Sweden and Pirates

I love Sweden. The men are hot. The women are hot. The latest news out of Sweden has made me even more effusive about the country. Without having been there, I have just developed a DEEP and possibly undying love for all things Swedish. (Well, maybe not all)

Socialism and beautiful blonde men and women are certainly a draw to Sweden, but they do not even begin to compare to the fact that Sweden has elected a Pirate to the EU. AAAAARRRR! Sweden and Pirates- Are there any two words in the English language that sound better together? I think not.

The Pirate Party (which sounds like a party I want to go to) represents the portion of society who are upset with the massive amounts of Copyright Infringement Laws being passed in the European Union and what they perceive as harassment by the players in the government and judiciary who are always taking the sides of big corporations against "file-sharers" and file-sharing web-sites.

The party resulted from anger over a judgement against "Pirate Bay", which sounds like a Disney ride, but happened to be one of the largest file-sharing sites in the world. The judgment was a month prior to the elections and served as a rallying call for the people and the Pirate Party of Sweden captured 7% of the vote.

According to Rickard Falkvinge, the party leader, "People were not taken in by the establishment and we got political trust from the citizens."

Because the Pirate Party has only one vote in the Parliament (out of more than 700), they will more than likely have to join forces with another party in order to have their voices heard. They will more than likely join the Green Party or the ADLE group.

For a really interesting perspective on how the European Parliament actually works, please check out this post. It's a lot to take in, but I think this the most substantive explanation of the EU's parliament and how their system really works.

S & M Murder Trial Set in Switzerland

The lover of one of France's top bankers now has to defend herself in court for allegedly shooting Edouard Stern not once, twice, or three times, but four fricking times in the head during sadomasochistic sex. 

He was found dead dressed in nothing but a latex body suit. The murder itself took place four years ago and Cecile Brossard, now 40, is claiming it was "a crime of passion" after a night on which Mr. Stern "taunted her over a million dollars he had transferred to her account but later blocked."

I can't even begin to tell you how much I LOVE the British Press. Not only do the stories kick-ass, they appear ready-made for the pages of Perez Hilton's blog.  Today's "story" is no different.

Wow! Sounds like the plot straight out of a Guy Ritichie film to me. The infamous line that reported drove Ms. Broussard over the edge? "A million dollars is a lot of money to pay for a whore." (In another article, it was reported that Miss Broussard was actually a high-class call girl at one point in her life, so this may be why she reacted so strongly to his statement or I guess it could have just have easily been the fact that she was angered she did not get $1 million dollars from him. )

His lawyers equally demeaning to her and told the judge in no uncertain terms that Miss Broussard  was a "sexually deviant little blonde from the suburbs" who was scheming for Mr. Stern’s money as they attempted to get the charges raised to premeditated murder. Nice. Now that I think about it, it's got a Quentin Tarantino ring to it as well.  I had no idea that it was a crime to be blonde, sexually deviant or from the suburbs, but apparently I was wrong.

The judges, however, are closer to buying her side of things-and the charges have been  reduced to "unpremeditated murder". Mr. Stern's sons agree with this assessment as well and don't seem to have been too impressed with the version of events told by their father's attorneys.  They contend that the "relationship" between the two centered on emotional blackmail.

According to an earlier article, Stern once said told her, "I'm sad I can't teleport myself into your arms." in a phone message. Later phone messages, however, were not so sweet as he said, "I don't trust you. I vomit on you."

The Swiss trial is expected to last ten days.

The Mystery of David Carradine's Death

As soon as David Carradine's hanging death in Bangkok was reported in the media, the rumors started flying. Was it a true suicide or an accidental death through asphyxiation ala Michael Hutchence of INXS fame?

The news leaked out slowly-David Carradine had both his throat and his penis tied up. Not your typical suicide there. But that wasn't the end of it as some people were saying that he also had his hands tied (and we are talking in the literal, not figurative sense of the words here). How could this be possible in a suicide or accidental auto-erotica?  (Auto asphyxiation incidentally, according to the esteemed Wikipedia accounts for 250-1000 deaths in the United States alone.)

Family and friends of the deceased actor are saying murder, and not just an ordinary murder either. According to the Vancouver Sun, one lawyer is claiming "that secretive martial arts sects might have been behind the death" because of Carradine's investigations into secret societies who were associated with martial arts. No word exactly yet on what exactly constitutes a martial arts secret society, but I'm sure we'll have more information soon.

One of his ex-wives (number four in fact) is calling bullshit on the secret society theory, claiming that he probably died of sexual asphyxiation, but others disagree, pointing to the fact that his hands were tied and that there was a footprint on the bed not matching Carradine's.

The FBI has been asked to investigate by the family, but whether this has happened yet or not, I do not now know.

