ketsan's Blog

"Gods. 
Resolved by the Boule and the People. 
Themistocles son of Neocles of Phrearrhioi made the motion.

The city shall be entrusted to Athena, Athens' protectress, and to the other gods, all of them, for protection and defense against the Barbarian on behalf of the country.

The Athenians in their entirety and the aliens who live in Athens shall place their children and their women in Troezen, [to be entrusted to Theseus ?] the founder of the land. The elderly and movable property shall for safety be deposited at Salamis. The treasurers and the priestesses are to remain on the Acropolis and guard the possessions of the gods.

The rest of the Athenians in their entirety and those aliens who have reached young manhood shall embark on the readied two hundred ships and they shall repulse the Barbarian for the sake of liberty, both their own and that of the other Greeks, in common with the Lacedaemonians, Corinthians, Aeginetans [1]and the others who wish to have a share in the danger.

Appointment will also be made of captains, two hundred in number, one for each ship, by the generals, beginning tomorrow, from those who are owners of both land and home in Athens [2] and who have children who are legitimate. They shall not be more than fifty years old and the lot shall determine each man's ship. The generals shall also enlist marines, ten for each ship, from men over twenty years of age up to thirty [3], and archers, four in number. They shall also by lot appoint the specialist officers for each ship when they appoint the captains by lot. A list shall be made also of the rowers, ship by ship, by the generals, on notice boards, with the Athenians to be selected from the lexiarchic registers, the aliens from the list of names registered with the polemarch. They shall write them up, assigning them by divisions, up to two hundred divisions, each of up to one hundred rowers, and they shall append to each division the name of the warship and the captain and the specialist officers, so that they may know on what warship each division shall embark.

When assignment of all the divisions has been made and they have been allotted to the warships, all the two hundred shall be manned by order of the Boule and the generals, after they have sacrificed to appease Zeus the All-powerful and Athena and Victory and Poseidon the Securer. When they have completed the manning of the ships, with one hundred they shall bring assistance to the Artemisium in Euboea, while the other hundred shall, all around Salamis and the rest of Attica, lie at anchor and guard the country.

To ensure that in a spirit of concord all Athenians will ward off the Barbarian, those banished for the ten year span shall leave for Salamis and they are to remain there until the people decide about them. Those who have been deprived of citizen rights are to have their rights restored [4]."

 

 

Apart from the war, students and taxi drivers they're all public sector workers.

So let's see. They get higher pay than private sector workers, better pensions, better holidays and yet they go on strike for more? Does this sound like a bunch of people the government should be listening to? Remember that these people don't really pay tax. How can it be tax if it's already government money? By the same token they don't pay national insurance either. The entire public sector as a whole doesn't make any money for them to pay tax and national insurance with in the first place, not one single pound. They're a net drain on the economy of £700bn.

Where does the money come from for all this cushy pay and pensions: the private sector which all taxes added up pays 50% tax all of which goes straight into the public sectors back pocket. Slag off the bankers all you want, one bank exec pays more tax in real terms than 50% of the working population i.e the public sector, even if he's in some off shore tax avoidence scheme and pays no income tax, because of VAT etc.

Why should person A who earns money for the country, and already has to give half his earnings up, have to pay more to pay for person B, who earns zero money for the country, so that person B can live better even when he's alread living better than person A who he's scrounging off via the government?

Students are a special case. Where do you think the money comes from to educate students? Doesn't come from them. It comes from general taxation. So everyone pays for these people to go to university, even really poor people who will never go.
And who goes to university? Overwhelmingly it's the middle class. So poor people subsidise rich people to go to university. Is that fair? No, obviously not.

So when the government says to students "Hang on a minuite, we're not taxing poor people anymore so that you can go to university on the cheap" they protest. Is it right tat the government backs down and charges people who don't go to university to pay for people who do? No.

Students will benefit from it, students won't pay anything until they're on a good salary, students should pay for it.

Taxi drivers I don't know about so I won't comment.

The war is a difficult one because it hinges on what the government really believed at the time. If they arguendo truly believed there was a threat to national security and that war was the best measure to be taken then they would have been grossly negligent to listen to protesters because they would have been putting everyone in greater risk by doing so.

