Cav's Place

The people from that little Italian city that had elections (unofficial, of course) for the US president said it well. Since the US president is basically the world president, we should all be able to vote, not only the Americans. At least that way we’d have been certain Kerry would have won. As it is… we’re in for another 4 years in a world led by an idiot.
I’m really wondering what the ones voting for Bush are thinking.
Ok, I support the military campaigns. Someone had to do that, even though they were wrong in lying about the reasons. They should have simply said “somebody has to solve the problems there and if you don’t have the guts we do, just know that if you didn’t have the guts to go to war you shouldn’t expect any of the benefits of victory after we’ll earn it, as the advantages are rightfully only for the ones involved.” That way the problem would have been solved as simply as possible.
But aside from that, I dare anyone to tell me another good thing he did. He fights to ban abortion. He implemented tax reductions that favor the rich. He wants abstinence-only sex-ed, with no information about birth control methods. He won’t even consider gay marriages. He withdrew the USA from the Kyoto protocol, significantly reducing this planet’s chances of surviving it’s man-caused injuries. He wants to drill for oil in Alaska, even though those reserves would not last more than 6 months and will be obtained at the cost of destroying one of the last places that animals could feel at home in, without the involvement of man… And many others…

Unfortunately that’s how it is in a democracy, and unfortunately it seems that’s how it will stay until we will figure out a new world order. The smart and informed ones can make the right choice, but they are not the majority, and since the majority decides…

I “threatened” you a long time ago with talking about choosing death. I finally got to writing about that.
I’m just wondering why can’t you choose that without being condemned? You can’t choose the time and place of your birth or your family. Why couldn’t you at least choose when you’ll die then? Especially when you have a reason for it.
I read an essay written by someone who pointed out that on one hand suicide is frowned upon only in the western world and on the other hand there are exceptions even here. When a soldier throws himself on a grenade or stays behind to “buy”, at the cost of his life, a few extra minutes for the others who were trying to escape, his suicide isn’t frowned upon. The conclusion was that suicide becomes something bad when the reason is selfish. Well, that doesn’t seem too fair to me. After all, everyone needs a reason to live. If that reason disappears and isn’t replaced in a very short time by another, anyone should be able to choose that. Also, if someone has a disease that will result in death anyway and would rather know when and how that death will come, instead of waiting, suffering and spending the last moments in a hospital.
And this leads me to euthanasia. It’s only legal in Netherlands, from what I know. Why is that? Animals are put to sleep since it’s said it’s the humane thing to do, not to be let to suffer. On the other hand, humans are left to suffer until the last moment, saying that they have the right to live and no person can take that away, they can only choose to not have CPR done to them if their vitals fail, but not to be killed when things become unbearable. Make up your minds! As things stand now, it seems we must show pity towards animals but they don’t have the right to live, while people have the right to live but we mustn’t show pity towards them. Doesn’t really make sense…

I’ll go quickly through the religious issue linked to this subject. If God would want you to keep living and would get involved in what happens in this world, He’d make sure you wouldn’t commit suicide. After all, suicide is not a decision taken in a moment and the methods used are not 100% certain to work since at that moment you can’t be too exact in what you do, so there would be time. When it comes to euthanasia it’s not even an issue, since if He’d want you to live He’d have made sure that you wouldn’t be dying already. Anyway, He doesn’t interfere directly, it seems stupid to think He does. Maybe when you ask for help, if you know how and what to ask for, He might give you some chances, but He doesn’t play The Sims with humankind. Even if, absurdly, He might want to do that and wouldn’t be bored of it by now, I’m sure there are much more interesting civilisations than ours somewhere in the Universe.

This was the very short version… And since it was short, I’ll say something else in the end. A big “what if?”
If you find out that you have a disease that will kill you in a few months, what do you do? Risk an uncertain cure, hoping you’ll be healed, but knowing that if you won’t be healed you’ll die without using those last few months to do the things that you wanted to do before death, or use those last few months to the max, doing everything you wanted to do before death, but giving up your chance to live longer, in case that treatment would have worked?

