good food for your hair

It is very important for your hair to get the proper care and proper food. The proper hair care treatment can be in the form of proper diet, good exercise, and use of different herbs for your hair. The use of different kinds of products would help your hair in its natural growth.

Food which is rich in silica and iron helps in preventing hair loss which can help in having good hair too. Leafy vegetables are rich in iron and would surely help in creating the needed smooth and shiny look that everyone keeps talking about. It is very important to have a good diet as it is food for your hair and body.

Some of the common food habits which you can acquire is to have beets, green leafy vegetables (as mentioned above), broccoli, carrots, radish, mint, basil. You can have different types of salads to add freshness in your diet. Combination of herbs and vegetables just makes it a very healthy diet. If you want to digest your food better cook it tender enough to eat.

One must be having this impression that spices won’t be good for health but some spices like turmeric and cumin in your dish helps in your hair growth. Fruits in all form are an essential nutrient provider and should be part of your diet. Berries, citrus fruits, melons, grapes and small amount of raisins also help. Coconut helps in avoiding premature graying as well as hair fall.

You can quit some of the habits such as smoking, caffeine, aerated drinks which weaken your bones and also affect your hair too. Avoid constant brushing, combing your hair and be careful the way you treat your hair. By roughening up your hair it will damage your hair. Too much of hot water on your hair is not good. Stressing your hair in any manner is not good; blow drying too much is also not good.

Food Therapy Hair Loss

A wholesome diet, rich in silica, calcium and iron, will help reduce or prevent hair loss. Green, leafy vegetables, especially sea vegetables, are good mineral sources. Raw oats provide silica. Dried fruits and cherry juice are rich sources of iron.

For women, thinning hair or hair loss can be a sign of a problem in the gastrointestinal tract. It could be a sign of insufficient stomach acids; It could also mean a deficiency of protein, zinc and other nutrients. Taking two acidophilus tablets after or between meals (four to six tablets per day) for two months will help. For men, balding process can be slowed down by taking a low-fat diet. Some scientists postulate that the male pattern baldness is tied to increased testosterone levels during puberty. A high-fat, meat-based diet raises testosterone levels, and that may adversely affect hair follicles. For example, in Japan, male pattern baldness was very rare prior to World War II when the diet was lean and healthy. The Japanese now consume a more fatty, Westernized diet. Baldness is now increasing substantially among Japanese men. Eating low-fat foods may not stop hair loss; but it might help slow down the hair loss. Anemia is one of the most frequent causes of hair loss. Eat plenty of iron-rich foods, like liver (Avoid if you are pregnant) and other organ meat, whole grain cereals, dark green leafy vegetables, eggs, dates, and raisins. The hair is comprised mostly of protein. To encourage hair growth, adhere to a diet rich in protein. A recommended diet for this purpose includes calves liver, brewer's yeast, wheat germ, and two tablespoons of granulated lecithin. Along with protein, these foods are also high in B vitamins, an important nutrient for hair. European studies have found that soy protein reinforces hair and stimulates its growth. In one study, The hair growth increased by 15 percent. Tofu and soy milk are good sources of soy protein. Other good sources of protein are: low-fat cheese, eggs, fish, beans, brewer's yeast and yogurt. Another important nutrient for hair health is silica. Studies in the former Soviet Union have shown that silica therapy slowed hair loss. Organic silica added to shampoo was found to help prevent baldness, stimulate healthier hair growth and assure beautiful shine, luster and strength. Some scientists claim that they have effectively stopped further hair loss by adding silica to their shampoo. This can be applied externally to regrow already lost hair. Silica is found in the outer coverings of potatoes, green and red peppers and cucumbers. Bean sprouts are also high in silica. Eat whole foods including sprouts. Vitamin C improves the absorption of iron. Include a good serving of fruits and vegetables in your diet. Vitamin E is important for healthy hair growth. Eat avocados, nuts, seeds, and olive oil on a regular basis.If hair loss is due to thyroid dysfunction, eat more foods rich in vitamin A and iodine. Eat vegetables such as carrots or spinach in unrefined, cold-pressed seed oils such as flax, walnut or pumpkin seed and sea salt. Take turnips, cabbage, mustard, soy beans, peanuts, pine nuts and millet if there is a deficiency of iodine. Caution: Excessive intake of Vitamin A can cause hair loss.

Foods to Eat

Foods to build spleen/pancreas:

Brown rice Oats Sweet rice and mochi (pounded sweet rice) Root vegetables, such as carrots, rutabagas, parsnips, ginger, turnips, and onions Winter squash Black beans Pumpkin Black pepper Brown rice syrup

To build or strengthen the blood:

Seaweed (wakame, arame, hiziki), when consumed daily, can prevent hair loss for many. Microalgae Vegetables Beans Whole grains Nuts and seeds Leafy, green vegetables

Foods to Avoid

Cold foods and drinks Sugary foods and drinks Fatty foods Animal protein Excessive raw foods Fruit, especially citrus Tomatoes Tofu millet Salt Dairy products

2009/07/28 Mohammad Balbol released from administrative detention

[Ramallah, 28 July 2009] – On 22 July 2009, Mohammad Balbol (UA 1/08) was finally released from Ofer Prison after spending 12 months in Israeli administrative detention. Mohammad was arrested on 25 July 2008, and issued with an administrative detention order for four months by the Israeli military commander in the West Bank. During interrogation, Mohammad was accused of weapon possession and being a member of Islamic Jihad, an organisation banned by the Israeli authorities. However, Mohammad was never charged with any offence and the evidence against him, which was said to be contained in a ‘secret file,’ was never shown to him or his lawyer. Mohammad’s initial administrative detention order was renewed on 24 November 2008 (four months) and again on 23 March 2009 (four months). Mohammad’s third administrative detention order expired on 22 July 2009, but without any guarantee that he would not be issued with a fourth order. Mohammad has told lawyers for DCI-Palestine that at 2:00 p.m., on 22 July 2009, he was taken by a prison guard to a waiting cell where he remained for seven hours until 9:00 p.m. Mohammad was ‘very worried’ during this period because the prison guard told him they were waiting for a new administrative detention order for him. The prison guard came to his cell every 30 minutes carrying a piece of paper telling him that they were still waiting for the new order. Mohammad recalls that ‘those last seven hours were like a year in prison for me.’ At around 9:00 p.m., Mohammad was finally released and arrived back to his waiting mother at the family home in Bethlehem, at 11:00 p.m. DCI-Palestine would like to thank everybody who wrote letters on behalf of Mohammad Balbol requesting that he either be charged with a legitimate offence and tried in open court with internationally accepted fair trial rights, or be immediately released. Administrative detention Administrative detention is detention without charge or trial and is often based on ‘secret evidence’. Israeli Military Order 1591 empowers military commanders to detain Palestinians, including children as young as 12, for up to six months if they have ‘reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention’. The initial six month period can be extended by additional six-month periods indefinitely. This procedure denies the detainee the right to a fair trial and the ability to adequately challenge the basis of his or her detention. There are currently around 428 Palestinian men, women and children in administrative detention. For more information please visit DCI-Palestine’s Freedom Now campaign page.

“The U.S. invaded Iraq to protect the dollar”

20/07/2009 02:58:00 PM GMT

The real reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to protect the dollar, not just the oil. Saddam had planned to trade his oil in Euros instead of dollars, this action would have destroyed the dollar and the U.S. economy. The Iraqis were chased out of Kuwait by the U.S., with an alliance of 134 countries, and condemned to water and bread by a UN-embargo that lasted ten years. Although the U.S. sought a way to re-establish its influence in Iraq, Saddam’s switch to the Euro on November 6, 2000, would lead to the U.S. invasion. The dollar sank away and in July 2002 the situation got that serious, that the IMF warned that the dollar might collapse. A few days later the plans for an attack were discussed at Downing Street. One month later Cheney proclaimed it was sure now, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. With this pretext, the U.S. invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003. The U.S. switched back the oil trade into dollars on June 5, 2003. The Dutch from The Netherlands Source: AJP

Bin Laden's son believed killed in U.S. attack

23/07/2009 02:14:00 PM GMT Comments (0) Add a comment Print E-mail to friend

U.S. officials believe a son of Osama bin Laden has been killed in an American missile strike US officials believe a son of al Qaeda ringleader Osama bin Laden has been killed in an American missile strike in Pakistan earlier this year. According to National Public Radio (NPR), Saad bin Laden -- Osama's third-oldest son -- is said to have been killed by Hellfire missiles fired from a US Predator drone. US spy agencies are "80 to 85 percent" sure that Saad bin Laden is dead, a senior counterterrorism official told the US broadcaster. "We believe he is dead, although in all of these instances, unless you have DNA or other hard evidence, you don't know for sure," acknowledged the official. Saad is believed to have fled Afghanistan shortly after the US invasion in October of 2001. According to media reports he went to Iran, where he was held under house arrest for a number of years. Former US spy chief Mike McConnell said earlier that the younger bin Laden, supposedly in his 20s, is likely to have resettled in Pakistan. Earlier in January, the US Treasury Department froze the assets of Saad bin Laden and three other al Qaeda operatives According to authorities, the son was not considered a significant player in al Qaeda. A US official commented on his death report, saying that Saad bin Laden was simply "in the wrong place at the wrong time". It is not known whether Saad was close to the location of his father -- who remains at large and is believed to be hiding in the violent tribal belt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border -- when he was killed. Source: Press TV

Blustering Biden bows to Bibi

23/07/2009 09:30:00 AM GMT

Biden told ABC television the U.S. could not 'dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do' By Paul J. Balles U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told ABCtelevision the U.S. could not "dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do". On ABC's current affairs programme “This Week”, host George Stephanopoulos asked Mr Biden whether the Israeli position was the right approach. The vice-president replied: "Israel can determine for itself – it's a sovereign nation – what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else." Perhaps to please Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Biden added that this was the case, "whether we agree or not" with the Israeli view. (Watch video: Biden says Israel has ‘sovereign right’ to hit Iran ) Making thoughtless statements like these utterly defies both logic and sensibility. Using the same logic, he could have said the same thing about Iran. Why doesn't he say "Iran can determine for itself – it's a sovereign nation – what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Israel and anyone else?" With the same logic and lack of sensibility, Biden might have said, "Iran can develop nuclear weapons whether we agree or not with their view." With this kind of senseless thinking, it’s a wonder that Biden ever managed to hold the leading Democratic position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, except that he is a self-declared Zionist with a 36-year Senate record of pro-Israel leadership. While in his non-interference state of mind, Biden recently questioned the legitimacy of Mahmud Ahmadinejad's victory in Iran's presidential elections. He commented that officials "just don't know enough" about how they were conducted. What if they were conducted like elections in other countries that have clearly been rigged but have gone unnoticed by Biden? This is a perfect demonstration of America’s foreign policy hypocrisy. There's also the insensibility of maintaining double standards about international issues. "The president will not allow Iran to go nuclear," says Biden. About North Korea's tests of long-range missiles, Biden says: "If the country is proliferating nuclear weapons or missiles, then it is a serious danger and a threat to the world..." With North Korea, which withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it's a question of how quickly the missiles and nuclear weapons are being developed. Iran, on the other hand, remains a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which seeks to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Iran has made it clear that they want only to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Meanwhile, as Israel and America focus on the potential of Iran to become a nuclear power, Israel carries on with its never-ending land grab on the West Bank and its terrorist slaughter and mayhem in Gaza. Commenting on the growing settlements in the West Bank, Sandy Tolan writes: "So dense had the Israeli West Bank presence become by 2009, so fragmented is Palestinian life – both physically and politically – that it now requires death-defying mental gymnastics to imagine how a two-state solution could ever be implemented." The “logical” comments by Joe Biden should bring scathing criticism of the way Israel spends American taxpayers’ money to support its continuing ruthless inhumanity to indigenous Palestinians. Haaretz reports: "Israeli officials told U.S. envoy George Mitchell in recent weeks that Jerusalem is willing to temporarily freeze settlement construction, but that the move would be conditioned on substantive steps from the Arab side, as well as guarantees from the United States." What an abomination! Break into my house with guns. Lock me in a small room; and when a neighbour complains, agree to set me free if I agree to let you keep much of the stolen loot. This is the twisted logic of Joe Biden's Israel-American politics, using Iran as a distraction. -- Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see pballes.com. This article appeared in Redress Information & Analysis. Source: Middle East Online

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW BRIEFING

Bosnia: A Test of Political Maturity in Mostar

Sarajevo/Brussels, 27 July 2009: Mostar, the largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a Croat majority will face new and potentially dangerous strains if its leaders do not break a deadlock that has paralysed its government for nine months.

Bosnia: A Test of Political Maturity in Mostar,* the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, warns that the administration of that city is breaking down, with no mayor, budget or functioning city council since an October 2008 election. The tensions threaten to poison relations between the leading Bosniak and Croat parties -- coalition partners throughout the country.

