Month: January 2005

Oh boy, this is going to be a though 14th February! Valentines day is coming up, and someone is expecting flowers… But I’m against celebrating this specific day, as it was established to fund gift stores, florists, etc. Usually I prepare woman I care about that I wont give away flowers on Valentines days. But I’m afraid to loose that battle this year against the marketing machine of powerful flower manufactures if I don’t want to make someone very unhappy. The fact that this is already an topic for my blog, three weeks prior to Valentines day is proof enough…

Why must it be the 14th of February? What is so special about this day? Why not choose one of the other 364 days!

Well, I guess it’s a men’s fault, most of my fellow XY chromosome carrier don’t think about flowers and little presents for 364 days a year and it takes three weeks of heavy marketing, TV spots and newspaper ads to make men acknowledge that woman do appreciate (and deserve) little treats every now and then.

And even with all the marketing, some men wake up at 6:00 am in the morning, realizing that it is Valentines day again, and they have forgotten about THE FLOWERS. So they secretly rush outside the house to find a gas station that sells them some incredibly overpriced red roses.

Well, I will carry on with my tradition of flowers and little presents every now and then. Maybe I will make it a 13th February “I boycott Valentines day” present and just hope for a little understanding of my point of view.

I don’t want to be told when I have to make presents!

Sometimes I find a joke that I just have to share. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. After all, there is a lot of truth in it 😉

A group of girlfriends go on vacation and they see a five-story hotel with a sign that reads “For Women Only.” Since they are without their boyfriends, they decide to go in.

The bouncer, a very attractive guy, explains to them how it works. “We have five floors. Go up floor by floor, and once you find what you are looking for, you can stay there. It’s easy to decide, since each floor has signs telling you what’s inside.”

So they start going up, and on the first floor the sign reads, “All the men here are horrible lovers, but they are sensitive and kind.” The friends laugh and without hesitation, move on to the next floor.

The sign on the second floor reads, “All the men here are wonderful lovers, but they generally treat women badly.” This wasn’t going to do, so the friends move up to the third floor, where the sign reads, “All the men here are great lovers and sensitive to the needs of women.”

This was good, but there were still two more floors.

On the fourth floor, the sign was perfect. “All the men here have perfect builds, are sensitive and attentive to women, are perfect lovers, and are single, rich and straight.”

The women seem pleased but they decide that they would rather see what the fifth floor has to offer before they settle for the fourth.

When they reach the fifth floor, there is a sign that reads, “There are no men here. This floor was built only to prove that it is impossible to please a woman.”

New York Daily News scribe Lloyd Grove recently announced that he would not mention Paris Hilton anymore in his columns. Grove cited Hilton’s lack of ‘any talent, education, scruples, modesty or underpants” as the reason behind his vow. Some other columnist thought so too and promise to ban Paris Hilton from their gossip reports as well. I think that this is one of the best ideas to start the year 2005 and I’m promising to do so too. So this is going to be the last time I write about Paris Hilton (and also the first time…)!

I think the attention Paris Hilton gets from the media is way out of proportion. Every single fart is well documented. Lets go back to that one incident that brought her to big fame. Yes, I’ve seen her well promoted “sex video”. But even on fast forward, there is not much action going on and I would like to quote my former workmate, who admitted that he had “thrown away better porn”. I actually think “True love waits” could use the footage as a daunting example so teenager decide to stay maiden instead.

Rick Salomon’s announcement to release another private video with the hotel heiress doesn’t get me excited at all. Or should I say I look at it as a threat? But he should release it, and prove once more to the world that even rich people can have boring and unemotional sex.

Paris Hilton sucks, and she is not even good at it! And thats all I’m ever going to post about Paris ;-)!

When a filming crew wants to capture a leopard hunting down his prey, they usually set up a camp and wait days, sometimes weeks just to get that one shot. If they miss it, it’s gone and they have to wait again. Wouldn’t it be convenient if the leopard would show up at the camp and let them know that, in about 6 hours he will try to hunt down an antelope, just two miles west of their camp? Of course it would make things a lot easier. And as we know how nature films work, we always get to see the cruel parts, when the leopard digs his teeth into the flesh of the prey, until the point where vultures show up to fight with hyenas over what’s left from the corps. Most of us are just waiting for things like that to happen. These days we want to see the real face of nature, not “The Living Desert” presented by Walt Disney.

So, what does this have to do with Iraq? I think there are interesting aspects on how media reports from Iraq. All we have to do is to replace the leopard with Iraqi insurgents and the Antelopes with US soldiers, going on patrol, say in the city of Mosul.

The media is in Iraq to keep us posted on what is going on, they are observers, they are not supposed to get involved – right? Just like a filming crew in the heart of Africa. Well, what if a reporter gets a hint that, at a certain time later that day, somewhere in Mosul, something “might” happen? Would it be his agenda to inform US troops to be more cautious when going on patrol? Or would a journalist just get his camera and wait at that certain position, trying to get the best shot? After all, a journalist is not in Iraq to protect locals, or foreign soldiers, he is just in Iraq to keep us informed, to keep us posted on what is going on. He has to produce news, that’s what he gets paid for. If he informs US troops he won’t get any pictures, and the Iraqis will not inform him anymore.

