Happy birthday!

"I think, therefore I am"

The man behind these famous words, René Descartes, was born on this very day in 1596. 413 years ago. I was born on this very day 21 years ago, and our philosophies on this very day are much the same:
"I eat cake, therefore I am"

Happy birthday to me! And to René Descartes, and according to famousbirthdays.com, a happy birthday also to: Joseph Haydn, Christopher Walken, Rhea Perlman, Angus Young, Al Gore and Ewan McGregor.

Give me the flu!

You know what I really hate? Being sick. I'm sick. But not the "oh-i-seem-to-have-a-fever-mom-can-you-make-me-some-soup-while-i-watch-tv-in-bed?"-kind of sick, oh no. Just the annoying kind of sick, where your throat has adopted the texture of a mexican cactus and your nose is runny, but apart from that, you're perfectly fine. You know what I'm talking about? You feel like crap, but it's not enough to get off from work? I mean, if I'm going to get the flu, at least have the decency to give me a proper one with a fever, so that I can stay at home, drink hot chocolate and watch Disney classics!

Eyes on the road ahead

I got my new little lovely planner in the mail a week back, and it is now my new best friend. It contains everything I'm looking forward to the next few months, and I have A LOT to look forward to:

March 31st: Birthdays are always nice, especially when you still live at home and your mom makes you cake.
Easter: A lot of the lovely people I miss are coming back home.
April 18th: Maybe spending the weekend with one of my best friends in her family's cabin.
April 29th: Going to Trondheim to visit a good friend and have a look at the city I'm going to spend the 5 next years of my life in.
May 13th: Going to Iceland to visit the fabulous Hulda.
July 7th: My last day at work.
July 9th: Going to the United States to visit MaryGrace. New York, Dallas, Vegas; here I come!
August: Starting University and my new life in Trondheim.

So, cleaning toilets and floors, and making burgers and hot dogs to an endless line of people at the local gas station might actually be worth it after all.

:)

Making plans

I'm growing up. You know you're growing up when you go shopping for an almanac. Ugh, what a horrible word, and I'm sick and tired of going from bookstore to bookstore looking for one i could like enough to share my life with (I'm talking about the almanac, not a bookstore cashier). But thank heavens for the Swedes, there's a genious over there who made a website where you can design your own, and they print it up and send it to you, not very expensive either (again, talking about the book, but would be nice if I wasn't though). So that's what I did, cause my plans for this spring/summer are growing by the number each day, and are currently written on post-its.

Today's thought provoker: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - John Lennon

Barbie's birthday

[bahr-bee], noun, trademark: a brand of doll representing a slim, shapely young woman, esp. one with blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin.

50 years ago on this very day, Barbie made her first appearance at the American Toy Fair in New York City. Her 50 year-long story is interesting, but long, so if you can be bothered, read it here. She was an immediate success, and has become one of the most significant icons of our time. She's had more than 100 careers, ranging from model to surgeon, ballerina to teacher, firefighter to astronaut to presidential candidate. You can buy your Barbie as a geisha, african american, latin american, you could even buy a handicapped Barbie, wheelcheer inclusive. I bet that was a limited edition. Ha-ha, I'm sorry.

She has been loved and hated through the years. Loved for the hours of joy she has brought to generations of little girls (and boys), hated because of her somewhat proportionally incorrect body and how her looks affect todays expectations to how young women should look. If Barbie was human sized, she would stand 5 foot 6 inches tall (1,68 m) and weigh 110 pounds (49,9 kg). She would have a 39 inch bust (99 cm), an 18 inch waist (45 cm), and 33 inch hips (84 cm). In 1995 some Finnish scientists claimed that lifesize Barbie would be too skinny to menstruate, and in 1997 her waist was slightly broadened. That did not stop the religious police in Saudi Arabia from banning the popular doll in 2003, claiming that she promoted "decadent and perverted western moral".

A product of the devil or not, today she is not only a doll, she is a brand and a billion dollar business. You will find Barbie products in 150 countries, and Mattel claims that every second 3 Barbie dolls are sold somewhere in the world. But what's interesting though, is that when the University of Bath did a research on children's relationship to different branded products, they discovered that young girls tend to be very violent with their Barbies, a disturbingly high number of the children found joy in tearing her head and arms and legs off, or putting her in the microwave. They saw this tendency with no other brand in the test. This proves what I have suspected for many years; our underlying hatred for gorgeous, skinny, successful women is pure instinct.

I owned a few myself. I never tore her head off, or microwaved her for that matter, but I do remember crying hysterically when a bully at my school decapitated one of them. Happy 50th, Barbie!




Today's thought provoker: In 2007, the song "Barbie Girl" by Aqua was voted as one of the world's 20 most annoying songs by Rolling Stone magazine, the song has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide and the music video has 26,5 million views on YouTube.

Eric Hutchinson - You don't have to believe me

This incredibly energetic, though laidback, can't-help-but-dance-to, James Brown inspirated, groovey tune has been stuck on my mind lately. The rest of the album, Sounds like this, is not quite as up-beat, but the feel-good-factor is so high you have no choice but to smile. I especially like the songs Food Chain, Outside Villanova and Oh! and the first and so far most popular song from the album: Rock & roll.

Hutchinson's been compared to talented singer-songwriters like Jason Mraz, a comparison I certainly agree with, even though I find Mraz's lyrics to be better. But with this song, I say to hell with the lyrics, it rocks. You don't have to believe me, listen yourself.

