Fugato.net wishes its tireless, deluged readers a happy new year with thanks for everything, online and off, in the years gone by.

Note to self: do not buy scientific instruments from websites that smack of the previous millennium.

Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance [ecstasy], not in itself, or even in the form of an image, but as a part lacking in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to the of the signification produced above, of the jouissance that it restores by the coefficient of its statement to the function of lack of signifier (-1).

— Jacques Lacan (via Alan Sokal)

I’m sure that totally made sense in context.

Tipex lead singer pushing the button

The eerie pipe-smoking accordionist

Okay, I’ve quit complaining about Eurovision songs being watered-out corny sugar clichés. First the Finns last year, and now — for those readers domiciled under a rock like me — the Israeli song this year (thank you, Eyþór).

Here are the lyrics, as far as I can tell, with an English translation of the Hebrew rap segment (cobbled together from here and there using this dictionary).

Yikes.

כפתור אדום	Push the Button
מילים, לחן והפקה מוסיקלית: קובי אוז	Lyrics and music: Kobi Oz

The world is full of terror
If someone makes an error
He’s gonna blow us up to biddy biddy kingdom come
There are some crazy rulers
they hide and try to fool us
With demonic, technologic willingness to harm

They’re gonna push the button
push the button
push the bu-
push the bu-
push the button

Il ya plein de souffrance
Dans les rues il y a trop de violence
Et on a beaucoup de chance d’être vivant même pas blessés.
Avancement tactique de régime fanatique
Situation tragique qui me met les larmes aux yeux

And I don’t want to die
I want to see the flowers bloom
Don’t want to go kaputt kaboom
And I don’t want to cry
I wanna have a lot of fun
Just sitting in the sun

But nevertheless …

He’s gonna push the button
push the button
push the bu-
push the bu-
push the button

מסרים מתפוצצים עלי טילים מתעופפים וגם נופלים עלי שוטרים וגנבים מתרוצצים עלי הם קופצים עלי מתקרצצים עלי אללי אללי תענה לי אלוהי הי	Messages are blowing up on me, Missiles are flying and falling on me, Cops and robbers running around on me, And they’re jumping on me, bothering me. My god, my god, answer me god?
הסיוט הזה ארוך מדי כשאני בקושי חי וכולם מכוונים אלי זה מוקדם לשיר אולי שנתתי לך חיי ווי ווי – המשטרה וויאוו וויאוו – צוות הצלה	This nightmare is too long, When I am barely alive and everybody is aiming at me it might be too soon to sing “I Gave My Life for Thee” Why, why – police patrol Wow, wow – paramedical
הנה זה בקדם שיר ללא סלאם אדום זה לא רק צבע זה יותר כמו דם שוב עוצר בלב את הנשימה שלא תפרח עכשיו הנשמה	Here it is in the Kdam (prelims), a song without Salam (peace in Arabic). Red is not just a color, it’s more like blood, Stopping my breath again, So my soul won’t pop out.
הנה מלחמה הנה הנשמה בום בום זה מה שקורה עכשיו בין רקטה למצ’טה בין צופה לכתב בין מחטף לנחטף בין גשום לשרב	Here is war, here is the soul [or: here is war, here is CPR] Boom boom this is what is happening now, Between rocket and machete, between viewer and reporter, Between underhanded opportunism and kidnapping,
הסלמה במדרגות עולה ותופסת קו כלום כלום זה מה שכולם עושים קיצונים מקצינים וקצינים מרצינים התמימים מתמתנים ממתינים לנתונים ועונים: שכולם חסרי אונים	Escalation rises up the stairs and takes a (front) line. Nothing is what everybody does. Extremists getting more extreme and officers acting serious, The naive turn to moderation and wait for information And answer that everyone is helpless.
עולם כולו דמונים שאנחנו סתם פיונים ושמפיונים עם ז’יטונים מחליטים מה שיהיה ניהול בעצלתיים, אוניה מלאה במים וכולם שותים לחיים וטובעים זה לצד זה	A world full of demons, and we are only pawns, And champions with poker chips decide what will be. Things are run slowly, a ship full of water, And everybody is drinking l’chaim, drowning next to each other.
אולי זה חד מדי צריך לשיר שירי דקלים שירי מדבר ללא דגלים אני עוד חי חי חי ואם ימשיך להיות מפחיד רק אז אני אגיד:	Maybe this is too blunt, maybe we should sing about palm trees, Sing about a desert without flags. I’m still alive alive alive, and if it continues to be frightening, Only then will I say:

I’m gonna push the button
push the button
push the bu-
push the bu-
push the button

Whatever happened to hupa hule hule hule?

aibophobia = an irrational fear of creepy Japanese robot pets

Read verbatim what your slides say

Might as well just email them your slides and stay home.

To suck less: Rephrase it. Or shut up. Or (perhaps best) leave it off the slide. Keep slides ultra-concise.

Disengage

• Look at the screen/whiteboard most of the time, turning your back to your audience
• make no eye contact with anyone
• seem uninterested in your subject
• drone

To suck less: Seem as interested as you want them to be. Fake it if you have to.

Spout clichés …

• “To understand what the client wants, even when he doesn’t know what he wants himself”
• “At the end of the day” (melodic, with a drawn-out daaay)
• “Moving forward” (when you’re going to end a sentence with this … don’t. Please just don’t.)
• “So let’s go right ahead and …” (oh yeah, do sound like Lumbergh, the cult king of the annoying.)

