Fright Knight

Recipe:

1/2 lb of high-tech toys
1 fairly attractive woman
1 hero
1 madman
a tbs of moral dilemma
a pinch of death
madness to taste

Stir well, let simmer for 2.5 hrs.

What do you get?
A fairly entertaining, much acclaimed and even more hyped superhero blockbuster.

Only this time, someone spit in Batman's soup. Him:



Don't get me wrong, "The Dark Knight" is a good movie. It's just that I would have given it a different title. Because apart from Commissioner Gordon's epic speech at the end of the movie, the Dark Knight is pretty much only second runner up in this movie. They should have called it "The Dark Jester".
Ledger's performance as the scar-faced, insane Clown was definitely one of the best I have ever seen. He was really good, and speaking from a subjective point of view, it seemed like he got way more on-screen time than Batman.

I can honestly say, I have never seen a movie, in which somebody portrayed a madman quite so detailed and with such "passion", that I actually started to be "afraid" of the guy. At first you think "Haha, funny what he did with that pen...", then after 10 more minutes, you wonder how he can be so cruel and a little voice in your head starts whispering "dude, that is wrong". After some more minutes you start feeling uncomfortable; this guy, he shows not a single sign of rationality. Halfway through the movie, you loath the guy. His very face makes you hate him, this cold, brutal, inhuman abomination of a man. And then, then you feel desperation.
How can it be that a creature as malevolent as this man, can survive for so long? Why don't they just kill him. Batman, Gordon, or somebody else, anybody really. Why do they all uphold the law and play according to the rules when he, mercilessly and without any sign of guilt, plays with the lives of countless people as if they were just toys, and doesn't care about rules? And the little voice in your head is a thundering roar of outrage and disbelief now, and it screams: "Why don't you kill him already, he will never stop if you don't!" And still, they don't.

And then you realize what the true challenge in being a good person. It`s not just to be good. And to do good and make the world a slightly better place, one step at a time. It also means you can't do bad things, because that makes you one of the bad guys yourself. And that is the real challenge. Not dodging the bullets, not keeping your identity secret at all costs.

No, the real challenge is not to become like them.


And as a side note, having seen his truly scary performance, the way he talked and licked his scarred lips was just absolutely unsettling. I can see why people believe the rumors that he spent some time in a loony bin to prepare for his role.
And I am not in the least surprised that he offed himself. I guess it's true that you become part of your role, seems like he adopted his fair share of mental problems.

Recreational Running

Heya, this post is going to be a little more personal. Up to now I mainly rambled on about random stuff, in this here post I will let you in on my life a little.

As I mentioned before, I did a BA thesis that was due January. In order to be able to focus and remain calm, I started running back in November.
Healthy mind, healthy body. That kind of stuff.
And trust me it helps tremendously. Running through the woods has a very calming, cleansing effect on me. It lets you ponder a day's events, reflect on a thought you couldn't quite finish at the desk, or just go into idle mode and run and run and run...

And it helps you loose weight as well.
Back in early December this here tubby boy weighed a whooping 87.5 kg at 1.86m.
That's 193 pounds at 6'1". Not outright fat, but I felt too heavy.
I started running seriously only after I finished my thesis, but I have been running 3 times a week now, for some time.
I started at 4kms(2.5 miles), and then went up to 6 km and today I ran a whooping 9.5km aka 5.9 miles.
And I just realized I now weigh 80.7 kg or 178 pounds.
I lost 15 pounds, without actually changing my diet at all.

I am actually quite thrilled to see this work. I have never been much of a sports enthusiast (apart from e-sports, "would you like to see my micro" nerd stuff, which I quit cold-turkey style in January), so I am surprised to see I am good at this.
My goal for now is to be able to run 15 km (9.3 miles) in one session. That's a good distance to be able to run the usual 10km "competitions" for fun with some energy to spare.

And if I can ever manage, my longterm goal is to run a marathon, at least once. Preferably Boston or New York. But I hate running on tarmac...
We'll see, for now, it's laps in the park for me.

Hetero-hate or just sloppy spelling?

So I went to the Munich Bladenight last Monday.
Yeah I know it's a week now, but I just discovered something that I thought I'd share.

The website www.s2d8.com sells these hip latex/rubber/whatever material wristbands that are oh so in fashion these days.
Only these are not for breast cancer awareness or other charity reasons, these convey your dating willingness and sexual preference in a neat colour code.
So last Monday, they gave some away for free. All of these were colour coded yellow/black. This, according to the attached business-card sized flyer, means the wearer is looking for "DATES! (Today? asap? Now?)"

