Remember, Remember

Behind a mask is an idea...

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a failed assassination attempt by a group of provincial English Catholics against King James I of England and VI of Scotland. The plot intended to kill the King and most of the Protestant aristocracy by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening on November 5th, 1605.

The conspirators also planned to abduct the royal children and lead a popular revolt in the Midlands. The plot was overseen from May 1604 by Robert Catesby, with the conspirators coming from either wealthy Catholic or highly influential gentry families. Catesby may have decided on the plot when hopes of greater tolerance of Roman Catholicism under King James I faded, leaving many Catholics disappointed. However, it is likely that Catesby simply sought a future for Catholicism in England enabled by his drastic scheme: the plot was intended as the first step in a rebellion, during which James’ nine-year-old daughter (Princess Elizabeth) could be installed as a Catholic head of state.

Other plotters included Thomas Winter, Robert Winter, John Wright, Christopher Wright, Robert Keyes, Thomas Percy, John Grant, Ambrose Rokewood, Sir Everard Digby, Francis Tresham and Thomas Bates. The explosives were prepared by Guy “Guido” Fawkes, a man with 10 years’ military experience gained by fighting with the Spanish against the Dutch in the Spanish Netherlands.

The details of the plot were reputedly well-known to the principal Jesuit of England, Father Henry Garnet, as he had learned of the plot from Oswald Tesimond, a fellow Jesuit who, with the permission of his penitent Robert Catesby, had discussed the plot with him. Although he was convicted, there has since been some debate over how much Garnet really knew. As the details of the plot were known through confession, Garnet was bound against revealing them to the authorities. Despite his admonitions and protestations, the plot went ahead; however, Garnet’s opposition to it did not save him from being hanged, drawn and quartered for treason in 1606.

“You are the truth outscreaming these lies…”
- Flyleaf (Red Sam)

The Next Level

Moving on to the greater beyond...

Many people talk about stepping things up to the “next level” but what does that really mean? In the world of hip-hop music, rappers always try to make it seem like as if they’re beyond rapping about what they used to. However, as cleverly mentioned in a review that I recently read, it seems that all “next level” efforts simply involve using more futuristic sounds and spaced-out delivery. Same stuff, different wrapping.

The same can be said about  life… it’s just the same stuff with different wrapping each day. We wake up, we go to work, we go to sleep. The next day, we might do these things a bit differently but we’re still doing the same core activity: we wake up, we go to work, we go to sleep. Repeat this cycle until death. That’s the “next level”?

We can try and fill in the blanks with other activities but the same cycle continues. Maybe the “next level” is to step back from it all and try running life a bit differently… or maybe the “next level” is death and the afterlife. To each their own – I won’t tell you how to do things – but I know this much for myself: the next level requires me to start preparing for where I go from here.

“If I stay it won’t be along before I’m burning on the inside…”
- Three Days Grace (Get Out Alive)

Web Presence

Tangled up in a web of lies...

One of my cousins recently suggested that I turn my blog into a revenue-generating tool. How? He suggested that I focus or apply my blog to a defined set of topics – for example, on mobile technology – and that people would read it then to see what it’s all about. The traffic to my blog would suddenly be able to generate revenue through advertising…

The idea I think has a lot of merit but there are a couple of problems with this. I’d have to be committed to doing such a thing and I don’t think I am. I have a lot of extracurricular activities, including writing on this blog, and it’d be difficult to be able to dedicate more time to this blog than I already do. Plus, anyone who knows me knows that I’m not going to do anything haphazardly… so I’d have to go all out and ensure that this blog would be really unique and powerful. I know I can’t commit that kind of energy to a project of that kind at this time…

If I’m going to have a web presence of that magnitude, it’d require much more time and invariably, something will suffer while I’m all caught up in the spindles…

“Whatever you about to discover we off that…”
- Jay-Z (Off That)

Resonator

Powerful yet possibly dangerous...

Is it just me or do wind turbines scare you? I’ve always appreciated the power generated from a sustainable resource such as the wind or a water source but a farm of wind turbines bothers me because of the potential environmental damage that could occur. Granted, they don’t seem dangerous when gracefully being turned by the wind but when you have a multitude of them, I can imagine that for anyone nearby they can feel the cumulative physical effect of multiple turbines.

