Who is this driver?

A so called live ticker where people can follow the events of a formula 1 race while it's running:

Nico Rosberg is in first position at the moment, Drive-Through is second, Giancarlo Fisichella is... wait... who the fuck is Drive-Through?

Sensational! A 15 kilo baby! Yeah...

Awww... look at that. A cute little baby sticking it's tongue out. Isn't that what makes all of us smile and forget our worries just for a moment? How cute. Let's see what a heartwarming baby story is written below it.

In Bangladesh, a baby weighing 15.2 kg was born and died shortly after birth. "The child hardly had any chance of survival. It's sexual organs were not correctly developed. It had the length of a normal child but chest, abdomen and limbs were very large", said Dr. Pabitra Kumar Kunda in Dhaka on Friday. Thousands of village people [...] went to see the dead baby. The hospital personell eventually had to hide the dead body.

What??? Is this picture even the right one to put up along such a story then? Well, I should have guessed that journalists also have an amputated sense of morality and respect for the dead. Why they put such a picture there is beyond my understanding. Usually you either put an actual picture of the place or persons involved above the article (for example the particular baby, the parents, or the doctor) or you choose a related picture, like any baby picture or a picture of a hospital floor. They chose a picture of a random baby. But instead of choosing something more appropriate that prepares the reader, they just use a sweet happy face because I guess that's what some people just HAVE to share with the world. Maybe it was a woman who was so heartbroken by this cute picture. Wouldn't a crying baby have been a better choice? At least it sets the mood. The picture you see above gives us the impression that the baby was okay and that it was going to say something like:"Hehe, look, I'm a very cheeky one. I gave my mother a lot of trouble getting her out of me. Yeah, I'm a little overweight, but I'm alright".

Disgusting... but obviously okay. This has seen the light of day, so someone must have approved of it.

Being stupid is okay, you just need the right job

Sorry to bring this topic up again, but it just makes me angry. This picture shows the two killers who caused trouble in Finland. One of them caused a massacre in 2007, the other one was the one I mentioned in my last post. There is also a text below the picture indicating who is who. Or at least trying to! But it was not possible for the author of those words to do that right.



This guy mixed them up. He wants to indicate that who is right (r.) is the guy who did the most recent massacre. But that is the other guy who got himself killed in 2007. I know that because there is again a wikipedia page that gets it all correctly and does it well. And wikipedia is run by everyone, no agency or people who get paid for gathering information.

Why does this upset me? Because left and right should not be a problem for someone who gets paid for making news articles and associating pictures with them. Why am I struggling so damn hard in my job, but other people get away with everything? Why is it not necessary to tell left from right? Why is inattention so damn okay in every other job except mine?

Another conclusion: Intelligence or good character traits don't matter. It only matters that you have a certificate proving that you sat your ass sore in a university. The only thing important is that you went to some place to study for 5 years. The number of years matters and the fact that you learned stuff you forget later. It's pointless of me to claim that I could do a better job even without all the studying. But that's not what matters. What matters is that you fulfill the criteria set up by "the others"... the state, the society, the business world. It is like that and it will always be like that. And I'm not saying that because of left and right, I'm saying that because of all the things I write here month after month, and because of what I go through in MY job. I certainly cannot afford to mix up left and right. If I do that, I will be called an idiot, I will cause costs, and I will not get away with it, even as an apprentice!

This is Finnish... but not the end

Sometimes even school massacres have something amusing about them. Okay, what happened today in Finland was not funny, but it caused my favourite site to cause another funny mistake. It's especially funny because I could not possibly have known it was a mistake, but somehow figured it out.
Here is the story: A 22 year old guy went amok and killed 9 people (death toll might be increasing), then shot himself and got severely injured. In this t-online news report, he is called "Herra S." by the author.






So far, so bad. I was interested to know more, so I checked the english Wikipedia page, where an article about the massacre had already been put up. Strangely, the name of the murderer was completely different there. He was called "Matti Juhani Saari". Okay, the "S." is correct then, because his last name starts with an "S". But what about the rest? Well, I checked again because I thought that probably "Herra" would be the wrong first name because the other name sounded like a complete Finnish name. And I already had a suspicion that became true. Take a look what "Herra" really means. One tip: There is a German word that sounds not too different.

Wow. So yeah... who do you think ever calls their son "Mister" as a first name? I can't imagine that's common, even in such a strange country. You know, I think the story went like this:

T-online reporter (now called T) and Finnish policeman (P) have a conversation:

T: Hello, do you speak English?

P:Little...

T:Who was the name of the killer?

P (feeling confused, turning around to a colleague): Um... question? Not understand.

T:The name... killer... shoot shoot. Name. How called?

P: His name... we not tell, just say Herra S. is privacy... understand?

T: Yay! I have to write an article totally quickly anyway, gotta go, must write quickly and I make so many spelling mistakes anyway. Thanks.

P: What... ever....

EDIT: The number of victims has increased to 10, the killer has died and t-online.de has changed its version to the more common one that had been on wikipedia before. But the mistakes never end: The news channel of my Nintendo Wii says the killer was 20 years old, as opposed to all other sources who say he was 22 years old. I guess journalism is a very difficult job. At least it's allowed to make mistakes because nobody cares except for nerds like me.

