What Were They Thinking?

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I just don't get it. Marrying a woman, any woman, is tough enough. But marrying a woman half your age? Where do you think that's going to end up? Why don't they just toss themselves off the Petronas twin towers and get it over with? It'll probably be less painful too.

Malaysian Artistes For Unity part 2

Pete Teo, the Indie music genius behind the wildly successful MAFU is at it again. He's planning to release 15 short vids based on the MAFU theme sometime in August.

I'm not allowed to give you any more information just yet, but I'll tell you this - he's working so hard that he's fallen sick. Watch this space for updates.

Michael Jackson –A Different View

Like everyone else on the planet, I am a huge fan of MJ. I wholeheartedly agree that he died too young. However, for someone who always strived to be young, to be Peter Pan, his death has made us look at him in a different light. It’s true that we only miss and value something when we lose it.

Jackson’s personal troubles won’t overshadow his legacy as a musician and performer. The good will always outweigh the bad.

When he was alive we called him Wacko Jacko and dissected his every move, watching and expecting juicy gossip and scandals. Pretty much like what we did to Princess Diana. Now that he’s gone, we look at him with love and affection, and we warmly remember only the good that he gave us. Michael was not just a singer. He was an entertainer. There is a world of difference between the two.

Michael was US $400 million in debt, on the cusp of a final comeback after well over a decade of scandal. He received a daily injection of a synthetic narcotic similar to morphine – Demerol, to combat the pain from rehearsing for a massive 50 gig tour. Tickets sold out within 5 hours of counters being open.

How do you put into words the way you feel when the news is flashed around the world: "Michael Jackson Is Dead?"

For many it was too shocking to absorb.

You tell yourself it's a mistake. Then the confirmation of his death spread across the Internet, and people around the world shared their grief at his passing. Millions felt the void in their lives that I did.

Beside his musical talent, Jackson was a cultural phenomenon & ground breaker as the very first African-American to reach the status of global mega-celebrity.
In doing so, in the early 80’s, he paved the way for others African-Americans global stars such as the plethora of Hip Hop stars, Tiger Wood, Oprah Winfrey and even to some extent President Obama.

His life may have become overwhelmed by odd behaviour and scandalous accusations for the last 15 years, but there is simply no disputing Michael Jackson’s legacy as a titan of the music industry and an icon of pop culture around the world.

Skyrocketing to stardom at 5 years of age, the “King of Pop” would go on to sell more than 750 million albums worldwide, set world records for awards won and quite simply become the definitive performer for an entire generation.

It was his zeal when performing that gave Jackson’s music such universal appeal. It was the passion in his music. When he made music, it didn’t just pinpoint one race. He made music for everybody.

