The Cult of the Acid-spitting Llamas

What would be cooler than having your own personal cult? Well, of course having Darth Vader's suit would be ostensibly magnificent, but we can't have it all. Even though if I would have the same gargantuan sized corpse holding my beautiful brain over six feet over mother Gaia.

But what do you actually need to run your own cult? Well, you need followers and some hard-core disciples - apostles, you could call them. You also need some crazy principle. Too many concentrate on the destructive things, suicide, murder, aggression, religion, football and what have you - I would concentrate on the nice things of life, such as llamas. Especially the genetically engineered protection machines that would spit acid at will. Totally awesome. No one would expect that kind of defense. Then you also need a back story, which isn't an issue for a group of talented bs-generators such as us. We would weave tales of grandeur together with national epics, tie them up with messianic messages and stories of incredible miracles that only tell the tale of the impending doom - and then just sprinkle some llamas and acid here and there and create the most ultimate creation story that encompasses both intelligent theory AND evolution, while having so many conspiracies and soap opera style plot twists that even explain the massive redneck-like-family-values that increase our inbred world (ask yourself, who ELSE they would have sex with? eh? That's right. No one.)

Ok, now that we've pissed off every single christian reader of this blog, we can concentrate on funnier things. Sorry for the delay with the post, people have been very insistent in wanting to read more. One brilliant person was even checking whether I had updated when I was sitting right beside him and I had spent all of the time from his last check with him. Talk about habits, eh? I finally got myself back to the Bloc, and had a great weekend there, doing nothing at all and walking out singing Mos Def's Brooklyn with the authenticity of a redneck playing intelligent. Brought some 50 lb. of clothes and shoes with me, imagine packing that in one suitcase.

Second week starting in the office and it's fun so far. More comic updates this week as well.

Peace out.

Back in the USSR

Well, I'm not. But I'm planning to be for the rest of the week, cutting my ties there and and meeting with friends in a massive debauchery of immoral acts and a lot of talk and laughter expected.

I went to my new office today for the first time, the people seemed nice, young and interesting. There's a lot to be done and I can't remember the last time I've been so interested in getting to do something. Everything worked out just great, got everything settled and things are going smooth. The thesis is getting there, I just sent it today to my supervisor for him to check it out - let's see whether I'll have time to repair the damages ;)

Anyway, more My Name is Earl on the way - so a bag of nachos and a fine woman beside me, what more could a man want?

Here's the latest strip. (as soon as I get my shit together from Latvia I'll get some decent tools to start drawing.)



Word.

Oh yeah, more classics last weekend - Back to the Future trilogy (GREAT SCOTT!), Robocop (I'd buy that for a dollar) and Quantum Leap (!!! FA!!!)

woot!

Well, today was the meeting and I'm happy to say it was a success and thus I have decided my next job, which I will start in two weeks or so. This option came totally out of the blue, but it quickly became the most interesting one and I'm really happy that I was found good enough for the position.

This naturally eases everything else up, as now I can do some planning and start executing my plans further. Writing the thesis (or doing research more than writing) all day again and pretty tired due to a really early meeting in the morning and late sheep-counting last night. Well. A few more hours and I can take a nap.

Here's the first comic of Mind Itch. I know, vector crap, not detailed enough, but it was the best I could do whilst hacking the thee-sees.




Peace out.

Doggystyle

There's a dog park just outside our window, thank god it's six floors down so the barking doesn't bother too much. It's quite relaxing and sometimes amusing to watch the dogs play together and a wanna-be behavioral psychologist like myself it's rather educational as well. Just now, there were only two dogs there, but I was still laughing to see a St. Bernard chase a Jack Russell around and around. The feisty terrier seemed to have unlimited energy and the hulking cognac-carrier was getting behind more and more with each circle. Great entertainment. Reminded of myself chasing a greased piglet.

Been hacking at the thesis all day again, and will continue after this short break of blogging. It's starting to take form and the exponential amount of new questions brewing from each answer seems to be smaller and smaller all the time. What a relief. I'm making good pace and should be ready easily on time before the first draft deadline looming in February.

Tomorrow morning will have one meeting that might change my professional life, let's hope it will be as interesting as the one I had last week.




Stay strong.

np: Smaller And Smaller from the album "Angel Dust" by Faith No More

Future Itch

Dear Readers!

If you look in the top right corner, above the "about me" crap - you can see a paypal donation button, available for your use. As you've probably noticed, we're planning to move to a different service and whip up a new domain with the more good stuff than ever before, but the downside in it is that it costs money to maintain a service and even though this is a hobby and hobbies are expensive, any support would be highly appreciated.

A buck helps.

Thesis-tastic

Hurgh, thesis writing all day and still continuing until the lady of the house returns from her daily labor. We're going to go and check out a new apartment tomorrow, which seems really nice and it's even really close to her our apartment in Helsinki, meaning that I won't have to carry too much stuff too far away. Huzzah!



Some other stuff on the whole building-up-a-thing-people-are-interested-about, you can check out the drawing in the box above, giving some hint on what direction we're heading to.