Twitter v. Facebook

If the media is to be trusted, and I'm beginning to suspect it is not, Twitter and its founders are the next second coming of Christ. I read about Twitter every day: it is growing five times faster than,  Facebook, Oprah is now tweeting, and Steve Colbert has officially coined the term "twatter". Even Maureen Dowd of NYT columnist fame seems enamored with the Twitter founders if not the actual tweeting herself.  I would guess that at this stage, Twitter still needs her support more than she needs theirs. The NYT has also reported on people "ghost tweeting", which is when a celebrity pays someone to Tweet for them. If anyone needs a ghost Tweeter, let me know. I can do it: see,  "Sunny skies here." (Of course, my own personal tweets run along the lines of: "Still Facebooking."

WIth all the hoopla surrounding Twitter, I decided to "tweet" myself and see what would happen: how many followers would I get and who could I follow? The results, I'm afraid, either reflect a huge lack of interest in my own personal tweeting ability (I now have four followers) or the fact that none of my Facebook friends tweet. I have three friends following me and one mystery follower, and only have two friends to follow myself.

To investigate further, because that is the kind of intrepid person I am, I looked into the demographics of Twitter v. Facebook. The Big Showdown at the OK Coral it is not, but rather the New Battle for Web 2.0 users is on. Who is tweeting and who is Facebooking? I know you are dying to know.

According to http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com, the Twitter data breaks down like this:  55% of Tweeters are female, with the remainder being men. 80% of Tweeters are Caucasian. On Facebook, the numbers are strangely similar: 54% of Facebook users are female and 76% of them are Caucasian.

Looking at a side by side comparison of the two sites demonstrates the fact that although Facebook is not growing at such a fast rate as Twitter, it has four times as many users and is still growing, which is what I suspected all along. Without giving specific names or numbers, I can say that I have a significant difference in the  amount of my Facebook friends v. my Twitter followers. Another thing that puzzles me is the fact that I am able to update my status on Facebook whenever I want, making Twittering or Tweeting or whatever you want to call it a tad redundant.

Charging People by the Pound

Are obese people the new minority to discriminate against? We have PC words for just about every other minority, but "fattie" or "fat-ass" seems to be the most common expression for those who are a little larger than your average bear. Definitely not PC, and definitely inappropriate in my opinion as well. Ryanair, England's low-cost air-carrier that has super-cheap flights is seriously considering  instituting a "fat tax" for obese passengers based on popular demand.

The airline actually polled its passengers on whether or not to institute the tax and more than 30,000 said seemed like a nifty idea. I can't imagine how this will actually play out. Can you imagine the sheer embarrassment of having to share your wait with a ticket agent on the phone? When a rather large person steps up to the counter, is the ticket agent then going to ask them to step on the baggage scale, too? Is it going to be like buying alcohol? Maybe they will have a sign at the front of the counter reading, "If you look like you are over 230 pounds, please step on the scale or show us a doctor's note with your actual weight." Will this be discriminatory against tall people as well, who weigh much more than their shorter counterparts? Or will there be a HWP chart with specific weight requirements? (I myself have been indulging myself in the beer and chocolate area a little more recently and would hate to see where I would fall under that chart.)

I can understand not wanting to have a 500-lb passenger sitting next to you, but shouldn't they have the same rights? Otherwise, where do you draw the line? Should there now be an "annoying tax" for overtalkative passengers on long flights or a "baby tax" for parents who travel with crying infants? Personally, I would like to see a "noisy Mp3 player tax", but this might be a ways off into the future and difficult to enforce.

RyanAir has come out with a statement about not wanting to delay passengers with the fat tax. I am not sure what this is referring to. Are they predicting that angry customers will come up to the counter yelling and screaming and thus delaying the flight? Or does it rather refer to the extra work involved in weighing the cattle, oops, I mean passengers.

The last time weight played such an important part in commerce was perhaps the slavery era, which did not go so well. It's hard also to forget the lessons of Shylock in a pound for pound of flesh.

Mr. Bean- President of Spain?

Mr. Bean has a doppelganger. No, it is not a Mr. Bean impersonator (although I think there may be a few floating around.) Mr. Bean's doppelganger just happens to be the president of Spain. Imagining Mr. Bean running the country of Spain may give you chills or a strange feeling in your stomach, kind of like the feeling after eating candy cotton and then riding on a roller coaster. I think, however, we have to prepare ourselves for the worst as I am thinking there is something sinister perhaps going on here. Mr. Bean seldom talks, so who is to say whether he is actually fluent in Spanish or not. And, President Zapatero may have some secrets up his own suit jacket sleeves as well.

