This is how not to make a marriage proposal.
Watch this video.
This top comment sums it up best.
There is nothing more romantic about a proposal in public than there is about a proposal in private. The only difference being that one is manipulative (using pressure from a crowd to make the ‘target’ say ‘yes’).
We have to realise that the above video may be fake. It may be 2 actors. However you can find, on youtube and other video sharing sites, other public proposal fails.
Regards
-Simon
Watch this video:
For those of you who couldn’t be arsed watching this video, it relates a story of a man who was wrongfully convicted for rape. He was found to be innocent via DNA evidence, then given $4 million in compensation.
His now ex wife (wife at the time of conviction) is demanding a slice of that 4 million, despite divorcing him 3 years into his 25 years in jail.
Now if you’re like me, you may think this is ridiculous. After all, she didn’t stick buy him for all these years and therefore shouldn’t receive anything. However don’t be surprised if she ends up winning some money.
You see, over the years, the vows of marriage have been pissed on so often that very few people take marriage seriously anymore.
Marriage used to be a life time commitment. These days it is a commitment up until the point where it becomes inconvenient.
This is largely a cause of no fault divorce laws being introduced (allowing anyone to obtain a divorce even if there is no justifiable reason).
When she chose to marry him, she made a commitment to stand by him no matter what. She should have been there supporting him every one of those 25 years. But she wasn’t. She bailed when it got tough.
The classic vows:
For better or worse, in sickness and in health.
Should be changed to:
For better and in health… as long as it’s convenient for me.
There really is no point to taking these vows if you don’t plan on keeping them.
More on this sad joke of an institution later.
Regards
-Simon
Halloween 2011 was a total disappointment for myself and most likely the kids around my area.
Here’s how it went down.
Remembering how awesome a day it was as a kid, I was looking forward to Halloween on behalf of the other kids in the neighbourhood.
So it was off to the shops to buy chocolate bars to give out should any of them come to the door trick or treating.
Walked about 20 minutes to the shops (had no car) in the searing heat (not fun). This is no normal walk… it’s all up-hill. And we aren’t talking about a slight incline either, we are talking a very steep hill.
So we are at the shops and 30 chocolate bars are bought (big ones at $1 each). Was tempted to buy more thinking that 30 wouldn’t last, but figured that there was always the possibility to drive up and get more (when there was access to a car).
Very glad that more weren’t bought.
That was 3pm.
Waiting…
5pm
Waiting…
6pm
And finally there are 2 kids in costumes with their mother walking past the house.
I can’t wait… but then they walk straight past.
I run to the fridge, grab 2 of the chocolate bars and run down the street to give it to them. They appreciated them, but let it be known that they were only going to houses with decorations out the front of the house (so they knew the house was willing).
So 2 bars down, 28 to go.
I wait another half an hour and it’s almost dark. Another girl comes with her mum and dad. They get their bar. She and her parents did the right thing by going to everyone’s house.
3 down now.
It was soon dark and you could finally hear groups of kids running about having fun (of course accompanied by parents, which I would have found SO lame as a kid, but anyways.
A group of 6 girls come past and take one each. However they only did this after being told that we were participating in the event.
6 more down, 21 to go.
After this, I was starting to see a theme. Kids were only coming to houses that were showing that they were participating (through decorations on the outside).
We didn’t have any decorations so decided to turn the front light on (as simple as that might have been).
Success… 5 more kids came.
To add to that my friends mother came to take a chocolate bar (she did this after my friends dad saw facebook comments of mine bitching about how nobody was coming to my house). She had told me that their house had had so many kids that they ran out of lollies… there’s no justice in the world.
15 more to go.
And that’s how it stayed.
There was a group of about 10 kids who walked past (with their parents), they didn’t bother to stop. Again it must have been because the parents only wanted to go to the houses of the little kids (and not bother anyone else).
If you got through that story… well done.
This has to be the most disappointing Halloween ever. Money was wasted on chocolate bars (buying double what was needed) and those chocolate bars have to go somewhere, and since I am addicted to chocolate, we all know where that is.
Lessons
Next year Halloween will be a Wednesday as opposed to a Monday (a rubbish day) and so will have more participants. I also learned that you need to have decorations outside your house in order for people to be confident to approach your house.
