Problem: My laptop, after an incomplete hibernation, left me with a blinking cursor and me cursing when all the usual tricks didn’t work.

Solution: After Googling, doodling and racking my brain, I finally just thought like a computer.  As a result, I’m typing away again.

This Toshiba Satellite M200 has been pretty good until now.  I’ve had it for almost 2 years and apart from overheating on warm days, it’s been a pretty solid machine.  I do lots of video editing on it and the speed at which it renders is quite impressive for a tiny laptop.

However, impressed I was not when, during a long night of tapping out a script, my battery died.  It made a feeble attempt to go to sleep just prior to this, but as the battery gave out it’s last squirt of power, Windows wrote about all the lovely things I had been typing and how it wanted to remember them later, but then all went black.

My natural recourse was to plug in the power.  That I did.  I saw a flash screen for Phoenix Labs, as one might see while the computer wakes up.  No boot options or suggestions to hit the Delete key.  Then a black screen, a flashing cursor and nothing happening in the hard drive department.  No worries, I thought.  Corrupted restore file is the problem.  I’ll just shut off the power and hold the button a really long time.  This is how I show my laptop I really mean business.

After that didn’t work, I still wasn’t worried.  I’ll take out the battery.  If things get serious and button pushing doesn’t work, start the strategic withdrawal phase.  Know that this phase, once started, could lead to the computer’s destruction, as each increasingly integral component is taken out and yet the game goes on.  Battery comes out easily.  Goes back in seconds later.  There, the hardware will be power starved, not remember anything and the system will reboot from scratch.  But after another boot, there is that damn black screen and cursor, blinking at me as though taunting me.  Off, on, off, on, you don’t treat me well… on, off, on, off,  you suck at computers.

Here was I, trying to work this out in a civilized way.  I push a button here, I push a button there, computer works.  We don’t have to create a scene.  We don’t want anyone to get hurt.  But you made me pull out your battery because you still didn’t work after I had tried so hard to be polite.  And now we’ve already crossed over to the dark side.  Now I have a taste for this game of torture.  What will it take for you to work for me?

I took out, then replaced the RAM.  Blink, blink, ha, ha.
I pulled out the hard drive, plugged it back in.  No, no, blinked the screen.
I inserted said hard drive into a portable unit and checked to see it was working.  All was well.
I racked the internet, which told me to hold the power button for a minute, run boot disks (obviously no boot menu so can’t boot), change Windows power options (hello, not booting!) or update my BIOS.  The cursor actually found the last one quite amusing.  Blink, blink, go ahead and try, it said.

I have no idea where the nearest Toshiba shop is.  I really didn’t want to have to find out.  I had to come up with another solution.  I spend a good part of my day sitting in front of my computer and if that vast stretch of time is gone I might start reading books or doing something productive.  As you can see, I desperately needed a solution.

Toshiba laptop, turns on.  What happens?  What would I do if I were that laptop.  The first thing I do of a morning is check to see that I’ve got all my bits.  Legs, arms, face, dick, balls, OK.  It really is all a man needs to be a man.  Everything else is extraneous.  Sure, I’ll put a T-shirt on and may even wear pants, but first I’m checking to make sure I have some legs to put in those pants.  So, if I’m a computer waking up from a deep sleep, I think I’ll be checking to see that my parts are all cool.  If they are, then move on to the hard disk boot sequence and let Windows do the rest.

I’m going to pause here to mention that my approach to problem solving my computer is to FBM.  First blame Microsoft.  There’s no passion there.  It’s all for show.  I guess companies are a lot like their founders.  In this case, bland.  That’s how I see Microsoft.  I’m going to have a little rant about my phone with its Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system in the very near future, I can feel it.  When a problem arises, I assume that it’s a Windows fault.  For example, when going to sleep, have a tag to say not complete.  When the session saving has finished, change that tag to finished. When the system boots up, if session saving tag reads finished, restore it.  If it reads not finished, do a fresh boot.  Simple.

