A new computer… Again!

So I had the lovely Acer Timeline, but the Q dropped it on the floor (which somehow was my fault) and it died. Just before I really needed to safe my work which I didn’t do and so when I got a new computer, the diminutive Toshiba Portégé, I had a lot of work to re-do, and I was not nearly finished, after three months, when the Q dropped a glass of coke over it and it died. Just when I was thinking, ”Where’s my portable harddrive? Because I really need to make a back-up now”

So all my work lost again.

So this is my new computer:

Thieving in Blogsphere

Every now and then a friend points out a site where hey have been stealing my drawings and posting them without my permission, without an acknowledgment of me as the artist, or a link to my blog. Check this!

But this blog, called ”desert pill pusher” is the pits! Yes she stole one of my drawings, but that is not all, this drawing I gave to Carol of American Bedu for the post she copied with the drawing! Turns out she stole many  more posts from American Bedu. And the other posts I seemed to recognize too, they are mostly stolen from other bloggers like Layla from Blue Abaya,  Rasheeds World, A Canadian in Riyadh, Saudi Jeans, and Susie of Arabia.
Virtually the entire content of this Pillpusher blog is stolen from the best known bloggers about Saudi Arabia! How stupid can you get? Some of these blogs have HUGE reader bases, you can count on being shown up for the thief you are at some time!
Why does she do it?
She is making money from it!
She even used several articles of other bloggers to write a newspaper article!

And that’s not all, she is also a racist bigot, making up lies about white women. (Always considered to be sluts in the Middle East). Well, I am a white woman, and I am amazed that although we are utter sluts, we are still good enough to have our artwork and writings stolen by this mentally unstable blogger.
I can’t wait for her reaction when she finds out her robberblog has been discovered. She will write some original content for the first time in her life and the subject will be how she is being persecuted by the victims of her thievery, and how unfair it is and how she meant well, and doesn’t understand what she did wrong.

check out her blog and tell her what you think of her methods of ”writing”: Desert Pillpusher

Religious freedom or human rights for babies?

Guess what, I opt for human rights for babies.

This was in the news last week:

A court in Cologne, Germany has ruled that removing the foreskin of young boys for religious reasons amounts to bodily harm. European Jewish and Muslim groups have joined forces to protest against the decision and defend their right to perform the act on religious grounds.

I read this heartbreaking article which a friend put up on face book.

Babies who get circumcised go into coma, deep depressive sleep and suffer health problems. They connect less with the mother, often drink badly or not at all for a while, and there is a marked psychological effect on them as adults. And there is the number of babies who die, but that is just collateral damage. There is also a detrimental effect on the penis, the now unprotected tip will become much less sensitive, And as the foreskin contains the highest number of nerves in the male body this is lost too. For women sex can be less pleasurable as well. The foreskin has a distinct function also during the sexual act. No foreskin should not be removed without real medical need.

I do not think that parents have any right to mutilate their children. It’s not a right of parents. But children do have rights here, the right to remain intact until hey decide as well-informed adults if they need to cut important pieces of their bodies. Parents have a job, and that it to protect their children from harm. Not to cause it!

If you belong to one of those religions where the invisible skydaddy expects you to worship him by offering up your foreskin you can do so as an adult, when it is your own informed decision.

A baby is not asked, and it will be many years before he is old enough to decide for himself is he likes to have a dangerous unnecessary and harmful procedure done on his most sensitive parts. But that is for me the only acceptable form of circumcision. An adult male, who has first been well informed about the uselessness and the effect on his sexual feelings, and who still wants to have the most sensitive bits cut off?
Fine.
Go for it. But don’t mutilate your baby. Wait 20 years and see what he decides.

I fully agree with the German court, intelligent modern rational people should not cut up, damage, traumatize and endanger the lives of their babies. And if they do they should be punished.

And read this article about how male circumcision harms women.

My death and funeral arrangements

This is an important post, I lost my parents in a plane crash, and a few months ago I lost my brother. And while you are dying inside and hurting you have to think about the ”disposal” and what your loved ones would have wanted. I want to spare whoever gets the task of getting rid of my body the odious mulling over what I would have wanted.
I am going to describe in detail what to do with my remains and the party after, and I am doing it here on my Clouddragon blog so it will be available, probably for nigh on eternity, and easily accessible for everybody.

My most beloved human is the Q, he inherits my earthly goods, and as he is totally uninterested in my ”stuff” (antiques, books and collections) My friend Ruth gets the task of sharing them out. So anybody interested in some of my ”stuff” can put a petition to Ruth after I am dead.

The body:
No embalming if I die in America! It’s bad for the environment and a way of stealing more money from the survivors for something totally useless! I would like to wear something quite spectacular, and have glorious hair. If I have foreseen my demise I might have some nice painted coffin prepared, if not I want the simplest, honest wood, no shiny fake satin etc. coffin. If any artist feels the urge to paint on it, knock yourself out, but you have only a few days to do it.

I want to be buried in a nice place, with lots of trees, and where you don’t get dug up again. Something like ”De natuur begraafplaats” in the Netherlands. And as I won’t be dug up, I have another request of those who do the last honors, I want you to secretly sneak in a lot of stuff, jewelry, statues, made of stone porcelain and metal. You see, I think that we are being very inconsiderate towards future archaeologists, and I want to leave something fun to be excavated in 2000 years.

