All genius is genetic

It was a documentary, from the Prisma series made by DW-TV.

The struggle of genius kids, according to their mothers everybody envies them: other kids, other moms, and their siblings, but not them, they know it’s hard being a genius (even if they are not one themselves), but also feel proud that their kids have so much potential.

Potential for what?, well they do poorly in school (they already know everything and get bored), have no friends, are incapable of the most basic logical thinking (it’s not that basic or logical to them), and they have lack any sense of how to behave socially.
But, in some way, their IQ tests reveal they are geniuses, so they must be.

Only two kids were interviewed, a boy and a girl, the boy played piano worse than any of those 5 year old child prodigies we all get to see regularly on Youtube, and the girl was studying Japanese; learning kanjies, and being as fluent as somebody who has been taking lessons for less than a year, unfortunately for her she had already been learning for 4 years.

What exactly is people’s fascination with ‘that’ kind of intelligence?, is it because it’s supposed to be linked to superiority?
It is not practical to measure success through the most popular vision of achievement, but it’s still a mystery why so many minds that are said to be superior also lack order, and their work is scarce and not functional.

I forgot if I have mentioned it before, but «Rainman» is one of those cases. People think the guy is gifted because he can remember everything he sees and wobbles like a baby, but he has not been able to connect that information in order to give it a new or different meaning.
He’s like a super developed parakeet, but primitive human being.
And that’s the tragedy of stupidity: Any person who is dumb, slow or deficient can pass for an misunderstood god, specially to their parents.

Remote spectators

Watching Germany beat Argentina would have been worth missing a doctor’s appointment. Every time I saw them play was like watching a perfectly rehearsed choreography of what an ideal game with supreme athletes would look like.
I could have paid 2,000€ to watch the German team humiliate Spain as they did with Maradona’s lame ambitions, but it didn’t happen… It didn’t happen!

Now the final is going to be between a mediocre team facing a more mediocre team. It’s embarrassing how they managed to win against a superior squad who were only having a bad day, this is not what makes the difference between ordinary and memorable, this is nothing but a fraud, specially because of the obvious inclination the referees had for Spain and The Netherlands.

And that was a relatively new phenomenon in itself: Thousands celebrate the defeat of one team instead of the triumph of another, all thanks to the barbaric refereeing which has created villains instead of heroes.

But the whole event has been atypically boring, aside from Germany’s matches and the last 15 minutes of Netherlands vs Uruguay; Martin Caceres thoroughly drying the ball with his shirt with only 2 minutes left of the game… I seriously thought I was going to cry.
I hope Germany wins next Saturday though.

This is an internet post

I missed all the drama.

Trent Reznor cancelled his Twitter account and said trolls made him do it.

Two things really stand out:

– Trent Reznor had a Twitter

– Trent Reznor is new to the internet.

Yes, I’m a NIN’s fan, have been for many years, it’s amazing he took Industrial music to a commercial level 20 years after Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten had experimented so much with the genre but in all honesty only the first two albums were interesting, the rest quickly became pop, elevator, or grunge music with a mediocre keyboard and a bunch of effects.

But I still respected him as an artist.

And he was supposed to be a precursor with his online site, he allowed members of his fanclub to watch shows live through the internet, he shared a bunch of his old works through torrent and he even made a Ghosts’ version available to download at a very reduced price but it seems all of that didn’t happen out of a knowledge of what the internet was about and instead focused on finding a way to feed his ego when he wasn’t giving concerts. When he stepped outside of his controlled little world (nin.com) without hundreds protecting him of users with thoughts different to his he began calling people «fat», giving them instructions of how to commit suicide and saying he was only on Twitter as part of an experiment.

I don’t know if he managed to convince himself that his fanbase wasn’t mostly made out of a bunch of egocentric morons who think the world sucks because it has various kinds of people in it, it’s slightly depressing witnessing his great shock, specially when he shares the same flaws with those trolls who also happen to be 30 years younger than him.

First MM and now this. It’s like those guys never grew past the age of 14 and are clueless and sheltered about what the world is like, all the pain and suffering in their songs is probably not born out of a great loss or a terrible tragedy but because somebody made fun of their clothes.

Pathetic wouldn’t quite cover it.

