Sometimes, you find a song that not only sounds so beautiful you could listen to it all day, but also has excellent lyrics. For exemple, "Ensemble", performed by Jean-Jacques Goldman in his 2001 album "Chansons pour les pieds"

You spend several years trying to get a copy of it, and when you finally do, you're first a bit disappointed that the version you got is the live version, not the album version. You then realize that not only the song is perofrmed exactly the same and so sounds just as beautiful, but you also realize they changed the instrumental intro - which passes from a few seconds in the album version to almost two minutes in the live one. And said intro manages to sound even more beautiful than the original one. Almost makes me cry... (for info, it's a melody played on a fife with a background made of an acoustic gutiar and some bass)
If you want to find that one version, it's on the second CD of the album "Un tour ensemble Live"

EDIT :
Album version can be heard here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIenvQkVlLo
Truncated live version is here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l5lyIvgec8

Mom caught a flu. She's sick, trembling, covered in sweat, but she STILL refused to stay at home and went to work.

Someone seems to have attacked Ran Tan Plan, our dog, last night. When I went out to fetch breakfast, I realized the terrace, stairs and courtyard were literally painted with blood. Luckily (?) though, it's just a damaged toe on his front-right paw. The skin almost got ripped off it, ugh... I couldn't do a thing though, so it'll have to wait until this evening, provided the parents don't insist on just sitting it out...

A company wants me to design a mascot for them. They want either a fossa, or an ant. Knowing my drawing skills, I went for a fossa and downloaded several reference pics off Google. And a few minutes ago, while I was about to start drawing... I realized that picture #2 wasn't just a fossa relaxing in the sun, but actually a fossa relaxing under the sun with a raging boner. Talk about embarrassing.

Anyway, winter's definitely here... For the last few days we've had an often cloudly, always windy weather with heavy fog on mornings, fine sprays on evenings and near-freezing temperatures at night. As you can guess, we aren't exactly prepared for that last part, being a tropical country by nature...

MAn, that piece of software's so buggy it almost looks like a Microsoft release... Sure hope I can downgrade!
...
Or I could switch browsers as I always told worksinreallife I would...

So the results are out.

"Better luck next year", heh...

One more year away from worksinreallife... I could cry.

Mmh, so now that I got the theological yak-yak out of the way, time for some news.

A first in Madagascar, bomb attacks have been frequent during the last two weeks. Only two of the bombs managed to explode though, with no casualties and only light damage. What's more worrying is that both the pro- and anti-H.A.T. are accusing the other side of these bombings. Last week, several anti-H.A.T. people were arrested for being the bombers... and yet three days later, two more bombs were found, one just outside the stadium where the military parade had taken place mere minutes earlier (that one exploded).

I just heard that the army had just been given a brand new Special Ops section. Headed by the same Commandant Charles who, mere weeks ago, was having lots of fun arresting and torturing anti-coup militants. The new gestapo ahead?

I'm glad I slept all day on Independence Day. TVs and radios were nothing but honeyed propaganda and copious amounts of the H.A.T. patting itself in the back because no one else wanted to do it.

Now for the reason why I slept all day - my job is a fun one. Challenging but not stressing, and I finally have co-workers closer to my age (try being a gay guy in his early twenties in the middle of mothers in their mid-thirties and rather macho fathers ranging from 30 to over 50...)
I was invited to the Independence Eve party (in the June 25 to June 26 night). It was, honestly, the first time ever I really had fun at a party. And the funny thing is, it's because for the first time ever I was at a party where nobody insisted on making me dance.
The usual scenario - "Why don't you dance? Oh, come on, you can't have fun if you don't dance! Come on and dance!" *force-tug* - is my nightmare. I never have fun in situations like that (just so you know). I prefer sitting... eating snacks... drinking a bit (a few drips of alcohol in a few glasses of soda)... preparing snacks for everyone... taking care of those who partied a bit too hard... That's how I have fun. And because they let me do exactly that on Independence Eve, I actually managed not to try and find excuses to bail out before midnight. I actually stayed to the end by my own accord!
As a result, I came home at 7am, put some tea to boil, read myself a good book, fell asleep, forgot the tea on the stove and didn't wake up until 5pm.