So in my mind, it’s the point after the system check that everything goes wrong.  So I try to make the security check fail.  I pull out the hard disk again, but this time leave it out.  I turn on the computer.  The now-familiar Phoenix logo flashes, the little blue bar down the bottom fills, then…

Black screen, flashing cursor.  Its blinks seem slower this time, as though it was an effort to blink them out.  It says, “you got me”.  Suddenly, a bunch of white writing appears.  Hardware failure!  Blah, blah, blah!  I reset the computer, plug in the hard drive and voila! We’re back to standard boot-up.

The whole process from start to finish took almost 2 days.   I am most unsettled when Google can’t solve my problems.  It has become like a big brother to me and when it doesn’t come through, I’m left vulnerable, having to use my own brain for a change.  But my brain proved that it is still working and that it, with the help of a little Microsoft distrust, could still save me from a life of productivity.

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There have been countless books written about confidence and how to get more of it. It’s a genuine concern for all of us at some time or another. We inevitably find ourselves confronted with a situation in which we are, for whatever reason, completely lacking in confidence to proceed in.

Fears abound us in modern-day society. We are no longer the commanders of our domain, like when we were hunter-gatherers. We rely on the actions of others for our material needs. We are cogs in the great machinery of society, a special skill developed to help turn the engine that drives our economies forward. We are also faced with situations completely removed from natural life. Public speaking is something the caveman never had to face, nor was intercontinental travel. But in this modern society, we overcame our resistance to other cultures and instead embraced them, shared them, all the while infusing ours into theirs. Ordinary people rose to the top ranks of large corporations through white-collar channels rather than battle and subterfuge. Men no longer hunted women in the same way as he might hunt a gazelle, but rather had to revert to conversation and dialog. He had to read a woman’s signals, then try to decypher what they mean. For the woman it is often just as strange, when men approach and speak nonsense in hope of impressing them, or entertain them all night unable to mouth the words of interest due to the social stigma of rejection. Or what of the countless number of people scared of the outdoors, of nature? Unable to fend for themselves, even in the most basic of natural scenarios, they would make their forefathers of only a few generations blush in their caskets. We no longer need to learn the skills of natural survival that were so essential just a century or two ago.

The fact is, we are incomplete people. We are only an element of an equation, entirely unbalanced in our efforts to fit in to modern society. We no longer seek to make ourselves the best in a wide range of endeavors, but rather to better one particular aspect of an endeavor in order to serve society better. As a whole, it makes for a better society, all the cogs working in harmony. But is it any wonder that the average person lacks confidence in a wide range of situations? We find ourselves living in a modern society with social rules and laws of manner and ettiquette, yet with biological programming identical to our spear weilding forefathers. We are conflicted, unbalanced and as a result, unconfident.

I don’t have a social answer to the larger problem, however I do have a solution to all those lacking confidence: act.

Confidence or rather, self-esteem is determined by your actions, not your thoughts. Those who are overly thoughtful, no doubt have heightened sensitivity to a whole range of topics, with increased knowledge and quite possibly the correct answer to many problems. But those who act, endear themselves with the confidence that the action brings forward into future situations.

In personal terms, conquering fear requires action. There aren’t any thoughts which can satisfactorily conquer it. Action with an external focus is the only way. External focus is important. Concentrate on the subject of your action, enjoy every part of the action, the process. Standing there on the verge of action, contemplating the result, be it success or failure, only serves to weaken confidence.

Constantly focus on things outside yourself. Let your emotions tell you how you feel, rather than analyze your own head. Act. Start small. Let that action lead to the next action, instilling confidence into the way you act, again and again. It will not always have the result you hope, but everything that happens will still give you the confidence you need for the next action because you did something. As soon as you act, you have more power than all the self-confidence boosting prop speeches gave you.

As for all the cog-in-the-wheel stuff, try not to let it bother you. Take up a new hobby. You’ll feel much better.

