Every day Ed picks a topic, does a web search and picks the bones out of various international blogs. The varied viewpoints and opinions coupled with Ed's humor should make you think, grimace and grin.

Tabacco is a pretty safe bet as a topic of interest world-wide. Yet again, my blog search took me down a different route to what I expected.

They don't even grow the dreaded weed in the city of Tabaco. However the Phillipine government needs to be hung out to dry because, apparently, they are standing by as a series of politically motivated killings unfolds, including the murder of a guy from Tabaco City. It looks such a neat place on the TV travel shows, but obviously it isn't all fun for the locals in the land of food, glorious food.


The tobacco companies have no shame when they need to expand their customer base. They target teenagers so they can cultivate a smoker of the future, and now it looks like they are also targetting another great untapped and healthy demographic. Watch out if you are a woman in Africa. Tobacco will play a big role in your life in the future.

Incredible that the multinationals are going to turn the whole of a male-dominated continent upside down and undo taboos, just to make a few billion. Whatever next. And according to Mrs Tuwine, repressed women are going to be bombarded with adverts to persuade them to partake of the evil weed. There is such a dilemma coming up for young mothers when the nicotine addictions kick in - Do, or do I not spend my Nestlé powdered milk money on cigarettes instead?


And finally, you don't need to smoke the evil weed if you listen to salsa! Seriously, the 12-piece OrquestaTabaco y Ron will lighten the mood and cast you into a cigar and rum fantasy music land without affecting your lungs or liver in any way.

Every day Ed picks a topic, does a web search and picks the bones out of various international blogs. The varied viewpoints and opinions coupled with Ed's humor should make you think, grimace and grin.

And this is the flag of?

Dour by name but not by nature

Dour is the name of a place in Belgium where anything but dour DJs, alternative bands and grand master mixers congregate for a live 4-day Music Event July 12 to 15.

I know this because one of the Wavumi members, Koolman, is the guy who runs the blog, indeed the whole damn website for the Dour Festival, and with a billing like that, I couldn't help but take a look.

How do they have fun in Belgium?

Belgium, famous for rain, chocolate and fries, plus van Damme and Merckz the Cannibal, is a country full of culture. And it should come as no surprise that thousands of Europeans converge on a small site in the great Belgian outdoors to camp, eat, drink and make merry gratuitously to hip alternative music.

For just €75 you get a 4 day festival pass, not bad for sessions going on from lunchtime right through to 5am. Pick the bones out of these bands! What stamina these Euro party goers have.

€15 also gets you a camping spot, toilets and lighting plus somewhere safe to burn your waffles and sausages.

Surprisingly, they even have mobile homes in Belgium, surprising for such a small dot on the globe. But if you were thinking of parking up at the festival site in your $200k Meet the Fokkers mobile home, think again. Even a quaint place like Belgium isn't crime free, and Koolman has to announce that there is no longer any room for mobile homers at the Dour inn, so to speak, due to too many thefts in the past.

Rock on in Europe

The Dour festival is just part of the Euro fest scene this summer, and there are another 20 energy-sapping concerts to choose from, including the Montreux Jazz Festival, yo, and Eurorockéennes - yowza plug those ear drums, man, and lock up your daughters, here comes Marilyn Manson.

I had to smile at the countries involved in this particular circuit. The usual suspects Belgium, France, Spain, Hungary, and Iceland, Burkino Fasso and Canada. Sounds like an Axis of Revel.

Thanks to Koolman for opening our eyes to that little lot. Are you going to any fests that come close to the orgiastic musical events going on in Europe this summer?

After reading a few posts around the net on commenting and comments, I am going to slightly revamp MyBlogLog Sunday.

Cool. That way, you get to interact with visitors to the Pisstakers and I get a hint at what you might like me to focus my attention on. (To be honest, it may not sway the angle of my mini review in any way, but then again, it might!)

So far MyBlogLog Sunday consists of 3 blogs who left a post to link to. I will extend my breakfast time to see if there are any more takers! Thanks.

As you can see, visitors flock from all over the world to read this well-crafted rubbish. I say, there is no point being a jet-setter and not putting that knowledge to good use. (Who wants to become another Paris Hilton?)

Therefore the topic of conversation for the blog spot on the homepage will be international blogs.

Before you skuttle off and hide, I appreciate that the bulk of Pisstakers readers are from the USA, so it is only fair that I continue to blog in English, the international language (in the minds of us English speakers.)

