"A friend in need is a friend indeed", the chicken thought, as it crossed the road to help out a friend.

Here is something you don't see every day. Though it would be lovely if you did.
Inspiration is like girlfriends- it's easier to get some when you already have some in the first place. I  have been inspired and spun around, 360 degrees, lately, by those among us who have that rare (or not as rare as I would have guessed) drive to prioritise others, or at least those who want to help. It is usually helping a stranger that makes the most difference and raises more surprised eyebrows, but of course, a stranger is just  a friend you haven't met yet.
A friend of mine, Stella Raycheva, has been a kind friend of animals ever since I met her 8 years ago. I suppose she was my first boss, when I worked for Radio NET one summer. She has been volunteering to make a better life for street dogs, and thus for all of us who live in Sophia (your help is just as welcome, if not more, if you're not from Sophia!) for about 2 years now. Establishing a dog shelter, which needs the difficult amount of around 20 000 lev (10 000 euro) per month! to pay the salaries of the few staff members and experienced vets, is a challenge. They survive mainly on donations and they don't know if they are going to make it until the next month. We were sipping tea and she told me of the 500 dogs there, which need care, neutering and shelter. Limited space means that almost every morning there is a dead dog in one of the cages where 20 dogs fight for 40 m2. And it is a shame because they are good dogs, they are no better or worse than any other dog yet they have had the "shit end of the stick". A pity, as dogs love to play with sticks! They are available for adoption- it is an easy way to get a pet, one that will appreciate your love and will love to love you back.Once again, here is the link for Animan Rescue Sofia. Tell your friends about it, link it, share it and support it. It's a good cause and simple to help to!
Kiva lends money to those in need for help with education, development ideas or life long dream of getting a cow! I literally learned about them tonight, and it is a cause worth knowing of. They work, as most such organisations do, for people or groups in underpriviledged countries, but the difference is, this is not a donation, no. You lend money (the link is for a free trial donation, though, they hope to get you hooked on the endorphine-high of helping a project) voluptuous, and all money is paid back in time. Crafty little idea. Check it out, I helped a family with no roof and my friend Ilina helped a man get the cow he had always wanted!

And now, the new BLOG CHALLENGE- can you spot the WORD? Or can you give me a word, quircky enough, which I will include at a random place in one of the next articles?

Why did the news anchor chicken cross the road? In search for good news.

I've got some good news and some bad news....

How many media expert does it take to figure out what sort of news sells best? None. Say it with me: bad news sells. That's the bad news. Yet, after another car crash with innocent victims, may they rest in peace, which was the reason for another day of national mourning, I think many were left cynical. Of course, quietly so. This is less a testament to their character, in fact I will openly admit I felt skepticism rise in me as well- we mourn for a day, TV channels will change their broadcast schedule and content for a day, reasons will be thrown around the newspapers, the opposition will blame the current government for the fact that they haven't been doing their job. After the small changes in legislation, necessary to calm down the general public, it will all slowly go away, business as usual. Hypocrisy is ugly, I don't condone it regardless of the reasons behind it and this case is no different- we have become numb to the gross over-exposure to negatively slanted news reports. It is inevitable, given the psychology of our human nature.

Have I got news for you! Paradoxically, t is this desensitisation, though, that allows for some good news within tonight's report- more and more often lately I find myself impressed with the great kindness of humans. I see volunteers travelling the world to help out people they have never met. I see people setting up dog shelters, sparing from their time, energy and money, to heal homeless dogs and feed them. I see an old couple still holding hands after decades of marriage, as they pass through airport security. I see kindness to strangers at stations. It is all within us, and I don't believe that some are innately good and others- innately bad people. Hopefully, if you just allow yourself to, you will see such Acts of Random Kindness. And, as saturated as we've become with bad news, where good news are not a given, but the exception, we inevitably are more impressed with them. As the capitalist world some of us live in will have us know, scarcity means higher value. Ergo, the rules of economics and human nature make me believe that soon enough, news channels will start looking for the good news, and more importantly, we as viewers and co-habiting humans, will be looking for our own good news.