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An addendum. Eugenics has always been a dirty word, equated with Hitlerian aspirations of a ’super-race’. However, while reading the Wikipedia entry for Nikola Tesla, I noticed this interesting quote:

[...] man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct [...]. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.^[ref]

I think Tesla was too optimistic of social trends. But it makes one wonder. Is the weakening of this mating instinct offset by the increased opportunities for meeting your potential mate that modern society affords? The question of who to mate with will still be programmed into us, to a degree, but how much this does or should play a role is highly debatable. As I discussed above, we have moved away from personal self-sufficiency and the pride that brings, toward a mutual interdependency and the material pride that brings. The result is a society which seeks personal happiness at any cost. When faced with one’s personal happiness over more perfect offspring, we might choose the former more readily. After all, the rule usually goes that whatever is lacking, people are more desperate to have. Poor people are thus more likely to steal and people lacking in self-worth more likely to scream “me! me! me!”.

So who would you choose? A person with a personality you like, or someone who was, eugenically speaking, a perfect match? Should that even be raised as a question?

The other side of the argument is that today’s society has moved away from the notion of physical strength. Functioning well in modern society requires superior mental ability, not pure physicality (sports men and women excepted). However is just as much a physical trait as strength, arising from superior cognitive functioning, rather than muscular.

Ethically, the whole issue is a slippery slope. While countries such as China have embarked on a program of sterilization for those with “genetic diseases of a serious nature” and even some mental health conditions. Canada had a program of eugenics which continued into the 1970s, as did other countries including my own, Australia. And surprisingly, the largest state-sponsored eugenics program behind Hitler’s was run by, you guessed it, the US of A.

Programs such as these are artificial attempts to restore the natural balance of society. Programs and policies such as Feminism, Taxation/Welfare or Economics seek to correct some failing of modern society through a set of imposed rules on it’s subjects. Yet social programs which instill their own criteria on social interaction easily circumvent human nature to suit their ends and leave society more imbalanced than ever, inevitably. I could talk about each of the above programs in detail as to why I feel they are unnatural, but I think this rant has gone on long enough.

Plus, I’m meant to be travelling, not philosophizing.

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Fans of the Unshow will know that I have a pretty special connection with God. After all, he was a guest on the show. This fact is made all the more baffling by the other fact that I profess to be an atheist. This doesn’t mean that I have given up hope for some of the big answers, it just means that I don’t really care. My logic is that if God is actually there, he’ll understand my twisted logic, or, and this is more likely, not give a flying fatwa what I think.

If I was God and I made something remarkably dim-witted, I wouldn’t hold grudges. Knowing and understanding all must be pretty calming, I figure.

Some part of me wishes that there was a definite answer to the questions of life. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with Bible Bashers on the street every day. Well, every other day that is. Today must’ve been a special day because they were out in force, in broken English, which is worse because they can throw verses at me but when I retort they can’t understand.

Like when I asked about the age of Earth and he said that 4000 years was just a parable, to which I replied that this meant anything you find inconvenient could just be called a parable. He answered me with a well timed and drawn out blank stare. I really should stop talking to these people.

In order to counter these armies of Scripture Streetwalkers, I have devised these Ten Commandments of Avoidance to protect you from these people as you walk the streets. By blindly following these rules and watching for the signs of the Deliverer you may avoid losing precious moments of your life or worse still, having your soul ’saved’.

Commandment One: Beware the Neverending Smile. As you stroll along, you may think that the person up ahead is just happy. Think again. There are not that many happy people in the world these days, what with wars going on, high prices, taxes and global warming. If someone is smiling more than a second it is probably because they are high on hymns and are ready to tell you about them. You look into their eyes, they are wide, they appear to be glad to see you. You know that this is just too good to be true. Run, lest they impart the meaning of their joy.

Commandment Two: Clipboards: Thine Security Sense is False. So you see a person with a clipboard. Ah no problem there. Probably just some poor schmuck with a survey. WRONG! Suddenly you find yourself staring at a set of questions all about people called Mary, Moses and Matthew, but by then it’s too late, you have a pen in your hand. You hurriedly scribble the answers down and try to run away but they have you, they’re talking, it’s too late. Noooo! Beware the clipboard, for often these implements carry rounds of biblical ammunition, from surveys to fliers to booklets filled with stories about mystery heroes with long hair. See the clipboard and run, my friend.

