Stop trying to save the world

Gmail20-20Death20by20Strawberries3B20Sad20Toy20Story3B20Legal20Pedophilia20-20janis.abens40gmail.com

Yesterday, I attended a business development fair in Riga, where the Royal Theater Company (Karaliskais Improvizācijas Teātris) participated in a theatrical demonstration of the dos and don’ts of job interviews. Although the attendees were entrepreneurs, employers, headhunters or job seekers, everyone was laughing throughout the hour-long presentation. And how could they not? The Royal Theater Company is also an improvisational comedy sketch group including Skutelis,Varis Klausītājs and Ģirts Runātājs.
After the show, I approached Skutelis and requested an interview, to which he kindly consented. Due to the fact that I am a moron, and my Garage Band “turned itself off” immediately after I began asking my questions, I’ll have to present what I remember. Hopefully, I’ll be able to present some more information about both Jānis Skutelis and the other hilariously talented members of the troupe in the near future.
——————-
Me: Are you Latvia’s only standup comedian?
J: I don’t know. Am I a standup comedian? Not really sure. (I assured him that he most certainly was a very good one.)

Me: Why are there so few standup comedians in Latvia?
J: There are several reasons. First of all, this is not really a traditional genre in this country. And second of all, there really aren’t any venues available for those who would aspire to be comedians.
(I then told him that I usually open my act with the same question, and my answer is: “Because the few really funny people here in Latvia generally can’t stand up for very long”. This did get a smirk out of him.)

Me: Are you a fan of American comedy, and if so, who are your favorite comedians?
J: Sure, somewhat. I really like Eddie Izzard, and Will Ferrell is hilarious. I like Ellen Degeneres work because she does her sets without saying “fuck” all the time.

Me: What needs to be done to improve the situation for standup comedy in Latvia?
J: I guess we have to keep working on establishing a tradition here. So far, it’s tough going, but we’re working on it.

Me: Well thanks very much for the interview and good luck.
J: You’re welcome and good luck to you as well.
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Now, considering that I’m both a moron and terrible interviewer, this went pretty well. As a huge fan of standup comedy, I’ll be looking to continue this effort with a series of interviews with more of Jthe funny people you can meet here.
And don’t forget to check out their web page at: www.karaliskais.com

Trend News: Baku detains Latvian citizens illegally residing in Azerbaijan
Baku detains Latvian citizens illegally residing in Azerbaijan

So, I am no longer feeling depressed about my situation… I could be an illegal in Baku…

http://www.kasjauns.lv/lv/news/pedofilija-apsudzetais-macitajs-baudijis-baznicas-labvelibu&news_id=20573

Aizdomās par pedofiliju arestētajam luterāņu mācītājam Agrim Lēvaldam par vēl nekonkretizētiem grēkiem pirms pāris gadiem bija steidzīgi jābēg no Kurzemes uz Latgali.

http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=1241534&lang=eng_news

So, here we go again. now it’s a Lutheran priest abusing children, but in his defense I guess it’s fair to say that he used to be Catholic priest.

This is, at least the strategy being used by the leadership of the Latvian Lutheran Church to try to suggests that Lutheran priests are not capable of abusing children. Fair enough. Lutheran priests are often married, have families of their own and are generally well respected citizens. On the other hand, child abuse outside of the hothouse of pedophilia and homosexuality that is the celibate clergy is not insignificant. Obviously, anyone working in a position with unsupervised access to children on a regular basis should be routinely and continually scrutinized. Unfortunately, the status of benevolence and altruism achieved by the church as a result of self-congratulatory advertising has created a smokescreen that most people do not care to peek through.

THE creeping forces of secularism and materialism were addressed by several religious leaders during their Good Friday messages yesterday, with Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen condemning atheism as a form of self-worship.

“As we can see by the sheer passion and virulence of the atheist — they seem to hate the Christian God — we are not dealing here with cool philosophy up against faith without a brain,” Dr Jensen told the congregation at Sydney’s St Andrew’s Cathedral.

“Atheism is every bit of a religious commitment as Christianity itself.

“It represents the latest version of the human assault on God, born out of resentment that we do not in fact rule the world and that God calls on us to submit our lives to Him. It is a form of idolatry in which we worship ourselves.”

Dr Jensen’s comments came a day after Catholic Archbishop George Pell praised church-based community organisations “paid for by the Christian majority” for helping make the Australian way of life the envy of the world, but noted that atheists did not sponsor any community services.

So we learn that atheists are evil, because a “human assault on God, born out of resentment” could be nothing less than true evil. We learn that atheists do nothing for the community. Not even implying, but outright stating that secular people are per definition devoid of altruism,
The fact that followers of any Christian Church would simply go about their Easter business instead of demanding justice for the victims of the priests of the Catholic Church, the number of which seems to increase exponentially by the day, doesn’t seem all that benevolent either. A hotline for victims in Germany, opened after allegations that the pope had ignored knowledge of child abuse while a bishop, received over 4000 calls. I wonder what will happen when South America turns out to be a horrendous pit of sin of gargantuan dimensions in comparison to what goes on in Europe and the United States.
I guess that the best defense is a good offense, and ignoring problems until they no longer seem problematic but just the part of life is the Catholic and Christian traditions.
The collective evil of willful ignorance and indifference perpetrated by the Catholic Church on not only the victims of child rape, but also on the populace as a whole in the form of intellectual rape, interfering in human evolution with antiquated ideas based on a society of total control.