In that spirit, here’s my personal tribute to Michael Jackson:
100 facts about the king of pop
1. Michael Jackson's favourite animated character was Pinocchio
2. When he was a child his favourite books included Rip Van Winkle and The Old Man and the Sea
3. Michael was very ticklish
4. Saint Vincent, an island in the Caribbean, once issued Michael Jackson stamps
5. The singer once owned a boa constrictor called “Muscles”
6. As a youngster he used to put spiders in sister La Toya’s bed
7. He played a scarecrow in The Wiz, a movie version of the Wizard of Oz
8. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one for himself and one as part of the Jackson Five)
9. Quincy Jones nicknamed him “smelly” – a slang term similar to “funky”
10. Jackson described his own voice on early Jackson 5 records as “like Minnie Mouse”
11. He was a big fan of The Three Stooges
12. He was an Exeter City fan
13. He had two llamas called Louis and Lola
14. His album Thriller spent 37 weeks at number one in the US Billboard chart.
15. In 1984 he won eight Grammy’s – the joint highest amount ever won by one person in a single year
16. He gave his first public performance at the age of 5 singing Climb Every Mountain
17. He had eight brothers and sisters
18. His marriage to Lisa-Marie Presley lasted only 19 months
19. Jackson paid $47 million for the publishing rights to the Beatles back catalogue in 1985 and sold a share of to Sony in 1995 for $95 million
20. His middle name was Joseph
21. He was born on Aug 29, 1958
22. At the Brit Awards in 1996 Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker took exception to his bombastic performance of Earth Song and ran on to the stage
23. Jackson was very fond of Mexican food
24. In 1993 Jackson’s dermatologist said he had a rare skin disease called vitiligo, which causes sufferers to lose pigmentation in their skin
25. Thriller is the world’s best-selling record of all time with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide
26. Two of his other albums – Bad and Dangerous – are also among the world’s best-selling records
27. He popularised dance moves including the robot and the moonwalk
28. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice
29. He won 13 Grammy Awards
30. Billie Jean was the first video by a black artist to air on MTV.
31. Jackson owns the rights to the South Carolina State Anthem, South Carolina on My Mind.
32. He has waxworks in five Madame Tussauds museums across the world. Only Elvis Presley and Madonna have more.
33. He has sold more than 750 million records worldwide
34. His favourite superhero is Morph from X-Men
35. He had a pet ram called Mr Tibbs
36. His total lifetime earnings are estimated at $500 billion
37. Jackson regularly wore a black armband to remind people of children suffering around the world.
38. The moonwalk was picked up from street dancers
39. Little Richard wanted to be played by Jackson in a biopic
40. Jackson had a pet python called Crusher
41. In 1984 a French fan committed suicide because he couldn’t have surgery to look like Jackson
42. The video for Scream was the most expensive ever at £3.8 million.
43. A library once accused the singer of owing $1 million in overdue book fines
44. Jackson was a vegetarian
45. He won an MTV award for Best Movie Song in 1994. It was for Will You Be There from the movie Free Willy
46. HIStory was the biggest selling double album ever released in the United States
47. Jackson was given a royal title in the Ivory Coast in 1992
48. Before concerts he would drink Ricola candy dissolved in hot water
49. His birthplace Gary, Indiana, is planning a museum in his honour
50. He patented a shoe device that allowed dancers to lean forward at gravity defying angles
51. He was a best man at Liza Minnelli’s wedding to David Gest
52. The largest television audience in US history watched him perform at half time during the 1993 Super Bowl
53. Martin Scorcese once directed a Jackson video
54. A survey in 1997 declared him the Most Famous Person in the World
55. He paid $1.5 million in 1999 to buy for the 1939 Oscar for best film won by Gone With The Wind
56. Jackson once described Elizabeth Taylor as “a warm cuddly blanket that I love to snuggle up to”
57. He recorded a voice-over on The Simpsons
58. Macauley Culkin is godfather to two of Jackson’s children
59. Jackson co-wrote We Are The World with Lionel Richie
60. He is godfather to Nicole Richie
61. He is also godfather to Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb’s son Michael
62. Jackson shares a birthday with Sir Richard Attenborough and actress Rebecca DeMornay
63. At the time of his death Jackson was rehearsing for his greatest comeback, with 50 shows scheduled in London
64. He was four years old when he began singing with his brothers Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito in the Jackson 5
65. The Jackson 5’s number one hits included “I Want You Back,” “ABC” and “I’ll Be There”
66. In 2002 Jackson caused controversy when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin in front of fans
67. MC Hammer once challenged Jackson to a dance off
68. In a TV documentary he acknowledged sharing his bed with children but described the practice as sweet, and not sexual
69. During production of a 1984 Pepsi advertisement Jackson sustained burns when an explosion set his hair on fire
70. Jackson’s 13 number one hits on the US Billboard charts put him behind only Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey
71. Jackson’s father Joseph worked in a steel mill
72. Joseph Jackson and his brother Luther were in an R&B band called The Falcons
73. Michael was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness by his mother
74. In a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey the singer spoke of a traumatic childhood including suffering from loneliness
75. Jackson showed his singing talent at the age of five when he performed at a Christmas recital
76. The family band was originally called the Jackson Brothers
77. Michael was promoted to joint lead vocals at the age of eight and the band became the Jackson 5
78. They toured extensively in the US Midwest from 1966 to 1968
79. He initially used his eccentricities to promote his music but strongly disliked the “Wacko Jacko” nickname
80. Wild stories about him included that he slept in an oxygen chamber and that he bought the bones of The Elephant Man.
81. During the world tour for Bad he performed to 4.4 million people
82. His first autobiography, Moon Walk, took four years to complete
83. The book reached the top of The New York Times best sellers’ list
84. Jackson admitted to having had two nose jobs
85. He suggested weight loss and a strict vegetarian diet had contributed to the change in his appearance
86. He paid $17 million in 1988 for the land in California that became the Neverland Ranch
87. The 2,700-acre property had a theme park, a menagerie, and a movie theatre.
88. Its grounds were protected by a security staff of 40
89. Neverland was valued at $100 million in 2003
90. The profits from his single “Man in the Mirror” went to charity
91. In 1991 he signed a contract with Sony worth $65 million
92. In 1992 he founded the Heal the World Foundation which brought underprivileged children to Neverland and made donations worldwide
93. When he visited the African country of Gabon 100,000 people turned out to see him
94. Jackson’s most famous pet was Bubbles the chimpanzee
95. Bubbles was adopted at the age of three from a cancer research clinic in Texas.
96. Bubbles sat in on recording sessions for the Bad album and accompanied Jackson to Tokyo
97. The artist Jeff Koons made a series of sculptures of Jackson and Bubbles
98. Jackson fathered two children with Deborah Jeanne Rowe – Michael Joseph Jackson Junior (also known as “Prince”) and a daughter, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson
99. The couple divorced in 1999 and Rowe gave full custody rights to Jackson
100. Vitiligo, the skin disease from which he suffered, affects 1 to 2 per cent to 2 per cent of the population

