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To cover a song in various styles is quite a nice concept though pretty hard to do or at least, to do it well. Anthony Vincent Valbiro of tensecondsongs.com does it fantastic and uses 20 (!) styles! Watch and hear him sing Katie Perry‘s ‘Dark Horse‘.

So…which style do you like best?

Jennifer Hudson: “We all have the power to choose how we are going to handle every situation we are faced with throughout our lives. We are in control of the decision we make whether it’s about work, relationships, parenting, or our health.”

I couldn’t resist thinking of people who make a big deal about changing their swimming trunk on the beach in a way so that no one can see their thingelingy…if only they would be handy with towels as the guys in the YouTube video below!

Funny! 🙂

Barbra Streisand: “A human being is only interesting if he’s in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.”

Michael Hanson: “To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action.”

You might remember the Ylvis Brothers from last years funny and funky song ‘What Does The Fox Say’ (unless you live in Norway and *obviously* know the Ylvis Brothers 🙂 ). They did an elevator prank in 2012 which I recently ‘discovered’…ROTFLMAO!!

Follow the links to the separate episodes here: 1, 2, 3 and 4, or watch them all at once below:

HILARIOUS!!

John F. Kennedy: “The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”

It is probably nothing more than a coincidence, but when I started writing this post (about a magnificent beatbox performance at Sydney’s TEDx) and wanted to refer to some previous ‘beatbox posts’ I made, I discovered that there has been one every two year from 2008, 2010 and 2012…huh?! A mystical two year beatbox cycle on the blog?! 🙂

This one is a must-watch; really amaaaaaazing what this guy, Tom Thum, can do with just his voice! He ‘uses his mouth in strange ways in exchange for cash’ 🙂 strange ways indeed and…friggin’ brilliant!!

Erica Jong: “The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.”

In an era where the importance of being connected and ‘always online’ prevails, this video offers a welcome perspective; a good piece of poetry, packed in a nice audio visual presentation. Interestingly enough, ‘we’ would never have known about this video without social media he he! 🙂 Furthermore; didn’t our parents make similar arguments with respect to TV? The argument of ‘everything was so much better when we were young’ has been used throughout history and honestly, it has never been a good argument. (QOTD May 2 2014 🙂 )

That said, I believe in balance and the online world is the modern way to stay connected with the ones you care about (besides meeting them face-to-face!). Oh, and most of the ‘new connections’ are still made in the ‘real world’ anyway, and when you do meet online first, you will definitely meet in real life at some point before you fall in love, f*ck like rabbits, get married and get loads of babies! 🙂

Furthermore; how is reading a (fictional) book better then watching a movie, playing a computer game, or surfing the web? Actually one can argue that many skills needed in future life are nowadays much more gained by using an iPad then playing soccer on the street?

Once more, I believe in balance; so make sure to work out as much as you surf the web, spend time in nature as much as you read, be present on social media as much as you meet people in real life!

And most important of all: be present and BE aware…LOOK UP and spread your LOVE! 🙂

Richard Feynman: “No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”

Pierre Trudeau: “The Past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.”

This simple test apparently ‘forces’ 98% of people to give the same answer…huh?!

It is a weird phenomenon that no one can really explain, but it is surely fascinating. Hmm, as my answer was something totally different I am in the 2% group (aka WEIRD fellas! 🙂 ), which makes it hard for me to ‘proof’ this test…let me know your result in the comments so I can see if indeed the vast majority of people give the same unlikely answer…

Oh, for this test you should not write anything down nor use a calculator. This is just fairly simple arithmetic (no catch!)…

So, *are* you one of the many that thought “red hammer”? What about “red” or “hammer”??

If you’re in that 2% that thought of something else, well you are just like me…weird! 🙂

Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

A recurring thing, the transformation from long nights to long days (aka. the voyage from darkness into the light 🙂 ), is pretty visible here ‘up North’. It becomes most apparent when the sun sets (which is just because I am normally not awake when it rises 🙂 ), today it set at 21:14h, nice! For comparison; in Amsterdam it set at 21:06h (not such a big difference, but every minute counts 🙂 ). The differences in daylight are much bigger though; Oslo has 15h 58m 06s daylight and while Amsterdam only has 14h 56m 19s, over an hour less!

The ‘total daylight tipping point’ occurred on March 19 (logically around the vernal equinox) and from April 20 the evenings are longer than those in Amsterdam. Ha, it won’t take long before I can read a book on my veranda…at midnight…without a torch! 🙂

If numbers are your thing, check out timeanddate.com for *all* the data (Oslo, Amsterdam).

Marlo Thomas: “One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man.”

Some advertisements are just too good not to share and the following YouTube clip is one of them; a 3 minute video that serves as a fantastic reminder of the power of being kind without expecting something in return.

Live and love unconditionally…I *love* it!

Hugh Macleod: “Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing. The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world.”

Besides a great song by Alanis Morissette, Ironic is also what some photographs, photos of situations that are a pure fail in themselves and by that hilarious.

Check ‘m out here, actually some are so ironic that it is hard to believe that they were completely unplanned. 🙂

Margaret Deland: “One must desire something to be alive.”