almost a diary

Still laughing my head off. Got this from the Guardian’s backbencher newsletter – they did not yet feature it in the alumni newsletter ;).

Congratulations to Monica Lewinsky, who will begin an MSc in social psychology at the LSE next month. Regrettably, the option on Gender and Psychology, which includes a unit on workplace relations, is not available in the next academic year. LSE suggests “Rethinking the [Word Omitted] Body: Theories, Cultures and Practices” as a suitable alternative.

Just as Doug mentioned over on afoe, and as you might be experienceing yourselves, my gentle readers – it’s summertime. And summertime means that most Europeans enjoy the easy livin’, particularly during August, when entire countries seem to relocate to the sea.

Unfortunately, the Air France flight that crash landed in Toronto a couple of hours ago (apparently all passengers survived and only a few are injured) did not wait until la rentr�e to run over the end of the runway and break up. So while CNN had already found a camera crew in Toronto, and Wolf Blitzer had already talked to passengers and witnesses, the Air France website still reassuringly read -

Aucun événement à signaler sur l’ensemble du réseau Air France….

I guess that’s one way of dealing with such events…

Spam is almost always annoying. Comment spam is the worst, because it requires additional attention, not rarely amounting to more time than it take to write a blog post. But there is also the rare instance where spam is fun or prompts reflection about its underlying social meaning, as in today’s case.

“Don’t get left behind” was the headline. “Add three inches today!” the goal – I’m assuming you’re familiar with the kind of addition offered -, and the way to do that was buying pills that my doc would most certainly frown upon, to say the least.

I know we guys tend to be competitive for the better or worse. It’s probably what evolution “had in mind” for a good number of reasons. I am also aware that the sexual evolution has brought about the general features of male primary sexual organ about whose size and functionality so many kind advertisers are so concerned about to offer help via email. But I wasn’t aware that technological advances had already turned a man’s endowment into a race to be fought individually let alone by taking pills.

So assume for the moment I decided to “add three inches” by taking the miracle pills. And then all other guys decided to do so, too. And if only size mattered… would I not be forced to eventually repeat the experiment? And wouldn’t all others? Would men eventually come to their minds and end a mostly certainly disfunctional sexual arms race? Or would we be more like the lemmings… (which I assume is what most girls believe ;))

I’m glad I won’t have to think about it anymore until I get the first spam about helping girls to cope with all those added inches… I’ll keep you posted.

Sometimes, life is a beach. Even in Germany, even in this politically exciting year.

I’m at loss for words. Those of you, my gentle readers, who know me, will be able to certify that being in that state is a rather unnatural condition for me. However, I just found out about a website called savetoby.com. Being a Toby myself, I felt the need to inquire what was going on with my name buddy.

Toby, it turns out, is a rabbit, whose life has come under threat by two anonymous American students, who, according to savetoby.com and MSNBC.com, are planning to kill and eat Toby on June 30 unless they have raised at least USD 50,000 from donations and profits from selling savetoby.com merchandise on the web.
(more…)

it’s somehow become summer over here.

And my sister has actually posted another entry in her blog.

I’ve noticed that all those subscribing to the rss feed of almost a diary are probably unaware of the changes in the server configuration that took place over the last couple of weeks… well, at least my bloglines account told me that it’s still January in the old rss feed.

That’s because the old blog doesn’t exist anymore and all http queries are redirected to the new server. But redirecting doesn’t work well when looking for a specific file like index.rdf.

So I’ve now posted an rdf file with a last post in the old location, hoping it will help readers relying only on rss to find me again, but if you’re reading this, and you’re still interested in subscribing to my rss feed, please adjust your subscription manually to “http://www.tapsmusic.de/aad/index.rdf”.

Thanks!

For those not familiar with German brands, “Granini” is higher quality fruit juice brand… though I love the sarcastic use of their glasses to sell a glowing poisonous something…

Hello again!

I know it has been a while since I’ve posted more than the occasional photo or a brief message to all ye faithful out there. Well, I’m not promising anything, but as you can see, I’ve redesigned “almost a diary” with the intention to write more frequently again.

There’s also a new blog, called “tapsmusic”, which I will use to publish some songs I’ve written, “demo-produced” and, mostly, also sung – check it out. One of the songs there has already been published over on A Fistful Of Euros last October.

Lastly, “rest” is the third new element of this site, and I will use it to publish anything that doesn’t quite fit this blog or doesn’t have anything to do with my music.

Well… that’s the future structure, for as you will see by clicking on the links, neither “tapsmusic” nor “rest” are working yet. But they will – very soon. Stay tuned!

It’s -5 degrees at home. It’s snowing. In Rio, it’s 30 degrees. Sun’s shining. That’s about 1,5 degrees shift per hour for me until tomorrow evening.