The High Representative, the international executive authority, should facilitate a solution consistent with the intent of the disputed statute but not impose it on the city council, which has both responsibility and competence to resolve the crisis.

“The crisis is rooted in demographics, the recent war and a city statute that replicates many of the power-sharing rules that govern the state”, says Marko Prelec, Crisis Group Balkans Project Director. “It should be a warning for the country”.

Mostar’s ethnic structure and political landscape are similar to Bosnia’s, but with the players reversed. Croats are the majority, and the city is important for their community statewide. Bosniaks struggle for equal treatment in the city’s political and economic decision making but also for attention from their Sarajevo leaders, whose focus is on other issues.

The breakdown of Mostar’s internationally-imposed government shows what happens to a consensus system without inter-ethnic agreement. The first part of the solution is election of the mayor. The city council should adopt the statute and, if necessary to remove remaining ambiguity, amend it to avoid a similar deadlock. But that should be only the beginning. The council must guarantee all communities a real voice in government and an equitable share in Mostar’s development.

Mostar’s Croat majority seeks to force the High Representative to impose a solution on its behalf. But use of his special “Bonn powers” should be restricted to the most extraordinary situations: use on a matter the council should handle would perpetuate a culture of dependence. The international community should make clear that fourteen years after the end of their war, it is time for the Bosnians to take responsibility for their own futures.

“The leaders of Mostar, like those of the whole country, will have to assume full responsibility for their governance”, says Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group’s Europe Program Director. “Bosnians must show political maturity to run their own affairs”.

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*Read the full Crisis Group briefing on our website:http://www.crisisgroup.org

Contacts: Gabriela Keseberg Dávalos (Brussels) +32 (0) 2 536 0071
Kimberly Abbott (Washington) +1 202 785 1602

To contact Crisis Group media please click here

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The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation covering some 60 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

Israel moves ahead with anti-Iran plan

24/07/2009 11:45:00 AM GMT Comments () Add a comment Print E-mail to friend

Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon Israel struggles to portray Iran as a threat to the world's security saying the international community should make concerted efforts to counter Iran's nuclear program. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in an interview with Xinhua on Thursday that the world could not afford a nuclear Iran and therefore the international community had to avert the prospect. Ayalon said that Iran would turn into a "regional hegemony" if it went nuclear, adding that the international community had to deal with Iran's nuclear work as "the most important thing." "Also, a nuclear Iran will start such an aggressive nuclear arms race in the world, not just here in many countries, but also in Asia and other places. So it's everybody's interest to stop Iran," he added. He suggested that tougher sanctions were also needed to force Iran to abandon its nuclear work. Under US pressure, the UN Security Council has slapped sanctions on Iran for its uranium enrichment activities. The West, spearheaded by the US and Israel, the sole possessor of a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, accuses Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program under the guise of enrichment activities, an allegation dismissed by Tehran. Iran argues that, unlike Israel, it is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has willingly opened its atomic activities to the most stringent supervision of UN nuclear watchdog inspectors, according to the terms of the NPT. Stressing that all options were still on the table against Iran, Ayalon added that, in his eyes, there was also a consensus on the issue, both inside the new US government and among Tel Aviv's European allies. "I've heard both US Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama saying that no options are ruled out and all the options are on the table. And I think this is the right approach," he said. "In our discussions with European allies and others, we have not heard any call to rule out any option." Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom also took a tough line against Iran over its nuclear work. He told foreign reporters on Thursday that Israel could not come to terms with a nuclear Iran. Shalom also cast doubt on US overtures to Iran to resolve the country's nuclear issue through diplomatic means. Any attempt to conduct dialogue to halt Iran's nuclear program will be a complete waste of time, he added. As part of Tel Aviv's strenuous efforts to amass international pressure on Tehran aimed at stopping its nuclear work, Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is on a tour of Latin American countries. The mission has also been described as a counter to Iran's growing inroads into South American countries. Lieberman arrived in Argentina amid angry protests on Thursday after his first stop in Brazil, where he failed to drum up any support for setting up an anti-Iran front in collaboration with the Latin American country. In Brazil, Lieberman took part in a joint news conference, during which he said Brazil should make good use of its growing ties with Iran to help bring to a halt the country's nuclear activities. "I believe that Brazil, more than other countries, could try to convince the Iranians to stop their nuclear program," Lieberman said. In response to Israel's request, the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, defended Tehran's development of nuclear technology for "exclusively non-military" purposes and within a "verifiable" framework. The Brazilian official then took an apparent swipe at Israel over its blunt refusal to sign the NPT. "Brazil would like all countries to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty". Israel, which is believed to be the Middle East's sole possessor of nuclear warheads, has shrugged off requests to join the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT, to which Iran is a signatory, grants its members the right to develop peaceful nuclear activities. After his stop in Argentina, Lieberman is scheduled to visit Peru and Colombia, before returning to Israel. Source: Press TV

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT

Israel’s Religious Right and the Question of Settlements

Jerusalem/Brussels, 20 July 2009: The issue of West Bank settlements cannot be properly understood without taking into account the increasing role of Israel’s religious right.

Israel’s Religious Right and the Question of Settlements,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, warns against underestimating the importance of a growing political and social phenomenon that, if ignored, could undermine a sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace. Israel is facing arguably unprecedented pressure to halt all settlement activity, led by a new and surprisingly determined U.S. administration. But the settlement issue has been transformed in recent years by shifting domestic dynamics, as national-religious and ultra-orthodox Israelis have gained influence and leverage. Entrenched in many West Bank settlements, they benefit from demographic trends: Israel’s army is increasingly dependent on their manpower and politicians on their votes.

“The religious right has assumed an ever more prominent role in opposing territorial compromise”, says Nicolas Pelham, a Crisis Group Senior Consultant based in Jerusalem. “It is banking on its support within state institutions to discourage the government from taking action and on its own rank-and-file to ensure that every attempt to evict an outpost or destroy a structure, however insignificant, comes at a heavy price”.

The ultra-orthodox and national-religious camps account for the lion’s share of the 37 per cent increase in the settler population in the past six years. Although not a united bloc, their politicians hold over a fifth of Knesset seats, some 40 per cent of the ruling coalition. In Israel proper, their numbers are growing steadily, and they carry weight far in excess of their numbers. They occupy key positions in the military, government and legal and education sectors, as well as the bureaucracy, and are seeking to strengthen their ability to resist future territorial withdrawals by building up their influence within and without state institutions. Their role and concerns need to be understood if the obstacle settlements pose to a two-state solution is to be removed.

An agreed Israeli-Palestinian border would make clear which settlers could remain in place and which could not. Several long-overdue steps should be taken in the interim, however. Legislative enactment of an early evacuation compensation package could help persuade some settlers to leave voluntarily. For those who value their attachment to the land over their attachment to the state, efforts could be made to examine how and under what conditions they might live under Palestinian rule and the extent to which Palestinians might accept them. Foreign actors, the U.S. included, should examine ways of making religious parties feel part of the diplomatic process. A clear offer by the Palestinian leadership to guarantee and protect Jewish access to Jewish holy sites under its control could send religious sectors a positive signal of its vision for post-conflict relations.

At the same time, the government should apply its laws more consistently, whether on settlement and outpost construction in the West Bank or acts of violence and incitement against Palestinians.

“The 2005 disengagement from Gaza went remarkably smoothly, but it would be wrong to assume that what happened in Gaza automatically will be replicated in the West Bank”, explains Robert Malley, Crisis Group’s Middle East Program Director. “The differences in numbers, background and militancy of the respective settler populations should serve as a warning of the need to give more attention to this issue as talks with Palestinians proceed”.

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Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) +32 (0) 2 541 1635
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To contact Crisis Group media please click here

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The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation covering some 60 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

Can You Be an Environmentalist and Indulge in Tropical Foods?

Determine the carbon footprint of your favorite tropical foods.

By Sara Novak
Columbia, SC, USA | Thu Jul 16 11:00:00 EDT 2009

Brazil2/iStockphoto

READ MORE ABOUT:
Carbon Footprint | Eco-Friendly Foods | Food Miles |Sustainable Coffee

So you go to the farmers' market every week. You buy exclusively organic, and you're a vegetarian. But there's still a dirty little secret that can be found in the depths of your pantry and atop your counter: tropical foods. Tropical foods can travel quite a distance to get to your table (unless you live in the tropics!). That means a hefty carbon footprint.

My calculations are based on the premise that the average American would need to reduce their carbon footprint from the current average of 20 tons per year to 4 tons per year just to be in line with the rest of the world. Experts say that 3 tons is the level needed for us to begin to reverse global climate change. So by dividing the individual carbon used for each item by 3 tons we come up with the percentage that your favorite tropical foods use based on your 3 ton goal allotment. After all staying the same will do nothing to reverse global climate change, drastic reductions must be made. Some tropical foods travel farther than others and hence have a larger impact on the planet. Know the facts before you indulge so that you can make an informed decision.

1. Bananas

We eat them every day, and their carbon footprint is huge. This fruit originated in Asia but is now raised in the tropics across the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Brazil is the leading banana producer, followed by Uganda, India, and the Philippines. Latin American countries supply more than 90 percent of the bananas eaten in North America.

Take into account that getting a single banana to your table uses about 8 pounds of carbon for a four ounce serving or .13 % of your year's allowance, according to Eat Low Carbon Diet. If you eat a banana every day for a year that would equal nearly 49% of your goal average. In the event that you can't fight off your banana craving, try buying an organic variety. Then you can at least ensure that your bananas weren't treated with tons of chemicals and pesticides, which can destroy the stunning tropical eco-systems from which they come. If you eat one every other day, a day or two or week, or sparingly you an see how much you can drop your carbon footprint, just by changing your banana habits!

Zoran Kolundzija/istockphoto

2. Mangoes

Mangoes are my favorite fruit. I absolutely love the taste. It's no doubt, however, that the mango is an import. Mangoes are grown throughout the tropics in the Caribbean, Africa, South-East Asia, Australia, and India, where the history of the fruit goes back over 6,000 years. The demand for mangoes is growing and continues to encourage mango farmers to plant trees on barren hillsides, which contributes to environmental restoration and conservation efforts. In fact, mango groves can establish their own ecosystem on previously denuded or wasted land. The organic Keitt mango is the only widely available California-grown organic mango. However, just like the banana, mangoes have a huge carbon footprint at about 8 pounds of CO2 emissions or .13% for a 4 ounce serving when they are shipped far distances. Again, if you eat the average far-shipped mango every day for a year that would equal nearly 49% of your goal average.

Brazil2/iStockphoto

3. Coffee

It's a staple in so many peoples' diets. I have tried time and time again to give it up, and for the most part I have. Nevertheless, I still swear that I work more efficiently under its influence. It's a common struggle throughout the country.

If you are going to chase the coffee dragon, try to choose a greener blend for your cup. The carbon footprint of your morning coffee truly depends on the choices that you make at the counter. So always make an effort to figure out where your cup o' joe comes from.

In general, the production of 2,200 pounds of green (organic, fair trade) coffee can cause between 1,980 and 3,080 pounds of CO2 emissions. That means that every pound of coffee produces between 0.9 and 1.4 pounds of CO2 emissions and each pound of green coffee that you buy can equal up to .023% of your year's allowance. There are about 32 cups of coffee in a pound of coffee. Drinking just one cup of coffee per day adds up to about .27% of your yearly allowance, but hey, that's no banana!

Start simply by making sure that your coffee is organic and not treated with chemicals and pesticides. These chemicals pollute our ground water and eco-systems and harm the people growing it. Shade grown coffee preserves habitats for migratory birds on coffee farms and lets beans mature more slowly. That creates richer flavors. Refer to Planet Green's guide to coffee and tea for more great information on the subject. Also, check out this map of major coffee producers.

ranplett/istockphoto

4. Tea

The Camellia sinensis plant (which produces black, green, and white teas) comes from countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. Some types of tea are also produced here in the United States. In fact, one of the largest domestic tea producers is right down the road from me at Charleston Tea Plantation. On average, loose tea has about 20g CO2 per cup or about .43 pounds per cup. That's .0071% of your year's allowance. If you had just one cup of tea per day that would add up to about 2.6% of your yearly allowance.

Knape/istockphoto

Consider Yerba Mate

I drink yerba mate all the time. It wakes you up like coffee without any jittery side effects. It's a bit difficult to determine yerba mate's carbon footprint. Guayaki is my favorite mate because it's a quality product with minimal impact. The company offsets over 55 tons of its corporate CO2 footprint. Guayaki also partners with indigenous communities in South America to source the ingredients for its herbal drinks. In addition, purchasing Guayaki products helps drive forest restoration efforts.

