[	Tags	|	(not), fight, irony, meh, my big mouth, my job	]
[	mood	|	drained	]
[	music	|	Lupin the Third and the Castle of Calgiostro - Fire Treasure	]

On my way to the hotel. First day in the actual hotel, rather than the training one. Missed my ride (not used to daytime employee pickup times). Stood around hitchhiking, in the heat. A Bedouin with a service cab stopped, and everyone piled in. Drove down to the beach, everyone piled out.

"Hey, you (me) – out."

"Err…. No? I'm heading to THAT inn, as I have told you when I got in".

"Well, I'm not going any farther than this – even the buses stop here and don't go into the hotel driveway".

"Dude, it's a fucking 5 minute walk (more like 2 minutes, but it’s the principle of the thing)"

"Get out now!"

So he jumps out of his seat, stands outside the car door and is about to reach. I bat his hand aside and step out.

"You call me "fucker", you get out now!"

"First of all, that was a fucking exclamative, rather than an invective aimed at you, personally. Second of all, you didn't get me to the hotel, I don't pay you."

"I tear you apart right now!"

And at that he opens his cabin door, and reaches for the hammer under the seat.

"Give me the money"

Which, not being a big fan of being smashed by a hammer, I do. He leaves the hammer alone.

"All right then, what's your name? I'm reporting you to the police for attempted murder" (I go around, to have a look at his license number)

"You think I'm scared of the police? Hah! Have my card, it has my number and name and everything!"

But, as it turns out… he was bloody well scared of the police, or whatever, because the bitch started babbling in a much more explanatory / pleading tone now.

"You give me respect, I give you respect, you say fucking to me, I tear your eyes out. You give me respect, tell me you're short on money because you missed employee ride, I don't charge!"

And he gives me a ride up to the hotel entrance, repeating the above in various variations.

"I'm not like Israeli, you fuck his sister, say I'm sorry, he says ok. I am Bedouin, I need respect. You work here?"

"Yeah, as a reception clerk".

"All right, we're cool now, right? You send work my way? Here, your money back"

"Thanks. Sure, have a good day."

"We cool now right?"

"Sure, sure".

So I shake his hand, take the money, walk away. Shaking a bit, with the adrenaline and all.

And I finally have time to check out his card (from the "I'm not afraid of the police) segment of our story."Love and peace tours. Ask for Abdul".

The irony fucking kills me. Or maybe it’s the combination of my big mouth and a 10 pound hammer.

[	Tags	|	employment, hotel, job, leisure.	]
[	mood	|	content	]
[	music	|	Rufus Wainwright - Poses.	]

Found a new job. A while ago, but I'm only getting around to writing about it now that I'm done with the training and am reasonably sure that I'm not about to get fired for a while.

[	Tags	|	bus lines, egged, israel, joy, money saving through extreme frustration, sekrets!!!!!	]
[	mood	|	enraged	]
[	music	|	Tracy Chapman - Fast Car	]

Some local Israeli / Arad-Jerusalem news. 

Up until this day, whenever I had to travel to Jerusalem (where I study) from Arad (where my parents live/ I still have a room), I had to take a bus to Beer-Sheva, and catch the bus to Jerusalem from there. Nearly 90 NIS, 3.5 hours per trip. When asked, Egged (bus monopoly, nearly only way to travel between cities by bus) information personnel maintained that there are no direct lines between the two cities. The Egged information site claims the same when the question isn't phrased properly. However!!!111one!

A friend of my sister revealed that THERE IS, in fact, a totally super-secret bus line between the two cities. It's intended for the religious/Haredim crowd, rather than the general public, so all information is OMG SO SEKRET!!!! Bus signs list the bus route number (554), but not the destination. When you query by route number at the site you can find the times and destinations, but checking the destinations does not list the bus route.

I hate Egged (for this, for that, plenty of reasons, fucking bunch of idiots with no concern for their customers, as befits a monopoly) with a passion that... may or may not befit a bus company. 