Commandment the Third: As Moses Parted the Seas (parabolically of course), So Doth The God-Talker. You may notice, if you pay close attention to the people around you, that something strange is happening. People in the street in front of you are parting for no good reason. What could it be? What else but a church junkie, looking for friends so that they can all inject good intentions of hope into each others souls. For nothing will part a crowd like a Smiling Samaritan with the Good Word on his tongue.

Commandment Four: Do As The Jew Doth. While you may not be a Jew, it certainly is convenient to pretend to be one to ward off the surprise attack. The average basher isn’t equipped with the arguments to topple a faith older than theirs, especially one whose followers betrayed their number one guy. Most likely they’ll give up. Feel free to do your best Jewish impression to suit. Trust me, Jews appreciate good Jewish impressions.

Commandment Five: Do As The (insert religion here) Follower Doth. If Jewish impressions aren’t your thing, then you are not lost. There are plenty of religions that are just as repugnant to Christians. Try Islam for example. One mention of the Crusades or US Christians invading the Holy Land and you’ll think you had Saladin’s sword in your hands. It’s all in the approach. Greet them with “salaam alaikum” and it will it will be over before you can say hijab!

Commandment the Sixth: Unleash Thy Fury. One of the great things that many people forget is that Christians have to forgive. This has a great benefit for you the hapless victim: you can punch them in the face! Ok, well maybe not punch, because from a distance you can really get a run up and do a flying karate kick. A normal person would be angry, but if you apologize, they will forgive you. They have to! Then you can punch them again, and again, all the time with forgiveness guaranteed. Feeling tense or angry? Well, a happy Christian may even lighten your day after you get some of those frustrations out.

Commandment Seven: Repeat Ad Nauseum. An old game, yes. A good game, double yes. Turning bible talk into a fun game, absolutely! The rules are simple: just repeat everything they say. Exactly. Time yourself to see just how long they will endure their own words. Hey, if everyone else has to endure them, why shouldn’t they?

Commandment Eight: God Is Your Friend. Literally. If you were unable to read the signs and find yourself cornered by one of those smiles which are too wide for the mouth, all is not lost. Simply smile the same smile back and tell them all about the voices in your head. Tell them about your friend, God, and how he tells you many things. Have a conversation with him while your talking with them. “God says He’s angry” and look worried. “God, stop talking, stop! stop!” Trust me, by the third blood-curdling scream as you pound your fists on your temples, there will be no-one left talking to you. That is, unless of course the voices were there to begin with…

Commandment Nine: Cultivate a Following. Interestingly enough, someone who really wants to tell you something will often follow you if you fail to stop. The trick is to look interested enough to give them hope, but not slow down enough to stop. See how far you can take them. Up stairs, down stairs, across the street, across town. Given enough hope of saving your soul, the travel possibilities are endless!

Commandment Ten: Placing Distance. Should all of the above Commandments fail to protect you from the incessant rantings of a Godhead, DO NOT FEAR. For there is one final action which may be taken which is a sure-fire method for when all of the lying, acting or punching just won’t work. The trick is to put the greatest distance possible between you and the offending party in the shortest amount of time. They may shout “God bless you” or some other horribly joyous blessing as you peel off. However if the wind is right, or your running fast enough, you may be able to avoid even this. And that may be the greatest blessing of them all.

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Sometimes certain factors will get tired of their randomness and formulate a plot against you. I know this because a number of them got together today and had some fun at my expense. Call it bad management on my part, call it just one of those things, but whatever you call it, I wasn’t impressed.

I first suspected something was up when I approached my motorbike after a day’s teaching and found my keys in the ignition. It was strange because I usually don’t do silly things like that. However, I guessed that I had been distracted somewhere between stopping the bike and taking the cover off my shoe. You know how it goes with habits, fine for most days when you follow the order and don’t need to think, but fatal for those days where something distracts you half-way. A student yelling at me through the window was the spanner in the highly tuned machinery of my mind, and thus I forgot to take my key out.