I am surprised that the 9-11 Truthers and other conspiracy theorists have not jumped on this particular bandwagon as well. I mean, seriously, what would we have said if Barack Obama "just happened" to share a resemblance with someone like Chris Rock? Fortunately, we can rest assured that our very own former "dear leader" George Bush bore no resemblance to anyone save our ape ancestors (perhaps the reason that he so vehemently opposed teaching evolution in school?). It is one thing to have a doppelganger replacement in the entertainment industry, it is quite another to have one in the field of politics, especially one as the President of a country.

Creepy Japanese Wedding Bra

The Japanese are well known for many things, and their love of gadgets and wacky fashion sense come close to the top of the list. 

This new wedding countdown bra reeks of cynicism, and stone age values and is surely more likely to send a prospective husband run screaming for the hills than stopping the clock by proposing.

 

Recessionary Perspectives

Ten years ago, if your Grandmother had given you the choice of three presents: a mini-pack of ten packages of plain m & m's, a mini-pack of Trident Gum, or ten shares of General Motors, you might very well have gone for the stock, right? And, today, if you somehow happened to be on everybody's favorite daytime Game Show "The Price is Right", how much would you bid on the items above? Knowing full and well that that GM is not doing so well, will not necessarily guarantee that you bid correctly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of a package of gum (albeit Trident), a slightly larger than average pack of m & m's and one measly share of GM stock, GM Stock at $1.23 a share is definitely the cheapest. Of course, there is something a little unappealing about buying stock in a company that is bankrupt, seeking out money from the government, and is laying off all their employees, but it still might last a day or two longer than if you just go for the m & m's. As your financial advisor, I would say buy the gum for sure. Unless you are the type of person to chew pieces at once (like I am), it will definitely last the longest.

 

Facebook and the Art of De-friending

 

To de-friend or not to de-friend, that is the question.

 When I recently de-friended some of my Facebook friends, it was not for a free hamburger as inthe case when Burger King offered Facebookers a free burger for de-friending ten friends. According the NYT, about 234,000 friends were de-friended for a free hamburger.  Burger King has since dis-continued this nifty little application, but at the time sent out notifications to the de-friended explaining the reasons for the de-friending. I can understand being traded in for a taco, but a burger? I might be a little offended at this. 

In my career as a Facebooker, I have accepted many  Facebook friend invitations for less than altruistic motives. I had to know if the ex-cheerleaders from my high school would be fat and was itching for the inside gossip on how many kids the school's resident "town pump" (for lack of a better word) had? And where, oh, where, were my former classmates vacationing? What kind of jobs did the brainiacs have now? (One of my classmates is now a tri-athlete/mom/Neuro-Researcher at Stanford.)

 My interest in these people that I hadn't seen in almost 20 years faded away in less than three weeks. OK, I was relieved and a little excited to know that about half of the cheerleaders got fat, but he "town pump"  not surprisingly, was not on Facebook, and if the others knew what she was up to, it definitely wasn't showing up in their Facebook status. 

The majority of my former classmates seemed to be living really, boring lives. I liked Lori all right in high school, but did I really need to know that she was making macaroni and cheese for dinner? Was Beth's strange pilmigrage to Forks, Washington to see the home of "Twilight" (which is just about the dumbest book I've ever read) really worth re-living through her photos? Did I really care that Jennifer, who I supposedly went to elementary school with, but do not remember, was probably "Marilyn Monroe" in a past life? I decided to make a purge. 

 As I de-friended people, I started to think about the ramifications for my actions. Would my former "friends" (mostly people that I was definitely not friends with in "real time") take some kind of Facebook revenge on me? Would my South African Christian friend feel badly about my de-friending her? (something that became absolutely necessary as the Christian messages and Facebook statuses became a little overwhelming for my non-Christian mind.)

 In a column dedicated to the etiquette of Facebook, Slate writer Rehein Salom gives advice for a special Facebook de-friending situation of the worst kind:

 

But what if your so-called friend scans through their friend list and notices that you've gone missing? First off, anyone who is policing their Facebook account this rigorously is morbidly obsessed and thus best kept at arm's length. If she confronts you about it, the best strategy is to plead ignorance: Perhaps the site's massive growth has led to some unexpected technical difficulties? Re-friend, then wait at least six months before trying another de-friending. 

To me, this seemed like  a Mickey Mouse band aid that wouldn't really workall all that well on such an insidious problem. Finally,  I  did the unthinkable- I left Facebook altogether. Unfortunatley, as Facebook was my primary method of communication with many of my friends, I started to realize that in order to stay in touch with many of the people I'd met traveling, I'd have to re-join. My brief stint as a non-Facebooker lasted all of four days. 

I was missed, though. Re-joining led to a host of messages about where I'd been, and the fear that I would be somehow be caught out for de-friending 27 "friends" permanently. It's been about two months since I made the great purge, and I haven't been called on it yet, but I'm thinking I'll just tell anyone feisty enough to track me down and harrass me about the de-friending, I will simply tell them I did it for a free taco. 

 

 


 

Pages