It was in search for evidence for these good news that I set up my other blog, and I am still looking, every day.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the horizon.

I think that universities and clubs have much in common. They both involve the human condition of wanting what you can't have. It is said that people need a constant aim, and if our primal urges for food and shelter are satisfied, then we will invent a new aim. I will be talking about the never-ending chase of the horizon.

I've applied to a few universities in Holland, where I'd like to do a Master's degree in Media and Journalism. While I had no clear favourites, two of them seemed more appealing. Groningen only accepts 15 people to do the course, and oddly enough, they very much liked my interview,so I got an offer from them. Secondly, Erasmus  University Rotterdam offered a very appealing degree and just yesterday they told me they have accepted me too, on the condition that I pass all my modules and exams. Awesome.
Yet, the funny little female mind of mine indulged in some subsequent mind-games. What the bleeding hell must be wrong with them, accepting me to do a course there?!
Silly me. I would like to get into a good master's course. Challenge accepted. I have been offered place at the best universities for my speciality. Challenge completed. So...i am confused and suddenly thinking that what I wanted must be of less value, if I've achieved it.

Should you make the mistake of going into a club, there's the usual meat market: when it is a straight club, some girls are hot, some girls are not. Some guys hit on the former, and the later you go in the night, the fewer the good looking guys are, they are somehow taken by 10:30p.m. So, if you're a girl, and you're hit on by an attractive man (and let's face it, it almost never the good-looking ones!), then I personally get flabbergasted. That's nice of you to approach me... but if you're not taken by now, then something must be wrong with you. It may not be looks, but there's always something wrong.

That is at least the case with many women. They bitch that it is never the hot men who hit on them.However, when the inadequacy is not physical, they will immediately start looking for it until they can pin it down. There must be some other horrible shortcoming. Indeed, sometimes, may it be short? Is the coming short?

Of course, the entire reason for this disbelief is our own female shortcomings. In Theatre Arts, they talk about suspension of disbelief.And to chase happiness is an absurd concept- if you chase it, it will run away. It would do all of us well if we believed in our capabilities, knew our strengths and accepted our flaws.

Why did the female chicken cross the road, whilst chirping “We can do it!”? Because it wasn’t the 1950’s anymore.

Women’s sexuality seems to be threatening to men and this, I think, is the primary reason why pornography is also frowned upon. A man watches porn, that’s expected. A woman watches porn and suddenly she’s a whore. Fine, so be it, we’re all whores. If a whore means a woman who has many sexual encounters. It is the connotation of the word that gives it power, and the only way we can change the connotation is by owning the word. I think it is a fear that, if there was a word which, like “stud”, glorified women’s conquests, women’s sexuality would have massive effects on the male ego. The reason for it is the sexualisation of the western society. Sex equals power, thus words like “slut” or “whore” and the negative meaning ascribed to them is what keeps women in place, ensuring that they don’t openly enjoy sex as much as men do. Until there is not judgment passed on a sexually liberated woman, we cannot talk about equality of the sexes. Here is an interesting discussion of "sluts", rape, feminism in the Guardian,

Pornography should not be frowned upon, as there are women, many women, who enjoy such a career, they have made money from it and it shouldn’t be up to society to judge them for it. Instead of banning strip clubs with the excuse that women could be exploited, keep them legal and stimulate male strip clubs as well. As far as my liberal mind is concerned, prostitution should be legal. The reasons include security, social and economical factors. Firstly, in places where prostitution is legal, such as The Netherlands, it can be regulated, which means that there is no reason for human trafficking, thus ensuring for healthy and safe work conditions. Secondly, I struggle to find the moral problem. When we are not talking about forced sexual labour, there are women who enjoy working in the sex industry; to make it illegal on the misogynist grounds that they are exploited (in the cases when they are not!) is counter-feminist. It is a misconception that women cannot and do not enjoy sex. We do, just as much as anyone else. Thus, to take away the option of “getting laid and getting paid” appears to me to be in fact an oppressive practice, where women are made to feel victims. I am not saying that every woman should aspire to be a prostitute, not at all. All I am saying is, if she wants to be, she should be allowed to, and should do so in safe conditions because prostitution is happening whether you like it or not, and until it is legalized, millions of women are under the threat of being trafficked for a sleazy man’s pleasure in some smoky dingy flat.

