A world without air travel...

I am at home today because of the volcano... in a good sense (meeting cancelled). I'm sitting out on my balcony in the sun and I just spotted a plane making its way across the sky really high up. And I suddenly thought how nice it has been these last couple of days to see a beautiful big expanse of blue sky free from all those criss-cross trails and not to hear aeroplanes as part of the ambient noise of the city... I guess that's what it would be like in a world without air travel...

Cats and nosy neighbours

Nosy neighbours are sometimes a good thing. Not that I am nosy, of course, but from my bird's eye balcony view I spotted a neighbour's cat today who had got himself stuck in a window left ajar to air the flat. After much running around ringing doorbells and rallying of other neighbours, 4 or 5 of us joined forces to unstick him and he should live. In honour of this good deed, I've added the inimitable Simon's Cat to my comics page. An absolute MUST for cat lovers. Yay for that!

The summer

Just to say how lovely it is to have a balcony when the weather is nice!

Water pebble

http://www.waterpebble.com/

A snazzy way of keeping tabs on how much water you use when you shower. Every little helps! :o)

I will never buy Nurofen again...

Carole Cadwalladr
The Observer, Sunday 11 April 2010

Bart Becht grew rich on our stupidity

And so a warm round of applause for Bart Becht, the chief executive who last week took home a pay packet of £92.3m. How cheering it is that even in these straitened times it's still possible to make gazillions of money out of us, the people too stupid to know any better.

Mr Becht works for Reckitt Benckiser, a company that, as even he has pointed out in the past, makes some "very stupid products". And yet, dumb as they are – and this is the company that gave the world Cillit Bang – we have been proven to be even dumber.

It's not just that Cillit Bang is routinely voted the least popular brand in Britain and yet still flies off the shelves. Or even that it contains the kind of chemicals considered handy for cleaning up plutonium stains (a discovery workers at Dounreay nuclear power station made last year).
It's that there are few finer examples of how capitalism works than the Reckitt Benckiser model: make something people don't really need, charge them a lot of money for it, then, and – this is the truly brilliant twist – change the name slightly and put the price up. I give you: Finish QuantuMatic or what always used to be called "detergent". And Nurofen Express Liquid Capsules, which we pedants call "ibruprofen".

Except that a packet of 16 Tesco ibruprofen costs 28p and 16 Nurofen Express Capsules costs £3.68. I'd really like to say that anyone who is stupid enough to buy Nurofen deserves to be £3.40 out of pocket and Bart Becht to be paid £92.3m a year. But it's been clinically proved that if you believe Nurofen is better than ibruprofen, it will work better on you. Dammit. It's a refinement of the placebo effect so brilliant it's positively Bechtian. When even our headaches obey the implacable logic of the market, what chance do we have?

Nurofen: the analgesic of the masses. As Marx never said.

organic clothes for summer

http://www.gudrunsjoden.com/

I've had a look and some of this stuff looks really lovely! And her principles look to be good too. Worth checking out.

La burqa et la politique actuelle en France

Ce petit article nous attire l'attention sur un eventuel "poudre aux yeux" autour du theme de la burqa. Propos interessants...

http://www.michelcollon.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2670:burqa-bla-bla&catid=6:articles&Itemid=11

Yum!

http://www.resto.com/lacantina/

A La Cantina on mange treees bien! Et la déco est super colorée pour mettre de bon humeur. Resto brézilien qui fait les plats au poids je pense le midi.

Respect

http://thruspace.blogspot.com/2008/11/respect.html

I found this post on "thruspace" (blogging from India) really interesting. See what you think.

kif-kif

Qu'est-ce qu'il a fait beau aujourd'hui! Voici une adresse avec une super terrasse a Ixelles et une bonne cuisine (les mini-kifs c'est une tres chouette formule pour les vegetariens et plus petits appetits)

Le kif-kif

To pluck or not to pluck...?

In the same vein, here is a wee story of a conversation I had last summer with a very good friend of mine on a camping holiday. We were walking back from the village chatting about our school days and the stuff we had learned (and forgotten) and about general knowledge - how you get it, how to keep it and how useful it actually is! "It's funny", my friend said, "but when I think of the people I know, the guys tend to have more general knowledge than the gals... Why do you think that is?" Now I don't know if this is even true and there may be many reasons why if it is, but just at that moment we were walking back into our campsite, past the tent of a young Italian couple in their early twenties, on holiday, sitting outside in the sun. He was reading a book, she was ... plucking her bikini line. With my tongue firmly in my cheek I said: "Well there's your answer: by the time she's finished plucking her bikini line, he'll be one book ahead. And if she starts all over again once it's grown back in a few weeks' time, he'll be two books ahead, and so it goes on!" 

Extracting the tongue from the cheek, whilst I realise not all gents devote the time they don't spend removing hair etc to reading improving literature, could it not be fair to say that some ladies really do lose out on free time which is earmarked for 'beautifying'?

Ah, the gift of hindsight...

