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Hi all. I've got a really special treat today. With Shy's & madcanadian's permission, I've posted what you're about to read below.

Please read the story in the sequence as I'm presenting them. It will be so much cooler, and my blog will make sense. Don't just skip what they've done for what I'm writing, it'll totally ruin it. Have some discipline and read theirs first. :) Trust me!! Click on Shy's link, and after reading it, hit your back browswer button to return here. Then read madcanadian's link, and come back. Finally, read mine.


First, from Shy. http://www.interlog.com/~shireen/imode/ipast/2001/feb02.htm

Now madcanadian. http://madcanadian.server101.com/shout/s010201.html

....Across the dingy pool hool, I sit with one leg hanging off the side of a lounge chair; waiting for my opponent to inevitably miss. The rythmic clinking of pool balls hitting each other lulls me to a meditative state. In my semi-hynoptic trance, I look up, again searching for the girl several tables away from me, the same one that madcanadian pointed out from earlier.

I look at her, judging her not as a whole, but as part of some Frankinstein-ian parts beauty contest. Lips, painted dark red, too perfect. Make-up is okay, but too pale for my taste. Hair, straight and black, with a hint of volume. Nice. Cute white T-shirt and dark black jeans. Sexy, but not overtly sexual. Then I see her eyes, and I look at nothing else.

I can't describe it, except it reminds me of a pool of radiant blackness. Cliche? Maybe, but that's what they were. I can't stop staring at her eyes, and I can't fake it enough to pretend I'm not staring at them. I better stop, before I get caught looking the fool. One last look, and I notice she's a smoker, and instanteously, her beauty goes down a grade.

madcanadian misses and swears, signaling for me to shoot. I gather my senses and concentrate hard, until there's nothing but the object ball, the pocket, and my cue on the white ball. I take aim, feather the cue, and bam, it goes straight in. I'm proud of myself, and I look over to madcanadian, seeing if he noticed how easy I made that shot. But he's not paying attention to me.

He too is looking at the girl I was before, but not with the same lust that normal 20ish year olds with raging testosterone would. Instead, I can see distain, and a hint of sadness. Then, without warning, he smiles.

Worrying more about my reputation and ego as a serious snooker player, I ignore for the moment everything else that's around me. I chalk my cue tip, and I bend down for what seems to be an easy black. The flash of madcanadian's smile is still in my mind's vision, and for one second, I think of what could make him grin like the Chesire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

In that one second, I miscue, and mess up my pot. I look up, disappointed, wanting to curse. Then I catch what he's been looking at. The girl at the table 2 away from us, with a group of rowdy friends, wearing gang colours.

No more than grade 11, too young for me. But you could already tell she was going to be popular, and that on looks alone, she would go places. Yet, she somehow didn't fit that crowd. Quiet, intelligent, with a hint of mischievous glint in her eyes. Thank gawd she's too young for me, I could get in trouble with the likes of her.

Several games pass by, and each time I'm shooting, madcanadian is looking her way. Usually, we order a plate of fries, and like the proverbial vultures, we would peck and hog each fry, trying our hardest to swallow the much too hot and overfried potatoe sticks before they were all devoured. This time however, his portion of the fries were left cooled.

I turned to him, taking a break from my small four ball run. "Dude, you gonna eat them fries or what?"

He looks at me, dumbfounded for a brief moment, like I've just asked him something profoundly stupid. "Yeah. By the way, I'm still 20 points up."

"Maddy, you like that chick?". Classy men we were not.

"She's alright." shrugs Mad, his too quick answer betrays his true thought.

"Yeah," said I, with a hint of raunchiness in my voice. "She's more than alright....."

"Shut up, you perv." laughs Mad. "She's much too young for either of us."

"Maybe, but she'll grow up."

"Yes," agrees Mad, with a small longing in his voice. "I guess she will."
----------------------

When I first read Shy's post, I was pretty impressed. Then, unknowingly, I went to mad's site, and WHAM, I got the willy nilly, heeby geebies. How odd that they had intersecting lives and didn't even know it. Then I thought of a great little round up to their story. I hope you'll enjoy it, I was definitely having a blast thinking it up.

....Pulp Fiction it might not be, but darn, it's better than most trash on TV. posted by losir at 12:50 AM

Please refer to Sharky's (aka Confucius007) post about his take on "Free Will".

I knew it was going to spark a debate. But Sharky, as much as I hate to admit it, you've just made my point all the more clear. If God knew us better than we do, and he KNOWS what we want to pick before picking, then poor Judas, he had no choice but to betray Jesus. I don't want up to grow up being Judas. I just don't. I hope I'm not being blasphemous, but like I said, free will vs. predetermined continues to confuse me. I think I'll do what I've always done, ignore it and just shrug.

