Stay at home dad

As family norms, gender norms change more and more men are allowed and take the opportunities to stay home with their children. In most countries, men are allowed to share the parental leave given from 3months up to 3 years with the mothers. Also in many countries, such as Sweden, Denmark there are leaves that are ear-marked for men.(which means that they loose this benefit when they do not take it up).
This trend makes it easier for us to spot men with buggies alone on week day afternoons, doing shopping. Also men with young toddlers playing on the play ground on weekdays.
Anyhow, Jon la Joie wrote a song just for these daddies who stay at home and take care of their children.. quite hilarious, using heavy metal as the medium. However, the fact of being a stay at home dad? It will become more and more common... no joking matter.

L'Anti Kamasutra

The anti Kamasutra



Try it out...

Where the hell is Matt, again?

Matt hits again... 14 months 42 countries... and unlike the first time around he made some friends along the way

Atheist's nightmare; the banana

This is just soooo funny.

I'm going to do copy this video to do all fruits...

Secrets on line dot com

I think many of you now know about post secrets a site which publishes postcards sent by anonymous people on their inner most secrets. Some of them are just plain secrets with good artwork where as others are deep hidden secrets which surprises you that people are like that.. although it soothes you as well to think others are as weird. Check out the books based on this.

But now there are several more forms of that which you can do on line. Such as secret talk and group hug. Secret talk is more of a conversational platform where you post up your inner most secrets and other are allowed to comment on them and give you suggestions their thoughts. Group hug is where people can only either hug or shrug at your confession/secret. It has a nice format, secrets and confessions are not supposed to be filtered by the webmaster and most of its on relationships and eating, mental disorders. Like Postsecrets it also has a book out based on its secrets.

Then there are many confessions sites, not all Christian oriented, such as E-admit,and of course confessions.net, confessions4u, daily confessions, confessionspost etc...

Now there are sites that are specifically for posting up anonymously on specific topics.
Boss Bitching is one where you can post up all sorts of things your boss did, and get rated in "stop complaining" "sounds bad" and "boss is a prick"

Whichever the case, it seems that the internet and its on-line users are now substituting the roles formerly done by priests, friends and hot-line desks. Also its now much easier to confess purely anonymously, even choosing the forum based on your topic.

75 cents and other wild things

As a non-European, I actually have never heard of Eurovision before I came to live here. From what I've heard from the Europeans themselves, it is more of a joke that used to mean something a long time ago right about the time when Abba was in and dinosaurs used to roam the land. (for the Italians, I've heard that after they stopped winning, they stopped participating altogether, to show their disapproval for the Eurovision's bad tastes)
I never actually saw any of the contests nor did I kept up to date with who is in, who won etc... until recently.

Why, you ask?
Well, there have been remarkable "developments" in the whole Eurovision song contests and it seems as if all of the member states are taking it to a whole new level, well a funny, gag like one to be precise.

Let's start with Ireland's entry for this year.
Ireland was represented by Dustin the Turkey... who is not only a fowl, but also can't sing, and he does technoish dance songs... to make things even worse. I don't know what bothers me more, the genre he sings or his massive disco "Balls" which he exposes carelessly. (although I must say the bird even has a political career and has been in the scene for some time, with his own TV show... respect!)


Okay the second one is from Spain.. Rodolfo Chikilicuatre - Baila el ChikiChiki
This song is reggaeton... which is alright, for some... but okay... this guy also can't sing, which is also alright.. but best thing is he is an Elvis impersonator (or is trying on the geek chic that is very in these days, I am not too sure). The highlight of this song/video is when he tells you which dance to dance... including the robocop, or shall I say, EL robocop.



But finally and my favourite has to be 75 cents and Kraljevi ulice representing Croatia, with their song Romanca. The whole gang includes a folk singer, a grandpa rapper and two musicians and finishes off with one exotic dancer. 75 cents, who is actually a very young 77, shows how grandpa rap can and should be! Of course it comes out actually more like your every day neighbourhood granpa yelling "get off my freakin lawn!"....



I think the Croatian government and well the whole European union should use him, along side John McCain as the billboard models for older workers and postponing your retirement. I mean who can beat that!

Whichever the case... in this fierce competition, who won?
Of course this idiot won.. who looks like a mix of Enrique Iglesias and some backstreet boy(s) type boy band, check out the dancer he has!

Oh well, too bad, but I am sure you will hear more of our wonderful granpa 75 cents, who will only increase his currency value as the years go by.

Banned Commercial: mocking christians?

Ad watch dog decides to ban a commercial on women's hair product due to complaints that it was mocking the Christian faith.
It shows women in various praying positions, saying that the new product is a new religion..

According to an article in the Guardian

The Advertising Standards Authority received a total of 23 complaints, including one from the Archdeacon of Liverpool, objecting that the ads were offensive to the Christian faith. The complaints particularly highlighted the use of the phrase from the Lord's Prayer and the depiction of the letter "t" as a cross in "thy".

Judge for yourselves..



I think its more of a complement if you asked me..

This one exploits little children as well..



Here is another one from the same company ... using the same theme "a new religion for hair" which apparently they have used for the past seven years..

THREE!!

I loved the BBC three blobs when I was in Britain... watching loads of TV
but then the news came, that they might get rid of them...
Then I started to find the indents on you tube...
they are brilliant
They were made by the Wallace and Gromit people

Here are some montages I've found.




some related to special events


And then my favourite

WIFI like air should be free

As the use of internet becomes a necessity of life and our reliance on it increases, I believe that people should have the right to free internet access when ever and where ever they are, just as our right for clean water or clean air. It should be a public good, provided by the state as our main basic items for life. It should be free I would say, and well for the technicalities I haven't figured it out yet.

There has been some movement towards this, found in many university where you have free wireless access throughout the university campus, but also now in cities and countries.
It has been anounced that the city of Luxembourg - which is the capital of Luxembourg will provide free wireless internet throughout its land free of charge for its 75 thousand citizens and 125 thousand commuters by the end of 2008. They have projected that this project would cost approximately six million euros.
(see this article for more detail)
The city of Leiden also has an open wireless network since 2002 and many cities are now trying to plan such projects.

Whichever the case, this shows us the trend towards making internet like air.. a necessity for all.

happiness and brianlessness

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937), The Last Asset, 1904

I think I've written about this topic several times,like this and this, but generally come to the same conclusions. Do not have any ambitions, be happy. Do not use brain, be happy.
Ofcourse the quote above is abit nihilistic it should be something like,

"enjoy what you have now and forget about how happy you would be only if this or that, then you will be surprised how happy you can be"

To do that we must detach ourselves from our synapses
on a similar note a quote from Ratbert

"My brain is empty, it feels great. Stress is just another word for knowledge!"

Then comes the inevitable question.
Do you choose to think or to be happy?
Can we do both?