You Shouldn’t Have Slaughtered Those Pigs

The upcoming school year has many schools and universities preparing for the potential epidemic of the swine flu or what is technically known as the H1N1 flu. Many colleges and universities are frantically giving away disinfectant hand wash to every student on campus and they even have created procedures for classes if the H1N1 virus hits half the campus. The swine flu which popped up around the spring of 2009 has caused a world wide pandemic. No one wants to go through another bird flu or a SARS epidemic again and Toronto and China can attest to that. Here’s a funny fact about the swine flu. Originally, they called it the swine flu but pig farmers got mad and lobbied to change it’s name because it reflected poorly on pigs and pig farmers in general. Everyone got scared of pigs and stopped buying any type of pork which obviously brings the pig farmers’ profits down. Then they called it the Mexican flu and all the Mexicans got mad because then everyone thought every Mexican (aka: illegal alien) had the disease. It was named Mexican flu because it originated from there, not because Mexicans had it. Now they have resorted to just calling it based on it’s strain, the H1N1 virus.

When this outbreak occurred, every country closed its doors and temporarily banned international flights hoping to isolate the epidemic. The WHO raised the their pandemic level to five (5). That’s pretty serious stuff; once the level reaches 6, it’s total and immediate lock down in every country. Many countries were obviously afraid that the flu would spread amongst the people so travel was banned for the time being. Egypt on the other hand went to a more extreme length; they killed ALL the pigs in its country. Some might say good move because this definitely reduces the possibility of a swine flu case to 0%. Also, Muslims do not eat pigs. They only eat blessed meat or halal and pigs do not get blessed. But why do they have pigs in the country in the first place if they aren’t used for food or food bi-products?

Well, one thing pigs are good for in Egypt is to clean up the organic waste that people throw out on the streets. This unfortunate and misguided attempt at preventing swine flu failed on an epic proportion as now the streets of Egypt are littered with garbage. When pigs were alive in Egypt, they would stroll the streets and eat the organic waste. Now, without the pigs, Egypt is facing an ever increasing amount of garbage on the streets and something even worse than the swine flu can come about, like The Plague. Obviously the government is trying to clean up all the garbage but that will take some time. It’s like whenever a city has a garbage strike. All the residents just throw their garbage in one spot and that area pretty much becomes uninhabitable. No one would even want to walk around there a year after the garbage has been cleaned up. If the government does not act fast, that could happen to Egypt. I’m pretty sure the effects of garbage on the streets are all negative.

This article has more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&topic=swineflu

I Caught Swine Flu…my Dad Said

Last weekend I had dinner with my family in pretty much an entire year. It was my idea that we all go out for sushi. As cheap as my parents are, they decided to go to the all you can eat sushi restaurant down the street instead of going to the really good one that is a half hour drive away. You would think it is because of the fact that the restaurant is down the street from us AND that it is an all you can eat restaurant but no, it is because they found a coupon that gives you fifteen percent off your entire meal. As we got to the restaurant and managed to beat the rush, we sat down and ordered our food. We ordered spicy tuna roles, california rolls, oyster rolls, cucumber rolls, spider rolls, love rolls, spicy salmon rolls, beef udon, miso soup, and fried smelt fish. The sushi was not the best but it definitely was not the worst but it really sucked when a lot of the rolls kept on falling apart while grabbing them with our chopsticks. Apparently my family can tell the difference between ohtoro (best quality) and toro (recycled fish) tuna/salmon when eating sushi but I can not. I really do not care about it though as I can barely taste the difference. My palette is not as well developed as theirs’ are and I am not motivated to develop it at all. Everything was good and fun and we were able to get back home right before Prison Break started which was SO COOL! Unfortunately, the next day was dreadful. I woke up with the runs and when I went to the washroom, there was no remorse for the toilet! I could tell I came down with a sudden case of diarrhea because when I went, it sounded like I was taking a long and THUNDEROUS piss; so loud that it woke my parents up. Haha no but it would be funny, actually more embarassing if that did actually happen. For the rest of the day, I felt like throwing up but my urge to vomit was not paramount which is a good thing because we were shopping. That could have been a great FML though. I barely ate anything that entire day and even when I came back home I had to take a ‘thunderous piss’ again which was even LOUDER hahaha. Obviously I came down with a case of food poisoning which I find hard to believe because no one else in my family came down with it. I also had burgers with my siblings earlier that day and neither of them got sick so it could not have been the burgers. The other possibility was the oyster sushi and the spicy tuna sushi. I was the only one to eat those pieces of sushi because no one else liked them. It might have been the spicy tuna because the oysters in the oyster sushi were fried. They may not have been thoroughly cooked though.
Forty eight hours after my ordeal, I was still FREAKING SICK with food poisoning. I was supposed to go have lunch with my grandparents but last last minute, I had to go back home because it got worse. My parents actually thought I had the flu but they still wanted me to have lunch with our grandparents which I think is stupid. They thought I had the flu and they still wanted me to have lunch with my grandparents in which I could potentially pass it on to them and kill them because of their weaker immune systems. It was not so bad as we were travelling to lunch, but then right when my dad turns into the parking lot, he hits a big pothole and I almost threw up all over the car. We drove half an hour to the restaurant, only to turn back once we hit the parking lot. When I got back home, the thunder came back and I thinkwe need a new toilet…haha no. Everything was better the rest of the day as I fell asleep in my bed and woke up the next morning; I had slept for 14 hours, a new record.

