Employee of the Year

Long Johns was named employee of the year for his dedication and devotion to the rule book. Numerous are exemples of his fidelity. We'll just cite one of these to illustrate that. Here writes a local newpaper,

At the height of the bloody war againts the rebels, the government call out to the lost boys and girls, offering them amnesty if they should hand over their weapons and return to society before 31 of August, 2006.

Later, on that fateful day of 3 of September of the same year, 300 individuals queued up in front of the window in the Registration department with their rifles and balaclavas. The tension was high in the office and in the stairs leading downwards, because Long Johns, risking the possiblity of turning his wife into a widow and 2 sons into orphans, refused to stamp on their surrender form because the offer expired 72 hours and 24 minutes ago. So he sent them down the stairs and back to the mountains where they came down from.

"What a bunch of irresponsible hooligans missing dates like that! How do they expect people to do their jobs if everyone behaves like that?" Said he.

Protests nationwide sprang from the episode, and the civil unrest started once again. The government, recognizing his contribution to the state, named Long Johns employee of the Year.

"Je crois entendre encore" (Nadir)

Tonight she showed up on the desktop, she was fixing the little decoration thing I bought her to her cell. We were in Café Paris in Reykjavík a day prior to my departure. The day before she told me she was a bit scared by how serious I was about the whole thing and I didn't know what to say or to think about it.

I've never asked because I didn't expect to receive an answer to why she fell for me in the first place and how could she be so objective or, cold, about it, or was it bravery, or maybe self-protection?

We were roaming the streets of Reykjavík and all of a sudden she clung to my back with such a force that I stumbled a bit. She didn't make it explicit, but she was telling me that she was not exactly happy back home, bad memories, family problems and probably more. However, she refrained from giving the whole story away and I've kept wondering why, was it because of the fact that I had to leave in a few days and she didn't want to be sad? Or was she just looking for a good time?

I have no answer, despite of the uncountable analyses I've made. The last time we talked she told me that she was going to Bangladesh, I wonder whether she was ok. I'm afriad that she would be upset if I told her that I miss her a lot.

Downsides of Documentaries

The documentary festival ended seven days ago and its devastating effects are ever present. These buggers leave you wondering how their subjects are doing, a yearning to know that they are well, or at least, to have some news about them. You don't just walk out of this like you would with a film or a novel because they're real people with a real story in a real world, their world. You feel a kinship with them no matter how mundane and dispicable they are, curious, probably you are mundane and dispicable yourself and that's why you identify with them.

Or probably you're too coward to recognize the real you in real world, even though you know that you all along but keep dressing yourself with books and ideas. An intellectual! The world of laughter and friendship seems so out of reach and you're so poisoned that you can't laugh like a normal person would and this academic robe is too heavy to be shrugged off. Probably you're just a detestable little man who claim that you are a lover of books and ideas so that you are spared of yourself, so that the world don't get to hate you, so the world will love you and that you're funny and desirable.

No wonder you have no friends, you don't want them. You're afraid that they will discover the other side of you and decide that you're not cool at all. Your prestige, something that you've worked so hard unconsciously along the years to achieve so far, will disintegrate and your world will crumble and you'll be reduced to less than a maggot. It's like standing stark naked in an open field plagued with onlookers, humiliating. No wonder you always keep a distance from the world, lest they should spot something foul. So you keep playing the game, the game with no way out. Trapped and lost in the labyrinth unable to rid yourself of it even if you want to.

And what's the meaning of a blog telling the world how hateful you really are? Are you trying to make up for what you can't do in real life? Well, the internet is surely a good medium to talk, just as good as a confession booth, it's liberating. But also quite useless the moment you walk out the church.

The picture of Germaine Greer and some others scared you because you see yourself walking towards the same path, the path of total self-delusion and self-importance. You wonder how has it all come to this? You sometimes wish that you were just a simpleton living happy and ignorantly in a backwater world, but that's just another excuse really because you are not and you can't be just like that, and you know that. Or is it all just a big fat lie you make up for yourself, to cover the fact that you like fame and power? Saying that "ooh I'd love to lead a simpler life, to find the innocent child, the nostalgia...", to cheat yourself, pretending that you are not doing what you liked? To make youself believe that you're not bad, but just another poor victim of the sick society? You don't know, being a skeptic makes you unable to say much for sure, including your own thoughts and feelings, you can only say I don't know. That's why you envy those who can say and believe in something wholeheartedly, because you can't and you don't like it at all.