Amusingly illogical

When I made Pizza today, the radio was on and there was a song that gave me the inspiration for this blog entry. The message of this song was asking for forgiveness. But it was not direct asking, it was this indirect asking:"Can you tell her I'm sorry?"

Or there is a song on the radio where the singer always sings:"If you see this girl, can you tell her where I am?"

Oh yeah... how often have we heard that. Um... NEVER?! Come on! In my everyday life, I always have to hear how everything is MY responsibility, MY problems, MY stuff to deal with. I can't just say "can you take care of this for me?". And seriously, I'd understand if people sang about getting their tax computation done by someone else, or maybe they would sing about someone helping them out in general. But who in the world decided to give a song a chance that basically said: I'm too cowardish to apologize for something I did to my girlfriend. Can you please apologize to her on my behalf?

I can't get over it. If there were only great songs out there, either with fantastic melodies and/or amazing poetry, I would accept that without jealousy. But whenever I hear shit like that on the radio, I wonder why I can't just have that songwriter job. Sorry, it's true. Who do you even address with this kind of shit? Who would ever get so involved in a relationship that this person would apologize for something you did? The parents? The person who one person cheated the other with? The divorce lawyer?

There was another interesting thing today. My favourite shit site again, t-online.de it was. It was about a goalkeeper who didn't really have a great day in a 2:5 defeat. The whole text contained the word "fact" three times, once it was even not capitalised, which is wrong in our language. How uninspired must the author have been. It was like every other sentences was like "... [person] pointed out the fact that..." or "[person] was not happy about this fact". It's like everything is a fact. What has become of "circumstance", "situation" or simply "that"?

I wrote a comment then, because luckily there is a comment function below some articles. I pointed out the mistakes and then wrote just a little bit about the goalkeeper as an alibi. Some hours later the part about the mistakes were erased and only the sentence about the guy was left. Interesting. And they indeed changed their article a little! Success! Finally I achieved something. But that was not the first time. I even once corrected a spelling mistake that was on TV! Yes! My greatest triumph. I remember that a day after I pointed something out, they changed their spelling, even if it may have been only temporarily. Well, at least someone takes care of it. If I don't do it, then nobody does.

Now you may ask: Why is this guy so geeky about spelling? I will tell you. I learnt this shit and it got marked and graded at school. I don't allow things to change so quickly. It is happening around me all the time. If I leave school, suddenly the school system gets better. If I'm old enough to sit at the front seat of a car, they suddenly change the laws so that my brother who is 5 years younger can also sit at the front. I die, suddenly painless tooth surgery becomes a standard procedure.
I will not let things go on like that! They put me through all the shit, so we are not going to abolish any of it! Just because I'm older now doesn't mean that other people can act like children, can have sex with windows wide open, become careless about spelling and get any job that I would get and could perform a lot better with half the salary. I'm going to fight until I get too tired....*sighs*

Oh wait! One more thing... I'm not a native speaker so I may be wrong, but shouldn't it say "noticeably more comfort" instead of "noticeable more comfort"? Because there is more comfort in a noticeable way?
It is one slogan of a safety shoe company I read not long ago. And it made me wonder if I could have that slogan writer's job... I just really don't know why...

Only possible in the age of automated messages

Dear Customer!
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Does this need any explanation?

RTLnow sucks!

RTL is a German television station. One of their advertisements went like this:

That is Max. Max has just missed his favourite tv show. NO PROBLEM NOW! BECAUSE NOW, THERE IS RTLNOW! WATCH YOUR FAVOURITE TV SHOWS ON THE INTERNET! (and so on)

Okay, sounds good so far. I mean, that's not the first time I hear about stuff on tv being shown on the internet, too. You can even watch Formula One live on the internet, that's RTL's new service since a while ago. So it's available on tv and internet at the same time, no strings attached. You decide.

So... you might be thinking that RTLnow is the next step, because now you can even skip anything on tv and watch it later, at your own convenience. Needless to say, I will not wait too long because my episode might already be replaced by the one after that. So okay, what do you think I discovered when I checked out this site?

Well... it was shit. First of all, I purposely missed one brand new episode of Dr. House, and that -is- my "favourite tv show". So yeah, I thought: I will just go to this site and watch it there. But no! Not only is House not available on this site (so much about "your favourite tv show"), but you also have to
PAY
for the shit!

What is that? Let me get it straight for you: You can watch F1 live, you get it for free, you can turn off the tv, they don't care, they don't even care that the viewing rate on tv gets low because obviously, just like tv itself, they get clicks or "internet viewing rate" or something like that. I think you know what I mean. So to sum it up: They allow you to watch a great sports event that only comes every couple of weeks. They allow that. Live. No paying, you can just do it for free.

But when it comes to tv shows, they do NOT allow you to:

-watch a crappy episode of any random tv series
-to watch that episode for free
-to watch it for free days after it was already on tv anyway

So... it is only an episode of a tv show, no world championship, no live event, nothing that makes you want to grab popcorn and beer (not that I would).It's not live, so it does not even compete against tv, but nevertheless, you are supposed to pay! And most of all, there is no clue whatsoever in the tv advertisement! It looks like paradise! You miss an episode, who cares, you watch it on the internet! No, it was just a crappy joke.