If on the other hand they knew full well it was all bullshit then that's obviously different.

Don't get into the habit of thinking "protesters aren't listened to, government doesn't care" because government has to listen to everyone, not just the people who happen to shout loudest. If a million students protest there are another 59,000,000 people's views to consider.

So for the past week I've been all smart causal and rocking it muchly. Now for some reason I only listen to industrial and dark EBM.

Maybe women are sexual? Total brain fart I know but have you ever considered that some women might actually have a sex drive, or enjoy being celebrated for their sexuality?

Why does it always have to be that when a woman decides to be sexual people decide she must be some dumb, passive, exploted creature? As if only an intellectually subnormal woman would ever do anything sexual. Is that not just a tad misogynistic?

How about instead of saying "women" as if they're one big homogenous group who are identical in every way we say "Why is that woman doing that?" you know, treat them as individuals and people. That seems a more rational way of dealing with this than taking a small number of women in a VERY narrow context and trying to make a generalisation out of it like "Why are women sexualised so much?"

Are all women viewed the same way as dancers in a rap video? Is this universally how we view women? Or is it that maybe that throughout our culture there are many diverse views of women of which this is a part? Do we say to women turning up for an interview "Great we love your qualifications now strip down to a bikini and shake yo bootay until your boobies pop out"? No. Do we even view the dancers the same way when they're not dancing? No, our view of them is context driven not some perminently ingrained world view about women in general, if you saw the same woman coming out of a physics lab you wouldn't view her the same way even if you recognised her from the video.

Women are people, some people are sexual and there's nothing wrong with that unless you're nut case feminist who has to use terms like "patriachy" to dehumanise men into one homogenous group that they can blame for women doing things that they personally don't like as if the world revolves around them and their mores.

I know feminists don't see sexual women as people because they don't conform to the mode of behavior that the sisterhood has deemed worthy of acceptance but I think we can be a little bit more grown up and see all women as capable intelligent individuals who are free to do as they please within legal limits.

I think also we can give men some credit and say that we know that it's just entertainment and that there is more to these women than their sexuality. I think you have to be deeply misanthropic to view men as one dimentional beings that can only think of women in terms of sex. That kind of thinking reveals a very limited, narrow, sexist and reductionist view of men and the world and totally ignores the role of context in our lives.

Sorta. So I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy clothes other than black stuff. I seem to have done quite well, all the chicks dig it. So I bought one pair of jeans, dark blue, very nice. One pair of light sandy chinos and four shirts, two casual oxfords, one plain blue one blue and white stripped. Also two bengal shirts one with white collar and cuffs and a sports jacket, one pair of brown suede shoes and one pair of tan coloured boots.

Oh and I got a red tie for free, go me.

Results of this can be seen in my pics, you'll have to imagine that I've brushed my hair. Supposedly I now look, da bomb and new combinations of stuff keep coming to mind and various female friends are always offering suggestions and it seems to have taken on a life of it's own.

So this is turning out better than I thought. Much better. Even guys now stare at me and older women don't just sneek glances any more they just gawp. Not sure about younger women yet, haven't really been full on out in any of it yet.

One side effect though is now no-one recognises me, everyone I know has literally walked past me without realising it.  Not sure if this is good or not............

Thinking about it: they've got the left hand tree line and the base and we're attacking out of the right hand tree line. Really the problem is that we have to break cover and make ourselves visable while they remain concealed. The solution to this is smoke grenades.

That was probably the best game of paintball I've ever had. The next one will be far better but this one was awesome. It was such a slogging match with neither side willing to give an inch of ground.  I got the sense that they'd slowly drive us back and then we'd blitz them and retake the ground.

My aggression wasn't there though, it felt like doing a job until the last 45 minutes when suddenly me and my mate kinda went mental and we stormed the base at the centre of the field guns blazing until we ran low on ammo and had to defend. The rest of our squad joined us with elements of other squads and we were all low on ammo so I ran back to base and brought a crate back.
Resupplied we surged forward again with total disregard for enemy fire, I felt godlike, my aggression was in full flow, I could feel my teeth clenching, my face scowing, laying down fire like a demon and the rest of my squad was no different and our whole team suddenly gelled into one.