5. Nuts

If you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you probably get a majority of your protein from nuts. If you love cashews, for instance, you'll notice that the organic variety in the bins at Whole Foods is nearly $11 per pound. The steep price is a result of some hefty travel. Forteleza, Brazil, ships a majority of the cashews consumed around the world. While many almonds are grown in California, only 1 percent of the organic almonds sold in the US are grown here in the states. Germany is the largest market for almonds, followed by Japan. Other major markets include the Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Spain. Peanuts, on the other hand, are widely grown in the US, as you may remember from the recent peanut butter contamination disaster that played out in the national news. Domestic peanut crops are generally found in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. On average mixed nuts have a carbon footprint equal to that of tea at .43 pounds of CO2 emissions or .0071% for a four ounce serving. Again, if you had four ounces of typical mixed nuts per day that would add up to about 2.6% of your yearly allowance.

Denis Pepin/istockphoto

The Bottom Line About Tropical Foods

Tropical fruits, including bananas and mangoes, don't help anyone's effort to stay on a low carbon diet. The best idea is to give them up or cut way back, unless you live in a place or are visiting a place where they grow locally. Wherever you live, there are local delicious fruits that just don't have the carbon footprint of tropical fruits. We shouldn't take for granted that just because we always have (in our lifetimes) enjoyed bananas doesn't mean it's our birthright or sustainable. With regards to coffee and tea, try to find a local producer. It's often possible, even if it just takes a little more work. If you don't have the choice, consider passing on your daily jolt or cutting way back. But always purchase organic and fair trade varieties of coffee and tea. I wouldn't feel so bad about indulging in nuts because beef has 239 times as much of an impact.

Meet the First Electric Car Produced in South America: Brazil's Fiat Palio Weekend

by Paula Alvarado, Buenos Aires on 07.14.09

Photos: Fiat.

After a three-year developing phase, the Brazilian subsidiary of Fiat is producing an electric version of the Fiat Palio Weekend. The car manufacturers claim it has about 75 miles of autonomy (120 kilometers), 60 MPH speed, and an estimated price of 70 thousand USD.

Nothing compared to models like the Tesla Model S in terms of speed, looks and price, we know. But interesting in terms of an electric car being produced in South America, the first we know of (the REVA is sold in Chile, but not produced).

Can this mean the region could finally look forward to a near future of electric cars? Check the extended for more details.

The Electric Fiat Palio Weekend

According to the auto section at O Globo newspaper, the first conversations for the electric Palio Weekend began in 2006, when Fiat signed an agreement with Itaipu Binacional and the Swiss KWO. Three years later, the car is on production at the company's Foz do Iguazu factory at Parana state in Brazil.

The electric engine is by KWO and its battery is 100% recyclable thanks to its composition of sodium chloride and nickel, according to the mentioned source. Fiat claims it has an autonomy of about 75 miles (120 kilometers) and that its full charge time is eight hours.

The engine.

Its acceleration time 0-62 MPH is nine seconds according to Fiat but 28 according to O Globo's test drive (that would be considerably lower than the most advanced electric cars on the market). Its maximum speed is not to be amazed either: over 62 MPH. And it's more expensive than other alternatives: while it's only aimed at companies so far, its estimated price if it was sold to consumers would be 70 thousand USD.

So the car is not even close to being a really attractive electric option worldwide. However, the fact that an all electric car is being produced in Brazil, the news that the first electric charging station opened in Rio and the issue of the Brazilian governmentunveiling plans to develop a national electric car along with its Science and Technology Ministry may very well indicate that this country could be bringing the electric hype to Latin America.

Electronic panel inside the car.

We'll have to wait a little longer to really see that happen though. The price is not the only issue stopping Fiat from mass producing it: the electric engine is imported and the battery heavy, and the taxes over the car are higher because it's considered a "special model".

Nonetheless, we're happy to see some development of green driving. Even thoughBrazil is heading the wave on biofuels, sales of hybrid and electric cars are little to non existent in South America; and their production even less common.

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Cheap Sex for the Saddle Sore: Berlin Brothel Offers Cyclists' Discount

by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 07.15.09

CARS & TRANSPORTATION (bikes)

Image credit: Maison d'Envie

[CAUTION: Links may include explicit material]

Brothel Offers Discount for Eco-Friendly Transportation

When I wrote about Heidi Fleiss' eco-brothel for women, one commenter suggested it was just another example of the environmental movement being usurped to make a buck, although commenters were generally more charitable about Norwegian eco-porn. I am guessing the reaction will be similarly mixed to news that a Berlin brothel is offering discounts to anyone arriving by bike or public transportation.

The Maison d'Envie brothel, situated on Berlin's Danziger Strasse, is offering patrons an Umweltrabatt ("eco-discount") if they can prove they arrived by bike or public transportation (perhaps a shower in a bottle might be useful here, although wash facilities are provided). According to Leo Hickman over at The Guardian, the owners claim the eco-discount is driving more customers to the brothel while reducing parking and congestion in the neighborhood:

"Any punter who arrives by bike – the puns readily spring to mind with this story – or who can prove they've travelled by public transport qualifies for the discount (they must present a valid ticket and a map of Berlin's public transport network upon arrival). The room hire for a 45-minute "session" is normally €70 (£60), but cyclists qualify for a €5 "eco" discount. Customers with, er, less time on their hands can opt for the 15-minute session which normally costs €30, but with that eco discount it drops down to €25.

Of course it goes without saying that the sex industry is a hugely contentious one with human rights abuses and exploitation being a major issue (not that this proves a lack of exploitation, but for what it's worth the Maison d'Envie claims to only employ Germans and/or EU citizens). Whether or not the answer is legalization and regulation (prostitution is legal in Germany), or stamping the trade out all together is obviously a matter for debate. But while people continue to pay for sex, then I guess the climate will be happier if they arrive by bike. Let's just hope they tell any loved ones where they are going.

For the rest of us with no interest in paying for sex, the Planet Green guide on How to Green Your Sex Life is a good place to start for some eco-thrills.

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Forwarded on Behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies

Nadia Hijab is an independent analyst and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. This column was syndicated on 16 July 2009 by Agence Global. The opinions in this piece are her own. The column may be circulated on listservs but may not be republished without permission from Agence Global. For contact information regarding rights and permissions see below.

Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

By Nadia Hijab

"It was a trying time for dreamers," Wadad Makdisi Cortas wrote of the year 1935. She was 26 and "yearned to speak my language, to read Arabic books, and to foster Arab independence and solidarity." But she had just become the headmistress of a girls' school in Lebanon that was a particular thorn in the side of the French colonial rulers.

As in their other colonies, the French imposed their language, insisting that the students at the Ahliah National School for Girls not only be taught in French but also use it at recess. "Students who insisted on speaking Arabic were to be singled out, and those who persisted were to be given detention," Cortas recalled. (Of course, as history marched on, English won the battle to become the global lingua franca.)

Cortas' memoirs span the 20th Century: She was born in 1909 and died in 1979. She writes beautifully, with dry humor and with sadness, of living and travelling in a Middle East without borders and of the agony inflicted as frontiers were carved into a soil alive with friendships and family ties -- agonies that continue to this day.

She evokes a time when Jews and Arabs mingled freely, then stopped due to the growing conflict as Palestine was forcibly transformed into Israel. And she describes from personal knowledge -- she was one of 12 women amidst 1,000 men at the American University of Beirut -- women's struggle for a place in the public sphere.

Cortas was still the headmistress when my mother taught at Ahliah years later and when I went to school there decades later. So I turned to the just-published English translation of her memoirs, A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman (Nation Books) with anticipation mixed with apprehension. She was a formidable woman and I had left a lot of homework undone: I was sure she would reach across the pages of time to hold me to account.

To my mind, perhaps the book's most astonishing revelation was that she was only five feet tall. She so towered over everyone, her back straighter than the wall in the assembly hall where we were gathered for pep talks and music. But of course she spoke from the stage and we were much smaller then.

When she was growing up, in the early days of the 20th Century, Arabs were not yet worried about Zionism. Cortas describes a mixed Middle East that included White Russians, Armenians, Turks, Jews and many others among the Arabs. In her youth, this woman from what had just become Lebanon even visited a Jewish kibbutz in the Galilee. She describes it as efficiently run by recently arrived Polish Jews but "completely detached from the life of the area." Arabs only later discovered that many kibbutz dwellers were being trained in modern warfare at the same time as the British empire was disarming the Palestinians.

Cortas' writing is often lyrical. She depicts a Beirut where mulberry trees and orchards stretched out in place of today's chic restaurants and cafes. "We learned to love the sea in all of its moods," she writes, and tells of the old fisherman Khalil who remained by the sea when the Italians bombarded the Lebanese coast on the eve of World War I. His philosophy: "Conquerors come and go. Only the sea is eternally with us."

She was bred on politics, which were then as they are now a matter of life and death. She listened as her father and his friends argued long into the night whether Arab aspirations for independence would fare better under a weak Ottoman Empire or by supporting the British and French. Arab nationalists chose the latter and paid a price still exacted today.

Cortas came from a family of redoubtable women, and her father supported the equality of the sexes. She and her sister were the first girls from their school -- they also studied at Ahliah -- to go to university. At the American University of Beirut, they were able to get an education but had no social life. In a puzzling insight into social mores, roller-skating was the only sport considered proper for young women.

The female students were not allowed to attend historical plays, but could take up public speaking, and they happily debated the emancipation of women and political freedoms. The student body went on strike to protest British and French imperialism, but America was looked upon with favor as "a great center of liberal ideas." That was then.

Cortas visited America many times in later years, admiring its "organization and discipline" but finding that "grace had vanished. Life was a swift race, and no one could afford to loiter." She noted that black students at the University of Michigan, where she worked for a post-graduate degree, were a small minority and were "quite aloof. When it was my privilege to have contact with some of them, they unloaded their painful recollections." In perhaps the understatement of the century, she thought it would "take a long time to change the situation."

This globe-trotting woman also taught in Iraq back in 1930. Her daily commute in Baghdad involved a boat ride across the Tigris, past riverbanks adorned with tall palms dangling red dates, gardens, and palaces. "I did not have eyes enough to see all the haunting sights of this magical city."

But Cortas soon got into trouble. Chosen to speak to a cohort of graduating pilots, she "prepared a fiery speech expressing pride at seeing the first Arab aviators fly in Arab skies. I must have been strongly moved, for the speech disturbed the British authorities." For the rest of her stay, she concentrated on her teaching.

Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and the whole Arab world were intertwined then, and, in spite of the borders, still are. Cortas' daughter Mariam married the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. Cortas helped to found and served on the board of many organizations, including the Institute for Palestine Studies, to which I am affiliated.

This intertwining is why to be an Arab is to sometimes live in a well of sorrow. My mother, who also taught in Baghdad in her youth, before her exile from Palestine, spent her last years in Jordan. The advent of satellite TV into many homes since 2000 meant that she was daily buffeted by graphic images of terrifying death in Iraq to the east and in Palestine to the west. Perhaps many Arabs found some meagre comfort, as I did, that their parents were no longer alive for the Israeli assault on Gaza this winter.

Cortas wrote before she died in 1979: "War has crowded the memories of my youth and old age and every stage in between." She witnessed the early flowering and brutal crushing of Arab nationalism; the catastrophic loss of Palestine in 1948, which has defined the region since; national liberation movements; the growing rapaciousness of oil wealth, local and foreign; and the succession of home grown dictators and their freedoms denied.

Her last years were marked by the horrors of the Lebanese civil war, described in staccato sentences in between sheltering from the fighting. Yet her legacy lives on and the school she served for so long has remained a byword for Arab nationalism. But her nationalism was never of an ugly, exclusivist kind. Rather it was about people attached to their land being able to express their identity amidst diversity.

She wondered whether succeeding generations would "prove wiser" than her own. As if to answer that question, the introduction was written by her daughter Mariam, who worked tirelessly to get the English edition published in time for the 100th anniversary of her mother's birth. Mariam has loving, and unflinchingly honest, memories of her mother.

And the afterword is written by Cortas' granddaughter Najla, an accomplished actress, who discovered during a visit to Lebanon in 2006, when war raged once more, that she was the veteran now, comforting children and "somehow responsible for future generations." She and her peers fought down their fear and went on to protest in old ways and new, blogging and creating art, music and theatre, with "no sense of resignation."

Had Cortas lived through the horrors of the wars of the present day, she would also have seen much determination and sensed many changes, small but tangible, giving hope that a world loved is not yet lost. It is still a trying time for dreamers. Yet there are dreamers still, of all races and creeds, striving for a different reality.

For rights and permissions, contact Agence Global rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Published by Agence Global and distributed by the Institute for Palestine Studies

The Institute has produced authoritative studies on Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1963. Its flagship Journal of Palestine Studies is published by the University of California Press.

"Do what you like, and like what you do. Life is Good."