Blogger again is having a tonne of problems. I'm getting all these "broken pipe" errors when blogger is trying to connect to my FTP. I hope they sort it out, and soon.

posted by losir at 4:14 PM

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way....

Sing with me people, Christmas is coming early this year, like in Feburary. You don't believe me? Check out these pix.


This is taken from the front of the building
looking out. Nice and snowy. JOY!



Back of the Company's parking lot (car park).
Beautiful ain't it? 15 cm of orgasmic fun.



The is the front of the Company. For all
former employees, look and shudder, then
realize you're probably in a better place.


I loooove snow, NOT.

ain't it sick?
posted by losir at 3:26 PM

Please refer to madcanadian's post about my "Free Will" thing below. I will try to formulate a response without it turning into a debate. :)

Like I said, I don't believe in free will, but I choose whatever I think is right. This is not a contridiction. It just means that I do not allow my belief in non-free will to govern my actions. It's like some guy driving his car and never changing his engine oil. The engine will be damaged, and he may know that. But in the mean time, it doesn't stop him from driving. It just merely means he's ignoring the consequences.

See my point? I do what I want regardless of consequences. Well that's not true. I do think of the reprocussion, but it just means I don't have a 5 yr plan that I stick with. I have hopes for my life in the future, but I don't bet it'll happen the way it want it to, and if it doesn't, I won't cry about it, or feel really bad that my goals weren't achieved. I guess I don't worry about disappointment, because I take it as it comes.

...EOF.



posted by losir at 3:53 PM

One thing I don't debate about is religion. I don't even want to talk too much about it here, because religion as a personal belief is something that can be hotly contested, with both sides believing that their faith (or the lack of faith with atheists) is right. I guess it's hard to deal if you somehow come to realize that everything you've ever believed in is wrong. That's a pretty scary thought. What if the God you're worshipping turns out to be nothing more than sticks and stones. Ugh.

Therefore, I won't talk about religion on my blog. Not because of any fear, but because I'm just not strong enough to argue about it. I know it sounds like I'm wimping out, and I probably am..... but it's my page, so nah nah.

However, I was having lunch with 4 other people who all had different religious backgrounds, and a question was posed thusly: If we believe in a God, and we believe that God is omniscient, does human free will exist?

What a seemingly simple question. It sounds like it should be a Yes or No. But I've been thinking about this question of "free will" ever since I was 12. I remember vividly struggling with the comprehension of free will, and to this day, I don't have a valid answer. I'm not saying my faith failed me, it's merely that I don't have a satisfying answer to make me feel at peace.

Unfortunately, ever the cynic, I don't believe in Free Will. There I said it. I believe that ultimately, we are destined to be who we are, and that's that. I don't even believe in the "going to work" theory. That is, you will eventually get to work, but you can choose by foot, bus, taxi, or bike. Another words, there's more than 1 way to reach a destination. I don't believe it. I think the path you "choose" is the chosen path, you just didn't know it yet.

Take for example a bunny in a cage. Think of the cage as being huge. Big enough that it is possible the rabbit will NEVER reach the fence, let alone see it. Now I ask, "Is the rabbit caged?" That to me is a very deep question. I'd have to answer yes. Just because the rabbit doesn't realize it's being boxed in, doesn't mean it isn't. Yes, it can poop where it wants to, it can eat or drink whenever it wants. Hence, a small bit of free will?

No. Because the rabbit cannot leave the cage. It cannot decide to roam free because the captor has decided that its freedom must be theoretically limited. Besides, who says that there was food/water in the cage if the captor hadn't decided to feed it? If I know that the rabbit from where it's at will never reach the spot where I've placed the food, then because I already knew the distance and endurance of the rabbit, it will die of starvation. So, its path is set. A path to death, yes. But a valid path. I may not know if the rabbit will attempt to reach the food (let's assume our rabbit has an acute sense of smell, and knows exactly the direction of the food), but then, I'm not God. I'm not "all knowing".

Now we think of our God, the one that knows all and sees all. If He knows that someone will win a car race, then nothing can change it. God has NOT interfered in any way to allow the racer to win. It is because He already knew it was going to happen, and therefore, cannot be wrong, because of the omniscient aspect of God. So, it's fore-ordained.

Let's look at the Old Testiment. For easyness sake, let's pick a familiar Bible story. The story of David & Goliath. For those who've never heard of this, it goes something like this: A shephard named David (who in the beginning is said to possess courage and a strong love for God), convinced King Saul to let him fight against the Philistine in the war. A champion warrior named Goliath was slaughtering the Isrealite army and demoralizing the troop. To make a long story short without taking things out of context, through faith in God, David used a slingshot and struck down Goliath with one stone.