Now changing the subject slightly.

There was a time where viral videos, images or memes actually had a message or a purpose. Serious cat meant it that the internet was serious business and the girlfriend posing with the car was truly a huge accomplishment, even Badger-Mushroom’s fascinating nonsense couldn’t be easily copied by the masses, Tourist Guy wasn’t something most people would share with their grandparents, parents or co-workers, millions saw them but nobody really talked about it.

But there’s a need for the masses to take away the essence out of everything so it can be nothing more than light fun for everybody. Caturday, Demotivationals, Drama Praire Dog, everything was consumed, digested and shat for the whole world to enjoy, and this is how we reach one of the lowest moments in the short history of humanity: Television reporting what happens on the internet.

I know, I had mentioned it before, and I’m really over it because I barely watch 20 minutes of TV a week, but I still wonder why there’s even a need to find a light form of amusement when there are so many self-help books around begging people to live like every moment was going to be their last and like there’s no tomorrow.

There’s some woman who became famous thanks to a reality show done by TLC, I thought that channel only did documentaries and perhaps some boring shows about «every-day living» but somehow they thought exploiting 8 kids was educational and the show was a success, so much that two weeks ago many popular magazines dedicated their headlines to those people. But I think USA’s society must really be going through a difficult moment if the sites with millions of daily visitors spend hours talking about how atrocious is Kate’s barely unusual hair-style, how much it looks like a possum, adding images of the hair to the pics of animals, selling a «Halloween» wig that resembles the woman’s hair, etc.

Then there’s some video of a wedding in which the guests are dancing, millions of hits in just a few days, millions in awe: «Oh look! people are dancing! that’s so kooky and wacky!».

I also kept seeing news on Lindsay Lohan, she went to the hair salon, she went to a friend’s house, her mother gave an interview, Lindsay was promoting a Milkshake, and people left comments about how bad she looked, how stoned she probably was, how dirty and disgusting was her hair and often there were several people who made the same question: «What is wrong with her?», I used to agree and considered there really was a problem, she was jobless when she finally had the right age to work, she does drugs and has an eating disorder, she also has very low self-esteem and control issues but there are a lot of people like that doing those and many other things, there is nothing wrong with Lindsay, her behaviour is pretty normal for an addict in denial, so then why is she being followed around and photographed?

Superficiality is not about the self anymore, it’s about the one of others’.

Baby’s got pack

According to a not very reliable newspaper it’s now a trend to give newborns a very unique «gift pack» consisting of a single thing in the area of online personal spaces (none related to the MSN ones), the mostly priceless gift can either be a Facebook account, a Myspace account, an e-mail account or an internet domain, this last one clearly being the only one that does has a price.

E-mail is definitely a must for any human being, DOB and full name of each person has to be available as soon as the person can type, or if they can’t as soon as somebody can do it for them.

But the obvious question is not why the parents’ spaces are not enough to promote a baby amongst those they know (and don’t) but why would an underage kid need such a recreational and sensible thing.

The options are endless, we have for example that the parents may want to show the world how their child changes, there’s nothing more interesting than a complete stranger broadcasting everything about themselves whilst the parents imagine it’s none other than Shiloh Pitt Jolie on that million dollar portrait for People magazine, but they can also upload the photos of their little ones wearing their nicest pieces of clothing (or none at all), and if photography is not their strong point there’s always the posts option to talk about their talents and accomplishments.

And the best part would be when the kid begins school, not only would it be known where he/she lives, also where they spent their days and links to their closest friends would appear, friends w/pics & a/s/l as well as lots of more precious info on them and their parents. It would only be a matter of time before posts are made about the things they do, their worries and special moments, even if they would most likely delete their page every time one of their crushes crushes them, a group of friends splits, an unwanted friend of relative finds them or when the parents run across their nudes, it wouldn’t be difficult to make a new account and continue where they left off.

Even if no kid born during 2007 is likely to know what «Hi5» was by the time they reach 10 I can’t help but find the idea of a full generation of overexposed kids more amusing than the MySpaces for fetuses.
Oh yes, I must add this journal was recently refurbished.

Video Reviews (Begotten & Play With Me)

These contain spoilers.

