Month: June 2005 (Page 4 of 5)

Birds Do It…

June 9, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 1 Comment

(or Reason #12 for Women Not to get Married)

It is not just human males who seduce prospective paramours with expensive gifts while bringing home cheap trinkets for their long-term partners. Some male birds do it too.

Great grey shrikes mate for life and raise offspring each breeding season. But the males also sneak away and mate with other females. To charm both long-term partners and mistresses the males offer gifts of food.

Researchers in Eastern Europe then tested these males to see whether they put more effort into their "affairs" or their "marriages."

According to Piotr Tryjanowski at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and Martin Hromada at the University of South Bohemia in CeskÃ© Budejovice, the Czech Republic, the male birds gave gifts to their mistresses which averaged 75 kiljoules of energy content, while gifts to their long-time partners only averaged 19 kilojoules.

Males often caught lizards, voles and other birds for their mistresses, which required six times as much effort to catch as the insects that they gave their partners.

Tryjanowski summed it up by recalling an old Polish saying:

"Artificial jewelery to the wife and real diamonds for the mistress."

(via New Scientist)

The Blog is Mightier Than the Sword

June 9, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 3 Comments

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a Korean-run bagel shop that I’m boycotting because of bad service. The only problem — really good bagels. Today, as I’m driving past the store on Wilshire, I have a thought:

"What if… just what if… the owner read my blog. Surely, he would know that I was writing about his store in my post. I’m sure he wants to apologize, maybe even give me three bagels for the price of two. Come to think of it, according to my stats, I did see someone reading my blog last night from Comcast – Los Angeles. Maybe he searched on Google for "Unhappy Customer Korean Bagel Shop" and found me. He was probably up all night feeling bad."

To make a long story short, I went inside the store and he made me wait while he finished making some sandwiches. No mention of my hard-hitting blog post. No free bagels or anything!

Yes, it is the year of the Blog. Chalk one up for blogging and narcissism.

American Woman

June 7, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 23 Comments

I hate to give this idiot any readers, but Sophia and I found this too funny to not share. It’s a website from an angry guy who hates modern American and Western-thinking women (damn feminists!).

A huge percentage of American women are selfish, flighty, insecure, needy and psychotic, and quite capable of concealing those traits during the dating phase

White ‘career’ American chicks are the bottom of the barrel marriage-wise.

Foreign women from South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia are at the top. Only guys who travel (in other words, guys who are successful and ambitious enough to travel a lot) find these. But they never, ever go back.

Foreign-born women living in the US are the next best. They get married early…they are highly sought-after by American guys for their wifely skills (hell, any women who has ANY ability to be a wife is better than your average American chick, who knows NOTHING about being a wife)

Bottom of the barrel—white American chicks. Yecch.

In other words:

American woman, stay away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don’t come hangin’ around my door
I don’t wanna see your face no more
I got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin’ old with you
Now woman, stay away,
(American Woman by The Guess Who)

I think this guy was turned down by a neighborhood girl one time too many.

His main thesis is that American men should only marry foreign women. You know, the old-fashioned ones who walk behind you, and know their place is in the kitchen and the bedroom (oh, we can dream, can’t we?).

Even though we’re separated, I’m still great friends with my wife, Sophia. She was born in Russia. One of my best friend’s wife is Japanese. I know men who have married women from Mexico, Israel, Taiwan, Iran, the Phillippines, Peru, and France. Take my word for it, Mr. Angry American Male, whoever you’re going to marry — no matter where she is from — that woman is going to throw your life upside down.

You might think that Japanese wife is obediently walking behind the man, but believe me, if you cross her, you’re still going to be sleeping on that living room couch.

And that hot Latina from Mexico — you forget her anniversary, and forget about sex until the next Cinco de Mayo.

No matter if it’s in Turkish or Tagalog, you will eventually be cursed at for peeing on the toilet seat (in the native tongue of course).

And women from Albania to Zambia know when their husbands are checking out another woman’s ass.

So, don’t give up on American women just because they can be pains in our butts. All women are. American women are special. They’re smart, pretty, and they’re as clueless as us American men are about what’s going on in the world. Because only caring about America is as American as, well, apple pie! (now if we could only find an American woman who still knows how to bake one).

(More anti-women stuff from this moron)

(thanks to The Alley Notebooks for the link)

(photos via Ted Morris)

Short People

June 7, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 0 Comments

Knowing that I live in Los Angeles, people are always asking me, "Neil, I want to be a successful actor. But I’m only four feet tall. Do I have a shot at making it in Hollywood?"

The answer is a resounding, "Yes," thanks to Willow Personal Management, the Biggest talent agency for Short Actors in the World. (via GrowaBrain)

Gay Pride Paree Hilton and Her Mother

June 7, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 0 Comments

(photo via A Socialite’s Life)

This weekend is the annual West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade, which is always a lot of fun. And this year’s Grand Marshals are — Paris Hilton and her mother, Kathy?

Huh? West Hollywood gays, are you out of your homosexual minds?

You mean there was no one available who actually did anything for the gay and lesbian community? An advocate for gay marriage? A doctor looking for the cure for AIDS? Portia de Rossi?

The official response:

“They are a very public mother and daughter team, and they know what it is like to be different — or what it is like when people don’t understand who they are,” said Rodney Scott, board president of the Christopher Street West, parade and festival organizer.