Now, since nobody with any knowledge of actual events believes that the top brass in the Vatican represent anything but greed and political interests, one might ask: who is evil?

Toxic Translation: A Twelve-Step Program for Self-Injuring Translators
by Wendell Ricketts
reprinted without permission … sorry Wendell…

The Twelve Steps

1. Admit that you are powerless over translation agencies.

2. Make a searching and fearless inventory of the times you have found yourself saying “I might as well take this job for $0.0000000006 per word; if I don’t, someone else will!” or “A client who pays regularly at 8,275 days is still better than one who doesn’t pay at all!” or “Agencies are a business like any other; it’s only natural that they try to make as much money as possible.” Acknowledge that the justification of unjustifiable behavior is an addiction and that your life as a translator has become unmanageable.

3. Prepare to receive a truth of the universe in nine words: Translation rates are dropping because translators accept low rates. If you want rates to stop descending, you must take your finger off the elevator button. Immediately. There is no methadone for people who are willing to translate for half what the average busboy makes, so the only way to combat this addiction is cold-turkey. Make amends by explaining clearly, each time you respond to an insulting offer, refuse a low-wage job, or decline an invitation to lower your rates why you are doing so. I know Miss Manners says we’re not supposed to tell crass, rude people that they’re crass and rude, but she’d make an exception if she were a translator: Low-payers are the abyssopelagic feeders of the sea of translation. Do not hesitate to send them back to filter the ooze whence they came.

4. If you are truly living on Kibbles ‘n Bits, cannot pay the rent, or are slipping your child thinly diluted Elmer’s glue because it’s cheaper than milk, you have an excellent excuse to accept offensive working conditions and insulting wages. Temporarily. While you look for a job that pays you a living wage and doesn’t screw your colleagues who depend on translation for their livelihood. Otherwise, you don’t have an excuse. Not everything in life is black and white, but this is. Meanwhile, if you are not truly in need, stop using that pretext to justify your participation in the destruction of the profession. It might happen to any of us to find the wolf at the door, but he isn’t at everyone’s door all the time. Don’t use the real misery of others to disguise the fact that you couldn’t locate your self-respect with a Sherpa guide and GPS.

5. Conversely, if your parents are still paying your rent and buying your groceries, your husband is the CEO of Halliburton or the President of Mediaset, or you’re a trust-fund baby who just “loves languages,” do some good for the profession and your immortal soul and start translating for free. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of worthy non-profit organizations who could use your help. In the meantime, some of us are trying to earn a living here. Your “pin-money” rates are killing translators who depend on translation as their sole source of income.

6. Accept the fact that your degree from Acme School of Language Mediation or The Flinghurst Academy of Translationology is substantially worthless. Translation is learned in the field, not in the classroom. If you are nonetheless a recent graduate of such a program, here is what to do until you’re truly prepared to command professional rates: apprentice yourself to a translator you trust, donate translations to a worthy cause in order to build your curriculum (see No. 5, above), spend your free time doing practice translations for your personal training, improve your ability to write in your native language, read—a lot—in both your languages. DO NOT : offer cut-rate translations or beg clients to let you work “for practically nothing” because you “love translating.” Why not? For the same reason that there’s a sign at the zoo that says “Don’t Feed The Monkeys.” Because, if you do, they get fat and lazy and never learn that professional, well qualified bananas are not handed around for free.

7. Stop allowing clients to dictate your fees and working conditions. Do you really need me to trot the analogy out for you one more time? Do you? Really? Fine. Here it is: You sit down to eat in a restaurant. After consulting the menu, you call the owner over to your table. “This steak is overpriced,” you say. “I’ll pay half, and I want you to throw in a bottle of wine with that. If you don’t get everything on my table within ten minutes, though, the deal’s off.” What happens in a restaurant is that they toss you out on your stern. What happens in translation is that you say, “Oh, yes, Mr. Client, thank you, Mr. Client, may I please have another, Mr. Client.” Three words: Knock. It. Off.

8. Stop using the internet until you learn how. The “freedictionary” is not a professional resource and Wordreference.com and Yahoo! Answers are not forums where you can consult with reliable and knowledgeable colleagues. About half the answers on ProZ.com’s KudoZ boards are wrong. Wiki is often worth the paper it’s printed on. Google is not your friend. Go search for the phrase “their is” or “its a question” and see how many hits you get (2,160,000 and 50,500,000, respectively). Then we can talk about how internet searches can be so helpful in confirming correct usage. (Gosh! Translation turns out to be tougher than you thought, huh?)

9. If a client doesn’t pay you on time (or doesn’t pay you at all), stop working for that client. Agencies, publishers, and clients who fail to pay as promised are like men who hit their wives. They will do it again. The only question is: Are you going to be standing there when the blow comes? (Quiz: “They didn’t mean to do it”; “They’re just going through a difficult period”; and “If I leave, who knows if I’ll ever find another one” are phrases commonly used by [a] abused wives; [b] self-injuring translators; [c] both.)