What do they expect and why do they use this strategy? Is it like "telling them that it costs money will make them shy away"?
I mean, it's not like I see it costs money and then I think: Oh... what a surprise. Well, who cares, just give me the damn episode now that I have gone the long way to my computer and typed in the address!
Hell no! I can watch it for free in English, just have to search for it. It's more inconvenient, but okay, I will do it as long as I know what House did last time, but I'm not paying damn money for it.

The biggest joke of all is this: If I had known all of this before, I would have watched the episode that day. I would have stayed up and not done anything else. I would have given this shitty tv station their viewing rate. But instead, they neither got my viewing rate, nor did they get my money.

I think I will write to them some time in the future. After watching House today. On TV!

Hetero pride

"...the more important it is that stars confess their love for men in public: Thus they encourage those who hide their sexuality out of fear of the reaction of their environment and, at the same time, show the whole world that heterosexuality is not less "normal" than homosexuality".

You heard it! Don't be afraid! If you are heterosexual, if you are a guy loving girls or a girl loving guys, be strong! Step up to your gay parents and tell them right in the face that you deserve as much respect and love as everyone else! It is okay to like someone from a different sex, even if it's unusual and seems so unnatural because of all the physical differences.

Okay, I think you get the idea. This was simply another mistake done by an author of the German MSN website. They put pictures of all the stars who are gay on it and also this little comment about how okay and necessary it is to be gay. They just mixed up the words there and made it look as if heterosexuality is the unusual thing and not homosexuality.

Well, this mistake had to happen because the person who put the words on the site (maybe a gay person, considering the passion and commitment of his/her comment) had to make it more complicated than necessary. If you say "not less normal than bla bla bla", of course you get confused. I mean: That ain't not so hard to not misdiscomprehend, isn't it not?

There was also a huge understatement in the text, just above the one I quoted here. The author wrote that homosexuality is still a taboo in many countries and that some gays even get discriminated against in some countries. Hell yeah! You could also want to mention that some countries even kill people who are homosexual. But that would not be so nice to read, would it?

The reason for this is again religion. I think there are many things one can argue about in religion, but when you read what the bible (and other books) say about a man hanging out with another man in this specific way, it's clear enough that it's not so welcome. I don't care, I have nothing against gay people, but somehow I feel that Christianity and homosexuality don't go well together. You have to do a lot to make it sound right for yourself if you are gay.

Anyway, happiness comes first, I guess. But that is already enough for now. Just thought I'd share the madness of another mistake done by someone whose job I'd love to take over but can't because I'm officially not qualified enough.

Stop the presses!

-Similarities make relationships last longer than differences
-Sex is healthy
-Atmospheric change irreversible
-Atmospheric change definitely caused by mankind
-Facial symmetry is attractive
-Pair bonding influenced by facial features of the parents

What do all these online article headlines have in common? Well, several things. They are all commonly known, they appear time after time over years, they are always presented as "new" although they have been published before, and it always takes scientists to figure out things that any human being could guess.

The phrase is always "now [enter number] scientists at the [name] institute have found out that..." and it makes you wonder how many scientists can find out the same thing until all the scientists in the world come to the conclusion that other scientists in other countries have already stated the obvious a million times.

Another interesting thing is what the media make out of this. They use the amazingly researched information to use it for their own interests. You can easily link the "sex is healthy" part with the online dating site that you are supporting, link it to the erotic area of your site, and of course also promote "free love" as something totally normal. In other words: Just have sex with everyone as often as possible, otherwise you die early. By the way, people who kiss a lot live [enter number] years longer than people who.... uhm... don't kiss. Monks?

Eventually they do more things, like even turning bad things into good things. For example: If you cheat on your partner, be so nice not to tell them, because that ruins a relationship. You do your partner a favour by NOT telling them. And hey, it's better for everyone. You can have sex to support your health, and your partner can live without worries. All the stress is really unnecessary.

Yes, it's true. Our society has come to a point where it is open to discussion whether to tell someone that he/she was cheated on or not. In the good old days it was up to everyone to decide, but nowadays you can read everywhere what some stupid journalists think. Imagine if your partner buys a typical man/woman magazine and it's full of this kind of shit. What would you think? I personally don't like the thought that a magazine talks about "7 ways to deal with having cheated on someone" or "10 secrets a woman should always keep" or "20 reasons why magazines that use whatever number of reasons suck".

Why is all this such a big problem to me? Hm... I think it's because there is no room for the deeper meaning any more. It can be religion, but also the true ideal of being in a love relationship. It used to matter more to be loyal to each other, but nowadays it looks like nobody believes that loyalty pays off. You can't justify it with religion because 90 per cent of the readers are either unreligious or only religious by name. I also must admit: It's difficult to explain loyalty in a secular world. You can't say:"Well... you just don't do things like that".

One more thing: One colleague at work sucks. Why am I saying that? Just precaution. I don't want it to look like I didn't see it coming. If I ever write about him again, then you know I saw it coming.