"You said I could knock"

I am very, very sad today.
I am not even sure why. I woke up feeling like this, and I cannot shake an odd feeling of dread - very uncharacteristic of me.

But whatever it is, I know the following "letter to God" did influence my state of mind, at least to some degree.
So did- perhaps even more - some of the replies to it.

A good friend brought to my attention the text, which was written by a friend of his.
It was posted on a public "Christian forum"; but since it is thereby a public text, I don't think reproducing it here will do any harm to anyone.

If it does, it won't be for any infringement of copyrights or any such nonsense.

Yesterday, after I had received the text and had not yet read it, a friend read it while I was working.

"So... how is it?" I asked her over my shoulder as I typed.
Silence.
"Haven't you read it?" I asked.
No reply.

I turned around and looked at her.
She was sitting there in perfect silence, staring at the screen, with a hand over her mouth; and huge tears were streaming down her cheeks.

I had never seen her react like that, so I was shocked, alarmed.

It turned out the text had touched a nerve.
So did some of the replies to it.

I don't know how you will react to it, but I do think it's worth reading.
So here it is, copied and pasted.
(Only the user name is omitted, for reasons of simple and possibly absurd piety - but you have the URL, so it's not a "secret".)

YOU SAID I COULD KNOCK

(This is a "letter" to God - not a provocation of any sort, so please, don't feel offended.
And please, do NOT read this if you are at all prone to doubt or sadness.
Also, I don't think I'll be back, so there is no need to reply - unless you're God, of course. :)


I have been knocking for seven months now, even after you took from me, one by one, every single source of my modest happiness on Earth.
Without notice you took out the sole light of my life, my reason for doing and being.
You were deaf to my prayers, even though I prayed as you told us to.
In a single sweeping gesture, you also took from me the basic sustenance for me to grieve in peace. Instead, you thought it would be profitable for me to add a new burden on my already broken back.

And yet, the more you oppressed me, the more I kept praying and counting on your help – BLINDLY counting on your providence.

But you just kept taking away from me and destroying everything that I had built over many years. Every single work I ever started was dedicated to you – surely you must have known that? I said so, quite openly. I always asked for your assistance and guidance. Every single thought I had was a prayer. When I walked down the street, when I shopped for groceries, when I stood admiring the majestic beauty of nature, when I hummed to music, when I worked... You were always WITH me.
Weren't you?

Ever since you allowed the world to start hitting me, ever since you turned your back on me, things have been going from bad to worse. And, most extraordinarily, you chose to take away from me – from us – even the one thing I was sure could never be taken away by anyone: our family's togetherness and pure love. No thief could ever take that from us, I thought.

And I was right. No thief could do that – but you chose to destroy even THAT.

I was shocked; and I could not understand what was happening. After all, it's not like you were punishing a petulant child who isn't grateful for what she's got: surely you heard all the beats of my grateful heart over the years? Every joy I had I dedicated to you; I only turned to you when I was happy and grateful; on the few occasions that I asked for your help when I was in great trouble you didn't seem to have heard me at all.

And yet, I kept praying and singing your praises. And I kept smiling, even though my life was crumbling inside and out. I never complained to anyone; I didn't want to spread misery or fear. I didn't want anyone's confidence in you wane because of my Job-like calvary.

But after taking out the life of my life, the only earthly joy of my heart, you took away even the possibility of comfort, of grieving in peace; you took away my meagre fortune, my sustenance, and my reputation, which I had so painstakingly built over the years, by which you effectively took away my future. There is very little left – only debts and heartache – and the prospect of living destitute in a joyless world, in effective slavery.

Most of all, by your relentless deafness to my pleas you not only broke my own strength, but also my ability to pray to you.

So, was I no good to you while I was successful and striving for happiness and singing your praises?
Would I be of more use to you as a pauper? As a homeless, hungry wretch, cleaning toilets for a pittance? As the laughing stock of everyone who has the time and the inclination to kick somebody who is down?

