Category Archives: Random

Fifty Shades Trilogy: Fifty Shades Darker – Book Review (EL James)

After the torture read that was Fifty Shades of Grey (my review), I braced myself for the second book. A sane person would have stopped reading but being the masochist that I am, I wanted to know if these books, which are still selling like hotcakes, actually had anything more to them than the sex scenes upon sex scenes which filled their pages, ultimately becoming useless and skippable.

The second book in the Fifty Shades trilogy, titled Fifty Shades Darker, doesn’t stray away much from its predecessor. But as the title suggests, it runs deeper into what the first book lacked: a tangible story.

Fifty Shades Darker picks up where Grey left off: Ana had left Christian after he beat her in one of his sexual escapades. She then starts to sink in to despair, as is typical for similar characters in other books (Yes, Twilight comes to mind). Luckily enough, that doesn’t last a whole book. A few pages later Ana encounters Christian and ends up in his arms again without much struggle. This time, however, their relationship won’t be the same. New boundaries need to be set and new rules need to be instilled. As the story progresses, Ana starts to become fearful about the prospect of Christian leaving her for someone else when he gets bored of her and the “vanilla” relationship they have. On the other hand, Christian finds in Ana a reason for living (the billions upon billions that he has are not enough) and is equally fearful about her leaving him.

As their “relationship” grows, one of Christian’s ex-subs who had never lost her fixation on him returns with a vengeance while Ana faces trouble at the publishing house she’s working at with her overly flirtatious boss.

That’s book two in a nutshell.

Is it better than book one? Only slightly. Fifty Shades Darker delves deeper and goes darker into what made Christian the sadist BDSM-loving person that he is but those insights into the character’s personality are so diluted by the overly abundant sex scenes that they eventually become irrelevant.

Ana is still as useless a character as she was in book one. Even the “improvement” to her relationship with Christian don’t rub off on her – no pun intended – to give her some spine. In fact, she even melts further into the man she’s in love with, becoming more and more useless with each passing page. She “flushes” at every turn of the page. Her infamous “oh my” is blurted out countless times. Her Macbook Pro is still called the “mean machine.” Everything about her is still the same – except much staler and when her being as stale as it can get in Fifty Shades of Grey, that’s saying something.

If you’re the person reading Fifty Shades for the sex scenes (I’m not judging), you won’t be disappointed. As I said, Fifty Shades Darker doesn’t run short on them. Among the places that get a taste of Ana and Christian’s undying libido there’s a pool table, an elevator, their corresponding apartments and a boat’s deck, just to name a few.

Fifty Shades Darker manages to go a few shades deeper than its predecessor but that’s nowhere near enough to turn this erotic “thing” a novel worth reading. The characters still use the same cues for sex. Whatever plot that takes place is as predictable as it can get and that’s without even going into the overly repetitive writing style which gets even worse on this.

Why did I read these? Yes, I read all three books a few months ago. Well, horrible as they are, they were still better than the medical school material I had to study.

3/10

Lebanese Forces Website Turns Into a Joke

Just so you don’t think I have a blind vendetta against Tayyar.org with me bashing them on different occasions (check those here & here), it’s now the Lebanese Forces website’s turn to take a hit.

We’ve all been suffering through horrible electricity outages. Even Beirut is getting 6 hour cuts. Different sides are taking different opinions regarding the matter, as usual, depending on which end of the political spectrum they belong to.

Those opinions can be summed up with the following: Blame Bassil vs Don’t blame Bassil.

I don’t like Gebran Bassil and as a voter in the Batroun caza I won’t vote for him when he runs here – again – in 2013. That won’t end up doing much since he will end up as a minister – again. But I would have done what I can.

When it comes to the electricity problem, however, there’s a drastic difference between putting the entirety of the sector’s woes on him, as some people are doing, and actually acknowledging that the problem didn’t start with him, although his handling of the whole issue isn’t top-notch. For the record, I have blogged before about the electricity problem and about how silly Gebran Bassil was when he threatened civil strife against his one-sided government if they didn’t comply with his electricity plan.

