Mirror, mirror on the wall...

I dunno if you guys’ve been watching the stuff they show on CNN lately. No, I’m not talking about the US Presidential Elections or the War on Terror. Something fiendishly paler:Fairness creams.
Yup, you heard right. Apparently some of the stuff on the shelves that’s supposed to make you the ‘fairest of them all’ do just a little more than that…and can get you killed. The report also featured several serious-looking doctors lamenting on how Sodium-whatever-oxide can get inside your body, poison your liver and stop your kidneys.

That really got me thinking; apparently fairness creams are big business…and why is that? Simple.

Everyone wants to look a little bit better than they really are. If you think that’s lame, look closely the next time you see one of those fairness cream commercials (yes they’re on TV even in Europe, for whatever reason).
The fair girl gets the hunk or the job or the promotion.
It’s always the same story on the other side too; prince charming always falls for the fairest maiden.
I don’t know what they were thinking when they made those commercials, but I know what they want us to think: success is nothing more than looking good. Good-looking people are more successful. In other words, if you’re ugly, you ain’t going nowhere.
That is so pathetic.

But again, I’m surprised by the sheer number of people who fall for this gag. Because if they didn’t, well it wouldn’t have made the headlines. It’s about time someone put a cork on it.
And lightened things up!

Ground Zero

Call me naïve, gullible or just plain childish.
But I guess it’s a special moment, in its own crazy way, when you see the thermometer hit home base at zero degrees just outside your house. Of course people who’ve lived in cold places before, can laugh out about this, but for the rest of us hot-heads who’re used to around 40 degrees (yes we are talking Celsius) in the tropics of Southern India or the Middle East; we don’t exactly find this…er…cool.

And, I am told, this is just the beginning. Hell, we haven’t even seen snowfall yet. And I’m not exactly looking forward to it. But from the looks of it, we have a long way to go…

A "loner" strikes again!

I don’t mean to be insensitive, but all I can say is – Yup, there it is again.
For those of you wondering what’s this all about, here’s an insight. Yesterday, on the 7th of November an 18 year old ‘gunman’ walked in and opened fire in an otherwise quiet town in Finland, killing 8 people before turning the gun on himself.
And that’s not all. Further investigation revealed that at the time of his death, the guy still had over 320 bullets and lots of inflammable liquids in possession; and I bet my baloney sandwich he probably planned on using them!
Which brings to mind an important question: how does a teenager end up with around 400 bullets (by the way, each of his victims took at least two bullets) anyway?

Somehow, it feels just like just yesterday when the same thing happened at Virginia Tech University in the United States.
And once again, it’s the same story all over again; the kid was a ‘loner’, hated people, was bullied at school, and somehow figured out a way to end it all.
And just like the last time, people light candles, flags fly at half-mast, news channels go into overdrive, and in two weeks everything will be forgotten and back to normal.

And once again; NO ONE called him a terrorist!

Almost makes me wonder who the hell a terrorist is exactly. Does it really take a middle-eastern-looking guy wearing a turban and waving an AK-47 to be called a terrorist? Or would you have kill people on a plane or train rather than a school to qualify as one?

I believe terrorism has no religion. And I also believe pre-planned, calculated, cold-blooded mass murder of innocent school-children amounts to terror.

It’s about time we did away with the stereotypes, and called a terrorist a terrorist; loner or not!