The Internet is (Not Just) for Porn

Okay, I've been holding this one back up for a while even though one of my best friend urged me to do it quite a while ago, because despite the topic is an interesting one to discuss, it's still something quite dangerous to talk about because it involves some privacy and different point of views. But then this son of a bitch came along and decided to do yet another retarded thing for reasons that doesn't make any goddamn sense, I just have to do this after all.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls; I'm going to talk about porn.

And then there was much rejoicing

Let's Meet Up... Somewhere

Hello there, gorgeous beings. Today I'm going to expose the shame (pride?) that most of us Indonesian people have in common. I'm going to talk about how we arrange appointments.

How appoinments are supposed to be made?

Let's see the ideal conditions in an appointment, I'm going to use an "unofficial group meet up" situation as an example. First thing first, the time and location of the meeting must be arranged and decided beforehand, surely no one wants to go blindly with no idea when or where they should be for the appointment.

Not all of us can fast travel, you know

Next is the list of people that will come, participants should let everyone else know whether they are available on the said time, and of course whether they are familiar or at least know the location of where the meeting will take place.

Finally, before the appointed day comes, or at least several hours before the meet up time, make sure you tell anyone attending should it turns out that you can't come after all. Your prescence might not be important for the whole thing, but at least it shows that you are a responsible person.

Simple Ethics Guide, by an Introvert

Ah, real life, the place where everything goes on, and nothing may escape from it (if not for long). A world where your fantasies might get laughed at and your fetishes might deliver you to jail. The reality in which resides the harsh truths that will haunt you for eternity, but will still gives you some experience points like in any RPG you know. But I'm not going to talk about those things... yet.

Not having a light pillar shooting up through your head kinda kills the excitement anyway

What I'm going to discuss are the simple words that would either pave your way to 'ethical human being', or 'that ignorant douchebag'. Let's consider these three rare words for a bit: "Please", "thank you", and "sorry".

"Please", as we all know, is a word used for polite requests or questions.

So why should we use it?
It's to turn your requests from 'giving order' into 'asking a favor'; which might sound the same, but with a very different meaning to the receiver. There are other variants for the usage of this word, such as "could you do me a favor", or "would you kindly", but they all hold the same meaning. By using "please", the person you asked would feel like they're doing you a favor instead of feeling like being bossed around.

Depends on the usage, however

Next is "thank you", which is a word used to express our gratitude towards someone. Usually said when that someone did something for us, be it giving an item, a favor, or simply an act of kindness.

So why should we use it?
Imagine that you're holding a door open for someone else behind you, and they just walk past without even looking at you (or worse giving that "you're a weirdo" look). Don't you feel like pulling them back and smack their head to that very door? No? Well, you're stilll normal then, good for you.

But my point is, saying "thank you", or "thanks", or a simple smile to the person who went out of their way and did something for you, no matter how small, would have a great impact on both you and that person. By expressing your gratitude, that person would feel appreciated and will live their life with better confidence, and you yourself would feel more at ease and unconsiously improve your physical and emotional health.

"This happens after 2 billion worth of 'thank you's, thank you!"

Finally we have "sorry", the word we mostly use to express our apology. It can also be used to show the feeling of regret, compunction, sympathy, pity, etc.

So why should we use it?
Well if you're the kind of person who would just walk away as if nothing happened when you accidentaly bump someone's shoulder, or stepped on someone's feet, or running over someone's baby, you need some therapy (especially for the last part). "But I didn't even see them", you may argue, "why should I be held responsible for something I had no idea about? It might even be their fault for not paying attention".

Well, it's a fine argument, but it would only make the situation worse. The fact that you didn't see them could be interpreted that they don't mean much to you in the first place and you have every right in the world to ignore them, and you refusing to accept the responsibility and even accusing the other party guilty would only show that you position yourself higher than them, and being arrogant won't resolve anything.