Sometimes I wonder: what am I?
I look at the stars and feel very small;
just a tiny consciousness.
But if I were as tall as a planet,
I would still be short in comparison to the universe.

I see a person twice my size
and I feel weak and fragile.
But if I were strong and powerful,
I would still not be invincible.

I see a painting by the hand of a genius,
and I feel inexperienced and ignorant.
But if I were the greatest artist alive,
it would not make me love what I do any more or less.

I see blood, running from the wound of another,
and I feel a chilling fear from deep within.
But if I walked this earth with bravery,
it would not make things less dangerous.

I see a baby, innocent and naive,
and I feel cynical and jaded.
But if I saw through untainted eyes all my life,
it would not make the world a better place.

I see a raindrop, tear of the sky,
and I feel ugly and unsightly.
But if I were as beautiful as rain,
it would not make me crystal clear inside.

There are children with cancer,
mothers who lose their babies,
people who are worse off than dead.

I wonder if I am just lucky or if the world was cruel.
But even if the world was kind or if I were dying, too,
there would still be suffering.

I weep all night, I get nightmares,
I lose myself thinking of such things.
But even if I could right every wrong,
if I could run faster
or jump higher
or be stronger,
it would not make me better or happier.

With what I have, I'll do what I like
and like what I do.
Life is good.

D'accord, c'est vrai. Parfois, même les meilleurs d'entre nous prennent des décisions irréfléchies.
De mauvaises décisions...
Des décisions que l'on sait déjà que l'on va regretter, sur le moment. A la minute...
Ou plus précisément, le matin qui va suivre.
Enfin, j'veux dire... Peut-être pas regretter, regretter parce qu'au moins, on aura été capable de
prendre un risque, mais; quand même !

Quelque chose au fond de nous décide de faire une folie, une chose dont on sait...
Qu'elle va forcément se retourner contre nous !
On le sait... Mais, on le fait quand même !

Ce que je veux dire, c'est :
Qu'on récolte, ce qu'on sème...
On a, que ce qu'on mérite...
C'est le karma, et peu importe comment vous voyez ça. Votre karma vous empoisonne !
Comme j'le disais... Le karma, ça craint !

D'une façon ou d'une autre, notre karma, nous pousse à nous regarder en face.
On peut regarder son karma dans les yeux...
Ou on peut attendre qu'il s'approche de nous par derrière.

D'une façon ou d'une autre, notre karma nous rattrape toujours.
Et la vérité en tant que chirurgien, c'est qu'on a plus souvent l'occasion que d'autre,
de faire pencher la balance en notre faveur.
Peu importe le mal que l'on se donne, on ne peut pas échapper à son karma.
Il nous suit partout !

Je crois qu'on ne peut pas vraiment se plaindre de son karma, ça n'est pas injuste,
ça n'est inattendu. C'est seulement, une façon d'équilibrer les choses.
Et même quand on est sur le point de faire quelque chose qui pousse notre karma
a nous tomber dessus, et bien, cela va sans dire...
On le fait quand même !

Grâce au calendrier, les nouveaux départs arrivent chaque année.
Réglez vos montres sur Janvier !

Notre récompense pour avoir survécu aux vacances, c'est une nouvelle année.
Ce qui nous amène à la grande tradition des résolutions du nouvel an...
Laisser le passé derrière soi et entamer un nouveau départ !

Difficile de résister à la chance d'un nouveau départ.
Une chance de mettre de côté les problèmes de l'année précédente.

Qu'est-ce qui détermine quand le passé est finit et qu'on fait enfin peau neuve ?
Ce n'est pas un jour sur le calendrier, ni un anniversaire, ni une nouvelle année...
C'est un évènement... Petit ou grand... Quelque chose qui nous change.
Et surtout, qui nous donne de l'espoir !

Une nouvelle façon de vivre et de regarder le monde.
Accepter les habitudes, les vieux souvenirs...
Ce qui est important, c'est que nous n'arrêtions jamais de croire que nous avons le droit à un nouveau départ.
Mais c'est aussi important de se rappeler, qu'au milieu de tout ce chantier...
Auxquelles ça vaut la peine, de s'accrocher !

Les bonnes choses ne sont pas toujours ce qu'elles semblant être...
Même trop d'amour, ce n'est pas toujours une bonne chose.

Comment sait-on quand, trop c'est trop ?
Trop vite, trop tôt... Trop d'informations... Trop de plaisir... Trop d'amour, trop d'exigences...
Et comment sait-on quand c'est trop lourd à supporter ?

La douleur peut se manifester sous différentes formes.
Ça peut être un petit pincement, une légère irritation, une douleur lancinante,
une douleur que l'on supporte tous les jours.
Et il y a le genre de douleur que l'on ne peut pas ignorer. Une douleur si grande, qu'elle bloque tout le reste.
Et fait disparaître le reste du monde !

Jusqu'à ce que la seule chose à laquelle on pense, c'est à quel point on souffre !
La façon dont on gère notre douleur dépend de nous.
La douleur... On l'anesthésie, on la surmonte, on l'étreint, on l'ignore... Et pour certains d'entre nous, la meilleure façon de gérer la douleur, c'est de foncer tête baissée.

La douleur... Vous devez arriver à la surmonter. Espérer qu'elle disparaisse d'elle-même, espérer que la blessure qui la causé se referme.
Il n'y a pas de solutions, pas de remèdes miracle. Vous devez respirer à fond et attendre qu'elle s'estompe.
La plupart du temps, on peut gérer la douleur. Mais parfois, la douleur s'abat sur vous quand vous vous y attendez le moins. Elle vous attaque en traître et ne vous lâche pas !

La douleur... Vous devez juste continuer à vous battre parce que de toute façon vous ne pouvez pas l'éviter.
Et la vie en fournit toujours plus !

Vous vous souvenez de votre enfance, à l'époque où vous croyez aux contes de fées ?
Vous faisiez des rêves sur ce serait votre vie. La robe blanche, le Prince charmant qui vous emporte jusqu'à son château sur la colline.
Vous vous allongiez le soir dans votre lit, vous fermiez les yeux et vous y croyez dur comme fer. Le Père Noël, la petite Souris, le Pince charmant, ils étaient si proches que vous auriez pu les toucher.
Mais finalement vous grandissez.

Un jour, vous ouvrez les yeux et le conte de fées disparaît. La plupart des gens se dirigent vers les choses et les gens en qui ils ont confiance.
Mais le fait est que c'est difficile d'oublier complètement les contes de fées.
Parce que chacun de nous garde toujours une minuscule part d'espoir, de foi, et se dit qu'un jour, il ouvrira les yeux et que ses rêves deviendront réalité.

En fin de compte, la foi est une chose très particulière. Elle se révèle quand on ne s'y attend pas.
C'est comme le jour où on réalise que les contes de fées peuvent être légèrement différents de ce qu'ils étaient dans nos rêves.

Le château peut ne pas être un château. Et ce n'est pas si important qu'on vive heureux pour toujours. Ce qui compte, c'est être heureux maintenant.
De temps en temps, même si c'est rare, les gens vous surprennent.
Et une fois de temps en temps, certaines personnes peuvent vous couper le souffle.

You know how when you were a little kid and you believed in fairy tales, that fantasy of what your life would be, white dress, prince charming who would carry you away to a castle on a hill. You would lie in bed at night and close your eyes and you had complete and utter faith. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Prince Charming, they were so close you could taste them, but eventually you grow up, one day you open your eyes and the fairy tale disappears. Most people turn to the things and people they can trust. But the thing is its hard to let go of that fairy tale entirely cause almost everyone has that smallest bit of hope, of faith, that one day they will open their eyes and it will come true.

----------------------------------------

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.

“Je pensais à Adrien. Qu’était-il en train de faire?
Où était-il à cet instant précis?
Et avec qui?
Et notre vie, à quoi allait-elle ressembler?

Chaque pensée me tirait un peu plus vers le fond. J’étais si fatiguée. J’ai fermé les yeux. Je rêvais qu’il arrivait. On entendait le bruit d’un moteur dans la cour, il s’asseyait prés de moi, il m’embrassait et posait un doigt sur ma bouche pour faire une surprise aux filles. Je peux encore sentir sa douceur dans mon cou, sa voix, sa chaleur, l’odeur de sa peau, tout est là.
Tout est là…
Il suffit d’y penser.

Au bout de combien de temps oublie-t-on l’odeur de celui qui vous a aimée? Et quand cesse-t-on d’aimer à son tour?
Qu’on me tende un sablier.

La dernière fois que nous nous sommes enlacés, c’était moi qui l’embrassais. C’était dans l’ascenseur de la rue Flandre.
Il s’est laissé faire.

Pourquoi? Pourquoi s’était-il laissé embrasser par une femme qu’il n’aimait plus? Pourquoi m’avoir donné sa bouche? Et ses bras?
Ça n’a pas de sens.”

- Je l’aimais - Anna Gavalda -

- - -

“Tu verras Jeannot, un jour le printemps reviendra.”

Jacques

” Ne te fie pas aux coincidences, dans nos vies, il n’y en a jamais”

Boris

“Jeannot, fais moi cette promesse: jure-moi qu’un jour tu aimeras. J’aurais tant voulu pouvoir le faire, tant voulu pouvoir aimer. Promets-moi que tu porteras un enfant dans tes bras et que dans le premier regard de vie que tu lui donneras, dans ce regard de père, tu mettras un peu de ma liberté. Alors si tu le fais, il restera quelque chose de moi sur cette foutue terre.”

Samuel

“Alors je me souviens que le mot “Etranger” est une des plus belles promesses du monde, une promesse en couleurs, belle comme la Liberté.”

- Marc Levy -

On pense tous que notre vie sera géniale. Et on se sent un peu lésés quand ce que nous espérons ne se réalise pas. Mais parfois nos espérances nous sous-estiment. Et parfois nos espérances font pâles figures comparées à l'inattendu. Il faut se demander pourquoi on s'accroche à nos espérances... parce que ce qu'on attend nous permet de rester stable, équilibré, tranquille. Ce qu'on attend n'est pas que le commencement. L'inattendu, c'est ce qui change nos vies.

Il est toujours question de lignes.
La ligne d'arrivée à la fin de l'internat.
Attendre en ligne d'être appelé à la table d'opération. Et la ligne la plus importante de toute...
La ligne entre vous et ceux avec lesquels vous travaillez.

Ca n'a pas d'importance d'être trop intime.
De devenir ami. Il faut mettre des limites entre vous et le reste du monde.
Les autres sont bien trop compliqués.
Il est toujours question de ligne. Tracer des lignes dans le sable... et prier très fort que personne ne les franchisse.

À un moment, vous devez prendre une décision. Les frontières ne maintiennent pas les autres à distance. Elles vous enferment. La vie est compliquée, c'est comme ça.
Donc, vous pouvez gâcher votre vie en traçant des lignes. Ou vous pouvez vivre votre vie en les franchissant.

Mais il y a certaines lignes... qui sont beaucoup trop dangereuses à franchir.
Je sais déjà une chose. Si vous êtes prêt à courir le risque, la vue de l'autre côté... est spectaculaire.

Rag your ride - be home

learn to sing alone

to the music

to the music

Rag your arms and shake

on a stone as babe

to the music

to the music

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

dance

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

dance

(I'm gonna dance with somebody)

When you're all alone

We become your home

Where's the music?

Where's the music?

When your love's away

And your feel be trade

Where's the music?

Feel the music!

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

dance

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

dance

dance (6x)

(dance)- dance (9x)

aaaaaahhhhhhh! (dance, dance, dance, dance, dance)

uhhuhuhuhuhuuhuuuuhuhu!

uhhuhuhuhuhuuhuuuuhuhuuuuuuhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Yeah!

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

dance

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

dance

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

dance

I'm fallin' in love with your favorite song

I'm gonna sing it all night long

I'm gonna dance with somebody

dance with somebody

dance

dance

daaaaaaaance !!!

We ain’t got no money
What we gonna do
Well I got 20 things for a poor boy
To green those poor boy blues

Plant some flowers
in an ugly patch of ground
Plant a kiss on your baby
when no one’s around

Plan a picnic;
Go to a park,
look at some stars,
On a walk after dark

See them there apples
On that there apple tree
Climb up there when no ones looking
Give those apples to me

We could go to the library
Get a book on local plants
Then we could learn to eat for free
After we brush off the ants

I hear there’s old people in the park
We can listen to them sing
And when the night comes and they start dancing
Why don’t we just join in

I don’t have a radio
I don’t like to watch TV
But I know this crazy girl makes a crazy music show
And puts it on the Web for free.

Invite some friends to your place
Bring some old books and CDs
Give em away cause we don’t need em anymore
And get some new ones for free

Surf online for some free stuff
Yes people just give things away
Or get together with some friends your size
Trade clothes and gossip all day

We could try to draw a picture
Or make a scrapbook instead
Make a greeting card, it aint hard
To let grandma know you aint dead

60 Fun Things to Do for Little or No Money

Looking for things to do on the weekend or vacation time that won’t set you back a lot of money?

