Bullshit Technicalities

As some of you know, my girlfriend is currently doing an internship for the European Commission in Brussels. As a result, I travel down there about every other weekend, and she travels back the remaining weekends. This seemed like a good deal, because the EC had promised to pay for our trips, since I'm her "significant other", and she was actually leaving "home" to do this internship.

It now turns out, however, that definitions matter a great deal to the EC. Because we were not officially living together, and that she didn't return to her registered address (that she moved out of when she left for Brussels) when the came back here (but rather to me), it doesn't count, so we don't get out money back. None of it, not a cent.

Not that I hadn't gone down to see her as often as I could even if they hadn't promised to pay, but you just feel fucked over by the government, once again, when this kind of stuff happens. When we were first told about the reimbursements, I thought to myself "hey, maybe there is at least some good in government circles", but I was wrong. The government keeps screwing you over at every chance they get. They get by on doing the bare minimum required, and often not even that. In the immortal words of Leo Getz, "They fuck you at the drive-thru!"

I feel properly and fully rogered. Thanks EU, this is just what I needed. A good ass-fucking to show me who's boss!

Thoughtcrime

It appears that EU is Moving to Ban Online Hate Speech.
When will people stop trying to regulate what other people think and say? I dislike racists and whatnot just as much as the next guy, but that doesn't give me the right to limit how they can express themselves.Also, people who are "targets" of these sort of things needs to relax a little bit.
Seriously. Being called all those things can be bad, but there's got to be a limit. Soon we'll turn into some society where people sure each other as much as in the US, and the government sends people to Siberian prison camps like in the USSR, at the same time.
I, for one, do not want to live in such a society. Shape the fuck up people, it's not as serious as you think!

Stop trying to regulate my brain!

The French Are Coming!

You'd think that reason would outweigh arrogance when it comes to a big machine like the European union. Apparently the french are lobbying to make french the official language of the EU, at least with regards to the official language or original texts of law in the union.
Their reasons are, get this, "for its precision and rigor".

I am by no means well versed in french, and certainly not in all the other languages in the union, but if there are two things I do not associate with the french and their language, it's precision and rigor.

You'd think that choosing a language like the de facto English, that most of the member states speak to some degree would be better then cramming a language like french down out collective throats. I suppose it takes some audacity claiming that your language is, in essence, The One True Language, rather than looking at things like actual language penetration. I think you'd be hard pressed to find statistics saying that french is better understood by a larger part of the EU population than English. Especially when it comes to measures like "precision" and "rigor".

Excess and Vigor is more like it. (See, I was going for something antonym-like that would rhyme with precision, but no dice...)

Prove me wrong?