Buzz from the beehive

The Belgian teenager Kimberley Vlaeminck (18) from Kortrijk (B) decided that she wanted three dots next to her right eye.

She went with her father Diego and sister to her local tattoo artist, ex-Parisian Rouslan Toumaniantz of Tattoo Box. Daddy was willing to pay for it, since the whole family has tattoos. The fact that she only speaks Flemish and that he only speaks French didn’t stop our enterprising girl to go under the tattoo needle. Fifty-six stars later, she claims that she asked him to tattoo only three small stars next to her left eye and not the whole Milky Way (my words, not hers).

Half a starry face later, when her family and boyfriend came back from eating ice cream, the reactions were less than enthusiastic. Our girl defended herself by saying “I must have dozed off”. She is a hairdresser and started working that day at 5am, you see…..

The tattoo guy stated that she did indeed gave him permission, but freaked out when her father and boyfriend disapproved. He cannot remove the tattoos himself, but is willing to lower the price of his handiwork to Euro 50 (just in case you want to know: that's the price of 5 tattooed stars).

She filed a complaint at the police station and is seeking damages. The spokesperson of the Kortrijk law enforcement (Tom Janssens, who for sure has better things to do during working hours), stated that the investigation will show if this is a case of bodily harm, of miscommunication or that Ms. Vlaemink simply changed her mind.

In the mean time, M. Rouslan Toumaniantz is not unhappy at all – he is now a well-know "artist". I cannot blame him, excellent free publicity for a young business, n'est-ce pas?

As for our little hairdresser – I just don’t get it. Getting tattoos is a personal matter (I am one of the few members in my fitness center that is tattooless – and I like to keep it that way!), but may be it would have been wise to avoid the face? Even Angelina Jolie doesn’t have any ink illustrations there!

As for falling asleep – makes as much sense as spontaneously dozing off during your standard dentist appointment.

As a lawyer, I can tell you that the “I didn’t give permission”- defense just wouldn’t fly, since she knew that the guy doesn’t speak any Flemish. Caveat emptor!

Both the French and the Dutch have a lot of jokes about the Belgians…that they are not that clever (to put it mildly and political correct). Well, this girl for sure doesn’t help matters!

For all you parents concerned about your offspring tattooing body parts - let them have a look at her starry face…..and whatever you do: don’t go out for ice cream when your heirs are falling asleep during the procedure!

Labels: diego vlaemink, kimberley vlaemink, kortrijk, rouslan toumaniantz, stars tattoo, tattoo box

For years, the main threat to our safety was crime – the old fashioned one. There were burglars, robbers and other villains. But our main threat nowadays is of the sneaky variety – yes, I am referring to cybercrime.

My main fear is not that I will be robbed in the streets by some crazed junkie, but that my identity is stolen by person(s) unknown. The Four Horsemen of the Cybercalypse ride their Trojan horses through cyberspace – wracking havoc with our online data. Once they get their grubby hands on our bank account or SSN, we are toast. Forget about finding out who stole, traded and used your data – cyber crooks operate in cybergangs that could have given Al Capone a run for his money. The chance of them getting nabbed by law enforcement is very slim, and even fewer are ever convicted and thrown in the brick.

Personally, I think that only one punishment fits the crime – cyber crooks should go non-tech for the rest of their lives. Let them get water from a well, read books (remember those?) by candlelight, and walk or ride a bicycle to go shopping. They cannot use credit cards of course, so they have to queue in the nearest bank to get money from the bank clerk. The downside is that I don’t know if there are any places left on earth that are non-tech…may be Eastern Island or Rottumeroog?

To help them out, I composed a list of terms that they can refer to since they wouldn’t have access to Wikipedia or Google to help them out.

Dear evillenus,

Please memorize the following term and erase all previous definitions from your memory (the one in your brain, inside your skull, you know, that boney part between your ears)

Spam = SPAM®, a tinned hopped pork and ham concoction that only Brits like. Since its first introduction in 1937, it has been a firm favorite in Albion, which could explain the teeth. Still, you have to eat, so click here for recipes.