Conclusion
Back in my day (sounding like an old man) we would have gone to every house. If you didn’t give us stuff, you were a dick (and were punished). There was no fear about going to houses with no decorations since it was expected that you participate.
Now we have parents who will avoid houses because of this reason. Really sad. It should be a day for the kids (where they get heaps of sweet stuff) and a day for the adults (where they get the enjoyment of an exciting event).
It’s the same with people putting Christmas lights up, everyone is in a celebratory mood. We don’t have that anymore, and that’s sad.
Guess there are 14 chocolate bars here to relieve my depression (already eaten one of them).
Regards
-Simon
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p.s. hopefully all the kids actually still had fun. This post is more to highlight that it doesn’t seem as fun as it used to be back in the 90′s (my time).
A friend showed me a link to the first ever motion picture.
Lasts 3 seconds. I guess film must have been expensive to make.
Anyways, while clicking through the related videos the following were found:
Probably the second oldest surviving film.
The oldest sound recording from 1860 (amazing).
A repeat of the oldest recording plus 2 others (one of them Edison).
Now take a look at some old photographs.
And finally…
We have the first ever recorded fail.
Hope you enjoyed.
Regards
-Simon
Write a to do list.
Regards
-Simon
The man who ruled Libya for 42 years is now dead. I am not going to comment on the man himself. He died approximately 24 hours before the writing of this blog post.
You can read the initial reactions here and here (or you could google his name).
I find similarities between him and Saddam Hussein. Both led their countries for a long time. Both claimed they would fight to the death. One was found hiding in a hole, one was found hiding in a drain pipe. Both met death.
Both had control of many millions of dollars. It didn’t help either of them. You’re born with nothing and you die with nothing.
The death of Gaddafi was suspicious in that there is video of him alive (after being captured). The next time footage is taken of him, he is dead. There are claims that he was shot in the crossfire between Gaddafi Loyalists and ‘rebel fighters’ in between those videos.
I think this is rubbish.
My guess is that he was killed (execution style) and that the rebel soldiers wanted to cover up the fact that they destroyed any chance of their former leader going to trial. Maybe they wanted to claim the cash reward for themselves (I’m hearing that there was one) and wanted to make sure of it.
It really does end for all of us. The only thing left after our death is what we did for God.
Good luck to Libya.
Regards
-Simon
Just a few days ago, Australia were soundly beaten by the All Blacks in the semi-final of the world cup. The All Blacks deserved the win, wanted it more and will most likely win the world cup (unless France can pull yet another rabbit out of the hat).
I had a real problem with the tactics the wallabies used this entire tournament. I found 2 videos which highlight where it went wrong for the wallabies. I will go through them one at a time.
The video has commentary so will not delve into each play. However I will say this. The wallabies, against every opponent had potential line breaks and potential overlaps in every game they played this world cup.
For some reason they decided to discard these advantages in bring the ball back into already crowded rucks. They also had the habit of running into the opposition defense when they should have kicked the ball down field for territory or into touch. This often saw wallabies players being isolated (sometimes we would have one back running into 3 or 4 opposition forwards).
Let’s have a look at the second video…
We don’t have commentary here so I will explain a bit what is going on.
Towards the end of the game the All Blacks had a player sin binned. Australia needed to score a converted try in the next 3 and a half minutes and hope they could score another converted try off the kickoff. It was a long shot but something that needed to be tried as it was a semi final of a world cup.
This video shows that despite their one man advantage, they were not able to convert a golden attacking opportunity into a try. They had set up their backs for a run at the all blacks defense. However the ball (for some inconceivable reason) was kept in the forwards (where no further progress was being made).
Once the ball got into the backs it was just a matter of converting. The extra man saw a single defender facing 3 attackers. At 2:05 in the video Adam Ashley-Cooper needs to pass left to create a definite 2 on 1 or possible 3 on 1 in the left hand corner.
Instead he did what the wallabies had a habit of doing all world cup. Cutting back into the wall of opponent forwards. This turned a 99% chance of a try into a turn over for the all blacks.