For example, the wind pushes the blades of Turbine A which then generate its own physical force adding to the wind’s power of Turbine B. Continue that process along a series of turbines and it becomes clear that the force generated by several turbines will be much greater than the natural force of the wind itself. Now try standing nearby there… and see just how it feels…

…or worse yet, imagine if the wind really becomes excessive and has the turbines spinning at full speed. Aside from the obvious fact that it’d become like a giant slice ‘n dice machine, the resonance frequency could be enough to kill people just from the sheer force of it. Imagine the damage that could happen to wildlife in that area. This may sound like it’s from the X-Files but bridges have been known to collapse due to high winds thanks to the resonance frequency… so what makes you think a farm of wind turbines couldn’t wreak havoc?

“Life, it’s always overblown, till we wake up create some other needs…”
- Chevelle (Roswell’s Spell)

Electric Grapes

Who would think that these could be lethal...

Think about it: a world full of electric grapes. Everywhere you go, bulbs light up a fruit and advertise to you its availability. Every social gathering, they’re available for your consumption. Every function, it can be had. Electric grapes.

Keep walking in a world where pleasure is king and electric grapes are consumed with tolerance levels in place. A little too much and you’ve lost your balance. A little more will lead to poor decision-making. A little more and you’re lethal with a pair of keys in your hand. Electric grapes bring the party to life but also bring the party to a sudden halt.

Maybe it’s time for the availability of electric grapes to be decreased and its consumption to not be advertised. The same was done for cigarettes in an effort to decrease its effects on the populace so maybe it’s time for the same to be done with electric grapes… too many people are losing their lives over these fruits.

“I know that you are in a better place, somewhere you can escape…”
- Adema (Do You Hear Me)

Productivity at Its Finest

Burning in a city of ice...

We all have to work… dragging ourselves out of bed each day in order to go into our workplace where we need to expend energy and effort to get things done. But who says we can’t have fun while at work?

In a recent meeting in my company’s boardroom, I broke apart a paperclip while listening to someone talk and I realized that I had five pieces… so I laid out the five pieces to form a torso, two legs and two arms on the desk. It reminded me of the doll from the first season of Dexter that was left in Dexter’s fridge by an enemy. I then wrote out on a piece of paper Dexter’s famous line of “he’s asking me if I want to play, and yes, I want to play, I really want to play…” and left the piece of paper there in the boardroom with the paperclip pieces.

Last month, I left a note in the boardroom for others to read when they’d eventually come into the boardroom about how it makes no sense for the Wizards and Magic to play each other in the NBA since the two are supposed to go hand in hand. I went as far as explaining that any wizard playing without magic was in for a long night…

The President of the company that I work at already thinks that I’m crazy since I pull pranks on other people all the time while seemingly coming up with very creative ideas and presentations for major issues. An example: I named our software implementation project as “Project Firestarter”… we’re a lumber yard.

Other wonderful things that I’ve done are:

• Changing the order of the keys on peoples’ keyboards or writing messages out of the letters on their keyboards
• Attaching a computer mouse to the bottom of a chair so that when that specific person moves their chair, the mouse moves along too like as if it’s a real mouse intended to scare them
• Turning everything upside-down at someone’s desk including their monitor, keyboard, chair, personal possessions, papers, stuffed animals and more
• Changing the radio station everytime a specific person leaves the room intended to make that person paranoid that the radio station keeps changing
• Giving a 5-minute speech in front of about 15 people for a meeting about how I tried to come up with a topic for my 5-minute speech and how I subsequently never did come up with a topic and then used the lack of a topic as my speech’s topic – and then titled the speech as “The Topic of Topics”…
• Watching hip-hop videos in the boardroom and turning up the music loud enough so that when people walked by the boardroom, they’d wonder what kind of meeting was taking place and how come they were missing out

Productivity is no good if you can’t have fun doing it… might as well travel the road less traveled in order to get a wild ride from it.

“Only thing that’s on my mind is who gon’ run this town tonight…”
- Run This Town (Jay-Z)

The Lillehammer Affair

Attacked on all sides - openly and covertly...

In Lillehammer, Norway on July 21, 1973, Israeli Mossad agents murdered Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki. The agents had been sent by Israel as part of Operation Wrath of God to assassinate Ali Hassan Salameh, the leader of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian group that carried out the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. They mistook Bouchiki for their target and shot him repeatedly as he walked back from a cinema to his apartment with his pregnant wife. Two members of the assassination team were arrested the next day as they re-used a getaway car to go to the airport. After their interrogation the whole cell was arrested. Incriminating documents and the keys to a network of safe houses were discovered.

Of the nine agents who participated directly in the assassination, six were captured by the Norwegian authorities and five were convicted of Bouchiki’s murder. Two of the killers escaped and one was acquitted. The five convicts were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two and a half to five years but all were released within 22 months and deported to Israel.