And as far as the Prime Minister of Iceland, who is the first openly lesbian prime minister, she should have known better than to make strip clubs illegal! :)

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get over the ex-chick.

I think it's time to openly admit that I am still not over my ex. At the end of the day, I seemed to play a game I didn't know the rules of but I was getting just enough to feed my imagination and make me want to play more...I played against myself, with no option but to lose.

Some of you know that I have a permanent partner, we're still together and we're still able to make you vomit with our cuteness, very much so. Just before I met him, I was still with an ex. Incidentally, not just an ex but my first ever girlfriend. We were together in our mid teens, we then split up, and after about 7 years (i.e. last spring) we decided to give it another go, as we both realised that we'd left things unfinished and we wanted to know whether "us" was a relationship worth pursuing. Our dates were wonderful, we took walks, talked and claimed places to be "ours" or called places we'd like to go to. We did all that people do on dates, and it was sweet because it was the second time around, we had grown up and you probably know, there's nothing sweeter than getting back with an ex-partner.

I had to go back to England, we wrote little, I wrote her a letter. She loved it, thanked me and adored me for it, she loves letters. She never got to writing one back. I felt like I put in more effort and yet she would still spontaneously write to me saying "I love you". Fair enough. I got back to Sophia, and we took the same walks, it was all lovely. We just never progressed from there, and soon she failed to come to Pride with me because she'd been out the previous night, being fucked by some guy until the morning, to the point of bruises. I didn't know whether to kill her or help her on the next day, when she called to explain. I wasn't bothered much about the guy, we'd been in an open relationship, but I was pissed off as hell that she chose to go out when I was purposefully giving her space to study, with exams coming up for her, so I called the whole thing off.

She had long beautiful hair, going down to her waist. Such a charming smile. What I will always remember, though, no contest, is the scent of her body, natural sweet smell. That's what makes her unique.

I am happy that I know now what I didn't know when I was 14 and when I cried my eyes over her: we cannot ever work, we're so compatible yet so different in our approaches toward relationships. It's all the closure that I'll ever get, just knowing that it cannot work, it's no-one's fault. It should be enough.

Yet I am stil bitter, not because I miss her, but because I miss what she represented. I hate that the person who is so responsible for who I am now, the person who made me a bit more of a woman, is also the only ex that I am not speaking to and I am not on friendly terms with. I hate that she hurt my ego, that I still don't know what she did to me to get under my skin like this. I know she meant it when she said she loved me. I hate that I will never really know why we couldn't work, why I wasn't worth the effort for her to fight for me.

I hate that I will probably never be able to hate her. 

Why did the chicken cross the road? It was a matter of principle.

Is it always right to uphold your convictions?

What initially got me thinking was a discussion on The Big Questions, a BnB had refused to host a married gay couple in a double room because it was agains their convictions. It was an interesting enough case, with courts giving preference to law against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and thus overruling the law supporting the right for religious expression. Awesome. 

Little did I know I'd be having a much more personal encounter with the same issue.

My partner recently asked me to delete a photo I had taken of him, that he wasn't too proud of. As far as I was concerned, I was in the right: he was aware at the time, thus his lack of objection indicated consent to me, that I was about to take a photo. I had also agreed not to share the contents of it to others. So why was he asking me to delete it? It made him uncomfortable, he said. He felt that simply asking me to delete it should be enough, we play for the same team, not against each other. I knew I was technically right but of course, when you are a team, you can't get away on a technicality. I deleted the bloody picture. 