The rest




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Every day Ed picks a topic, does a web search and picks the bones out of various international blogs. The varied viewpoints and opinions coupled with Ed's humor should make you think, grimace and grin.

I was going to do a search for blog articles that dealt with minority sports, and cleverly call it the Minority Sports Report. But I was hijacked at the first hurdle by this article on Blogging is not a minority sport.

The writer of Online Media Cultist, Eric Berlin, responds to an article by Vic Keegan, a journalist with the UK Guardian. Eric argues against the idea that blogging is waning in popularity, and covers a few points of interest in the process, namely: the percentage of English language blogs as a percent of all blogs world-wide is diminishing fast; more people are reading and not blogging themselves; and there is very little money to be made out of most blogs in their traditional format.

In the original Keegan article, (basically ripping into Technorati!) there were several other thought-provoking assertions made, and it too makes for interesting reading.

For bloggers with drive, I think you will find the whole episode quite encouraging. And if you are looking for a niche, (and a way to harvest new ways of thinking), blog about blogs not written in English.

I already mentioned Pambazuka, a weekly social forum on injustice in Africa



One of The Pisstakers' perennial sources of referrals is Overheard in Bucharest



And Clapping Trees points you to the top blogs in Asia

How to read a blog in a foreign language?

Wonder no more and enjoy the thrills of the world through other eyes.

When you visit a new site via Search Google Machine translator will do most of the heavy lifting for you.

To translate a few paragraphs only, copy and paste the mumbo-jumbo into the translation tool.

To add a Google translation tool to your own blog, View Source and copy and paste the sidebar code in The Pisstakers sidebar.


We've linked to several web search engines offering random payments & prizes! Click the icon & search our keyphrase Zwinky . Add the code to your sidebar too! Ask Ed!

Hit the head icons above to peruse hundreds of Ed's posts about your favorite topics. Most recent posts are in the right sidebar.

For tips on losing weight there are plenty of sites to choose from.

Chris Pirillo has 50 tips on how to lose weight and beat the bulge forever. Interestingly he makes a point of saying that point number one is all the info you need. I like his honesty and would buy his eBook if he had the nerve to print it with that one salient paragraph only.

For fitness without fatness, the best advice is to start simple and work up. I therefore recommend reading this blog on How to train For Ultimate Fighting.

If that sounds a bit excessive, you could sign up to the gym that Bobbarama attends and lose weight instantly in two ways. Firstly, you can lose about 2lbs if you pay for 12 monthly subscriptions in advance, in quarters. And then when you say that one of your goals is to be on an equal footing with the trainer, you will lose a few ounces when the humor section of your brain is removed.

To slim down in spectacular fashion, Ed personally recommends cycling up mountains or becoming a trawlerman on the Bering Sea. Both of these pastimes, if performed correctly, will enable you to eat like a horse and lose vast amounts of weight in a relatively short space of time. The only drawback to cycling is that you rely heavily on statistics to gauge progress. so, not for the mathematically challenged, and as for trawlermen, well, every time they sit down to gorge, it could be their last supper.

If you prefer the exercise-less route, where you are slim but unhealthy, try teaching your body Thermogenesis using the latest greatest chemical, Thermocerin. Basically, by being at one with your fat cells you can tell them to let go. It is that easy. The trouble is, the fat cells are fitter than your heart cells, so you may end up out of breath while slimming.

We've linked to several web search engines offering random payments & prizes! Click the icon & search our keyphrase Zwinky . Add the code to your sidebar too! Ask Ed!

Hit the head icons above to peruse hundreds of Ed's posts about your favorite topics. Most recent posts are in the right sidebar.

What's up in Africa? Pambazuka, a weekly social forum on injustice in Africa offers the curious reader a summary of very well written and thought-provoking blog posts from Africans. It amazes me how forthright and logical African writers tend to be. They have to be that way in the face of extremely troubling attitudes from us know-it-all Westerners.

As per a recent review policy, full reviews are being reserved for winners of MyBlogLog Sunday reviewees sending me the most traffic each week. Many years ago, Claire Pitt flooded the Pisstakers and this is her payback review of A little Piece of Me.

