Short break

I won't be able to write anything serious (or stupid) on here for the next two weeks due to a massive increase in my workload and a trip to Sweden that I'll make in about a week. I'll try to be back with more interesting stories and news snippets after the break!
Take care

Honesty prevails!

What do you think about the truth? Should we always be honest even if we will hurt somebody’s feelings? Or is it ok to lie once in a while just to protect our friends and family? I have constantly asked myself this question in the last few years. Should you tell your friends if you think that they are making a big mistake or should they have the experience on their own and learn from it? Should you tell your partner that he/she has gained weight (to a point that you no longer find him/her attractive) and that you think he/she should do something about it? Why is it that we usually find it most difficult to tell our closest friends and family the truth? I never studied psychology but questions like these still fascinate me. Of course nobody likes to hear that they are doing something wrong or that you think something about them should change. I think if a relationship is close enough, the different parties should be able to criticize each other (as long as this is constructive criticism of course). I wouldn’t think it appropriate to simply point out something negative and not give any helpful advice on how to change it. A small amount of tough love might do wonders at certain points. Don’t accept if your friends resign and throw away important opportunities. Don’t stand idly by when you see that some bad choices are made. Your honesty might make all the difference in the world. And of course when I say be honest I don’t mean be rude. Just don’t tell them you like their new haircut if you really don’t. You can still pack it up nicely and make them feel good without lying to their faces.
So be brave and be honest. You might see that it is quite liberating.

Join the Ayreonauts

For the last ten years there has been a specific band that followed me wherever I went. Of course I’m not a victim of stalking but merely a victim to Arjen Anthony Lucassen’s pure genius that he puts into his musical project called Ayreon. Lucassen writes the music for these concept albums and then recruits some of the world’s best artists in Heavy Metal and Rock to record it and finally releases it under the name Ayreon. These past records have included talent like: Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), Anneke van Giersbergen (The Gathering), Daniel Gildenlöw (Pain of Salvation), Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian) and Devin Townsend, just to name a few of the many musical geniuses that Lucassen has worked with over the years. It all began in 1995 when “The Final Experiment”, Lucassen’s first Metal Opera was released. Since then Ayreon have come up with seven records and Lucassen has also worked on three other side projects. Ambeon was an ambient based single-singer project featuring Astrid van der Veen, Star One’s songs were all based on popular science fiction themes (like Star Wars and Dune) and Stream of Passion was Lucassen’s first real band in over 10 years. SOP was initially created to showcase the incredible talent of Mexican singer Marcela Bovio a newcomer at the time. Since then Lucassen has quit the band to create his latest Ayreon record called “01011001”, but SOP are still going strong.
If you like challenging music with a lot of variation and if you are not afraid to open your mind to different genres than you should definitely have a look at Ayreon. They are worth it!

Official Page

Myspace

Customer support

Do you remember the sayings “the customer is always right” and “the customer is king”? I am wondering what happened to them. I would consider myself to be a spender. Not that I don’t keep a security fund in my bank account at all times, but I am not a cheapskate. I still buy CDs and DVDs, I buy a lot of books and I also have my fair share of little electronic gadget to make my life just a little less/more complicated. If you only do your shopping online than you escape what I like to call the customer trap. When was the last time you were at a store and needed some advice from a salesperson and actually got the help that you went there for? I have been duped several times, just to give you an example: I wanted to get a faster internet provider and the salesman assured me that they could upgrade my connection to a much higher speed (he even called a person at their tech-center to confirm it to me). When I finally received the new connection passwords it turned out to have been a hoax because my connection speed was still the same.
More than once I have noticed that customers that are not very familiar with the item they want to purchase are talked into buying a more expensive product that they don’t need. It is sad to see that it is more important to dupe your customers and make a lot of money off them, than to genuinely be interested in helping them. Of course I am very well aware of the ideas behind the free market economy but I’m tired of uneducated salespeople that can’t help you because they don’t know their products. If you want to buy for example a new television it is very important to get the right information before you make a purchase, or you will end up with a device that is ten times more advanced than you actually can use (the new HD standards are not used everywhere and most people don’t really understand the difference between standard SDTV and modern 720p and 1080p HDTV, a difference that has an enormous impact on the price range). So what happened to the friendly helpful salesperson? The last time I met one was when I went to the PC Spezialist branch in Trier. The main board of my new computer was defective due to an error I made while installing the CPU so I had them check it out. At first they told me that it was busted and that I had to buy a new one but then they tried to clean the whole thing and it paid off. The technician gave it an extra effort and thereby saved me a lot of money. Money I would probably have spent in their store. But since they did not try to rip me off I will probably go there more often from now on.
So here is an idea: try to be nice to your customers and ACTUALLY help them for a change, you might find out that it pay off and that they will return because a satisfied customer is a good customer.

