For people who really have experienced life in Russia and those who wish to know how it feels to live in Russia

You have been a student in Russia if:

1. You take your shoes off every single time you get into some ones house even if you don’t have to

2. You know at least three Dima Bilan’s song, even though you say you don’t like him

3. In fact you kinda cry when he won Eurovision 2007

4. Viagra is not just a medicine, it is also a music group that has the exact same effect

5. You know that Russia IS NOT Europe

6. You know that matryoshka is not only a tipic toy, but the reality of the Russian woman past her 50s

7. You know 50 Sashas, Sergeys, Olias, Lenas and Katias

8. You found out that the Russians won World War 2 and the Americans just showed up at the end

9. You lived in the общежитие

10. You used to hide the bottles of beer and vodka from the вахтершка

11. If the вахтершка finds out you just pay her for the комендант not to find out

12. If somehow the комендант foud out and enters your room the exact moment when you are having a toast with your friends, you just offer him a drink

13. He actually accepts the drink

14. The most horrible times of your life have to do with the сессия

15. You took care of your зачетка more than your passport

16. You know what a Зачет and an Экзамен is, and that the difference between them is that one is more expensive than the other

17. You loose the tension drinking

18. You drank vodka when you were sad

19. You drank vodka when you were happy

20. You drank vodka because there was nothing better to do

21. You made a toast before every drink and sometimes you even tell jokes

22. You heard Russian jokes, you get to understand Russian jokes, you get to honestly laugh with them, you learn to tell them and people really enjoy it

23. Beer was and appetizer to vodka

24. You drank the beer hot and with Рыбка (smoke fish)

25. At least one time you sat in a public place to drink vodka in an under zero day and by your own will

26. You start to drink with strangers and they became your lifelong pals

27. Пельмени was your favorite meal because it cooks in 10 minutes

28. You put сметана to everything

29. Борщ is the most delicious soup there is and you cannot picture your life without it!

30. You drank Чай in winter and Квас in summer

31. When you feel cigarette smell you remember Russia for some reason

32. You use the word Прикин anytime you wanted to add emotion to a conversation

33. You think Putin is the best president ever

34. You hate cats!

35. You found out about what happen in world war 2, in the soviet union, after the soviet union, about Putins former job as a spy in Germany not from your history teacher but from the old lady sitting next to you in the bus that for some reason started asking you the time and end up with a whole life biography with real history events

36. You have argued more than one time with a бабушка that doesn’t respect the line in the bank

37. You no longer ask for ice for your drink, and don’t even think about looking in the store

38. You know more bad words in Russian than in your language, because simply there is more bad words in Russian than in your language

39. You are always worried about the weather

40. You are surprised that there are no 24 hour shops in your country

41. People scream at you in the street and you have no reaction what so ever, in fact you start to scream too, not because your angry, is simply the way we speak in Russia

42. …you hate Russia, you wait eagerly the moment to return to your country, but once you are in your country you found that you actually miss Russia, in some tiny little hidden place of your heart, really inside you LOVE Russia. You can’t live with her, you can’t live without her. Without notice it she’s already part of you, and you will always have a special place in your heart for her, Великая Россия, a Russia that is not ours but we love her as she was, we can call it ours наша, наша Russia!

Ryanair mulls charge for toilets

Michael O'Leary: 'People might have to spend a pound to spend a penny'

Irish budget airline Ryanair has said it is considering charging passengers for using the toilet while flying.

Chief executive Michael O'Leary told the BBC that the Dublin-based carrier was looking at maybe installing a "coin slot on the toilet door".

Consumer group Which? said the airline was putting "profit before passengers".

Ryanair's PR chief Steven McNamara later played down the idea, saying: "I don't think it's going to happen in the foreseeable future".

"Will it happen long-term, I'm not really sure," he said.

"It's one of those things that when Michael starts looking at something, you know, it's always up for discussion."

Last week Ryanair confirmed it planned to close all of its airport check-in desks by the end of the year in a bid to reduce the cost of its flights.

'Fast buck'

Ryanair aims to offer low basic ticket prices, and then charge extra for items such as checking in at the airport or for additional luggage.

"One thing we have looked at in the past, and are looking at again, is the possibility of maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door, so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny in future," he told the BBC.

He added: "I don't think there is anybody in history that has got on board a Ryanair aircraft with less than a pound."

