Desperate Freelancer

I planed to tell you some about stupidity and stupid people. As a frenchman, I - of course - feel superior and so clever it would suprize me to discover I didn't invent philosophy on my own, so I felt I have much to say about stupidity.

But as I was doing some research on this vast subject, I understood how vain and pretentious it was to have the objective to write you something on the topic.

I have to SHOW you. It would be so obvious, no words could compete.

1. We are all stupid when we pretend to know

And believe me, it's not typical from US citizens, I can easily make the same video in France.

2. We are more stupid when we pay attention

3. The more powerfull you are, the more stupid you are likely to be

4. Being evil makes us stupid

5. But trying to help as well

6. We are even more stupid when money is at stake

7. It's great to be on TV when you are stupid..

because everybody knows...

8. But it's so good to do stupid things, when you do them on purpose

Well, I guess I made myself clear, and that everyone saw what was my point. Hope you had a good laugh too.

I can't help showing you my new laptop. I have just bought it this week end. It's my very first purchase on internet, can you believe this ?

The thing is I absolutely don't need a new laptop. The one I have is recent and works perfectly well. So why did I bought this one ?

I have a few reasons :

1. It's a sign of wealth

In my times, you could judge a man at his car. Nowadays, you should do it at his computer. And I want to be judged as a dumbass who could spend several months' savings just to send e-mails.

2. It's beautiful and it will stay so

You can't say so of most women you know. Moreover, it has a mute function.

3. It makes me feel so young

I will be able to spend hours trying to solve the conflict between two applications. Installing.. uninstalling.. installing... uninstallling.. True delight of Youth.

4. It's designed by Apple

So, as all Apple products, it would make me look cool. Even if I miss one of my front teeth...

An even if I takes me five minutes to remember how to switch it on.

5. It runs windows

So If I need bugs to spoil my workday, I know where to find it.

6. It's so cute

And never ask for money to go shopping.

7. I could read the news in the toilets without making noise turning pages

Thanks to the wifi.

8. I could wedge my wobbly bed with it

It fits perfectly. I tried.

Well, it seems, its fate is already written.

9. It's really beautiful

And never pretends to do good cooking.

10. I am old enough not to have serious reasons to buy something

Especially if tomorrow will let me forget this inanity. Until I receive it for good. Gasp.

It's quite a long time since I settled myself i[n this shared office and I am now starting to feel a bit lonely as much of my co-mates are spending more and more time out, some being staffed for an abroad mission, others pretending to be ill to skip work, and the remaining being in hospital for having jumped through the windows to escape my bad jokes.

Fortunately, as I have no people to bother, I may have some time to redecorate my workspace. I cleaned all the dramatic amount of paper that was overwhelming my keyboard preventing me to write in proper english, I bought myself a Dracena, and I hanged a poster of Google's logo.

But I also decided to find some funny gadgets to embellish my desk and make the office more friendly.

Here are a few that retained my attention.

1. This pen holder :

I believe it will make people think twice before borrowing your pen without permission.

You can find it here

2. This imaginative insult generator :

It could be very handy when I am short of words for my neighbours. You can discover more about this wonderful device here

3. And, the one I like the most, this bullshit button :

which will be very useful in my next meeting. You can buy it here

I think I will buy them all. And you, which one do you like the most ?

Since I discovered Internet, I started wondering how big it could be. How many websites can there be in the strange space we call the world wide web. It's surely the stupid questionning of an old man, and young people who use the web everyday won't make such a fuss about it. But, please follow the old man for a minute, and maybe you will be stunned as I was when I first took the measures of the World Wide Web.

Wide it is, for sure.

I recently found out a study that says that there was about 433 Millions websites. Another one pretends the figure is much more like 109 millions or so.

Well, the difference between the two studies is no big deal to me. I am just amazed by the volume of information human being can produce in so little time. According to the same studies the number of pages (not websites but pages) must be somewhere between 15 and 30 billion.

If Internet is born during the cold war (the date is disputed but let's say it's during the late 50"s), the web itself is still a young boy. Mosaic, the first web browser was conceived in 1992. It is no more than 15 years old. A teenager. Though, it contains at least 100 millions websites !!!

Can you imagine that ? In 2000, there were around 7 millions websites, and now there are between 100 and 450 millions websites. So much of them we can't count them precisely. Can you have the measure of it ? What are we doing we all that information ? What is it for ? Do we have so much to say ?

In my awry brain, the figures just lead me to two conclusions :

- We are 7 billion people or so standing on this planet. So we can assume that not everybody has its website. As every human being must have something to tell, I guess the web has still an impressive potential of development. We are not over with its growth.

- Noone would ever be able to visit all the websites that has been created. Please do take for granted that there is 109 millions website (I took the smaller estimate to strenghten my argument) and that a normal guy will take around one minute to visit a website. Yes, a minute is pretty short but let's assume it's enough, as many websites are no worth more than a minute.

So It would take to visit 109 millions websites, 1 million and 816 thousands hours. That is 75 694 days. That is 207 years. 207 years to visit all the websites.

Except for some dudes named in the Bible, nobody has ever lived so long.

So if you want to see, as I do, all what the web has to offer, you will have to find a solution. Get some digest from Google for example. But I fear it won't be very much satisfactory.

I hope some day some tour operator will propose a formula to have a round-the-web trip, providing in 15 days a good combination of what's worth visiting. Buses of old goates like me, would be discharged to cybercafes to catch up with their delay of 15 years of Internet. It could be fun.

All my working life (and it has been long enough to make you snore like hell if I start to tell you about), I tried to avoid working in an office. I felt like it was not a place for me. Like there could be no salvation for my soul, in wandering hours with a cup of tea in the hand between crowded meeting rooms and blinking computers.

So all the jobs I did before this one kept me away from the office's tyranny. For my sake, or so I thought.

Last night, I dreamt of cubicles. It was weird. Though, it was enlighting.

In my dream, I was working in a cubicle with my dog (I don't have a dog, and I don't work in a cubicle but that's what dreams are made off, aren't they ?). The dog was named "Mr Gates" and even if it was MY dog, it was charged to supervise me.

My job was to send junk mail all the day to a list of recipients who subscribed to my "newsletter". Most of them were mentally deficient people who would swoon for computers and softwares they could pay for beta-test. So my emails were about wonderful applications that could sniff the bugs in the products they already buy, or spy out softwares from competitors that could hinder their machine to work. All of them were as cheap as a Limo.

Sometimes, I sent them an email in order to convince them to spin off their beta-test subscription against a full-life gold membership (twice the price, no difference except the golden logo they could display on their website)

Each time I made a sale, the dog was wagging his ass and started singing an old and stupid Xmas song.

I was making lots of cash with this job. The dog paid me every sunday with a briefcase filled with Yuans.

And now, here is the weird part. One day, I decided to quit. So instead of sending my promotional e-mail, I wrote my resignation letter and left the cubicle. The dog tried to stop me by sending me huge and smelly fishes to my back, but I managed to make my way outside the cubicle. To discover that this cubicle, my cubicle, was alone, lost in a gigantic and empty room. The dog and I were the only employees of the company. There were no doors, or elevators anywhere. I was trapped.

So, I went back to the cubicle to ask the dog for the way out. But it transformed itself into a big alarm clock shouting me to go back to work and stop fussing around.

That's the moment MY alarm clock chose to ring.

Now, I think I really like working in an office. It could be worse. I could work in a cubicle.

And it makes me have dreams so strange I could blog about them.