Begotten

As I read: «The first scene is a cabin and shows God killing Himself» a shock feeling took over me, I postponed watching it for a long time and I never thought I was ever going to be ready to witness such a thing, but I did, five minutes of it.
The scene was supposed to fit the description I had read, «God kills himself» and it showed a mutant Bellmer-Doll actor with a razor attacking what seemed to be a cushion on his stomach, blood splatters didn’t follow any logic and the figure just shook back and forth as a kid with downs. The first seconds were a bit frightening, then after the scare had passed all I could feel was disbelief, How could something so lame cause any reaction besides boredom?.
The answer is not complex as I was able to see the critics’ opinions on a trailer from the movie, I believe the praises come from people who always dreamt of doing «the next Eraserhead» and ended up wearing a bow tie whilst o
n queue for a plane to a paid trip for a France film festival.
People who had probably never seen any «decadence» expression from the past or present, because gosh, is that thing smelly, just perfume some feathers and you are ready to go.
Supposedly the film is about a god committing suicide and a mother nature being born of it, I saw none of that, I saw a human leg and I saw a female actor doing a few modern-dance movements and wearing something very renaissance-fair, I didn’t see a birth, I didn’t see beauty and I didn’t see emotion, in any of them.
The use of the line of God was more than ambitious, it was leading and lacking of substance, it wasn’t anything Marilyn Mason hasn’t done, better.
Mr. director, I will not thank you for making me waste 5 minutes of my life.

Play With Me

Okay, I’ll admit it, I was crying at night when I remembered this video. And, it did start playing itself alone, I had not touched the play button.
This is about a doll, filmed in stop-motion and using a bunch of different objects for her «play time», what does she play at?, nothing big, just suicide, cutting and curling up in fetal position after seeing who knows what.
I have no idea what the point here is and I have no idea what the artist wanted to express, and at first I wasn’t impressed in the slightest, there was no music, nothing unusual or special about the doll’s activities, it called my attention how well she could draw, but nothing else, it wasn’t until the end of the film(s) that my brain made a special appearance saying «No, you are not watching that».
Good Lord, horror at its finest.
Initially I thought it could have been a very bad copy of a film from around 30 years ago, but it wasn’t. The film I originally thought of was a Russian animation, a stop-motion doll with a tea set, and a cat, the cat was real though, and the doll drank something I won’t mention here (and served them) as she was playing with the little set, it’s a shame I have never been able to find out anything about the film, name, director, or even the date, only that it was part of the lovely Soyuzmultfilm (Sovietsportfilm) clips shown on TV during the the evenings some 20 years ago.

Camp huh?

Because the world can never have enough anas now there’ll be a new show whose sole purpose will be to mess people enough to make them anorexic.

One could think «A healthy mind would never allow such a disorder to appear», well, that’s exactly why they’re not going to recruit healthy people, but morbidly obese ones.

Nicole Richie doesn’t belong with her parents or on a mental health clinic («eating disorders are a mental illness you guyz»), she should be on magazines, tv shows and whatnot, where the biggest amount of teenagers can see her, she’s not an actor, not a musician, not a dedicated worker, she just is, and now she’s back with Paris to dictate: «You have a problem, focus it on getting thin and you’ll at least be a nice corpse».
Assuming the «Nazi Camp Winter ’45» look is what you consider nice.

I was watching yesterday some show filled with ads on how to be «beautiful«, some of the worse coconut-looking fake breasts TV has paid to show were attached to an ugly mouth saying: «In the old days ugliness was only for women with poor husbands, these days it no longer has to be, anyone can be beautiful, we accept monthly payments», yes, according to them «everybody wants to look their best«, so they offered implants; Chin, cheeks, calf, breasts and backside, the «before/after» photos were beyond depressing, the floor/room where they were taken was dirty and the €5,000 difference wasn’t obvious at all, neither was the improvement.

In the future people are really going to wonder why extreme body modifications happened or were tolerated.

{Yes I got the photo from Perez’ site. The rest are from the superfish, of course.}

I’m oh so disgusted

So there’s a new trend, to discuss what’s ethical/right/moral in the case of a disabled little girl, it’s «Let’s Judge The Unfortunate’s Relatives» all over again, like the Italian woman who killed her brain because she wanted to lose weight, except this is a girl who didn’t ask to have such severe problems.

