Scientific Breakthrough

They should have a Nobel Prize especially celebrating the hard working scientists working in the interesting and challenging field of amateur anthropology. Because, if they had, I'll surely be the next in line to receive this prestigious award, receive all the nice cash and be an object of eternal admiration and envy from my peers.

See, for years I've had a very interesting theory and just recently I had the opportunity to prove myself right. The theory goes something like this: Take a bathroom with a cabinet that will open and close. Take a house full of guests. The result? Well, my theory is (was) that if you let other people use your bathroom, a large number of these people will be driven by a mysterious force (curiosity) to open up the cabinet and quickly glance inside, or they will take out any shampoo bottle with a label and read while using the toilet. The result is, for whatever reason, that when you let other people use your bathroom these people will go through your stuff...

During the years I've had many heated discussions with some of my mates regarding the validity of the above theory, many of them accusing me (me!) for projecting my own vices onto the rest of the world. So, in the interest of science, last Saturday I decided to put the theory to the test.

I had 15 friends over for a nice BBQ in the garden, but before they arrived (dressed for Tuscany in August - it was a damn hot day!) I made my preparation. Using an old traffic counter with a numbered plastic click wheel, duct tape, parts of a BIC ball-point pen and some Styrofoam to conceal my contraption I cunningly designed a simple counting device that would increment the traffic counter by one every time the cabinet door in my bathroom was being manipulated. To make the experiment more valid I made sure that, soap (both liquid and bar), towels, band aids (you never know...), dental floss, Kleenex, unscented hand crème and a jar of cotton balls were all left in plain sight next to the sink to avoid anyone "having" to open the cabinet looking for the most used items.

And with everything ready, I reset the counter and started preparing for dinner.

The next day, when the hangover was finally on the retreat I removed the contraption from the cabinet, and look...the cabinet had been manipulated no less than 38 times during the past 18 hours, which means that each person on average (assuming all went to the bathroom at least once) had peeked inside my cabinet 2.5 times. To be honest that number exceeds even my wildest expectations.

The evidence is incontrovertible, the data are solid and the conclusion is not to be challenged. People DO in fact snoop around in other people’s cabinets when no one is watching.

No one can dispute the greatness of my discovery, and I pledge not to rest on my laurels and relentlessly keep improving my instruments and data capture methods. I'm already scavenging the Internet for concealable electronic data capture devices that will help me better understand this behavior.

Until I do come up with more hard evidence, please take my advice and don't leave anything you'd rather not want anyone to see (sex toys, naughty magazines etc.) unattended in your bathroom cabinet.

Finray

Relaunch

So it's been awhile since my last update. Not that I've been particular busy or something like that, more to do with the fact that I temporarily lost interest. However, now I'm back in the game and ready to share my tales and shenanigans as I meander through life.

Basicly my life is still a pointless grind and I still haven't found the love of my life that I'm looking for. I get my fair share of steamy sex and hangovers, but somehow I can't seem to get any serious relationships going. I'm the emu of love: All wings and feathers, but can't get of the ground.

Finray

Resurrection

Yes. I'm back, but unlike a certain historic figure not from the dead.

Past 4 weeks has been a crazy roller-coaster ride including ups and downs, peaks and valleys and unpredictable changes but now I've finally reached a plateau and can rest my bones for a while.
It's funny, but when I'm totally stressed out from work I tend to relieve some of the pressure by pursuing some of my more creative talents. People who know me are often surprised when they discover the rather artistic side of my nature and often have a hard time grasping that behind my cool (perhaps even cold) and polished business-like surface lurks an artistic, creative and sometimes even perhaps poetic person.

My creative veins runs in many different directions, but photography is my real passion. This is where I express myself (and surprise myself) I'm no star photographer, but I really get satisfaction from taking good pictures and making good compositions. And I've been taking a lot of pictures lately. Cars, landscapes, people, architecture, animals etc. Pictures of anything remotely photogenic.
It's quite thrilling to insert the CF card in the Lexar reader and just wait for Aperture (THE best RAW workflow software on the planet) to import the shots so I can see the results of my efforts, and start sorting, picking and fine tuning my images before sending them to Photoshop for masking and final compositing (Yes, I'm very good with Photoshop too)
I love photography so much that if I had the opportunity to CMD-Z (that's CRTL-Z to those of you still stuck with Bill-ware...) part of my life I would want to be a photographer and travel the world documenting events and wildlife.