Michael’s legacy is music that has defined moments in our lives and leaves us telling our Michael Jackson stories and laughing as our kids on the playground try the moonwalk in their sneakers.

Yes, he was too young to die -- but maybe if you're Peter Pan that's the best way to go.

Farewell Farrah

One of my childhood crushes, actress Farrah Fawcett, who rose to stardom in the 1970s on U.S. television show "Charlie's Angels, died last Thursday 25^th June 2009 after a long battle with anal cancer. She was 62.

* Fawcett was born Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas. She was named Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett by her mother.

* Millions of teenage boys in the 1970s decorated their bedrooms with the poster of Fawcett clad in a red one-piece bathing suit and flashing a dazzling smile while playing with her tousled blond mane. Sales of the poster and her role as a crime-fighter on the television show "Charlie's Angels" made her one of the most recognized women in the United States at the time.

* Despite the show's popularity, Fawcett tried to leave "Charlie's Angels" after its first season. As a result of a lawsuit by the producers, she agreed to return for six guest appearances in the next two seasons.

* In 1985 she had a son with long-time companion Ryan O'Neal and the couple starred in a short-lived sitcom, "Good Sports," in the early '90s. Fawcett's struggle with cancer brought them back together and O'Neal had said this month that he had asked Fawcett to marry him and that she had agreed.

* Fawcett chronicled her fight against cancer in a 90-minute television documentary titled "Farrah's Story." It drew 9 million viewers and included footage of her shaving off her hair, as well as scenes in which she was bedridden and heavily medicated.

* Fawcett married Lee Majors in 1974 and they appeared together in his television show, "The Six Million Dollar Man," before divorcing in the early 1980s.

* After "Charlie's Angels," Fawcett wanted to show her range and some of her best work featured characters who were victims or caught in domestic turmoil. She was a battered wife in "The Burning Bed," a rape victim in "Extremities," the unfaithful wife of a preacher in "The Apostle" and a mentally unstable woman in "Dr. T and the Women."

* Fawcett's hair set a fashion trend and was one of the most talked-about styles in Hollywood. The New York Times called it "a work of art that looked as if it had just come out of the sea and been tossed by the wind into a state of careless perfection" and was "emblematic of women in the first stage of liberation -- strong, confident and joyous."

* Fawcett was nominated for three Emmys and six Golden Globes but never won.

* Before stardom, Fawcett had small roles in 1960s and '70s television shows such as "Mayberry, R.F.D.," "Three's a Crowd," "I Dream of Jeannie," "Marcus Welby," "McCloud," "The Flying Nun" and "The Partridge Family."