And that’s where this whole thing becomes really difficult. The insurgents in Iraq have a clear goal. They want the foreign troops out of their country. The best way to do so is to get the people in the western countries to think that the war is just not worth it, that there is too much at stake. This then puts western governments under pressure to pull out their troops. The most efficient and fastest way to reach that goal is to kill as many people and cause as much havoc as they can. But this wouldn’t really affect us, if we would not know about it – right? Even reading in a newspaper about five killed soldiers doesn’t really bother us anymore (sadly). Seeing it on TV or a picture in the newspaper of a dying man in a Mosque, that’s what still delivers a message.

So, is the media responsible for how things are in Iraq, or are we all responsible for watching the news, and the commercials, that fund those News corporations?

Comments welcome!

Sometimes I stumble across a news article, carry on reading, until the point where I realize what I just read – and can’t help but start laughing. Last night I found something very interesting on the web, something I wasn’t aware of yet and I want to share it with you.

The following line is taken from an article on www.cnn.com which was posted on Tuesday, January 4, 2005: 2325 GMT about the safety of Condoms.

“While abstinence has a 0 percent failure rate, doing nothing to prevent pregnancy has an 85 percent failure rate, the group found.”

WOW – this are astonishing news! If I would have just known this earlier! Not having sex means the chance of pregnancy is ZERO percent – nadda – nothing! Well, I’m male, so the chances of getting pregnant are also around zero percent, but its good to know that I can’t get a woman pregnant if I don’t have sex with her. I hope the group that uncovered that truth gets a shit load of money for this amazing new insight.

While the entire article was about sex, condoms and how the safety of condoms increased over the years the writer never gave a hint about how save condoms actually are. Well I can help with that! The Pearl Index (a technique used in clinical trials for measuring the effectiveness of a birth control method) is 1 – 5. Which means out of 100 couples that use condoms over the course of one year 1 to 5 eventually will get pregnant.

Well, the group did also found out that “Durex Extra Sensitive Lubricated Latex” is the safest condom among all the brands, which is good to know. I personally prefer Inspiral, but maybe that is just a bit to much of privat information.

Well, enjoy life, have sex, or don’t whatever pleases you!

My condolences to all the people who lost or are still missing members of their familys and friends because of the Tsunami that hit South-Asia.

A couple of years ago I had the chance to visit the islands of Koh Phi Phi in Thailand. Currently the Phi Phi islands are on the news because of the Tsunami that hit South Asia on the 26th of December. I know people that are in Sri Lanka and witnessed the flooding and the destruction caused by the Tsunami. It is a horrible time, which also made me think of the experience I had when I was traveling around the area.

Back in 2001, when I arrived in Koh Phi Phi, it looked like paradise to me. I stayed close to the beach, though up on a hill where I could overlook the sea. Just yesterday I saw that beach again – on the news. All the huts where gone, even the one I stayed in, debris all over the place and corpse of killed people. I wonder what happened to that little Reggae bar on the beach, that played Bob Marley songs all the time, the friendly Thai family where I rented the hut, or Andrew, the guy from England who took me on a snorkeling tour to Maya Bay on Ko Phi Phi Le, the place where parts of the movie “The Beach” where shot. I suppose dozen of boats where in Maya Bay at the time the first wave hit the island on the 26th of December. I hope for the best, but I know that this might just be an illusion.

Three years ago it seemed to be such a peaceful place, there were no roads established, a wooden pier and a small landing platform for helicopters. I had to walk everywhere. Yet, Ko Phi Phi was already hit by a slow but deadly wave – called mass tourism.

The beaches on one side of the island looked nice, they where cleaned every day, but there where those beaches and areas that tourists normally wouldn’t go – and that’s where you would find the dumps, filled with “icons” of western tourists. It was bad enough that all the water needed to be shipped to the island, even worse was the fact that it was sold in little bottles that most people would just throw away. And if you did not decline the offer, every bottle came in a little plastic bag. I remember the hundreds of cans, mostly Coca Cola and Pepsi, which could be found all over the island. Washed into the sea those things would become lethal for all different kind of animals. Especially something very small called cigarette butt.

When I left Ko Phi Phi I thought differently about it. On the pier, I talked to a girl from England who had stayed in Ko Phi Phi for a couple of years. She was leaving the island on the same boat and she vowed to never come back. She said: “Ko Phi Phi used to be Paradise for me, but now its hell.”

I hope that the Phi Phi island get a fresh start now. Where people are more aware of what they are doing to the environment when they throw away an empty bottle. Or when they stay in a resort on a wonderful beach – that used to be a nature protection area for sea turtles. But maybe that’s also just an illusion.