We never even stood a chance, so make sure that the next generation is equally screwed. (Endorsed by Jesus and UNESCO)

As I keep telling my cat as no one else will listen;
Sometimes I forget how utterly stupid people are, how we are locked into conventions and traditions without question, blindly following our own expectations, handed to us by a society that is "not perfect, but the best we can manage at this point". Then at some random point in time and space, the thought "Obviously we can be anything and everything we choose to, as a society and as a race." hits me, quickly followed by "Yes, and this is what we chose."
It follows that depressed cynics are merely observant and intelligent. If the intelligent and observant are happy, it is probably because they are either rich or have a hopeless case of optimism.
So how do we manage this magic trick of such all-encompassing vastness, creating this illusion where we are both on the stage and in the audience at the same time, telling ourselves when to clap, because we are doing our best and this is it? Well, fuck me, maybe it's because we're telling the children that this is what we've always done, we're going to teach you to do it to yourselves, then you will do it to your children.

Let me clarify my thoughts in one condensed sentence without ranting incomprehensibly:

Our education-system fucking sucks. It sucks from start to finish, kinder-garden to university.
Here is the whopper - people actually agree with me on this*, but, hey, what can you do, right?
Right.
So when the topic comes up, these are the usual suspects of preferred solutions:**

1. We need better teachers, we will raise the standards and educate better teachers.
2. There are too few options, more private schools will create diversity and competition.
3. The social environment is bad, we need new social projects and to be more including.
4. Update the material, new books for everyone!
5. More tests, different tests, new tests! To measure progress and compare numbers and... stuff?
6. Let's reform everything, confuse the shit out of all the teachers for years and blame it all on     the other political party when it doesn't work.


I just wrote this list and I already hate it. I mean, holy shit, does that list look like it's brimming with the revolutionary ideas needed to change an antiquated education-system?
Never changing in any meaningful way for ages, our schools are still churning out factory workers, soldiers and young people encouraged to fit in a-one-size-fits-all-mold. That is what it's designed to to, look it up - produce a working-class, instill respect for authority and the system, thus conditioning the young for the possibility of a military career. The brightest of the lot might make it far enough to get some higher degree and specialized education, making their way to the middle-class. A happy by-product, but good on them.
Much like as in the US, Norway has adopted a "no kid left behind"(-ish) stance, on the early to middling stages of education. That means dumbing it down enough that borderline handicapped children get a chance, while making sure that they are stuck doing something they probably don't want to do, making this formulae stick to... everyone, more or less. It is an oversimplification, but then again so is the education-system.

So, let's have a look at the list again.

1. Yes, better teachers, please. Of course, the powers that be will go about this in some weird way, making demands on the education-system itself to produce better teachers, changing benchmarks and demands to grades in various fields that are often unrelated, unrealistic or just superfluous.

Possible solution:***  Pay teachers enough to make it a prestige career. Why the hell aren't we doing that already? This would in turn make demands on their education and attract more people, because that's what money do. Just don't pay them so much that it makes the job worth it even though they actually hate children.

2. Private schools are for religious crazies and the rich. Or possibly hippies. Either way I fail to see how any of the options are healthy for society as a whole. The public school should be good enough, even for the moderately rich. The religious option is not an institution for learning, but for indoctrination, make-belief and delusion. The artsy hippie alternative is whatever the hell it wants to be, and should probably be incorporated into the normal school-system to some degree. Don't really know and don't care enough to get into it. Damn hippies.

Possible solution: Get rid of 99% of private schools for various reasons.

3. Social environment. These projects tend to fall into one of three categories.
First: Let the children play, dance, hold hands and sing. In short, let children be children.
Second: There is to much bullying, we need the children to stop behaving like children.
Third: Social justice agenda! Raise the minorities to the top and ask the rest to check their privileges. 

Possible solutions: Good question. Children are cruel savages, sometimes because their parents are trash, sometimes just because they are children. I suggest an artificial Lord of the Flies scenario to pin-point the psychos early, preventing getting the chubby kid killed.
But that is for the kids. The higher echelons need to curb the SJWs  before they go amok. Possibly earlier intervention and better teachers could beat this problem to a pulp.

4. New books. Ok, I love books, they are awesome. Books = Civilization. That being said, why do we still have them at school? Information gets outdated too fast for books to stay relevant for any longer stretch of time. What do commercials for certain companies and products have in common with scifi-movies from the 80s and 90s have in common? You learn shit from computers, possibly with VR.