But Rochelle Turner, head of research at Which? Holiday, said: "It seems Ryanair is prepared to plumb any depth to make a fast buck and, once again, is putting profit before the comfort of its customers.

"Charging people to go to the toilet might result in fewer people buying overpriced drinks on board, though - that would serve Ryanair right."

THE STELLA AWARDS

It's time once again to review the winners of the Annual "Stella Awards." The Stella Awards are named after 81 year-old Stella Liebeck of New Mexico who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's. That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States. Here are this year's winners:

7th Place:

Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.

6th Place:

19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.

5th Place:

Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.

4th Place:

Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams, who had climbed over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3rd Place:

A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2nd Place:

Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

1st Place:

This year's runaway winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs.Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons around.

Kenya Steals the Show With Upset Win

Kenya beat New Zealand for the first time in 14 attempts to proceed with them and the rest of the top seeds to the Cup quarter finals at the USA Sevens in San Diego.

Los Teros of Uruguay gave the USA Sevens its first shock result by upsetting the Kenyans 14-12 in their opening match, but the African side performed the ultimate recovery job in beating the Kiwis at the end of the day. South Africa, Samoa and Fiji were all unbeaten at PETCO Park

Knowing that only victory against the kiwis was enough to stay in the Cup, the Kenyans started well with tries by captain Humphrey Kayange and Brian Nyikuli. New Zealand, missing several key players but still a force in the game, hit back through Tu Umaga-Marshall to trail 14-7 at the break but two tries by Victor Oduor sparked mass celebrations from the thousands of amassed Kenyan fans present in the generous crowd.

Earlier, World Cup-bound Uruguay caused an early upset by beating the Kenyans 14-12. The Uruguayans scored two tries through Santiago Carracedo and Santiago Gibernau and then defended with their lives to shut the Africans out for much of the match. Matias Arocena slotted both conversions for Los Teros, while only one of Kenya's tries by Lavin Asego and Collins Injera went converted.

Benjamin Ayimba, Kenya coach

"It was a very bad start and we knew we had to raise our game. It was probably a blessing in disguise losing that game [against Uruguay] because then we always went a notch higher in the next games that we played and ultimately of course playing New Zealand and beating them three tries to one, which is definitely an achievement.

"The commitment of the boys has been exemplary. Back home they've had to leave jobs and school and sometimes it weighs down on them but this time they responded."

Humphrey Kanyange, Kenya captain

"What a day. We like doing it the hard way and really responded well in the last two games, it's a sign of what's going to come in the World Cup.

"What we want to achieve in the World Cup now looks much more possible."

My money has been acting funny lately,

My money has been acting funny lately,

I don't mean haha funny, am talking strange, weird, different type funny.

This time money is going on all out.

Leaving me, showing up then leaving as quickly as she came.

Ignoring me treating me like a poor man.

"What did I do boo? All I ever did was love you,

may be too much couse right now it's like we aint cool no more!"

   

We use to be roll dawgs, inseparable!

But lately my money has been acting funny, and

I haven't seen money in months.

I got more than a hunch she is playing me.

Trying to make me jealous,

hanging out with other fellows,

always in some other brother's pocket.

   

I try to tell her man,

"those other guys, those other guys are just using you,

THEY ARE JUST USING YOU MONEY!"

She doesn't hear me,

she doesn't hear me.

she doesn't even return my phone calls,

she doesn't stop by the crib like she use to,

she won't go to the movies with me.

She won't even go to get something to eat,

And you know a brother cannot eat without money!

   

Don't you know I miss you?

I want you!...Okey.

I need you to survive.

My life revolves around you.

I cannot replace you money,

believe me I've tried!

There's only so much water and bread I can take.

Call me spoilt,

but I remember the days people use to see us at the hottest clubs,

expensive restaurants all the hottest places.

I made sure I looked good with money

"I TREATED YOU RIGHT!"

'I never abused you. Did I?

did I get used to you hanging around,

and now you are giving me a taste of what it feels to live without you?'

   

People still think we are tight.

I mean they still ask about you.

I don't like them in my business,

so I reply, "money and I are not as close as we use to be."

   

My money has been acting funny lately.

I can't even call out her name when am shooting ball.

"Oh! oh! I saw her the other day at Beverly Hills..."

she didn't even acknowledge me, she looked at me like,

"How did you get to Beverly Hills?"

