Legislation strikes back

So we had some unfortunate events here earlier this year when several persons ran amok and shot some people.

The usual public demand for more security after such events lead to the typical reaction of politicians. Instead of admitting to the public that there is a risk you just cannot minimize anymore with a halfway intelligent legislation they plan to.....

outlaw paintball games. The given explanation is that you can practice for killings in this way. It will probably take just some more killing sprees to outlaw water pistols as well.

I once learned that when it is not necessary to enact a law it is necessary to not enact a law. This simple concept seems to have gone out of fashion.

I know of no one who claimed that any of the shooters ever attended paintball games. There simply is no good reason to pass such a law. It´s pure populism.

Exclaimer: I don´t play paintball games myself and probably never will. It just pisses me off that my personal freedom is curtailed more and more for no good reason.

Happy Labour Day

A very normal Labour Day. In some big cities there were the traditional riots. When formerly the motto was proletarians unite, today it´s just idiots unite.

On a day dedicated to the workers, all the people who appear in the news belong to the lazy ones who probably not even once held a job.

Nothing new under the sun

Today I got around to re-read some essays from Kurt Tucholsky, a german author, journalist and satirist. One, called “A short outline of national economics”, had a paragraph I found exceptionally fitting for the situation of today. The essay itself was written sometimes in the 1920´s or 30´s:

“Every economy relies on the credit system, that is, the false assumption the other one will pay back money loaned to him. If he doesn´t do so, a so-called supporting measure is undertaken, by which all, except the state, will profit. Such a collapse can be recognized by the fact that the people are asked to have confidence. They oftenly have nothing else anymore anyway at this point.”

sneezy easter

All in all, the prolonged easter-weekend wasn´t that bad. Much opportunity to have fun with the friends, going to an easter fire etc.

What really goes on my nerves is that the weather, which was really cold just a few weeks ago, changed completely and we now have temperatures constantly well above 20 degrees. That´s not bad in itself, but it leads to an insane amount of plants that decided to bloom simultaneously. As a person suffering from allergies to various kinds of pollen, that means I have to pay dearly for every minute I try to have fun outside. Hopefully the situation will get better as fast as it got worse.

A perfect weekend

After a stressfull week, there´s nothing better than relaxing and hanging around with friends at the weekend. This weekend was pretty much perfect.

On friday I had the obligatory poker league game. Our furnishing was extended by a fridge and a microwave this time.

The big surprise was, that I actually ended first place. That´s pretty unusual for me. To commemorate this, I took a photo of my winning hand:

On Saturday, a friend gave a party to celebrate his birthday. It was interesting and funny. What bugs me, though, is that we seem to adopt the behaviour of our parents. After finishing dinner, the men separated from the women. We told old army stories and let the women have their talk about whatever women talk about when they are among themselves. I have never noticed this to happen before. A sign of old age probably? I´ll have to keep an eye on it on further occasions.

On Sunday morning we went to the shooting range. It´s perfect for clearing your thoughts and just live for the moment. Besides, I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning....

All in all, a perfect weekend.

The unmentioned risks of Youtube

Today I was a member of a board that conducted the final examination of some trainees. As you could imagine it was a highly official setting and the trainees were quite a bit nervous. My part was simply to remain silent, to take notes and afterwards discuss the given answers with the other boardmembers and decide upon the grades we would give.

Unfortunately, I have been watching so many Youtube videos lately, that some really silly joke stuck in my memory. So when one of the examinees gave an answer like "in this case size doesn´t matter" I had to work pretty hard to repress the urge of replying "That´s what she said!". I´m glad that I couldn´t watch my face at this, because I think I must have looked pretty stupid.

Only later did it occur to me that this reply would not only have ruined the examination; it would have been a joke on my cost as well...

Exaggeration and overkill

I love it how some simple things can evolve quite far when you have some creative and borderline silly guys around...

So this all started when some friends of mine got into poker (Texas Holdem of course).
At first, we only played occasionally. Then we decided (being german) that we have to have a club, no , a league, and play every other week. So the league of the extraordinarily ordinary gentlemen was founded.

Another few months later, we decided that it was absolutely necessary to have an own poker room. Fortunately the father-in-law of one of us owns a farm with some unused old buildings we could renovate. Some workdays later, after groundworks (quite some cubic metres of sand and concrete, a new floor, some paint etc. the room was ready.
Piece by piece the furnishing came in as well. A poker table, chairs, cupboards, lamps, an old couch, a radio, a computer, a TV-Set, a game console, some electric heaters etc.

All the stuff you can´t do without when you play poker every other week, right?

The funniest thing was when lately somebody brought along an old oven to heat frozen pizzas. This was the time the fuse blew. We are now considering upgrading the wires...