Possible solution: Get rid of the books, get laptops, pads and VR-headsets for everyone. You can't follow a link in a book to learn more. Books are in fact not interactive. The world today is.  Probably the most important thing we could do to reform. Case closed. 

5. Tests. Test what? What are we testing? How are we testing it? The form of written tests we use today, are still largely a leftover from a time when books were the ultimate authority of knowledge and possibly even rare or hard to come by. Thus students crammed and memorized, because they needed information readily available in their heads. THAT IS NOT THE SOCIETY WE LIVE IN TODAY! The amount of information we have at hand is staggering and freely available to the filthy masses. Sure, certain specialists need to know stuff. You don't want your surgeon to pause the operation to quickly google something. But then maybe you DO want that, because the procedure might have changed some since the surgeon read about it in a book.

Possible solution: Stop memorizing useless facts. Test a students ability to comprehend the information available and his or hers ability to use it correctly. We are not machines. Machines will give you lists of facts. People should utilize them. Fuck antiquated tests. 


6. Reform, confuse, blame. This happens all the time. Someone means well, tries to make a change, but gets caught up in bureaucracy, compromises, politics, personal agendas etc, and it ends up not changing enough to make a difference, just messing it up for everyone.
How about this? Reform, educate, take credit. You're welcome.

Possible solution: We need to have the balls and ovaries to take it far enough to make the difference.
What if learning and teaching never ends? If the teachers are continually kept up to date on new material in their fields, the students would be equally educated, thus ending the gap in knowledge between elderly teachers and well-informed students. Again, put the books away, the are old and out-dated after a couple of years.

Imagine this - A public school, more or less without books, without blackboards, but with more well-paid, well-educated and highly motivated teachers. Learning would be highly interactive with all the visual aids you could dream of, painting in as broad or narrow strokes as you'd wish. Explanations and language can be tailored to each individual's needs and level of comprehension, with an ever present possibility to go deeper or wider into the information, information that would always be current and up to date. Let the children be children, but let them be smart children, let them have general knowledge and specialized knowledge if they so wish and help them be what they want to be, not what an out-dated institution have told us to be.






Soundtrack: Paradise Lost - No hope in sight****

* Some do!
** I enjoy writing lists. Sue me.
*** Yes, I dare.
**** Is where I started. After some hours of typing, I ended up on Nirvana - Lithium

Ode to my Hobbit. (This is really about my manly bits)

There is just too much retardation in the world. Forget Trump, elections, North-Korea, what the fuck ever David Lynch's problem is, your lack of money and the slow dying of your soul.
I've written something bad to make everything better. Buy me beer. I'm bored and sober.


Concerning hobbits:*
My hobbit is an average hobbit, small and fairly stout. The hobbit enjoys pleasant surprises and attention, but if startled , it will go into hiding. It requires surprisingly little food, and too much alcohol will make it confused and render it useless.
The hobbit is fairly private and enjoys indoor activities, but is known to venture forth into the wild nature when alone and feels the need to breathe.
Most of all, it enjoys spending time in a hobbit-hole, where it feels most at home and can engage in all sorts of activities. Though somewhat short of stature and very modest, the hobbit will rise to most occasions, and performs great feats of endurance and bravery when put under pressure. Give him a magic ring, and there is no end to what he can achieve. Although the hobbit spends most of his active time in the hobbit-hole, he enjoys the occasional trip to Mordor.  



*Yes, I'm perfectly aware of the fact that I once referred to myself as a hobbit in a wedding a long time ago, and thusly calling future-me a cock. Which I'm fine with.

Feel the divide - nibble on the rich, just a tiny bit, just a morsel, ok, maybe a little more, maybe have intercourse with a police-person.

Some 77 different international NGOs, left-wing political parties, think tanks and trade unions have organized a two-day "alternative summit" in Hamburg on July 5 and 6, a day ahead of the G20, which organizers say "defends a system that boosts social inequality." Over the course of 12 panel discussions, scientists, activists and politicians are to debate different ways to overcome "poverty, exploitation, oppression and the destruction of nature."

