BIG news!

Who of you thinks they have more than enough online accounts? I definitely do, and I don't see them getting any less. I certainly don't keep track of all of them, and created some just to check out something or to take advantage of some one-time type thing. So who knows how many I really have and how many have been orphaned. But do I really need an account that collects all my chat accounts? I fail to see the point, and don't like having to trust a company with my collected information in that way. And where will it end? Another account to collect my e-mail accounts? One for the different shopping sites? And then one to keep all of those account-keeping accounts in.

That's why, after realizing that you have to have an Astra account with the latest version of Trillian, which I neither want nor need and prefer to make a decision about autonomously, I decided to switch to Pidgin. And I like it.

Also, this is funny:

Stating the obvious or: I don't even wanna know what prompted this

There was a paper sign on the dressing room at the gym today, reminding people that the showers are, in fact, not co-ed, but for men or women only. Very interesting.

Eating dirt

I can't even imagine how much people are suffering in Haiti right now, and the fact that the destruction prevents much-needed help to arrive make this so much more tragic. PBS repeated this report yesterday, which serves as a reminder of how wealthy we all are and how much Haitians have already been suffering every day before the recent earthquake.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call...

I was very sad to hear that the outcome of the summit on climate in Copenhagen ended with what seems like no result at all. I think this teaser from the WSJ's website sums it up nicely:

"The United Nations summit on climate change ended Saturday with a fractious all-night debate over an agreement brokered by China and the U.S. that has no legal force, and is vague on crucial details."

The key words here, are "no legal force" and "vague". The full article is here. Now I haven't read a whole lot of on the details of the accord, but the German news reports that I did consult, are much harsher in their criticism than the Wall Street Journal (who point out as a negative, that the accord will make it hard for companies to make investments in carbon-reducing technologies, since it's not legally binding; take that however you want to). The German reports call it a "fiasco" and the "miserable end" of the summit, which approximates my opinion pretty well.

I could go on a big rant on how China should really not be considered a developing nation any more, or how the Western countries should lead the way much more affirmatively by setting good examples, but really, I just wanted to communicate the sense of hopelessness this leaves me with.

Ice, ice baby.

Do you like ice cream? Well I love it. And Christina loves it. And we have it way too often. Or not often enough, depending on how you look at it. One thing's for sure though, we're living the dream. And that dream just got a whole lot sweeter because we have found ice cream scoop bliss.

When I was a kid, my parents had, and still have I believe, one of those scoops with the mechanical handle, where a piece of metal would release the ice cream from the scoop and into your bowl of waffle. It was nice, but of course the mechanical part is not that easy to operate sometimes, and has the potential of breaking. When we moved to the US, we thought we'd get a nice scoop, and went with Kitchenaid. The scoops they had looked nice and we thought we were getting great quality. It made pretty round scoops too, but to get the ice cream out of the scoop I had to use a teaspoon to help it. And not before long, the shiny chrome-looking coating was nicked and started to come off. Huge letdown. Then Christina got another nice scoop from a company named Wilton, that makes all kinds of great baking tools and accessories. It worked pretty well, but because of it's shape it was really difficult to get into the corners of the ice cream containers and impossible for me to make anything that even resembled a nice round scoop. Might as well have used a simple spoon. We've looked around some more, but none of the ones we saw really looked any better. They either had that chrome coating or a funny shape.

And then we went to the city last weekend, to witness some of the madness and get a few last gifts. And inside the MOMA store, we found a scoop that very much appealed to us: a great shape, made out of aluminum alloy (so even if the ice cream sticks, using a spoon wouldn't hurt it) and made in the USA since 1935. Oh, it also uses a scientific principle to help the ice cream come out, namely a heat-conductive fluid. I assume that your hand warms the fluid in the handle, which then provides heat to the scoop part and melts the ice cream into your bowl or cone. And best of all: It really works! I am amazed by this ice cream scoop and it was well worth the price. Beautiful round scoops that come out of the scooper absolutely effortlessly. Ladies and gentlemen: Zeroll Original Ice Cream Scoop.

Well, that pretty much reads like a comment somebody who's being paid by the scoop's manufacturer would leave on an online shopping site or review page, but I just had to share the great news.

Spreading it on too thin

Pantyhose are not the same as regular pants. This becomes especially obvious when the sun is out. And people can all too clearly see the tattoos on your butt as you walk into a fast food restaurant.

It's like déjà vu all over again

We carved pumpkins for Halloween and gave out candy, and we also watched Scream, which I had actually never seen before. And there is this really hilarious, possibly embarrassing, line by Neve Campbell in the movie, which I used as the title for this post. So remember folks: careful when using those fancy words, unless you're 100% sure what they really mean, especially when you use them in a sentence.