Future Logos After The Economic Crisis

The current worldwide financial crisis is probably the most serious economic crisis we have faced after the Great Depression. Stock markets from around the world fell as much as 20% in a single week, dozens of banks either failed or were rescued by governments and private institutions, and companies are laying off employees as a consequence of the reduced demand.

We know how we entered into the crisis, but we don’t know when or how we will be getting out of it. Considering that issue, the Spanker decided to do a little bit to help cheer everyone up by presenting the future logos of some renowned companies …. AFTER the crisis, with mergers, takeovers and bailouts having taken place.

Let's start with the obvious - 2009 is not a good year is it?

Financial services

AIG screwed everybody
the stock market is down
Lehman Brothers is facing bankruptcy

Motor Vehicles & Fuel
no need for captions, right?

Ford's attempts to sell cars is not working
Chrysler has been sold to Fiat
VW have stopped producing parts for older models

Ferrari sales are no longer galloping but limping along
so much so that Vespa are now considering buying Ferrari
while the fuel price hike has Shell laughing all the way to the bank
and they are considering buying over Dell Computers

F&B Services
Carrefour are in takeover discussion with Canon
Starbucks have been bought up by the Dark Side


service at KFC is really bad due to incompetent staff
and now the Colonel is forced to kill his own chickens due to lack of manpower
while McDonald's sales have also dropped due to poor service

and Apple Computers might inject capital in return for equity

Pizza Hut have resorted to selling hats to survive

Avian just realized that their name spelled backwards is naive

and 7-11 has stopped selling condoms

Religion

the owners of Facebook have become evangelists

and Lexus cars have changed name to tap the Christian market

Courier Services

people are getting bored waiting for FedEx

and overworked UPS staff continue to make wrong deliveries

Multimedia Services

Microsoft are losing sales

and are discussing a joint venture with Volkswagen

Sun Microsystems are feeling the effects of piracy

while IBM is praying for a GM style government bailout

similarly Hewlett Packard are in need of assistance

and might be taken over by JK Rowling

Dell Computers have died and gone to....

while Apple have lost big chunks of market share

Google has been forced to peddle porn to survive

Nokia is getting tough with bill defaulters

Many people are buying cheap cloned Sonys

Motorola is also in new partnership discussions

LG can now confirm that life is not always good

Miscellaneous Brands
Internet search engines have finished off the yellow pages
Tommy has reduced prices to cater to everyone
Nike has just done it with Nikon (merged the company lah)
Jebsen & Jessen have laid off all their employees
Lego sales have fallen due to their pride
the economic crisis has forced the Discovery Channel to diversify
Really, times are so bad now that Toys R Us are selling children.

Sex On The Beach?

It seems to me that the authorities in Port Dickson are behaving in the typical "knee jerk" reaction so beloved by Malaysian bureaucrats. There were sex parties conducted on an island recently and a naked run on the beach was filmed for a reality tv series on another island so therefore we shall ban anything that even remotely smells of trouble.

Here's what my buddy Mac from PD sent me, including the pictures. I'm posting his message verbatim. I feel his pain because I too, at one time owned a pub in PD.

" bro need a help frm ya .

Recently our old X Sport Bar N Cafe ( the one and only pub in Port DIickson) was forced to close becoz the owner wanted back the buliding . He sold the building to a bizzman for 400k and now its a hardware showroom .

Hence, we moved out to a place which is a corner lot somewhere towards Lukut town .We didnt have much choice to find any better place due to some building in the town were occupied by the "burung layang layang" nesltlers We spent plenty of money for renovations and made the new place look much better then what we had .

We operated for 3 weeks under temporary license and the respond was good .We also sticked by the law on bizz operating hours . The building is also sound proof and there wasnt any nusiance complaints frm the locals . Furthermore . the pub only has music on friday and saturdays while on other days its just like a normal restuarant where people watch football matches on screeen .

As the temporary license expired .the bizz had to be stopped becoz all the other parties (bomba, majlis n kastam) have approved the permit except for the police .