You don’t need to be a millionaire or even slightly well-to-do to enjoy the finer things in life. Consider this list of…

60 Fun Things to Do for Little or No Money:

1. Enjoy a concert in the park - Spring and summer begin free things to do in the park season. Concerts and movies are just the beginning.
2. Go camping - Still one of the cheapest vacations one can take, especially through the US National Parks system.
3. Go for a hike in the woods.
4. Go for a swim - Many lakes and oceans are free for swimmers, others require a small fee. It’s still a good, affordable way to spend a day. Better yet, find yourself a good, old fashioned swimming hole.
5. Go fishing.
6. Have a picnic.
7. Take the kids to the park.
8. Visit a museum -There are lots of free museums and many others take a donation.
9. Work on an arts and craft projects
10. Play board games.
11. Dig for fossils or gems. Find out where to dig in your area.
12. Build sandcastles
13. Have a barbecue.
14. Run through your garden sprinkler.
15. Play a pickup basketball or volleyball game in the park.
16. Visit the library. Take out books, movies, music or take advantage of some of their great programs.
17. Take a free online class.
18. Find a fireworks display.
19. Go canoeing or kayaking.
20. Do some birdwatching.
21. Make a kite and take it for a ride.
22. Go for a bike ride.
23. roller blade.
24. Ride your scooter.
25. Visit the zoo. Most zoos are affordable and if you get a summer zoo pass you can visit as often as you like for one price.
26. Read
27. Sell lemonade
28. Watch a play at a local theater
29. Visit a vineyard - some tours are free while others are affordable.
30. Visit a street fair. Food is cheap, plus craft displays, flea market finds and entertainment abound.
31. Tour a college campus
32. Lounge on a hammock
33. Adopt a pet - Actually adoption fees aren’t as cheap as they used to be but it’s well worth the cost.
34. Tour a fire house or police station
35. Bowling - A night out for the family really doesn’t cost much, especially if you bring your own snacks.
36. Tour a brewery
37. Bake
38. Make a chalk mural in your driveway.
39. Tour a television or radio station
40. Attend a tv show taping
41. Shakespeare in the Park - If your area has it
42. Make a birdhouse
43. Stroll through a public garden
44. Work on your own garden
45. Visit the state or county fair.
46. Join a book club at the library, Borders or Barnes & Noble
47. Browse the flea markets.
48. Find a drive in movie theater in your area.
49. Take advantage of local cultural events.
50. Visit a dairy farm.
51. Visit historic battlefields.
52. Take a day trip to Washington DC where most of the museums are free.
53. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or another place that feeds meals to the homeless.
54. Have a scavenger hunt.
55. Teach yourself a new language using online tutorials and materials from the library.
56. Start a scrapbook and fill it with items found outdoors.
57. Jigsaw puzzles!
58. Make a working volcano
59. Have a campfire in your backyard, roast marshmallow and tell ghost stories.
60. Clean out your house and have a garage sale.

Things to learn before I die

Thanks to Ian for suggesting this on my forum.

1 - Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2 - If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

3 - There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

4 - People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

5 - You should not confuse your career with your life.

6 - Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

7 - Never lick a steak knife.

8 - The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

9 - You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

10 - You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

11 - There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.

12 - The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

13 - A person who is nice to you but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

14 - Your friends love you anyway.

15 - Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

16 - Thought for the day: Men are like fine wine. They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the c*** (not the best) out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

17 - A husband will never get the last word in an argument, due to the fact that anything he says is actually the start of an entirely new argument!

18 - Phrases to live by "Please, Thank you, and YES DEAR!"

19 - I believe in equality and women's lib......but instead of changing postman to post person, how about tackling........menstruation, mental illness, menopause, etc......it seems to me that we are picking only the nice ones to change!

Famous Quotable Quotes


"Insanity is a tool, use it well." - Robert Clark

"Government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you." - Orson Scott Card

"Shut up! Shut up! If I can't hear you it's not illegal!" - Homer Simpson

"I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire

"Outwit, Outplay, Outlast" - Mark Burnett

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong

"Abandon all hope all ye who enter here." - Dante

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." - Spock

"I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer" - Frank Herbert

"Nobody has the truth - truth so true that you know it is true, and know that what you know is bound be right." - Orson Scott Card

"Normal is in the eyes of the beholder." - Whoopi Goldberg

"Never let schooling interfere with your education." - Mark Twain

"I think, therefore I am." - René Descartes

"All who wander are not lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Albert Einstein

"It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. And here's my own concoction:
I also feel like praying that the Gods save me from their followers....namely...the humans." - Oscar Wilde.

"Do not believe in anything simple because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious text books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations, But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it"- Buddha

"A religious war is like children fighting over who has the strongest imaginary friend." - Anon

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." - Oscar Wilde

Fun Things to Do - Bored For times when severely bored

Simple Boredom Fighters Blow bubbles with bubble gum Blow on a beer bottle Blow on a blade of grass Crank up some music Cut out photos and paste them on Popsicle sticks and have a puppet show Eat Eat 6 spoon full of sugar, a soda, and another think that makes you hyper and then you won't be bored anymore, you will end up finding something to do... trust us Experiment with makeup Get a bubble blower and then blow some Get a tootsie pop and see how many licks it takes to get to the center of the tootsie pop Laugh out loud Learn how to fake an accent Make a humorous crank phone call Make an entertaining phone answering-machine message Make up poems or songs about your boredom Nap Play cards Play Dead Play house with yourself Play with marbles Pop zits and blackheads, clean lint out of belly button, q-tips, and find those hidden treasures of the nose Practice your arm pit farting skills (Advanced participants try with your hand cupped on the back of your knee) Pretend that you are not bored Read some comic books See how long you can hold your breath Send a tune with keypad numbers on the phone Sing even if you can't Spin until you're dizzy Stand on your head Stare at the ceiling and try to make something out of the dots Write your name in permanent marker on all your underwear Inside Boredom Fighters Break into a friend's house and clean it Call a wrong number and talk to whoever answers. Catch a fly, then put in a jar and stick in the fridge (this cools their metabolism down), then tie the fly to the end of a thread 15in. and hold the other end of the thread while you watch it fly around (We have tested this and it works - a lot of patience is involved) Chase your best friend round the sofa Dance around your living room naked Doodle or cartoon Dress in something silly and laugh at yourself Fiddle around with a Ouija board Figure out how to get yourself on TV Find an address to your favorite famous person and write them a letter. See if they write you back Flip a coin 500 times to see who wins Get on the radio Give names to your body parts Go shop for a really cool book Go through the English dictionary looking up really long words like discombobulated. Have a carpet picnic Have a staring contest with yourself in the mirror. Kiss your elbow, if you can. Lay a long straight line of masking tape on the floor. Now spin around really fast then try walking on the masking tape. Learn a new word in the dictionary Learn to Juggle Learn to peel a banana with your feet Let a helium balloon float up to your ceiling and throw things at it to pop it Listen to a type of music that you don't normally listen to Listen to really hard music and head bang Listen to some polka music and eat sausages Make a list of the fun things you've already done, then admire how long your list is. Make a trash can a basketball hoop and throw crumpled up paper for baskets Patch some clothing Phone your local government rep and see if you can convince him or her to have lunch with you Plan a journey Play bottle cap hockey...with pens as the sticks and a bottle cap as the puck Play dress-up with all the clothes you have in your closet Pronounce your friends names.backwards Put doll clothes on your cat and play dress up Rent a movie, 2 hours later go back to the same movie store and rent the sequel, 2 hours after that go back and get the third movie Rent some fun movies Roll your change Run around your house as fast as you can and, count how many times you can go without getting tired. Shave your head Sit at your desk with your left arm sticking out until it goes numb Snap your fingers as if suddenly you have a bright idea and see if you get any Take a company that has been getting on your nerves - find out who the person is that you should write complaints too. Write a letter to them with the most trivial or confusing complaint. Ensure you talk in circles so that the letter is well written but extremely confusing Take one hundred dollars out of the bank and spend it all on yourself Throw a huge party for no reason at all Turn on the T.V., put it on mute and make up dialogue Washable crayons are a wonderful invention. Pick a wall and invite friends Watch 101 Dalmatians and see if they really show 101 Dalmatians Watch a foreign film Watch cartoons (preferably funny stupid ones) Write a big list of fun things to do Write a limerick or twelve Write a rant letter to the paper Write out ten things that make you happy - then do one of them You and a friend pick your noses and see who has the biggest boogers Outside Boredom Fighters Bring dog treats to the park and meet 25 new dogs Burn things with a magnifying glass Buy the craziest, most comfortable slippers you can find Climb a tree Find some crutches and pretend to have a broken leg Flip some coins into a fountain Flirt with people Go dumpster diving and see what you can find Go out and get your motorcycle license Go to a candy store and buy a ton of candy. Eat all day Go to the 24 hr grocery at 1 a.m. Have an egg toss Make a rope swing Make faces at strangers to make them laugh Play Frisbee Play knicky knicky nine doors leaving freaky anonymous notes behind Put bunny ears on people you don't know (the two finger kind you know, like a peace sign) Skip rope Take your TV outside Try to stay up for 24 hours Volunteer for a charity Walk around a public park, every so often pretend to trip on a 'invisible' wire. Watch kids play - and then join in

THE VERONICAS LYRICS


"Untouched"

I go ooh ooh, you go ah ah
lalalalalalalala

I can't lie lie lie lie lie lie
I wanna wanna wanna get get get what I want
Don't stop
Give me give me give me what you got got
Cause I can't wait wait wait any more more more more
Don't even talk about the consequence
Cause right now you're the only thing that's making any sense to me
And I don't give a damn what they say, what they think think
Cause you're the only one who's on my mind
I'll never ever let you leave me
I'll try to stop time for ever, never wanna hear you say goodbye (bye bye bye)

I feel so untouched
And I want you so much
That I just can't resist you
It's not enough to say that I miss you
I feel so untouched right now
Need you so much somehow
I can't forget you
Been going crazy from the moment I met you

Untouched
And I need you so much

See you, breathe you, I want to be you
Alalalala alalalala
You can take take take take take time time
To live live the way you gotta gotta live your life
Give me give me give me all of you you
Don't be scared
I'll see you through the loneliness of one more more more
Don't even think about what's right or wrong, wrong or right
'Cause in the end it's only you and me and no one else is gonna be around
To answer all the questions left behind
And you and I are meant to be so even if the world falls down today
You've still got me to hold you up up
And I will never let you down (down)

I feel so untouched
And I want you so much
That I just can't resist you
It's not enough to say that I miss you
I feel so untouched right now
Need you so much somehow
I can't forget you
Been going crazy from the moment I met you

Untouched, untouched, untouched, untouched, untouched
Alalalala alalalala
Untouched
Alalalala alalalala

I feel so untouched
And I want you so much
That I just can't resist you
It's not enough to say that I miss you
I feel so untouched right now
Need you so much somehow
I can't forget you
Been going crazy from the moment I met you

I feel so untouched
And I want you so much
That I just can't resist you
It's not enough to say that I miss you
I feel so untouched right now
Need you so much somehow
I can't forget you
Been going crazy from the moment I met you

Untouched, untouched, untouched

Inspirational Quotes
Print these out and stick them up on your bedroom wall.

"Mistakes, obviously, show us what needs improving. Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on?" - Peter McWilliams

"Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me." - Carol Burnett

"Change your thoughts and you change your world." - Norman Vincent Peale

"I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time. " - Anna Freud

"Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy" - Norman Vincent Peale

"Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent." - Sophia Loren

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared." - Eddie Rickenbacker

"Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration." - Thomas A. Edison

"Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient." - Eugene S. Wilson

"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it." - Theodore Roosevelt

"I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. " - Christopher Reeve

"Victory belongs to the most persevering." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay

Little known 'Did you know' facts

Weird facts that you would rather not know....

Did you know?...It is impossible to lick your elbow.

Did you know?...Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

Did you know?...Coca-Cola was originally contain cocaine.

Did you know?...23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.

Did you know?...In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

Did you know?...If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles?

Did you know?...Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

Did you know?...More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

Did you know?...The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.

Did you know?...The Eiffel Tower in Paris weighs over 1000 elephants.

Did you know?...there are actually two types of humans? The slightly larger and less intelligent kind, males, have protruding external genitalia called "penises" that are used for making important life decisions. Meanwhile, females have these nifty things called "vaginas" that no one understands yet, especially males

Did you know?... In 1879, a mail service in Belgium employed 37 cats to carry bundles of letters to villages around the town of Liege, this experiment was shorted-lived as the cats proved thoroughly undisciplined. Just plain weird...even by my standards.