Cookies = biscuits, the ones you munch or crumble. The word cookie is derived from the Dutch word koekje, which means "small cake", which shows you that the Dutch settlers lived the good life when they came to the New World - way before Internet. Fortune cookies are allowed, as long as text is handwritten preferably with a quill.

Mouse = a little rodent from the Muridae family. It is the favorite food/toy of cats (from the Felidae family). You are allowed to 1) keep them as pets 2) eat them (no recipes available) 3) feed them to your cat.

Bug = insect that can come in many forms. To help you identify which one bit you or ate your food, here is a list. Enjoy!

Cache = a hiding place that you can use for storing provisions or valuables (from the French “to hide”). Since you have to walk or ride your bicycle to the market for food (remember, no car!), I advise you to maintain a cache of food in case of emergencies (e.g., your mice eating your provisions).

Shopping basket/trolley/cart = a metal or plastic basket with/without wheels that you push or carry to schlep groceries to the check out. Since you cannot shop in a supermarket, you might ask a homeless person near you for a demonstration on alternative uses.

The Web = a spider or cobweb. Quite likely, you will have multiple ones in your dwelling. To give you idea what you are up against, check out this YouTube video. And when you are cleaning the cobwebs, you might remember the famous quote from Sir Walter Scott: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”.

Mail = letters, bills, etc. that a post office person drops off at your dwelling. It works both ways; you yourself can send mail by writing a letter, stuffing it in an envelope, putting a stamp on it and dropping it in a mailbox. It does require that you to know the physical addresses of hacker212 or lovemebigboy though.

Home = your dwelling, which in your case is hopefully a hut in the middle of nowhere.

Domain = a piece of land or real estate. In your case, your dwelling is located on a domain (Guantanamo Bay, maybe?)

Keyboard = the black and white keys on your piano. You are also allowed to play a harpsichord if you like.

Bit = a mall morsel. To help you with your withdrawal symptoms from hi-tech, you might consider biting on the bit of a pipe (the part of a pipe stem that you hold in your mouth)

Virus = a sub-microscopic infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell. To fight a virus infection, you might consider adding paracetamol (eg Panadol) or ibuprofen (eg Nurofen) to your cache.

Worm = an invertebrate animal that have a long, soft body and no legs whatsoever. They are part of the Platyhelminthethe family, which is the academic way of saying “flatworm”.

Trojan = a citizen of Troy, such as Hector and Paris (the guy, not the city)

Trojan horse = a sneaky ploy to hatched by Odysseus to get into Troy. If you are bored, you can build one following these instructions.

Microsoft = the unfortunate side effect of steroid use (males only)

I already found my first candidate – the cyber crook known as "the Analyzer”, who was arrested in Canada in September 2008 for hacking into a Canadian credit and debit card issuer and siphoning cash out of the compromised accounts. According to an affidavit, U.S. authorities also linked him to several data breach incidents at financial institutions across the country, resulting in losses of 10 million dollars.

Labels: bug, cybercalypse, cybercriminal, microsoft, spam, trojan, virus, worm

Charles Langley (born on March 28, 1917, worked as a journalist for the Morristown Daily Record, Morristown News, The Broadcaster, and High Point Journal Advertiser) posted the following on his yahoo group "one good turn". It makes excellent reading!

"Let me tell you about Southern writers. They are different from you, and from everyone else. For one thing, Southerners start living life much earlier than other people. Twelve year old boys operate farm tractors. Fourteen year old girls raise their siblings and keep house while their mother joins Dad in the fields. So when you have a Southern writer and one the same age from any other section of the country, the one from the South likely has more years of experience to write about.
Then there's the thing with words. Southerners have love affairs with words. People sometimes think they speak slowly because they think slower or because they are naturally lazy. Not so. They speak slower because their love of the words is so great that they can't stand to part with them. They caress them, massage them, polish them and linger over them lovingly before allowing them to go on their way with a lilt and an inflection found nowhere else in our country.They care about things deeply and when they talk about them, they use words unfamiliar to you. Sometime these words are right out of Elizabethan speech or are borrowed from Shakespeare or from works that Shakespeare borrowed from. Other times they are brand new, coined for the occasion, but perfectly understandable because they are crafted to fit the context in which they are used.

