2022

On the last day of the year it is time for a short look back on what was my 2022.

The thing that has cast a shadow over the whole year is the incredibly useless war in Ukraine. It worries me, I don’t know what that brain-cancer suffering selfish fuckwit in the Kremlin’s next step will be and I don’t like to see this meaningless conflict stretched another year. I hate all the disinformation Russia has spread over the world, I don’t want to witness the detonation of another atomic bomb. I hope Ukraine keeps standing tall, I hope NATO will keep supporting Ukraine with everything they have, I hope Russia will crumble and degenerate into a crippled and poverty stricken country with nothing left to threaten the world with for the coming centuries. I hope Putin dies soon. Slava Ukraini.

This decade is the worst I have experienced since the eighties. I don’t like what is happening around us. There is no sense of freshness, no feeling of a new dawning, like we are on the brink of new discoveries, there is a lack of unity, a sense of a bond between the peoples. Only unnecessary dissension, confusion and disarray. Money isn’t everything. Being a millionaire or a billionaire should be illegal. There is nothing wrong with having a little extra money as long as you pay your taxes. Having enough to be able to buy Africa as a whole and not paying taxes is. Money should be shared. No one should have to sleep on the street while two blocks down someone is able to bathe in hundred dollar bills. It often makes me conclude the world would really be better off without human beings messing everything up. You might conclude I am a bit of a dark person and maybe you're right. But I think I have all the right to be. After 52 years of living I think I have seen enough to come to these conclusions. And deep inside I still am a happy little fellow trying to think positive thoughts.

So. Let’s talk about my list of good things of 2022. It seems I got myself a steady job after more than twenty years of being a free-lancer. I still have time to be film maker but I do not have to worry about whether or not I will have food on the table next month. That’s good. I still am with the same woman I already love for over twenty years. That’s awesome. I made a couple of nice paper models. I started reading books again. My cats still are alive and healthy. I have friends, in real life and online. I still have a mother. I can enjoy the little (and bigger) things in life that make it all worthwhile: food. Music. Panel shows. Walks in the park. Family. Friends. A rocket launch. A rocket landing. New boots. A new pair of trousers. A new coat. A silly cartoon. Reading bedtime stories to my girlfriend and making her laugh.

I have no new year’s resolutions because I am convinced that if you want to change something, be it yourself or the world, you shouldn’t wait until a new year begins,  you should take action right away. I just hope 2023 will be better than 2022.
My wishes for 2023 are plain and simple. Peace. Love. Freedom. Happiness. Equality. Tolerance. Climate change awareness. It shouldn’t be that hard to reach those goals. Maybe I should wish for some kind of revolution. A kind of turnaround in consciousness about who we are, what we do and how we should live together on this little planet, which is the only place we can live now. We still have no other place to go. I wish you all a really good and prosperous 2023 with peace of mind and world peace.

Take heart.
—PK

Rant.

I wrote the text below this paragraph somewhere in August last year. When I had trouble with my printer. I needed to vent. I never published it because I thought it sounded a little too aggressive. Tonight, I again had beef with the machine.
I couldn't take it any longer.
I actually beat it so hard that I destroyed it.

 

I hate printers.

I love paper modelling. The problem is that this hobby depends for a great deal on printed material. And that is when I get dark. Really dark.
I absolutely loathe printers. I detest them. I hate them, I wish them all to hell. Canon, Brother, HP, Lexmark, other brands, I don’t care. Screw them all.

Printers are one of the epitomes of capitalism. Opposite from computers and lots of other electronics, printers never were meant to be reliable. Printers have the cheapest electronics, the flimsiest sensors, the lousiest plastics. Their designers must belong to the lowest scum on earth. Creating practically worthless pieces of junk just like themselves, mainly built to irate you.

BEEP. YOU HAVE A PAPER JAM. No, impossible. There isn’t any paper even near the printer. YOU. HAVE. A. PAPER. JAM. REMOVE THE TRAY. OPEN THE SCANNER LID. OPEN THE BACKDOOR. CLOSE THEM. PRESS OK.
There, I did it. Opened, closed, opened closed, You see? I said there is no paper j- BEEP. YOU HAVE A PAPER JAM. REMOVE THE TRAY. OPEN THE SCANNER LID. OPEN THE BACKDOOR. CLOSE THEM. PRESS OK. There isn’t any pa- BEEP. YOU HAVE A PAPER JAM.

They are made to get you to your boiling point. And make you go broke with consuming printer ink.
Because printer ink, which is - and I have told that a lot of times already - more expensive than blood, is the main reason printers mess your prints up. manufacturers do not give a damn about your printer. That hulk of cheap plastic and lousy micro-electronics doesn’t bother them at all. It is all about the ink. That is where the money is.

Manufacturers don’t care about your delicate prints. They want you to buy more ink. They put chips on their ink cartridges to ring an alarm bell when it’s “empty”. That usually means you can easily print a hundred or more page- NO,THE CARTRIDGE IS EMPTY. But, there still is about ten litres of ink in it. NO. IT IS EMPTY. BUY NEW ONES. But it is yellow that is “empty”. I just want to print some text. NO. YOU. CANNOT. PRINT. BLACK. WITHOUT. ALL. OF. THE. OTHER. COLOURS.
**** you, you ****ing ****, you ****ing can. You just ****ing won’t. You inaccessible brainless untweakable miserable piece of ****ing junk.

How many times I have been on the verge of taking the printer and throw it out of my three story high window onto the street. I don’t know what kept me from doing it. Oh yes. Littering, fines, and because I usually am a good law-abiding civilian. But sometimes. Sometimes.

I still can remember the time when household machineries were built to last a lifetime. Or at least were fool proof, repairable, accessible and  replacement parts were more or less universal.  If your vacuum cleaner broke down, all you needed was a screwdriver and some spare parts from the shop around the corner. Now those shops are gone and replaced by Amazon and ebay and the household equipment is disposed of when the light in the on-off switch has died, causing the complete machine to stop working and turn into a piece of junk.
Why cant they build a decent printer, which gives great prints, is sensitive and precise but also won’t give a 'I AM MISSING MY PAPER TRAY' or 'PAPER JAM' -error every time my upstairs neighbour is doing his girlfriend of the week? Why is printer ink so ridiculously expensive? I hope that the executives who thought that up will have to pay a hundredfold for a blood transfusion when they ever need one.

I hate printers. I absolutely hate printers.
And there is no exception to the rule. All printers are evil.

PS. Oh yeah. The paper jam. Wonder how I solved it? Online, after some searching I finally read something about a super slight misalignment of the moving guides in the paper tray that can cause the printer (a Brother in my case) to believe some paper is jammed. The. Paper. Tray. Guides. Have you ever? No debris, no shreds, no snippets in the print head’s lefty-righty-movey-to-and-fro-machinery, no, the paper tray guides. Took the tray out while Printer still gave paper error alarm, fiddled a little with the green guides, fiddle fiddle fiddle, put it back, alarm gone. You ****ing ****.

 

This time, I also tried. I fiddled with the paper tray guides. I really did. I didn't want to destroy it. ... Oh who am I kidding. I did want to destroy the f****r. I was so furious. It deserved to be destroyed. I had it for about six years so it was written off anyway. Now the quest for a new one will begin...