On further inspection, I realized that this had a number of consequences. First, I had left my lights on, which usually wouldn’t be a problem, except that the ignition was also on which meant my lights had been on all day. Maybe in a car this would be a big problem, but on a bike you can just flip down the kick start lever and be on your way. I did this and thought nothing of it. Nothing, that is until twenty minutes later when my bike started lurching. It was akin to the response a bike might give if it were, say, out of fuel. However my fuel light wasn’t lighting up, which it will usually do at least 20km before I run out. I don’t have a gauge, merely an orange light which changes to red when the situation grows more dire. It sat there, unlit, begging me to find another answer. It occurred to me then that there were two scenarios where one might see this light unlit. One was the scenario where one had fuel in the tank. The other would be the scenario where one didn’t have any fuel in the tank, but also no power to make such a light lit, as in a flat battery. As I eased my shuddering bike to the curb, I realized that I was probably case number two.

I thus embarked on a trip to the nearest petrol kiosk, Coke bottle in hand. On the way, I checked my wallet. That’s right, I had planned to visit an ATM in the morning but had run out of time. So now, I had to search for an ATM, then a petrol kiosk. I managed the two and made my way back to my bike. As I poured the liquid into the tank, I realized that in some ways we are at the mercy of the little things in life. We get distracted by all the big things, that the little things have room to run amok in their own little ways. I seem to remember a book which was popular a while back called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff or something like that. This is simply wrong. Sweat the little stuff, pay attention to it. We live and die in the details. Well maybe not die, but definitely endure long walks carrying bottles of yellow fluid. And after a long day with a hungry belly, this is almost the same.

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Well it seems like no matter how long I wait or what I do, I won’t be a university lecturer. Not in Korea anyway. I received the email today telling me that firstly, my visa had been rejected and secondly that the university was looking at other candidates. So I made a beeline for the immigration offices, trying to put them straight. I spent the whole day, waiting, standing in lines, going to different buildings in different parts of the city, waiting some more, explaining my situation, going to yet another building and finally being told that it wouldn’t be happening, but maybe I should try again in another 6 months.

Now, having been told this very same thing one year ago by a similar looking moron behind the counter, I am really really doubtful about this suggestion.

However, this fight ain’t over. Strangely, and it may have something to do with sitting in line all day, I am not that angry. I was angry, very angry. But now I feel like I will win the war, despite losing all these battles. The exact details of my plan can’t be revealed obviously, but let’s just say that it’s pure genious and it will work, no probs.

In the mean time, I plan to keep you all entertained with my new show. Me and Keith decided to make a little talk show… check it out.

PART ONE: David and Keith take some time to answer fan mail. Also David premieres the trailer for his new film, I LOVE AN OLD VEGETABLE WOMAN.

PART TWO: Keith and David debate when is the proper time to throw a punch. They also get in-depth with Mikhal the Bulgarian.

PART THREE: Keith reveals to David that he is the star of the “David Doesn’t Know He’s On the Internet Show.”

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On Tuesday, a letter was made available to the press by the United Nations. Written by the President of Iran and addressed to George W, it was a significant gesture as there has not been any contact between the two nation’s presidents since 1979.

In the letter, the Iranian leader not so much attacks Western Liberalism and Bush’s policies (not that those are in any way the same thing), but rather sounds like he is giving Bush a lecture. “Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems,” writes the President. He seems to take an almost rhetorical style and one may surmise that he wrote it for a wider audience than just Bush. Mind you, he may have just dumbed down the language so that they guy might understand it.

He went on to say: “We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point that is the Almighty God,” he wrote. “Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teaching of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question to you is: ‘Do you want to join them?’ ”

I find it interesting that in the midst of turmoil and wars based upon ideology and creed, that he might think that more ideology is the solution. Especially when it is his religion that is so strongly divided. If one Allah worshipper wants to kill the other Allah worshipper over the same Quran, then maybe it’s time to step back and consider what religion is really doing to the world. I don’t believe it’s sacred, I don’t believe that it is above criticism, I believe that all religions have a duty to protect their own views in the face of reality. Religions don’t encourage development, but rather stagnation. Whether they have good intentions or not, religions with their imams, preists and clerics want to strap us to a moment in time and impede any development of mind or soul.