Anyways, a description of the route and some google phrases in Hebrew follow:
The bus starts at Hotel Nof Arad, drives to the mall without any stops, swerves into Halamish (plenty of stops there, one opposite the gas station at the very entrance), drives along Hakanaim, into Givim, does NOT stop at the city limits bus and gets to Jerusalem in 2/2.5 hours (stops at Kirat Gat along the way). 

Direct bus from Arad to Jerusalem direct bus from Jerusalem to Arad 
קו ישיר מערד לירושלים לערד מערד לירושלים ערד: ירושלים ירושלים: ערד
Here's hoping this helps someone googling for the info  

[	Tags	|	fascism, new dawn, oleg gazmanov, russia, Олег Газманов Новая Заря, Фашизм	]
[	mood	|	contemplative	]
[	music	|	Олег Газманов - Новая Заря	]

'k. There are two reasons why you should care about the following. Either you speak Russian (being a citizen of/immigrant from, Russia), in which case you're pretty much aware of much of what I'm about to describe, and might only hang around for the song. If, however, you are a westerner who has little contact with present day Russian culture, experience tells me that the news will come as a total shock to you. It's been my experience that people in the West really have no idea just how anti-western and anti-democracy Russian public opinion really is. Even with the "new Cold War" babble. This isn't going to actually "prove" anything, as much as provide one sick, sad, hilarious example.

Oleg Gazmanov is a MAINSTERAM Russia pop singer. I mean, there were certain, "soldiers, officers, mother Russia the great empire" notes in a few of his songs, but mostly in a Tzarist Russia bit. The man even got an Order of Honor (because, that's what they do in Russia. Give singers and actors Orders to recognize their worth. Might be a leftover from Soviet times) from the government in 2006.

And... here's a clip for his latest song on youtube. Don't worry, you can follow the plot, in the shape of a cartoon, even if you don't speak Russian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfyYZ9Q2vHI

A Russian url which lays out the details of the clip's plot, the song's lyrics and offers several download links 

http://www.newsru.com/cinema/01nov2005/gazmanov.html

I define Fascism as the ideal of a single unified country, under a strong unquestionable leader, with no internal disputes of the sort that attempts to do things in a democracic manner would cause (the illusion of the people being a single unit with no conflicting goals) standing together against a fabricated external threat. Racism, "ancient traditions" etc are optional.

So, this is pretty much fascist, anti-western propaganda. Once again, not proof, just an example. Though some evidence can be found with a simple web search - praise, scorn, and comments.

Something that seemed interesting to me, is just how powerful the message was. The upcoming Russian empire has yet to do anything to kill me or my friends, so unlike most similarly powerful messages of "unity through strentgh" throughout history, I don't automatically have a negative reaction to it, and so...

Well, at least until I started reading actual praising comments and running into "dirty zionist fucks" at every clause.

Oddly enough, it started out ok. I actually manged to wake up early enough to do some stuff (though, come to think of it, that was probably the cause of all my grief). I missed the doctor appointment (weird lump in my throat, probably cancer) but other than that, things were terrific. I  was about to board the bus to Jerusalem... and then I decided I should wait for a few minutes until Mom comes back from the pool, so that I could borrow the car and settle some minor things with social security (and old paper regarding... something essentially equivalent to Tax Returns... only a few dozen Shekels. I also have a seperate, long-dragging issue regarding the Maanak, that will probably never be settled). Mom's back, car keys, request to drop by the pool and retrieve her swimming suit, forgotten in the changing room.

Sasha told, Sasha goes. Social security, take a number, waiting time, GREAT fucking chance to save some time, make the trip to the pool and come back before my number is up. Mom's card through the electronic lock, nobody pays attention, "Ma'am, could be ever so kind as to...". YOU HAVE GAINED BLACK AND WHITE SWIMMING SUIT! YOU HAVE GAINED 30 XP! 193129 XP TILL LEVEL UP! 

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd. Fucking and. 