If that is so, I am sure YOU know the reasons. But I don't. And forgive me for not embracing your mysteriously devised »plan«. You should know that it won't make me a better person; I already was that »better person«. And apparently that wasn't good enough for you.

Yes, I have been weak.
Is there no place for the weak on your Earth?

And I have been far from perfect.
But so are other people. At least I was always aware of my mistakes and regretted them.

But I was also many other things: joyful, humble, grateful, hopeful. Compassionate. And generous - that too. (Do you remember my giving, God? Have you, mighty accountant, figured out why all those to whom I had lent money, when I had very little of it myself, ignored my reminder that, after more than a year, I'd like my money back – because I needed to pay my bills? Don't you, the All-knowing, know that I have nobody to turn to?)

All my life I walked in grateful confidence.

Did that displease you?
Was that not the prayer that you wanted to hear?

Is »please, don't hit me« the prayer that you would prefer?

If such were the case, then you wouldn't be much better – or much more - than a medieval potentate who has to be curried for favours and whose moods are to be feared.
Or like those Chinese deities that are supposedly jealous of man's happiness, so humans have to hide it from them.

If such were the case, you would be no God at all.

Once upon a time, I was afraid that I might die in my sleep because of the pain that would cause to my loved ones.
Today, that seems to be my only escape.

So, here's your chance, dear God. Tonight is the night. Do that thing you promised to do: open the door. Listen to my dying heart and grant me THE miracle – or else go pour some more fragrant oil into the vials of the »wicked« ones, the ones that don't want to know your face, who may even spit on your name - who never think of you at all, but live happy and fulfilled in heir ignorance of you; who sleep peacefully in their comfortable beds, anticipating nothing but another fruitful day and then a weekend with their loved ones – while I fear going to sleep because there is a good probability that I might wake up. Wake up... to yet another pile of bills that cannot be paid, to yet another 20 hours of hunger and heartache, of wondering: what did I do? WHAT, in God's name, did I ever do to anyone, except bring them joy and comfort and, yes, very palpable help? As for my many ill deeds, I have repented for them so often and so bitterly in the past – if you were listening, surely you should know that.

Do that miracle – or go add some more bliss to those who never think about you – or about other people – because they have no use for your paradise: they have their own paradise, right here and now.

Is this an ultimatum?

You tell me, Almighty.
You may live outside Time, but I don't, because you yourself placed me within Time.
You allow the bill collectors and the bank – and my empty stomach, which is such a wonderful complement to a heart broken by long months of grief and deceived hopes – to persecute me pitilessly, without any regard for my sadness and loneliness and, yes, poverty; now I can actually speak of poverty. I don't have the money to buy even a lottery ticket.

You didn't care to preserve and protect a happy, grateful heart who considered herself RICH because she walked bathed in your Light and Grace – or so she thought.
Finish me off, then.
But, considering my recent past experience with your favours, even that might be too much to ask from you. Perhaps all the good pious people, sitting pretty in their comfy chairs, who IN YOUR NAME promise nothing but brimstone to those who take their own life, are right, after all. Perhaps you would like me to do that, so that you can have yet more fun with me, from here to eternity.

Or perhaps there is no YOU.
Not here, not in eternity.

I am not going to even comment on it, as I believe it's been formulated well enough for anyone - anyone with a heart and a mind and a minimal experience of the world - to understand.
In fact, it's one of the best formulated outcries to God that I've ever read. It is angry, yes, and not a little childlike, and extremely sad, but even in its anger it's not stupid "God-bashing", it is not shallow sulking; and even deep in the abyss of her pain, the author remains sensitive to other people, the readers.

What dumbfounded me were some of the replies - but please, note that I only read the first page.
And here's why I couldn't, didn't want to, go on reading the replies: with the exception of a sentence or two (which I thought were really good and, I hope, helpful to "Job" - especially the one of being "in construction", that was really good), they sound as if people simply did not read past the first three or four sentences.