The Catholic Church is all smiles and laughs now, but let’s not forget that were it not for the deaths of so many who fought for more freedom, we would still be in the midst of medieval suffrage. “But what about the inquisitions, the tortures, the killings in the name of God?” you may ask your local priest. “Oh that. They were dark times, but now everything is ok. Those bad guys have been removed, are deceaced and we’re all nice. Especially now that we have removed all the paedophiles.” But all you have to do is give the Church a little voice, a little power and see how they use it. Stamp on stem cell research (potentially saving and repairing a multitude of lives), stamp on euthenasia (allowing someone to choose to end their own life), stamp on contraception (preventing unwanted pregnancies), stamp on criticism (and Da Vinci Code is just a novel!). Most religions desire to keep mankind in the exact same place and tell everyone what is good and what is bad. Like I said, it might be well-intentioned, but those same intentions inevitably lead to conflict and unfortunately, war.

But back to the letter. I think this letter presents a unique opportunity for Bush and his speechwriters to respond. It’s a real chance to finally throw open a debate about what the West is trying to achieve and our view of them. There is hardly any dialog between the Middle East and the West which is intelligent and which doesn’t involve guns. The lines are open now, and it’s important to use them.

It would be better that Bush write it down too, that way he can put it through a spell checker before sending. Also you can’t see the smirk in a letter. Here’s what I might write, were I him.

“Dear President Ahmadinejad,

Thanks so much for your thought-provoking letter. It was a total shock receiving it, I can tell you. At the time I got it I was doing some work on the ranch to take my mind off the Iraq thing and Laura came running down from the house crying “George, you’ll never guess who wrote to you.” Of course, it took us a while to translate it, being written as it were in those squiggly lines that you call letters, but it was well worth the wait, I can tell you.

I really enjoyed your openness and thought-provoking suggestions about our way of life. It’s touching that you would make that offer and I want to let you know that should I convert to Islam, you’ll be the first to know. Sometimes I really do think about it. Of course, I love my wife very much, and this is just between the two of us, but I get the occasional urge to stone her. The only problem is that by the time I’ve found a suitable rock, the urge has usually passed. I guess it’s that and the guilt. Oh and the Secret Service. If only I had the right brainwashing to easily justify it. I could brainwash them too and do whatever I wanted to. But like my father said, “George, nothing in life comes from wishing. To get what you want you have to pay people off.”

The fact is, you’re right about the mono-theo thingy. If I could have my way, everyone would be a believer like me and I wouldn’t have to worry about these silly arguments about stem cells and the like. But with so many people questioning religion it’s not like the old days any more. Back then, the Church said shut up, you shut up, no question. These days we have so many religions that there are new ones with names that I don’t even know how to say. Much like your name Mua…Muahaja….sorry the spell checker didn’t work on that one, but I think you know what I mean.

In some ways I envy you guys for keeping such a tight ship. It takes time to win it back. I think I’m making headways, but it’s an uphill battle. We have a saying in Texas that if you push a rock up a hill and you let go it rolls down. But it doesn’t gather moss. Some animals eat moss so moss can be a good thing. But the animal can possibly help you to pull the rock up. Essentially what I’m saying is it’s tough.

One of the things I like about your religion too, believe it or not is the clothes for the women. The amount of times I’ve cracked a woody on the podium when giving a Presidential address, I can’t even begin to tell you. But when you’ve been in the White House all day around Laura and those crusty old office ladies, then you see a cute reporter in a short skirt, well that little fella has a mind of his own! Luckily people are so concerned with trying to understand what I’m saying that they don’t notice.

Well, I really do have to go now. The dogs need walking and Laura is cooking roast pork tonight. If you ever decide to come to visit us Great Devils in the West, know that there will be a nice pork chop waiting for you. I guarantee you’ll love the dogs too.

Warmest regards,

George W. Bush “

I should be a speechwriter for the guy. Anyway kiddies, have to go. Remember, it’s not about saying no to religion, but saying yes to thinking first. Rant over.

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