Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

How Not to Buy

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Yesterday I found on the Net a former colleague, maybe even friend. We haven’t been in touch for about fifteen years. I saw her last time in Europe, where we both used to live. Now she’s in North America and I’m in the South Pacific. So many years and so many miles apart, I thought of something that we ­must have in common, something that’s so universally valid, that I can share with my friend and she’ll immediately understand and perhaps agree. I dedicate this mockopost to Vianora.

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One of the silliest things I can think of is shopping. And I absolutely love it!

I fully accept that shopping is therapy for depression, obesity, measles, catalepsy and many other conditions I claim not to have.  People go shopping even when their account is in red, they get deeper in debt, yet they fell better. If a new pair of slippers could make you fell reborn, a new car will take you straight to Nirvana (I experienced it eight times).

The daily act of shopping is a bit like having sex, maybe with a softer ending, but safer, generally speaking. Sometimes it can involve a little redundancy (daily dairy shopping across the road) but this is like being in a strong matrimonial relationship: loads of fidelity and no surprises. Yet some other times shopping is a heavenly experience: go to Paris or Melbourne, Milan or Tokyo, get a cab and ask the driver to stop as soon as you see a shop with the letter ‘N’ third on its name or just walk on a busy commercial street and pick the seventh shop on the left. Go in and I bet you’ll find something to buy. Now, this is like having a one night stand and waking up with no hangover and the love of your life bringing you breakfast in bed. The only significant difference is that with shopping you can experience this far more often than in real life.

Shopping is power: I can buy; therefore I must have money, which means I’ve got the power.

Shopping is kindness: I can buy something for you; therefore I show you how much I care and how important you really are for me. (And shopping for YOU means even more power: I’m so powerful that I can even afford to  buy it for you, not for ME.)

In a way or another, for many years I sold stuff or I advertised for other people’s stuff so they could sell it better. I know the look in the eyes of a person who wants to buy as well as the expression on the face of somebody who can not afford buying. Shopping is a drug. It is more addictive than nicotine, it is compulsive and unforgiving. Its high is very short lived when compared to how much you spent for achieving it and, what’s worse, shopping is not only legal, but encouraged. In fact shopping is the vital force of our society and one of the few differences between our species and the others.

Having had a lot to do with shopping and selling, I thought I may write a book on how NOT to buy stuff. I’d put really cool little secrets in there, like how not to make eye contact with the salesman and how not to… Forget it! I’m hoping a smart publisher will read this blog and offer me a contract for the printed, podcasted, DVD recorded and the online versions of How Not to Buy. Sorry, this is why I won’t disclose any tricks in here. (Not just yet.) I hope you’ve enjoyed the introduction though.

Loudspeaker: Important Announcement! (Not at All)

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

(The following paragraph is not the most serious reason you should hire a loudspeaker. If you really want to hire one, do it by hour and not by day as you cannot predict precisely when you’ll get arrested but an hour cuts it fine enough. Still in doubt? Get a white van and some paint. Make sure you have enough petrol just to get there – you know where. If you don’t have enough reasons, read on.)

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I had a bloody respectable website for so many years; true and safe, New Zealand based, virtually untouched. I had been so accustomed to go in there as you do when you retire by the seaside after a lifetime in a slaughterhouse with broken air conditioning. And I was retiring in there almost daily, just making changes once a year when the only thing I  had to change was the copyright notice with the year at the bottom of the main page. This is how frequency in non-frequent actions creates an unusually use of usual stuff.  (What’s the name of the guy who thought some yucky bodily functions are as pleasant as some other yummier ones but they just became common due to very frequent use? Freud? I don’t think so. He was much better than that.)

You may think this has nothing to do with parenthood.

Watching a baby grow is more predictable than watching the paint dry. There have been a few babies known to have done the same thing before: they grow and grow! (Not that I’ve noticed.)

“Nursing can be tricky” [quoting The Encyclopaedia of Mothers Reunited – FAQ]. In most cases nursing is still boringly predictable, though. Even the sleepless nights are quite normal, as much as you may hate them. (While you don’t sleep but you should sleep and you so much desire to sleep, your body releases endorphins or other things with longer names and this could extend your life or the contrary, whatever – don’t try this at home!)

Yet watching a concept grow is a bit of another concept. Ask Sigourney Weaver, if you can get hold of her. Concepts are aliens.

To cut it short: this cute monster I’ve been nursing here wants me to put its name at the front of the home page. Do I have a choice?

The baby wants to be changed. This is why as of today we are called just

mockoblog

Like it or not, you’ll have to accept it as it is. Still in doubt? What about that as the most hated slogan: “there’s nothing like a free lunch”.

If you really want to punish us for the changes (there will be a few more major ones but of a minor sort!), please do not post any comments. My baby mockoblog hates your comments anyway. They wake him up!

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Brief history note: I am returning the loudspeaker because the street opposition in Iran may need it more than I do after their last Presidential Elections.