10. Translation is not the ‘Ndrangheta. No one will send you to sleep with the fishes if you fail to maintain a lifelong pledge of omertà. Tell your colleagues when clients don’t pay, when they make unreasonable demands, when they revise without telling you, when they insist that you lower your rates, when they forget to put your name on the translation, when they change the agreed-upon conditions after you’ve already started, when they refuse to pay for urgent or after-hours work, when they demand unwarranted discounts. Accepting these conditions silently doesn’t make you a Wise Guy; it makes you an accomplice.

11. Stand up for your native language. Take pride in seeing it used eloquently, fluently, and well. Take offense when it is abused and disrespected. Don’t believe the hype about globalism, world languages, and all the rest. Stop caving in to the absurd and unverified claim that non-native translation is just as valid as native translation or that the people who read translations in their second language “don’t care” if they’re well written or not. Your ability to deploy your native language with sophistication, flexibility, and skill is your most important selling point. You may never succeed in convincing everyone of the importance of this issue, but consider this: many people also find it acceptable to drink wine that comes in boxes, watch Fox News, or buy Lady Gaga CDs. If you’re a language professional, you’re supposed to be above things like that.
12. If there’s anything worse than translators who complain all the time, it’s translators who complain about translators who complain all the time. Let’s suppose you make lots of money, your clients are respectful of your time and your expertise, and everyone pays you promptly. If so, let’s call that what it is: Enormous luck. What it is not is a license to lecture everyone on how they should just stop whinging and get back to work. The fact that translators complain is a good thing; it indicates self-esteem and an instinct for self-preservation, as distinct from your sense of superiority and every-man-for-himself smugness. If you have nothing to say that helps moves the profession forward (and not just your personal little slice of it), at least have the decency to get out of the way of people who are trying to make things better (including for you, buckaroo).

Businessmen20preparing20manifesto20for20a20prosperous20Latvia203A3A20The20Baltic20Course207C20Baltic20States20news202620analyticswell, this is pretty good… the document “For Prosperous Latvia” will be presented on March 29 and it sounds just great…
The document, presented by a group of business people generally associated with a respectable degree of prosperity, proposes more rationally organized state administration, and want the things we say about one another to be positive and to start working together.
Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but if people have been saying bad things, one should answer the question, why?
Actually, people all over the world are basically involved with bad mouthing one another as part of a power struggle. But in the Gold Rush climate of post-Soviet business environment, many of the bad things said about these people are justified. Greed is our enemy, and in the Gold Rush, greed is paramount for wildly successful business.
So, is it unreasonable to think that greed might be involved in this move as well? Rational organization is a euphemism for increased profits. What about transparency? What about social justice? I’m not convinced these businessmen are excessively concerned with anything but increased profit.

In her recent broadcast, Rachel Maddow told us that Bart Stupak would enjoy his 15 minutes of fame as a result of his opportunity to block health care reform legislation on the grounds of personal antiabortion views. I disagree. Bart Stupak will be immortalized by the famous expression “a Stupak dozen”, which means anything but actually 12, and most likely far fewer.

Sometimes I’m glad Rachel is wrong. Mostly because she rarely is.

Why is the word “truth” now a now term of derision? Apparently, by adding “er” to the end, we can lump these people together in a bag, label it “fringe extremists”, and treat it accordingly.

Bill Maher seems to think that the truth is particularly unimportant as far as 9/11 goes. Does Bill believe we have been told the entire truth? If so, why would this case be so special? Just because Bill can’t imagine how we could have been lied to on such an evil scale?

As the maker of the movie Religulous, Bill examined kooky beliefs from various points of view, and I’m sure he’s familiar with the works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the like. In other words, Bill knows that the argument from personal incredulity is a fallacy, however incredible the situation. Bill says that it is beyond belief that our own government would bomb a major city in a move to grab more power. But is it really, completely beyond belief that a government could have information about others planning such a move, and, instead of acting decisively to prevent it, surreptitiously wait in the sidelines to see how it plays out and how it could be spun?
Considering the number of lives that have been sacrificed for profit in the various wars perpetrated by profiteers masquerading behind the United States of America, it seems unlikely that those in the highest positions of power would possess anything resembling a conscience, and would thus not be moved by a few thousand more lives lost, whether they be civilian or military, friend or enemy.

Well, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but I don’t know of a single intelligent person who trusts the government. Indeed, anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of American history knows well that our founding fathers were extremely suspicious of government, and spent significant effort in curtailing the potential for oppression. And the government has in turn spent significant effort on eroding these barriers to increased power, as one would expect from people who have power.

So how can Bill Maher dismiss completely those who seek the truth when even the authors of the 9/11 commission report have admitted that the report is inadequate, that they were not privy to relevant information, and that the data given them was censored and manipulated by government agencies for reasons unknown?

Since when is being a seeker of the truth a bad thing? Shame on you, Bill!

Janis Abens, 15/3 2010