My mother used language which, when I was an ignorant, callow youth, I took to be the result of lack of higher education. When I later saw the same phrases in Shakespeare or Marlowe I was amazed that she had allowed them their use. She never came up short for a word to express any scene or any emotion because she so readily invented her own. "Any damn fool can use words they get from a book but it takes a fine mind to design words that are needed and will be understandable to anyone who reads them," she said. Others have said similar things, but I would bet that my mother beat them to it.

Southern writers have a way of putting a distinctive twist on their writing. Others write about a subject. The Southerner will write around it. Like a singer sings the note while a bel canto singer sings all around the note, the Southern writer will go so far afield in his or her embellishment of the writing that the meaning lies not in the lines but between the lines.

Actually, most Southern writers are not writers at all, but story-tellers who just happen to tell the story in writing. So you can ordinarily look for a rhythm and flow in the writing not often found in that of writers from different areas. William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe wrote in sentences that seemed to run on for half a page. It wasn't that they didn't know the ban on run-on sentences. I'm told it was because they had the habit of taking a sip of the elixir of life at the end of each sentence, and if the sentences were too short, so would be the story for they couldn't survive very many hours of short sentences.

I once asked a novelist friend of mine who had similar writing habits, "How long is your latest book?" "About a quart and a pint," he told me. I read the book. He was only off by two sips and a swallow......"

Labels: charles langley, language, one good turn, southern writers

I didn’t have a choice; I had to break up with my boyfriend. OK, I know this will make my mother sad since he is a doctor and all that. But once you learn about his Christmas gifts to me, you will understand….

It all started on the first day of Christmas. I came home from work and found a pear tree in front of my door. Since I live in an apartment building on the top floor, my neighbors bitterly complained. So did the fire department for blocking the emergency exit. Hence the fine, which boyfriend didn’t pay of course – and that in these economic times, really! After auctioning off the arbor in question on eBay, I found the remains of a partridge in the corner. No wonder my fat cat was not hungry! Ah well, at least he is a happy cat.

After this disaster, b-f surprised me with two turtle doves. Well, anyone who knows me is mucho aware of the fact that I don’t have a romantic bone in my body. All that coo, coo went on my nerves, and the fat cat was happy to help out. At least I saved again on cat food (Royal Canin is expensive, you know!) so I killed two birds with one stone (literally).

Naively enough, I thought that would be the end of it, but no -on the third day I got three French hens. They resembled Sarkozy and were loudly arguing (in French) while flapping their wings. After they polished off a bottle of my favorite red wine, I decided that coq au vin would be a Good Thing to have for dinner. Lover boy seemed a bit miffed that I turned his gift into a gourmet meal. Ah bon, c’est la vie!

You would think that he would by now have realized that those livestock gifts are not exactly my cup of (Earl Grey, no milk) tea. Hence my surprise, when Mr. “I have an IQ of 160 and I am member of Mensa” showed up with four calling birds. They escaped from their cage and were chased bylover boy and my cat all around my living room. Neither was successful in catching them, so I opened the window and out they flew. That was a Very Good Thing indeed, since one of those PETA fanatics claimed that they are “protected”. Whatever – those bleeding hearts are more than welcome to them (cooked or fried, heh, heh).

The next day, I received five rings, which I naively thought were gold. I considered that adequate compensation for all that poultry mayhem, until I found out that the rings were not made out of gold (I had them appraised for insurance). Trust that cheapskate to give me gold plated junk – I bet my finger would have turned green wearing them. I gave them to “dentists without borders” to be turned into fillings.