I see. You mean "different" in that you both have more disposable income than the rest of us to buy expensive clothes, liquor, automobiles, and gay cruises (as seen in the official Gay Pride Parade advertising-packed glossy magazine I picked up at The Flower Tree on Santa Monica Blvd. while drinking a carrot juice)?

Logo Trends: The Swirl is the New Zigzag

June 6, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 0 Comments

Just as women’s hemlines go up and down depending on the year, company logos go in and out of fashion. Logo-Lounge shows fifteen trends in logo design. See how everyone is ripping off each other’s logos!

(Graphic Design USA via Be a Design Group)

Russell Crowe Phones Home

June 6, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 8 Comments

Russell Crowe was arrested in New York for allegedly throwing a telephone at a hotel employee early Monday morning, according to a police report obtained by CNN.

Authorities say the New Zealand-born actor, 41, was upset that he could not place a call to Australia on his phone at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo. (via Martinis, Persistence, and a Smile)

I did a little searching if I could find any more details, but couldn’t. I’ve never actually seen anyone throw a phone at anyone, so I was curious about the details.

I made up two possible scenarios:

Russell calls room service and an attendant, a young Indian-born man, come to his room. Russell starts screaming about the phone not working right. The attendant says he’ll speak to management right away and Russell rips the phone from the wall and says, "here’s your fucking phone!" and throws it at his head.

Russell goes to the front desk, a scowl on his face, upset that Cinderella Man isn’t doing very well at the box office. The attractive girl at the desk, a NYU film student from New Jersey, is excited to meet the actor.

"Can I help you, Mr. Crowe?" she asks.

"What the fuck is wrong with this hotel!" he screams.

He reaches behind the desk and lifts up the telephone to show it to her.

"Do you know what this is?!"

"A telephone?"

"That’s fucking right!"

And then he throws it at her head.

UPDATE: It’s now later in the day and more information is out. The clerk was a male. Robin Baum, Crowe’s publicist, spins it like this:

"Frustrated by a clerk’s unwillingness to help him put through a phone call to his family in Australia, Russell Crowe was involved in a minor altercation at the Mercer Hotel earlier this morning… After asking the front desk several times to replace a faulty phone in his room — and getting only attitude from the clerk on duty — Crowe brought the phone down to the front desk in an effort to address the situation in person. Words were exchanged, and Crowe wound up throwing the phone against the wall. He regrets that he lost his temper, but at no time did he assault anyone or touch any hotel employee."

Ok, now it’s been cleared up. He only threw the phone against the wall, something we all do at a Holiday Inn every once in a while.

Los Angeles – A Hundred Years Ago

June 6, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 2 Comments

Imagine living in Los Angeles a hundred years ago — before the traffic, the overcrowdedness, and Trader Joe’s.

If you were living in Los Angeles a hundred years ago:

Kabbalah 101, sort of

June 5, 2005 / Neil Kramer / 9 Comments

I don’t trust anything I can’t understand.Â Â Today, I did some searching for some information on Kabbalah because I’m still curious on why it’s so attractive to so many big-name celebrities here in Los Angeles.Â I found a website in Israel that supposedly helps explain Kabbalah.

In one post, the writer of the website gives advice to singer/producer/activistÂ Bob Geldof.Â Â In case you haven’t heard, Bob Geldof has arranged for huge concerts across the world next month as a repeat of 1985’s Live Aid concert.Â These concerts will highlight the ongoing problem of global poverty and debt.

What message from the Kabbalah does this website’s writer have for Bob Geldof and the celebrity participants ?

Whatever the results are, the final result must come from a feeling of justice and equality in each and every person.Â In a situation of equality and fair distribution someone can earn ten times more than someone else, but the distribution of such a salary will be received by the public as fair and equal, and no one will contest this. The feeling of justice and equality in the final situation is the solution for the human race, there is no situation better. The big answer, that will revigorate the nation and bring salvation to it and the world, will be an answer that comes from the feeling of holiness that will pervade, any other situation brings war, killing and destruction, and all the evil in the world. As long as humanity does not provide a solution for equal distribution it will go through many sufferings. And in the end it is the sufferings that will bring it to agree that it is better to reach equality and justice rather than die. When humanity agrees to equality and justice as the ultimate solution another question will arise, namely what is the best way to implement these values?

Ba’al HaSulam (the author of the commentary of the Zohar) directs his words over and over again to the same explanation, that even if a person determines out of his own good will to be in justice and equality, his desire to receive will not allow him to actually implement them. In order to establish a system of equality with just distribution a person must correct his will to receive. He must first correct his desire. Correcting the desire will allow man to live in justice and equality. The correction is only possible to attain by the light that restores man to his ideal state. The correction is only possible if the justice and equality come from an equality of form with the Creator. In these conditions man attains the world beyond, and justice, equality, security and success in this world.

Can someone translate this for me into regular English? Â Is the author saying we need equal distribution or not?Â

Is it possible that the following sentence helps explain why so many wealthy, over-paid celebrities respond to the message of the Kabbalah?

In a situation of equality and fair distribution someone can earn ten times more than someone else, but the distribution of such a salary will be received by the public as fair and equal, and no one will contest this.

I think many of our county’s CEOs would enjoy the Kabbalah, too.