When we asked "why" they cant approve . they replied they just dont want public entertaiment in port dickson.

so i have bloged a customers comment and hope u will also blog it for me to let ppl know that there isnt a single pub in entire port dickson. Port Dickson is a tourist attraction and at least should have a decent pub laaa.....

the comment

I was in port dickson laz week and i wanted to have some nice drinks over a football mactch and music .. but the only place i was told by the locals was head on to a hotel lobby. i was very supprise to find out there isnt any pub or cafe in the whole of port dickson to cater me and my friends . i suggest Port Dickson should have pubs or cafe's out side hotels so that the visitor can walk in casuall and relaxed . Hotel outlets are expensive and have to be decent attire ( no slippers or shorts) .. Common laaa .. we come to Port Dickson to enjoy and not to spoil the mood . I hope the nex time I come with my frens to Port Dickson . i ll see a normal street pub or cafe . thanks"

How the coming vegetarian revolution will arrive by force.

I have a prediction: Sooner than you might think, this will be a vegetarian world.

Future generations will find the idea of eating meat both morally absurd and logistically impossible. Of course, one need only look at the booming meat industry, the climbing rates of meat consumption in the developing world, and the menu of just about any restaurant to call me crazy.

But already, most people know that eating red meat is bad for their health and harmful for the planet. It's getting them to actually change their diet that's the hard part -- and that's exactly why it won't happen by choice.
Going by the numbers, eating meat is pretty hard to justify for the even moderately health-conscious. A National Cancer Institute report released last March found that people who ate the most red meat were, as the New York Times put it, "most likely to die from cancer, heart disease and other causes."

The biggest abstainers "were least likely to die." Those who eat five ounces of meat daily, (the equivalent of one and a half Quarter Pounders or Big Macs) increase their risk from cancer or heart disease by 30 percent compared to those who eat two-thirds of an ounce daily -- a stark difference.

The environmental impact is also crystal clear -- and similarly appalling. "Livestock's Long Shadow," a 2006 report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organzation (FAO), found that livestock is a major player in climate change, accounting for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions (measured in carbon dioxide equivalents), or more than the entire global transportation system.
The obvious solution to both health and environmental disasters is to stop eating meat altogether. But this is easier said than done. Even the studies addressing the impact of meat on the planet downplay vegetarianism, as if the authors are nervous to press it on people. Going veggie is not even proposed as one of the FAO's "mitigation options" (which instead include conservation tillage, organic farming, and better nutrition for livestock to reduce methane gas production).

Food choices are a very personal decision for most people. We are only now convincing them that this is a tool at their disposal if they care about the environment.

Giving up meat is tough, and arguing people into it is probably a losing proposition. Even with all the statistics out there about the dangers of meat, there are fewer vegetarians in the world than you'd think. A Harris poll conducted in 2006 for the Vegetarian Resource Group found that only 2.3 percent of American adults 18 or older claim never to eat meat, fish, or fowl.

A larger group, 6.7 percent, say they "never eat meat," but often that means they only avoid the red kind. Worldwide, local vegetarian societies report high participation in just a few places - for example, 40 percent in India, 10 percent in Italy, 9 percent in Germany, 8.5 percent in Israel, and 6 percent in Britain.
So how will we become a vegetarian planet? The numbers suggest that we won't stop eating meat simply because it's "the right thing to do." People love it too much. Instead, we'll be forced to stop. By 2025, we simply won't have the resources to keep up the habit. According to the FAO report, 33 percent of the world's arable land is devoted to growing crops for animal feed, and grazing is a major factor in deforestation around the world.

It's also incredibly water-intensive. The average U.S. diet requires twice the daily amount of water as does an equally nutritious vegetarian diet, reports the Worldwatch Institute. Meanwhile, there will be more than 8 billion people on this earth, and two-thirds of the world's population will live in water-stressed regions.
Sounds like a mess -- and one that doesn't bode well for our cattle cravings. Meat will disappear -- except as a luxury available to few -- and the ethical issues will evolve, too. In the way that slavery, once a broad social norm, later became an unthinkable crime, we can expect to see a similar shift once meat-eating disappears from our planet.

Perhaps, some day, the very idea of eating animal flesh will seem as remote as the idea of owning humans does now. So if you're a carnivore, enjoy now -- before the inevitable vegetarian revolution begins.

* note: I am quoting figures from US because none are available for Malaysia. Trust me, I've checked.