Too morbid? Why? I don’t think so…

I’m really starting to like Indian writers. Not that I read many, but what I read I liked… It‘s well written and funny.
In the end, he just wanted to be left alone…

Rating: 9/10

There was an earthquake here. 5.8 at source (some 200 km away from here and about 100 km deep). Not enough to do any serious damage as far as reports went so far, but enough to shake things up, knock some things over, crack walls in older buildings and create a lot of panic. There were smaller ones preceding it these days, so it wasn’t unexpected, but that didn’t stop the panic…

Just as it started I was with my girlfriend and her mother in the same room. We noticed the floor shaking under us, noticed it wasn’t a big one and just wanted to move on. But a few seconds later we got the harder part (the first one, there were two) and some things fell off shelves in two rooms, so we scattered to unplug things, turn off the gas and so on.
Then we had to figure out how to calm the cats. Two hid under a bed, the third was stunned on the hallway… Eventually, after the shockwave dissipated, one of the ones that was under the bed in the bedroom came and laid calmly belly up in the middle of the living room. The other got even further under the bed and only went out three hours later, still scared. And the third followed us everywhere and kept looking at the hallway trying to see what was that thing that scared it, thinking it came from there…
Just after the actual earthquake was over there was a loud sound, like steam (or something like it) coming out of somewhere. The initial assumption was that furnaces are being cleared in the industrial area. But it was way too loud to be that, considering the distance. What’s certain is that we have a fog outside that you could cut with a knife… If it’s fog and not smoke from who-knows-where.
After this my girlfriend and her mom sat down in front of the TV to see what’s being said about it and I started reading (keeping an ear open for the TV in case something interesting would be said). Anyway we were all wondering what our neighbours were thinking since they all flocked out and started talking panicked on the building hallway. If something is to fall first in such a case then the stairway is it…

I’m angry because my net access isn’t working. Wasn’t since before this, now I have even fewer hopes for it to be fixed tonight… I’m just writing this off-line and testing ways to record with my TV tuner.

Haven’t written in a long time, not that I wrote too often before…

I noticed something about myself. No matter how much I say I’m not interested in how someone looks, I still am influenced by some things at the beginning.
I’m talking here only about girls/women between 15 and 30, because I start with a lot of mistrust towards anyone else and it doesn’t go away easily. Actually that’d be the first preconceived idea I suppose, but that’s not what I meant to talk about here. I mean to talk about why and how does someone’s physical appearance, no matter how much I’d try to ignore it, influence my opinion.
Looks influence me as a first impression when I see someone for the first time (whether it is a picture on the net, meeting “in real life”… or whether I see for the first time “in real life” a person that I have previously seen a picture of on the net). Some of these impressions last only a few minutes, but some influence what I think about a person for a long time.
As a general rule, if I say that a certain impression will last in time, I say that actually the plusses will last only if that person raises to my expectations from the other points of view, immediately vanishing when (if) I realize she doesn’t, but the minuses never vanish. If she fits into one of the categories that I put at minuses then the bad impression will not go away, but I’ll keep being displeased and making various comments.
I’m talking about absolutely anybody here, any person that I have to interact with, from someone I hardly know to the person I’m intimate with.

