Cav's Place

It would have been our eighth anniversary today… Instead, it’s getting close to five years since she left and about two and a half since we last spoke. So it’s just a very painful day for me, quite possibly the worst of the year, though there are a few others that could rival it… Either way, I don’t want to get into serious discussions that aren’t personal today, much less do anything that has any tangible results in any way. Talking to friends is always welcome of course, but I won’t get involved in things anywhere else. I just want to sit here, with the blinds drawn, and try to dream myself into a life worth living. Or at least remember the time when I used to have one and just imagine that all of this is nothing but a nightmare and I’ll wake up again someday.
It’d be nice to talk to someone, and I’m happy that I found Ami on right now. Would be far nicer to have someone who could understand these things and really be willing to go through feelings and memories with me, not just put up with it, if even that, as it’s usually the case when I don’t hold back just because I know it’d be unpleasant on both ends. And, of course, really nice would be to have such a person that I could also cuddle with. But that’s not going to happen. Neither of these is likely to ever happen, in fact, considering how things have been during these nearly five years. But this was still unexpected and nice in itself, and I’m enjoying whatever it is we’re talking about.

Otherwise, I seem to be able to find out a few things, though nothing important and certainly nothing certain. In a way, it’s nice that I can figure out even that much, but on the other hand it’s really painful that it’s not actually from her, and obviously not knowing what I need to know means I’m growing more and more worried every day, as always. But I probably said way too much about this already, so I’m not risking more, even though the odds that anyone who’s talking to her is reading this are slim.
Then again, I am wondering if someone hasn’t started talking to her again, or at least learned something of her that she doesn’t want me to know. Of course, the latter would include pretty much anything, but the less I’m told the more I worry that it’s something important and really devastating for me. So the fact that I’m not getting as much as a word anymore from that person either makes things seem really bad…

But I’m used to being ignored. Always happens. Still wondering if there has ever been even a single person that I chose to have any sort of relationship with who didn’t mean far more to me than I meant to them. Obviously only talking about those who seemed to desire some sort of connection as well, at some point, since in the other cases it’s clear how things stood.

I’ll try to post this tonight, but don’t expect any links or very detailed information because I won’t be looking for them. If anyone who happens to read this notices any mistakes, please let me know.

This edition ended with a final between a team that certainly should have been there and one that shouldn’t even have made it into the quarterfinals, and possibly not even past the group stage. Unfortunately, the latter even won the trophy! So I was happy that Italy didn’t even make it past the group stage, but had Spain go all the way to the final and then even win it. Infuriating either way, because of the message this sends to any team that could be inclined to play in a way that’d give even neutral viewers something to cheer for.
Sure, Spain probably deserved to win the final itself, judging by what happened during it, but that doesn’t excuse their general attitude, noticed during the final as well, of doing just enough to get by and barely managing to scrape by each round with an 1-0 victory. Netherlands, on the other hand, gave viewers plenty to watch and cheer for during most of their matches, as did Germany, these two being the teams I saw as the probable and deserving finalists all the way through, until of course Spain got in the way.
Otherwise, I need to point out that both Australia and New Zealand impressed me, compared to what I expected from either of them, despite neither making it out of the group stage, and Ivory Coast also deserved a better fate than the one they ended up having. South Korea offered more than I thought them capable of as well, while the fighting spirit of the USA and Uruguay also deserve a special mention, with the added note that Uruguay even obtained a semifinal appearance for their efforts.

The refereeing was amazingly good at first, but then mistakes started piling up towards the end of the group stage and even more so later. Even the final was full of refereeing mistakes, the vast majority of them against Spain, but at least in this one case I didn’t mind because of what I said above regarding Spain. It was far better than in 2002, but it’d be really hard for an edition of the World Cup to be more fraught with refereeing mistakes than that one was, so this doesn’t count as a good thing in any way.
It’s just another piece of evidence, if any more was needed, in support of the idea that technology really needs to be used to make matches more fair. In fact, Roberto Rosetti had the chance to make history during the Argentina – Mexico match, but he chose to ignore the replay which was accidentally broadcasted on one of the big screens and stick to the letter of the rules, not changing his original decision based on video evidence. That was a real pity, as is FIFA’s decision not to allow replays that’d reveal the referee’s decisions to be wrong, or at least questionable, to be broadcasted on the big screens.
I really can’t see any good reason to stop referees from using such video evidence for their decisions… It’d still be the referee who makes the call, but after properly seeing what happened, as you really can’t expect one person, or even two when one of the assistants is close by, to see everything as it happens and make the proper decisions every time. They could come up with something like the challenge system in tennis, each team having a certain number of challenges available, which are only used up if they’re proven wrong. When a team decides to challenge a decision, the referee would go to a TV placed close to the playing field, so this could also work on stadiums without big screens, watch the replay of the moment in question and make a more informed decision. This could also end the complaints and discussions with the referee that you keep seeing now, as players would need to either challenge or keep quiet, receiving an immediate yellow card if they complain in any way without challenging, because it means they either know they’re wrong or they’ve been wrong too many times so far and used up their challenges already.