The before party:
I will be dead so I will be fine, in time every part of me will return to the stardust of which I am made, so don’t worry about me. But I hope and expect that there will be some people who will be really depressed that I am gone. So this party is for you (except the music). Everybody can write something and give a speech. My sisters do not get to organize this btw. Make sure they don’t, they can come but they are not allowed to butt in anywhere. Lots of flowers are welcome.

Music:
There’s lots of music in Dutch funerals and I want to make sure it’s the right music. My music. No matter how much suffering it will produce. I will not sink to the depth of Vogon poetry. (this is preliminary, I might change the selection a lot)

• Mozart’s requiem
• Iron Maiden
• Sarah Vaughan
• King Diamond, Abigail

Dumping the coffin in the grave:
Please don’t make a lot of fuss about this, especially when it’s cold or raining, just dump it in the hole, get some earth on top of it, and move on to:

The after party:
For the after party I am thinking a nice buffet, lots of amuses,  or a barbecue. Good food, because this is the last party I am throwing. I will try and leave enough money to organize this. And of course some super desserts and lots of chocolate (Green & Blacks organic, only medicinal quality chocolate please) and chocolate cake. Lots of nice drinks and fresh fruit- and vegetable juices.

Music can be more attuned to creature comforts. Nice seating everywhere so people can sit down with their food and reminisce about how lovely I was and how terribly sad it is that I am gone.
Make sure you get a nice venue where there’s no time limit like they have in these boring funeral parlors.
Either something superbly elegant, or totally magical, or the Gothic Dracula’s castle idea. Feel free to choose something cool.
If we aren’t too old we could end up with a disco party, although I think a solid zimmer frame gets you a long way so that should be no excuse.

I expect my friends and loved ones to send me off with a bang!

PS, I am really serious, this really is the blueprint for the death-party after my demise and I expect my friends and family to abide with this.

Cthulhu-Carrot

Guess what I found in The Tarq’s big bag of carrots???

A Cthulhu Carrot!

I am going to sell it on E-bay! If you can get a couple of thousand dollars for a piece of toast with the face of Jesus, I could surely get a few dollars for a carrot which is an exact portrait of Cthulhu…

I’ve listed it, click here to watch (and bid) on my Cthulhu carrot!

Aafke’s wager versus Pascal’s wager

Pascal’s wager:

For those who do not know, in the seventeenth century the mathematician Blaise Pascal formulated his infamous pragmatic argument for belief in God in his ”Pensées”. The argument runs as follows:

If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing (assuming that death is the absolute end), whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything (eternal bliss). But if you correctly disbelieve in God, you gain nothing (death ends all), whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in God, you lose everything (eternal damnation).

How should you bet? Regardless of any evidence for or against the existence of God, Pascal argued that failure to accept God’s existence risks losing everything with no payoff on any count. The best bet, then, is to accept the existence of God. There have been several objections to the wager: that a person cannot simply will himself to believe something that is evidently false to him; that the wager would apply as much to belief in the wrong God as it would to disbelief in all gods, leaving the the believer in any particular god in the same situation as the atheist or agnostic; that God would not reward belief in him based solely on hedging one’s bets; and so on…

I find Pascal’s wager stupid and supercillious, here is a better alternative, which btw I do not take much credit for, as I formulated the basics of it when I was about 8 years old.

Aafke’s wager

If you are, due to nonexistent evidence, not convinced that there is an all loving, compassionate, all-powerful invisible skydaddy, then you should not waste your time with silly immoral religions, but you should spend your life spreading sweetness and light and trying to make the world a better place.

How should you bet? On the ”Spreading Sweetness and Light” bit. If there is an all-loving, compassionate, all-powerful, invisible sky daddy you lose nothing, but gain everything, the invisible sky daddy will not mind you never believed for he/she never put out any proof and you have been a good caring human being so you will always be in.

But if you have been doing bad things, even though they were endorsed in some holy book, a truly good and honest invisible sky daddy would take you to task for it, so you gained nothing, and lost everything, by following rules which you knew  were immoral but you liked them anyway and you justified them because some bronze age barbarian brute wrote them in some book.

So whose the clever thinker here?

Me, not Blaise!

More about what is good and what is bad in the next post.

Rising water

We have been having a lot of rain and stormy weather. The water level has risen so much that several villages and surrounding countryside have been evacuated.

Not only is the water level very high, in this photo you seehow low the villages are compared to the canal. The dike of this canal is so saturated with water that it is now leaking and it could break down. A large part of the countryside would be flooded within a few hours if that would happen.

Some farmers have refused to leave and abandon their animals. There are now plans to evacuate the animals as well.

Merry Christmas!

My tree

My nativity stall

 

My present!, From my brother, one dial for my time, one dial for Q time!

I love it!

 

scent of the day: Hové Rue Royale

I brought this perfume when we were visiting New Orleans. Yummm, it’s a very elegant deep, somewhat sweet and spicy perfume.

Anastasya Volochkova dancing to Adiemus

The russian dancer Anastasiya Volochkova Beautiful and brilliant.

Enjoy and happy Christmas, Yule, etc.

My Chrysanthemum