Little funny detail during the party - one of my co-workers is the gay-of-the-joke. Meaning that he's straight as an arrow, but is secure enough with his sexuality that he doesn't mind being teased as gay... He actually has fun doing it.
When I had to sit on his lap... don't kill me Hon - we had to fit more people in the car than it was meant to hold, and some people inevitably ended up sitting on other people's laps. So, I was saying, I sat on his lap for a while and he was joking that at least he could promise not to go over the good old "that's a flashlight in my pants! honest!" joke.
Later in the evening we went to shop before the party. The both of us ended up being the only ones noy holding another person's hand... so he jokingly offered to hold mine. Heh, I knew it was a joke, the smirk and general attitude told me enough about that.
And finally, late during the night, he tried to dance to a love song with most of the girls... before realizing that those who weren't taken were dead tired and slumped in heaps on the seats. So he turned to the guys with no more success, hehehe.
I wonder what he'd have done if he had known about me actually being gay, though! XD

Last remarks - I had fun watching the DragonBall movie because I actually took the lucky initiative of preparing to watch a spoof rather than a real film. I'll just say this: the manga and anime had a good reason for not having Bulma flirt with Sangoku (too young!), but why would her movie counterpart appear so uninterested in the cute-looking, somewhat intelligent,athletic movie version of Son Goku? Oh, and speaking of Goku, he's really a prick for deciding to bring Roshi back to life first instead of poor old Gohan.
I'll also mention a remark by Nick - either the TV channel RTA has gone somewhat open-minded, or they just didn't notice. One of the shows they're broadcasting twice a day has several openly gay characters, and some of the storylines are even revolving around that! (e.g. the traditionalist man who threatens to kill the main character who dared to "desecrate" his family by dating his younger brother... While the rest of the family is okay with that, he actually wants to get rid of every trace of that "abomination" by killing both his brother and his brother's lover)

First - the place of Man according to Genesis :
So, let's take the first book of both the Christian Bible and the Torah. It says that God first created the Universe, then the plants, then the animals. and He decided that it was good. And only afterwards, He decided to create the race of Man to appreciate the beauty of His creations.

What I understand from that is that if you strongly believe in the Genesis, then you should realize that humanity is the result of an afterthought - God's original, PERFECT creation was actually the World and its living creatures. Humanity was only created so that the World could have an admirer and a caretaker that wasn't God or the Angels.

Let me ask one question then - why is the vast majority of Christian (and, I guess, Judaic) denominations constantly denigrating the work of God? Constantly saying that the World is bad, that it's evil, that we're only here to prepare to return to God?

Face it, worshippers of God, Jehovah, Adonai or however you call Him: the world is like the a Louvre filled with God's best works. You're like the visitor who was admitted inside as a favor, who then not only ends up desecrating most of the museum's contents, but also constantly repeats that his stay is but an ordeal that he suffers only to please the Creator, but he actually can't wait to get out.

Second - Why I think Christianty was originally a sado-masochist club :
And I don't mean the whole martyrs-and-Inquisition thing, either. I actually took three things taught in the Catholic catechism (and probably in other Christian and Judaic ones too)
1) The world is bad, it is made of nothing but trials and suffering.
2) Heaven awaits us after Death, a place of bliss and peace.
3) No cheating: suicide is forbidden!

Plus, Christianty is founded on the teachings of a man who willingly let himself be whipped, tortured, nailed on a wooden cross and then pierced with a spear. And then he went and taught his disciples how they'd get better rewards by following his example! Compared to that, leather fetishism seems a bit tame...

Third - Why I think the Bible says that God was actually just an ordinary man with extraordinary powers :
Let's face it, our Creator, as presented in the Bible, suffers very human emotions, good or bad :
- Curiosity :
The creation of the World
- Need for recognition :
the creation of Man as an admirer of the World
- Naive expectations that lead up to bitter disappointment :
Adam and Eve and how they were kicked out of Eden. So all-knowing, all-powerful He couldn't stop a couple of stupid humans from eating a single fruit, didn't He?
- Superiority complex :
So He destroyed the Tower of Babel because he feared humanity would try to be equal to Him?
- A severe penchant for collective punishment :
I'll cite humanity being punished for the faults of two mere individuals, but I could also cite a lot of innocent people who didn't deserve it - like Cain's offspring, or that of Noah's son Cham, or the children of those who didn't make it to the Ark, or the underage children of Sodom and Gomorrah (prove me that there weren't any), or the firstborns of Egypt, or all of Job's children, or the families of those who conspired against Daniel... There, quite enough for you?
- Anger :
The Great Flood, the first recorded trace of an almost total genocide...
- Remorse :
After the Great Flood - "Whoops, shouldn't have done that"?
- Jealousy :
the First of the Ten Commandments.
- Sloth aggravated by narcissism :
So Moses had to do all the work by himself but was banned from the Promised Land for daring to take some of the credit, uh?
- Aggravated sadism :
Too many examples to count. I'll just cite the request tha Abraham sacrifies his son, or the years the Hebrews spent in slavery in Egypt, or the years they spent in exile in Babylone for the faultes of ONE King.

I posted about the good news earlier, now for the bad ones : the Malagasy military is currently an unstable bundle of nerves...

What gave that? Well, the COMESA and the SADC, two regional organisations Madagascar is a member of (but was suspended from due to the coup), have declared that given the prolonged state of stalemate in the negotiations to get the country out of the political turmoil it is in, they considered the possibility of using ARMED FORCES to restore constitutional order.

