', meaning 'Murat (the murderer) was disappointed in Van Wieren (the murdered teacher)'
While such an event is more common place in the United States, here in Holland this tragedy is rare and has hit the community very hard. Everyone is meandering around in complete shock, fearful that the previously stable society is beginning to crack and crumble. Holland is turning into a kind of America.
An interesting difference is this. In America people react with hatred and want to make the suspect fry on the electric chair. They seem to yearn for the spectacle and gain satisfaction from it. Even if he has not been proven guilty.
Here on the other hand, many people feel sorry for the kid and try to rationalize his behavior as a result of a failing society.
The school should have been better prepared, the teachers should have been trained to deal with aggression, etc. Groups of kids are walking around carrying banners with things like "He's not a murderer, he's my friend" written on them. There was even this television program last night where rather than feel bad about the poor teacher that was killed, they sat around sipping on hefty wine glasses and saying how guilty our society should be feeling for letting this happen.
He's just a kid, so I guess it is alright.
To make matter even more complicated, this school has a lot of students with a Turkish and Moroccan background. So that means that everyone is afraid to complain or get on the kid's case, because that would mean we were being prejudice to the Muslim community.
In the meantime, as discussions run rampantly here and there, and the people become fixated on rationalizing life's tragic experiences with logical argumentations, the poor murdered teacher's family sit around home distressed and feeling forgotten.
Movement is the expression of the soul, and silence is the means of describing this fact the best.
For some reason, I have been getting messages from some of my readers stating that they can no longer add any comments to this blog.
Strange, because with my browser setup, everything seems to work just fine.
Could be that in my never-ending pursuit of making things even better I may have once again (accidentally) made them worse.
If you are having this problem, please describe to me exactly what you are doing and what is happening (if anything).
I would also like to know what browser you are using, which should appear below. All you have to do is click on the link to email me a report.
Hopefully I have made this convenient enough for you. Thanks in advance for taking the time to report this bothersome error.
Took my first run of the year. Although it was far from a stellar performance, the whiteness all around me made it more than worth it. Interesting how the snowfall hesitated and waited and refused to fall until exactly the very first day of the next year. Seems at first like some kind of coincidence, me running out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the whitest landscape you could possibly imagine.
I am not sure whether or not you already know about it, but rumor has it that 2004 will be a wonderful and fantastic year for those who decide to take advantage of it. I am going to place all of my bets on this possibility and go for it.
In other words, have a really great, fun and relaxing year this time around and be sure to drop by my web log once in awhile. See you around...
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