All those traditions that are supposed to give us good luck have never made sense to me and still don't. I've been wondering why I'm skeptical about it, that "something" that just stops me from believing. Recently, I noticed one thing that may just be that special reason.
Ever notice that when a misfortune befalls someone, that person never blames it on not doing something during a certain festival, be it not receiving a red packet (or not enough) that Lunar New Year or not eating glutinous rice balls (tang yuan) during the last Winter Solstice (dong zhi). "See the guy next door who just got bankrupt? That's because he didn't get any red packets during Lunar New Year last month!"
Neither does anyone thank their obedience to tradition when anything good happens to them. Never have I heard anyone mentioned anything like," Thank goodness I ate so much yusheng during Chinese New Year this year!"
Following such traditions is something done for reasons other than good luck. What is the point of eating yusheng, receiving red packets or eating tang yuan then? Why do people do that despite knowing they are not benefiting from doing any of them?
It cannot be blind obedience alone.
It must be the atmosphere. Something to do with everyone. Brings people together using a false reason.
People need a reason to be together. Not just a holiday, no. If people merely need the holidays, we wouldn't have any specific activities during these festivals.
So if I had asked a random unattached girl I know out on New Year's Eve, what would have been my probability of success?
So porn is legal in the Vatican... Even Catholics find porn acceptable then. It's probably illegal in Singapore only because of the Muslims. :(
That sucks. They allow alcohol and pork to be sold but not porn.
Oh wait, it's illegal in the Phillipines. Huh??
So they say that porn is wrong. It harms the moral values of the people. By that logic, Japan is pretty fucked. However, even with the widespread love for rape porn, it has one of the lowest sex crime rates in the world.
But one can argue that it is the Japanese culture that is stopping women from reporting them, especially molest cases in the notoriously crowded Japanese trains.
Even if it's true, studies have shown that the legalization of porn in Japan since 1972 has reduced sex crimes significantly. In fact it is found that the level of sex crimes is lower when the popularity of porn increases. Yes, even with the child porn being easily but illegally accessible.
So does it mean that the women become more reluctant to report the crimes to protect their honour when they come in contact with porn more often?? That would have rather lewd implications (eg they actually don't mind the groping that much).
Or, more likely, men who watch porn more can masturbate/have sex more often, thus lowering their urges far more frequently. This sounds more logical than the fantastical reason above I sometimes see mentioned.
I can imagine how difficult it must be to act against an unknown hand touching you in a crowded train like those in Japan during peak hours. Hell, it's probably hard just to get the hand there anyway. Worse is that in the end, no one can witness anything because there are just too many people.
Mass Effect 2, coming "soon, but not real soon".
Now that they have all the basic stuff ready, from the production of Mass Effect, they have acknowledged the fact that it won't take as long as the 3.5 years which was the time they took to make the original Mass Effect.However, it's under EA now. The bane of all PC gamers.
Found this website that generates ideas for bad fanfiction. According to the random generator in one of my first attempts, I'm supposed to "write crossover fanfiction combining Duke Nukem and Incredible Hulk. The story should use anal sex as a plot device".
How shall I go about doing that?
In another try, I had to "write crossover fanfiction combining Cats and The Bible. The story should use love triangles as a plot device".
Tough stuff.
If ghosts exist, and they look the way they were when they died, there would be many I wouldn't dare lay my eyes on. I once saw a pic of the head of a dead cat which probably died from a blow on the back of its head. It's tongue stick out of its mouth and it's eyeballs were popped out from their sockets. Precisely what I used to see in those Tom and Jerry cartoons many years ago, whenever Tom got hit by something, except it's real. I don't want to see people with that sort of facial expression.
I have seen, though, pictures of heads that's half-gone. Probably from an explosion, a shotgun in the face or the person stuck the head out when the car was moving. Who knows? Anyway, it was pretty gory. Still, it is less disgusting than most other pictures I've come across.
Certainly less gross than videos of animals dying. I'm not shitting you, there are people sick enough to kill animals on live cam. Bloody disturbing, in both sense of the phrase.
But most things can't beat videos of people dying, like the one with the reporter beheaded slowly. If you have trouble staying awake, you have to watch one of those. The extraordinary experience will make sure you have trouble staying asleep.
Strange, minimalism is not related to being minimalistic. A minimalistic person has nothing to do with minimalism. Minimalism is, in fact, a musical term for a reductive style. A minimalistic person is one who "advocates smallness".
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