Andkon is the shining bacon of the 21st century, single-handedly leading humanity out of the uncertain present. Apart from managing the world's best arcade, he writes daily to cultivate the ignorant masses 
Andkon Briefly Surfaces from Wilderness to Bitch at World
Jul 05, 2004 @ 13:21[After a month of exile, I still manage not to forget how to write and, more importantly, how to be pissed off at my surroundings. As usual my personal anger gets unleashed at the world:]
As I've watched the Final Round of the Euoprean European Football (aka soccer) Championships between the host Portugal and some homos from Greece, flashbacks from the past continued to haunt my future.
Apart from the striking resemblance of the rules and strategies of soccer to my former sport waterpolo, during a past game a Portuguese guy my age named Cristiano Ronaldo was benched despite the fact that he scored a very nice goal that game. Along with today's final game, that started a bad trip on Memory Lane.
Houston, fall 2003. My waterpolo team had to win two games in a row at the very end of the season to qualify for the state level. Most of the first game, the team was either losing or tied, until I hit the scene. Thanks to a big oaf's drowning attempt of the world's favorite online writer, I was awarded a 4-meter penalty shot, which is basically me versus the goalie from about 12 feet. Unlike most of the 4-meters that season for the team, mine swiftly went in: the game was no longer tied, we were winning. One shocking surprise: a second after scoring the goal, I was benched since it's obvious that I'm useless. Nonetheless, the team managed to maintain the lead and ended up winning the game. Thus, we advanced to the second game, the last game which separated us from state. Surprisingly, I played absolutely nothing in the second game. And we lost. Perhaps we might have needed a player who could score and swim fast. But it's not like we had anyone like that, especially not on the bench who scored a penalty shot the game before… So the season ended for me with a tie-breaking shot expeditiously followed with a giant serving of bench warming the pivotal game.
While I never wanted to be a sports star, this "Let's bench the guy who scored" move in the soccer game struck a nerve in me. But it went deeper than that: I could not believe that a guy my age was doing what he liked, while getting paid up the ass. And this brings us to my present problem: not being able to do what I like (screw the money and fame for now) and being put into compromising positions like some common street-corner whore.
This gloomy flashback was accompanied by one of my amazing insights into the future in which I saw myself getting screwed for yet another four years in the name of "higher""learning".
As I signed up for college courses, I signed up for international studies. Essentially being nothing more than the bullshit mixture of politics and the economy on a worldwide scale, this major on the surface appears ideal for me.
But of course it's not. I have a suspicious feeling, and these feelings have a way of always being on mark, that this international studies is nothing more than the present bullshit I hate in politics and write against weekly.
In politics today, non-partisan pundits never viciously attack sleazy politicians (redundancy noted) in any fashion akin to my political commentary. For example, no one in the national media has asked what the hell Kerry's veteran status (from a needless war) has anything to do with running a nation and no one has asked why Bush dares image himself as the Antiterrorist President when his Iraq war created a new rich breeding ground for terrorism. The only viciousness is the unfair childish half-truths from the politicians of both parties.
I also enrolled in some honors course that for now samples the work of mostly ancient Greek writers and philosophers. Among these writers, Plato hails as the greatest. As a matter of fact, an encyclopedia article quotes some guy as proclaiming that "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
All this scholarly brilliance has blessed the European continent (and in more modern times, the entire world) with war after war. There hasn't been even an a single generation since the ancient Greek philosophers that hasn't felt grief from war of hunger from starvation. The history of Europe from ancient times to now can be described as a monolithic internal war machine consuming everything in its path. From the ancient semi-mythical Battle of Troy (which the ancient Greeks were ever so proud of) to the Roman conquests to the Crusades of the Christians, to the quasi-religious, quasi-political wars after the Reformation, to the modern atrocities committed by tyrants, Europe has hardly recovered from a war when it was time to rein in the horses for battle once more.
The great philosophers were greatly fully of shit. Their words were ineffectual in creating any lasting stability. Just as the encyclopedia quote shows, the last 25 centuries were an experiment of Greek philosophy which has failed to produce any lasting good.
In light of the unfolding (as the worst has yet to come) disaster in Iraq, which was based on a carefully crafted philosophy of presumptive guess with helpful servings of oil, power, and money, it is perhaps time to examine the worth of all philosophical bullshit that best failed to prevent 25 centuries of conflict or at worst in some way caused all the chaos.
I hate giving literary blowjobs to literature that is asinine and wothless crap.
And yes, I was betting on a Greek loss in the soccer game for obvious reasons.
[From sports to rejection of Western thought, an amazing journey this has been.]