Loud, Dirty, and Dark.

Listening: Carcass “Corporeal Jigsore Quandary,” Decapitated “Spheres of Madness”

Reading: Dean R. Koontz “Hideaway” and Thomas Harris “Red Dragon”
 

So, I finished reading the second of the Stieg Larsson's books. He was a very good popular writer, and yet the second installment left me thinking he was just setting up his next one. I decided then that the best curse of action would be to take a brake and read something else. Therefore, I plan to start reading Thomas Harris. I haven't read anything from him and am looking forward to see what the hype is about. Hopefully it's not going to be like “The Da Vinci code” which I read for a while and just had to abandoned due to his very bad style.

I'm reading 2 books. One I read on my Kindle and one I read on a paper version so I can take it on the bus and won't be afraid someone is going to take it away from me (although... someone stole my 1960's copy of Dr. Zhivago once... hope they kill over.) The paper one is, and a bit ashamed of admitting it: another Koontz. There has been no more money to buy other books, so I'll finally read what I have. Haven't you found that collecting books makes you feel alive? Ha! It makes me feel purposeful.

In “Hideaway” I found this:

Inside, the club was everything he liked. Loud, dirty, and dark. Reeking of smoke, spilled liquor, and sweat. The band hit the chords harder than any musicians he'd ever heard, rammed pure rage into each tune, twisting the melody into a squealing mutant voice, banging the numbingly repetitious rhythms home with savage fury, playing each number so loud that with the help of huge amplifiers, they rattled the filthy windows and almost made his eyes bleed.

It reminds me of a time, long ago, when I was getting my hair cut. I was a child living in Guatemala City. You see, in Guatemalan barber shops the reading material is very poor in selection. Aside from your playboy's and hustlers, there are also comics. It was in one of this that I found one that told of devils and witches dancing to music that would make other creatures insane! I thought this was tacky and yet could not forget it. I must have been 7 or 8 years old.

So, as any good nature and angry boy I started to learn guitar. I wanted to play this sort of music that would rattle the filth out of your soul and make the devil and his company shake uncontrollably. I don't know if I did, but I still play my guitar. I like the fastest most disruptive musical constructions I can play. The feeling of getting on stage is what other people might experience with drugs. elation. Acceleration. Freedom.

This is the point of all this rant then... Freedom. Long live metal. I'll head bang until my head falls off!

I'd been dead in a way too

Listening: Flow – Life is Beautiful. This is a very nice Japanese band. I like it a lot, even if they have an awful lot of ballads.

Reading: The girl who played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. And Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden.

I always feel a bit guilty if I like a best seller like Memoirs... The reason is that popular culture has very little to offer in the way of cultural excitement. I usually think that the higher the number of people that like something is inversely proportionate to that thing's entertaining value. Still, I've been so many times wrong about this, that the only reason I still believe it is because there are some very bad novels out there.

Memoirs is, however, a very nice exception to this rule of mine. I have been enthralled by the book, as if I had suddenly become a house wife from the 50's! Nothing to do but sit the kids and watch my soaps on the TV.

I ran into something on this book that call my attention:

...The past was gone. My mother and father were dead and I could do nothing to change it. But I suppose that for the past year I'd been dead in a way too. And my sister... yes, she was gone; but I wasn't gone. I'm not sure this will make sense to you, but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction, so that I no longer faced backward toward the past, but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would that future be?

I love this quotation. In order to understand this fully you'll have to understand the context. In favor of concision, I'll just talk about what made her come to this conclusion. The story is about a very famous Geisha that was sold to a house where she is mistreated.

Life for her is very hard, she tries to escape and fails, she is mistreated, for a while she can't become a geisha anymore. You know... life is very hard. The only thing that keeps her going is the idea... No, the hope, of going back home.

When her parents die and then her sister escapes with out her she realizes something. I mean “something” important. When she let's go of this hope, when she realizes that she has to let go of the past, then her path becomes clear.

This is very important for anyone that has been holding on to anything that is not real in life. In order to have a future, first you have to get rid of the past. This ritual killing of the past has to take place so that your mind can see the future clearly.

It is a very elegant way to say that you should not be weigh down by your past. When you let it go, no matter how important it might seem to be, you'll feel better.

I love this book, and wish it can last longer than the couple of hundred pages I have left in it.

The scientist that has become an evangelist

Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden and The girl who played with fire by Stieg Larsson.

