My 2 Second Shelf Life

Sunday Click Around

The the picture to your left is of a Gypsy entertainer in a downtown plaza in Madrid.
He was very accommodating, posing for me in dramatic ways.

While there are gypsies here in Toronto, they seem quite different from those who reside in Europe. When I was a little girl, I remember seeing the colourful caravans...I think those are more or less a thing of the past.

Anyhow, it got me thinking about Gypsies and their history and traditions.
Here is a bit of History and Way of Life of Gypsies, as well as Gypsies in the Halocaust.
Gypsies of the UK, and photos of the gypsy way of life.

The Onion has a series of statshots that are pretty amusing. It's fun to satirize those quick little powerpoint pages that allow you not to have to spend precious time reading up on the full facts yourself.

Here's Coco Chanel's collection from 1959.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Chanel suit...but this show, since it's in black and white, makes all the suits look identical. Here's an interview with Coco.
It's all in French (duh) but her body language and the cadence of her dialogue is just as arrogant and dismissive as I imagined she'd be.

While we're on retro fashion for a minute, here's Vintage Fashion Reels from the '60's, and Vintage Fashion 1940, where the narrator uses words like "scamp", "skippy", and "fine and gay".

Here's a little history on "Voguing".

World Monuments Watch, a watchlist of 100 most endangered sites that threaten cultural heritage around the world. Found at Cynical-C.

Bound for Glory is a site full of great photographs of America in Colour from 1939-1943.

Here is a little vignette of some guy going around asking random people "What is your personal meaning of Life?".
I don't know about you, but I think it's kind of a stupid question, since none of us know why we're here to begin with, and to assume that we really have any say in it is typically self-revolved.
Many people in the short said that the meaning of life to them was "to be happy".
What? Was that the question?

Question: "What the secret to happiness?"
Answer: "Accepting misery"

Question:"What's the difference between a realist and a cynic?"
Answer: "The number of times you've been kicked in the head".

Whatever the answer to the question: "what is the meaning of life?" it must be sarcastic, sardonic and ironic....not lame, like "to be happy".

Here's the blog of a UK Police Constable. I think that law enforcement should use the internet as much as possible. YouTube, and blogs could be a great tool if used properly.

While reading Funkaoshi, I found this article about how mean French mothers are compared to North American mothers.
I read the entire article, and I didn't think that it was just French mothers.
I recognized their parenting style as "natural consequence" parenting.
If I tell you not to do it, and I tell you not to do it, and I tell you again...and you still choose to do it, you suffer the consequences and I don't give you any sympathy because I told you not to.
It was my mother's parenting style too.

It was one of the questions I had about Spanish children.
They too are well behaved. Is it because Senora has no qualms about smacking her kid in the head (which I saw) if they don't listen or behave appropriately?
Is it because anyone who witnesses your child doing something inappropriate can tell your kid off in the street?

You tell me.
But, I'll tell you that while in Spain, I didn't cringe and plan to move when I saw a family come in and sit down next to us in a restaurant like I do here.

A Night at the Roxbury - Turkish Style.

Here are some banned TV commercials.


Here's a very odd condom commercial (I loved the sheep/Woody Allen reference).

Last night, we had a BBQ with a quite a few people.
One of my friends noted that it was a good collection of fatherless people.
In my head, I went through the guestlist and realized that she was absolutely correct...However, while the guests were all fatherless (save one) all of the fathers who were at the table are real ones.

Happy Fathers Day to all you dedicated Dads...all others, kiss my ass.