I read this one previously at the Null Device, wrote about it on Cafeína, and now it's time for the IF THEN ELSE treatment: Are you a sensitive and aesthetically-conscious person? Or, if you're a female, do you prefer army-style overcoats and boots to bimbo-style clothing? Then, according to the profiling directives circulating in the U.S. of A. (where else?), you are gay. Nice, as always the americans show us that the appearance is more important than the truth. You might ask, "OK, I'd be considered gay in the U.S., so what?" Nothing, unless you consider that this kind of profiling is meant to take people into 'correctional facilities', because it's quite obvious for American legislators that gay people are criminals. Of course, there's the married accountant with three kids at home who says his wife he's going to play bowling, and instead he'll go molest young kids without anyone ever saying anything, but if instead there's this nice and calm arty-type guy sharing a flat with his *girlfriend*, they're both screwed anyway. It's kinda interesting to see how this measures actually spread homossexuality (by forcing people into unwanted marriages for cover-up), as its degree is a genetic property. Of course that's until mandatory 'genetic filtering' is used on unborn children, to eliminate diseases like homossexuality, the dark skin syndrome and others. Of course real diseases don't matter as they'd put pharmaceutical companies out of business. Nice. ¶

Well, it's also that time of the year: allergy time. That means I will try to stay away from screens and other things that increase eye strain, as my eyes are all itchy and it's incredibly annoying to work. However, I am still browsing the tips a few good people send me, like Deconcept which remembers me of my own Lab sandbox, except that my site looks crapper. I definitely need to redesign asseptic.org, but definitely not now. ¶

IRC, the other day. Well, I actually don't care much about IRC, I just logon to the usual network, on the usual channel... And I let mIRC stay there on the background, with a pile of browser windows on top, hoping something worthwhile happens. I rarely engage into private conversations, and I never start them. However I had this nice conversation the other day: Besides exchanging a few URLs of arty websites, I had a good conversation about blogging, and how many people turn blogging into a bore by using weblogs as personal diaries. I mean, personal diaries are typically little black books kept on a secret drawer because no one will ever read them. Readers don't need to be reminded of their own problems, so blogs should be, although from a personal point of view, informative and interesting. Depression-based blogs will only appeal to sadistic types who will think "There's someone worse than me". Ain't I right? ¶

My TV set is broken. Which means from now on I'll be a better, well-adjusted person. ¶

Porto European Capital of Alcohol: It's that time of the year. The Queima das Fitas ('Burning of the stripes'), the annual celebration of college students that, apart from some parade on Tuesday, consists of having thousands of people in some field just getting drunk and listening to crappy bands. Portugal leads all European alcohol statistics, and check this: Here in Porto, during this week, people will buy more litres of beer than during the whole Munich Oktoberfest (the most famous beer party in the world). If you consider beer is only half of the story - there's vodka, wine, and incredibly poisonous absynthe-based 'shots', drank by 16-year olds - it's not hard to imagine the biggest pukefest in the world. Which is nice, because while everyone is at it you can get yourself a table on the usually overcrowded bars and pubs. ¶

If anyone could tell me what's a Second Bad Vilbel, that'd be nice. But if anyone could tell me what unknown Autechre/Gescom record I jave just captured from this hard-to-read art site (under 'illegal', of course), that'd be nicer. ¶

Speaking of illegal stuff, a new version of WinMX is now available, now it seems to have its own protocol, along with the dying Napster and dozens of OpenNap servers. Just don't forget to use a firewall if you live in a country where police goes after Napster users (like Belgium). ¶

As seen on Slashdot: Denmark, a small country that doesn't export almost anything else but overrated moviemakers and beer (definitely it doesn't export musicians), is considering legalizing music sharing and weakening copyright laws. Mind you, this is very important indeed as Denmark is part of the EU. I hope naapstär.dk lives long enough until the EU decide to kick Denmark out because of this and their anti single currency tradition. ¶

By the way, if you are stuck into Windows and have a reason not to use Internet Explorer (which is a MS product but a good one), and must use a Mozilla-type browser, you could try this one. It's based on older 0.6 build but at least never crashed on me. And it's way faster than NS6. ¶

I spent some time finishing IF THEN ELSE at last, adding an archive viewing system and fixing a few CSS glitches. Many webloggers use Blogger which is fine for almost everyone, however I enjoy being different and I use a mix of my own PHP code along with a customized NewsPro, which is actually a news posting script meant for several users, but I rather use it instead of other blogging/journal scripts, as I feel much more comfortable with it and I kinda know NewsPro inside out. As always, I lost 90% of my time fixing things to prevent it from going wrong on Netscape, used by less than 10% of you. Netscape might have that guerrilla edge, but when I stay up late because of it I can't deny it: I am a Netscape hater. ¶

I bought a book called Wow Wow: Sites Unseen - The Internet Review (Laurence King Publishing), which features a terrifying collection of bad personal sites, fetish websites and just plain horrid ones. Ocasionally throw in the odd Zeldman or serious art site, but the rest is indeed not recommended to conservative types. It reminds me of the net back in 95, when almost everyone seemed to be a psycho of some sort. Which is nice. ¶

