Bob

Today I remembered a funny situation from where I was living in London in mid 2000s for a little while. I had just visited a heavy metal pub in Soho after work (I used to work in Covent Garden as a bartender during that time). I had been in London for a few months at that point and I was trying to meet people to hang out with.

So I was sitting alone in the back couch/bench and a hetero couple sat next to me. The woman had a punk haircut so I decided to comment on that.

Me: Hey there, I like you haircut!

Woman: Hey thanks! You seem new here, where are you from?

Me: Oh I’m from Greece. I just recently moved here.

Woman: Nice, so what’s your name?

Me: Konstantine

Man: Oh that’s way too hard. What’s your surname?

Me: Thoukydides

Man: Alright then, we’ll call you “Bob”!

Meh

So…yeah

The janky mods of the Anarcho-Communism group in Facebook decided to ban me because I vented against U.S. Imperialism in a thread venting against cis people, in the same style the OP did. They piled-on me trying to prove that privilege-don’t-real if you’re poor, and deflected criticism by pointing out they’re not U.S. citizens themselves. Eventually I pissed one of them enough by applying the same logic to my arguments, that they muted me and asked one of their buddies to ban me.

Unfortunately this is par for the course for anarchist organizing on shit platforms like Facebook and that group had just devolved into the anarchist version of purge-bait. Here, I’ll give you a sample of the daily quality of posts:

“All people not in my oppressed class are crap!”

You now have seen 90% of the “content” posted in this group.

Unfortunately in too many public anarchist spaces, this kind of venting (that should normally be reserved for your affinity group) is par for the course, and then mods fall on top of each other trying to prove who is the best ally by banning whoever tries to use this as a springboard for discussion.

It’s all just immature fucking posturing by immature people who just discovered anarchism. Followed then by more posturing by the resident in-group who has 5% more power than the rest and wants a reason to exercise it. This shit is what passes for activism for many, and the reason why I have lost a lot of interest in trying to contribute as much as I used to in /r/anarchism.

The funny thing is how the people who are ban-happy when they think they’re on the right, cry foul when they end up on the opposite side, like a mod in reddit who whined about me oppressing them for reverting their deletion of a post ((It was nothing reactionary but rather a silly anarchism-related game they didn’t personally like)).

Now to be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with banning or venting online, and neither of these acts, nor being a ban-happy fuckhead is isolated to anarchists, in fact right-wingers seems to be naturally more complacent and glad to fall in-step to a leader-figure. However there is something wrong when most online discourse on this subject is dominated by immature anarchists trying to prove how radical they are. Even more frustrating when they are stumped that they go digging into your profile and attempt to start an oppression olympics with you as a silencing tactic.

It had gotten so ridiculous at times that I managed to avoid getting banned for the longest time because I am Greek (and therefore “non-white” somehow? Dunno how that works, but whatevs) and could speak with some experience about U.S. imperialism. But someone from mainland U.S.A. making the same arguments would be banned without a second thought if they didn’t “win” at the oppression olympics at some other area. I.e. it stops being about what you say, and rather about who you are.

So, meh. Probably for the best as the group had just devolved into people daily calling each other “trash” and high-fiving each other about it in a group-masturbatory celebration of how progressive they are.

Candles and Smoke

Disclaimer: This is mostly a test to play with my wpg2 enabled lightbox plugin as well as display photos rather than a normal blogpost 😉
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So last Sunday, as always me an Vio visited Sam’s place as has become the normal for the group in the last few weeks. I don’t usually joing as I just can’t understand shit of what they are saying in German. It’s not just that they talk fast, but they tend to just eat half of the sentences while replacing the other half with slang I am not familiar with. Meh!

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This is actually the reason why I do not join such excursions that often. I just know that I’ll not be able to take part in the discussion, will miss all the jokes and generally, other than being in the presence of friends, miss the rest.

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Thus it needed a specific incentive to get me to join, and this was Munchkin. I was actually hoping to play a game or two this time since it’s been a while since last I did. So I took my handy bag (which is doing a disintegration act due to the sheer weight of the cards) and my new shiny camera, and headed there.

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Unfortunately it didn’t happen after all. It pretty much evolved as I assumed, with everyone talking except me 🙁 Fortunately I had hugs and a nice gadget to keep me occupied. I wasted my time playing with the camera settings and taking pictures of whatever. I still haven’t managed to discover how to take nice long-exposure photos (Too many options of photo stuff confuse me), but I’m getting there.

