Exactly a month ago I said I was working on something big. The time to present it to the world has finally come. I welcome you to Crowchase.com – Crowchase and com with a dot. To become self-hosted was my wish for years and now that has finally happened. I can’t wait for you all to see it and I hope you’ll like it :)
Of tyrants and governments
There were people befriending tyrants; tyrants hosting Olympic games, people hating the land of a tyrant and all the people of the land and their toilets; pop stars smoking weed on a plane and pilots worried about losing their license because of the weed; creationism apparently is a huge thing in a country that managed to conquer the Moon and so is being gay if you professionally handle balls; and, of course, there were people accidentally burning priceless documents because they wanted to burn buildings of all ten governments — the same governments which had sent the police to beat up and/or throw one or two protesters into a river.
There was lots of shit I could have made fun of, but decided not to because I don’t like to reward myself if didn’t do anything to deserve a reward. So I was doing some legal shit to punish myself, but since I have completed a task I deserved a reward. Funny this mindset of mine is.
It’s also funny how ten governments, two prime ministers and two presidents aren’t enough to build 100 kilometers of highway. Which, of course, is better than paying a kidney-worth of money for a square centimeter of a highway.
Finally, I wanted to embed a song, but I might get a 10-foot cock if I did do it so I only posted a link.
Position and fake power
nuchylee @ freedigitalphotos.net
My day turned out to be an utter piece of crap. I’ve experienced some shit in the past year, but I think nothing has made me so surprisingly angry.
I wrote something yesterday and mentioned lousy criticism. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’m psychic. I’m more than happy to receive constructive critiques and I guess it makes me more sensitive to bullshit. However, I had no idea I could be so angered by assholes giving shit to people I care about.
One more teacher
I’ve wanted to be a teacher since the age of 10, but in all those years I managed to forget why I wanted to become one in the first place. Growing up made me appreciate people I used to hate, so my idea gradually shifted from if I become a teacher, there’s going to be one more teacher, so a chance to get a bad teacher will decrease to I’m going to be like those great teachers I used to hate, but I’ll try to make my students like me.
Even though I never publicly took teacher’s side in arguments in high school – you need to maintain your rep – I would usually agree with them. I wasn’t known as a troublemaker, but I was an editor of our school newspaper. A teacher who lead the journalism group (my class-mistress) gave us a lot of freedom in our work so I made some teachers (rightfully) angry a few times.
A teacher did make me angry once or twice during high school, but I knew they are human beings made of flesh and blood, and so am I. I’m not a pupil anymore, I’m not a child, but I’m also still not a teacher. This thought hasn’t crossed my mind for a long time now, but I’m basically nothing. I’m an alumnus, a to-be teacher who hangs around journalism classroom.
Passing judgement on equals
Today I hung around a municipal level of a journalism competition. I’ve always considered teachers to be PR experts and every person who does anything related to public must know their (target) audience. Unfortunately, a power position can obviously make people forget everything about relations.
I know teachers in the western world are rarely headhunted, but this never happens here. If you work in a school, you work there because another teacher retired and you were lucky enough to find a position. Also, if a teacher acts as a judge in a low-level competition, it’s not because of his or her expertise, but because that particular teacher had the time. Working in an over-hyped school or being a judge doesn’t grant you the ability to be an ass. Nothing does.
I never really though about it because nobody I know found himself in a position of power, but power really does seem to reveal people.
Designing the need to walk
I think this has been one of the longest unannounced pauses from blogging I have ever taken, if not the longest. I have almost magically became hyperproductive and didn’t procrastinate at all. Writing blog posts usually falls into procrastination, so, yeah. Anyways, I did do some blogging related stuff (two things) and I can’t wait to reveal them to the world, but bureaucracy is killing me.
Unpopular stereotypes
What I actually wanted to write about is something I wrote about a year ago and it made a lot of people angry – gaming. Basically, I analyzed a popular stereotype that says gamers are fat and socially awkward. If a stereotype forces me to write something, it means I completely disagree, but over the course of the article I actually changed my opinion and did conclude it’s very bad for health.