Cthulhu fthagn!

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."

Have you ever had the feeling that the world is not quite the way everybody seems to think it is? Do you believe in a higher power? And no I don’t mean God. Well I don’t mean your God. Do you dare to look behind the shrouds of reality and be swallowed by the Old Ones? Then step into the world of the almighty Cthulhu and beware of his eternal slumber. If you like horror stories and have never read the works of H.P. Lovecraft you should definitely look him up. Among his best work are the “Dream Cycle” stories and the “Cthulhu Mythos” stories. Lovecraft was plagued by frightening night terrors which gave him the inspiration for his horrifying stories. In 1981, half a century after the death of Lovecraft, his work and especially the mythos he had invented had gained such an enormous popularity that it spun off a pen and paper role playing game. Since then the publisher Chaosium has released several different versions and additions to the game. The basis of the game is simple. To play you need a game master (the person in charge of the story who presents it to the other players) and several investigators (how many is entirely dependent on the scenario). The story is usually situated in one of three different eras: the 1890s, the 1920s or the present. Recently there have also been additions to the game that take place in the Middle Ages (Cthulhu Dark Ages) and the future (Cthulhu Rising). So if you are into horror and suspense stories and also like to role play (and I don’t mean in the bedroom) you should get together with some friends and try out the dark world of dread Cthulhu.

"They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape...but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them."

The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft

Neil Gaiman parody

Metal Bonanza

I just wanted to promote a project that I am currently involved in. It’s a Metal review page where you can get some opinions about recent CD releases. The page also includes some information on upcoming events and festivals. So if you are into Metal music, check us out under: http://mfgreview.wordpress.com/ and get involved.

The Effect of Old Age

In the past decades modern medicine has made unbelievable advances and if you lead a relatively healthy life (that means no smoking and no excessive drinking and binge eating) and are not a victim of a freak accident, you will probably grow very old. After having worked almost their whole life, you would expect people to be happy to retire and use all their new won free time to do all the things they missed out on for the past years. I know several people above the age of 70 and something that tends to strike me, is their belief that they are constantly ill and will die soon. Of course after a certain age the human body is prone to sickness, but even if the doctors ensure a clean bill of health they are convinced that something is wrong with them. I don’t want to insinuate that every person over 70 is a hypochondriac but sadly it often seems that way. It must be frustrating to outlive your friends and close relatives and it might even awaken a feeling of despair or depression.
When I talk about these old people I don’t mean any disrespect. For example I used to have the utmost respect for my grandfather but his constant obsession with his own mortality has it made very difficult to talk to him in the last few years. He has always been a very healthy person (except for his minor heart attack a few years back which he survived without any medical consequences) and I have always found it astonishing how he was still able to chop wood or work in his workshop at the age of over 80. But during the last few years he has been convinced that he will die soon and has given up. He doesn’t care about anything important anymore, ignores his family (two daughters and 4 grandchildren) and waits to be taken by Death. It is very painful to witness the decline of a loved one and it even makes me angry. He is now 86 years old and even managed to get his driver’s licence renewed last year. Unfortunately after Christmas he became so obsessed with the idea that something is wrong with him and so he had to go to a hospital and since then he has not been able to leave even though the doctors say he is fine. He is so convinced that he is dying that they cannot release him (he needs a lot of care now since he has given up and does not want to leave the bed) and it has also been impossible to place him at a retirement home (even though he bought himself a place in a care facility just for such a case). Not that his family wants him out of the way. It is just impossible to give him the care he need at home.
Well I am drifting of my point. My grandfather has always been a person who wanted to be on top of things. He read several newspapers every day, was politically invested and had strong opinions about the world and current events (who could blame him after having witnessed a war himself). This obsession (I really can’t think of another word here) has ruined what could have been a very healthy and productive retirement for him. He even started to write down his memories of the war but gave up because it was too painful. I always wanted to record his experiences so that the horrible events of the World War II would not be forgotten. It is sad to see that nothing is of any joy to him anymore. Worst of all is his apparent anger at the world, which he displays in anger fits he hurls at his visitors. It makes it very difficult for his children to visit him because he usually treats them like servants and strangers (even though he is not senile).
I hope I myself will be able to enjoy the rest of my life and use all the time I have been given to the fullest. I would really love to hear from some of my readers here. What are your opinions on this topic? Do you agree with me? Or do you think I am being too harsh with him? Please feel free to comment.