Like I don't belong

   

Ever since money hasn't been around,

am feeling am losing my other friends too;

American Express, Visa,..Discovery..

They starting to act shaddy

I think she is spreading lies on me.

   

Tell you ,

I don't know what I did but my money has been acting real funny lately,

and I don't know her anymore.

And my life ain't the same, never will be the same until money comes back into my life.

So if you see her or any of her cousins

(cause she got a whole bunch of family running around)

let her know that I MISS HER,

THAT I LOVE HER and I want her to come home!!!

   

  

A Legend lives on in our hearts

Miriam Makeba – African Mama and Queen.

The death of South African icon Miriam Makeba brings to an end an illustrious music career spanning over four decades.

Makeba, who died aged 76 years in southern Italy on Sunday night, was an inspiration to many worldwide.

She will be remembered for having vowed to "continue singing and never retire".

Her illustrious lifestyle ranged from earning the fame of "Mama Africa", being a symbol of fighting apartheid in her home country, through song and dance.

During her life, she weathered many storms including several car accidents, a plane crash and even cancer.

To her thousands of fans, the musical inspirational voice of Makeba will still live on in many forms.

May her soul rest in eternal peace.

Why We Need to Call a Pig a Pig (With Or Without Lipstick)

We know Orwell for his novels, but it's the way he saw the politics of language that makes him relevant.

In 1944, a young British writer named Eric Blair sent the publisher Jonathan Cape a manuscript for a novel-length parable about the rise of Stalin. The book had already been rejected by one editor for its inflammatory content. Cape also declined. While he personally enjoyed the manuscript, he wrote, he believed it was "highly ill-advised to publish at the present time." Perhaps Blair might have better luck were he to change the identity of the main characters? "It would be less offensive if the predominate caste in the fable were not pigs," he wrote. Blair finally found a publisher, and the book, "Animal Farm," released under Blair's pseudonym, George Orwell, became a bestseller. But the experience proved instructive. The next year, in the essay "Politics and the English Language," he wrote that degraded, unclear language was both symptom and cause of the decline of contemporary culture and political thought. "One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end," he wrote. In other words, it's important to call a pig a pig.

Since its publication in 1945, "Animal Farm" has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, and become a standard text for schoolchildren, along with Orwell's other dystopian vision of the future, "1984." But it is the writer's essays on the importance of clear language and independent thought that make him relevant. Consider this, from "Politics and the English Language": "The word Fascism has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies 'something not desirable.' The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another … Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way." Substitute "anti-American" for "Fascism," and you've summarized the tenor of much of the public conversation regarding the current election and the war in Iraq. "We're so saturated in media today that anyone who is following it is bound to think, 'This is terrible language; what are the effects of these clichés on my mind?' " says George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker who has edited two new collections of Orwell's essays, "Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays" and "All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays." "God knows, I've wanted to use that essay as a purgative. Orwell tells you how to cut through the vapor and get the truth and write about it in a way that is vigorous and clear. Those skills are particularly necessary right now."

Eric Blair was born into what he described as "the lower-upper-middle class" in 1903 in Southwold, England, and spent most of his adult life trying to undo the comforts and privileges his station afforded him. He attended St. Cyprian's prep school, where, he wrote in the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys," he learned "life was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined." As a writer, his greatest aim was to ameliorate the conditions that made life terrible; as a man, he lived as though forever attempting to atone for his own wickedness, real or imagined.

After prep school he attended Eton, but instead of going on to university, he joined the Imperial Police, requesting the remote post of Burma. As David Lebedoff writes in his new dual biography, "The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War," "it was a desperately lonely life. Some of his colleagues committed suicide and others went mad … he was in a far-off land whose people did not want him there." It was in Burma where Orwell would learn to hate all forms of imperialism. "In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters," he wrote in the essay "Shooting an Elephant." Pressured by an excited mob to kill an elephant, he perceives "that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys." After five years in Burma he returned to England, where he slept in homeless shelters and scrounged for work in restaurant kitchens to experience how the poor lived, then went to the dreary, economically depressed north of England to document the condition of the miners. A self-described democratic socialist and fervent anticommunist, he volunteered to fight with the republicans in the Spanish Civil War, where he stood up in the trenches to light a cigarette and promptly was shot through the throat.