I’d like to announce I might change my opinion about that in the near future. One of the only games I actually like is The Sims series and there are those gaming goggles my Sims used to have. It’s a cool gadget from the future that can quickly fill their fun need, except it’s not from the future anymore!
International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) has come to an end. I normally wouldn’t care for it because teachers can’t afford three-meter-wide (10 ft) TVs, and even if they could, it would look ridiculous in 30 square meters (320 sq. ft) apartments. However, I stumbled upon a SourceFedNERD video where Omni by Virtuix was featured – and I was left speechless.
Did you watch the video? Good, skip to the next paragraph, NOW! Basically, Omni is a system that enables you to run on a frictionless surface while wearing goggles and experiencing a digital reality. A great plus is that it should fit in your living room.
Bones are for moving
First there was Nintendo Wii, a gaming platform whose creators we’ll be thanking one day because our children will have firsthand understanding of what bones are for.
Now there’s something that will be able to make them run! And it costs less than a bike and a treadmill together! And it seems to me you can also use it as a baby walker! What an amazing thing! And I’m not joking!
Seriously, every fourth person in the world is overweight, and one in ten people is obese. The rate of obesity rises way faster then the rate of malnutrition drops. Obesity is on it’s way to become the world’s biggest serial killer, even though I can’t remember any celebrity that has overeaten to death.
I don’t kick ass
At the beginning of each year, I write a short description about the previous year. Usually that happens spontaneously, but this time I’ve given it a lot of thought.
It has crossed my mind that I have never heard someone praise a year, so I was quite astonished to hear someone call 2013 a kick ass year. While I can undoubtedly say I haven’t kicked asses – never? – I’m very satisfied with how everything worked out.
And I had a wonderful time last night. If what’s coming can be predicted by the party, it’s going to be an awesome year. I won’t be kicking ass, though.
Happy new year!
Do I celebrate Christmas
Christmas has ended an hour and twenty minutes ago. That means I’m not very much sober – this post has an inborn tendency to turn out to be a lot more fun than they usually do, so let’s cover some shit.
Everyone’s tipsy
Fistly, what the fuck does the question: “Do you celebrate Christmas?” mean? There’s one potential difference between me and you. I don’t attend Christmas masses. If I wanted to hear hate speech from a tipsy person, I would take some of my friends for a drink. It would be fun. Seriously – you’d be surprised what I can say after a beer or five.
And if I need some hate speech from a sober person, I could just check flagged comments under my YouTube videos.
Let’s make things simple: a person who has a Christmas tree celebrates Christmas. We buy things we don’t need and eat more cakes than we normally do.
Orthodoxy and controversy
Except for me. I only bought what I’ve been talking about for months. Years. However, I did eat a lot of many different cakes and intend to do so tomorrow and the day after.
Ooo! There’s one more thing! I don’t give a shit if somebody’s going to think I’m Orthodox (i.e., Serbian) so I may or may not remove my Christmas ornaments by January 7. Since my tree, in the matter of fact, is not a cut off pine tree but is made of plastic, it shouldn’t drop any needles, hence there will be no need for me to remove it before I feel like doing so. We don’t use that corner of the room anyway.
The not at all Christmassy Christmas has passed. I’m one step closer to having everything that I need now, but I still don’t have that boiler.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Yugoslav TV sets and bad menagment
I’ve managed to do quite a lot in the last few days. The project’s almost done, two exams have passed and I’m halfway done with spring cleaning. To fully understand why exactly is it called the spring cleaning, you have to do it in mid December.
I actually enjoy not having enough time. When I take up the normal amount of shit to do, it perfectly fits in my calendar, yet sticking to the schedule is even bigger problem than wiping the dust under a Yugoslav TV set.
There’s one other thing I’ve noticed. It seems that my managerial skills are now directly proportional to the amount of money I’m about to receive. Even though I’m still not even close to what I need for a new water heater, the poor hourly rate moves me to the adulthood at staggering speed. I feel like tomorrow I’ll wake up in a strange bed surrounded by students learning about palliative geriatrics!
