We used to say “Only in America”… but we don’t anymore. It’s happening everywhere.

Amid ACTA Outcy, Politicians Don Anonymous Guy Fawkes Masks

Members of Poland’s Parliament hold up Guy Fawkes masks, symbolizing protests by Anonymous, to protest ACTA. A new photo is doing the rounds on the Internet. It shows members of the Polish parliament holding print-outs of the notorious Guy Fawkes mask in front of their faces, homage to an unofficial symbol of the Anonymous cyber collective.

via: www.forbes.com

Related articles

• Anonymous takes aim over Europe’s SOPA (news.cnet.com)
• Polish MPs wear Guy Fawkes masks to protest ACTA (boingboing.net)
• Amid ACTA Outcy, Politicians Don Anonymous Guy Fawkes Masks (forbes.com)

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Don’t worry, next classes include How-to-write-a-blog-post-and-bore-everyone-to-death lessons! Yeeehaaaw!

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But (yes, there is a BUT!) there is one more thingy to consider…

The Ugliest – How to unlearn’n'forget

Probably you don’t have difficulties forgetting things (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading Brainmachine 101 shitty witty tips, would you?), but (yes, another butt’s but)…

Unlearning? Doh …wtf?

First, let me redefine DOH WTF for you: Declaring Obdurate Helluva War To #Fail.

Second, why should you forget or unlearn something? I’m sure you’re more than happy to forget the Godzilla you once dated or annoying facts about the loan. Unlearning is beneficial for your brainmachine, because it prevents #F2O syndrome. #F2O syndrome is caused by a nasty disease with a very complex Latin name “fail too often” and it’s defined as “doing the same mistakes/stupidities in the same way over and over again”. No #F2O for you, k?

Third, let me explain why it is important to distinguish between unlearning and forgetting. Obviously, they are not the same. If you forget something, you end up with not knowing what you once knew, but if you unlearn something, you still know it, but you are aware it’s not the right thing to do (anymore). Kinda. What I wanted to say is … huh, I forgot. I’m lost.

Unlearning… un… what?

There are three atrocious monsters you can destroy by unlearning: a beast called Un-geek, another one with strange nickname Un-habit and the most ferocious villain Un-thoughtway.

Un-geek

Once upon a time there was a prince. No, he wasn’t. Once upon a time there were Swedish defense forces with a strong belief that Soviet submarines are spying on them and testing some super-duper stealth techniques to eventually take them over. Guys responsible for detect-submarine-or-detect-nothing devices were used to distinguish noises and to tell, whether there is (or isn’t) something fishy in the sea. And there WAS really something fishy going on. Swedish government was so close to believing Soviets are organizing a war against Sweden, that they authorized the use of really hard-core firepower for (one) “submarine” hunt. Funny thing though, after that mayham they couldn’t find anything – neither whole submarine nor its parts. Then one day this dude, Tero Harkonen, Swedish seal expert claimed that there is a possibility of guys listening to young seals rap music. Of course government denied everything. Only after another political party took over the control people started to listen to dudes like Tero.

See what happens, if you think you know it all? Being a geek can be a good thing, but it can make you hunt submarines that don’t exist (at least not always).

Un-habit

Bad habits are just… baaaad. Do you want to get rid of them? Unlearn them. Yeah, simple, I know. Afraid of heights, spiders, little green beings also called Walking mint bonbons? Do you want to stop drinking, smoking, smacking people? Stay with me.

Un-thoughtway

You don’t need a vehicle to end up on highway of thoughts like “I suck. I’m such a failure. My bad karma run over my dogma.” One moment of distraction (nice looking gal/dude) and you end up on this highway to Hell. Turn off the engine, we’ll make a detour. On foot.

OMG, what to do, what to do?!

Please, put down the gun. Just don’t panic, k?

The hit list (for unlearning)

The most obvious thing – don’t go hunting submarines, silly you. Un-geek once in a while, it’ll do you good.

Second most obvious thing – don’t be satisfied with quick solutions. Don’t be afraid to learn something new (e.g. to cook). Good is not good enough. There is one exception though. I’m good enough. Don’t argue.

Third most obvious thing – play with buttons. Remember Dee Dee (Dexter’s sis from cartoon Dexter’s Lab)? Bee Dee Dee. Say “What does this button do?” while pressing red, blue and green buttons. See what happens. Don’t worry, Dexter will fix everything. Right? Right?!

Unfortunately, this hit list is not very efficient for elimination of thought zombies.

Thought zombies

Whoa, thought zombies? You’re not in a horror movie. You ARE the horror movie and your brainmachine is the lair of thought zombies. Thought zombies are hatched from braincells with #F2O syndrome combined with bad habits. If you take an unpleasant event, add emotional charge to it, you get persistent memory. Thought zombies are helluva persistent suckers.

How could you possibly destroy them? Well, because I’m a very simple person, I try to live up to the KISS principle. Foolish, I know, but here it is … KISS principle applied to the zombie hunt.