A good friend of mine asked me recently why I don't shave my armpits. Hmmm. Here, with hindsight, is what I would have liked to say:

“It's funny, because whenever anyone asks me that question I can't help feeling a bit annoyed. Why not ask me why I'm wearing this jumper or these shoes? The question reveals that there's something surprising here, something unusual, odd, out of the ordinary, something curious that you want me to explain. If I say it's a purely aesthetical choice that wouldn't be entirely honest. I have always preferred a 'natural' look, but there's more than that. The remainder of my answer is in your question: I don't accept a 'norm', a set of 'rules' on women and their body hair. My body hair is mine, it belongs to me and I cannot feel that I am truly free and truly equal in this society until I can spend as little time, effort and money as I choose on my own aesthetics. My ideal is a society free of such norms. Fashions come and go; playing with different styles can be fun. The day no-one feels the need to ask me that question, is the day I'll feel free to have fun with my hair.”

Le super-service du mois (2)

Je sais, je sais, on avait deja eu le super-service, mais cet endroit est tellement GENIAL qu'il fallait l'inclure tout de suite:

http://www.arrierecuisine.be/

Une vraie attention a chaque petit detail, une super selection de thes et de sucreries et une ambiance tres calme. Un vrai oasis au centre de la ville. 

She's back?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athletics/8595361.stm

I've been wondering for some time what decisions Caster Semenya and her team would take on her further career. To me, this story epitomises the problems with our very dualistic society, which still today leaves little space for people who don't "fit" certain pre-conceived ideas. I understand the difficulties of this particular case which relate to the sporting world, but personally I'm a big fan of Caster Semenya. She always came across to me as a strong, determined and composed athlete. I find, fortunately, that sometimes actual people in real life can be much more unphased about all of our own individual identities than the voyeuristic and scandal-hungry media. This may of course be because I know many fantastic people... Thank goodness for that!

Voetbal

De vrouwenvoetbalploeg van De Monk in Brussel zoekt nieuwe spelers!

Shero of the month

The Spayce Cowgirl Shero of the month is... my very own sis! For being unswervingly herself in all situations and for taking a stance when it's needed, despite a shy disposition. She recently called out her employers for failing to ensure gender equality in the workplace. Go girl!

Cowboots for you!

Men's Liberation Front?

Ik heb het zelf niet gezien, maar zag wel onlangs een reclame hiervoor op toilet in een Brusselse cafe... Vrouwen als meubiliar - zo chic jongs! In zulke gevallen vind ik vandalisme bijna geen slecht idee... Ik vind de fotos zo verveelend dat ik ze zelfs niet op deze blog wil zetten. 

Woman as overcoat

Galeria Inno

Does anyone else find these adverts REALLY annoying? They were all over town just a short while ago. They're creatively pretty crap, but it's the whole "woman as overcoat" bullshit that really pisses me off.

Playing with gender

The following is a link to champion ice skater Johnny Weir's Poker Face routine. I like his style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTaVkbl3Dp4

Geslachtoffer van de maand

Kim Clijsters krijgt een Barbiepop. Wereldnieuws? Toch wel, want de pop stelt Kim zelf voor. Er werd ook speciaal een Jada-pop gemaakt. Dit is misschien al oud niews, maar ik vind het zo ergerlijk dat ik toch nog over wil bloggen. Ik ga akkoord met famiweb.be (bedankt voor een crosspost):

Barbie Kim is veel te mager

Meteen valt op dat Barbie Kim veel magerder is dan de echte Kim. Zo mager dat Barbie Kim in het echt niet eens zou kunnen rondlopen, laat staan tennissen. Nu ja, geen enkele Barbie zou in het echte leven haar hoofd kunnen recht houden.

Kim Clijsters is een mooie voorbeeld van een sterke, krachtige vrouw, een top athleet met de spieren die haar kunst eist. Zou het echt zo moeilijk geweest zijn, de pop ietske sterker te maken? Foei!

------

Why does this Barbie doll of Kim Clijsters look like it couldn't even hold up a racket, never mind win a tennis match. For goodness sake...

Pourquoi cette poupee Barbie de Kim Clijsters est tellement maigre?! Clijsters est une athlete au top de sa forme avec les muscles qui vont avec. Ca aurait ete tellement difficile de refleter ca??

Le super-service du mois

www.abaobxl.be

Pour tous les amateurs de bons bouqins, BDs, mangas, delicieux thes et cafes, pain d'epices, attention au detail et - surtout - un TRES BON SERVICE!!! Je vous conseil "abao", rue Middelbourg a Boitsfort. N'y allez pas si vous etes presses, il faut y passer du temps. Et preparez-vous a depenser des sous ;o)

Le super-mec du mois

Je vous presente: Serge Hefez (voir video ci-dessous). Voici un lien pour son blog: http://familles.blogs.liberation.fr/ Il a quand meme des supers idees, ce mec!

Ou sont passes les hommes?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6992889648130207837#

Une emission tres interessante sur le genre et le feminisme en 2010 (ou plutot 2007 a l'epoque!) avec des contributions interessantes surtout de Coralie Trinh Tie, Pascal Bruckner, Serge Hefez et Irene Thierry.