No nipples on Facebook

You might have seen the report in Weekend Post about Facebook banning mothers from posting photos of themselves breastfeeding.

In response, a America artist named Phil Hansen decided to push the Facebook limits with quite a creative art project. He photographed his own nipples and then posted a profile picture that was a collage of those photos to his Facebook page. Here it is – and this is what he has to say about it:

“As everyone is focusing so much on the war in Gaza, I picked a light comical war to focus on instead, the war on nipples. As some of you may have heard, Facebook deems showing of nips obscene including breastfeeding. Meanwhile, men’s nipples aren’t a problem. So I decided to post a picture of me made entirely with nipples. And now we will watch the fate of the photo on Facebook."

Click here to see a video clip of what he had planned. Click here to see what happened next. There was even a Facebook update from supporters around the world.

You might like to check out the rest of his site, Phil in the Circle, as he seems to be a very web-savvy artist. For example, just take a look at him doing a Prickasso with a dead duck ... the mind boggles!

No smoking, even at home

If you are a smoker, be grateful that you don’t live in Belmont, California. This Silicon Valley town probably has America’s strictest anti-smoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings. From this month, residents who live in a flat in Belmont, California, are not allowed to smoke inside their own homes.
Compare that to here in South Africa where we have strict laws which rarely are enforced. Many restaurants give smokers the balcony area, rather than go to the expense of having a partitioned-off inside area.
Which should be fine, except, perhaps, if you are sitting inside next to a window at VovoTelo and there is a table of smokers right outside.
Which is why I loved the visit we had to Mariana’s Bistro, a charming little restaurant near Hermanus, over the summer holidays.There only are a half dozen or so tables and guests flock from near and far to eat Mariana Esterhuizen’s delicious food and be entertained by her husband Peter’s quirky waitering skills.
Their balcony has “no smoking” signs so you can dine al fresco without the whiff of tobacco overpowering your dish of the day.
Where do the smokers go? Like naughty schoolchildren going for a puff behind the bicycle shed, they are sent to the bottom of the garden.
Actually, it’s not that bad: the Esterhuizens have thoughtfully provided a table and chairs and they even have an undercover area for chilly or wet days.
How about it Port Elizabeth restaurateurs ... something you might consider?

Veet says bye to Bush

Did anyone send you a copy of that cheeky Veet ad this week? If not, here it is ... as it appeared in the Sydney Daily Telegraph earlier this week.

A colleague sent me the e-mail and she obviously wasn’t the only one to think it funny. Since Obama took over from Bush as president of the United States on Tuesday this week, it’s been hurtling round the web.

Brand managers and marketing gurus have been giving the ad agency, Euro RSCG, all credit for the ad ... and it has been such a wow that Canada and New Zealand newspapers are also going to run it this weekend.

This kind of hair removal humour could only come from the irreverent land they call Down Under ...

Another tree woman puts down roots

There’s a new “tree woman” in Port Elizabeth and this time she is sporting a green polka dot bikini and lying at the bottom of Upper Valley Road, with "Boo!" and "2009" tattooed on her calf and neck.
I imagine she’s related to the “tree woman” who put down roots just off Buffelsfontein near the Walmer Woods golf driving range in 2005.
That one sprang to life when someone with a sense of humour saw the shape of a woman in a fallen tree and decided to paint a bikini on the appropriate body parts. Here is my colleague Mike Holmes's pic of her, to give you an idea of her size. The next thing we heard, someone had daubed on a new pink polka dot bikini.
Then on Valentine’s Day two years ago up popped a “tree man” in red trunks and shortly after that a little sapling and a tree dog completed the family.
Sadly, last year The Herald reported that the tree child and dog had gone missing.
It reminds me of the Gnome Liberation Army abroad, and if you search for them on the internet you’ll discover that there really are people who take this seriously, such as the Free the Gnomes group.

Speaking of which, there is this poor little fellow in Victoria Drive in South End, who really looks the worse for wear, who could do with their services.
He’s lost his nose and one arm and probably hasn’t been painted or paid attention to for years.
So, if you know how to get hold of the mystery tree artist, please ask him or her to sneak up in the middle of the night and work their magic here.

We live in Big Sky country

While the northern hemisphere is huddling around its heaters, we’ve been having a hot, hot, hot summer here in Port Elizabeth and along with that have been some fabulous cloudscapes.
I took these two photographs on a friend’s farm near Somerset East in the holidays because looking at skies like this just lifts my spirits. It's hard to feel stressed out when you are gazing at creation in all its unbounded glory.
If you love nature photographs, you also might like to check out Firefly and Skywatch. Firefly is a Port Elizabeth blogger who takes photographs that highlight our region and I’ve noticed that he also loves gazing at the setting sun. Yesterday he posted one of his daughter but perhaps he should submit it to Skywatch as even though it’s ostensibly of his little girl the contrast of her leaping up off the trampoline against the cloudy blue sky really hits home.
Anyone with a blog can post their own cloudscapes at the Skywatch site.
Port Elizabeth Daily Photo is another lovely blog for photographs that I particularly like because it is short on text and lets the picture tell the story. Have a look at Sue and Max’s shot of Hobie Beach at sunrise ... it's a stunner.

It's dicey

Life is full of mysteries which while they don't quite keep me awake at night certainly pique my curiosity.

Such as, why does Kobus Wiese have a haircut that makes him look like a pineapple? Who was the person who counted the 7,000 species of dung beetles in the world?

Why are there still so many mistakes in The Herald when we have so much talent working here?

And ... the latest ... what do people do with the fluffy dice they buy at the robots in PE?

Since they started to sell these items, along with cell phone chargers, cockroach chalk and black bin bags, it’s really intrigued me.

Then, the other day I was at the Bridge and saw that they even sell them at that little boutique upstairs, Vibes.

Now, it’s one thing to sell totally useless items at the traffic lights ... the bad quality black rubbish bags, for example, that The Herald often warns readers about ... but another to discover that they are so popular that they are stocked even by regular shops. And the Vibes saleswoman told me, when I asked her who bought them, “everyone”.

But have you ever actually seen a car with these dice jiggling from the rear-view mirror? It’s the 2009 equivalent of an orange on the aerial ... please let me know if you see someone with these in their car.

Or perhaps I should take heed of my earlier post not to sweat the small stuff. Really.

Wind power blows PE's hair back

Well done to Walmer Park Shopping Centre for setting up a row of wind turbines supplied by Eveready to generate electricity for the complex.

Alternative sources of energy have been explored for a while of course, except everyone’s thoughts turned to solar, not wind, power.

But think about it: we are not only known as the Sunshine Coast but we also live in the Windy City. Double the potential.

Some of America’s biggest chain stores are turning their eyes heavenwards for a new take on saving electricity. They are hoping that their immense, flat roofs are an untapped resource that can be used to harness solar power.

Last year several chain stores, including big ones as Wal-Mart and Safeway, installed solar panels on their roofs with a view to generating electricity on a large scale.

Now, we have a great deal more sun than our north American counterparts ... and as for the wind, well, step outside today and our south-wester will your hair back. I can’t remember such a breezy December for years – and those turbines have been whirring like mad up at Walmer Park.

Are any more shopping centres or business up to the challenge?