My mood didn’t improve when I found six geese waiting for me next day after work. I don’t know if you ever had any dealings with geese, but they stink and are aggressive buggers. The cat freaked out and went into hiding – unfortunately for me in my clothes closet. I wonder if I ever get that pee smell out of my evening gowns. I wanted to kill the brutes, but they are Canadian geese and therefore protected. Animal Welfare took them away – I kept the eggs. Made a damn good omelet I must say!

The next day, mon amour took me out for dinner in the park, on the lakeside. So far so good, it was all tres romantique, until he gave me my next gift – seven swans. What the Hackensack is a city girl like me to do with those ducks on steroids, I ask you! In a stroke of genius, I donated them to the city – to grace the lake. The municipality was grateful, boyfriend upset. But at least the bird-gifts stopped – to be replaced by worse gifts!

Yes, the next present I had the honor to receive consisted of eight maids milking a cow. Turned out the cow was rather bad tempered (small wonder with 16 hands pulling her udder) and the maids were illegal immigrants from Mexico. At least B-F has to deal with the authorities and not little me. If he thinks I am going to post bail or visit him in the slammer – forget it! I am still burning cented candles to get rid of the manure smell.

The next gift turned out to be OK – nine ladies dancing. Since I love to dance, it was a great gift; and once I get the hang of this hip hop…..move over Beyonce!

My favorite was the next present I got – ten lords a-leaping. I am still blurry-eyed and have muscle-aches, but boy, was it worthwhile! I think I got a bit over enthusiastic – boyfriend was verrrrrry annoyed! That will teach him to be a couch potato! I never knew that guys could be so, well, athletic and flexible!

To make sure I would not exercise with those ten hunks again (I think he shipped them back to Australia) he bestowed eleven pipers. Since they were playing bagpipes in kilts, it brought back fond memories of the time I studied criminology in Edinburgh. Turns out that I still know how to have a highland fling.

The last gift was fine as well – twelve drummers. I am currently outsourcing them to the blue man group – to our mutual benefit, I might add. No need to grant b-f a kickback; he is enjoying Her Majesty’s hospitality as we speak and therefore enjoys free room & board.

So know you understand, why I am single again…..and don’t celebrate Christmas!

Labels: cat, Christmas, gifts, mensa, sarkozy

He became a media sensation without spending a dime on PR – Joe the Plumber.

It all started when Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher, who works as a plumber, told Obama during his campaign in Ohio that his tax plan would keep him from buying the business that currently employs him.

It would have ended there, if both presidential hopefuls would not have started referring to “Joe the Plumber” every opportunity they got. Maria Gavrilovic of CBS news counted that both candidates mentioned his name more than 25 times during their 90-minute debate, compared to the 16 times they mentioned Iraq. Needless to say, Saturday Night Life spoofed it brilliantly.

The media jumped all over poor Joe, digging into his private life. In a time where you worry about the loyalties and ties of your neighbors (especially if they have "Middle Eastern-sounding names), the relentless US newshounds tried to find any piece of dirt they could on our hardworking plumber. They claimed that Joe does not have a license to operate as a plumber, is behind on his taxes, and would actually enjoy a tax cut of about $500 under the Democrat's plans, because his real income is much lower than he claimed. Whatever.

It for sure didn’t stop Republican Senator John McCain to turn our Joseph into the ultimate Average Joe or Joe Six-pack symbol, in an attempt to gain the upper hand over rival Obama. Up till now, the only clear winner is Joe himself.

He got coverage (without any sponsors or funding!) that many celebrities (or wannebees) would dream of. For starters, the prestigious Times Online wrote a 2-page profile on him. Wurzelbacher was also interviewed by Katie Couric of CBS Evening News, Neil Cavuto of Fox News and Diana Sawyer of Good Morning America. The only one who didn’t show any interest in him was Oprah – no wonder since she is a staunch Obama supporter.

