Ole! Spain 2010… Campeones del Mundo
Por fin…
Ahora no nos la quitan. Esta vez hemos demostrado que nadie controla el balon como nosotros, nadie pasa el balon como nosotros, y nadie juega con la gracia y estilo nuestro.
Ole!
“There is no place in football for the way the dutch played this game,” Alan Hansen.
“Tonight football won,” Gary Lineker.
“Spain play the kind of football that we all want to play, in our heads,” Gary Lineker.
Starbucks, stop the music!
Starbucks used to be a cool place for me to sit in and work. But the music really is something else…
The music – that cacophony of discordant sounds strung together for torturous amounts of time (I think they call it Jazz) is insufferable.
Folks, if you like Jazz, then that’s cool (that you like something, not that you like Jazz in particular) but since Starbucks are not targeting a niche made up of Jazz music lovers, I’m a bit baffled as to why I have to be subjected to this.
At least here in the UK.
We’ve only just got rid of smoking. Can’t we ban Jazz too?
I mean of course from public cafes 
Well (before you get all flustered…) they don’t play death metal in other cafes… and if they did, you would expect only ‘metal heads’ to be in there, slurping the black stuff.
Conversely, when you look around Starbucks, you see mostly trendy mainstream people, babbling to each other loud enough to drown out the out-of-place Jazz.
So, for me, Starbucks is losing cool points by the minute. I just can’t work in there anymore, with all that noise going on. The decibels are something else too! They cut right through my headset and derail my thoughts.
These days I much prefer sipping my coffee in the local library, where I can work in piece.
Bottle Water versus Tap Water. Who wins?
Cool clip about the bottled water industry (no pun intended) – worth sharing for those who need to raise an eyebrow every now and again.
(this is where I would embed said clip, for your viewing…)
But somebody decided not to allow embedding.
The message in the video is intended to make us wiser and save the planet. You can only do this by propagating a great idea or concept. By going viral.
Going viral means allowing other people to share your message.
Duh.
The video is well constructed, so it would be a shame not to share it, so I’ll add a link at the bottom of this post.
Seems like the producers were more concerned about intellectual property than about saving the planet.
Hmm.
Hint: use a watermark or a logo :/
Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/storyofstuffproject#p/a
Think you’re flexible? Check this out!
My my…. how we take things for granted these days… how far we elevate ourselves when we can do something well…
Take a look at these 3 sisters, performing back 1944. By today’s standards, if you could do ALL of those things, you’d be the highest paid t.v. performer… and yet, there’s something humble, almost -hey’ish, it’s just a thing I can do, that’s all – about it.
Still, this is by far the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen when it comes to flexibility. Enjoy.
PS Wear ear-plugs.
Forgetting the past
To forget the past is the fastest way to make the same mistakes again.
Boxing Day Origins, Queen Victoria and Corporation tax
Do you know where Boxing Day comes from?
Apparently, Boxing Day originated in England in the 19th century, when Queen Victoria ruled. They made the 26th of December a holiday, and on this day boxes were filled with gifts and money for servants and tradespeople.
I’m not sure why tradespeople benefited from this… I mean, what if at trade person was doing very well for themselves? Did they also get a cash bonus on this day?
Ironically now it’s the other way around: now trades people have to pay the Queen every year (corporation tax).
But not Queen Victoria of course.
My name is Jose Gonzalez
I have something quite amusing to report. I am trialling out some speech to text software – to be specific: Dragon Nuance Naturally Speaking. It can be a little daft at times, but when it works it can be a great tool.
I just tried saying: ‘My name is Jose Gonzalez‘.
Do you know what it typed onto the page? Can you guess?
This is what ‘Dragon’ has to say about me:
My name is awesome and valid.
I’m quite an agreement with the software to be completely honest and I don’t see why I should teach it to spell my name when it can obviously substitute my name with something equally worthy and adequate.
Job well done, ‘Dragon’ software makers!
Awesome and valid
Christmas day 2008
Today is a perfect day for reflecting upon what has been, and for imagining what is to be.