When Monday came, all my parents could think was that I caught the H1N1 virus, the swine flu. They kept on asking me if any of my friends went to Mexico during spring break and I repeatedly kept on telling them, “I DON’T KNOW.” If it was the swine flu, then I could have caught it from anyone in any of my classes and I can tell you, I do not know everyone in my classes so it will be very hard to pinpoint just from that.

As I write this entry now into my blog, I still have not fully recovered from my ordeal at the sushi restaurant. I think the food poisoning translated to stomach flu which has no translated to a sore throat and a build up of mucus. I actually might think it is the flu and in any case I will have to get the shot but I am actually recovering and feeling better now…except when I eat. Everytime I eat, I get full really, really fast. I kid you not I used to chow down medium sized pizzas in one sitting but I tried it earlier this week and I could only get through two slices before I was stuffed. Everytime I eat food, there is a build up of gas and I get full really fast. An hour later, the thundering piss comes in. Actually it’s more like thundering wind (if you get my ‘drift’. Double pun definitely intended).

Installing Intrepid Ibex on a USB Key

I started doing some machine level coding this month and it is the most complicated programming language I have ever seen. It takes quite a bit of time outputing “hello world” on the terminal. It’s not the same as just importing your libraries, creating your class and typing out, system.out.println(“hello world”);, or printf(“hello world”);. The high level programming languages like C, C++, C#, or Java make this so much easy for you, but once you start assembly language, you’re done! It will take a lot more time to get to know how the language works.

So, I figured the best way to write assembly language is in linux. So I decided to hop on the band wagon and download the most popular unix/linux variant I can find which happens to be Ubuntu. I downloaded Ubuntu 8.10 or what many like to call it, Intrepid Ibex. I already have Hardy Heron (8.04) on my computer as dual boot with Windows XP so I decided to install it on my 8 Gb USB key. I used this article from PenDriveLinux in order to install to USB. The installation process is actually the same thing as just installing it on your computer. The article states that you should remove any existing hard drives in your computer/laptop before you plug in the USB, but you don’t have to. As long as you know the name of the hard drive(s) on your computer and the name of the USB key, you should be fine. Oh, you have to make sure to set your BiOS to boot from CD and if you want to use the Ubuntu USB, then you better make sure your computer can boot from USB as I learned the hard way. In the partition option, they give you which storage device you can partition and it will show you the USB key. Choose the USB key from the list and start the installation. Usually installing Ubuntu on a computer takes around half an hour. It depends on the reading/writing speed of your hard drive and the CD/DVD drive. If you install it on USB though, you better make some popcorn because it will take a while. It took about an hour and a half to finish installation but when it finally finished installing I leapt with glee, only to have it brought back down to observing HOW SLOW it is on USB. The operating system is so slow on USB; due to the fact it is SSD technology slowing it down, a lot. I’ll open up Firefox and it will take about thirty seconds for the program to pop up and when I create three empty tabs….it takes a LONG time for the program to respond. You actually might think that the program stopped responding but, just be patient and you’ll see. Anyways I had enough of that once I tried out the many applications that came with Intrepid Ibex. They just took too much time to boot up and I couldn’t do any work on it. The terminal was even slow and I couldn’t do my machine level coding on it.