Now, the moral of the story is that David's faith in God allowed the stone to strike the only place Goliath wasn't protected, in between the eyes. What I'm saying is that David was destined to have done this deed. A little sidetrack first. During lunch, we all agreed that God has indeed given us his words through books. Whether it was the Old and/or New Testiment, or the Koran or whatever, we didn't need to argue that such book exists. We also agreed (because I forced the issue) that these books were written for later generations (that's us) to read and glean wisdom from, because these were the words of God. Back to David & Goliath.

Remember what the moral of the story was. God needed an example of faith. What I'm asking is this: If David had true free will and decided not to fight Goliath one on one, could the story have been Frank and Goliath? How about David and Yeti? I mean, based on the "same destination, different route" theory, would there have been replacement characters if David and Goliath didn't pan out??

Too deep for me. Maybe I don't want to know.... whatever the case, it disturbs me.

So I'm saying this to someone, and they're like, "With this knowledge, do you stop planning your life and just drop dead?"

I reply: "I don't know. I certainly don't dwell on the fact of whether I have free will or not. I decide what I want to do, and if that's what God had plan for me all along, great. I believe that God doesn't interfere, but I believe that when the time is needed, He will make it very hard to change the course." Again, I point to the Old Testiment for support. Think of Jonah and the Great Fish. (The Bible never specified a whale) When God needed a servent to tell a city of people that they needed to change their wicked ways, Jonah bulked and ran. God sent a great fish which swallowed him for 3 days, and in that time, Jonah changed his mind and went on behalf of God. See, Jonah was destined to go, and I think the fish bit wasn't his choosing either. It wouldn't have been much of a story if it was "Jonah saying 'Yes' to God as soon as He asked...." Jonah thought he had a choice by running away, but he didn't. Not one bit.

"Hindsight is ever perfect" as the saying goes. And of course, with history, it is very easy to say "I told you so." I don't believe in free choice, but I believe in living as it comes. If what I chose really was what I was meant to choose all along, then so be it. Life is already interesting, and I'd like to enjoy the ride. I think of my life as being on a tour bus. I really don't have much say as to where it goes and how long it takes, but at least while the bus is moving, I can enjoy the scenery.

....see? This little losir has a brain afterall. One of the guys at the table (which I respect a lot) called me a philosopher. I like that.


posted by losir at 1:44 AM

Here I am, whining about the cold and snow, and madcanadian is riding his motorcycle?! What the...?!?! If I could spell profanity, I would have written some. *sigh*

When is spring coming again?? I'm really starting to miss riding. Heck, I missed riding in Dec actually. Winter blues are getting me down.

I need to hear some good news.

BTW, I've been poking around the net looking for good reads, and I stumbled on this person botacellipeon. She writes really well. Sometimes it's funny, and sometimes a little tragic. But all in all, she is worth the link. She's also in my links page, if you ever get to visit there.

There are a couple of people I haven't linked to yet.... I know it doesn't take a lot of time, but I'm just too lazy. :)

posted by losir at 10:57 AM

*sigh*. My work is never done. I guess I need to write a followup to last Monday's entry on how to treat a girl right.

The topic for today pupils, is open to discussion. It's by no means the final word. I, your dutiful and humble teacher, will try to enlighten you, my reader and student, into the ways of the mythical "Phone Call." (Gong sounds, everybody bows.)

You've gotten the mustard to get her number. The first hurdle of calling her up without wetting yourself and sounding like somebody having an epileptic seizure has been overcomed. You second conquer, although incomplete and not without losses, went as most first date do. It wasn't the greatest time in the world but at the very least, you held yourself together, even after 1 or 2 drinks. "Great!" you say, patting yourself on the back. "I'm on my way to gleaning a fruitful relationship with the girl of my dreams. Telephone number, 'checked'. Date, 'checked'. Dinner plans, fun time at club, alcohol, 'check, check, and check!' From here on out, it's nothing but smooth sailing in the sea of looooove." (Think Barry White.)

Not so fast bucko. Don't think you're in the clear. One date doesn't clinch it, not by a long mile. The road to happy-dom is long and arduous, with the man always fighting a losing battle. If you think taking the beach of Normandy was bloody, you don't know women. I've always thought that if the Axis had allowed their women to fight, I'd be speaking German today. What am I getting at? Women are feisty, and once entrenched in their ideals, it's nigh impossible to rouse them.

Hence, after that crucial first date, your subsequent phone calls should be well planned and thoughtout, looking for a tactical advantage. Your action should be decisive yet fluid, allowing for on-the-fly changes. Call too early, and you've lost to Eager Beaver Syndrom. Your dam will never be built. Too late, and your dam is too high, and all vegetation below the dam will wither and die. Don't let your guard down soldier, there's still a war to be won!