They did not read it - or else, how could they reply like that?
Why reply at all, then?
She explicitly said she did not need any replies - and yet, some people apparently could not resist the temptation to offer their... oh, what was it - "well-rounded knowledge"...?

I am speechless.
And depressed.

I knew people in general had difficulty listening to other people.
Reading doesn't seem to come much easier to them.

And yet... if people who consider themselves to be followers of Christ cannot be bothered to really lend their ear to their "neighbour's" pleas ... who will listen?

If you are going to read it, then please read it: do not extrapolate, do not compare, do not scoff, do not judge. Take it seriously on both the emotional AND the intellectual level.

The "Jobs" of this world deserve nothing less.

And pray to God you never become one yourself.

Is Wikipedia corrupt?

I am seriously starting to think that it is.
But first, let's define corrupt.

For some reason - OK, for good reasons - many people seem to equate the notion of corruption with greed, with money.

I am using the word here in a more general (but no less pernicious), core sense: as a state of contamination, i.e. removed from a pristine condition.
Perception of such a state often results in indignation on the part of those who haven't (yet) succumbed to the latest fashion in the prevalent mores.

It was precisely this "old fashioned" sentiment what drove a respected friend of mine to report to me that the venerable Wikipedia has been publishing photos and other images that he - my friend - deemed far too graphic to find a place on such an easily accessible site as Wikipedia, with no protective mechanisms to safeguard the visitors from visual contents that might be offensive to them.
In fact, he sent me a link - which I am NOT going to share with you - so he could prove his point.

Did he ever...!
I still regret clicking on it.
You think the offensive images were sex-related?
Think again.

Deep down, in its mediocrity-worshiping bourgeois heart, Wikipedia is far too conservative to allow such uncontentiously contentious subject matter as sex to occupy its very exposed pages, unless the encyclopedic entry in question absolutely demanded it.

No, it was obscenity of a different kind - perhaps the most terrible, most damaging kind: two (two!) photographs - BIG, impossible-to-miss photographs - of the carnage allegedly inflicted by "Jack the Ripper" on one of his alleged victims.

At this point, let me add that the scene captured on said photographs is known to have been extremely traumatic even for the policemen of the time.

Let me tell you, those policemen weren't pampered pansies. They saw A LOT during their years of service in the belly of London.
But none of them - or so they said - had witnessed anything nearly as horrific as that. It is said to have haunted them for the rest of their life, just as they thought it would.

And this is the kind of image that some Wikipedia "editor" deemed appropriate to post within the main article about the victim in question!
They are totally unnecessary, they contribute nothing to the scope or quality of the information; as a matter of fact, they defeat the purpose of the article, as they scare off genuine researchers who come looking for information, not an unexpected horror show.

And the fact that there are not one but TWO of them, betrays the probable true - deeply banal - intention of the "editor": to shock.

This suspicion may be corroborated by the incredible fact that the pictures appear to have been deleted a number of times - isn't that (along with the verbal complaints in the "discussion" section) a very clear message by the users regarding the usefulness of the images? - and yet, the "editor" keeps restoring them!

Now I want you to imagine that Wikipedia had posted the autopsy photo of Marilyn Monroe.

Having had the misfortune of stumbling upon said photo (that was before I upped my Google Image Search settings to "moderate"), I can tell you I found it extremely unpleasant.
I can also tell you that there is no visible blood on it (or maybe a few specks, I am not sure), there is absolutely no gore, nothing that could disturb the eye or the mind - except for the obvious fact that it is... well, an autopsy photo.

But what do you think would happen if Wikipedia posted that photo in its article about Marilyn Monroe?
I dare not imagine it. But I can actually hear the clamour in my mind - before the swift disappearance of the photo, of course (which would probably be a matter of minutes rather than hours, let alone days).

"Outrageous!"
"Why don't they let her rest in peace?!"
"Have they no respect for the poor woman's DIGNITY?!"

I can hear them because I know people - and because something very similar happened when a newspaper tried to publish a photo of Diana Princess of Wales taken while she was lying injured on the back seat of the car, after the fatal crash in Paris.
She wasn't dead, not yet.
And I am told she wasn't disfigured at all.
(The French doctor, Frederic Maillez, said she actually looked "very beautiful".)

