Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati - the voice has to be heard to be believed

Some classic clips - Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (clearly a CIA comedy plant), the Al-Qaeda bloopers care of Ayman Al-Zawahiri (''Afghanistan, no wait, um, Vietnam...'') and my man Sha'ban Abd Al-Rahim who kicks the funky jam. The soup opera clips are fascinating too.

Friday night, rather tired. But I have tune into WeFunk, some classic old-school tracks from Static.

Good night.

If you are looking for about two hours worth of music to enhance the Simulation tinkering, I can recommend my favourite WeFunk show currently;

http://www.wefunkradio.com/show/2003-05-02

It defines everything classic about WeFunk.

A couple of nights ago my man, Brian C. Wiles, stayed overnight with a friend of his. A lot of pizza was consumed and I haven't cleared the generally polluting salt backlog. It's a funny thing living in the desert. Irrespective of if you are in the open air or under air conditioning, you will get dehydrated. Maintaining water consumption and lowering salt seems to be central to feeling okay in these conditions.

Good morning.

I often thought growing up in Australia through a number of factors - forced politicisation, the extended psychological effects of the underdog mentality, anti-intellectual culture and the general depression of the place - that it would be easy to be recruited into cults and terrorist organisations.

My own experience in Australia, whilst not attached to Muslim fundamentalists, could have easily turned to a number of cults and groups that could have quickly become terrorists. Many practiced active recruitment. I was chatting online about it to Mridul P last night on my sociological experiment yoof.

I awoke this morning and read on BBC News online about Matthew Stewart;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4144412.stm

And googled his name to only find this on ABC Radio AM's site (ABC = Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

http://www.abc.net.au/am/stories/s551296.htm

They're in addition to two known individuals with suspected al-Qaeda links including a Melbourne taxi driver who changed his name to Jihad and a former Australian soldier and East Timor veteran, Matthew Stewart.

It would be nice to know more about Mr Stewart. Clearly a number of people and organisations know quite a bit about him.

On the feel-good side of the news;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4145150.stm

Mmmm... huge halal sandwich...

Noble Ape Obsessions

My week to-date has been spend working through the Noble Ape code progressively with Pedro Ferreira. This probably understates the amount of time I have spent online working through changes with Pedro. About 14 hours and counting - at least. Lots of code covered and some decent changes made. I'm planning on releasing the new version (0.671) t'row, with a bit of luck.

Pedro is a 21-yo Portuguese computer engineering student. He has developed a solid interest in Noble Ape. It's always good to find like minded folk.

Good morning.

Good night.

Watching what he has been listening to, I noted that he must be in the process of assembling an album. I sent him a couple of messages. The result, I'm proud to include two Barbalet Log exclusive Loe Pesci tracks from his soon to be released mix tape, Loe Pesci Volume One. Both are around 1.7Mb MP3s. Short tracks with a long track volume of lyrics pushed together in classic Pesci mode.

Peace out to my man Loes! Thanks for the exclusives.

Kicks, Snares - Loe Pesci

When It's Time To Rip a Mic - Loe Pesci

WARNING: These tracks are uncensored. Do not download if you are not familiar with Loes frank bluntness. You may be offended.

Good afternoon!

http://www.barbalet.net/dig/toy-soldiers/

Good afternoon.

Another month and a clean webpage to write in.

I went to the Meadows Mall with my wife today. It always strikes me as strange now we are back in the US that the local mall is so far from our house. In the Bay Area, there was a density of malls that enabled me to walk with ease to one and cycle a short distance to the other.

I have written quite a bit in the Log about my mall experiences. Mainly because it is an experience that doesn't necessarily have a timeframe associated with it. As I almost exclusively go to malls with my wife, the experience is akin to being dropped in the jungle and asked to wander around for two and a half hours. I find it very difficult to emotionally mesh with the mall experience. I guess I'm not a good consumer.

The thing that strikes me the most about living in the US again is that it is in a state of denial about the war status of the country. I went into a book store and there wasn't a war comic there. Nothing. The toy stores have three US Ranger toys at the back of the shop. No sign of the enemy either. Honestly, I get angry at the amount of branded nonsense vs reality that exist in American popular culture. There are no cultural links with what is actually going on in the country. It produces a society removed from reality. I'd like to consume more reality. I guess that makes me a bad consumer.

I went on toysrus.com to try to find how far back you needed to go before you could find an enemy of the US in toy form. I've heard that using terms relating to current enemy combatants can get you blacklisted from Google. So I will say that I typed the variance spellings for all the combatant types and their commanders, religions/political leaders etc. Didn't find a toy until... the Germans. The Germans in the Second World War are the first enemy combatants allowed in toy form.

Somehow in looking for more information, I found this site online. Gotta love the internet.

Games aren't Fun!

I have been working on a text for a few months now and following my last Log entry at the end of last month, I have decided to reduce the target age and make it more like the books I read as a child. I have a lot of fantasy related books. But as I had time to kill today, I thumbed through the local Dungeons and Dragons offerings.

The methods of game play between the US and the UK are quite striking. Here, the play is aggressive and competitive. The idea of fun as a fudge of experimenting and getting along is replaced with the aim of decimation of an opponent. Reading through the Dungeons and Dragons' Dungeon Master's Guide I found a section near the front that talked about dealing with disputes and personal differences outside the game. Taking folks aside and talking to them. Giving folks time-out. Culturally it seems really quite strange. I appreciate that difficult characters may converge on fringe hobbies. But to spell such things out explicitly. Very strange.

Free the Fur

Although my wife thinks I should never step inside, I always go to the Meadows Mall pet store at least once per trip. You need to understand that if you spend two and a half hours in the Mall, and there are three stores you feel comfortable going in, you are going to go in these stores at least three times through your 'Is she done yet...' wanderings. It is how I rediscovered my interest in toy soldiers after all.

I went into the pet store.

I always enter with a family of toddler-aged children. One in a push-chair. Two running in opposite directions. Confronted by a smell, is it animal or juvenile? The pet store had a sign up saying they didn't support puppy farming on glass cages containing three or four puppies. About twenty glass cages containing three or four puppies each, all asleep.

My immediate reaction - these animals need to be free. I saw two schnauzer puppies and my immediate reaction was, Charlie would want them to be free.

My wife had actively banned me from going into PetSmart because of the middle-aged pound dogs, declawed, debarked and still sent to the pound.

What life can these animals have? To own an old dog and to know the joy he gets and gives... a hard experience to think what these animals will be raised into. Dogs in particular are built on their early life experiences.

I always walk away from pet stores feeling less human. Today slightly more dog.

Good evening.