Did you know?... The greatest recorded number of children that have been born by one mother is 69!The poor lass gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and a measly 4 sets of quadruplets. Even in the days before IVF!

Did you know?...Males, on average, think about sex every 7 seconds.

Did you know?... Every 5 seconds a computer gets infected with a virus

Did you know?...13% of Americans actually believe that some parts of the moon are made of cheese...yummy

Did you know?...The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

Did you know?...If you could count the number of times a cricket chirps in one minute, divide by 2, add 9 and divide by 2 again, you would have the correct temperature in celcius degrees... How do they know that?

Did you know?...Fish that live more than 800 meters below the ocean surface don't have eyes. Eeewwwwww

Did you know?...Hydrogen is an explosive gas. Oxygen supports combustion. Yet when these are combined it is water which is used to put out fires.

Did you know?...Walt Disney's autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo he was also impotent. Bwahahahahahaha!

Did you know?...The Dutch town of Leeuwarden can be spelled 225 different ways-

1. Leeuwaarden
2. Leewaarden
3. Leewarden
4. Leuwarden
5. leuwaardenn
6. Leuuwarrden......
224. Bradford

Did you know?...Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave. Go on, try it then

Did you know?...The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.

Did you know?...Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

Did you know?...Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history.

Spades - King David

Hearts - Charlemagne

Clubs - Alexander the Great

Diamonds - Julius Caesar

Did you know?...In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

Did you know?...If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds recieved in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Did you know?...Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

Did you know?...The average chocolate bar has 8 insects' legs in it.

Did you know?...101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die during the movie.

Did you know?...To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

Did you know?...You're most likely to win the UK's Lotto if you buy your ticket on a saturday rather than a wednesday. Because you are more likey to die before the number draw than win.

Did you know?... In York, it is perfectly legal to shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow (except on Sundays)

Did you know?...On average, 90% Dutch teenagers can speak fluent English whereas only 80% American teenagers can speak fluent English. (Just incase you didnt know, English is not the first langauge of The Netherlands.)

Did you know?...In Texas, a recently passed anticrime law requires criminals to give their victims 24 hours notice, either orally or in writing, and to explain the nature of the crime to be committed. Only in Texas....

Did you know?...No piece of square dry paper can be folded in half more than 7 times

Did you know?...The people who make school kitchens, also make electric chairs.

Did you know?... The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.

Did you know?..."Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

Did you know?...The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.

Did you know?...1 in every 200 people are a psychopath and they look just like everyone else......

Did you know?...An average human loses about 200 head hairs per day.

Did you know?... All the chemicals in the human body have a combined value of approximately £4.00 (6.25 Euro)

Did you know?...In Alaska, it is legal to shoot bears. However, waking a sleeping bear for the purpose of taking a photograph is prohibited.

Did you know?...You are most likely to be murdered or raped by a family member or a close friend (98% of all murders). Whereas being murdered by a derranged lunatic down a dark alley is very rare.

Did you know?...Bill "Four eyes" Gates has enough money to buy every house in Alaska, greedy bastard!

Did you know?...Mexico City sinks about 10 inches a year

Did you know?...It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open? Next time you feel a sneeze coming try it!

Did you know?...The expression "to get fired" comes from long, long ago. When clans wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down.

Did you know?...The word 'corr' actually means 'odd' in Irish.

Did you know?...Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula". In English this means 'The City of Angels'

Did you know?...In France, a five year old child can buy an alcholic drink in a bar

Amazing Armadillos

Check out these facts that makes armadillos simply amazing!



Armadillos have four babies at a time, always all the same sex. They are perfect quadruplets, the fertilized cell split into quarters, resulting in four identical armadillos.

Armadillos are crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.

Armadillos get an average of 18.5 hours of sleep per day (just like me).

Armadillos can walk underwater.

Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.

If disconnected, the sex organs of an armadillo are still active.

Most armadillos seen dead on the road did not get hit by the wheels.

When an armadillo is frightened it jumps straight into the air.

Armadillos can be housebroken.

Armadillos have a very low need of oxygen. Even when burrowing they can stop breathing for 6 minutes by storing air in the trachea and wide bronchus.

The regulation of the body temperature of about 32°C is a big problem. Armadillos don't survive long periods of frost, except the fairy armadillo that lives in Patagonia and hibernates.

The three-banded armadillo hardly digs a burrow; it protects itself by rolling up like a hedgehog. The only opening is covered by the shields of the head and the tail, so that even a dog can't open this ball. As the body fat would disturb while rolling up, the fat moved to the dorsal part of the animal during evolution.

No armadillos have ever been reported to have been abducted by aliens.

The name "Armadillo" comes from the Spanish explorers word meaning "Little Armored Thing"

There are over 50 million armadillos in the US

Useless Geographical Info

Learn something new today....

ALASKA

More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.

AMAZON

The Amazon rain forest produces more than 20% the world's oxygen supply. The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that, more than one hundred miles at sea, off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.

ANTARCTICA

Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. Ninety percent of the world's ice covers Antarctica. This ice also represents seventy percent of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, however, Antarctica is essentially a desert. The average yearly total precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4% of it, i.e.), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.

BRAZIL

Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.

CANADA

Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined. Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."

CHICAGO

Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.

DETROIT

Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M - 1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

DAMASCUS, SYRIA

Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents.

LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula--and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: L.A.

NEW YORK CITY

The term "The Big Apple" was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930s who used the slang expression "apple" for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time- The Big Apple.

There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jewish people in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.

AFRICA

Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28.

Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38.

OHIO

There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio; every one is human made.

PITCAIRN ISLAND

The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq. miles/4.53 sq. km.

ROME

The first city to reach a population of one million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C.

There is a city called Rome on every continent.

SIBERIA

Siberia contains more than 25% of the world's forests.

S.M.O.M.

The actual smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M.O.M.). It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts, and as of 2001, has a population of eighty, twenty less people than the Vatican. It is a sovereign entity under international law, just as the Vatican is.

SAHARA DESERT

In the Sahara Desert, there is a town named Tidikelt, which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years.

SPAIN

Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.'

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pig's Eye after a man named Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant who set up the first business there.v TEXAS

The deepest hole ever made in the world is in Texas. It is as deep as 20 Empire State Buildings but only 3 inches wide.

UNITED STATES

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one-mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips and in times of war or other emergencies.

WATERFALLS

The water of Angel Falls (the World's highest) in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet (979 meters). They are 15 times higher than Niagara Falls.

DOWNLOAD FREE TRIAL

Thinking of 'Fun things to do' that all your friends or family will enjoy isn't easy. Your suggestion for something to do when you are bored may be completely different to someone elses idea of fun. Perhaps they are not in the mood to do that activity, visit that place, or don't want to do anything that requires effort. Sometimes the 'fun things to do' need to be done on a budget. There are times when the activities need to be indoors because of the weather. On other occasions it could be a holiday idea for a weekend break or the main family holiday.

Indoors	Outdoors	Daily Distractions	Holidays	Computer Services
Cinema Ice skating Dine at a Celebrity Chefs Restaurant Ten pin Bowling Walk through a shark tunnel Ghost walks, Haunted houses & castles, dungeons, Witches Murder mystery weekend Night at the Theatre Circus or Circus training Swim in a Fun pool Centre Parcs Music Concerts and Festivals Visit the National Exhibition Centre Hands on Museums / Art Galleries Football Club Tours Planetarium Beer Festivals & Brewery tours See how it's made - Factory tour Take part in a TV Show Spiritual retreat Health Club Cathedrals Educational Courses Visit a Night Club Visit a major Shopping centres Painting Holiday Find and Meet an old friend Friends Reunited Penpals Military Reunited Planet Reunited Service Pals Chat on-line using: AOL MSN Yahoo ICQ Google Talk Merseyside Business Directory Get a FREE Business listing www.MSBD.com	Safari Parks Hot Air Balloon flights Get Lost in a Maze Dry Ski Slopes Theme parks Visit Harry Potter film locations Go underground Play Golf / Driving Ranges Learn to Sail Boat trips / River Cruises Zoo keeper for a day Scenic Steam Railway trips Historic Buildings & Monuments Paintball shooting / Laser Tag Visit a Children's farm Horse riding Holiday A day at the Races Go Karting Stock Car Racing Motor racing Visit a Skateboard / BMX Park Cycle Tour / Mountain Biking Help build a cycle track Camping & Caravanning Walk up a mountain Best surfing beaches Wildlife watch Parks & Gardens Bus Trips and Coach tours Sightseeing Find Accommodation Hotels, B&B, Guest Houses, Inns	Fun and Games Crossword Sudoku Daily Chess Puzzle Darwin Awards Daily Horoscopes Word Search Cryptogram Daily Anagram Riddler Tetris Videos Mazes Newspapers Select Newspaper Express Mail Mirror Record Star Guardian Independent Scotsman Sun Telegraph Times Sunday Mirror People News of the World Sunday Times News & Results BBC Reuters BBC Sports news Reuters Sports news UEFA Sporting Life Find a new Job Job search	Weekend Breaks Weekend Breaks Hen and Stag nights Ski weekend Romantic Weekend Break Bargain Holidays SkyScanner Easy Jet RyanAir LastMinute.com Opodo First Choice Deck Chair EBookers Bargain Holidays Cheap Flights Travel City Direct Hotel Shop Need a bit of consideration ? Disabled Saga - over 50's Requiring a bit more effort Independent Travelers Camping UK Balloon Flights Discovery Travelocity Lonely Planet Specialist holidays Honeymoon Naturism Pet Holidays Santa Trips Ever thought about ? Exchange homes for a holiday Conservation Holidays Transport Bus & Coach Car Share Ferry & Tunnel London Transport Pickup services Public Transport Route Planner Street Maps Traffic news Passport Office	Hard Disk Drives External Hard Drives CD / DVD USB Pen Drive Flash Memory Cards Photo Recovery Recover deleted files Recover lost or deleted data from damaged or unreadable Computers, Disk drives, Camera cards and electronic devices

Fun Things to Do -Travel

Jump on your bed in the hotel room Collect some sea shells from the seashore Drive up and down Main Street blaring your favorite tunes Escape to a Bed & Breakfast Extend your vacation by staying at friends and hostels Figure how to get your butt to Disneyland in the next six months Find a peaceful piece of countryside and stay there for a while Find some sand dunes to run down Get a hovercraft ride Get a ride in a Hummer Get a ride on a paddle wheeler Get tickets to a random country like Latvia or Lithuania . Go to that country and find fun Go beachcombing for driftwood and cool stones Go explore caves for an entire holiday Go for a glass-bottom boat ride Go prospecting for gold Go scuba diving in a place where God wanted to show the world just how beautiful it can be Go see the local big sporting events Go stream fishing Go to a cricket match in a country where cricket matters Go to Hawaii Go to Mardi Gras Go to the Grand Canyon Go to the Rocky Mountains Go to your nearest national park Great Wall of China Hike to a waterfall If you're a passenger in a car, put your hands/feet/head out the window on a long deserted stretch of road where you can drive fast Just go out the door and start meandering Meet a foreign person and get them to teach you a silly nonsense phrase : e.g.: "My toes are clean" " I wish I lived in Mesopotamia " "My what glorious nail polish!" Next time you go to the airport, take a limo Play a game of " I Spy with My Little Eye" or "Red Light, Green Light." Play in the waves Rent a 15 person van, load it up with people and go to your nearest mechanical bull Rent a houseboat for a week Ride the Orient Express Sailing See the Olympics Shower in a waterfall Snorkel Spend a night in a themed hotel room with friends Stay in a hostel Stonehenge Swim with dolphins Take a jeep tour in Arizona Take a month of vacation in another country-rent a car there, drive each day a little, and sleep in the car in a new place each night. Take a ride on a dinner train Take a train ride Take a week vacation in your own home town Take a weekend trip by yourself Take an orienteering class Take an RV trip Take the highway and drive as far as you can. See where you end up Try Alaska or any other northern location during summer solstice Urban exploration - explore your own area Visit New Orleans at least once Whale watching When on a road trip, post your cell phone number in visible, bold numbers in your rear window. See who calls. When stopped at a red light in your car when the light turns green everyone jump out of the vehicle, run around it, jump back in and take off Wherever you go make sure you draw up a pirate map to show to everyone along the way. Write letters on airplane barf bags and mail them from your vacation destination. Fun Things to Do in Winter "Paint" a snowman using Windex bottles filled with water colored with food coloring. Bobsledding Build a skating rink Build an igloo Build snow furniture Catch a snowflake with your tongue Cross country ski to work during the next big snowstorm Curling (don't knock it till you try it) Dog sledding Go for a sleigh ride Go Ice camping Go tobogganing Have a barbecue in the middle of a snowstorm Have a fire and roast marshmallows Have a winter hoedown Hold a tops Olympics(you know like those spinning top things) but do it on ice Ice blocking (slide down a hill sitting on a block of ice) Ice-skate on a lake If you're going to wear a toque, might as well be a toque with ears (not earflaps... ears!) Join in a polar bear swim Lie on your back in a snowy field Make a snow fort Make a snowman Make snow angels Slather on suntan lotion in the middle of winter. The scent will win you friends and admirers Snow animals or statues Snow biking Snow cave Snow skiing Snow tubing Snowboarding Snowmobiling Snowshoeing Take your pooch to the park or open field after a fresh snowfall. Proceed to make people and doggie snow angels. Watch the snow fall Winter luge Yodel, especially on the chair lift Fun Things to Do at Work Arm people with water pistols, Nerf balls or paper wads to assail anyone who is blocking creativity Ask a work mate if they need a hand, then give them a photo copy of your hand At the office, make your garbage can into your in-tray Bring a different tablecloth and flowers for the lunch room everyday for a week Call everyone bob or Richard, even the females. Change the speed dial settings on a co workers phone Change your accent every three minutes. Crank up some music Create a hall of fame photo gallery Create an official lighten up room with books, posters, videos, etc. Create the worst case scenario for your project - feel free to exaggerate Decorate your office with fun posters - add a humor section to the bulletin board Dress up like a flight attendant and stand in an elevator, when people get on hand them peanuts and tell them to enjoy their flight. Give crazy awards fior the sexiest phone voice, biggest blunder, Most likely to OD on coffee, Largest toe contest or whatever Give your boss a "wet willy" and blame it on someone else standing there. Grab the whole team when you need to pick someone up at the airport Have a contest to see who gets to paint a mural on the elevator doors Have a slipper day.everyone wear slippers and have prizes for the funniest, the cutest, the most worn out etc. Have fun with a photocopier or scanner Have swivel chair races at work Hold an awards ceremony during a particular stressful period Hold meetings out of the board room - at a park, picnic site or a bowling alley Mail an anonymous joke-of-the-week to someone on a regular basis Move your desk into the elevator and ask anyone that comes in if they have an appointment. Penalize people who talk about work when they are not at work Play Nerf Frisbee in the office Pray to the gods of the water cooler and leave various sacrifices. Proudly show everyone your calculator and hand out cigars. Tell them your computer just had a baby. Put a sign on your photocopier that says "New Copier - Voice activated - please speak your command" Watch the fun Send odd emails from other peoples computers - Pretend you are them Show home slides or videos in the office during lunch hour Use a banana or any other vegetable as a pointer for your next presentation Water the fake office plants. Wear your thong over your trousers and act surprised when anyone notices When people send you unsolicited faxes - Send them back to them about 600 times