While the UN, the EU and the AU decried such a declaration as useless and possibly harming, the H.A.T. "government" took it a step further. They first went "OMG they'll send mercenaries against us!!!" Cue in a heightened state of mistrust and xenophobia nationwide... But then all concerned associations publicly denounced that, first denying the term "mercenaries" since it would be a perfectly legal, mandated army. They just didn't want to consider it because they believed in negotiation. In case the talks fail, then sending an armed peace-keeping force would be perfectly legal, if unwanted...

Of course the official position switched from "OMG MERCENARIES" to "OMFG INVASION!!!" and the Malagasy army instantly went into full alert "just in case". Bad idea.

Madagascar hasn't been involved in real armed conflicts since the two world wars... and yet, during those, it wasn't the Malagasy army that fought, but Malagasy soldiers in the French army... If you want to know the last time Madagascar's army was involved in an armed conflict as an independent entity, part of a sovereign state, then you have to go back to the wars against France in 1885 and 1894-1895. And we lost these ones. My point is, we have an extremely inexperienced army here. Collaboration with France might have gotten our soldiers more experienced on the technical side, but on the mental side... The very word "war" transforms trigger-happy soldiers into trigger-happy bundle of nerves.

The result so far? Over the last week the army tear-gassed two peaceful, authorized anti-H.A.T. demonstrations. And on several occasions, people living near military camps have experienced the fear of their lives as said camps started responding in force to what was later always discovered to be imaginary attacks. Just imagine guns and cannons going live next to your house for hours because some soldier jumped at shadows. And there are three major military camps in the city of Antananarivo alone... Make that a dozen camps if you count those located less than one hour away. Now isn't that reassuring?

The H.A.T., of course, isn't helping. They keep stalling the negotiations, either by not honoring them with their presence, or by insisting that each party first acknowledges each and every one of their demands. "We can negotiate, but only if you all agree that we're right to begin with," doesn't that remind you of someone? (*coughHamascough*)

Plus, you wouldn't belive what I heard on Radio VIVA, the one owned by "President" Rajoelina. Their journalists now keep repeating that helping foreign invading forces is high treason, and the penalty for that is capital punishment... They're practically warning anyone who'd support an armed peace-keeping mission that they're liable to be sentenced to death!

Now, with a "government" that slowly instils xenophobia and chauvinism in the uneducated masses, and an army that opens fire on the smallest road-crossing chicken, I'm glad that my new job finally allows me an extremely short commute time (20-30 minutes by bus, which I can cover in less than an hour on foot if need be).

Okay, I wanted to type something else first but a big popup window came into view telling me it was wolfbrothersong's birthday. I should have known! Happy birthday mate!

Now back to your regular update schedule.

First, I found a job at last. Ironically, they were the first company I applied to... Their video editor (who happens to be a former classmate of mine) felt overwhelmed by his job (also had to take care of organisation). So he decided to get someone to share BOTH jobs. Meaning, I was actually hired as a manager, not a simple employee. The good side, I have a say in how the company works (something both cool and frightening). The bad thing, at least for now, is that my wages will be based on percentage of profits, not a fixed value. Which means, for now, it'll be kinda low as profits aren't expected to come in until a few weeks.

And now, the contemplative side.

One day you're being highly doubtful of long-distance relationships, and the next one... you're two years into one and not regretting it. Yup. As of this week, worksinreallife and me will have been a couple for two whole years, albeit one separated by thousands of miles. And still hoping to get rid of that last part.

So, what did posting a job application in a newspaper AND a recruitment agency give? Two phone calls. One led to an interview. None led to a job.

The one with the interview wasn't even in my skills - I had posted something about being experienced in computers and computer graphics... they wanted an accountant with some experience in Photoshop and silk-screen printing. Combined with the location (not that far but very isolated - the no-lights-at-night, dust-road-amidst-fields kind of isolated), I wondered if I would accept the job. The company spared me the dilemna by just not calling me back.


Other subject : this week's "most terrifying and most shaking nightmare". IT involved me being either a testing pilot or a fighter pilot, I'm not sure. I was apparently based at the nearby Ivato Airport, and my planes of choice seemed to include the Viper Mark VII from Battlestar Galactica. Pretty cool so far, eh? Except that at some point my family comes to the airport and tells me my Aunt Maryse is going to arrive soon (she lives in Reunion Island, 2 hours away by plane). So we head inside the airport, watch as her plane makes it approach... and plows right into a hillside at full speed. Panic, screams, people running around, ... At that point, I start crying. I can say I cry a lot in my waking hours, but in my nightmares I'm a literal fountain...
I almost thanked my brother when he woke me up to ask me for something.


Last thing. HAs the backstabbing began in its earnest? I heard the Obama administration has thrown its support behind upholding DOMA. Haven't had time to check but if it's true, then... I dunno. Bad news, half-expected news?



Word counts :
- Kyell Gold fanfic : 2879
- A Matter of Duty - original story : 789 (complete rewriting due to major changes in universe)
- Shadowknight - my long-term project : 9124