What upset me was the certain emotional manipulation: surely, if you love someone, you don't use their trust and love against them, and this is a point that should speak to both of us in this case, I get it. 

I still struggle to make up my mind: did I make a compromise and take one for the team, or did I simply bend over and take it? When does compromise end and when does manipulation begin? There are cases when being right is not all and upholding your convictions will ultimately be destructive.

Going back to the original case, the BnB was held by a religious family who wouldn't allow any unmarried couples to stay in a double room, gay or straight. However, the gay couple were married, but were still denied the double room, as marriage was only for men and women, the owners felt. Yet, you relinquish your rights to judge, when you open up a business in the public sector. It shouldn't be right to uphold your religious views when that harms others and when it is against the law. We have placed the law above religion, which pleases me immensely. 

As far as my partner and I, we're fine. After some sulking on my side, and some Galaxy chocolate bars, it's all back to normal. I figure, as long as we communicate honestly and are able to swallow our ego every now and then (yes, mostly me, doing the swallowing), then we'll continue to be awesome.

"Forgive me father, for I have sinned!...." -Cross the road six times, chicken, say ten Hail Marys and you shall be forgiven.

It's time to talk about religion.

Religious matters are personal and often very complex. However when it comes to child molestation, the issue becomes as simple as any "truly American" movie- the bad guys should get punished. 

The media have given publicity to enough stories in the recent years, involving Catholic personas high in the hierarchy, who have been charged with child molestation.It seems to me that it is the strict prohibitions and supression of what is one of the most natural human needs- sex and companionship, which has led to stories like Billy's. This is yet another example to me of where organised religion has gone wrong. To deny people what is natural, ask them to supress it and constantly reinforce a feeling of guilt for being human cannot end well, and anyone who thinks otherwise has got another thing comming.

Here's generally what happened:

Father Engelhardt plied Billy, a fifth grader,with sacramental wine and pulled pornographic magazines out of a bag in the sacristy and told the child it was time “to become a man,”.

“After that, Billy was in effect passed around to Engelhardt’s colleagues,” the report says. “Father Edward Avery undressed with the boy, told him that God loved him,” and then had him perform sex. 

“Next was the turn of Bernard Shero, a teacher in the school, with whom the parents of the boy had shared about the molestations . Shero offered Billy a ride home but instead stopped at a park, told Billy they were ‘going to have some fun,’ took off the boy’s clothes, orally and anally raped him and then made him walk the rest of the way home.”

Billy fell apart and turned to heroin. (NY Times, 2011, "Avenging Altar Boy")  

In any profession, once a person has been convicted for child molestation, they are never allowed to work with children again. Aparently, the Church are under no such obligation. 

I am not preaching against organised religion, this is a personal choice. I don't claim that all catholics are bad people. 

What I am saying is that it is not acceptable to forgive religion, to tip-toe around it or allow for more. It is not acceptable for the the Pope to cover up a child molestor, and having done so, I don't know what he is doing still being the head of the Catholic church. The reason why he still is on his post is, i am guessing, money and power. And it upsets me that, just like anything else that is too complicated and takes more effort than The X Factor, we seem to lack the attention span to even remember it ever happened. 

When Michael Jackson was accused for child molestation, it destroyed his career. Sadly so, as his accusors later admitted they had been forced by their parents, for money, to accuse him of such terrible acts, even though all they had received from him was company, attention and a great time in Neverland. He was cleared of all alegations, yet still the seed of doubt remains. 

Why can't we be more socially just, socially responsible and socially interested to give a damn about the thousands of children who have been and still are molested by priests, whom these children trust and who are supposed to give them guidance in life? Why is it so appealing to deny an innocent pop-start forgiveness but grant it to those who don't practice what they preach?