This week I'll know what I'll be doing for the next two or three years, which is pretty cool and when I'll make that decision it might prove to push a lot of changes in motion, moving to a different country etc. I'll keep you updated on what's happening with everything. Hope you like the cartoon style.

About a girl from the album "Unplugged in New York" by Nirvana

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Aretha was right, we should all have a little respect for each other. Today I have participated in a most interesting discussion about the so-called lower level jobs, which most definitely are not low level in any way except the way the school recruitment agents promote their schools and degrees to have people study with them.

It seems like people have lost respect of their own jobs and values, lower level jobs seem always be only transitory in western countries. Naturally this will be a little distorted when you have a schooling system that is free and almost everybody with simple hand-eye coordination can get in - meaning tens of thousands of new students accepted each year waiting to sign in after graduating.

Our way of life would not work without cleaners, postal workers, police and what have you. I'd like to see the MBA to fix his own car or do his HVAC installation, I'd like to see the Engineer to heal their family or clean their own pool. These people earn their respect from me and I try to remind them of the important work they are doing every day by being as easy and helpful as possible, but now I've noticed that these people themselves don't respect themselves.

When I was a kid, the postal delivery guy was an important guy, of course he was less important than say a fifty years ago, but he was still a messenger - delivering important information (of course, later in life I learned that they only deliver bills) and keeping us informed with our newspapers and stuff (this was before the internet sold out.) Today, the postal workers are mainly part-time workers who don't give a flying fuck about what they are doing - they're just in it for the quick buck, trying to get through their school and student loan payments. When you go to a restaurant, the people there are not proud of what they are doing. In the discussion I was having, there was a great example of a trio of businessmen eating in a restaurant and the waitress being ashamed of working there, and the businessman just told her that without her no one would be eating there. That was a great example of how the world has changed to a differently valued system that is corrupting our values from within.

Pretty screwed, huh. This lack of motivation passes it forward, since when the only person you see outside your shitty day at the office looks like she would like to slit her wrists while selling you a cup of coffee will not make you feel like prince Charming for the rest of the day. Is this a change for good? The old saying says that the more things change the more they stay the same, doesn't seem to apply here. I wonder why.

Well enough of that.

Movie stuff (hey!) - Lord of War was pretty damn good, I have a love-hate relationship with Nick Cage. He's somehow charming (I just saw him in National Treasure - another one of those don't-spend-a-buck-in-the-theatre-but-rent-it-later-things) but somehow so annoying. Still, the movie was funny in its realism and witty sarcasm. Might even buy it.

Oh yeah, got our first visitor from Brazil - how cool is that. Though I think the poor dude just lost his way somehow, but that's another continent for the blog. Huzzah!

Peace out, have a nice weekend - I'll be off in a rare opportunity to rock with my band tomorrow. WooooT!

Firefox

Whoa, Sixty-Two percent (62%) of all Mind Itch readers uses Firefox! That's good going. Microsoft's IE is a good second with 20 percent.





Yes, that's a small sneak peak of what's to come.

np: Sugartime from the album "The Complete Sun Recordings 1955-1958 (Disc 3)" by Johnny Cash

Cheek to cheek

Yo.

Seems like things are progressing as planned or even better. That's something new. Though, it's funny how people generally complain that they can't get a job due to the fact that they don't have experience or education or neither, wherein I'm in limbo due to the fact that I have "too much" of both. Without education or experience you can always get a job doing whatever or go study so you could gain those two. By limbo I mean the fact that with great power comes great responsibility, and with those two come demands of what I want to do for a living. When I find something I'd like to do, the other side of the table usually think that I'm "too good" (oh the irony) for the job as they expect that I'd get bored too quickly.

This might be the case with some black sheep in the fast-lane of hyperactivity we call the world today, but I have no quarrels of doing simpler things as I've always been resourceful and proactive enough to keep myself busy. Still, it's pretty hard to deliver this message to the other side of the table when they only see your CV and a dazzling show of talent, which is called the interview. It's not like this is something new to me, I've been in this limbo for the past 4 years while growing my education and experience constantly - this means that pretty much the only way for a guy like me to get a job is to know people, who hire or know people, who know people.

Speaking of knowing people, comes an issue that we have been discussing quite a lot with my friends and my beautiful bride: Efficiency thinking when meeting people. I can't help but evaluate people I know and meet on whether they are or might be relevant to me or my future. If not, I rarely spend too much time with them, which is kind of sad but on the other hand I just don't have time to please everybody I meet and as the saying goes - life is too short to spend with assholes.

(I'm writing this while eating an orange, hope my keyboard doesn't get all sticky. Yuck.)

On a lighter note, saw Sahara last night - again one of those movies on which spending the few buckaroos for the theatre experience is just not worth it. However, I was amused by it - Steve Zahn is a funny guy and Matt McConaughey has the greatest smile. Penelope Cruz's accent is quite annoying, but thank god she keeps mainly screaming instead of talking in the movie, so that' s a relief. Also it was really refreshing to see a movie with very little product placements after the Island's product placement orgy .