Live to work; don’t work to live
Life’s not about work, it’s about living – work is a part of living. Don’t get the order mixed up.
Your headstone will either say:
“Worked very hard, then died”
OR
“Had a nice life”
Remember Bum bags?
Bum bags were trendy and snazzy at one point in the 80’s. Thinking about it, probably everything was snazzy at one point in the 80’s. But bum bags were one of those things that were snazzy AND useful… until we invented fashion.
Fashion and the taste police put an end to the trusty, snazzy, useful bum bag. It killed it outright.
If you’re not sure what a bum bag is – or if you’re shuddering at the words, conjuring up horrendous images.. then relax. The bum bag was a pouch with a waist strap that allowed you to carry all your shrapnel around in one place instead of having it all over your pockets. You can see a bum bag ‘in action’ here to the right.
Well, bum bags are not things that you admit to. They’re like Kilie Minogue and Jason Donovan… you just don’t admit to liking their duet efforts. And for the record… I do not like Kilie Minogue and Jason Donovan! I’m sure they’re smashing people and I’d love to attend their yatch parties (I’m serious) so please do send invites. I’m talking about the duet efforts… which I’m entitled not to like.
I do on the other hand hope that Kilie Minogue and Jason Donovan agree with me on the bum bag issue. The truth of the matter is that bum bags are damn handy! I for one cannot wait until they reinstate the bum bag as a fashionable item. We are all going from day to day, searching our pockets incessantly for our car keys, change to pay for the sneaker bars and coffees… My God… how many hours off your life do you think all that rustling inside trouser pockets cost you over the months? And this is my point: it’s a needless waste that can and should be stopped right away by bringing in a useful tool to take care of this issue… and we have such a tool in the bum bag! Just look at the car keys next to the image of the bum bag! It’s efficiency times 10!
Dear fashion world and Wallmart, please bring back the bum bag so I can get myself a snazzy one and save lots of time.
Now, having said all this about the bum bag, I feel I must point out something crucial here… and that is… pimping up your bum bag! They say a picture paints a thousand words,so I’m going to show you exactly what I mean.
My good God, what were they thinking of! OK, there is NO NEED for this to have ever happened… Look at it! Not one but TWO drinking bottles? Where is this person going to that they need a bum bag loaded with bottles? Up a mountain? If so, this is the job of the backpack! Let’s not confuse the two items now…
Can you imagine walking around with this bumbag? You’d look like an action man (the toy that is…). Even in a world where the bum bag was an iconic symbol, where everybody walked around freely with their snazzy bum bags… turning up with THIS monster of a bum bag would make you the laughing stock of the year! It’s the equivalent of the pimped up car that went slightly wrong at the very start because it wasn’t really a car to be pimped up in the first place! It’s like adding floodlights to your bumbag!
Is it any wonder then that the bum bag died a death… with this kind of… thing… going on? I mean, where do you draw the line? If you start showing up with bum bags like that, then somebody else will make a bigger one, and a bigger one, and before you know it we’ll all be walking around with bum bags the size of small wardrobes, dragging them along behind us or permanently walking at 45 degree angles! And this, ladies and gentlemen, defies the whole point of the bum bag… which was always meant to be a small compact handy (snazzy) device.
Having said this, I still await eagerly the day they make a huge comeback. I will be first in the queue. In fact, I may just buy one and stash it away until such day arrives, so I can stroll out of the house triumphantly donning my spanking new bum bag. And I can tell you that it won’t have water bottles attached to it!
Nothing is random
Nothing is random…
Food for thought
Lately, I keep finding bits of banana lodged inside my t-shirt. This morning I discovered some crunched up walnut hanging around the back of my right ear, and just the other day somebody pulled (like a magician) an entire lettuce from my left nostril!
Hmm… I don’t think I’m eating properly…
My phonographic magazines
I found a pile of phonographic magazines under the bed today, but they took them away when they caught me composing myself.