[	Tags	|	8-bit theatre, angels 2200, chopping block, comic, devil's panties, digger, dm of the rings, dr mcninja, dresden codac, elf only inn, eva's escapades, girl genius, go girly, gunnerkrig court, hello cthulhu, i hart darth, lackadaisy, loli loves venom, lowroad75, minus, order of the stick, review, scary go round, sexy losers, sinfest, something positive, vgcats, von van hunter, webcomics, xkcd	]
[	mood	|	exhausted	]
[	music	|	Guns and Roses - Civil War.	]

Decided to create a compendium both to remember those comics that I want to check out once in a while and to give the few who check out my journal based on my hilarious misanthropy elsewhere a less boring url to check out.

Brief description + links here, examples of art in the next post (tomorrow, or at some point in the future) 

Brief intro - you can go to a LOT of places to hear rants about safe, unfunny, recycled newspaper comics, and the potential that webcomics have in comparison (Sturgeon's Law and all). On the other hand... crap, I totally suck at remembering names. Some guy made a Scott Mcloud-ish (Understanding Comics) point that webcomics have freaking unlimited potential in terms of layout, plots, style and characters. Unlimited by publishers who "know what the people want", if anyone is brave enough to experiment they can come up with something new and successful. Therefore it is a testament to both the lacking intelligence and poor taste of "the public" and the creators lack of courage and vision (I'm totally paraphrasing in my own, cliché terms here) that most successful comics follow the exact freaking same "gag a day" sitcom humor, and certain particularly moronic creators actually pride themselves on reaching the negative standards of newspaper comics, recycling the exact uninspired, lowest common denominator jokes and situations over and over, in what he tentatively referred to as "Fart and Poop jokes". At which point Scott Kurtz, being the complete imbecile that he is, decided to butt in, in order to point out that he's exactly the sort of moron described. But that's beside the point.

The point is that I agree with both of the above, and tend to enjoy comics that buck the trend at least a bit.  Therefore, I hope that the comics mentioned here will be (for the most part) original and/or well crafted in some manner, and possibly unknown to people not particularly familiar with the webcomic world. Props to the people at the VGCats forum, without whom I would never have heard of some of these. I also consider quantity of updates a big part of the comics quality (and the "high quality art, epic plot" comics never ever finish their first arc before the creators gives up, semi-exceptions like
Alpha-Shade aside). So a lot of these are either updated often with higher than average quality with a few gems scattered around, or update very rarely but are always almost good/very good. A few are just archives of finished or "indefinite hiatus" comics.

Hope that was in some way educational - after all, nothing beats being told about someone's taste in webcomics in addition to seeing a very comprehensive illustration of the taste with an incredibly long list. Not redundant AT ALL.

Let's begin with the very dark, violent and perverted. A lot of these are - Sadist Shows  taken to the extreme.

Chopping Block - The whacky misadventures of a serial killer. Note - cynical, funny, DARK. Kills freaking innocent people, which oddly enough, few people expect based on the description above. Hiatused.
Chopping Block Something Positive - one of the few comics I read mostly based on force of habit. Initially a bunch of sarcastic, sadistic, and somewhat intelligent people living in a "Sadist World", it just became much more conventional, bogged down and unfunny. Yep, shockingly enough, I preferred it back when it was course, and went out of its way to shock. Still, the archives are still there Something Positive 

Sexy Losers - sexual humor. But not good wholesome sexual humor, but rather "So, going to hang yourself? Can I have your body once you're done?" humor. Started out hilarious, went downhill by recycling, overdoing and sliding into the pits of the cliché, then closed down when the creator realized the above. Archives still there - go read. Ten strips should really let you know if it's the comic for you. Sexy Losers

Nana's Everyday Life and Tomoy 42's room are probably the most sadistic "good" comics ever. They take on the child protagonists of several anime shows, mix them together and inflict untold rape, humiliation, torment and death upon them. Nana's life is slightly more serious, particularly towards the end, 42 is a lot less permanent and has a tendency to mock every "serious" "pet the dog" "touching" moment, including the sort Nana's had. Nana's Everyday Life ... Tomoy 42's Room 

Lj cut here, because there are A LOT of reviews here. I wonder about the psychological aspect of only displaying the reviews that link to the really disturbing stuff, but... meh.