Well, so much for wasted youth and opportunity. Must get back to forecasting sales for FY07Q1 and set-up the bi-quarterly sales meeting...How fun is that?

JB

Well Well Well (or actually not..)

Dear Joe, Louis,Tom and Joe

Congratulations on Milburns first album, Well Well Well. I've been following your band for quite a while now and was really looking forward to the release of you album. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the album is currently only available on the UK iTunes Store....
I know that Denmark may not be top of your list, but making music available on iTunes is fairly easy and introduces no extra distribution costs etc. I could of course go completely grandfather and find a decent record shop and have them order the CD for me. However most shops charge an arm and a leg for this service and it would really bother me to pay a premium to a reseller who doesn't even care enough about music to actually stock your album.
I know that I shouldn't be pointing my guns at you guys, but rather at your label. I'm guessing that your label have signed off their distribution rights to different labels/companies in different countries and whatever stupid company owning the distributing rights in DK cannot be arsed to do anything serious about it because your band is not yet big enough so they don't receive any marketing funding from the parent label...

It's really sad that the world still has to rely on arcane music distribution when there are modern more efficient alternatives available.
Unfortunately I'm too busy to visit your fair island before December so I guess I'll have to wait until then to pop into an HMV a pick up a copy. Good thing is that I may be able to synchronize my trip with your Camden gig!

Regards,
JB

I have my very own and personal Mrs. Robinsson. She's pushing 50 but she's still a very hot and passionate woman and I believe that every guy should be allowed his very own specimen. I met her ten years ago when I was in my early 20s and we still meet every 6 months or so for drinks and a couple of nights of no-strings-attached sex.

Anyway, my Mrs. R runs a quite successful modeling agency and this week by coincidence I met her while visiting a studio of a mutual friend where she was doing a casting for a female fashion underwear-peddling company.

Mrs R had arranged an impressive line-up of very talented young girls all hoping to land a contract with above mentioned fashion house. Maybe I'm getting old but, bar none, these girls were perhaps the most superficial and stupid bunch of women I've ever met. The constant name-dropping, the ubiquitous chatter about luxury fashion brands, the constant angst of not yet having received a VIP invitation to the MTV Music Awards in November. Man, these girls were between 18 and 22 and looking good was all they knew how to do, and being "somebody" or "with somebody" was all that mattered to them. Empty lives with no prospects beyond the age of 23 other than netting a rich husband and kicking back as a kept woman...

(OMG...I'm ranting about the youth...I'm starting to sound like my dad...)

Well, enough about hot young chicks with fit bodies and feather brains. I must now get in the shower so I'm all clean and fresh for when Mrs. R arrives in an hour.

Hope your week-end looks as exciting as mine:-)

JB

Endeless hours

Work is extremely busy at the moment, but I'm hoping that things will calm a bit down later this week giving me more time to update my blog.

I have a lot of things to blog about, including some very funny e-mails I've received from semi-angry US citizens expressing their cranky attitudes towards my sometimes euro-centric and US-bashing entries. Some of these mails are involuntary funny and are contributing to strengthen the confidence in my suspicion that some Americans are a sad bunch of ignorant and uncultured people.

In other news:

- Spendt a nice week-end celebrating New Year (!) with a surprise visitor from London
- New colleauge that is utterly annoying
- Still got the work blues

JB

Babysitting

Last week I was charged with the responsibility of looking after my 4 years old niece a couple of hours while my sister and her husband went to a funeral.
Not having any kids myself I'm not that comfortable around youngsters but at least I managed to sit her down with some A3s and a bunch of crayons. While she was sitting there and I went about the flat doing some chores I was having Frank Zappa playing on the stereo.
The particular album providing the musical backdrop to our activities was "Sheik Yerbouti" (say it out loud..) This choice of music turned out to be most unfortunate as the little toddler apparently enjoyed Franks friendly voice and was singing along (making the words up as she went along) to some of the catchier tunes.

The really, really bad thing was that apparently my niece is quite good at imitating and remembering sounds so when her parents picked her up later that afternoon she was joyfully singing "ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop chute" over and over again without understanding a word she was saying. Unfortunately my sister and her Aussie husband had no trouble decoding her mumblings and I had to explain what had transpired a couple of times before they at least pretended to forgive me.
Good thing I didn't tell them the title of that particular song: "Broken hearts are for assholes"


JB