For the 5 funniest blog posts ever, check out this list. They are political, but hey, even politics can be funny. These posts also prove that most humor is actually cultural references presented in a clever way. They may therefore not be remotely funny if you are an Inuit making a living in the fast melting areas of the Northern hemisphere

Round 'em up is a post on Blog About Your Blog re summarising the best or most useful blog posts of your week ie creating a blog post around others' articles. If done correctly, the benefits are many for both sides of the equation, especially if useful anchor text is used. That touch of linking class requires a little bit of research on your part to find the bloggers' keywords, or if in doubt use the blog post title as the link text.

Round 'em up should therefore get the author plenty of interest from cow hands seeking a free ad worth 60 buckaroos.

Personally I don't like the work involved in rounding up best posts myself. I think bloggers should email me your best posts! Hint hint. I am lazy like that.



I am also a self pisstaker, as I am not really lazy - as you can tell from MyBlogLog Sunday. However I have insisted that lazy-ish bloggers who want a mini review should get out of bed early on a Sunday and actually show their faces on my site. 140 mini reviews later it isn't going too bad, but it isn't the heavenly two way mutual linking fest it could be. Many bloggers either don't bother to mention their mention, or they don't know to look on Technorati to see who is blogging about them.

New angle on MyBlogLog Sunday. This post has just given me another idea, actually. From now on, to increase the two-way benefits of MyBlogLog Sunday, if you want to be mini reviewed: When you time your visit to be included in the last 10 in the MBL widget. you should also leave a comment mentioning YOUR best post of the week.

Oh how sweet is that? So sweet I expect MBL Sunday will drop to 2 mini reviews per week of conscientious marketing-aware blogs! I guess I can live with that in the name of quality blogging.

We've linked to several web search engines offering random payments & prizes! Click the icon & search our keyphrase Zwinky . Add the code to your sidebar too! Ask Ed!

Hit the head icons above to peruse hundreds of Ed's posts about your favorite topics.

I have linked to quite a few blog contests. If you have one going, let Ed know, and I will publish the details on the homepage.

The good thing about blogging is the sense of community and sharing of information. Say thanks to June for bringing Two Loos Le trek within the scope of our daily lives. The blog is a day by day Before and after exposé of the evolution of a European bathroom renovation project. It should reach almost toiletry proportions sometime soon. From that statement you can gauge what European builders are like with their commitments to schedules!

Comments are an intrinsic part of a blog, adding variety, perspective and additional information to the one-sided ramblings of bloggers, but they can have their downside. Touch wood, spam and trolling are not an issue yet at The Pisstakers, but Josh Wolf is going to start deleting comments containing blatant personal attacks.

He also discovered that one person had posted 85 times under different names and addresses, and most of the comments had been negative. Should he delete them, edit them, disable anonymous comments, or what? He asks for opinions.

The one address the phantom commenter couldn't be bothered to mask or change is the IP that traces them back to their basement. And Josh Wolf knows all about small dark rooms. He was the blogger jailed for not handing over an unpublished video of G8 shennanigans. Hence the irony / dilemma that he now has to decide whether or not to censor others' opinions that may not be to his liking.

We've linked to several web search engines offering random payments & prizes! Click the icon & search our keyphrase Zwinky . Add the code to your sidebar too! Ask Ed!

Hit the head icons above to peruse hundreds of Ed's posts about your favorite topics.

Today MyBlogLog Sunday cruises into part 14 at the Pisstakers.

It is an early blogger who catches the mini review this morning. The sun burst through the window most rudely and woke me up way ahead of schedule. What is a person to do when there is no coffee on the menu to lessen the pain? Therefore, the 10 bloggers this week are the nine o'clockers. Let's pray there is no sun next week so we can get back to a more civilised 10 or elevensies. And maybe I can lose this monk-like habit and drink more coffee too.

Thanks for taking part today, and to those of you who don't know what on earth is going on here, the MBL Sunday rules are explained here. (As a hint, be a MyBlogLog member who visits here just before I start blogging on Sundays - usually 10 to 11am!)



Permalink is permanent
All mini reviews from today are instantly added to the archives, so you can get a permanent back link to your mini review when it appears later today.

Update on the outcome of MyBlogLog Sunday "program"
The hope was to generate shout outs from reviewees who then tagged those posts in Technorati. About half of reviewees tend to do this! Not that the mini reviews have been in vain, as about 100 people a day check out the Pistakers MyBlogLog community - and some even cruise on by the blog. Plus it gives me the chance to really read other blog posts which is like being paid to have fun.

MyBlogLog Sunday prize winner

MyBlogLog Sunday info links

Be back later.