… and hesitative filler

• Uhh
• Umm
• Okay
• So
• So there you have it

You don’t notice it when you do it. But they notice. Oh, how they notice.

To suck less: Overcome this. Record yourself and listen for it. Practice.

Speak in the valley-girl accent

This is not a question? But I make it seem like a question by putting a question mark at the end? That is all kinds of annoying? It’s annoying in speech too, and it’s done by making your tone rise at the end of a sentence?

To suck less: Ditto above, record yourself and listen. Practice.

Use grievously predictable jokes

• “… supporting legacy browsers like Netscape 4 and … Internet Explorer 6!”
• “There’s always an evil genius planning to take over the world … ”

Don’t get flattered by the giggle you get from those 4% of your audience who didn’t see it coming.

To suck less: Be funny if you can. “Not funny” is still OK. But predictable means anti-funny. Just don’t.

Indulge in proud self-deprecation

• I realized early that I’ll never be a programmer, I’m just not a logical person.
• I’ve got these wonderful assistants, sometimes I feel like I’m more their assistant than the other way around.

Sincere modesty is fine — but generally does not need announcing. Fake modesty is worse than sincere arrogance. Your personal merits, whether proclaimed or denied, are just an uncool topic, and probably not one your audience wants to spend time and money hearing about.

To suck less: Skip it completely. To be endearing, just be sincere.

Here is one way to improve your presentation style:

1. Get a video of a presentation by Rafal Lukawiecki, or Stephen Boyd, and watch it.
2. Get a video of yourself doing a presentation, and watch it.
3. Compare.
4. Seek crisis counseling.
5. Repeat.

This statue is located prominently in Harvard Yard at the heart of Harvard University’s campus in Cambridge. It is an old custom for students to rub the toe of its left shoe for academic prosperity. That toe is shiny golden because of this, while the rest of the statue is blackened with age.

It is commonly called the Statue of Three Lies. That is because it carries this inscription:

JOHN HARVARD

FOUNDER

1638

Harvard University was not founded in 1638.

John Harvard did not found it.

And that’s not John Harvard. Some student posed for the sculptor. John Harvard sucked at posing, on account of being dead.

But more amusing than that is the expression on the face of the guy in the red shirt. I have enlarged it here for your viewing pleasure.

A fork in the road.

Photo by Jack Keene. Some rights reserved.

To ameliorate the overwhelming volume of postings, I’m splitting this website by language: from now on I’ll write only in English here, and in Icelandic at mitt.eigid.net.

Betra að safna fyr-
ir hlutunum í stað
þess að taka lán

Loksins er komin niðurstaða í þetta aldagamla vafamál.

Sumarið sem álpaðist inn í febrúarbyrjun hefur áttað sig á mistökunum og haft sig á brott í bili. Þurfti að fara í peysu utan yfir stuttermabolinn til að labba í vinnuna í dag. Peysu! Ekki nokkur sanngirni í þessu.

Þrjár túristatáningatelpur hjúfruðu sig saman fyrir utan Deli og rýndu í kort sem þær reyndu að halda kyrru í rokinu. Ég hló. Þær hlógu. „Having a good trip?“ „It’s great, thanks!“

Hvað fær þrjár vinkonur utan úr heimi til að verja fríinu sínu á Íslandi í febrúar?

Að túrista sig á hol.

Find cross-cultural romance today: scandirabia.com

It is not going to win the mullahs over (a featured profile says: “Don’t blow my embassy … Blow me.”) but it does have a whopping 15 people registered already, including six from primarily Muslim countries.

Join now!

In my street there is a car alarm keeping me company through the night. It is one I haven’t heard before; sounds like somebody’s raygun set to “stun” in a seventies B-movie, except that it keeps going and going, and the tweeweeweewee sound warbles back and forth slowly in random ways to make sure it is very hard to fall asleep to (unlike a raygun set to “stun,” which puts you to sleep expertly (as does the average seventies B-movie, for that matter)).

The owner is probably already on the way home from his midtown travails, lying sideways in alcoholic stupor in a taxi with an understandably disgruntled driver who wishes he could find a new avenue in life as well as between Reykjavík and Hafnarfjörður.

Maybe the owner is the one who left that impressively bright-saturated-red puddle of vomit on my steps; probably he wanted to get it done before going home, out of consideration for the taxi driver. How do you give your barf that color? Drink Bloody-Maries all night? Get yourself a bleeding ulcer?

It just turned off. I’ll do the same.

Imagine them all completely silent.

I am at work. There is no one in here, and no sound but the faint whirr of several laptops and the clackety-clack of my keyboard.

And still it seems like there is more silence downstairs in the bank branch, where there are perhaps 60 people or so.

They are at a chess tournament. The players want to concentrate, and the spectators re-, well, -spect that.

There is probably more sound there than here. Every few seconds somebody slaps his chess clock, and a spectator whispers to another, and there is shuffling in chairs. More sound, sure. But more perceived silence as well. Silence is the absence of sound and an absence is only a thing when noticed; the more people you stuff together in a small space, the more you notice their silence, thus the more perceived silence there is.

Silence is remarkable in proportion to the number of people present. It is entirely unremarkable when there is no one there.

Dense silence. You find it in exams, sometimes in libraries, and apparently in chess tournaments.