Oh how I hate benchmarking! You run a few benchmarks, get some results, and then people start thinking you’re making conclusions! No! They’re just a bunch of numbers in a spreadsheet! I think I’m going to have to write some sort of Excel/VBScript type macro-thingo that displays an EULA to the reader and makes them confirm that they’ll treat all benchmarking figures as the product of a collection of vague assumptions with appropriate error values. Wouldn’t help of course. Anyway, benchmarking is over – long live porting Python self-compiling binary parser modules to Win32.

I have a picture stuck to my computer of a war-axe smashing through a wooden bench – I hope this doesn’t intimidate anyone (well any more so that already achieved by growling at my computer like an enraged bear).

Normally when consuming my lunch I read blogs and news, but it seems to be a bad week for both. Blog people (friends, not randoms) aren’t writing much and the news is getting ever more tiresome – people tried to kill us, yay – we killed people in the middle east, yay – some more western soldiers have died in the middle east, yay – Israel killed people, yay – people killed Israelis, yay – Muslims are killing Muslims, yay. Kill, kill, kill, KILL, KILL. And that is the news. Aside from that we have politicians being fuckwads, as usual (and mostly related to killing people anyway); the environment getting fucked over, as usual; and boring famous people doing boring things, as usual.

Look at the way things are, “we” means UK/USA/Western-Powers(laughingly inclusive of little old Australia). Muslim groups want to kill Israelis because Israelis are killing Muslims. Israelis want to kill Muslims because Muslims are killing Israelis. We want to kill Muslims because Muslims are killing us. Muslims want to kill us because we are killing Muslims. (I’ll leave out all the other groups in the world who are killing each other since the media doesn’t care about them. Africa? Who cares, don’t they just have, like, desert and lions and stuff.)

I don’t think I’m being over dramatic with “want to kill” – wherever things started out be it the rightful removal of an evil dictator, revenge for a terrible terrorist act, border protection, plain old religious or racial hatred, reclaiming stolen land or some conspiracy over control of the world’s oil supply in the end it is all about killing. You drop bombs on people if you want them dead. Sure, you can claim that you just want one of them dead and the deaths of 20 children are an unfortunate side-effect but ultimately your wanting of that one target dead resulted in you wanting the 20 children dead as part of the deal. If you actually didn’t want the children dead then you wouldn’t drop the bloody bomb.

Yes, there are counter-arguments. “We didn’t want them dead; it is unfortunate but they were in the way.” That simply doesn’t work for me. “It was a mistake, I swear!” Oh, that’s okay then – I feel sooo sorry for you, the burden on your soul must be so heavy. I wish there was a hell, because then I could say: Hah, you poor bastards are all going to hell, enjoy!

The supposedly terrorist groups are a step above all of this, at least those evil, fucked-up, shitheads are willing to say “we bomb you because we want you dead”. The rest of the world needs to come clean. Shout it out and be proud.

You are not us! You must die!

And when the last man is left standing he can look around himself; a peaceful scorched earth – free from all dissent and strife. He can sigh, smile and be happy for at last the story of death and hatred, the story of humanity, is over.

Yes, benchmarking puts me in a bad mood.

Sod off and die already.