You don't apologize only because you're in the wrong, you do that to restore - or even improve - the relationship you have with that person after that incident happened. When you apologize to someone, there will be that guilty feeling on the one who received the apology should they refuse to forgive you (unless you really did ran over their baby), so there's really nothing to lose. There are also a lot of other benefits in apologizing, but mostly it's to show that you prefer being a respectable human being than keeping your ego. It's true that there are things that can't be easily forgiven, but it's a lot better for you to try apologizing instead of keeping that pride and hope the matter will resolve on its own, even though it might be the hardest thing to say.

"Sorry for blowing up your planet, buddy"

Words are powerful weapon when they are spoken, but they also prove to have considerable effect when not spoken at all. Hopefully it's not that difficult to make a habit of saying these words when the time comes for you to actually say them. Just remember the basics of conversation technique (which might be difficult for us introverts), and remember to treat people as fellow human beings, because that's also how you want to be treated like, right?

It's Due Date, Jim

Deadlines, the time limit of a project before it’s declared overdue (hence dead), the very thing that scares writers in finishing their articles, workers trying to escape overtimes, and college students trying to finish their report paper; A word that actually had a more literal meaning during the 1864 Civil War as stated by a certain famous article site with a taste of humor.

But we’re not going to talk about the definition of deadlines, nor the effect they do to stressed minds, weak-hearted people, movie producers, and game companies.

Not everything can be forgiven with a DLC

Actually, there are only two kinds of things that will happen to people being faced with deadlines. The first kind of reaction would be to plan ahead and try to finish the things they need to do bit by bit, and hopefully everything would be done before the date of the deadline even comes around.

The second reaction however, would be to procrastinate as much as possible until the very end, when those people would finally step back into reality and says, “Yup, guess it’s time to do it, it’s now or never”. Some of you would probably judge those kinds of people as ‘lazy’ or ‘untrustworthy’. Now, I know that it is true in many cases, but let’s look at the phenomenon in a different light.

You see, there are people who would freak out by the thought that the deadline of that work they’re doing is looming very close by like that annoying next door neighbor you never want to come visit you, and got so stressed out that their brain just freezes, halting any means of productivity and not even an act of true love can ever thaw it.

And then they would rage-quit while singing

However, there are people who would actually gain some kind of superpowers when the deadline comes knocking at their door. Every single ideas in their head comes pouring out, inspirations suddenly can come from anything, their time taking a dump in the bathroom becomes a method of meditation that makes their brain as superior as Sherlock Holmes in his best case of Asperger’s syndrome.

I am the latter kind, which is why I can relate when someone claims that “they can only work under pressure”. We need our targets, we need our due dates – we need our deadlines. That’s why I’m trying to spend as much as I can from my savings because I want that strong outside push to earn even more than what I spent.

Money well spent, though

But does it mean that we can work on constant pressure over and over? Nope, there is a high probability that our mind would collapse (unless you’re a workaholic). And, as a matter of fact, I actually don’t like this condition, what I really want is to be able to do things step by step whenever I have that spare time instead of cramming everything at the end, but I just can’t do it.

Now, the problem is that some people would think that their category is the other way around. People who can only do things in slow pace tend to procrastinate, which usually results in work overdue. And people who can unleash their full potential during deadlines try real hard to do it slowly at the beginning, which usually results in wasted energy and they’d still do it near the deadlines anyway.

So before you tackle that work with a time-limit period, make sure you do that one thing first: Know yourself

A Piece of Mind for a Piece of Dream

(This is an article that I submitted for myself, just in case I start to lose my will to do stuffs)

Dreams

For most people they are the things you see when you sleep, things that goes within both your rational and irrational thoughts, things that may  or may not involve real people around you, although it has been said that every face you see in your dreams are the ones you saw in real life, whether you remember them or not.

