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Data Vampire

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Posts posted by Data Vampire

  1. I've written an epic fuckton of poetry. Strangely, I hate writing poetry even though I seem to have a knack for it. Mostly I just write snarky book reviews these days, although I've been cranking out some short stories (mostly horror and bizarro). Although I love writing fiction, the process of doing so is... excruciating for me.

  2. ahh I love Norwegian Wood, Murakami is amazing. What's wrong with Jay Rubin's translation ?

    I have heard that the Birnbaum translation is closer to the original japanese (Birnbaum's japanese is apparently better than Rubin's). That being said, I haven't actually read the Birnbaum translation and Rubin's is the only official english translation fully endorsed by the author (or so the inside of the book tells me). If it's good enough for Murakami, it's good enough for me.

     

    Also, have you read any of his other work? I've heard mixed reviews of most of it other than The Wind Up Bird Chronicles which is widely regarded as awesome.

     

    As a side note, does anyone here ever write book reviews on Amazon or Goodreads?

  3. The more physically attractive you are, the more genetically superior you are assumed to be. This causes people to view you in a much more flattering light, even making it more likely that strangers will help you in a crisis.

     

    Wait, it Gets Worse...

     

    You know how when the hot girl at the bar tells an unfunny joke, all the guys laugh anyway? Or when the office stud makes a mistake, the female boss laughs it off?

    Attractive people live in a world where most feedback they get is bullshit. The compliments mean nothing--they've learned that's just the sound people make when they walk by. That's why studies show they tend to dismiss the genuine compliments they get in other areas (their work, personality, sense of humor, creativity) because it gets lumped in with the same counterfeit flattery they've been getting their whole lives.

     

    The upshot of all this is that this treatment can easily result in narcissism or worse, the appearance or narcissism. If you thought that no one really cared about you and the only reason people were nice to you was because of the way you looked and not who you were, wouldn't you just say "Fuck everybody else, I'm looking out for Number One."?

  4. I live in Canada, which means I wouldn't be able to accomplish jack as Prime Minister unless I had a majority government. If I did, though, I would probably spend that week reforming the voting process and how votes from different parts of the country are weighed. There are some retarded Canadians who dispute this but quite frankly the OMG U MUST VOTE LOL message is insulting to the intelligence because unless you live east of Manitoba your vote is effectively worthless. Due to the whole "rep by pop" bullshit if everyone in Central, Northern and Western Canada all voted the same way they could still get out voted by the residents of the eastern and maritime provinces. Seriously, you're better off convincing people who live in Ontario or Quebec to vote the way you want them to than actually voting yourself.

  5. The War on Drugs is a joke. All that it is really accomplishing is driving up the prices of street drugs and making drug dealers and crime syndicates more and more ruthless. Others in this thread have stated that illicit drugs (not just narcotics but also stimulants, opiates, etc.) are a huge money maker for the demi-monde. Since the War on Drugs seems focused primarily on disrupting the supply, it can never be won, since the demand is still there. As long as there is a demand for a product or service, someone will be willing to supply it whether it is legal to do so or not.

     

    A more effective (but excruciatingly expensive and difficult) approach would be to focus or reducing demand while simultaneously disrupting supply lines. This would make the costs of operating a drug distribution ring in a particular area (be it a city, state/province/county or even a whole country) far exceed any revenue generated by the drug trade in that area. Crime Syndicates are just as profit driven as legal businesses and corporate entities, they just make more money because their activities and products are not legal and thus not regulated by any governing body or consumer protection agency. By killing any chance of them making a profit in a particular area, one could effectively drive them away to greener pastures.

     

    Like I mentioned before, however, to do so would be brain-shittingly expensive and the logistics alone are enough to induce an aneurysm. That being said I think this sort of approach, rigorously implemented, would be far more effective than "lol u hav a joint. FIFY BAZILLION YEARS IN PRISON ENJOY THE BUTTRAEP!"

  6. Try Freedom. It disables internet access on your computer for up to eight hours and is the only reason I've been able to get any writing done this week. I think the same company also makes a program that just blocks social networking sites. Alternatively you could just read somewhere without computer/internet access. If you try to permanently delete your Facebook account, Mark Zuckerberg sends his ninja after you.

  7. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (sadly not the Birnbaum translation). I recently gave A Prayer for Owen Meany (the novel that the film Simon Birch was based on) the old college try but it was so boring it made me want to develop psychic powers for the sole purpose of telekinetically falcon punching John Irving in the reproductive organs so hard that it would cause a shockwave that would travel back in time and kill him and all his ancestors in the womb generation by generation all the way back to Noah so that everyone would wind up dying in the flood.

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