 Music: I'm listening to... I think Demon kitty rag by Katzenjammer. If you haven't heard this band, I recommend you go on and listen to it.. go on... I'll wait...

So, I just finished reading Breathlessby Dean Koontz and found a very interesting quotation that I’d like to share with the internet. But first a quick synopsis of the book, it tells the story of a retires sniper that has become a carpenter. He has moved to the mountains and there he finds the most beautiful and enigmatic creatures that he has ever seen. In reality, these creatures are not known to humanity, but whoever sees them becomes entranced and feels happy and peaceful. It is a nice book. Won't tell you anything else, again... go on a read it for yourself.

The quotation that inspired me to think it unique is this one:

          “When a scientist tells you that 'the science is settled' in regard to any subject,” Lamar said, “he's ceased to be a scientist, and he's become an evangelist for one cult or another. The entire history of science is that nothing in science is ever settled. New discoveries are continuously made, and they upend old certainties.”

I just love how that sounds. What does it mean though? Well, I think it means that if science stops evolving it becomes a cult. If this is so, I love it even more. I've talked to a lot of scientists or people that swear by science. And it has struck me as funny how committed they are to the “truth”

Now regardless of what it is that “Truth” means, scientists that don't allow themselves to consider all or new avenues of explanations are nothing more than evangelists. Which is what make this quotation so fascinating. Someone like Richard Dawkins for example, he is so committed to the “cause of science” that he sometimes sounds like he is preaching the gospel. The good news are not that Jesus has come, but that the Higgs boson is going to tell us about the secrets of the universe. Or in Dawkins case (he is a an evolutionary biologist) a gene-centered view of evolution.

Now I don't mean to say that I believe in any form of organized religion. On the contrary, I hate it all. I haven't had any religion for a very long time. The reason I bring this things up is because it seems that the human animal will always cling to an idea and tend to become fanatical about it.

Once fanaticism has taken root, what ever standard he or she holds becomes sort of like scripture. Something to be believed rather than evaluated. It is a criticism about scientists accepting instead of thinking. Nice discovery for Koontz.

The rest of the book falls apart for me. Even if I liked the ending of it, the book seemed rushed. Maybe it is too short. At least it wasn't like other Koontz book that leave you wanting. Don't know if anybody has thought the same. There is very bad science on the end of this book. Maybe I'll make another entry entitled “Math against evolution?” later. I haven't found any evidence that would explain what he is saying, so I'll wait until I have more material.

In the mid time... think about this quotation.

Drug legalization in Guatemala

Drug legalization in Guatemala.

I don't know if anybody else knows but the president of Guatemala has issued an initiative to discuss the possibility of legalization. Now at first I thought that it was a great plan, after all the government in this Central American country spends a lot of money fighting “the war on drugs.” This money could be used to prevent children from going hungry or providing them with schools to get Guatemala out of the pitiful state in which it is. But, then I thought if there is actually other countries in which legalization had worked so we could compare its results to this country's various idiosyncrasies to see how feasible it would be.

So, everybody knows that drugs are legal in Holland right? Wrong! Drugs are not legal in the Netherlands as I found out by a quick search on the internet. In Dutch legislation there is a difference between what they call hard drugs (opiates and stimulants, ei. Morphine and cocaine) and soft drugs (marihuana and hash). Soft drugs carry a penalty of a fine, so if you are in Amsterdam and carry with you 5 grams of marihuana for personal use the police can fine you but they never do. This is something like a relaxed view towards these soft drugs.

OK, so back to square one, where are drugs legal? Well, according to the internet drug possession is legal in Portugal. But with just a bit more research you'll find out that drugs are still illegal in Portugal. The only change, from 2001 was that now if you carry less than a 10 day supply of your favorite recreational drug, you don't go to jail. Instead justice makes you go to rehab and do community service. Good idea, help junkies don't put them in jail (and if you knew how bad things are in Guatemala's jails you would also agree with the Portuguese.) Still, no legalization.

The more I search the more convinced I am that legalization is very far into the future. With out anything to compare it to, I'd have to rely on my knowledge of Guatemala's personality to give my opinion on the matter. We are, after the before mention meditation, not ready for legalization. But a change that would improve our policies towards the Portuguese or Dutch model is something that is worth discussing and implementing.

Further reading and bibliography:

http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/Article/Dutch-Drug-Policy.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_of_drugs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#Laws_and_regulations