Monday 23 July 2007

Airports are dangerous

Here is Germany, you cannot buy proper food. There is no cheddar cheese to speak of, and the only bacon available is terrible, American style streaky bacon that you wouldn´t even feed your children. You cannot get orange squash, Branston pickle or HP sauce.

Knowing Germany, this food is probably against one of their laws.

Anyway, while traveling from the UK to Germany recently, I thought I´d take with me a jar of mustard piccalilli with me.

"Do you have any pastes or fluids with you?" asked the polite chap as I went through check in. I showed him the jar. He said that he would have to confiscate it, because it might be a bomb.

Might be a bomb.

So what did he do? Did he call in the bomb squad? Did he carefully place the jar in a reinforced concrete block?

No. He literally threw it into a huge bin, which had hundreds of other jars of piccalilli in it.

"If you really believe that it could be a bomb, is throwing it around a sensible thing to do?"

I also pointed out that he spent all day standing next to a huge pile of potential bombs. The chap did not seem to understand, and yet he is allowed to carry around a presumably loaded gun.

Something is wrong here.

Friday 20 July 2007

Links for the unimpaired

I wanted a links page on the right hand side navigation bar, but it is a crap system. It just wants links, with no comments (if I am wrong, please let me know).

So instead I´ve got this "Links" post, which I might edit once in a while, and change the date to have it near the top. Might.

These are some of the most useful sites on the web.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
Mike Rivero has been running this controversial news site for 14 years.

http://www.anti-neocons.com/
Author Ryan Dawson´s news forum. Dawson is so good that he lets you argue with him.

http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=64
This is the James Randi forum, subsection "Conspiracy Theories", one of the largest sites for skeptics. The excellent moderators on this site manage to make it one of the best places to watch a collection of unsung geniuses and master wordsmiths at work.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/aaronmann
This is the discussion forum for political activist Aaron Mann. There are diamonds in this site, even though Aaron lost his hair when he was 24.

Much more to come here.

The pen is mightier than the sword. If you throw it hard enough.

This is one of the maddest quotes of the year.

"We must replace the signs on the handicapped toilets that say ´deformed men´, and the meeting place for ethnic minorities that is currently signposted as ´Racist Park´. Some of the translations are really problematic and not so polite."
Liu Yang of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Office (Quoted in the UK´s Private Eye magazine No 1189)

Anyway, here is a list of the chapter titles of my still messed up book.

The Con - Navigating the Sea of Disinformation

1. The Closed Mind
2. Foot in Mouth Disease
3. Religion - The Original Con
4. Darwinian Evolution - Religion for Atheists
5. Education - Another Brick in the Wall
6. The Destruction of Culture - Mozart Spins in his Grave
7. Hollywood History Lessons
8. Real History Lessons
9. Biological Warfare at Home
10. Blackmailing the Rulers of the world
11. Disinformation, Crisis Management and the Super Bizarre
12. The Puppeteers
13. Conjecture, Opinion and other such Wank

If anyone can give me a better chapter title, please email me (you´ll get credit if it is used). I´ll update this bit as I go along, probably.

Look at some of Howard Bloom´s chapter titles, in his masterpiece Global Brain - The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

4. From Social Synapses to Social Ganglions: Complex Adaptive Systems in the Jurassic Days
11. The End of the Ice Age and the Rise of Urban Fire
17. Swiveling Eyes and Pivoting Minds: The Pull of Influence Attractors

There are many more. Bloom is a genius.

More info on my book, just in case the four of you are interested.

It is short. One thing people asked me is "How long is your book?". Short seemed to be the most acceptable answer. You can read it in a day, if you can stay awake long enough.

It is also not entirely serious. There are some very serious topics discussed, but it is not like reading a real non-fiction book. I find that most books about important subjects tend to be rather boring, so this one is interspaced with various semi-amusing nonsense.

Please leave a message if you see any spelling mistakes in this post, as I have had a few glasses of wine this evening.

Credit to James for the title of chapter 13

Thursday 19 July 2007

"I´m the king of the bus!"


Many years ago, I had an argument with a London bus driver. In the end, he wouldn´t let me board until I admitted that he was "king of the bus". I told the queue forming behind me "He wants me to say that he is the king of the bus". They laughed. If you are reading this, bus driver, you are are twat.
ve had close to a million emails, asking for a picture of one of my guitars. Here it is.
If you are going to have a photo taken, make sure it is in front of a massive stack of books.
Seeing as I´m the king of this website, I can manipulate things to make sure this picture doesn´t appear on the top of the page.

Wednesday 18 July 2007

Welcome

Welcome to my webpage.

This page will serve several functions. Firstly...

Music lessons

You can learn to play piano in a matter of months. No boring scales or arpeggios (well, one or two perhaps). All styles, from Elton John to Franz Liszt.

Or perhaps learn to play guitar. It is easy. Play like Jimi Hendrix, again within a few months, if you put in the practice.

Oh yes, I am based in Berlin, Germany. My German language skills are rubbish. It looked like a good gap in the market. There are very few private, English language only music teachers in Berlin. For some reason.

(I´ll also teach English lessons here in Germany. But you may as well learn music at the same time)

If you need someone to play the piano at a wedding or similar happy event, please email me.

Additionally, I have written a short book about political and historical censorship. It has just come back from the proof reader, who pointed out spelling errors, and also question marks where there should be dates. It should be published in a few months, and I´ll probably put the chapter titles up here soon.

For more info on the lessons or the book, please email me at aosler@hotmail.com