Just remember that the next time you see that nice ass in your wet dreams

But to others, they are the things of your wishes; things that you would like to do, feel, have, see, and accomplish in the future. The things you would feel outmost satisfaction when you realize them, the things that drive you to do what you’re doing right now. Personally, I’d call them 'visions', or 'goals', or 'that thing you’d feel nudging your butt-crack when you’re slacking off'.

Everyone have the former definition of 'dreams', unless they’re not getting an enough deep sleep (or maybe too deep), or they simply don't dream in their sleep. But not everyone have the latter definition. Sure, they may have things that they want to do, however they are usually short term impulses. They are not 'dreams', they are called 'desires'.

With 'dreams' comes 'passions', there is no motivation that goes without a reason. In every goal you set, there must be a strong answer to the question: "Why?"

"Because"

And of course, many people fail to achieve their dreams in the end, which happens a lot of times. The reasons also varies with each person; The dream may not be strong enough to motivate them, the current situation made them abandon that dream, they just can’t get enough resource required to make that dream come true, they couldn’t clone a velociraptor for that specific dream, and so on.

But most of the time, people fail to achieve their dreams simply because they are distracted and/or not prepared to get them. You can’t save up for your future children’s school fee when you’ve been exhausting your money resource for new cars or classy vacations, you can’t start a business so suddenly when all you’ve been doing is blindly working in the office just to satisfy your job demands and nothing else. Hell, you can’t be a writer when you’re too lazy to even start writing one goddamn sentence.

Laugh all you want, but at least he started something

What if when you’ve been trying really hard but fail in the end? Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. The objective of a dream is not the only thing that is important; the path you take, the process you go through, the things that you learn, they are all invaluable things that you will also get during that pursuit of happiness.

Should that happens, just try and get some wisdom out of the final result; maybe you missed something during the process, maybe it’s not something possible for you to achieve, maybe you realized that having a velociraptor was actually a bad idea after all. Or in the worst case, maybe that dream you have would in fact make people around you suffer, which I would recommend you to stop it altogether.

We told you stop, you piece of shit

But if you still believe in that dream and view the failure as a minor setback, then by all means continue going for it. Maybe you need to change the methods, or get more resources, or gain more knowledge about the issue, just keep trying and don’t be afraid to fail again. Because a dream will only stay as the literal first definition of it without that one vital thing:

Action

Election? More Like Gambling

I've never liked politics, not even once. Even when I was a child I could see a lot of things that are wrong about it; First we had a president (God rest his soul, for he's still a human being) that never gave up his seat for more than 30 years, and then we had an "obvious winner" political party and two other background players that are there just for the sake for democracy but they'll never win the elections anyway, finally we had people willing to give up their humanity and sees anyone else with different allegiance as an enemy to the point that they would use violence.

And then there was a turning point, called the New Order, which happened after the legendary economic crisis back in 1998 forced the late president to step down and thus began an era where freedom of speech can finally be made reality without anyone saying the wrong things about the goverment would suddenly disappear without a trace (thus explains why I'm still here after those previous sentences). Which means the dominating party will no longer have their own way because the poeple were finally free to make their own choice. So it's a happy ending, right? I mean, it's not like everyone will just go and try to claim the leadership seats now that they are available for anyone-

Well, shit

Since I'm pretty sure you can't read that because I had to zoom out for quite a lot to get a full list in print screen, that was the result of the 7 June 1999 Indonesian People's Representative Council election results. And those are not names of people; those are the names of the political parties that participated in the election, all 48 of them. Bloody hell, it's like looking at the list of The Idolm@ster - Million Live characters, with the lack of cute girls.

I mean, seriously? All of a sudden we got freaking 48 parties from the usual three? I understand that we gained the right to voice our opinion freely, and the best seats are no longer reserved for that "winner" party and instead open for any qualified people. But that doesn't mean we had to go full retard like that, especially with the haunting fact that.... there were no qualified people in the end.

