who dat?

i once wondered why anyone would use a foreign celebrity to promote products for the arab world (they did that with nicole scherzinger again, but damn she can promote bottled air and i'll buy it), but i noticed an even more disturbing phenomenon.

i was walking past a poster with a big picture of anne hathaway promoting a perfume or something, and she had a nice gown on (she cute, no?). i was smiling to myself enjoying the display, then i noticed her name at the bottom of the poster.

why?

why would a company promote a product by using a well-known face if it's not well known? yes, some idiot doesn't understand contradictions and decided to tell everyone "look! we're using a celebrity you don't know! buy our perfume! now!"

real athletes

the word athletics usually brings to mind images of physical activity: intense competition, players running, jumping, sweating, competing, with large audiences and cheering and excitement. athletes are physically active, in good shape and inspire fierce loyalties.

what they aren't are golfers, dart or dart players.

those two sport wannabes should not be sports. unless a "sport" causes you to sweat, it shouldn't be a sport. i mean dart players are notoriously fat (maybe because of the snacks they have between the turns throwing darts). but even those "sports" have some motion. what shocked me today was that chess was in the sports section of the newspaper.

chess.

chess was in the sports section in the newspaper.

chess.

can someone please explain to me why chess was in the sports section? is it the suspense? is it the ceaseless action?

chess. a sport.

witty tshirts

i love the onion. i think their satire is the best available anywhere and i would give my pinkie toe for a chance to work with them. i don't know if i have the wit, but they are the funniest, smartest people out there (barring 4chan, of course, but those people are hard to swallow to all but the most hardened cyber residents).

a considerate friend got me a "the onion" mug. on one side it reads "the onion", and on the other (the one that people can see when a right-handed person is using it) it reads "i wish i were dead". i was foolish enough to bring the mug into the office and weirdly enough people actually use it. i mean i thought the office was generally suicidal, but it turns out the problem is much simpler than that: people themselves are simple, they don't read what the mug says.

of course this problem is but a symptom of a bigger issue, which is people reading what's on anything they use. this includes mugs apparently, but also tshirts, notebooks, anything someone idiotic enough can write useless nonsense on. useless slogans, meaningless information, self-advertisement and downright babble are all plastered on anything that'll hold ink.

i guess i just want to say this: read. before making yourself a bigger fool than you already are, read what you wear and use, it might save you one day.

medium rare

i don't get vegetarians. i mean, to consciously stop consuming meat (with meat i mean beef, lamb and chicken) is a little beyond my imagination. however, i won't judge. live and let live, i always say.

but those fucking assholes who have "veggie burgers" or "veggie bacon" or whatever fuck meat wannabe veggie shit they wanna consume should die slowly. there's fake bacon! fake bacon for god's sake! bacon is yummy because it's fatty and crispy and clots your arteries. typical of weaklings: don't quit the stuff you like to eat for whatever reason (ethical, religious, etc), but instead, find a marginally less controversial version an enjoy that instead.

you think eating meat is wrong. fine. don't pretend you're eating meat, STOP eating meat. get your protein from beans and cheese. have eggs (unless you don't feel right about eating unhatched chicken fetuses). but don't fry facon and enjoy it in a blt, it's defeating the purpose - you don't eat meat, fucking stick to it.

for me it's simple: i love animals, but mainly dead, on a plate and grilled medium rare.

tit tat

i wonder what messages women try to send men. i wonder if they know. i wonder if they don't all need massive group therapy.

i work in a company with colleagues from around 10 different countries. one of my colleagues is a cute little indian who at 30 something has braces (i hope i got the age right or she'll have my nuts for this). she's bubbly and loud and her laugh can be heard a mile away. she also has a tattoo right above her ass (or as the females would like to point out, at the bottom of her back). one day in the conference room she was reaching for a phone across the conference table, and on account of her being little, she really had to reach, exposing said tattoo. that was the first time i notice it, so it caught my eye. a split second later she's yelling at me accusing my of staring at her ass. i was "uuhhhh".

this morning i stepped into the elevator with a group of people. one lady had a tank top on, and there was a tit tat, staring me in the face. of course having learned from my lesson with my friendly colleague i quickly averted my eyes, but was inspired to write this. i mean i will accept the argument that tank tops are worn because of the heat, but inscribing a tattoo over your breast is only asking for attention. no? any female insight here would be appreciated. it's like a guy getting into a ferrari then acting all offended when people ogle it.

do not read these books

i like reading. i like to vary my reading and take chances on books (so i randomly pick out books at book stores). i have favorite genres, but generally speaking, i like em all.

what i despise is overhyped fucking classics. i understand that people praise highly subjective crap like art and call it genius (picasso? really? must i get high to appreciate his art?), but when it comes to books it really pisses me off. i present to you 3 classics that are best left to rot in a library somewhere.

1. george orwell's animal farm and 1984
the concept behind these novels is quite interesting. they deal mainly with censorship. however, animal farm is literally about a farm with speaking animals. and is like 80 pages or something. and 1984 takes the animal farm concept and applies it to humans, almost idea for idea. i did myself the injustice of reading them back to back, but i would also say i did myself a favor by catching his bs. either one of them written alone would've been enough. don't do the animal one, the human one analyses the ideas in much more depth

2. james joyce' a portrait of the artist as a young man
never in my life have i read such a narcissistic account of one's childhood as that pile of nonsense. i was brought up catholic but now i don't believe in god. boohoo. to be fair i didn't actually go through the whole thing, but damn it i tried to read the fucker 4 times and i couldn't past the first few chapters. it's boring as hell.