I’ve been ignoring the subject because it’s really none of my business what her family decide to do, with thousands of kids being murdered around the world I don’t think one person’s private life is a reason to tear my clothes over, so I won’t talk about it.
Why am I mentioning it then?, because of this post.
I wanted to comment on it, on how dumb some comments were, but because I have to be a member and I’m not going to join such a limited place I’ll ramble here.

The debate:
– «The girl can’t be looked after if she’s bigger»
I guess that means old people should get something done so in case they reach 90 and can’t move around they won’t cau
se problems to the nurses.
– «The parents will have to change diapers with menstrual blood»
The first girl ever to be disabled or in a coma that has a period, what has the world gotten to?.
– «It’s the best thing for her, she will have cramps and they hurt but she won’t understand why it hurts»
So, she’s intelligent enough to suffer because she has cramps but she’s not to understand why she has them?, what difference does one or another pain make?, maybe they should stop feeding in too, bad digestion hurts.
Contraceptives, they stop periods and won’t allow her to have babies in case she gets raped.
– «It’s good for her»
How can making her go through surgeries be good for her?, isn’t she supposed to be suffering a lot already?, breast surgeries are the most painful ones, how are the parents explaining to her that they removed her breasts so she’s 1kg lighter?.
– «She doesn’t even know what her body is»
And that alone should be a good enough reason to leave nature follow its course then, if it doesn’t harm her to grow up, why try to artificially stop it?, don’t they know what treatments with hormones can do?.
– «Being a kid means being always happy»
Problem here is she’s not a kid, and adulthood doesn’t equal unhappiness, emotional immaturity does.
In any case, it’s cool if the parents want to disable their own child if the kid is so unaware of what’s going on, they don’t see a living being going through a process in that kid but a problem to solve, fine, I don’t know what I would do in that situation myself and the world that criticizes others so much is not going to be there to proclaim new heroes, what’s more, that little girl doesn’t need such a thing, only a happy and loving environment.
So all I’m asking here is: Please, don’t be stupid.

Edit: After reading this and this my veredict changed, now it’s: Can’t deal with something in life?, ask help or hand the situation over to another person who can.
Poor girl.

ANA

The movement seems “internet only”, it’s full of slogans like “Nothing Tastes As Good As Being Thin Feels”, terms like “thinspiration” and an endless resources to die of starvation.

What is it?, Who are these girls?, Why do they feel the need to do water fasting?.

The story is long, eating disorders are very new, another cure for human boredom that ends up being worse than the illness. Rumour has it “ANA” girls only exist on the internet, there are no books about it, it was first seen on the WWW, and they are girls with anorexia or bulimia but they don’t support each other to eat just a bit more, they become friends, partners, and they are there to help those who want to give in to food, they will share advice on how to hide anemia. They won’t ask you to feel bad for having a healthy weight, but they will be there when you feel bad for not being skinny.

This girls are obviously ill, but they stopped looking for help, they surrendered to their problems and obsessions, they paid attention to the messages a rotten society released, they didn’t stop to question what they were being sold, they became takers.

But I’m not really against ANA people, these days most teens, kids and even adults are just looking for trendy ways that lead them to self-destruction, drugs, promiscuous sex, violence, cutting, but it seems ANA’s are attacked just a bit more, but why?.

Sure, ANA girls believe photoshoped images of skeletons and models are real and they want to look that way, they make competitions of loosing weight, but how is that different to competing to drink gallons of alcohol in just a few minutes?, how is trying to look like a porn star different to glorifying Nicole Richie?, they all lead to the same, don’t they?, the rejection of the self.

And before I get called an ANA supporter I declare I’m not, I like my food greasy and my girls curvy, I’m not pro-suicide either, I’m just against shocks and in favour of perspective.
ANA is yet another beginning.

The hard way

I was surfing around the Internet (aka world wide web) when as usual, something called my attention, it was a book that said to document the «12 Steps Horror».

With the words «12 Steps» it was referring to the world known 12 steps program to recover from addictions, I don’t recall them all at the moment but as an example there are steps that say «Living one day at a time», «Asking for God’s help» and such.