Well, it was waste of 8 Gb. It was cool installing the OS on my USB key but the end results do not satisfy the curiosity. Next time I’ll install it on my external hard drive and see how that goes.

What it is Like to Get Dugg

If you do not know who Kevin Rose is, then you should be ashamed of yourself. Well you don’t have to be because not that many people outside of the technology industry know who this man is and if you are a casual internet user, you probably still do not know who he is. Well I’ll tell you, he is the man who created Digg, Revision3. and Pownce. AND before all that, he is one of the most beloved hosts of THE SCREENSAVERS and TechTv (Damit Paul Allen!). Digg is one of the best and most innovative Web 2.0 websites created, it has revolutionized the internet and is pretty much the website that has introduced social media to the people of today. Well it was one of the best web sites ever until it became a dictatorship, but let’s not get into that today.

Anyways, for a new user on Digg, it is great to look at the articles on the front page and digg them. Basically digging an article is the same as bookmarking your favourite websites but instead of saving the website to your internet cache on your computer, the digg just saves the article online in your account (and yes, I just used Digg as a verb). New users on Digg will most likely digg their most favourite articles and they will have a slight bias of what they want to digg. Some, will digg political submissions, some will digg technology submissions, and some will just digg those random LOLcats or XKCD comic whenever it appears. Slowly though, their bias will digress, and they’ll just digg anything that seems interesting to them. The point is, Digg has opened peoples’ eyes up to the world and allows people to discover new things that they never heard about or even seen before like that hexadecimal passkey allowing one to crack the DRM on HDDVDs. I remember that storm of anger Digg caused when they started deleting/banning accounts.

Over time though, when the new Digg user finally gets some balls, they will decide to start submitting articles. This epiphony that they have experienced will give them the sense of individualism and courage to start submitting articles. It only occurs though once they believe they can and they are not intimidated by the likes of: MrBabyMan, MakiMaki, msaleem, or badwithcomputer. These guys are Digg’s top users or as many would like to call them, powerdiggers; they have contributed/submitted over 26 000 articles, dugg about 400 000 articles (excluding their own), and have over a 1000 friends altogether. Talk about a Digg overload. These guys contribute probably over 80% of Digg’s top stories found on the front page every day. They are pretty much the life of Digg and have made sure Digg has become of the top Web2.0 websites ever. When most new users decide to start submitting articles, they will all feel the sense of anger and hatred towards Digg as well pretty much, no one has dugg any of their comments. Be reasonable though, it is a rare sight that someone will come across your submission and even rarer if they decide to digg it or not.

I have been through this process so many times as I try to submit articles. Most of the articles I have submitted have not been dugg by anyone else. Everytime I check a few hours later after I submit the article, I get really pissed off because no one has dugg my articles. What pisses me off even more is if I submit an article but a similar article is posted after my submission and it gets dugg. I hate it when users find something interesting and when they submit it they don’t look at the related articles that might be the same. They just hit the ‘Totally Original, I swear’ button and off they go. For a long time, many people will submit articles without another digg and this will put a lot of users off from trying to submit their own articles. The main factor behind this problem are the powerdiggers who are pretty much the gatekeepers of the website. They’re usually the ones who don’t read the similar articles and will just hit the ‘Totally Original, I Swear’ button. Plus they do have that ability of reading a hundred articles in less than five minutes, I wonder how they do it?! *Note the sarcasm*.

Finally though after tears, and heartache, sweat, and blood, someone finally sees your submission and diggs it. When you see that you’re article has two diggs, it is one of the happiest moments ever on Digg. It basically signifies your first fan, or your first paycheck, or someone has dugg you out and you lost your Digg virginity; that fine patch of grass is not so innocent anymore! When all the happiness and glee has drained out of your system, you just sit back and relax, close your eyes and think that you are, ‘t3h l337ness’ or somewhere along those lines. What is amazing is that someone else, somewhere around the world likes what you have done and have shown you their appreciation by digging your article. This euphoria of happiness from getting a digg gives people the courage and confidence to submit another article. Unfortunately, most of the time that second article they submit won’t be dugg so they enter a viscious cycle of anger asking themselves that their submission was not good enough. One day though, it will all change when more and more people start to digg your submission. The most diggs I have ever gotten is twenty and when I saw that, I almost pissed my pants with glee and I did think to myself that I was, ‘t3h l337ness’. Unfortunately, I have never been able to gain that status back and I have slumped back into a cycle of anger and despair.