So let me start, in order of the importance I noticed I give these things:
1. Hair
– I probably give it so much importance because it’s the easiest to change. (Of course, I’m talking about the hair on the head, I not in the least interested in body hair, unless she’d be like a monkey. Actually it’s better if she lets it grow so it’ll be soft than keep cutting and pulling it until it gets so thick and hard that it stings even when it’s just 1 millimeter long.)
– I offer a plus if it’s halfway down her back. Another if it’s simply cut straight, without revealing any hint that someone is going through a lot of trouble to make it look in some way. Another plus is if it’s straight (as in not curly), but that plus is somewhat reduced if I find out she straightens it, as it’s not naturally like that. Another plus, smaller, is if she’s blonde, but only if it’s her natural color, not dyed. This seems to look well regardless of body. But there is another option, if she’s a little shorter than me, relatively thin and… has a general image of a good girl in her mid-teens (regardless of her real age), she gets the same plusses if she has brown or black hair, leaves a little over her forehead and either has a ponytail or lets it flow freely on her back, having it go about 1/4 of the way down her back, if you know what I mean.
– A big minus if it’s short, as in not even reaching her shoulders. Another, at least as big, is if it’s dyed. Another, also big, is if it’s curly and I find out that it’s naturally straight, but she makes it curl, if it’s naturally curly it doesn’t apply. Another minus appears if it’s obvious she went through some trouble to give it a certain shape, I want to see it left naturally, the only exception being that bit over the forehead that I talked about above.
– These impressions will not go away.
2. Being natural and simple
– Another thing very important to me, and also completely controllable.
– No plusses here. If I see no trace of make-up, the clothes aren’t either fancy or expensive, etc. then it seems normal, no plusses. I accept, without minuses, a trace of color around her eyes (but not much, and not a color that will catch your eye), eventually also (very) little blush on her cheeks, some lipstick (but I won’t kiss her on the lips nor will I let her kiss me anywhere while she’s wearing it, no matter how much she’d assure me it won’t wipe off) and a light shade of nailpolish (white, pink or something transparent that only leaves a hint of a color) on the nails from her hands, I don’t accept anything on the nails from her feet.
– Minuses for anything else. The more make-up and/or care and/or money invested into her looks, the bigger the minuses.
– These impressions will never go away, using such ways to change the way someone looks seem simply lies to me, and I don’t accept lies.
3. Height
– I don’t like that I’m interested in this, since it’s not too controllable, but I noticed I’m interested in it so I have to say.
– Generally, it’s a plus if she’s about my height (5’8.5″ at the last check), +/- 4″. Might even be a bigger plus if she’s a little (at most 2″) taller than me.
– Could be a minus if she’s more than a head taller or more than a head shorter than me.
– This impression can be drastically changed by weight, I’ll explain there. Otherwise, it won’t go away, but the importance I give it will quickly lessen to a certain value, if I can call it that, where it’ll stabilize.
4. Weight
– It influences what I think about someone only if it’s because she eats too much/little and unhealthy. If I find out it’s because of a disease or some hormonal imbalance, any negative impression about her weight goes away immediately. Note that, when I’ll use the term “fat” below, I mean obese (if her bones are very heavy and her body type is naturally big, then it might even only apply starting from 2nd degree obesity), not just a few extra lbs. And “thin” doesn’t mean “just skin and bone”, but to still have a little bit of flesh on her, if I want to say “just skin and bone” I’ll simply say “just skin and bone”.
– It’s a plus if she has approximately my height and a normal weight, maybe even a few extra lbs if they’re not put on her abdomen. Another plus is if she’s shorter than me and thin.
– Keeping in mind what I said above about negative influences, it’s a minus if she’s either fat or just skin and bone. If she’s fat and very short or just skin and bone and very tall then the minus is greater. If she’s “big” (taller than me and fat) then the minus is clearly justified by the fact that she intimidates me.
– These impressions go away relatively quickly usually, after I get to know the person. Negative impressions will remain only if she’s already at an average weight (or already thin, if she’s more than 2″ shorter than me) and she wants to keep losing weight, if she’s just skin and bone and has no intention of gaining some weight, or if she’s fat and has no intention of losing some weight.
5. Apparent age
– It’s a plus if she looks younger than she really is. This doesn’t apply only to a 30 year old person who looks 25, but also to an 18 year old person who looks 16.
– It’s a big minus if she tries to look older than she is.
– These impressions go away immediately after I get to know the person normally. Still, the negative impression left by someone who is trying to look older than she really is will always annoy me.

Another thing that really bothers me, speaking of looks, is change. After I get to know a person I associate that person with a certain image. The first reaction when I see someone I know looking differently than I remember is “who the fuck are you?”.

I keep saying I want to have no interest in someone’s looks, but I see that I still have some things left, at least where the first impression is concerned. I wonder why I can’t get rid of them…