I read just a few pages from that book and was indeed horrified, not because I didn’t know already and almost by first hand that there are many places all around the world that like to call themselves AA or AL-Anon that only hide dumpsters full of prostitution, violence and humiliation, no, what horrified me was how the «miracle cure» can have so many faces, names and numbers, but in the end it’s all the same: People that take advantage of the weak.

When a person depends, I repeat DEPENDS of a substance that alters the conscience to live then that person might not be able to function correctly or make every day decisions, we all make mistakes, we all can be faced with situations that challenge us but if our minds can’t think clearly the decisions can be more complicated.

So, all of this combined with others ideas, promises and «investigations» can lead to people that are not only addicted to something (see wrong need of something not necessary to survive) and confused about many things but also believing in things that, for the average person, make no sense.
Can an addict be rescued from an addiction with a nonsense?
Many believe they do, that no matter what you believe in, if it works, if it makes you happy, nothing can be that wrong.

I won’t debate about that now, but I do feel the need to say a few things regarding a method called «Rational Recovery®».

I did a search on the term as I had no idea what it was, I was directed to a page that has in the cover a photo of an old man and his wife «The method creators» and I suddenly wondered if the method was so good, why the need of an ego trip?.

So I read and learned that it was supposed to be a method in which the person recovers from addictions very fast and doesn’t have to be in treatment forever, sort of like a surgery to fix your nose, why accept yourself when a simple operation can change how you look? Why exercise if taking 1 pill a day will make you thin and desirable?.

Well, too good to be true? Not really, a small look at the process showed some interesting ideas, let’s see a few:
«Alcoholism is not a disease», that’s what they believe, the only question here is, what would they consider a disease? Something that holds back a person? Something that interferes with a persons health?
«Why live one day at a time when you can compromise forever» Maybe because you cannot live in the future? Living a day at a time is the same as living the present, as simple as if you make plans for the future you cannot be sure if they will come true since you don’t know how when you will die, you are here now therefore that’s all that you can be certain of being able to live.

«Self recovery-Do it yourself-You can do it alone», Which is exactly why many people turn to alcohol in the first place, believing you can be your own hell and God, not because you are human but because nothing can be as powerful as the force within you.

Why give credit to a superior being when you can do it all yourself? You are human you are immortal, you are not even human after all but a demi God.

I cite the words of a recovering alcoholic: «I had a terrible weight upon me, then I understood I wasn’t God, the same force that created me was here before I arrived to this world and will be here after I’m gone».

Kitsch shite

La merde, I always prefer that word to it’s many variations.
I’m not a snob, but I read something interesting yesterday, about shit, a long part of a book dedicated to shit matters, shitless entities, a word with no shit and a world full of invisible but intuitable shit.
Questions, questions, if shit is sinful, why do we humans produce it? If it’s not, why do we humans produce it? Is shit human? Is it divine? Is is evil?
I personally never asked myself those questions, after all, I couldn’t give a shit if gods and saints did, but what I did often wonder in my young years was, If our human body is perfect, why does it need to eat and shit?, Shit is perfect too?, If shit is perfect why does it looks like it’s the garbage of our bodies?, Is a world with no shit a world with no food?.
Shit is not good, some eat it with allegations of it being a miracle cure but no miraculous event beyond people eating shit has been proven. But if shit it’s still as necessary as sneezing, as urinating, or even as necessary as sleep, why doesn’t it seems natural? Supermodels don’t shi
t, neither do rock artist, pop boy-bands, our boss, our teachers, our lovely girlfriend, nobody shits as far as the world is concerned, they can throw up a whole meal, they can spit swears until their tongues hurt, but shit, that’s some big stuff.
Nobody wants shit, not the one we produce, not the one of others, only some parents don’t mind their babies shit and some pet owners don’t mind «fluffy’s» shit all over their favorite sofa; Will it ever arrive the day when we see shit as we see a squeezed empty can of coke? Will we ever be able to accept shit as part of us and the world we live in? How would the world change if we stoped denying shit’s existence? Would it change? Would it be full of shit? Would that be bad?.
And I must say that all this shit talk wasn’t what I had planned to say about shit after I finished reading those lines on shit, I have to admit that with the progress of the hours I forgot every word I was going to say; merde.