Prisons are overcrowded
Yet another fabulous idea from the people in charge…
Prisons are over-crowded. So what do we do? We shorten criminal’s sentences, and in some cases we subject the naughty bastards to community service: brushing the streets and painting fences for 6 weeks will teach those buggers not to rape anybody in future…
Somehow, I’m not surprised by this. If you look at previous fantantic ideas to deal effectively with the criminal element you’ll soon arrive at my favourite one of them all:
What did we do with all the convicts in the country? That’s right: we sent them to a paradise tropical island called Australia. In the meantime, we all stayed here in England, enjoying the never-ending rain and the beautiful gale-force winds that make the cheeks blush blood-red and the eyes weep with anguish. Whoever thought of that one really wants congratulating in a special way.
And here we are again today, faced with the same problem. And this time, ironically, we can’t send them to Australia because they decided to make up some immigration laws to stop everybody else from moving in!
OK, so let’s review the options:
We have a bunch of psychopaths and we can’t fit them all into small cells.
1. We could shoot them and be done with them.
Problem: this would cause an uproar.
Ok: we could shoot them, be done with them AND tell nobody.
Ok, let’s be humane about this.
2. We send them to a paradise island.
Nope. We already did that one.
3. We send them to France.
No objections there…
I have a better idea. These people are mostly violent types: they like to punch and get punched; bully and abuse. OK, why don’t we slip some uniforms on them and send them out to the front line? Chose a conflict – any conflict. There you go. Have fun.
At least when they get shot to pieces, it was for their country…
If that was the way criminals were dealt with, I would stop stealing stationary.
Where’s my bag?
Everybody’s talking about loosing the carrier bag. A town in the UK has already implemented this: shops no longer give out bags. Instead, people have to walk around with boxes or canvas bags just in case they decide to shop for something on the spot.
This is because plastic bags are bad for the environment (mind you, so are humans, but we don’t go around disposing of them permanently (at least in a systematic way). Plastic bags simply don’t die: when you dump them, they take forever and a day to disintegrate (if they do, at all).
The cardboard box and the canvas bags are set to become daily essentials. The fashion industry will soon begin making sexy cardboard boxes and canvas bags that set your hormones on fire.
If you ask me, I think the carrier bag is a damn handy invention. It prevents you from dropping your shopping all over the place.
Why then, can’t we make bio-degradable carrier bags? This would solve the problem! We could go shopping AND carry our shopping around in carrier bags!
Is nobody thinking?
We can take the caffeine out of coffee; the fat out of food; the enjoyment out of life… and you’re telling me we can’t make a bio-degradable bag?
The black one is always more expensive…
I have come to the conclusion that, in life, you always pay more for the black one.
My pencil is chinese
My pencil is from China. How can I tell if it contains excessive amounts of lead?
How clever is your sat nav?
Do you talk to your sat nav? Do you argue with it when it tells you to go one way and you want to go the other? Do you shout at it and call it stupid when it can’t lock on to a satellite signal and you discover that you’ve been driving the wrong way for 2 miles when it finally does? Do you yell over it when it repeats an instruction at you at least three times, as though you were stupid?
I feel much better now…
Things that go boom
I had an idea today whilst sitting at the traffic lights. I was thinking for some reason about land mines and how many soldiers lose limbs when they have to test a land strip for the things.
Have you ever seen them doing this on TV? They tip-toe along and prod the ground very gently with a stick. And then, sometimes, they go boom.
Well, why not use rats instead? Why not pack a few truck-loads and then let them loose on the strip? As long as the soldiers and the rats don’t become friends on the way there, nobody gets ‘hurt’.
I mean emotionally.
Except the rats’ friends…
OK, if that’s a little controversial (Mickey Mouse has friends in high places) why not pack truck-loads of dead rats instead? They could throw the rats up ahead of them to see if they go boom.
Surely that has to be better than risking your own limbs?
OK, they could lob melons up onto the strip from a safe distance. At worse, they get showered in pips.
OK, that’s not a good option while there’s a food shortage…
Damn it, they could throw anything in front of them!
Why doesn’t somebody tell them!
I’m friends with a big fat spider
A big fat spider wearing glasses rushed into my bathroom this morning.
I shouted: ‘Hey, four-eyes!’
The spider laughed at my math…