I think that's enough for today, probably be back tomorrow - later dudes and dudettes.

np: Without Moral Restraint from the album "Reasoning the Impossible" by Chimaira

Parade of Cheese

Well, today held a most interesting meeting. Let's hope that will come into fruition, since it seems to be the most interesting talk so far about my future. I should have some concrete information on my decision by wednesday next week, but I have a simmering feeling in my gut that I will find out sooner.

More and more people are reading Mind Itch, a big hand to all of you big hunks of love out there, it's really nice to think that someone gives a damn (or gets lost real easy surfing the web.) People have even learned to google Mind Itch properly and avast, they have found us!

Oh yeah, some more game nostalgia - NES Punch-Out - damn! I used to play that game when we were wee lads with my childhood friends when the 8-bit Nintendo was the hottest shit out there. It still is, damnit. I was always a PC guy, I only had a Sega Megadrive later on meaning that I had to live at go to my friends' house to play some quality console action, since PC games back then were .. lacking. Still, about Punch-Out: It's crazy how well I still remember all the opponents and the strategies to beat their asses black and blue, only three more fights until Mike Tyson himself. I wonder if kids today even know who Mike Tyson is? Do you? Are there any kids reading this blog? Stop reading! Go tell your parents that you went to a bad web site and they should burn your monitor because of all the foul things it has touched.

Also had a message from my old job telling that they miss me in there, "the office doesn't feel like the same anymore." .. they never were much of liars, seems like they're getting worse.

It's kind of tricky, being too lazy to maintain more than one personal blog and having the urge to divulge a lot of personal stuff as well, but since that's not an option due to the fact that people know me and I don't want them (you) to know that it's me that's writing that stuff. Maybe I should start one of those anonymous blogs and become a social porn superstar!

And some words about movies that have touched me in one way or another.

The Island was something I didn't expect much of and thus skipped it in the movie. Watched it last night and I was pretty right about my estimate, and due to my knowledge of the key plot - it was not too difficult to concentrate on the massive amount of product placements in the film. I don't think there was a frame without a product placement. Some eye candy, some nice effects - oh wait, no there weren't. Ewan McGregor is still cool, but he's way better in The Long Way Round.

Also had the "pleasure" of watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose, apart from the well cut trailers I saw plenty of I knew the apple inside to be rotten. It was a pseudo-christian mythology-related-ally mcbeal-drama with some John Carpenter remake-effects. Only thing cool was the different languages and especially the part where Emily tells her possessor's name - I even made it as a SMS alert with Audio Hijack (which rules).

Let's see if I can put it here somewhere, don't bitch about the legal mumbo-jumbo, I don't care. Nah, too lazy to do it.

Some people have asked me what kind of music I like, hence I will list the song playing when I'm writing. Probably doesn't bother anyone.

Satan Is My Motor from the album "Prolonging The Magic" by Cake

Anxiety

The return of the gangster.

I have 34 days, 6 hours, 23 minutes and 6 seconds before I need to return the first draft of my thesis. I started doing it yesterday. I was a bit nervous, but then I had a little help from my friend and it didn't seem so bad. Now I just need to get my interviews and questionnaires ready and sent so I will have ample time to do the research.

The time for writing is good, because Family Guy, American Dad, Veronica Mars, Prison Break, Rome and many other addictive series are on break - but Battlestar Galactica's third season is starting this week! Hallelujah! Of course, I should be writing my thesis mind map now instead of partying about nerdy sci-fi action through my blog, but _can_you_dig_it. It's just that damn good.

News of my upcoming departure from Latvia have reached the ears of my mates, creating a ripple effect of mixed emotions. I can't say that I'd miss Latvia as a country due to its misgivings, but the friends are more important than any country. And while there naturally are people also in Latvia and there are new friends everywhere I go, you manage to find new siblings some times, and it always a sad affair to depart from this good relationship.

Let's see if this week will deliver the news about my new job.

Peace out, all the people who have an itchy mind.

Feliz Whatevaah

Björk is singing about craving, I've been in bed all day. Prison Break is so damn cool, the ultimate TV fix. Why can't all series be like that, especially when you have the ultimate TV media in the top of your lap, delivering continuous goodness all the way. Give it to me mommas!

New Year. New Tricks. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, .. -- Just got a massive Karma punch right in mid-sentence, there's just something about ex-***friends and current ones, don't add up. Great way to spoil the evening and the next one, guaranteed awkwardness hundred per cent, damn it. Crap, now I totally lost my flow with the news.

Well, I'll keep this short.

Last night was quite a nice party with some 60 musicians, we even had a friggin' snare drum with us in the snow to play some marching tunes while coloring the sky. Came home at about six or something, can't really remember the time though, stayed up for a little while longer. Met a lot of new people, made some new friends whom I will never see again and some that I will see again. Also saw a lot of people that I should've met a long time ago and I also remembered that I don't like Ouzo in any form.

Got a great mail from a really good friend of mine, he rules.

Well, I think I'll roll in my misery for while, watch some telly and try to get this grogginess out of my head. The feeling doesn't help, though.

Damn history.