Not everyone is happy with our Joe. Female plumbers, construction workers, pipefitters and other skilled tradeswomen are peeved, since no one has bothered to try to court their interests. As Lauren Sugerman, executive director of Chicago Women in Trades points out, real women like “Sarah the plumber” “Yvette the electrician” and “Meghan the carpenter” are facing pressing issues of their own. Personally, I am not quite sure what these are, since working in those professions raise the same concerns for men and women: payment, regulations and safety issues. But maybe I am missing the point here, being a high-tech nerdette. Feel free to leave your comment on this blog to that effect (please note that any comments of current and/or ex-lovers will be promptly purged unless they are extremely positive and make sense). Anyway, we always refer to “your average Joe”; we never talk about “your average Sarah”, sorry! I am sure you don’t want to be referred to as “Jane Doe”, do you?

In an eerie blur of reality and fantasy, Joe is being quoted on the left and on the right (pun intended) with the authority of a Bill Clinton. His (Joe's not Bill's) latest view on Obama and Israel promptly made it to the leading Israeli media. When asked by a retired Florida lawyer if he also believed that a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel, he answered "I'll go ahead and agree with you on that." In contrast to Condi Rice et al, our favorite Joe loves plain talk! Is he a new Secretary of State in the making?

With Halloween around the corner, guess which outfits are the bestsellers this year?
Correct: Sarah Palin wigs, greedy banker outfits and….. Joe the Plumber plungers!
No matter who will win next month – our Joe for sure spiced up the 2008 elections!

Labels: halloween, jane doe, joe the plumber, mccain, obama, samuel wurzelbacher, sarah palin

The 10th of September 2008 was a great day for a handful of scientists and a “so what?” day for the rest of us.

The 2,000+ eggheads at CERN (French acronym for European Organization for Nuclear Research) had the day of their lives – watching a collision of particles. Sounds like boys playing with toys to me…….do you guys ever outgrow this fascination with banging objects together with full force?

The particles were not up to speed yesterday, which is pretty shoddy if you ask me, and it also took all the fun out of it. Needless to say, the lack of speed was my main concern in life - way before potential terror attacks, the US and local elections, and the state of the economy. So it’s good to know that those two beamy things will still crash into one another at high-speed pretty soon. Nascar and Red Bull race fans (and other speed devils) will be relieved.

I am a lawyer (don’t hold that against me), not a physicist, so the famous CERN institute was only known to me from one of those wishy-washy Dan Brown’s novels. (Don’t ask me which one, they all read the same – I just vaguely remember a super plane flying to CERN. I was mainly wondering at the time if the passengers on it got more frequent flyers miles and better airplane food than I do on my European flights).

CERN describes its collider thingy as “a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. (Area 51 anyone?) It is a particle accelerator (just in case you want to know) used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionize our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.”

Well, that’s just dandy. The majority of us are still trying to understand the meaning of our own little lives. For the Mysteries of the Universe, I refer to my beloved SF series - characters like the Vulcans, Ferengi and Minbari make a heck more sense than many of the carbon-based life forms (especially homo sapiens) populating this planet.

Our dear scientists are looking for the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle dubbed "the God particle". OK, so we are spending millions on finding a particle that only exists in theory. Guys, newsflash, Lara Croft in the "Cradle of Life" already beat you to it!

What the technies at CERN try to do is to have two beams of 'hadrons' (not be confused with the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who had a Wall named after him) traveling in opposite directions inside a circular accelerator. You get it: the result is “boom”. This is supposed to represent the Big Bang. Clever citizens remarked that this would create a black hole, and were we all not taught (by the same eggheads) that black holes are Bad? However, don’t worry or check your insurance policy yet - we were assured that such a black hole will be:
1) tiny
2) only last a nano-nano-nano-second
3) evaporate
Mmmm, are these the same guys that told us in the past that nuclear energy is really, really, really safe?

I am not a scientist, but one thing I can tell you for sure – LHC itself is a black hole of the worse kind – the one where budgets and funding keep on disappearing into ….The only positive outcome I foresee in the near future is a bunch of Nobel Prize winners. Yes, those guys who are able to prevent us all from being sucked into a black hole of their making will for sure be winners.
Isn’t life deliciously ironic? And I didn’t even need a hadron or Higgs boson to figure that one out!.