3. gabriel garcía márquez' 100 years of solitude
i had to google the novel to get the guy's name. that novel was an absolute agony to complete. it is so irrelevant that i'm surprised that people actually complete and enjoy it. it talks about a town with a train and bananas and something about an eating contest. i have no idea what the hell it was all about. i finished it and wondered why i ever bothered in the first place. but the eating contest part i'm sure of.

a punch in the face

some people are just asking for it. guys who perpetually use bluetooth headsets. people ever-droning about their iphones. smokers.

but one category deserves it more than most. fucking guys who think they'll all that when they drive around in fucking minis. seriously? a mini? i mean guys in big trucks might be compensating for small willies, but a mini? what is it? are you a fucking artist or something? trendsetter? it's like guys who use macs. i bet that same guy will work a pink polo shirt and sporting those fucking glasses.

fucking glasses

btw, they're the same people who would drive the fucking beetle. seriously, someone please explain to me why these cars are bought.

update: also guys who wear skinny jeans and a dirty look also deserve punches. just saying.

war on trash bins

i was in the uk, getting ready to board a train, got a coffee and waited for the train. finished my coffee, turned around to look for a trash bin.

and looked.

and looked.

to no avail. there are no trash bins in any of the train stations. i noticed other people also stand there holding their trash. i asked about that and it seems it's part of the uk's war on terror.

after the 9/11 attacks on the us, narrow-minded americans have enforced all sorts of weird laws on the rest of the world. i mean other than the ridiculous security checks for flights, there are the restrictions on taking liquids more than 100ml, and putting them in clear bags (i don't get it, am i supposed to start mixing a bomb on the plane?). the uk has had its share of attacks, but their efforts on the war on terror has focused on trash bins instead.

they removed all the trash bins to discourage would-be terrorists from leaving bombs there. i mean, really? i mean, if i wanted to bomb a station, and i took my bomb to drop in a trash bin, and didn't find one, would i curse my luck, pack my shit and leave? how effective is that? would it help if the bins were perhaps a little less terrorist-friendly? small openings, transparent bags, you know, something where you can't stick a bomb?

i don't know. maybe they can wait and use the bins in the trains.

artsy fartsy

stocks usually represent a value in a company. so for example, if i start a company with a million dollars in capital and sell a hundred thousand stocks of that capital, i know each share is worth 10 dollars. so far so good? cool.

now stocks in the stock market are treated like normal commodities, so one can trade stocks like cattle or grain. people used to buy stocks because they had attractive dividends (that is, stock's share of the company's profits). however, because now they are traded, people buy stocks because they expect someone to buy the stocks from them for a higher price (because of promise of higher dividends, or someone else paying even more for a stock). so if i buy stock for 10 dollars a share, i expect to sell it for 11 to make a "quick" profit. still with me? good.

now problems arise when people start paying a lot of money for worthless stock (.com bust anyone?). that is, when everyone decides that this stock is worth something, just because everyone else thinks it's worth something, usually with no basis for the value. lemmings? yes. risky? very. preposterous? not at all.

see, i've never experienced as much bullshit as much as people in art galleries or people paying ridiculous amounts of money for art. i've tried to maintain an open mind, i tried to "appreciate art", but i just couldn't. especially the abstract stuff that sells for silly money. i mean seriously, what makes this particular piece of art so special? what makes it unique? to me they all seemed like the same scribblings, especially contemporary, abstract, bla, bla, art. but i was in a gallery one day (trying my best to understand why stick figures with enlarged heads was considered art), and it hit me. this is the fucking stock market, but for something even more volatile than value in an online company - it's the stock market for taste. the only reason art was considered "expressive", "tasteful" or "valuable", was because "experts" claimed this was art. people eventually decided this was art, just because everyone else thinks it is art. lemmings?

dirty escalators

i love my country.

ok it's like how you love your parents, you probably wouldn't love them if you've met them as strangers but you've known them your entire life and they have fed you you clothed you and wiped your ass when you crapped yourself.

so i love my country.

that said, i find faults in my parents.

and i find them in my country. alas they are numerous. further alas, they near cause me ulcers sometimes. the latest is the project to expand the existing airport or build a new one or some meaningless shit about wasting a ton of money on a totally useless venture. it's not like the airport is overflowing with passengers (although looking at the chaos of handling the whole of FOUR concurrent flights you would think ten thousand people were trying to pass through the security points). but no, some idiot decided that a new airport is needed (probably for some reason such as prettying the country or making it more attractive for investments or something - hell even the road to the existing airport is one of the nicest in the country).

of course building the new airport is like giving a spoiled kid a brand new toy. it's a matter of time before he breaks it or grows bored with it. in the case of my dear beloved country it'll be the earlier causing the latter. not that the country will get bored with the airport per se, buy it will be shiny for a year or two before it starts to fall into disrepair. it'll start with subtle signs here and there: a cracked tile here, a broken sign there, a faulty light in a corner, and all of a sudden the new airport is a shabby shell of its former self. which brings me to my point:

don't build a new airport. in fact, stop building new things at all. you're the government - the problem with our country is not the lack of buildings, but it's that everything governmental just falls into fucking disrepair. i remember expansions in my university campus. what i also remember was a ton of empty rooms that weren't used because they were a fucking mess. the same goes to new roads and bridges, new development initiatives, new whatever - the government has a hard time keeping things up.

so the problem is not that the airport can't handle enough people, it's that it has dirty escalators (see picture above).