The revelations of the captured agents dealt a massive blow to the undercover infrastructure of the Mossad in Europe. Agents who had been exposed had to be recalled, safe houses abandoned, phone numbers changed and operational methods modified. Michael Harari, the leader of the assassins, managed to escape and was never extradited by Israel to Norway. The Israeli government has not admitted responsibility for the murder, but in 1996 paid compensation equal to US$283,000 split between Bouchiki’s wife and daughter, and a separate settlement of US$118,000 to a son from a previous marriage.

“Time is like a knife for me now…”
- Lacuna Coil (My Wings)

Put You On Game

Cold and barren throughout life...

Don’t you know that I run this place,
And I’ve begun this race,
Must I rerun this pace?
I’m the reason its become this way
And their love for it is the reason I have become this praised

They love my darkness,
I make them heartless,
And in return, the have become my martyrs,
I’ve been in the poem of many a poet,
And I reside in the art of many a artist

Some of your smartest have tried to articulate
My whole part in this
But they’re fruitless in their harvestin’
The drow grows from my footsteps
I’m the one that they follow,
I am the one that they march with

Through the back alleys
And the black markets,
The Oval Offices,
The crack-houses and apartments
Through the mazes of the queens,
The pages of the sages
And the Chambers of The Kings

Through the veins-es of the fiends,
A paper chaser’s pager,
Yo, I’m famous on the scene
One of the oldest, most ancient-est of things
Speak every single language on the planet, y’all mean?

I am the American dream,
The rape of Africa
The undying machine,
The overpriced medicine,
The murderous regime,
The tough guy’s front,
And the one behind the scenes

I am the blood of this city,
It’s gas, water, and electricity,
I’m it’s gym, and it’s math, and it’s history,
The gunshots in the class
And you can’t pass if you’re missin, G.

I taught them better than that
I taught them aim for the head
And hope they never come back
I’m glad your daddy’s gone, baby,
Hope he never comes back,
I hope he’s with your mother,
With my hustlers high in my trap

I hope you die in his trash,
I can’t help it all I hear when you’re crying is laughs
I’m sure somebody find you tied up in this bag,
Behind the hospital little baby,
Crack addicts had

Then maybe you can grow up to be a stripper,
A welfare-receiving prostitute
And gold digger,
You can watch on TV,
How they should properly depict you,
The rivers should flow with liquor,
Quench your thirst on my elixirs,

I am the safe haven for the rebel runaway and the resistor
Ihe trusted misleader,
The number one defender,
And from a throne of their bones I rule,
These fools are my fuel
So I make them Cool

Baptize them in the water out of Scarface pool,
And feed ‘em from the table that held the Corleone’s food,
If you die, tell them that you played my game
I hope your bullet holes become mouths that say my name,
‘Cause I’m the… [gunshot]

- Lupe Fiasco (Put You On Game)

Powered Sails

Using the wind to power your sails...

Everyone uses the washroom at some point in the day. It’s a wonderful experience that results in us usually feeling a bit happier after leaving the premises. But when leaving, we often come across the last impediment to our sweet escape: paper towels vs. electric hand dryer.

The paper conservationists will tell you that you’re saving the world by using electric hand dryers while the energy conservationists will proclaim you’re saving the world by using paper towels instead. It seems that whichever route you go in this critical exit decision, you’re both saving and harming the environment.

The solution: Let the air dry your hands… unless the wind conservationists begin to clamour about valuable air being lost from other more meaningful tasks.

“I’m gonna blow my mind, I won’t cry wolf…”
- Adema (Planets)

Scissors & Blades

Simple and effective - functional not aesthetic...

We live in a culture obsessed by hair. Having enough on your head, not having any in other locations, methods on how to get rid of hair permanently, methods on how to grow your hair back, etc. It’s quite silly when you think about just how much emphasis is put on it.

I went bald a few years ago and decided to start shaving my head in an effort to accept that I no longer had sufficient hair on my head. I tried several methods of trying to re-grow my hair – Rogaine, some crazy African serum, old wives’ tales on how to re-grow hair, special hair thickening shampoos, etc. – but they all failed. Eventually, after all the failed attempts and self-confidence issues, I realized that it was all pointless and really of no benefit. It was time and energy being spent on something that society and culture was telling me I was supposed to do… not something that I really needed to do.

Now, I prefer being bald because of how simple it is and how I have no worries. Bad hair day? Nope. Need a haircut? Nope. If a cure to baldness was found, I’m not too sure if I’d even want to take the cure to get hair back on my head.

“If they ain’t giving it up, then they ain’t getting none and don’t give ‘em all naw, man, just give ‘em some…”
- Lupe Fiasco (American Terrorist)