When it comes to talking to her after the first date, don't think of blitzkrieg. For those that don't know, "blitz" means Lightning, and "krieg" means War; "Lightning-War". That is, don't strike hard and fast. Hard and fast on a phone means you call her, and hanging up within 1 minute. No! You stupid dumbkoff! Back to the barracks. No soup for you! One year!!

Instead, be smooth and gentle, like petting a new dog for the first time. Tell her you it was great, bring up a funny moment from the date that still makes you chuckle each time you think of it. Let her know that having her around was excellent fun, and it was a totally wicked time. Talk with her, not to her. It's not all semantics. There is a difference. Heck, tell her a joke if you have to. "Why did the monkey cross the road?.... Because it was tied to the chicken."

Come on Private, you know better than to rush headlong into the enemy waving only a water pistol. Don't let yourself become a loser. Call her and fight the good fight. Don't let her scare you off. If you're too timid to stay on the phone and chat, you've no reason to be on the front lines. Go back home and wear your diapers. Your soother will be where you've left it, in the crib.

Troops. Unlike injury and stock options, girlfriends and/or dates aren't given out for free. You have to earn their trust and respect. If you can't remotely look cool to the girl, you might as well be a hole in the ground. On the road of life, don't be a speed bump. Instead, be a gas station. All travellers when lost in the road take great comfort in seeing a gas station. There's fuel for the car so they won't get stuck, and there's probably someone in the station that can give them firm directions. Be the gas station. (I know that people leave after getting gas.... it's a flawed analogy. :P)

That is all. Now go out there and win yourself a girl gentlemen. There's no point for being in second place.

....when in doubt, take her to a comedy club. Even if you can't be funny, at least show her you know who can. posted by losir at 1:08 PM

St. Valentine, the patron saint of love. You must either be turning in your grave, or looking down from Heaven going "Tsk Tsk, I've turned into a Hallmark moment."

Flowers, Candy, cards, restaurant reservations. "iloveyou"; "I Love You"; "I LOVE YOU" Yeah?! Well love THIS, you evil corporate sponsored, cheesy sentimental, no good so-and-so!!

What is wrong with this society, that we must have to designate a day to remember to declare our love and affection to a world of strangers?! I just don't understand. It is such a hassle too, and totally devoid of real emotions. Do we really have to fight for restaurant reservations 3 weeks in advance, buy the most decadent chocolates that cost $12 for 3 pieces not even big enough to fill a cavity, and buy a boquet of flowers which:
A) does not grown in the winter
B) are genetically engineered to wither faster than stale cabbage in the back of a dump truck
C) costs $80 for anything that doesn't look like you picked them yourself???

People, please help me out. Stand back and take a breather with me. That's right.... in, out. In, out. Left a-circle, right a-circle.... wax on, wax off....

I believe in affection. I believe in telling the ones you love that you genuinely adore them. But I don't need a day marked out by some dead guy to force me to show that even though I look like a cold-hearted, snivelling, conniving, self-centered, machoistic man, I really ain't. And to prove it, I will jump through these fiery hoops while carrying sweet chocolate confection in my left hand, a dozen pollen polluting, allergy inducing petals of love in my right, all the while making sure you eat somewhere where Bill Gates couldn't afford to buy a bag of salted peanuts, AND to top it off, it's gotta be romantic and fun. Tall order? Nah, don'cha know I can juggle 500 pounds elephants and chainsaws all at once too? With my nose even!

I'm out of steam. I really don't think I can go through that every year. I'm a simple man. An easy person to get along with, and an even more easy person to please. I too love a good meal, as well as roses to brighten up a room. Chocolate, although no longer a favorite of mine, is still a good treat in conservative doses. I just don't need to be told to do these things. Not all at once. Too much.

But it's not really about me, is it? It's about showing affection. It's about telling everyone who sees you that day that you love the person you're with; and therein lies my point. I want her to know, but I don't care if the matre'd thinks I'm a stud, or the counter help at Godiva Chocolates wishes I was her sweet Valentine because I've just blown a paycheck on real gold flakes speckled with Smarties.

Build me a bomb shelter and stock it with a night's worth of rations. I'm hoping that I can convince her to spend it with me on Feb 14th. Maybe we'll rent a sappy little movie that night, turn on the electric blanket, and just watch it together, nice and warm like. Popcorn, soda, and a bag of chips.... hey I ain't frugal, throw in a bag of M&M Peanuts too!

As for flowers, I'm allergic. How about a cactus plant? They're like me, very low maintainance. Actually they're better than me. Cactus doesn't need a fifteen thousand dollar motorcycle to be happy, do they?

....does McDogs have McLove Burgers, hmmmm.

posted by losir at 2:58 PM