Which is all I checked before tugging the thing in my pocket for later disposal in the next trash can.

Why do I come back to this now?
Well, I forgot to trash it, and found the wristband in my pocket when preparing my gear for tonight's Bladenight.
And as I was about to fling it into the my litter bin, my trained translator's eye saw this:
As I mentioned the flyer attached reveals the colour codes of the bands, with a description.



What caught my eye was the bottom explanation for the colours orange and pink.
Pink as you may have guessed means "Gay", as usual.
However apparently orange means you are a "Hetro".
Yeah that's right "hetro" not "hetero"
At first I thought it was a spelling mistake, but then I remembered I had seen it before. So I checked.
For those of you who don't know yet, there is a very useful slang dictionary out there on the web called www.urbandictionary.com that has all kinds of slang words explained.

And upon entering "hetro", what does it come up with?

"2. Hetro

Slang for straight people, sometimes used in a derogatory fashion by gay people who dont(sic) like straight people. Like homo is used by straight people to put gays down.
1. "I'm a hetro"
2. "Look at those damn hetros walking around like they own the place" "

So the question remains, is this some sort of hetero-bashing, or just a really funny spelling mistake? It is after all a website in German, and marketing people are not always known for their excellent English-skills.
On their website, they are apparently able to spell "hetero" correctly, which makes it seem like an unintentional mistake.
I also doubt many Germans notice this or would even give a shit.
Anyway, it made me chuckle and I thought I'd share it with you.


PS: All copyrights remain with their respective owners and I do not take any responsibility for any of the contents of the pages I linked to.

Idle and Indifferent?

So far, blogging is going slow on my side. Maybe my life isn't all that interesting after all or maybe I am just a little lazy, as usual.
However, methinks that is no reason to give up entirely.
Hence, I shall post at least 1 post per week from now on, and to force myself to do so, I will include a note in my calendar to remind me of it.
Could be my posts are somewhat trivial at times, but then again only practice makes perfect and who knows, I might just be able to present even mediocre events in interesting posts...
We'll see.
Fell free to scold me if I am boring.

Computer Chaos

- Hey Ben, why is there no update on your blog?

Well, the main reason for my being absent from the interweb is that my antiquity of a personal computer decided to go on strike. When it comes to PCs I favour a hands on approach and tried fixing it myself. This abomination of a machine has been assembled by yours truly over the years, by replacing individual components whenever I saw the need. In a way, just like Frankenstein, I created my own monster. And apparently, to spin the comparison just a little further, in mid April said Monster looked into the mirror and realized what an ugly brute it was.

I will never forget that fear inducing , horibble scream of his and the moment he froze up in sheer terror. Whatever I did, the beast woudl not respond, the only thign my probing fingers were able to pry out of him were repetitions of that horrible, deranged outcry of mental pain: ....."BEEEEEEP"...."BEEEEP" at every push of a button.

But this is were the similarities with Frankenstein end. When he used power to bring his abomination to life, I had to cut power to fix mine. Okay I did fish some nasty looking used pieces taken from other PCs out of their dusty graves, let's forget about Frankenstein for now.

I have been fixing my PC for years and I consider myself a pro at installing Windows and all necessary updates. Hell I am so good at it I can literally do it in my sleep (Yeah original versions of Windows can be updated, and it can take up to 4 hours from scratch to SP3 + all security updates. Not that you would know that you filthy software pirates!) Jokes aside, this time it took me 5 days to do countless reinstalls, then I went to visit a friend in Geneva and when I came back it was all broken again.

As a result I have been fighting with my piece of crap excuse of a PC for a whole month now, only to discover it wasn't his fault at all. After sleepless nights, fits of rage and more bluescreens than there are bicycles in Bejing I found the reason:
Dust - no not the kind from the Golden Compass, the ordinary household kind.
After a serious clean and reassemble, I did yell out in delight: "IT'S ALIVE!!!"
No I did not really, however, I know what Frankenstein must've felt when he turned the switch and the long dead pieces of roughly sewn together meat started to move.



- I've done you wrong old friend, you may be limping along at the speed of Forest Gump prior to loosing his leg braces, and the capacity of your CPU would make you Forest's best friend on the short bus, but it wasn't your fault. -