Full credit to the All Blacks. They did what they had to do and deserved the win. They easily wanted it more (every loose ball was jumped on by an All Blacks player).
Having said that, the Wallabies didn’t perform at their best. There were at least 2 occasions (both shown in the videos above) where a extremely good chance of a try was blown.
There were also other points in the game where the Wallabies could have claimed the ascendancy but failed to capitalize on their strengths.
Regards
-Simon
Today I was on facebook. I saw this on the side of the page…
It got me thinking. Why bother having a facebook if you’re going to make it private?
I have this thought quite a lot. It makes me laugh every time I hear about someone bitching about privacy when they actively place their information on a website that is essentially public.
I hear about people deleting their facebook because they are ‘being stalked’. 99% of the time that will be total B.S.
A story by some attention seeking idiot attempting to make people think that they are so desirable socially that they are being followed online. I have heard this stalking story a number of times. It has always been a girl that makes the complaint… and that girl is almost always of an appearance ‘not worth stalking’.
Back in the day of myspace I would see the same sort of thing. Myspace was a site where you could create your own unique page and show it off to the world. You would then get people setting their profile to ‘private’ so that only friends could see you (thus defeating the purpose of myspace).
Here’s 3 things:
1) Most of you aren’t worth stalking
2) If someone wants to get info off you from facebook, for whatever reason… they will usually have the resources to bypass any privacy settings (think government or law enforcement agency). Your token attempts are not going to stop them.
3) The only information you put on your facebook (or any internet presence) should be information you wouldn’t mind the entire world seeing. Use the ‘grandmother rule’… if you wouldn’t show your grandmother, you shouldn’t post it.
The ultimate privacy setting lies in you preventing yourself from typing idiotic things, or uploading stupid pictures (or having them taken in the first place).
Also… fewer people care about you than you either admit or think.
(I realise that this could really come to bite me on the arse if my account gets hacked… you have permission to say ‘I told you so’)
Regards
-Simon
This is the super simple case for mandatory paternity testing. Read this article (note: I have removed the faces and family names as I don’t wish to bring attention to the people, just to the idiotic behavior).
This guy is gullible enough to believe that his wife got pregnant watching 3D porn while he was off in Iraq. While this is an extreme and ridiculous case, men are often gullible when it comes to being told that a kid is theirs.
Perhaps it is because they badly want to believe they have conceived a child. Or it may be because they do not want to face the emotional pain of having being cheated on.
Regardless, there are many men who are raising kids that are not their own. There is nothing wrong with this if they are doing this voluntarily and know that the kid isn’t theirs. However they should have a choice to either raise the kid or get out of their, not spending any time or money on the kid.
A mandatory paternity test will force many of these men to face reality. It will also weed out many cheating women who just use those men as a means to raise their offspring (while denying the men the opportunity to pass on their own genes).
A faithful woman will have nothing to worry about with mandatory paternity testing… it is just the unfaithful ones that oppose it. Which is why it will be a long time before mandatory paternity testing will come even close to law.
Of course she is suing the porn cinema which she visited to “see how a porno looked with 3D effects”. I wonder how successful she will be.
Regards
-Simon
Recently here in Australia, Coca-Cola launched a new marketing campaign. The marketing campaign revolves around having people’s names on the front of a coke bottle or can. They took 150 of the most common names and placed them on the front of coke cans.
Take my name for example. On the front of the bottle or can it would say:
Share a coke with…
Simon
Coke aim to sell 268 million bottles and cans over the next 3 months (since they launched the campaign). I think this is genius, here’s why.
There has been a huge buzz surrounding these coke bottles on social media sites. Particularly facebook. These cans or bottles are not only talked about every day, but are shown in pictures. People are doing the advertising for Coke (and having fun in the process).
One of my facebook friends even has the Coke billboard in Kings Cross as his profile picture.
(note: pictures of him, his personal details and his family name have been removed for privacy. This is to show the example of a person who has the coke sign in my news feed every time he does something on facebook).
People are searching supermarkets for bottles or cans with their name on it. Those who do not have common names joke about the fact that they are upset. Upset because they do not have a can named after them.
Many times marketing teams get it so wrong. This time I believe they have got it so right.
Regards
-Simon
