Roxette – It Must Have Been Love

“It Must Have Been Love” is a power ballad written by Per Gessle and performed by the Swedish pop duo Roxette. The ballad became the duo’s 3rd #1 hit in the United States, and is one of their best-selling releases, leading the single to be certified gold in a number of countries.

The song, included on the soundtrack to the hugely popular film Pretty Woman, rivals “The Look”, “Joyride” and “Listen to Your Heart” as the song most closely associated with them. In 2005, Per Gessle received an award from BMI after the song’s four millionth radio play.

How to be useful in wartime: practical patriotism

How to be useful in wartime: practical patriotism
The Times, 1914

We are receiving a constant stream of letters containing suggestions for personal conduct or useful action in the national emergency. We publish a selection below.

They vary, no doubt, in value. But they all reflect the intense interest and desire to help which animates the whole population, and they will, we hope, encourage the spirit of duty, unselfishness, restraint, and consideration for others which it behoves us all to cherish to the utmost.

  • First and foremost, keep your heads. Be calm. Go about your ordinary business quietly and soberly. Do not indulge in excitement or foolish demonstrations.
  • Secondly, think of others more than you are wont to do. Think of your duty to your neighbour. Think of the common weal.
  • Try to contribute your share by doing your duty in your own place and your own sphere. Be abstemious and economical. Avoid waste.
  • Do not store goods and create an artificial scarcity to the hurt of others. Remember that it is an act of mean and selfish cowardice.
  • Do not hoard gold. Let it circulate. Try to make things easier, not more difficult.
  • Remember those who are worse off than yourself. Pay punctually what you owe, especially to your poorest creditors, such as washerwomen and charwomen.
  • If you are an employer think of your employed. Give them work and wages as long as you can, and work short time rather than close down.
  • If you are employed remember the difficulties of your employer. Instead of dwelling on your own privations think of the infinitely worse state of those who live at the seat of war and are not only thrown out of work but deprived of all they possess.
  • Do what you can to cheer and encourage our soldiers. Gladly help any organization for their comfort and welfare. Explain to the young and the ignorant what war is, and why we have been forced to wage it.
  • Bin Laden’s Latest Message to the U.S.

    “American people: This address to you is a reminder of the causes of 11 (September) and the wars and consequences that followed and the way to settle it once and for all. I mention in particular the families of those who were hurt in these events and who have recently called for opening an investigation to know its causes. This is a first and important step in the right direction among many other steps that have deliberately gone in the wrong direction over eight barren years that you have experienced.

    “The entire American people should follow suit, as the delay in knowing those reasons has cost you a lot without any noteworthy benefit.

    “If the White House administration, which is one of the two parties to the dispute, has made it clear to you in the past years that war was necessary to maintain your security, then wise persons should be eager to listen to the two parties to the dispute to know the truth, so listen to what I am going to say.

    “At the beginning, I say that we have made it clear and stated so many times for over two decades that the cause of the quarrel with you is your support for your Israeli allies, who have occupied our land, Palestine. This position of yours, along with some other grievances, is what prompted us to carry out the 11 September events. Had you known the magnitude of our suffering as a result of the injustice of the Jews against us, with the support of your administrations for them, you would have known that both our nations are victims of the policies of the White House, which is in fact a hostage in the hands of pressure groups, especially major corporations and the Israeli lobby.

    “One of the best persons to explain to you the causes of the events of the 11th is one of your citizens, a former veteran CIA agent, whose conscience awoke in his eighth decade and decided to tell the truth despite the threats, and to explain to you the message of the 11th. So he carried out some activities for this purpose in particular, including his book “Apology of a Hired Assassin.”

    “As for explaining the suffering of our people in Palestine, Obama has recently acknowledged in his speech from Cairo the suffering of our kinfolk there, who are living under occupation and siege. Things will become clearer if you read what your former president, Carter, wrote about the racism of the Israelis against our kinfolk in Palestine, and also if you listened to his statement weeks ago during his visit to the destroyed and besieged Gaza Strip. He said in that statement that the people of Gaza are treated more as animals than human beings. For us God suffices, and He is the best disposer of affairs.