It seems the Warp Records website has been redesigned. Too bad, I'm starting to get a bit fed up of the whole TDR thing, and this site doesn't help anything - personally, it looks a lot worse that previously, full of unnecessary Shockwave and un-intuitive functionality. However, it has more content now, such as mix-tapes and decent-res videos (I recommend the weird documentary 7 Year Glitch), you can download permanently using now illegal tools by a certain company. ¶

Or does M1 mean May 1st? Yes, of course I am not amused by 'anti-globalization' hooliganism, but I can't agree with its media coverage as well, that depicts demonstrators as 'communists who eat children at breakfast', like in the old fascist days. Yes, among those demonstrators many are daft neomarxists who can't quite understand 'capitalism' is indeed human nature, and 'globalization' is a very good thing if the governments explore it properly. Yes, I don't like those. But what about the real demonstrators, that claim, you know, the usual stuff: better working conditions, ecological respect, less exploitation of the Third World, better healthcare, etc; in two words - peace and respect? Aren't those even a tiny bit right? I get annoyed at the media's leftism-phobia, and its tendency to mix reasonable, progressive leftism with die-hard marxist terrorism. Sometimes I wonder, aren't these 'leftish' violent instigators really right-wing agents provocateurs? ¶

Portugal über alles: Although I like electronic music, I am hardly amused by that 'bleeding edge', nearly unlistenable, that resembles some clueless, untalented teenager playing around with the latest audiowarez. So it's not surprising that only today I decided to listen to the compilation CD included on an amusing 'Christina Ricci' special issue of the FAQT magazine, which I had dusting for quite a while. And yes, most (if not all) of that CD is rubbish, die-hard masoquistic electronica like Kid606 or David Kristian, stuff that is fashionable to recommend to others, but no one actually likes it. However, something captured my attention: Track one, by someone called 'V/VM', is just a fucked up-version of a song by SOME PORTUGUESE CROONER (I can't really tell who, they all sound the same), stuff we call 'pimba' because of its utter crapness. Of course, the clueless V/VM credited it to a spanish crooner, but trust me, the difference is obvious. Portugal über alles, indeed. ¶

Oh, yes. Caffeine indeed does wonders. I had quite a few webdesign problems I couldn't solve lately, layouts that weren't quite working, navigation concerns, CSS worries et all. And as always, the miracle fix: Thinking about it away from any computer, on a nice coffee shop with good background music, using a pen and some paper. It does wonders indeed. Now, let's get to work. ¶

Portuguese football: Sporting beat Benfica 3-0 yesterday, and Benfica lost its last chance of a place on the UEFA Cup. Which, despite the fact I'm a FC Porto fan, is quite sad, because Benfica used to be Portugal's greatest club, and I will miss see them losing against some lowly Lithuanian side. Also, Porto had a close match against Braga but eventually won 3-2, which means the championship isn't over yet. Nice. ¶

If there was hardly any doubt Bush II's Florida election was in fact a coup d'état, then take a look at this comparison between facts concerning the Florida election and facts concerning CIA-sponsored coups in Guatemala and Chile. Today I was watching a documentary on the History Channel about a similar coup in Iran during the 50s, so it gets even scarier. Although I live in Europe, that's not quite the example I expected from the 'world's strongest democracy'. Link found in The Null Device. ¶

Keeping up with my 'sex on vacations' theory, today is my friend Ricardo's birthday. Alex organized a diner party on a good chinese restaurant, still celebrating his birthday (as more people are available on weekends), and later we picked up Ricardo to have a few drinks celebrating his birthday. We first went to Agência, which was crowded, so we went to the Ribeira outdoor cafés (as the weather is starting to warm up nicely). But something really pisses me off: Porto is the second largest city in this country, and if you count the Greater Porto area it is at least a 1.5 million people metropolis. At this scale, this city (which has Europe Cultural Capital status, for sake!) should have a lot more places to go out and have a few drinks, it should have a lot more 'alternative' places. But no, it seems to be crowded everywhere, and it's quite annoying that the 'alternative'/'underground'/'whatever' scene consists of always the same people. Which would be nice, if there was a real sense of community, but instead everyone seems to be a posh pseudo-intellectual marxist type, cynic critic-phobic, slave to the latest trend, wearing expensive 'casual' clothing. Yes, I am pissed. ¶

Portuguese football: That's 'soccer' for those of you who think a sport without ultra-violence isn't worth watching. Well, looks like Boavista won once again, and is quite close to winning its first ever championship. Which is quite sad for me, as I am one of those pesky FC Porto fans who are used to winning. But even sadder, is how such a mafia-sponsored team can clinch all those 1-goal victories with blatant help from the referees and even the opposing players - and at the end protest at the referee's decisions, to turn a previously fixed result into a dramatic victory, against everyone. ¶

Yestarday I went to the movies again, Gus van Sant's Finding Forrester this time, a movie that would have been a Wonderboys clone if it wasn't for a slower, more serious story, and the introduction of the pointless sports-related dramatic sequence (at least it was basketball, not stupid baseball or that wrong type of football). Overall, I found Wonderboys a more enjoyable experience, and Micheal Douglas better than Sean Connery. Anyway, despite the standardised pseudo-moralistic message at the end (about copyright, which made the blatant car manufacturer advertising look pale in comparison), Finding Forrester does have a lesson: That most artists make stuff because the enjoy it and that's it. Critics and other parasites are always making stuff up, always misjudging the artists' intentions. For that lesson, and that lesson alone, Finding Forrester is another movie worth watching. ¶