To move on to the organization, I have to say that the problems were somewhat fewer and less significant than I expected. I maintain my opinion that South Africa was certainly not the right country to host an edition of the World Cup, but I only heard of one person being shot and the reported thefts and robberies from the participants died down shortly after the start of the competition. Now that may be a case of media bias, as they stopped finding them interesting enough to report, but it may also mean the security forces did their job better and better. Also, likely due to a combination of security and people actually thinking with their heads for once and deciding that the risk of stumbling upon one who’s HIV positive over there is too high to be worth it, prostitution was reportedly almost nonexistent. (Not that I’d be against prostitution in general, far from it, but this was a special situation.) But I’m sure someone made lists of such events, so go look for them if you’re interested in something more accurate than this.
The number of spectators was quite low though, with stadiums very rarely being full and actually even being quite empty at a fair number of matches from the group stage, but that was to be expected, considering the rampant poverty in South Africa and perhaps also the security concerns that may have made some fans decide not to go and support their national teams. That, along with what I heard was a merchandising policy unsuitable for the purchasing power of the people in the region, means South Africa took quite a loss as a result of hosting this competition, and I was even reading an article that said the loss rose to no less than two billion euros!

But I want to end this post by going back to the qualifying slots awarded to each region and point out certain discrepancies between those numbers and the actual results, which would be a good indicator of how many slots each region should actually receive. I’ll use the number of teams that made it past the group stage for these calculations, as I think that’s the best indicator.
Africa, including the host country, had six slots. North and Central America had three and a half slots and three teams qualified, as Costa Rica was defeated by Uruguay. South America had four and a half slots and five teams qualified, as Uruguay defeated Costa Rica. Asia, which this time included Australia, had four and a half slots and four teams qualified, as Bahrain was defeated by New Zealand. Europe had 13 slots. And Oceania had half a slot and one team qualified, as New Zealand defeated Bahrain. But the number of teams that made it past the group stage was one for Africa, two for North and Central America, five for South America, two for Asia, six for Europe and none for Oceania.
As you’d expect about half the teams from each region to make it through, you can see that South America really needs more slots and Africa likely has too many. Though this is a somewhat surprising result, as normally Asia seemed to have too many slots, while North and Central America is a special case as there are obviously only two teams worth qualifying, namely USA and Mexico. But I’d like a completely different competition format anyway, so I’m just pointing out some facts here…

Crashed two days earlier than I “should” have, so this is all you’ll be getting from me right now. Retook the Rate My Life Quiz, so here you go:

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	3.1
Mind:	2.3
Body:	5.7
Spirit:	2.9
Friends/Family:	1.2
Love:	0
Finance:	3.6
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

For comparison, check out my previous result, from three years ago. Everything going about how you’d expect, and my body score is likely too high…

That gaming magazine came to the rescue again. This month, I saw it came with Drakensang: The Dark Eye, which was on my list, so I asked dad to buy it. Let’s just say that I don’t know how the hours flew by after I started playing it, despite the fact that it’s a gaming system I have to learn from scratch and that the game itself has some pretty serious flaws which are even more infuriating as they actually seem to be “features” implemented on purpose. I’ll see if I’ll still like it later on and if I’ll manage to finish it, but expect a review if I do.
This reduces the chance of following through with that plan of mine that should start next week or the week after that, but I didn’t think it likely anyway and at least this way I’ll have an excuse. The result’s the same, but not doing what I was thinking I should do because I’m interested in playing a game seems to beat not doing it, or anything else for that matter, simply because I can’t get myself started, at least from where I’m standing.

In other news, it seems that Nature is winning back what was lost when people cleared out this area behind the building. At this point it seems very unlikely that this horrendous fence will be covered again this year, but otherwise fresh green things are starting to cover that huge pile of dead branches and leaves and even that little tree that had its entire crown ripped away seems to survive, as it turned itself into something like a tall bush, with new branches and leaves sprouting all along the remaining trunk. I guess we’ll see next year if the gaping wound at the top will still kill it, by allowing parasites and diseases to affect it, but right now it seems like a real survivor.
Also, this sunset was particularly beautiful. Pity I can only see a little sky, and basically none of what would be the horizon… If it looked so nice even so, I can only imagine how it must have actually looked for anyone who could see it in all its glory.