All this time he was writing, or trying to. According to Lebedoff, Orwell was not a naturally gifted stylist: "One young lady to whom he showed his first efforts thought they were 'like a cow with a musket'." He persisted, and began publishing regularly during World War II. In addition to his war reporting, he wrote reviews, essays, memoirs, novels and a regular newspaper column, "As I Please." He also was a faithful diarist. Since August his entries have been published as a blog (orwell diaries.wordpress.com) on the same date they were written 70 years ago. (So far, his subject matter runs to the weather and the doings of his livestock—"Another hen bad in the legs this evening. Examined & found enormous black lice"—but the action should pick up once the war gets underway.) The publication of "Animal Farm" brought financial security, but again he sought out misery, moving to the remote, rain-plagued Scottish island of Jura. He died of tuberculosis soon after completing "1984," at the age of 46.

Orwell's lifelong inclination toward deprivation and asceticism may seem an appealing corrective to the pleasure principle of our times. "It might have been absurd for him to live like an unemployed laborer when he was an Eton graduate, but his obvious disregard for materialism or hedonism is attractive today, when there's an extraordinary emphasis on making a lot of money, having expensive toys and having fun," says Lebedoff. "Orwell's life, because it was so monkish, shows you can have a life of value without those things." But his miserliness was offset by a generosity toward the victims of the systems he despised. In the essays "Clink" and "Spike," about his stints in jail and a homeless shelter, he describes his fellow unfortunates without condescension or caricature.

He was extraordinarily tough-minded, most of all toward himself, vigilant against sentimentality or self-aggrandizement. In "A Hanging," about an execution he witnessed in Burma, he allows himself a few grace notes ("the Indians had gone grey like bad coffee") but never at the expense of brutal honesty: after the hanging, the Indians regain their color, Orwell finds himself "laughing quite loudly" at a joke, and soon thereafter "we all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was one hundred yards away."

Though many of Orwell's essays describe single incidents, his concerns are political, in the largest sense: the way human dignity is corrupted by false phrases. He was less interested in what motivates people to act without integrity than in the words they use to camouflage and perpetuate their dishonesty: for Orwell, bad language and bad politics were one and the same. Yet for all his penury and despair, his faith in the power of clear, strong language can only be read as optimistic.

Today, the writer's name is invoked to describe anything involving surveillance, paranoia or even books about animals. Orwell's ideas have been bastardized and simplified over time, so that "Big Brother," the totalitarian, state-run citizen-control mechanism of "1984," is now the name of a reality-TV show that bears little resemblance to the book, except for the fact that contestants are watched by cameras. "When writers use the word 'Orwellian,' you can be pretty sure they've read very little of him," says Packer. Rather than describing surveillance devices, or pig farms, a more accurate application of the adjective would mean something that aspires to the lucidity and integrity of Orwell's writing. In that case, it would be the highest praise.

By Jennie Yabroff | NEWSWEEK

Published Nov 1, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Nov 10, 2008

Wife Software Query Dear Tech Support

Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure. In addition, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization where it monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Drunken Boys Night 2.5, and Saturday Football 5.0 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. I can not seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run some of my other favorite applications. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0 but un-install does not work on this program. Can you help me, please!!!

Thanks, Joe

Dear Joe:

This is a very common problem men complain about but is mostly due to primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 with the idea that Wife 1.0 is merely a "UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT" program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and designed by its creator to run everything. It is unlikely you would be able to purge Wife 1.0, and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Girlfriend 7.0 to emulate Wife 1.0 so nothing is gained. It is impossible to un-install, delete, or purge the program files from the system once installed. Some have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but end up with more problems than the original system. Look in your manual under "Warnings-Alimony/Child Support." I suggest installing background application program C:YES DEAR to alleviate software augmentation. I recommend you keep Wife 1.0 and just deal with the situation. Having Wife 1.0 installed myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Protection Faults (GPFs). You must assume all responsibility for faults and problems that might occur, regardless of their cause. The best course of action will be to enter the command IAPOLOGIZE. In any case avoid excessive use of YES DEAR because ultimately you will have to give the IAPOLOGIZE command before the operating system will return to normal. The system will run smoothly as long as you take the blame for all GPFs. Wife 1.0 is a great program, but very high maintenance. Consider buying additional software to improve the performance of Wife 1.0. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0.

Best of luck, Tech Support.