Negative Besucher

Insgesamt kamen in der bisherigen Sommersaison Mai bis Juni 342.000 US-Bürger nach Österreich, das sind 366.000 mehr als im Vorjahr.

(s. 19, Kurier, 27.7.2006)

Offensichtlich haben -24.000 amerikanische Touristen uns im vergangenen Jahr besucht!

Semper retarded

Occasionally the ulcers in my stomach and various tumours I undoubtedly have from a constant diet of cigarettes and liter upon liter of Diet Coke recede and I feel the need to torture myself further until they return. Today was just such an occasion, and fortunately I found this thread on a US Marine Corps messageboard to cure (or uncure) what ailed me:

http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31729

Some farmer in the US hung a flag upside down on his property and here we have the stormtroopers making calls to "string him up" and sodomize him (one poster asks if there's any snipers on the messageboard living in the same area as the farmer). This doesn't really surprise me, as I already knew most people in the US Marines were the dumbest, most reactionary group of people in the entire armed forces of the world. Not all of them, but it seems to be a prerequisite for most positions. If you're too smart, you get discharged. If you're smart, they give you a job at a computer. If you're stupid, you get promoted. If you're dumb as shit, you go to the Pentagon, and those who have the misfortune of being even dumber than shit apparently spend too much time on a marine corps messageboard proving why if anyone should be strung up, it's the still-pregnant mothers of half-retarded hayseeds like this. If the crazy terrorists really wanted to defeat the US military all they'd really have to do is secretly replace all of their fragmentation grenades with baby-proof aspirin bottles. By the time half the service-men figured out how to get the tops off and rejoice, they'd only have a moment to realize they've already been killed ten minutes ago.

As for the farmer, it seems like he was just pissed off about his stupid loan money being taken away by the courts, and needed a gimmick to draw media attention to it. I bet he doesn't give a flying fuck about the state of medical care for soldiers.

Putin's Internet Conference of July, 6th (this is not a serious review, just some impressions).

Someone here called it a disappointment of the year, that's certainly an overstatement and I think it was really stupid to expect much from it, but yes, it could have been more fair. The questions that were asked were those chosen by moderators that left some of the most poplar questions (the ones that got the most votes) unanswered, not that I think those unanswered questions were important, I don't see the point in asking Putin most of these question anyway, I just think that since it's called "internet conference" they should have been asking questions in order of popularity (omitting the similar ones, of course). As a reason for leaving out some very popular questions they pointed out that their popularity was the result of flashmobbing. Well, probably it was, but the popularity of a question on the internet doesn't necessarily reflects it's overall popularity and probably all questions with the rating above some certain number are a result of flashmobbing of some sort, I guess it's just the way those kind of internet conferences are.

I also think that his first reaction to the following question was weird and stupid:
"I voted for you but the country is deviating from democracy, there's no strong opposition, almost no elections, no TV and radio independent from the state. When are you going to get back to democracy? "
Putin: "Honestly speaking, and we are having an honest conversation, I doubt that Vitaliy [the name of the question's author] voted for me. It is possible. I don't exclude it but I doubt it ..."
Well, even if he doesn't like the question, how on earth can he make that judgment. If a person who didn't vote for Putin wanted to ask the same question I see absolutely no point for him to say that he did. :/

On this page there's a list of stupid and funny questions to Putin that were asked on the net, they are in English and though English there is rather bad, I think it's mostly understandable. If there's something you don't understand, ask me and I'll be glad to explain.
Oh, and the most popular question about G.W. Bush was: "Do you think that Bush is a fool?"

Btw, if anyone missed the results of "What Does It Mean", it's in the comments to the respective post.

Mick Looks Even Smaller in Person

Just got back from the Stones concert in Vienna. I wouldn't have gone, but the ticket was free. I'm glad I went. I think Keith Richards forgot all their new material after getting that coconut to the head, because they played only old classics the entire performance. Sympathy for the Devil isn't really one of my favorites, but they built up to it with drums for about 3 minutes, with some fireworks suddenly going off and flying behind the stage, then smoke machines billowing clouds out onto the stage and into the audience, with two gigantic fireballs erupting out of the top into the opening of the stadium ceiling. Even sitting so far back, one could feel the heat momentarily. I don't know if it was an act or not, but another thing weird about Richards was that during his solo songs he seemed to forget the words (or in one case the title when introducing it until Ron Wood helped him out) and often to play the guitar or sing altogether. To sum it up, it was altogether a great show, although at the same time it felt a little fake as if we were all extras in a concert DVD to be sold at a later date rather than an audience at a rock show, and were the tickets not given to me for free, I wouldn't have bothered going. It just seemed like an opportunity I should consider taking, so I did. And I do not regret it.

Outernet?

If anyone was wondering/caring, the reason I seemed to disappear is because about 75% of the sites I normally go to, including servers for AIM and ICQ, are inaccessible. I cannot get any information on why, but from tracerouting and pinging for the past 30 minutes I've been able to hazard a crude guess: aorta.net's bridge between New York and Europe is offline, and thus the vast majority of servers in the United States are cut off. At first I was kind of paranoid because the sites I attempted to view were political magazines and such, but then I realized I couldn't even get to McDonald's website so something must be up.

Here is what a typical attempt to connect to a US computer gets me:

11 us-nyc01a-rd1-pos-6-0.aorta.net (213.46.160.154) 131.476 ms 132.556 ms 135.873 ms
12 213.46.190.178 (213.46.190.178) 134.788 ms 136.798 ms 136.052 ms
13 * * *
14 * * *

After the 213.46.190.178 the attempt times out for almost every site located in the US (Google, Blogspot and GMail excluded; CNN, Slashdot, Counterpunch, Infoshop, Libcom.org, *.gov websites included). Hopefully when I get back I won't have an inbox full of hundreds of spam e-mails. Then again I'm more worried that I'll have to rely on the mainstream press for my news in the meantime.