As for the blog, I may be gathering some stuff for another music post, but that will likely also get delayed now that I have something I seem to actually want to do, depending on how long it’ll last… Otherwise, there should be another post about the World Cup early next week, though probably not on Monday, considering it’s July 12th…
I really want to write, you know? I feel like I have a lot to say, but just don’t have the skills or the drive for it. Sure, I’m not particularly talking about the blog anymore, but even writing good posts here again and actually having them flow instead of being forced out of me each and every time would go a long way and could perhaps help other things as well… But I don’t see that happening…

I missed the proper opportunity to post something about the political mess we’ve been in recently, but I think it’s all for the best. The constant contradictions between me and Remus Cernea, other Greens and many of their supporters when it comes to their approach and desires regarding what should happen to our government and president helped me extrapolate the concept, so now I can take some of the ideas I meant to use in that post and use them in a much more general way, because they can apply to a lot of other situations just as well.

I’m starting from the fact that everyone has the right to criticize, as you can assume that when a person chooses to do something that will also affect others, or at least be shown in public, they should do it well, but you can’t demand change if you don’t really know what you want to change to. You can demand change if you think you could do things better yourself, if you don’t have the actual skills to put everything in practice but nevertheless have thought of a good plan that could be implemented by those who do, or if you simply endorse someone else’s plan, but you can’t demand to remove someone from a position of authority without knowing just what should happen the second after they’re removed! That’d generate chaos and most likely turn a system that’s working very poorly, if that is indeed the case, into one that’s not working at all!
Yet that’s just what usually happens, whether we’re talking about politicians, sports team coaches, company managers or anything in between. Whenever things don’t go quite right, people will rise up and demand the resignation or removal of those in charge, apparently thinking that all problems will magically solve themselves if that happens, or at least that some other person who has all the right answers is already all set up to take charge once the way will be clear. Yet of course problems aren’t solved like that, though they are usually right in believing that someone is all set up to fill the power vacuum something like this creates, but such a person is highly unlikely to have anything other than their own best interest in mind and is therefore also highly unlikely to do much to solve the problems that made the public demand the removal of the previous authority figures in the first place.

Overthrowing an authority figure only to have their position filled by someone who’ll be just as bad or even worse is a very stupid move, but the masses are always stupid, even when they’re made up of otherwise smart individuals. And many use that for their own benefit, by incensing the public against those whose positions they desire for themselves, or simply against those they dislike. I don’t think anyone’s a stranger to the concept of players playing poorly to get their coach fired, knowing he’ll get blamed for the performance as he’s considered to be in charge, and it’s even more obvious in politics, where the opposition constantly points out the flaws of the government and does everything to block all its plans, be they good or bad, in order to later be able to say that the government hasn’t done anything, only to be in the exact same position and create the exact same problems once they get their wish and are put in charge.
And this is the catch: Those you want to overthrow may well deserve it, in fact they almost certainly do if we’re talking about politicians, but those who’ll take their place are unlikely to be noticeably better if things are allowed to run their “natural” course. If you want to get out of this vicious circle, you need to fully plan the aftermath of the rebellion before starting it! Any other course of action only serves the interests of those who’re getting ready to fill the power vacuum, leaving everyone else in a similar situation as before, only more worn out and disappointed…

There was an opinion piece I read in a newspaper recently, which said something like: “The difference between an idealist and a reformer is that the latter focuses mainly on the ways in which his plans could go wrong, and especially on the ways in which others could use them to cause harm, and comes up with countermeasures well before setting them in motion.” In practice, this would pretty much equate idealists with thinkers and reformers with doers, which seems quite true to me and also explains why idealists should stick to coming up with ideas and leave actually turning them into reality to true reformers. A reformer trying to do an idealist’s job is unlikely to see all the progress that could be achieved and all the good that could be done, while an idealist trying to do a reformer’s job is unlikely to see all the ways in which others could turn the whole rebellion around and use it solely for their own gain. Both of these situations mean that the rebellion will bring far fewer benefits, so there is a place for each and those places should be respected.
Of course, the vast majority of those who end up involved in such movements are neither idealists nor reformers, but just a mindless mass that gets pushed around by whoever happens to be in the best position to do so at the time. But unfortunately opinion leaders, who should fill the gap between the idealists and reformers and the masses, putting the latter under control, often get carried away in such situations as well, greatly speeding up this process that turns a good part of the energy that could be spent in a constructive manner, preparing and planning for the future, into anger, hate and other kinds of destructiveness aimed at the present.

This shortsighted approach only ensures that even our successes will turn out to be failures, yet we keep getting carried away by this kind of attitude each and every time. You’d think we’d have learned something in several thousand years of civilization, in one form or another, but apparently not… Yet there may be a chance for just enough of us to do so now, if we’d only stop to think for one moment longer. Or so thinks this here idealist…