    “We should have a lengthy pause at this point. Any person with an iota of mercy in his heart cannot but sympathize with those oppressed elderly, women, and children living under the deadly siege. Above that, the Zionists pound them with US-made incendiary phosphorous bombs. Life there is tragic beyond limits, to the point that children die b etween the arms of their parents and doctors due to the lack of food and medicine and the power outages. It is indeed a disgrace for world politicians who are content with that, and their loyalists, who are behaving as such with prior knowledge and premeditation, and under the influence of the Israeli lobby in America. The details of that are explained by two of your fellow citizens. They are John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their book “The Israel Lobby” in the United States.

    “After reading the suggested books, you will know the truth and you will be severely shocked at the magnitude of deception that has been practiced against you. You will also know that those who make statements from inside the White House today and claim that your wars against us are necessary for your security are in fact working along the same line of Cheney and Bush, and propagating the former policies of intimidation to market the interests of the relevant major corporations, at the expense of your blood and economy. Those in fact are the ones who are imposing wars on you, not the mujahidin. We are just defending our right to liberate our land.

    “If you thoroughly consider your situation, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups. You should have made efforts to liberate it rather than fight to liberate Iraq, as Bush claimed. The White House leader, under such circumstances, and regardless of who he is, is like a train driver who cannot but travel on the railways designed by these pressure groups. Otherwise, his way would be blocked and he would fear that his destiny would be like that of former President Kennedy and his brother.

    “In a nutshell, it is time to free yourselves from fear and intellectual terrorism being practiced against you by the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. You should put the file of your alliance with the Israelis on the table of discussion. You should ask yourselves the following question so that you can determine your position: Do you like the Israelis’ security, sons, and economy more than your security, blood, sons, money, jobs, houses, economy, and reputation? If you choose your security and stopping the wars — and this has been shown by opinion polls — then this requires that you act to stop those who are tampering with our security on your end. We are prepared to respond to this option on sound and fair foundations that have been mentioned before.

    “Here is an important point that we should pay attention to with regard to war and stopping it. When Bush assumed power and appointed a defense secretary who had made the biggest contribution to killing more than two million persecuted villagers in Vietnam, sane people predicted that Bush was preparing for new massacres in his era. This was what took place in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Obama assumed power and kept the men of Cheney and Bush — namely, the senior officials in the Defense Department, like Gates, Mullen, and Petraeus — sane people knew that Obama is a weak person who will not be able to stop the war as he had promised and that he would procrastinate as much as possible. If he were to decide, then he would hand over command to the generals who oppose this aimless war, like the former commander of troops in Iraq, General Sanchez, and the commander of the Central Command who was forced by Bush to resign shortly before leaving the White House due to his opposition to the war. He appointed instead of him a person who would escalate the war. Under the cover of his readiness to cooperate with the Republicans, Obama made the biggest trick as he kept the most important and most dangerous secretary from Cheney’s men to continue the war. The days will show you that you have changed only faces in the White House. The bitter truth is that the neoconservatives are still a heavy burden on you.

    “Once again, if you stop the war, then that is fine. If you choose not to stop the war, then we have no other option but to continue the war of attrition against you on all possible axes, just as we did with the Soviet Union for 10 years until it disintegrated, with the grace of God. Continue the war for as long as you wish. You are fighting a desperate, losing war that is in favor of others. There seems to be no end in sight for this war.

    “Russian generals, who learned lessons from the battles in Afghanistan, had anticipated the result of the war before its start, but you do not like those who give you advice. This is a losing war, God willing, as it is funded by money that is borrowed based on exorbitant usury and is fought by soldiers whose morale is down and who commit suicide on a daily basis to escape from this war.