-  from dw.com


There is a divide. I can see it. Like Galadriel, I can just sense it in the air and water. It is inside of me. This divide isn't a single chasm, like a Grand Canyon, splitting USA between Trumps and No-Trumps, no, this is a spiderweb of a fractured Earth. It is Us against Them, only most of the time, We don't know who They are. Hell, I don't know who We are.
The divide is the crack between the Haves and the Have Nots, the people who represent the People, and the People. The network of cracks put the Left on one side and the Right on the other, immigrants, blacks, white, rich, poor, police, punks, hippies, Big Companies, GMO, bees, social justice warriors, feminists, gays*, North-Korea, USA, Russia, Trump, Putin - everything gets its own little patch of land on a scorched earth, laying siege to the land-island next to it.
But the divide is also inside of me, not only do I have to plant my feet in the dirt and yell this land is mine, get the fuck off my lawn, I have to deal with an internal divide. But that is the beauty about having feelings** and fucking thoughts, you can have more than one at the time! I can stand being a man divided a hell of a lot longer than some of the larger institutions can.
These are observations made through social and unsocial media. There has been a meeting of the elite of The Elite, a G20 meeting in Hamburg. This is of course the good and democratic meeting, the really-really elitist meeting would be the G8 meeting. Donald and Vladimir got to shake hands, but what else happened, who was there and what did they discuss? The short and sweet answer is, and will always be - Money. Global economic growth, international trade and regulation are the main topics, so naturally there are not only leaders of various influential nations present, the following parties (among others) are also present: The World Bank, The World Trade Organization, The International Monetary Fund, The Financial Stability Board and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. So they talked about money, terrorism, the cost of terrorism, immigration, the cost of immigration, environmental sustainability, the cost of environmental sustainability, and some other things, not all directly linked to finance, but with a price-tag attached for sure.
I realize I might sound like a broken record, but money rule the world, and this is a problem. I realize I sound like a naive hippie, but the way global capitalism functions, it is a one way ticket to a fiery death for us all.
Or I might be wrong.
This system of capitalism and "free market"*** might launch us into space, colonizing new planets, continuing life EXACTLY LIKE IT IS NOW! Which is fine for the few, and totally shit for the many more. Wouldn't it be great to mend our ways before we spread the status quo that constantly keeps us on the brink of international crisis, starvation and nuclear war to other planets? Is that what we want? More of the same for all eternity, because this works so splendidly?
But I digress.

There was also another participant that I forgot to mention at the G20 meeting. The People.
The people shoved up in such numbers that the German police requested reinforcements from Denmark (sic). So that is one big divide. The few who rule the many. Then there is the police that works for the few, to protect them from the many. That is another divide. Wait, is that what the police is supposed to do? What was your last interaction with the law? Just asking. And this is where my internal divide tends to kick in. In several ways.
I am sceptical to violence, but I'm in no way a pacifist. There were peaceful protests, riots, clashes with the police and random destruction in the city and suburbs of Hamburg. The question I ask is this - will meaningful change come about through peaceful means? I have to say I kinda doubt it. Take a glance to USA. Bernie Sanders vs the system, that worked great, and everyone is ok with that. That is how steeped the system is in corruption. People can't be bothered to even care anymore.
So when I see the condemnation of the riots and violence in the media I feel divided. I don't want innocent protesters to get hurt. I don't want random people to have their cars destroyed or their houses vandalized. McDonald's, big business, that sort of thing? Couldn't care less. Yes, fuck you too. You disagree yet? Here comes the big one, a big divider in every sense, both internal and external - the police.
The police are there to uphold law and order. They are also public servants, there to protect the public - everyone. But they work for the system. They aren't evil, they are ordinary people - UNLESS! - they are the kind of people who gravitate to positions where they can exact power over others, like many politicians do. Beware of the people who want power for power's sake.
Anyways.
When I see social media I see people condemning the violence against the police. My question is this - Why is violence against the police worse than violence against other people - in any situation?
In most countries there is a divide in the law between the public, the big players and those that serve them, the police. You get in a load more of trouble smacking a policeman in the face as opposed to, say me.
They have the fucking training and gear for it, they chose their line of work! I didn't. So when I get smacked in the face, why is that better? Why are public servants who in many cases do precious little serving to the public, held in such high regard in the eyes of society and the law? Well, the law-part might be self-explanatory, right. If you are in opposition to the system, there might come a time when you find yourself in position where you handled bodily and rudely. You might get beaten, soaked and pepper'sprayed. You are not allowed to defend yourself. You can hit the person next to you in the same situation and chances are good that no one will care except for said person. The system protects the system, paid with the money you provide through taxes and consumerism. So how about some equality to the law? The people of the police aren't magical, they aren't better or more important than anyone else, don't give them special treatment.
Sure, you can chant, you can sign a petition, you can write your local whatever and ask them to do something. That always works, the media will cover that, right?
Sometimes I think the divide needs to be bridged with fire. Maybe I'd like to see the smoke rise on the horizon, but then I think - yes, but don't burn down my shit. Or maybe I'd let my shit burn if it meant something. I'm divided on this.
And just to no get in any trouble - I totally condemn all violence. There. Covered my ass.