Kamikaze Idiotic Simple Solutions (KISS)

Three basic approaches to seek’n'destroy thought zombies:

• real life hangman
• melancohol
• extreme makeover

They are very simple, indeed, and can be expressed in terms of mathematic equations. Very simple ones, really. Don’t give up on me just yet.

Real life hangman

Definition
Real Life Hangman: a phrase, “take your toys and go find a tree before I say Popocatepetl”

Equation
Rope + Person = Person- – AND others get all your toys!

End result
#fail

Melancohol

Definition
Melancohol: noun, alcohol (lots of it) mixed with sadness and unreasonable amounts of melancholy

Equation(s)
Drinking + Person = BrainCells- -
Person – n * BrainCell = Vegetable

End result
#fail

Extreme Makeover

Definition
Extreme Makeover: phrase/noun, lobotomy combined with “don’t give a f***” and a shotgun

Equation
Person + Extreme Makeover = Serial Killer

End result
#fail

It seems to me that KISS approach is not the best approach to problem solving. Because I’m a very important person (LOL), I have quite good connections to highly appreciated authorities in the area of making people wiser and happier. I consulted Master Yoda about this little KISS problem and this is what he (it?) said … “Use the force, stupid!”

Master Yoda’s tricks

Here are the tricks I was able to extract from Yoda after a series of some Chuck-Norris-would-be-proud kicks in the ass.

Don’t pull the trigger.

I don’t have a gun.

Yes, you do. I saw it only few minutes ago (see Un-thoughtway). Nevermind, because in this case the trigger is the situation (object, person) that makes you do bad things to yourself (yeah, the bad habit thingy). If you avoid situation or get rid of object that triggers undesired behaviour, you’re halfway to Heaven (or Hell – whatever you prefer). If you’d like to quit smoking, don’t order samples of new brands of cigarettes on eBay. If you’d like to stop drinking, don’t buy books like “How to brew beer at home for Dummies”.

I refuse the mere notion of sparkica being a trigger for your bad habits. No way. Go find yourself someone/something else to blame.

Extinction is BAD! Not.

Today even the birds are politically engaged using slogans like “Extinction is bad, you suck, you humans are destroying everything, you’ll make every species extinct. Extinction is bad.” Guess what? Not all extinction types are bad. If you can make your problem behavior go extinct, you rule! Don’t let anyone spoil the extinction party!

Self + Monitor

If you are reading this, you probably have two things: (your)self and a monitor. Like I care. You should. But not for the monitor in front of you! You should (take) care about yourself by monitoring all the quirky moody behavioral modes. Pay attention — pay it carefully and systematically, otherwise you may end up being a textbook example of a chaos. The really messy one.

After further thirty minutes of pulling Yoda’s eyebrows, he (it) made another disclosure about common mistakes people do. Yes, you included. Not me, though.

Whata mistaka 2 maka

Top three mistakes you can make:

1. Thinking you always #fail and that it makes no sense (whatsoever) to even try anything. Please, at least let others convince you into that, why take them the pleasure?
2. After spilling a cup of coffee over your brand new laptop you roar “My life is ruined! Forever!!!” Your life ain’t ruined, laptop’s is.
3. I’m looking funny at you (actually, I really am) and you think I hate you … because you’re ugly! You’re not ugly, well, not as ugly as I am. I think you hate me because I’m ugly.

Whata mistaka 2 maka 2

Another top three mistakes you can make:

1. You regulary practice musterbation, because you are convinced this is a new way of you-know-what. For your infromation –  it’s not. Musterbation is a combination of Should, Must and Ought rules you force upon yourself – setting perfectionist deadlines, goals and impossible demands that are usually impossible to reach. And then you punish yourself for not meeting them. Errr… wrong way, dude. Musterbation is forbidden, k?
2. You believe that every successful date/meeting (with you) is a set-up. In 95% it probably is, but we should have faith in that remaining 5%, k?
3. White and black are the only colors you know – either you are the ruler of the world or a total failure. There’s nothing in between. Let me tell you something. There is always something in between. Your nose, for example.

What can you learn from these mistakes? That your grandgrandgrand…..grandgrand dad was an ape? And his date with your grandgrandgrand…..grandgrand mom was a set-up? Sure. If you want to.

What I want you to do is to take RISC! No, this has nothing to do with the sexual intercourse without preservatives (condoms?). RISC is a four stage cycle: Relax – Imagine – Stop – Can.
For example, first you have to relax so you can focus on next steps. Then you should imagine something positive, like you being in possesion of a Ferrari (you’re right, you’ve heard that one before). If you suddenly feel the urge to buy a yellow Ferrari, yell “Stop!” in your head. You don’t want a YELLOW Ferrari and you don’t need a drink to imagine a RED Ferrari. Ok, you’re ready to go and steal one. You can do it.

Yoda’s last words…

…right before he (it) kicked my ass after he lost all his eyebrows:

Let me tell you something, punk! Take every failure (#fail) as a lesson in the School of Life – learn from everything single thing either good or bad.
Now here’s a lesson for you!!!

Baaab! Kaboom! #%#” **?#! Bam!

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