It is fun though, submitting articles to Digg and hoping that one day someone will digg your submission. If it does not happen, just keep trying and if that does not work, start making some new friends on Digg to make sure all goes well. To many, getting dugg feels like you have accomplished something you thought was impossible and in some sense it is true except for the impossible part. It can become the happiest moment in your life until you get three diggs, then four diggs, then five, and so on and so on until you reach that milestone of reaching the front page. That’s what all Digg users want, to some day hit the front page. Just keep trying, keep submitting, make new friends on Digg, and one day you will get that satisfaction of hitting the front page. Just don’t be a douchebag and game the system!

Sacrifice a Friend for a Whopper

The real question though is, how does one “defriend” someone on Facebook?
Settings –> Privacy Settings –> Block List

Burger King has just come out with a new promotional stunt called, ‘Whopper Sacrifice’. This new app made for Facebook gives the user a coupon for a free Whopper if they “defriend” at least ten of their friends and they only allow one coupon per account so people don’t have to go overboard. This new campaign by Burger King will cause some rifts in relationships between people.

What would you do for a BK Whopper?
If you go as far as “defriend”ing your friends on Facebook, that is low. On the other hand, most likely everyone who has a Facebook account has added friends from their old schools or people in their new schools that they only have talked to once or twice and it was in the hallway. Face it, everyone has friends or acquaintances from school or from work that they never talk to anymore. We all fall into that classic situation where we add old friends or new friends on Facebook but only post on their walls once or twice and never talk to each other again, let alone never see each other again. Sometimes we even add people we know from another friend BUT NEVER TALK to them, hence the Facebook group, “I hate it when people add me on Facebook but never talk to me.” Adding people on Facebook but never talking to them alludes to the fact that you probably just want to stalk them and want to see their pictures.

Well it is a good thing we are like that because adding people we don’t talk to makes it much easier to sacrifice them for a Whopper. It actually pays off to add someone you don’t talk to anymore. Instead of twisting in agony or living those sleepless nights where you just don’t know how to tell your friend that a Whopper is more valuable to you than they are, you can just “defriend” all those people who probably won’t care if you “defriend” them. Chances are, if they have the same application as you they would have done the same thing so its pretty much guilt free sacrificing a relationship for a tasty Whopper. The bad part though is that once you “defriend” someone on Facebook, it will show on your newsfeed showing everyone what an evil, backstabbing, douche/bitch you are. It is just best to modify your news feed so that no one sees your actions for apps on Facebook.

If I know Burger King, which I don’t then they would have some function on their new application that allows someone to “defriend” people on Facebook. BUT if you really want to “defriend” someone on Facebook because you had a falling out or you just don’t really want to see their face anymore, just go to Settings –> Privacy Settings –> and on that page that shows up is an option for you to block someone. Once you block that person any trace of you will be distinguished from their eyes. They will not be able to see any of your posts that you write on mutual friends’ walls, won’t be able to see tagged pictures of you, and they will not be able to search for you. If you unblock them, you will have to add them back as a friend so be careful who you block because if you become friends again or what not it is going to be awkward trying to explain to them why you had to add them again.

I really think this is a stupid idea because so many people can abuse it and it does show how low someone is willing to go just for a burger. You can easily make a new Facebook account with a couple of your friends and then add them, add the application, and then “defriend” them. Also I’m pretty sure that once someone “defriends” ten people, they’ll be given an e-mail with the coupon on it and that person will send it to all his friends so they can abuse this campaign. Although BK probably has put a coupon identifier/code in place so this scheme does not happen.
I won’t be adding this application on my Facebook page because it’s just rubbish, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice a person for a Whopper and even though I know I will be sacrificed by the many people I don’t talk to anymore but have on Facebook, well that’s life what can you do about it?