No, really, the majority of them were people who either faked their diploma(s), using their relatives name to gain sympathy from people, put their whole goddamn curriculum vitae on their election banner, celebrities, or just there for the ride to fame and money. If you thought I was exaggerating, well tough luck to you guys, that's what really happened. There were (and still are) representatives who frequently absent from the job, sleeping in council meetings, and sometimes fighting as in throwing fists at each other. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them decided to get smart and watch porn instead... Oh wait, that happened too.

At least he's at peace with his mind

And those are still a trend up until now, and I was only talking about the candidates, the campaign methods are even worse. Violent campaigns are still around, even though it has been reduced greatly compared to 10 years ago. The ever-so-effective money politics method is still at large. Candidates pretending to pay attention to the lower class people and giving them the middle finger after they got elected are also unavoidable, I am aware that this is a global trend in political activities. There are still parties who do their campaign by giving out performance by erotic dangdut dancers. Faking pictures and videos of celebrities supporting their party, for a more high-tech ones. And of course, the mixing of  humanitarian act for people who suffered from natural disaster with personal gain to get elected by the people they "helped".

"What? At least I gave you a biscuit to eat during the flood, don't be a whiner and vote for me"

The new booming trend however, are the black campaign to make other parties look so bad in the media while making their own party look so holy and pure, making propaganda websites and fake newstories, and bringing up racial subjects and/or religion to the campaigns in order to easily snatch dumb "religious" people and bigots to their side, because apparently there are a lot of them here as well. It might sound stupid and dangerous at the same time to mix them up in political campaign, but it actually worked. Just ask my religious parents who support a certain party so much that they got so angry and literally cried when me and my brother refused to listen their recommendation to vote for it, saying things like we're ungrateful kids who never listened to them and whatnot.

Just what's going to happen here, are we really going for the road of racist extremists who would promote our own religion while subtlety (or blatantly) condemn another? Are we going back to the era where we unconditionally hate the people who were not born with local genes? How about they just start a new kind of KKK or Neo-Nazi here, because I don't know what's what anymore. I've discussed the topic of leadership*religion before, and it's really sad to know that the majority of people involved in politics seem to care about your belief/race first, and everything else comes later on.

Actually worshipping her would make more sense, really

Today, we had another election period for the representative council, and later on, the President. With 15 policital parties to choose from (from the original 34), and with up to 7 candidates for each party. And honestly, with all those bullshits concerning the politics around here, I just have no faith in any one of the candidates, especially since there are no data about the candidates' qualities at all.

Blind-picking like this for the sake of the candidates instead of having enough information for us voters feels even worse than playing League of Legends in solo queue (at least there is still a chance you get a good team, or the enemy team got that retard you don't want in yours). I did picked one that looked like Morgan Freeman, but that's it. I'm starting to think that having Kuroko as the president later on wouldn't be such a bad idea

Her leadership qualities would still make up for the unavoidable amount of missing panties

April Stulti

It's 1 April today... The dreaded April Fool's day.

I remember in the early days when I was still young, I would always get fooled by people, probably because I was a lot more trusting and naive person back then, not to mention cute.

However after I grew older I can see through hoaxes and scams a lot more easier, mostly because of the experience from getting scammed all the time before. Or maybe because I just can't trust other people that much anymore.

Especially here in Indonesia

That's about me getting fooled. On the other way around, however, I rarely do that. I just don't really like the idea of fooling people in a large scale like that and act like it's just a 'tradition', even though nearly all of the perperators don't even know how and why it became a tradition on the first place.

Now before anyone starts with the torch raid, I do find many April Fool's joke as funny, especially when they made it so obvious that it's hilarious. But the ones that I have problem with are the ones that are too extreme or downright stupidly offensive, and there were also those that were not even funny to begin with.

Although I actually did this shit once

And if you tried to pull off one today, hopefully your target audience was smart enough to realize that they've been had when the prank is over and also forgiving for that matter, because it will cause a huge commotion that neither one of you would want to happen.