Labels: Area 51, black hole, CERN, Lara Croft, LHC

Ditch Plains Beach, located in Montauk in the ritzy East Hamptons (the favorite summer playground of Manhattan’s rich and famous) saw some interesting action during the last week of July 2008.
It all started with the gossipy gawker.com publishing an article with picture of a creature washed ashore.

The pig-like creature got the kind of free media exposure that many celebs (including our battling presidential hopefuls) crave for. It appeared on TV channels such as FOX news, CNN and was covered in broad sheets like The Telegraph and The New York Times as well as on a strew of blogs.
The critter also got international exposure in France, Germany , The Netherlands, Spain and Latin America, Italy, Australia, South Africa, and featured in a strew of blogs.

Like most urban legends, the origin of the story is murky. It all started with Anna Holmes, the managing editor at Jezebel, receiving the pic of the pig by email from an Alanna Navitski, an employee at Evolutionary Media Group, in Los Angeles. Navitski got the gross image from her friend at Harris Publications, who got it from her sister who was there with her friends and one of them took the picture.
You are still with me?
A number of eye witnessed popped up, including the illusive sister, who didn’t want to be interviewed.
How convenient.
A local who wanted to remain anonymous (what, again?!) claimed that she saw it on people's phones and that she also knows people who saw it on Ditch Plains and other people who saw it at the person's house that they took it to. Yeah, right.

The remains of the mammal have conveniently disappeared. It's no longer at the beach where it was supposedly found. According to our “witness” Navitski, an old guy came and carted it away. That would only make sense if it would have popped up on ebay, where it is conspicuously absent.

And thus, my friends, urban legends are made.

The theories about the identity of the ugly beast are plentiful.

1. Pitbull dog – this theory was coupled with concerned dog owners worrying that it was their beloved pooch washed up on these fancy shores. Don’t worry canine lovers; the creature was not a dog, just read on….
   
2. Sea turtle – the poor creature lost its shell and died homeless. That’s the American real estate crisis for you.
   
3. Satan – I really like this one; I don’t think it could be Satan itself, being it so small and mortal, but may be one of its favorite pets? Did anyone check if it smelled of fire and brimstone?
   
4. An escaped experiment - from the government animal-disease research facility on Plum Island, just offshore from Montauk. This doesn’t make any sense at all, since they have an impeccable safety record and are supervised by the Department of Homeland Security.
   
5. It’s photoshopped – which, if it is, would make if part of the next theory:
   
6. It’s a hoax – similar to the sea serpent in Long Pond (Ironically enough, the Montauk finding spouted a hoax press release allegedly from the well-know PR company Ketchum).
   
7. Part of the Montauk Project – which consisted of a series of experiments (mainly in stealth technology) that took place at the Montauk Air Force Station. Since it closed down in 1987, it is highly unlikely that the creature came from there. Unless you believe in time travel….….X-files anyone?
   
8. Your favorite enemy – ranging from mother-in-law, ex-girlfriend to Lizzie Grubman and Marya Carey.

So what/who is our ugly beachgoer?
Larry Penny, the environmental-protection director of East Hampton stated that it is a raccoon with a broken jaw (hence the beak-like appearance). The long fingers and size (it’s about the size of a cat) are further indications that our furless friend is indeed a very dead raccoon.
Makes sense to me…..

Personally, I like the Gawker’s theory that "it's viral marketing for something.”
In that case, prime candidates would be “Cryptids Are Real," an upcoming Cartoon Network show about mysterious, scientifically undocumented animals such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Chupacabra, closely followed by Cloverfield 2, an upcoming Paramount monster movie. Considering the “source” of the urban legend, my money would be on the first.

The most likely explanation however, is that since the poor creature washed up at the end of July, and August is a notoriously slow month in PR, the story got the exposure it did – call it being at the right time at the right place. Just a damn shame the poor thing itself cannot cash in on it……

Labels: east hamptons, montauk, montauk monster, viral marketing