By the way, defriend is not an official word in the English Language yet.

ECE vs. CSE

I was looking up http;//www.bash.org today and I found this funny conversation/rap in the top 200 quotes. It went like this:

djahandarie> we ain’t here to do e-c-e
djahandarie> we’re here to do c-s-e on the w-e-b
djahandarie> listen to me spit these rhymes
djahandarie> while i program lines
djahandarie> and commit web accessibility crimes
djahandarie> word, son
http402> You talk like your big on these I-Net kicks,
http402> But your shit flows slower than a two-eighty-six.
http402> I’m tracking down hosts and nmap scans,
http402> While Code Igniter’s got you wringing your hands.
http402> Cut the crap rap,
http402> Or I’ll run ettercap,
http402> Grab your AIM chat,
http402> N’ send a PC bitch-slap!
http402> peace
djahandarie> you’re talkin bout down hosts and nmap scans
djahandarie> while i got other plans
djahandarie> you’re at your new job, but you can’t even do it right
djahandarie> you just create a plight with your http rewrites
djahandarie> i’ve been on the web since the age of three
djahandarie> you just got on directly off the bus from mississippi
djahandarie> respect yo’ elders, bitch
http402> You’ve been webbin’ since three, but still ain’t grown up,
http402> Gotta update your config and send the brain a SIGHUP.
http402> You say you’re that old? No wonder you’re slow!
http402> You’re knocking at the door while I run this show!
http402> Elders my ass, you’re shit’s still in school,
http402> Hunt and pecking at the keyboard like a spaghetti-damned fool,
http402> Rim-riffing your hard drive like a tool,
http402> Face it. I rule.
djahandarie> i erase my harddrives with magnets (bitch)
djahandarie> all you can do is troll on the fagnets
djahandarie> and son, my brain’s wrapped in a nohup
djahandarie> it wont be hurt by the words you throwup
djahandarie> dont mind me while i emerge my ownage
djahandarie> while you’re still over there apt-getting your porridge
djahandarie> you say i’m still in school
djahandarie> but the fact is that i know the rule
djahandarie> cuz you need to go back to grade three
djahandarie> and you better plea, that they take sucky graduates from c-s-e
http402> Time to bend over and apply a patch,
http402> Your brain’s throwing static like a CD with a scratch.
http402> Your connection got nuked and you’ve met your match.
http402> You run a single process like a VAX with a batch.
http402> I’d pass the torch to a real winner
http402> But it’d just scorch a while-loop spinner
http402> Caught in a loop that you cant escape,
http402> I run clock cycles around your words and flows,
http402> Cuz your rhyme is like a PS fan: it’ blows,
http402> Your water-cooled lyrics leak and it shows,
http402> Take your ass back to alt.paid.for.windows.
djahandarie> Good god, I can’t even respond to that.
djahandarie> You win haha
**http402 takes a bow
Ah a classic battle between Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, two major rivals in the high tech industry these days.

Best and Worst Jobs in America

I read an article today from the Wallstreet Journal which gave a list of the best and the worst jobs America has to offer during the recession. To my surprise, the best job right now is mathematician. Actually it is not really a surprise because once the recession hit, pretty much every single company in every single industry got hurt by it. Now, the only safe job to have is being a professor with tenure at a college or university and that is where mathematicians come in. There’s also the fact that as a mathematician you are incredibly smart having an IQ in the top one percentile of America so you are a great asset to whatever company you are working for and will probably be one of the last people to get laid off. Companies can not let go of their most important assets unless if they have two mathematicians hahaha.

The Wallstreet Journal (WSJ) listed:

The Best
1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software Engineer
6. Computer Systems Analyst
7. Historian
8. Sociologist
9. Industrial Designer
10. Accountant

I’m kind of dumbfounded to see Historian as one of the best jobs to have at this point in time. It seems like a job/career that would not be affected by anything, it will always be at the same place never rising nor falling from its position.

The Worst
200. Lumberjack
199. Dairy Farmer
198. Taxi Driver
197. Seaman
196. EMT
195. Garbage Collector
194. Welder
193. Roustabout
192. Ironworker
191. Constructoin Worker
190. Mail Carrier

It sucks for those who have the worst jobs. They’re the ones being hit the hardest in the recession. Most of them are actually trade professions which if looked closely at are related to the housing market…and we all know what happened there.