Lost online part 1

American Dreamz is on TV and I'm not watching it. Not because it's a bad film (well, it is actually), or because there's nothing interesting on TV (Lord of War, a really good film, is on the other channel), or because I've seen it before. No, the reason why I'm not watching Hugh Grant do one of his less memorable roles is because I've done it again; I got lost on the Internet. Ever experienced that? When you're just reading an article, linking to another one that mentions something interesting, so you google that, ending up on some blog without any idea of how you got there, but you just... can't... stop... reading...? Yeah, I do that, a lot. Today I ended up in a quite familiar place though, I've been there before. It has given me hours and hours of childlike joy. Overheardinnewyork.com. Random conversations overheard in one of the worlds most versatile cities, written down and gathered on the web for our pleasure and to satisfy my slightly eccentric interest in human behaviour and interaction. Three random favourites of today, I am sure there will be more:

Tween #1: You wanna abort this conversation?
Tween #2: What? Why?
Tween #1: Because we're arguing whether 'haha' or 'l-o-l' is funnier than 'l-m-a-o.'

Hobo: Hey, can you spare 20 cents?
Girl: Sorry
Hobo: Okay, 30 cents...40 cents...50 cents, but that's my final offer.

Thug kid: When are you having that damn baby?
Pregnant: I was due last week and I want a C-section but the doctor said we shouldn't do it yet.
Thug kid: I'ma call that doctor tomorrow and tell him to take that nigga out.

Addiction

[uh-dik-shuhn], noun: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics,to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

I quit smoking. Again.

I'm addicted to a lot of things. Cigarettes, chocolate, music, my favourite TV shows... The cigarettes obviously being the most serious and destructive of my addictions, and also the one I've struggled the hardest to rid myself of. I've tried it all: the cold turkey way, cutting down, nicotine patch, nicotine gum.. Doesn't work. The one thing I haven't tried, though, is this ingenious invention: The electronic cigarette! (YouTube video) Amazing. So-called "e-cigs" were first invented and marketed by the Golden Dragen Group in China, under the name Ruyan which means "almost like smoke", and are quickly becoming popular in the US and parts of Europe. There is no burning of tobacco involved, only vaporizing nicotine, meaning that you can even smoke your e-cig in the non-smoking section (today's society, that is). You can also choose the nicotine level of your e-cig, from 10 mg to nothing at all. You can even choose between different flavours, like vanilla, menthol or chocolate! Imagine that, get me one of those with chocolate and I have my two deepest cravings, on a stick. Would I consider trying it? Yes. Will I buy one? No. Too expensive, and it's the habit I need to get rid of, and I don't see how changing my lucky strikes into slightly nicer plastic cigarettes is going to help that. Plus, it sounds too good to be true, so it probably is.

I guess I'm just going to have to do this the hard way. Again. The fourteenth time's the charm..?
"For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die." - Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

Today's thought provoker: Worldwide, approximately 10 million cigarettes are purchased a minute, 15 billion are sold each day, 5 trillion are produced and used each year.

Poker

/ˈpoʊkər/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [poh-ker], noun: a card game played by two or more persons, in which the players bet on the value of their hands, the winner taking the pool.

Tonight I won. The last 10 minutes I was heads up with the host, he was short stacked but hanging around, stealing blinds. The pressure was on, I had folded my fifth hand in a row, until I looked down on what was going to be my winning hand; K-9 of hearts. For the umpteenth time he went all in. I couldn't take it any more. Did his eye twitch?
- Call.
Poker by the book? Probably not. But the flop showed a king, and I was safe. I had won. 1. place paid out less than a fraction of what you would tip the dealer on any table in Vegas, but I won. Amateur poker: you gotta love it.

Today's thought provoker:
The revenue that is generated from gambling is more than the revenue that comes from movies, recorded music, cruise ships, theme parks, and spectator sports, combined.

And I quote...

[kwoht], verb: to repeat (a passage, phrase, etc.) from a book, speech, or the like, as by way of authority, illustration, etc.

"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself." -Marlene Dietrich.

Exactly. Ol' Marlene here said what I'm thinking several decades ago, and she put it far more elegantly than i could have done. I could just end this post right now. But I won't.

If you know where to look, you can find a good quote on more or less anything, it seems everything worth saying has already been said. Estimates are that between 69 billion and 110 billion people have populated the earth since about one million years ago. So many brilliant people have come and gone, so many great ideas and comments are already out there, that being original has become a problem. "What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before" - Mark Twain. Well, I couldn't find a single good quote by Adam, go figure. The level of authority in what you're trying to get across rises significantly if you can use the words of some long gone genious to back them up. To quote David H. Comins: "People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first". Benjamin Franklin said "Time is money". He also said "God helps them that help themselves", "Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today" and "There was never a good war and never a bad peace". He was mistaken on some of his theories concerning electricity, but what a genious, huh?

People seem to think so, so in attempts to sound more intelligent, or to prove a point, they throw out a quote by someone a lot smarter than them here and there. I know I occasionally do. Samuel Palmer said "Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them", and Mary Pettibone said "The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is." Is it true, that in my use of quotations to prove my cause and ideas better, I actually weaken them by letting people see my lack of faith in my own wit? Maybe so, maybe I should put more effort into coming up with something genious by myself and let fools of the future use my words as their own. But what if it all actually has been said before? It seems Alfred North Whitehead was convinced of this when he said "Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it".

Fool or not, it so happens that finding the right quotes, and using them correctly, is harder than you would think. In books on quotations or webistes dedicated to the matter, you will often find them categorized by subject, so finding one close to what you're discussing won't be very hard. But findig the one that strikes hard, throws light on the matter, and gives your cause a deeper meaning, that is somewhat close to an artform. I mean, H.L. Mencken had this to say about Shakespeare: "After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations". And I personally prefer Anatole France's way of looking at it: "When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it".

Feel free to quote me on any of this.

Today's thought provoker:
The English language contains about 540 000 words, estimated to be about 5 times as many as during Shakespeare's time.