Fun Things to Do -Special Days Welcome to the Fun Things to do List. There are a number of categories on the Fun Things to do list that we have massaged together. We will do our best to direct you to the Fun Thing to do that you would most like to be involved in. If you do not find some sort of inspiration here go to the 500 Fun Things to do list.

American Independence Day At Christmas time plan an anonymous gift exchange where everyone pulls a name out of a hat, but only have your name on every piece of paper Be out of town for your birthday Canada Day Celebrate Australia Day Celebrate Christmas in a non winter climate Chinese New Year Christmas, Birthday and other Special days Do as many activities as you can on the day of Summer Solstice Go close to the north pole for Summer Solstice to see 24 hours of daylight Go for a fall foliage driving tour Make up your own special day to celebrate Mexican Independence Day On those Special days.Take a kid who is not planning or cannot go.to a celebration of your national holiday.talk to them about the day and what it means and why people celebrate...there is nothing like seeing life through the eyes of a child! Pick and carve pumpkins Pile leaves into a huge pile and jump into them See a lunar eclipse See a solar eclipse St. Patrick's Day Stay home on New Year's Eve to be with friends and family Ukrainian New Year Watch a meteor shower Watch a rocket launch Fun Things to Do -Sports Dirt bike Go goofy bowling. Each frame try bowling with a different twist; wrong-handed, between your legs backwards, between someone else's legs, on one foot, holding a balloon between your legs, from on your knees, etc Gymnastics Handball Hang on your local monkey bars Have a picnic on top of a mountain Ice hockey, Field hockey, Street hockey In-line skating on the freshest piece of pavement in the area Jet ski Lawn bowling Make a rope swing Organize a flag football game Paddleball Play a pick up rugby game in the rain, in the mud and in bare feet Play broom ball. Play cricket Play hackeysack Play indoor golf Play ringette Play table tennis Racquetball Rowing Skateboarding Skeet shooting Soccer Softball Squash Surfing Swing on a swing Take a moonlight bike ride, cross-country ski or walk Tennis Volleyball Wakeboarding Water polo Water-skiing Weightlifting Windsurfing Yachting Fun Things to Do -Summer Bathe in the ocean Build a sandcastle Bury someone in the sand Buy a movie projector and charge admission to view the movie that is projected on the side of your house at night. (set up chairs, couches, snack bar etc.) Celebrate on the beach with an ice cream fight - then dive in with your clothes on Cook your breakfast on an outdoor fire Find a field of wild flowers and sell bouquets for 5 bucks each Float down a slow river on a tube Get a random summer job with a friend Go boating Go camping on the beach Go far a tram ride Go on a rock find Go paddle boating Go swimming with all your clothes on Go to a classical concert outdoors Go to an afternoon baseball game Go to an outdoor café Go to the beach with sandwiches and a fantastic friend Go to your nearest trampoline and bounce Have a classic movie night outside with friends Learn a new water dive Learn to throw a boomerang Look for sand dollars and shells at a beach On a super hot day, get a kiddy wading pool - fill it up - then sit in it for most of the afternoon Play backgammon outdoors somewhere Play croquet with party beverages Play some children's games Put up a basketball hoop Ride a bike off a dock right into the lake! Ride every ride at the carnival Set up the sprinkler Sign up for a summer camp Sleep on your roof Start a herb garden Summer snowball fight (if you have an indoor ice arena close by, there should always be a big pile of snow at the side of the building - just take a couple of coolers and fill them up with snow, then go to the beach when it's 90 degrees and have a snowball fight) Swim at the pool Swim in a lake or a river That old favorite - badminton Watch fireflies light their bums up Yee-ha - take a hayride

Fun Things to Do Spontaneous

Fill your tank with gas - drive till it's half gone and come back Go for a car ride and ask people what direction you should travel and see where it takes you Go to the Library cookbook section and randomly pick out a book and set out to make recipe number 33 no matter what it is. (Okay if it's something repulsive pick #35) Go to the Yellow Pages and pick the seventh restaurant - eat the seventh entree and order the seventh dessert Kiss someone you really like who doesn't know it yet Let your waiter order for you at the restaurant Randomly choose a hairstylist from your yellow pages, go to them and give them COMPLETE freedom to do whatever they want to you. Send anonymous secret admirer notes to someone Surprise a friend that you haven't seen in along time Take a bus to a small town just to spend a few hours exploring Wake up in the morning take a picnic lunch get in your car and see where the day takes you Write in your journal and just write down whatever comes out of your head

Fun Things to Do - Party Themes

Food Parties

Bar B-Q
Brunch Party
Chocolate Party
Chocolate pot luck
Clambake/seafood Party
Cocktail reception
Fondue party
Lobster party
Mexican, Greek, French, or any other culture
Pizza Party
Potluck from around the world
Potluck Pasta
The old reliable dinner party
Wine and Cheese
Wine Tasting


Dress Up or Theme Parties

50's, 60's, 70's or 80's Party
Alien Party
Animal Party - dress up like your favorite
Birthday Suit Party (Only for the truly adventurous)
Black light party
Business active wear party (dress up clothes that you can play sports and games with)
Costume party
Cowboys and cowgirls
Derby Party
Disco Party
Disney party
Dracula Party
Dress like Royalty
Elvis
Every body in a red dress or any other color (Men and Women)
Glow in the dark
Grease theme party
Harry Potter
Hat party
Hollywood star look alike
Luau Party
Mad Hatters Tea Party
Mardi Gras
Mash
Orange Party or any other color (Everybody dresses according to that color)
Pajama Party
Pirate Party
St. Patrick's Day
Super hero
Toga
Trailer Trash Party
Wig Party

Other Party Ideas

• Backyard Party
• Beach Party
• Block Party
• Camp out in the backyard
• Card Tournament
• Casino Night
• Christmas in July
• Digital Photo Party (everybody brings a camera and make up photo assignments)
• Dog Party - Bring your dog over (make sure every dog has a name tag)
• Get a bunch of people together have a parade down your block
• Have a party for no reason
• Karaoke
• Make your own party(upon arrival guests form teams and are sent out to buy, borrow or create a party component like decorations, snacks, beverages, activities, entertainment or favors.)
• Makeover
• Olympics
• Pet birthday party
• Pool Party
• Rooftop Party
• Salsa Night (Eat salsa, play salsa music and dance salsa)
• Scavenger Hunt
• Superbowl
• Throw a party at someone else's house

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Things to Celebrate

Parties are really just some sort of celebration. Most of us remember to celebrate the big things but what about the little things? So often we take for granted the things that are around us everyday until something happens and they are gone. Why not have a little party and celebrate any or all of the following?

• Anniversary
• Birthdays
• Breathing
• Family
• Finally getting some after you haven't had any in a really long time
• Food
• Friends
• Getting out of Debt
• Getting rid of something negative in your life
• Graduation
• Having a Baby
• Having a car
• Health
• Landing a big customer
• Laughing
• Lovers
• New Job
• Paying the mortgage
• Seeing a friend that you haven't seen in a long time
• Having shelter
• Signing a business deal
• Walking

Fun Things to Do at Home

Build a tree house "Borrow" an ugly ornament from your neighbor's yard - see how long it takes them to notice Buiild a home for you gerbil or small pet Clean the yard with that awful sweater your aunt gave you for Christmas. Dress up on a Saturday and go to Open Houses and act like you have the money to buy the place. Fabulous for decorating ideas too. Bonus points in a wealthy neighborhood Get all the grandchildren to perform a skit at a family gathering Get some pink flamingos for your lawn Have a back yard talent show Host a yard sale Make a slip and slide in your back yard Make an entertaining phone answering-machine message Make the phone solicitors hang up on you Paint your hardwood floors like a gym floor Plant some tulips or any kind of plants Put a pond in your yard - with fish Put a rock-climbing wall in your house Put a water slide out your bed room window Put strings of lights on your houseplants. Set up the tent in the backyard Sing in the shower with all your might Throw a party Tie ribbons to anything that doesn't move. Use window markers and draw rainbows on your windows. Wash the Dog

Fun Things to Do in Public

Bring a rope and a Cowboy hat to a local park, find some geese and have yourself a fun time trying to roping some geese. Do a fake fall - falling down is funny Dress up really weird and walk around the block waving to people you have never seen Fill a condom up with water and leave it on a busy side walk. Observe the results. Freely distribute mini bottles of blowing bubbles in crowded public places Go into the adult section of a video store with a friend and comment loudly on the titles you have seen and the how great the actors were. Go to the library and loudly ask where the erotica section is and how many books you can check out at once Have your caricature done Order a pizza while you're at the beach Keep a squirt gun in your vehicle and have it loaded at all times Place a Whoopee Cushion on someone's chair just as they are sitting down Play flash light tag in a crowded place at night Print up a bunch of "lost pet" signs, instead make signs for a missing grilled cheese sandwich. Tape them up in lots of public places, and make sure people see you doing it. Be sure to look very sad. Put on a business suit and walk around a toy store playing with the toys really enthusiastically. Sit in a large cardboard box on the side of the road with a sign that says, "Why lie? I need a BEER!!" Skip to the grocery store from your car, or ride in the buggy back Take you pants off and try and give them to someone Walk down a busy street and then freeze for no reason When the money comes out of the ATM, scream, " I Won! I Won! Third time this week!" At the Mall Climb into a window display and pose Do the Peewee Herman Dance on a table in a food court Go into a fitting room and yell really loud, "Hey! We're out of toilet paper in here!" Go into a store all dressed up with some friends and give the appearance you are a movie star (see how many people you can convince - have some bodyguards) Go to the make-up section of stores in malls and give yourself a new look Go shopping wearing flippers and swim goggles then go scuba diving in the water fountain for change Have a sumo wrestling match in the middle of a mall Hide in the clothes racks, and when people walk by, or browse at the racks, change your voice and say "buy me", "pick me" or something of that sort Hum the "Mission I mpossible" theme loudly in a retail store Keep a mini water gun with you when you go to the mall. I nconspicuously shoot people as they walk by and watch for their reactions On a cold day get a big blanket and walk around an outdoor mall saying to different people " I 'm warmer than you!" Play the keyboard at the organ store Put on a white smock and find a ruler and a clipboard. Spend the afternoon asking strangers to let you measure parts of them Stick a price tag on yourself and sit on a shelf