What is interesting to see is that all the top jobs in America are the ones that require a degree before practicing and unfortunately for the worst jobs, a post secondary degree is not necessary to accomplish the task. The best bet for those people is to go back to school so they can stay protected from the financial meltdown, get a degree and own the hell out of that list.

Well Bush is at Least Good at One Thing

He can dodge not one but TWO shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. It seems to be the only good thing he has been good at since he stole the spotlight of winning the American presidential election. Oh there’s also the fact that he did a good job at screwing pretty much almost everyone in America, but lets not talk about that now. What is amazing about this whole ordeal is WHERE THE HELL WAS HIS SECRET SERVICE?

The outgoing president of the United States made a surprise farewell visit to Iraq on Sunday the fifteenth of December to talk about…well no one really cared about what Bush was talking about after the journalist threw his shoes at him. He did not just throw one shoe, he threw BOTH of his shoes at Bush. He threw both the left shoe and the right shoe and Bush was able to dodge those shoes pretty well just like the draft. People in the Western world think, why would he throw his shoes at him, someone could have sneaked in a gun and tried to assassinate Bush. Well it turns out that in Iraq’s culture, showing one’s sole of a shoe means great disrespect. Even worse is throwing your shoes at the person. It is Just like ‘flipping the bird’ or saying, “That’s not what your mom said last night. OOOOHHHHH BURNNNN!” The name of the Iraqi journalist is Muntadar al-Zaidi who stood up and he shouted to Bush, “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people,” and he threw his shoes at him. Obviously it has made news headlines around the world and in less than a week the video has been posted on Youtube and been watched over five million times. That has to be a record!

The problem that seems to have been overlooked was, WHERE THE HELL WAS THE SECRET SERVICE? I’m pretty sure a couple of agents of the Secret Service are always with Bush at all times, especially when he goes to a country he “invaded.” Aren’t they supposed to be behind him or beside him too? It took the journalist about four seconds to throw both his shoes before anyone actually stood up and wrestled him to the ground but it was not the secret service. Other journalists got up and wrestled him to the ground and yet still no one tried to protect Bush. Four seconds, that is a pretty slow response time for bodyguards who trained practically half their lives (well maybe a year or two at least) to protect pretty much the most important person in the United States. They’re also supposed to sacrifice themselves in order to save their primary, yet no one dove in front of Bush during the whole ordeal. It would have been funny though jumping in front of the person you’re protecting just to get hit by a stinky shoe. A few seconds after Muntadar threw his shoes, the Secret Service came in and crowded the podium. What the hell were they doing outside of the room anyway? Well to stop any outside intruders but where was the Secret Service in the room? No where to be found that is. Come on guys, even though he is the worst president ever in America and has the lowest approval rate, he is still the president. If someone tried to attack him back in America, those agents would be all up in the perpetrator’s ass and take him down to the town. If this happened to Obama, there would have been considerable amount of outrage and controversy about the slow reaction time of the secret service agents assigned to protect “Renegade.” There would have been an investigation of how the accused was able to do this and all the major news networks would be all over just that part of the story, but since it is Bush we’ll just let that one slide.

Muntadar al-Zaidi now faces a fifteen year prison sentence for his efforts. He has become an international star though, a martyr is more befitting. There has been protests on the streets of Baghdad to release the journalist but unfortunately it will go ignored. He’s going to jail unless if those 200 lawyers who volunteered to be his attorneys are really good. Muntadar should get OJ Simpson’s attorney then for sure he would be free. As for Bush, well he’s just good at dodging shoes. Pokeballs on the other hand, he has to practice dodging those.

Does Sex Sell? Ask Coca-Cola…Well Kinda

So we all know Coca-Cola is one of the biggest and well known companies in the entire world.  It sells probably the most popular brand drink ever created.  Everyone knows those red cans, even if we can’t see the classic logo of Coca-Cola of a Coca-Cola can, it is pretty much reasonabl to say that the can is a Coca-Cola product.  Coke is such an amazing drink.  It tastes so smooth and and nice, there is an appropriate proportion of sparkling water and syrup, and there is caffiene in it which is the most important ingredient of the drink.  Even though there are the health concerns like obesity, arthritis, osteoperosis, and juvenile diabeties the company is still turning up some profit.  It may not be in Coke but possibly its other brand name drinks like Powerade, Dasani, or their Nestea.