* and all that qlwarblegloop-jazz.
** like Hate.
 *** don't even get me started.

Things are getting interesting - short and sweet (Kim Jong-un rides suicide dolphin to sink presidential ship )

"Look, my job isn't to make everything beautiful. My job isn't to make living life a good time. My job is to keep the majority of people in this country alive. That's it. If fifty-one percent eat a meal tomorrow and forty-nine percent don't, I've done my job. That is the absolute fucking limit of what can be done...You might not think that's the way a president should behave. But you know...that's fuckin' tough." 

- The Beast, POTUS in Transmetropolitan. 




Yes, I'm writing something, big whoop. It's obviously not from peer pressure or popular demand, but the cat told me time was right, and I really need to flex my mental muscles and get cracking so here we are.
My friends, we live in interesting times, just like the ancient Chinese curse. But it isn't like I need telling you that, is it? The UK is leaving the EU*, Turkey is going full retard, France is on the verge of going so far right, they can't even see the left on the horizon, and then there is Trump.
Trump is the big one, or so every media tells me. I'm just happy he is there, not the most popular opinion I know, but I enjoy seeing the boat rocked. The thing is, if you rock the boat enough, the people on board might decide they need to set a new course or possibly even get a new and better boat. Yes, the boat is a half-assed metaphor for whatever you want it to be. The point is, I don't think this boat of your choice will capsize, which would be bad whatever your personal choice of symbol boat is.
There is a lot of noise about North-Korea being some sort of iceberg making the future of our vessel dangerous. They might even be in their own boat, shooting torpedoes at our boat.

Listen up.

I'm willing to bet my steam-account on this.

North-Korea isn't a danger to anyone who isn't living in North-Korea, or if things get super-hairy extremely fast, South-Koreans. If it wasn't for the fact that they have the ability to blow Seoul away if they feel they have nothing to lose, someone - I'm looking at you Uncle Sam - would have moved in a long time ago. There is some worry about China, they are backing the Kims, aren't they? Well, yes. If they didn't there wouldn't be any North-Koreans left to starve, but how do I put this?  The relationship between China and North-Korea is something like this - At the family reunion where China is the head of the family, North-Korea is the slightly retarded cousin who keeps on using food as finger-paint shouting he is an amazing wizard. The only thing stopping N-K from eating the poisonous floral arrangements, is China's firm hand on his shoulder,trying to keep him from embarrassing the rest of the family by accidentally killing himself. At some point China's patience is going to go away for a discreet break, and those delicious-looking flowers will be up for grabs.


"Past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war." 

-Kim Jong-un


Ok, so they might have a nuke that MIGHT fly. Again, if it even managed to get airborne, fueled by coal and hope, I predict it would make it a whopping five miles before it got shot down.**
Now consider Pakistan and India. Those are countries with humongous populations, big armies and actual nuclear weapons. And they hate each-other. AND I can't help but feel that Pakistan is just a crisis or two away from becoming a more or less ally of the US (where was it they got Bin Laden again?) to the new big bad enemy. Which would actually be scary, as opposed to Kim and co.

Back to Trump.
Trump is like a cartoon character. But you have to compare him to the right character. If you've ever read Transmetropolitan***, the choice is obvious. He is The Beast. Believe it or not, but that is a good thing, because that means he isn't The Smiler. The Trump Beast isn't a perfect comparison, but in my mind it's damned close. Get through the day, make money, don't get too many killed, Team America - fuck yeah! The environment is probably getting shat on (in a bad way, not in the good fertilizer way), but at least Trump Beast isn't in the job just to fuck with people, just because he can.
Beware the Smiler. Ted Cruz gives me that vibe.

So.
Let the boat be rocked, bring the interesting times on.
     
"Yes, General, I am masturbating into the American Flag. It relaxes me. Do you have a problem with that? Would you rather that I used you?"

- The smiler


* I enjoy the fact that some people on the net, possibly Americans, claim that UK is leaving Europe.
** Still very bad for the Koreans in general.
***If not, go do so. Now. THE POWER OF VISHNU COMPELS YOU! Or deity of your choice.