I’m Not Supposed to Be Here

Doctor’s orders.

Due to recent headaches and hurting eyes, I’m supposed to be resting my eyes and mind until the end of the week. The good news: I don’t need to go to work and I get New Year’s Day off. The bad news: no computer, no telly and I’m not even allowed to read any books!

But I’m addicted, and I can’t help myself. I need to have bandwidth on a drip.

I am so weak!

Benefits Of a Geek Boyfriend

Looking through the Deviant Brainwave logs I get to see the strings used in search engines that link here.

If you ever searched through Google, you would know that it does not check the Meta tags used by webmasters, but goes through the pages themselves and retrieves the pages in which the searched words are used most frequently. This often results in pages coming up with the words completely out of context and that can be quite amusing.

Yesterday my logs showed a search for “benefits of a geek boyfriend”. And it sounded just like the kind of thing that belonged on Deviant Brainwave.

Here are several I managed to think of:

• A geek boyfriend is very smart, which gives him the sexiest quality ever
  
• Being a geek chick, there’s no one better to share interests with than a geek
  
• A non-geek guy won’t appreciate a geek chick the same way
  
• A non-drinking geek will always be able to be the designated driver, leaving you to enjoy a good alcohol-fuelled night out
  
• Parents usually like smart and educated boyfriends (except of mine, who believe that no boyfriend of mine can be good enough)
  
• A geek will often be interested in gadgets. Now, think of the point of that one yourselves.
  

There must be loads more. Ideas welcome.

Veggie Friendly Restaurants – Wishful Thinking

I eat out with my carnivore friends at least once a week. We try to go somewhere different every time, but finding a restaurant in which everyone will be able to find something enjoyable to eat is a challenge. I don’t like dragging my friends to veggie restaurants in which they will not enjoy themselves, and they can’t take me to a place that doesn’t offer at least some veggie options.

I see no reason why carnivore restaurants will not make a habit of being more veggie friendly and having some veggie options on their menus. For a start, it will not lower their standards or quality in any way, and will only give people more options when visiting such fine establishments. Further, this will allow them to open their doors to a rather large minority and also facilitate for carnivores that for some reason may not want to eat meat. However, this will require some tolerance to minorities, and this is not a concept that exists in a country like Israel.

A while ago, a vegetarian friend and me were thinking about the possibility of starting a rating system for restaurants. The idea was derived by the approval given by The Vegetarian Society in the UK. All it will require from restaurants is to have some vegetarian items on the menu for which the preparation process is approved for ingredients and process to be suitable for vegetarians. Since this only requires making sure they are using a certain quality of ingredients and keep required hygiene levels, which, hopefully, they already do, it shouldn’t be much of a burden on them. In addition, the restaurants will be able to add the “V” symbol to the menu to mark the items suitable for vegetarians, and there you go: A Vegetarian Friendly Establishment!

Now the only thing I will need is to add the word “Tolerance” to the Israeli vocabulary and it will be so easy…

Hunting – What’s The Point?!

It’s Boxing Day, and the traditional hunts are on in the UK.

The modern day hunts are the most stupid and cruel tradition ever held, and it is one thing that really pisses me off. It is obviously cruel to the hunted foxes, it is cruel to the dogs used for hunting and has proved to be an environmental disaster.

Here are a few important points:

1. The hunt is done using dogs that chase a poor fox until it is exhausted, and then tear it apart until it is dead, while the hunters on horseback just enjoy the party. How can this be called “Sport”?
   
2. The hunting is not done to satisfy a need or purpose. The fox just dies. It’s fur cannot be used after being torn by the dogs and its meat is not eaten. So, why?
   
3. The hunt chases foxes away from the little habitat they have left after much of it has been taken for intensive farming. The ground is also torn up by the hunting chase, reducing the habitat of other wildlife.
   
4. Hunting has also brought an environmental disaster outside of Britain to countries like Australia where the foxes were introduced by the British rulers in the 1870’s. Now the red fox is a menace, killing the native animals, reducing their habitat and carrying disease.
   

There are many other important issues that bring to an inclusive conclusion that blood sports must be banned. The League Against Cruel Sports is doing it’s best. Individuals can also do their bit. If you’re in the UK, please sign the petition to ban hunting with dogs.

Such redundant cruelty must be stopped!

Happy Xmas everyone!

And for those of you in Israel: Happy non-Christmas.

Guilt

I go to the gym at least three times a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. At least that’s the ambition. Out of bed at 6:30am, into my gym buddy’s car at 7am, at the gym by 7:15am, workout until 8:30am and at the office on time for 9am. Or at least that’s what I would have you think.

This morning as my alarm went off, I saw a message on my phone from my gym buddy saying he can’t make it. The first thought was to get out of bed and go anyway, since my boyfriend could drive me there. Then came the thought “but it’s cold and rainy outside“, followed by “bed is nice and warm”. My boyfriend didn’t help much by hugging me while I’m in bed.

Cuddling won again.

I feel so guilty.

Duh?

Today I saw this article on BBC News confirming that a vegetarian diet cuts heart disease and was very happy to find another confirmation of the goodness of vegetarianism. However, as I was reading into the article, the only thought that came to mind was “duh?” and I was wondering why is important science funding spent on such ridiculous research?

“Researchers in Canada have developed a vegetarian combination diet, which they say cuts cholesterol by almost a third in just one month.”

The link between meet and high percentage of fat and cholesterol was proved years ago, so what’s the big news item? Also, the link between high cholesterol diet and heart disease was proved a long time ago, so why am I reading about it now?

That’s only the tip of it. My favourites are researches that show that clever wives are good for men’s health or that Being a man ‘is bad for health’.

Don’t they have to find solutions to real problems, like cancer or AIDS?

There’s another issue here. My information comes from popular news sites, and not from scientific publications. Could that mean that the real important research is just being kept away from the public? Is there anything else being kept from us? This scares me…

Good One

Today’s post on Defective Yeti claims that 7/5 of Americans Don’t Bother To Do The Math. My dear Mathematicians and educated friends, you’d love this one…

My Top Five of 2002

December is the time of the year in which all the new releases are set to be Christmas-present best sellers. This means, it’s either horrific pop or tragic compilations. So, just like anyone else does this time of the year, I’ll just compile my own best of list. Not at all original, but fun all the same.

Top Five albums of 2002

5. The Electric Soft Parade, Holes In The Wall

4. Coldplay, A Rush Of Blood To The Head

3. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, BRMC

2. The Streets, Original Pirate Material

1. Gomez, In Our Gun

The list would have probably been longer if I had managed to get my hands on all the CDs I wanted this year, but I wasn’t that lucky (I went into Musica Neto on Friday with a shopping list of ten CDs and only managed to find 4 of them! And that’s the shop that usually stocks my kind of music!). Maybe I’ll put my wish list up here soon too, hoping for better luck next year.

What would be your top five?

Dear Deviant

Recently I found myself giving some relationship advice to a friend and realised that I completely missed my vocation. I should have been an agony aunt all that time.

I guess it won’t be very smart of anyone to trust me, though. I haven’t been that good in my own relationships in life, so who am I to give advice to others? However, maybe I’m just good at giving advice and not very good at taking it myself.

All I need now is to find some weird geek sex magazine that will hire me. Either that or turn Deviant Brainwave into one. Send me your questions, and let’s start counting how many clichés I can put into the replies.