Fun Things to Do Inside

Board games by a toasty fire Build a mini weather station at home Build a model car Build a time capsule Buy a tabloid Crank up the music and dance in your pajamas Do crossword puzzles Either take lessons or hire a belly dancer for your next party Get a blanket or sheet, and go somewhere you probably won't hurt yourself if you fall. Then have your friend hold one end of the sheet and start spinning so the blanket twists around you, then get your friend to pull his end of the blanket really hard and you should spin around till u run out of sheet. Go to disco night at your local bowling alley Have a carpet picnic Have a dinner that is focused around laughter Have a limbo contest Invent a new dance Have a scary movie marathon Listen to classical music, lights off, lying on the floor, and take turns saying what it sounds like Jigsaw puzzle Nothing beats a Bollywood movie OrigamiPlay Cluedo Play foosball Play video games Scrabble Start a pillow fight Tell scary stories to each other Washable crayons are a wonderful invention. Pick a wall and invite friends

Fun Things to Do - Places to Go

B- I -N-G-O and bingo was the game-o Check out a rock concert Check out the nearest waterslide Garage sale and see who can get the best deal for a dollar Get your tea leaves read Go see a first-class pyrotechnics show Go to a big toy store and take 5 minutes to grab ANYTH I NG you see or anything you like and see what you end up with Disco music night and dance the night away Fashion show Fire hall and see if they will let you slide down the pole A lecture or panel discussion Afternoon baseball game or a sport that you have never seen before An amusement park dressed in costume Art museum An auction and buy something Improv Show Local children's sporting events and cheer loudly The beach with sandwiches The flea market The local fish jail An observatory on a star-filled night The symphony Go watch a lacrosse game Go-carting Hang out at the local roller rink Have dinner at your local murder mystery theater Karaoke Ride your nearest roller coaster Spend the day at a fair and street market. The library The Movies Tour a TV studio or any big manufacturing company Tourist in your own town Visit a beekeeper Visit a farm Visit a numerologist Visit a palm reader Visit your closest Aboriginal arts display Visit your local science center Voice your opinion at a city council meeting

Fun Things to Do with Friends Buy a kiddy pool for your backyard and invite everyone over for a pool party Kidnap some friends/family and go out for breakfast in your pajamas Laser tag Make friends with a cop Play word games in drinking establishments. See how many people you can get in on the story Share a book by reading out loud to one another Sneak your friends into a drive-in movie Take one hundred dollars each out of the bank and spend on each other Taking digital pictures of your friends and adding funny captions to them Have an armpit fart contest with your friends Talk among friends about your favorite childhood injuries Write a story with a friend, doing a chapter each, see how it turns out after a certain amount of time Get your freind's camera and take lots of pictures of people they don't know (Include a moon shot or two) Guys Bring some friends and some life jackets - go out in two canoes on a lake and try to sink each other's canoe Cigar Party Drink your favorite beverage and play billiards Fishing Go watch some of those "dancers" Have an Olympics outside with your friends and see who wins. Have the guys over for beer and pizza Play hooky from work Replace the meat in your friend's sandwich with cardboard Stay up all night playing risk When your friends go to sleep put mystery things on them. Girls Carry a wild handbag (wild colors, prints, fabrics, or shape) Get a group of fun-loving adventurous girlfriends together and get your body pierced Get a makeover Stay up all night playing risk Get someone to paint your toenails Have a chick flick sleepover party Have a scavenger hunt downtown (in bars, malls, buildings, restaurants, movie theaters) Put on some music and lip sync Save up money and go with a friend on an all out pamper day Try fake eyelashes and/or fake nails. Wear a wig in the most unpredictable circumstance Wear loud hats Tune Up Make an audio tape letter and send to a friend Use humor to cheer up a sick friend Visit someone you haven't seen in a long time Write a long letter to an old friend Write a short letter to a new friend Write five postcards to friends even if you are not on vacation

Fun Things to Do for Free

Believe in magic
Do your own thing all day
Dream the afternoon away on a riverbank
Enjoy a memory from the past
Ever try bird watching - what about bird listening?
Fall asleep on the lawn
Get up early to watch the sunrise
Have a paper airplane distance contest
Have a picnic with some squirrels
Hold a piece of Butterfly bush and let an Admiral land on your hand.
Listen to the language of the frogs or locusts
Make a house out of card board boxes
Take a ten-minute walk
Next time you see a rainbow, stop and really admire it
Play jacks or pickup sticks
Positive daydreaming

Fun Things to Do with Food & Drink

Bake a cake, and eat the whole thing
Bake something for your neighbors
Buy your favorite ice cream and some plastic spoons and it at the park.
Change sandwich meat with a friend at lunchtime
Chuck random amounts of ingredients like sugar and eggs, into a bowl, mix it all up, cook it, then see what it tastes like you never know it could be really nice!
Use garnishes when cooking
Cook something you have never cooked before
Cut potatoes into stencils and blot out designs with ink
Cut the crusts off of your sandwiches.
Decorate a cake with "Happy Tuesday" ( or any other day of the week on it!)
Decorate an outrageous cake
Decorate your food then eat it, eg. a smiley face sandwich made from chocolate spread, silver balls, sprinkles, etc.
Eat a fruit you have never tried before
Eat a huge piece of watermelon then have a watermelon spitting contest
Eat exotic foods
Enter a grape stomping contest
Get a large group of people and throw tomatoes at a target( people it always fun)
Go bowling in the grocery store with pineapples as bowling pins and cantaloupe for bowling balls.
Go for drinks at one place, appetizers in another, main course at another, dessert, than drinks again (of course)
Go to "The Chocolate Buffet"
Go to a pinball arcade and eat hot dogs
Go to the grocery store and buy one of every fruit
Have a cabbage kicking contest
Have a picnic with checkered tablecloth and fine wine and yummy cheese
Have dinner with the old people you know
Leave an outrageous tip for your food server
Leave copious amounts of jujubes with your tip at an upscale dining establishment
Make a sandwich with everything in your fridge
Make Chocolate Chip Pancakes
Make food sculptures.
Make French toast two inches thick
Make gingerbread men and decorate them so they look dangerous
Make home made ice cream
Make margaritas and hang out on the deck
Make pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse.
Make traditional food the wrong color like Shepard's pie with blue mashed potatoes.
Make beer or wine
Make your absolute favorite dish for dinner tonight
Make your own banana split
Make yourself a 'smore', microwave and eat it.
Name all your food creations with the terms "World Famous" and add your name too.
Open a package of chocolate chip s and eat them
Put your fork aside and eat with your fingers especially if it is spaghetti
Raid your kids' dress up clothes box and "dress up" for dinner.....it amazing how much better food tastes when you're a princess or a wizard.
Slurp your spaghetti really loud when you eat it
Start a food fight
Throw popcorn at a theatre
Use a straw to drink everything - extra points for silly straws.
With your hands behind your back eat jello out of a bowl.

Fun Things to Do - Fitness

Bike around your local university campus
Build a fitness program only around fun activities
Buy a mini-trampoline and bounce to some great music
Do a round of speed golf (golfing as fast as you can)
Enter an adventure race
Enter a running race
Enter a 24 hour mountain bike race
Go for a 25 mile bike ride
Go to the playground and play on all the equipment
Have a red dress run
Jog at sunset
Join a health club
Learn to Salsa Dance from someone that makes your heart beat faster
Play catch while sitting on an exercise ball
Ride a bike to work
Run a mile
Try some Jumping Jax (see below)
Train for and enter a triathlon

Family Fun Things to Do

Act out a play with costumes and make up Ask a grandparent about their wedding day or some of their most favorite fun moments Ask each other what your goal in life is Attack a household chore as a team then go out and celebrate as a team Build a fort with pillows from the couch Buy a telescope Collecting all bad news from newspapers and making a ritual campfire to burn them Dig for fossils (Sorry not at the cemetery) Go for a walk together Go help a charity for the day Go to a waterslide Go to the playground Hang a bird feeder Have a bonfire and roast marshmallows Have a lemonade sale Live in a cabin - with no power or water Make up a funky dance with your children Make up some instruments and start a band Make up superhero costumes and characters for everyone Play Twister Research your family tree Take you lawn chairs blankets and junk food to the all night drive in Try to get as many family members together in one place Water Balloon fight

How to Be Positive

by Remez Sasson

People often wonder how to be positive in their thoughts and actions, especially when they are unhappy and unsatisfied, or when life is difficult and tough. They even find it hard to be positive when things go well. Most of them don't know how to be positive and what they need to do. Like every other subject, the know-how of how to be positive can be learned and the skill developed. It is all a matter of attitude and thinking, both of which can be changed.

If we keeping thinking the same thoughts, they will eventually tend to manifest in our world. This means that if we desire good results we have to be careful of what we think. We have to stay and think positive.

Begin by becoming aware of your thoughts, and exchanging your negative thoughts with positive ones. Substitute negativity for being positive, thoughts about poverty with thoughts about wealth, ignorance with understanding, disharmony with harmony and lack of freedom with freedom. Start saying, "I can", "I am able" and "it is possible".

It is our mind that creates the kind of life we live. If we think positively we will transform our life accordingly. Everything starts from within, from the most simple action to the greatest achievement. We cannot always have control over our external circumstances, but we can control our inner world of thoughts, where everything starts. We can't always control our outer universe, but we can, with some effort, control our inner universe.

You are unhappy and negative because of how you think, but you can change the way you think. With a little work and effort you can change how you think, and this will you automatically change your attitude, expectations, actions and reactions, which will lead to more motivation, happiness and improved life.

How to be positive:

Focus on what you want, not on what you do not want.

Focus your mind on the good things you already have in your life. If you focus on them, these good things will increase in your life.

Do not fill your mind with thoughts of lack. Think and believe that you already have abundance, success, love and happiness.

Learn to feel, think and even act, as if you are already living the life you visualize. If you can feel, think and act consistently in this way, you will become happier, and will attract new opportunities into your life.

Think about what you want, create a picture of it in your mind, and make it very clear and precise. Hold it there and focus on it in a positive way, until it becomes a reality in your life.

Always tell yourself, "I can", "I am able", "I can do it", "I am a positive person".

Often, during the day, repeat positive affirmations about what you want. Do so with faith, feelings, intention and focus.

Look for the good in every situation. There is always something good, or at least something useful to learn, even in difficult or unpleasant situations.

Follow your positive thoughts with positive actions.

Always focus your mind on the full half of the cup, not on the empty half.

Do your best to reject negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts.

Be aware of your company. Choose to be around positive people.

Read about other people's success. Read things that inspire you and make you feel good.

Focus your mind on how to be positive and you will discover more ways to be so.

We get what we expect to get, therefore, begin right now to expect the very best of everything that this world has to offer - and wish the same for everyone else. There is plenty of everything in the Universe for everyone, and the Universe can create more of the good things for everyone. Don't think lack, think abundance, for you and for everyone.

The Power of Positive Thinking Key Point You are what you think. You feel what you want.

Why Think Positively? All of our feelings, beliefs and knowledge are based on our internal thoughts, both conscious and subconscious. We are in control, whether we know it or not. Aim high and do your best We can be positive or negative, enthusiastic or dull, active or passive. The biggest difference between people is their attitudes. For some, learning is enjoyable and exciting. For others, learning is a drudgery. For many, learning is just okay, something required on the road to a job. "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Abraham Lincoln Our present attitudes are habits, built from the feedback of parents, friends, society and self, that form our self-image and our world-image. These attitudes are maintained by the inner conversations we constantly have with ourselves, both consciously and subconsciously. The first step in changing our attitudes is to change our inner conversations. What Should We Be Saying? One approach is called the three C's: Commitment, Control and Challenge. Commitment Make a positive commitment to yourself, to learning, work, family, friends, nature, and other worthwhile causes. Praise yourself and others. Dream of success. Be enthusiastic. Control Keep your mind focused on important things. Set goals and priorities for what you think and do. Visualize to practice your actions. Develop a strategy for dealing with problems. Learn to relax. Enjoy successes. Be honest with yourself. Challenge Be courageous. Change and improve each day. Do your best and don't look back. See learning and change as opportunities. Try new things. Consider several options. Meet new people. Ask lots of questions. Keep track of your mental and physical health. Be optimistic. Studies show that people with these characteristics are winners in good times and survivors in hard times. Research shows that, "... people who begin consciously to modify their inner conversations and assumptions report an almost immediate improvement in their performance. Their energy increases and things seem to go better ..." Commitment, control and challenge help build self-esteem and promote positive thinking. Here are some other suggestions. 7 Suggestions for Building Positive Attitudes In every class, look for positive people to associate with. In every lecture, look for one more interesting idea. In every chapter, find one more concept important to you. With every friend, explain a new idea you've just learned. With every teacher, ask a question. With yourself, keep a list of your goals, positive thoughts and actions. Remember, you are what you think, you feel what you want.