    “This war was prescribed to you by two doctors, Cheney and Bush, as a cure for the 11 September events. However, the bitterness and losses caused by this war are worse than the bitterness of the events themselves. The accumulated debts incurred as a result of this war have almost done away with the US economy as a whole. It has been said that disease could be less evil than some medicines.

    “Praise be to God, we are carrying our weapon on our shoulders and have been fighting the two poles of evil in the East and the West for 30 years. Throughout this period, we have not seen any cases of suicide among us despite the international pursuit against us. We praise God for this. This proves the soundness of our belief and the justice of our cause. God willing, we will continue our way to liberate our land. Our weapon is patience. We seek victory from God. We will not give up the Al-Aqsa Mosque. We hold on to Palestine more than we hold on to our souls. Continue the war as long as you wish, we will never bargain over it (Palestine).

    “Endless war will not tire me
    “For I am now fully grown and strong
    “For this, my mother begot me (lines of poetry)
    “Peace be upon those who follow guidance.”

    ~ Al-Qa’ida leader Usama Bin Ladin

    Secrets Exposed! How to make a woman happy!!

    How to make a woman happy…

    It’s not difficult to make a woman happy, a man only needs to be:

    1. a friend
    2. a companion
    3. a lover
    4. a brother
    5. a father
    6. a master
    7. a chef
    8. an electrician
    9. a carpenter
    10. a plumber
    11. a mechanic
    12. a decorator
    13. a stylist
    14. a sexologist
    15. a gynecologist
    16. a psychologist
    17. a pest exterminator
    18. a psychiatrist
    19. a healer
    20. a good listener
    21. an organizer
    22. a good father
    23. very clean
    24. sympathetic
    25. athletic
    26. warm
    27. attentive
    28. gallant
    29. intelligent
    30. funny
    31. creative
    32. tender
    33. strong
    34. understanding
    35. tolerant
    36. prudent
    37. ambitious
    38. capable
    39. courageous
    40. determined
    41. true
    42. dependable
    43. passionate
    44. compassionate

    WITHOUT FORGETTING TO:

    45. give her compliments regularly
    46. love shopping
    47. be honest
    48. be very rich
    49. not stress her out
    50. not look at other girls

    AND AT THE SAME TIME, YOU MUST ALSO:

    51. give her lots of attention, but expect little yourself
    52. give her lots of time, especially time for herself
    53. give her lots of space, never worrying about where she goes

    IT IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT:

    54. Never to forget:
    * birthdays
    * anniversaries
    * arrangements she makes

    HOW TO MAKE A MAN HAPPY:

    1. Show up naked or just wearing a cotton tee.
    2. Bring beer.
    3. Hand over the remote.
    4. Discuss how to rank the following women on attractiveness, sexiness, as a lover: Jessica Alba, Megan Fox, Scarlett Johanssen.

    The White Birds

    THE WHITE BIRDS

    by: W.B. Yeats

    WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
    We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
    And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
    Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

    A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;
    Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
    Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
    For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

    I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
    Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
    Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,
    Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

    ‘The White Birds’ is reprinted from An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen & Co., 1921.

    Questions on Health

    Am I in all honesty pursuing a healthy lifestyle?

    Are my food choices healthy?

    Do I get enough exercise to keep all of my systems flowing well?

    Do I get enough rest, so the body can rejuvenate and heal?

    Do I do the best I can to keep the stress down in my life?

    Do I take time specifically to ‘take care’ of my body and show that I ‘love it’?

    Do I understand that if I don’t take care of my body, then ‘it’ can’t take care of me?

    What do I ‘get’ out of being un-healthy?

    Is being un-healthy an excuse so I don’t have to try to become all that I can be?

    Am I too lazy, negligent, ignorant or in a state of denial and I think that ‘disease and death’ happen to
    other people, but not to me?

    Do I ‘expect’ the doctors/medical field to ‘fix’ whatever goes wrong with my body?