But the idea - the perceived insult to the "dignity" of a dying woman - was enough to provoke outrage and, ultimately, prevent the publication of the photo.

And they were right - they are right, all of them.
What I want to know is, how come that poor wretch who lived a dismal life and died a horrific death in the slums of London does not seem to have any "dignity" to speak of?

How come HER right to "rest in peace" (however illusory it may be) is nobody's business?

Do human rights, including the right to "dignity", have an expiration date?

And what about MY dignity as a viewer - as an unsuspecting, well-meaning user who comes in search of information? What about my right to seek information without being assaulted - ambushed - by shocking images that I never sought out? (And once an image is burnt into my retina - and into my mind - it stays there. I may not dwell on it, but it is there, ready to ambush me at any time.)

Maybe the "editor" who originally posted those images did not realise just how offending they were, on all levels.
Fair enough.
(After all, it's not like Wikipedia is a real encyclopedia, with appropriately competent and sensitive editors.)

But what is their excuse for reposting them after the images had been removed, thus clearly rejected by users?
What is the core motive driving them to publish such images?

Because it can't be quality of information.

***

There is an interesting - flawed, but memorable - film called Time After Time(1979). 

One of the main characters is precisely Jack the Ripper.
Having escaped to the future, by means of H.G. Wells' time machine, Jack finds himself in 1979: safe, sound - and every bit the beast he was back in 1889.
So he resumes his activities.
Anticipating the thrill of publicity (some things never change), he buys a newspaper to read about his own exploits...

At this point, let us just say that he is bitterly disappointed.
And this is the conclusion he draws after having read the newspapers of 1979:

"One hundred years ago I was a monster.
Today, I am an amateur."

EDIT (2. I. 2010):
Here's a link to a post by a "disgruntled" Wikipedia ex-editor.

On mice and me

OR

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR MOUSE IS JUMPY

I bought a new mouse a few months - almost a year - ago.

In this day and age I probably don't have to specify that I am not referring to a pet rodent; I will say, however, that it is NOT a cordless mouse, so if you are looking for advice on cordless mice, this is probably not the best place. You'd better move on. (But do come back for other pieces of trivia in the future. ;))

I am crazy about useful new gadgets, but I don't especially fancy the idea of wireless devices because I don't like the idea of being exposed to (even more!) unseen waves of all kinds without anyone really knowing what they do to us. Besides, when one of those high-tech devices malfunction, one feels even more helpless than usually. At least with wires you have something you can sink your teeth into, to use a particularly eerie metaphor.

My semi-new mouse is of the optical kind (I don't remember the name of the model, and I can't find the leaflet that came with it), with a nice long black tail (the wire) to suit its nice black body, and has been made by Logitech, as I had been told they are "the best". (I didn't have the time or the energy to probe in depth just what that means - they guy who sold it to me seemed a game maniac, and I am not, so I fleetingly wondered whether it would be appropriate for my needs - but I did research it on the internet when I got home, so I was reasonably reassured that it is indeed a good mouse.)

A week or so ago, I noticed the mouse was beginning to act erratically - much like a drunkard: snoozing at all the wrong times, and then suddenly jolting up and leaping across the screen, before starting dragging its feet again.

Logitech, as most other serious factories, do have a customer support service, of course.

But for some obscure reason - probably the same reason that makes me HATE asking for directions (it has nothing to do with personal "dignity", it's more about the fun of cracking the mystery on my own - but more on that some other time) - I tried everything before resorting to it.

So, here is what I did.

First, I made sure there was no "gunk" anywhere. But then, it's an optical mouse, so there is very little space for gunk, anyway.

Second, I checked the wire to see if there was a bad connection somewhere in there. The procedure was low-tech in the extreme: I felt the wire up and down while observing the behaviour of the pointer on the screen.

No, nothing changed.