But the real question is, how and why is Coca-Cola’s logo so famous and influential.  It is probably because of subliminal sex messages within the logo.  Wait! How is that possible? Well Gatorade and Powerade (another brand name drink of Coca-Cola) have used subliminal pictures of the penis, so do the red cans and bottles of Coke show the exact same?  Well you do see something, or at least I do.  My room mate told me about this and when I tried to find it, it was almost near dam impossible to figure out what this illusion was.  I finally got it as my room mate did not tell me WHICH Coca-Cola logo had this but once I found the right logo, I managed to see this weird, crazy illusion.  What I saw, surprised.  It was a man…..just standing there…..DOING COKE!!!!!  Crazy enough, there isn’t actually some penis reference I found (maybe there is, but I haven’t seen it)  What I saw surprised me, turns out if you flip the logo on its side you can see a man in a top hat sniffing coke!  You have to have a wild imagination to see it but, I have a picture here if you can’t see it.

Isn’t that crazy?  Ya, active imagination right there.  Unfortunately I could not get a good old school logo of Coca-Cola.  The old vintage logos had the first C in ‘Cola’ extend further all the way to the ‘o’ in ‘Cola’ so it would actually look like the man is holding something to sniff his coke.  I am not surprised by the fact some guy is sniffing coke, I mean coke actually was put into these drinks when the drink first came out.  Surprised it is not a sexual subliminal message though.  It is some crazy coincidence though.  Apparently someone noticed this and notifiedd Coca-Cola and that was a reason why they shortened the ‘C’ to only underline ‘Coca’.  It is purely a coincidence though or apparently that is what ‘Coca-Cola’ says and they never planned to put it in there at all.  I think they did actually put that in there, but originally the man sniffing coke was supposed to be…sucking cock but something happened in the design and they went, “meh, whatever too late now” just like what happened to Monkey Kong, oops I mean Donkey Kong.

Does Sex Sell? Ask Powerade.

If you haven’t read my previous entry about how Gatorade uses subtle sex imagery to sell the number one sports drink in the world, you should read it. No seirously, do it! I haven’t really noticed this until recently but the Coca-Cola company is using the same strategy that Gatorade is using for its Powerade brand of sports drinks. The first rendition of the Powerade bottle was just a little stab at Gatorade’s powerful market share, as the Coca-Cola company managed to make a deal with the NHL for its hockey players to exclusively drink Powerade drinks. Even though, behind the deal there was probably Gatorade inside the Powerade bottles. Unfortunately Powerade’s appeal to the general public did not flourish so well as compared to Gatorade. It seems as if Powerade only made a dent in the hockey side of the sports industry. Also there was that rumour of the blueberry flavoured Powerade making you sterile.
With its latest rendition and redesign of the Powerade logo, the Coca-Cola company is ready to launch another attack on the Gatorade dominated sports market. Well, this logo has been out for a long time now so, I guess its a success?

If you look at the new logo for Powerade, what do you see? Do you see a ‘P’? Well you are one of the lucky ones, or you are just a kid. Of course we all see a ‘P’ but subconsciously, we all know what that ‘P’ actually is. It is the phallic symbol that has made man an actual man; the penis. It’s very ingenious on whoever made the design. It’s very simple and elegant. It seems as if the designer the Coca-Cola company hired took the saying, ‘Less is more’ to heart (if you know what I mean).
The company redesigned the shape of the bottle though, it does not really resemble a penis anymore as compared to the Gatorade bottles and as compared to what it used to look like. Maybe if they kept the old bottle design, people would consciously get a clue and see that Powerade is all about the penis instead of well, the replenishment of energy after physical activity. Which reminds me, looking at the design of the bottles probably gave people a clue that sports drinks are the best way to recover after an amazing night of…well you know, Bom chicka wah wah!

Guess in the end, sex and sports drinks do come together hand in hand!

OK, it looks like I can’t post this picture up. Looks like WordPress has some thing that will prevent you from putting up pictures from other sites. I should invest in fickr.