Or, bearing in mind how much I’ve been smoking recently, it’s more likely that I wake up at an oncology ward.
Casual drinking and idiocy
On Saturday evening, three very dear friends of mine and I bought some booze, taped it to our hands and filmed ourselves for a few hours. The final product can be seen below.
Basically, I was in a process of getting sick, I’m still not done with the proofreading project I mentioned a couple of weeks ago and now I have even more studying to make up for. That’s why I firmly decided to make a video that doesn’t require any preparation this time.
However, audio was completely out of sync in two (out of five) major clips I used to make the video, hence the editing got really complicated and took four days to complete.
I also wanted to make a video about terrible results both Croatian and international students achieved in PISA student assessment, but I simply couldn’t find the time. The fact that we have a generation of idiots keeps me rather pumped up, especially as a (future) teacher, so be sure I will make some content on the topic.
Blogging anniversary!
Today is the day of Saint Nicholas. This means yesterday was my 7th blogging anniversary!
I didn’t have (m)any friends at that point (in 2006!). With a severe case of pneumonia, I was put in house arrest for a month with nobody to visit me. Wrapped in blankets, I would be sitting at my table reading Bug and other PC-related magazines. There was this comparison of free Croatian blogging software so I gave each of them a try and actually continued to use one of them for years to come.
In the first ever blog post I published as a regular blogger, I wrote about presents children retrieve from their shoes. A few years ago I was terribly ashamed of the quality of my writing so I deleted the article. What an idiot.
Whys on the contagious naughtiness
Just in case you didn’t see the latest video:
I’ve developed the concept on Sunday, filmed it on Monday and spent around 14 hours editing. In the beginning, the video was 10 minutes long, but I managed to reduce it to 7 and a half minutes. Again, I’ve spent way too much time and now I’m in deep shit. Seriously.
Please behave
As I said in the video, I’ve received some criticism which I’m going to address.
However, I beg you to behave in the comments. I was overwhelmed by notifications of different sorts so I turned them all off. I manually checked for mischief, but I completely focused on making the new video so I didn’t do that for two days. When I loaded the comments on my first video this morning, the least I can say is that I was utterly and completely shocked.
It doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not – please refrain from mentioning other peoples’ mothers or threatening to kill someone! Insults and threats aren’t going to help you get your point across!
The language barrier
Some of you were offended and/or angered by things you thought I said. More precisely that:
- priests are gay
- heterosexual parents make an unnatural environment for children
Because quite a few of you said the same thing, I actually checked the video thinking I’ve made a grammar or syntax mistake that made me appear to be an asshole.
My assumption was wrong, as it turned out there was nothing wrong with what I said. That lead me to a conclusion that some of you understand English only on a very basic level so I created subtitles in Croatian. I don’t think I have ever done anything so boring.
I’m too tolerant
Many of you were like: “If I were you, I would have been a lot nastier!”
I don’t think you would.
Firstly, as I already said, throwing insults at people is not going to help you to get you point across. If I wanted to be primitive, I would have gone to a tavern to get drunk and discuss life with local drunkards.
Secondly, I engaged in a debate about the most controversial topic in the region. If I say one wrong thing, I might get beaten up in the streets and that’s not exactly what I’m trying to accomplish here.
Finally, I believe that homophobia is rooted in the lack of education and tolerance. That was and unfortunately still is caused by uneducated, impatient and intolerant teachers, while by teachers I mean both parents and the actual schoolteachers.
When I say parents, I mean a vast majority of parents (even mine) who were never actually educated on the topic of homosexuality, and even if they were, they were told it’s a disease that can and needs be cured by electroshock therapy.
Affiliation with UDBA
I don’t understand why my political or religious affiliation actually matters, but I believe addressing it can do no harm.
I am not affiliated with any political parties, governmental or non-governmental organizations and religious groups.
I’m neither a communist nor a member of UDBA! I’m also not a satanist.
I hope that’s all. Remember, we’re trying to make our country a beautiful place so please act accordingly.
Crowchase! 