All the political talk aside, you’d expect a reputable political website which should be concerned with, well, politics not to flaunt such a post on their Facebook page, which holds over 57000 likes.

The article they linked to can be accessed (here) and it features a collection of pictures such as the following:

Some of you might think these pictures are funny and you can share them on your Facebook and Twitter timelines all you want for all I care. But it’s unacceptable for the website of one of Lebanon’s leading parties to make an “exclusive” out of them. It’s unacceptable for that website to use them as material in order to please its readers.

How about Lebanese-Forces.com and tayyar.org stop running tabloid-ish “news” and focus on real issues instead? What does either website hope to accomplish by running silly articles about the politicians of the other?

The 2013 elections, if they happen, will be here before we know it. The article in question has over 700 Facebook “likes.” Brainwashing is here in full swing.

Pictures from Old Beirut

Have you ever wondered how the Lebanese capital looked before it got turned into the concrete maze it is today? Well, I blogged a while back about Lebanon in its golden age. Since then, I’ve found many pictures of Beirut that precedes the rabid urbanism of today.

Beirut – 1900

Bourj Hammoud, circa 1930

Raouche, around 1925

Martyr’s Square, 1930

AUB, 1930

Martyr’s Square (Previously Bourj Square) – circa 1898

Ain el Mraysseh, 1930

Koraytem, around 1945

Gemmayze – 1900

Nahr el Mot, 1965

Place de l’Etoile – 1950

Ramlet el Bayda – 1974

Ain el Mraysseh – 1972

The Last Part of UEFA Euro 2012 Round 1 Explained

I was reading the past couple of days sports articles about how a Croatia-Spain 2-2 tie would see Italy out, even if they beat Ireland by 10 goals.

So I asked people about that because it didn’t make sense to me and I was linked to the tie-breaker regulations, which are as follows:

If Spain ties Croatia, they would both have the same number of points as Italy in the case of Italy beating Ireland. In that case, they’ll go down through the above criteria in order. The first two, a & b, do not break the tie. Point c, however, which precedes goal difference, does. Italy tied Croatia 1-1. In the event of Spain tying Croatia 2-2, the number of goals scored by Spain and Croatia in their own game is higher and therefore, they would both advance. Unfair? Well, it’s the way things are.

Either way, sports blog figo29 has taken his time to write out a detailed scenario for all the different possibilities for the next few days playing out. So if you want to know, for example, how Holland can actually still advance despite having lost twice, I invite you to read this very simple analysis here.

Until then, I’ll go back to praying for the sake of Italy advancing. They leave their supporters to the very last round every single time.

The Lebanese Brew Ad Campaign: Try Something Brave… the Last Summer on Earth

I blogged several months ago about a great ad video by Lebanese Brew: Courage is Contagious.

The message behind that video was about the importance of being courageous enough to be free in life. And it extremely well done.

Well, who knew Lebanese Brew can come back with an even better campaign this time around?

Not straying away from their previous message, the Try Something Brave campaign is here: Going out of your comfort zone and doing things that you never thought you’d do, on the last summer on Earth.

All of these amazing ads are part of a video that has creativity & ingenuity written all over it:

Can I say brilliant? Can I say awesome? Can I say I got goosebumps?

This is probably the first time I’d want to try something after an ad campaign. I really want to have some Lebanese Brew right now.

Check out the campaign’s website by clicking (here) – it will redirect you to their Facebook page where a countdown for a smartphone app (for both iOS and android) is taking place. Almost 90 hours to go until you can get the app and try something brave. I’ll make sure to let you know about the app too.

Cheers to Lebanese creativity!

Update: The agency that did these is Interesting Times. I mention this because I think these ads are such a breath of fresh air that I need to congratulate the agency, even though they don’t need me. They have this feel of Lebanese friends sitting together and coming up with them – very authentic and very refreshing. A job truly well done, Interesting Times!