In front of this onslaught the other team just crumbled, whole squads broke and ran and we just rolled forward like a tsunami. Only Aikido and Paintball give me this sense of purpose and place. When the enemy are laying down fire and I'm organising an attack, directing people, leading the charge all the while paint flying around me I just feel that this is where I'm meant to be.

My own feelings and other people's feelings are neither here nor there; reality will show which one of us is right.

For instance when I was at school I was told that I'd never get more than a D in English and at the time I was inclined to agree. Reality showed that the teacher was wrong and so was I because I got an A.

Numerous times in paintball games I've planned assaults under critical circumstances which no-one around me thought would work and I can't claim that I was 100% certain either but reality showed that I was right. Other times I've led assaults that everyone, including myself, thought were definately going to work but which reality showed were really stupid ideas.

Humans are frail and fallible, we tend to think whatever makes us feel good so your faith and their doubt are just brain farts. If you know what you're doing and you can honestly say that you've challenged yourself to make sure that what you believe in conforms to reality and isn't just feel good thinking, if you're fighting against faith in yourself and losing, then that's the best you can do and that's enough.

So I'm here and I'm wondering why I put the effort in seeing as it gets me nowhere and my female friends are like "well the filter is if you put the effort in or not". I think about this and I see it and you know what? I realise that I kinda know this and the truth be told I really don't find women worth the effort.

I describe it as throwing stones down a well because it's that sense that I'm not getting anything back and I'm making all this effort to try and talk to them and try to get to know them and when you're getting nothing back it's disheartening and more than that, for me, it's boring and it communicates to me that this isn't a woman I want to be with.

I'm sure in her mind this is all fun and she likes that I'm working hard to get her but she doesn't realise that what she's telling me is that our future together is going to be one of being stuck with someone who doesn't have much to say for herself, doesn't really have a personality, isn't going to put the effort in. It tells me that there isn't really much about her, that she leads quite boring life that she doesn't really have opinions and I get bored and switch off.

That means though that I'm condemed to be single until I die.

Whoever did the action scenes should have been shot at repeatedly; then he might have realise how much of a dumbass he was for having zombie Germans running into machine gun fire.

Not blogged properly in ages. First I'll apologise to the planet for being grouchy, bad tempered, angry, my depression is kicking in like a bitch and I seem to be spending a lot time chasing people up. Combined the two are making me very annoyed.

Call me old fashioned but when someone is paid to do something I expect them to do it: I shouldn't have to spend two hours a day on the phone organising them.

I am so ready for a scrap. Really looking forward to paintball at the end of the month. Then the day after my treatment starts back up.

women are not attracted to men. There is a vague idea of what a man is physically, and some are better than others aesthetically speaking, but the purely physical appearance of a man is almost inconsequential unless he is horribly ugly or outright attractive.

Women are attracted to status, money, how much a man smiles and laughs, how many friends and resources a man has, how full a man's life is, how many "cool", "exciting" and prestigious things he is doing or connected to.

They are interested in how other people view him, how many people want to be around him, how other people interact with him and whether his interactions convey that he is special and amazing. They want him to be extremely outgoing and aggressive, they want him to demonstrate his status over other people by dominating them in various non-violent ways.

A woman's attraction to a man is a function of her jealousy at the thought of another woman having that man. She doesn't care who he actually is or -exactly- what he looks like physically, she only cares about the -value- of the life he has constructed around himself.

A woman is basically a greedy materialistic prostitute. Although that sounds vulgar it's true. She trades her physical self to buy into the success a man has.

Either that or the are Asexual they are definitely not straight

 

So grouchy today.

I'm in love with her.

"War is the most dangerous thing that can happen to an army. It destroys discipline, makes soldiers look dirty, stains clothes and damages equipment. It is therefore to be avoided at all costs"
- § 1, electoral saxon military doctrine, 1750

 

There's a certain level of genius in this. I mean calling up someone's house to ask if the enemy are there, genius.