Kyiv building declares love for inhabitants

The writing is on the wall!
In the inner suburbs of Kyiv today, a 9 storey block of flats adorned itself with letters cut out of peach wallpaper declaring "I love you" to it's inhabitants.
Whilst Valentines day is not a traditional Ukrainian celebration, the building (who wished to keep its street name and number a secret) stated "I have been thinking about doing something like this for ages. The occasion came up, and, well, it just seemed right"
To enhance the feeling of romance the building arranged for the part of the city around it to be transformed for the day into a giant snow dome.
Says one resident "It is nice to have snow around, it makes it feel like proper winter"

The big question or course, is whether this love is reciprocated. According the inhabitants we spoke to, the answer is a resounding "Yes".
"In my last flat the electricity used to go out about once a month. This building is much more reliable. Love it? Well, yeah, I guess you could call it love"
A group of smokers gathered in the foyer say they often come here to meet, some of them not even living in this block. "it's warmer than outside, and my mum would kill me if she saw me smoking" explains one teen.

With both rental and property sales prices sky-rocketing, it is likely most of the residents will stay for the long term, rather than move to new housing complexes. "I looked at some real dumps before I moved here, stairwells full of rubbish, parquetry coming off" says one resident "And you can almost see average rent prices rising month by month. If you find a flat, you stick with it, there is no point in moving"

The building sees stability as one of it's major draw cards "With me it's all up front- what you see is what you get. People don't want uncertainty in a building, they want comfort, security and a place where they can be themselves. I feel blessed to be a part of this."

land of surprises

oh yeah, i forgot to say last post, but i saw this weird interview with clare danes talking about taylor dane's great dane's tail, which she thinks is mundane. pretty weird thing to see on prime time ukrainian tv, but i am convinced that when Angela Carter wrote "the infernal desire machine of Doctor Hoffman" she must have banged out at least some of that book on Ukrainian soil.

Today I was sitting on the mini bus waiting for it to take off, when in the throng I noticed something spectacular. There was this guy, who from the ankles up looked like your average workin class man in his early 30's, maybe a bit of a hard life type but nothing extraordinary.
but beneath his trouser cuffs there was a razzle dazzle disco goin on- lime green sequinned winklepickers! fair dinkum!
what is more, he was walkin around in them like it was nothing special. what is more than that, nobody else looked twice.

I think this afternoon it was about minus four outside, which made the next encounter also rather surprising. On the bench outside my building was another mid 30's guy, this one looked more of a hard living type, but was on the bench with a pedigree white long haired cat on his lap. both him and the cat had expressions of semi-disinterest and weren't really interacting with each other, just looking around with a look of aristocratic disdain. I think I gawked too long and whilst neither the man nor the cat looked at me, when i got closer the man acknowledged me with a dignified "good afternoon". at least i think it was the man.

facelessbook

when one of my colleagues was getting some pizza out of the microwave he said " if this was facebook I'd say "john is getting pizza out of the microwave "

good call.

one other man at work has started spending every minute that he is not required to not be on facebook, on facebook. one woman equally socially awkward woman sits next to him and they occasionally comment to each other of stuff that is going on in the lives of their facebook friends, "her husband has the flu at the moment and I want to give a message to say get well but I cant remember his name and on her profile it doesnt have his name, oh how terrible"

yes it is terrible, but on a larger scale than you think, candypants.
you are acting out all the things people do when they have friends, but instead of putting energy into the kind of things that would give you real friends, your computer generates some fake ones, and you stay socially retarded.
send enough '...sends you a hug" messages and you are gonna get one back. even if it is the mistake, where someone is trying to send a 'hug' to someone else and the default settings mean that it gets sent to everyone.

and when i got that message "matt has challenged you to a movie quiz" i thought my friend had thought of some cool quotes from films we had both seen and I was supposed to reference them, but no, it was a generic market research poll where a bunch of shots of hollywood movies are shown and i have multiple choice quiz to test my 'knowledge"

no i do not want to add the 'who thinks you are hot' application or the 'mood ring' application, or the 'join the league of vampires' circle of crap
and perhaps worst of all, is the 'rank your friends' quiz. what??
no, it is not "perhaps worst of all", it IS worst of all. i got an email sent from facebook to my email account informing an anonymous friend had voted me "second best dancer"
second best?!! keep your bloody opinions to yourself whoever you are, or at least, to quote (and with equal venom) one computer-game nut who had just been killed in one of those 'room of 200 people playing doom against each other' competitions "Show your damn face!"