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In the end, I ended up falling asleep in Viola’s knees for, from what they tell me, 1.5 hour. I woke up late enough that nobody really was interested in playing Munchkin anymore.

Oh well. At least I got to show you all my new photos 😀

Jamming session

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Dirk has just informed me through an email (which I couldn’t really read) that they’ve written about the previous jamming party they did on his birthday. I went there and to my delight I also saw that they uploaded two vids from me playing with fire.

Excellent! Finally a recent vid with a good capture. I especially liked the jamming behind me. It is something that makes dancing with fire even better.

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Ελλάδα για λίγο ακόμα

Ελπίζω να γνωρίζουν αυτοί που με ψάχνουν ότι από την προηγούμενη Παρασκευή βρίσκομαι στην Θεσσαλονίκη και σκοπεύω να κάτσω μέχρι την ερχόμενη Τρίτη.

Οπότε εαν δεν σας έχω πάρει ακόμα τηλέφωνο είναι κάτα πάσα πιθανότητα ότι το κινητό σας βρίσκεται συνέχεια κλειστό. Γιαυτό ρίξτε κάνα τηλέφωνο στο 6946307628 που είναι το προσωρινό κινητό για Ελλαδιστάν.

Μέχρι τώρα έχω καταφέρει να βρώ τους περισσότερους αλλά ακόμα έχω μπόλικο χρόνο που δεν ξέρω πως να γεμίσω.

Some borrowed stuff

Viking RoarI finally registered on StudiVZ after the prompt of Viola and checking out the photos of Wacken I found quite a few of them that I just had to have for myself. I tried to download them but StudiVZ has a very stupid idea to stop people from downloading, by redirecting the actual file link to an empty .gif file. However this cannot obviously stop anything, but rather delay and annoy me. I just printed the screen, pasted it into GIMP and cut the part that was of interest. Of course that meant that the picture was only as large as StudiVZ’s small window, but it’s better than nothing. To this end I’ve created a new dandy album with all of those for you to admire me once again 😉

FirebreathingSome of the best pictures were taken by Anton who just took one amazing Firebreath pic of me in my last show, among others. I just can’t believe how good this looks :D. I guess that’s what happens when the photographer is a professional.

He also has some newer ones uploaded from the recent BBQ but I’ve still to…borrow those 😉

In any case, well done Anton 😉

Shout to the heavensI also saw some more cool ones taken at the Final Destination as well at the [tag]Wacken[/tag] Warm-up party and I just could not resist making a copy for me. Some of them are just so well shot 😀

So go and have a look at the new stuff.

I just discovered my favorite drink…

…It’s called “Black Soul”. It’s 50/50 Black beer and strong mead (and I’m talking 15%-20% here).

I drunk 0.7l in 1 hour

I’m fucking drunk 😛

The barI don’t know any other place that makes it but the alde Germane is the place I discovered it. And let me tell you, that place rocks!

It’s a little german ” pub” (Don’t really know any other way to describe it) that’s been open since 1450. Yes, that’s the 15th century…And it hasn’t aged a day!

The WallIt’s full stone, no bricks, iron or wood (and I’m guessing fucking cold in the winter). It serves drinks in horns, iron or wooden mugs and chalices. The barman and bar woman are dressed in medieval clothing, leather skins are on the wooden benches/seats and generally, the whole feeling is medieval to the bone. Just the place a guy like me would love.

I went there because I was invited by a couple I met last Friday in the Rock Times, when I went to see Arthur. We started talking and when they discovered that I was a gamer, they invited me to join them there.
This was their first meeting, and they plan to meet there once per month and make the third tuesday of every month like a gathering fore medieval gamers (LARP, RPG etc)

The CrowdUnfortunately this time there were not a lot of gamers, but we did get to meet a couple that patronizes the place.So we had someone to talk since no other gamers showed up. No worries though since the place is worth it. The staff is great, the music is great (I went in when they were playing Loreena McKenitt and left while they were playing In Extremo) and the drink is really great!

I stayed there for about 2 hours and I met some great people. All that’s left is to do is just convince Arnoc to join me for the next visit 😉