Third, I unplugged it and then plugged it in again. (I did this a few times.)

No, that was not it.

Fourth, I checked on my Device Manager whether anything was hogging the RAM - even though this would not have been a satisfactory answer because it would open another question: why now? What had changed, considering I hadn't installed anything new? (Besides I have plenty of RAM.)

That train of thought led me to the most unpleasant thought: was there a virus, a trojan, something alien sucking the life blood out of my virtual brain?

So I ran the usual tests: Spybot S & D, PCPitstop, Kaspersky online test... you name it.

Nothing.

As relieved as I was, I was also getting increasingly befuddled.

So I went online and searched for other people discussing this very problem. Alas, they were all smartassing about the things I had already checked: gunk, faulty wires, viruses, trojans, dead batteries... Batteries?

At this point I discovered that logic and Logi-tech are not necessarily compatible, let alone synonymous. You may not believe this, but finding batteries for mice that actually require batteries is not always easy.

So, hoping there would be some other solution, that would not require shopping around (shopping for perfume is fun, shopping for batteries is not - not in my book, anyway) I finally decided to email the customer support service, detailing everything I had done and other particulars of the case.

A few hours later, the answer arrived: try putting a piece of white paper on the pad; or, if the pad is white, try cleaning it.

Huh...?

I decided to postpone my anger at this apparently non-sensical answer just long enough to try their proposed solution. I took a sheet of perfectly white paper (the ordinary, stationery kind) , folded it and placed it on my dusty-violet old pad. Upon which I placed my mouse on the pad and gave it a test spin...

It worked.

It worked!

So, if your mouse is being jumpy, you should still try and check everything of the above.

And in case it needs a new battery, just google for... well, "Logitech battery".

But first - just in case - place a simple piece of white paper on your pad.

(And don't forget to replace it when it gets dirty.)

I don't know if Logitech's mice really are "the best"; and on the forums I browsed through while searching for an answer, I've noticed some people complaining about their customer service.

But I must say, for me both worked very well.

P.S. If you want to give your newly light-fed mouse a fun test ride, here are two places you might enjoy:

Redjellyfish (click here) and Jigzone

OR you can go to the Freepoverty website - just click on the image in the sidebar (where I am bragging about the 1019 cups that I have donated ;)) - and exercise your well-fed mouse work for the benefit of water-thirsty people around the world.

It won't cost you a thing except a few minutes of your time - which will also benefit you because you will learn A LOT about geography!



EDIT (14.XII.2008)

Who knew that, contrary to what the people selling this stuff will tell you, even optical mice can be tickled crazy by fluff?

Well, this mice tamer did:

PAPER TRAIL

(For some obscure reason, just reading the post above scared my mouse - which was apparently hungover today - back into orderly behaviour.
I don't suppose my looking very sternly at it while wagging my finger had anything to do with it...)

In for a penny

I hear Josef Fritzl - the man who kept his daughter locked in the cellar of his house for 24 years, and had seven children by her (while still living with her mother, of course) - has been charged with murder today.

Murder?
Yes: murder.


Apparently - that's according to the CNN correspondent - the authorities wanted to pin on him something that would get him into prison for as long as possible... And so they concentrated on the fact that according to Elisabeth Fritzl, the unfortunate daughter/hostage and mother of the children, one of the seven children born out of her incestuous "relationship" with her father died as a baby; and Fritzl is said to have burned the body. 

It seems clear that father Fritzl did not immediately cause the death of the child; but according to the prosecutor, the child appears to have had "a chance of surviving" (just how they determined this is not yet clear to me), but Fritzl prevented timely access to proper medical help.

That- if proven of course - should take care of their main concern (again, according to the CNN correspondent): that Fritzl gets a maximum jail sentence.

Because, apparently, having locked his daughter in a cellar, raping her repeatedly and producing children with her (most of whom also did not see the light of day until they were rescued by the police) is not enough to lock him away?

I do hope I got it wrong.
If I have, I'll be more than glad to correct this entry, or delete it entirely.