History in the Mocking (III) – The True about the Book: Past, Present and Future

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

The Mockoblog was mentioned yesterday on the Radio New Zealand National’s  (we think) most prestigious cultural programme:   Saturday Morning, hosted by Kim Hill (see http://www.radionz.co.nz/saturday  –  for archived audio interviews, podcasts, and information about featured guests and music).

For those of you not fortunate enough to live in New Zealand or to listen to its international and web casts, Kim Hill is like Oprah, with a few differences: her shows are made with less budget, have better content and the IQ average of the followers could be double (don’t quote me on this, I misplaced the stats this info is coming from, yet it may be underestimated).

Well, the mockoblog was not mentioned on air due to its merits. The producers didn’t look for it desperately. It was rather the other way around: I bumped into the show though an email. Kim had an interview about books, e-books and all sort of related stuff and this author could not help himself, wrote an urgent email on his smartphone and send it straight away. Here it is:

<<Dear Kim,

The book was born centuries ago as a veichle [sic!] for the story. Form vs content.

Yet the story had been created by the first humans to pass on information to the future generations. The stories were collective and intractive [sic!] in the old history of mankind but the book and now the ebook [sic!] became selfish forms, confining the screwing content and generating the concept of author.

The future of the story is its past: interactive as they are again, the true new books live on the internet, thus they are mortal and dynamic again.

Please check the concept of mockoblog as this is an example of new gendre [sic!] just being born as we speak. There’s an alternative history there, too.

Kind regards, […]>>

Kim red this email live on the radio and underscored the mistakes. I felt totally embarrassed. My English is poor enough. As it is. But the predictive text in my Nokia, which is perhaps the best fast spelling tool, is not good enough if you’re a bit slow with electronic devices, have big fingers, no glasses and don’t pay attention to the learning system inbuilt in this phone’s dictionary.  She said I was inventing the word gendre. I was not but maybe I should add it to MOKOPEDIA anyway:

Gendre = this is to gender and genre what mule is to horse and donkey.

Thank you Kim Hill! I’ll keep on listening your Saturday morning shows unless in a deep coma or worse.

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Here the history of the book should have continued, but I was told by one of my many readers (that by now has exceeded two, excluding search engines and spammers) that my posts are too long and there size extends over the normal attention spam of the average blog reader. I tried to explain that my blog is not an average blog and that my readers are NO WAY average readers. I lost this debate, so, instead of telling you the true history of the book, I’ll just stop and just have my average dinner.

Yet, do you really think my posts are way too long?

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PS:

About the what to do and the what not to do in a blog I may comment later. But the length of my posts is irrelevant anyway. As you will see in the near future, we will be rejected from the blogosphere, thus becoming (as in the theory of the Universe and other mathematical big stuff) a singularity. This is not a nasty blog at all, thus it doesn’t obey the rules of a blog. It’s a nice mockoblog and it has its own internal laws, if any. To compare the two notions, think of dictatorship (the blog) and democracy (the mockoblog).

Another feature of a sucessful blog is not to post twice in one day. The readers will only read the last stuff you’ve published. This may be true for their readers. Future will prove that the mockoblog doesn’t follow this advice either. Think of  Ronald Regan: he won the Cold War because he changed the rules of the game, of course. He was an actor for longer time than he was a president. The Soviet leaders, Gorby included, had always been communist politicians. Take their toys away and they’ll be lost.

Internet Fun – Joke of the Day (NOT)

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Less than four days since I posted my opinions on a possible cause for the last Airbus tragedy, I have received the email I’m publishing bellow with almost no comments:


This brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, one of

the largest passenger

airplane ever built,

sits just outside it’s hangar

in Toulouse , France,

without a single hour of airtime on the clock….

image001

Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies

(ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the  ground, such as

engine run-ups prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi .

The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area.

image002

Then they took all Four engines to takeoff power

with a virtually empty aircraft.

Not having Read the run-up

manuals, they had no clue just how light

an empty A340-600 really is.

image003

The take-off warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit

because they had All 4 engines at full power.

The aircraft computers thought they were trying to take off,

but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc…)

image004

Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit

breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.

This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

image005

The computers automatically released all the brakes –

and set the aircraft rocketing forward !!

With the following result……….

image006

The Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technology crew had no idea

that this is a safety feature so that pilots can’t land with the brakes on.

image007

Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough

to throttle back the engines from their max power setting,

so the $200 million brand-new aircraft

crashed into a blast barrier, totalling it.

image008

The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown due to the

news blackout in the major media.

image009

This was because coverage of the story was

deemed insulting to Muslim Arabs.

image010

Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.

image011

A $300 million aircraft meets wall.

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I do not know the original source of this email and I suspect it’s highly advertorial. I guess it could have been launched by an Asian competitor, perhaps one that has ordered even more A380s. Just a guess. But I like the interior.