Calendar Girls

Calendar Girls

It's never to early to think about what you'll be hanging up on the wall to separate the days next year. So let me be the first to show you the 2011 calendar you'll want to have. Say hello to your Czech Sexy Members of Parliament Calendar!

The 2011 calendar features four women MPs from the Public Affairs party wearing little in the way of clothing in a series of images that dispatch the traditional image of staid and serious parliamentarians. The country returned its highest ever number of women MPs at the last general election.

Two other women, one the party's candidate for the mayor of Prague, make up the numbers, with each politician photographed twice for the calendar, which will be sold for charity.

"We want to draw attention to the fact that we have women in politics," said MP Lenka Andrysova, who appears in one shot in a thigh-high dress kneeling on a shelf.

Katerina Klasnova, the 32-year-old deputy speaker for the lower house of the Czech parliament, is photographed lying on a bed wearing a loose-fitting robe.

The Czech elections in May saw a record 44 women elected into the lower house of parliament. In a significant political shift, young parties such as Public Affairs, in which women have a stronger presence, entered parliament for the first time.

Public Affairs and Top09, another newcomer to the Czech parliament, are now involved in coalition negotiations to form the country's next government.

"Women's political influence is growing. Why not show we are women who aren't afraid of being sexy?" said Marketa Reedova, Public Affair's 42-year-old candidate for the Prague mayor's office.

Public Affairs has previously used glamour to highlight its strong female presence. During the election campaign four of the women who appear in the calendar posed for a billboard poster wearing black swim suits.

As further evidence that few in the Czech Republic have qualms over spicing the world of politics with touch of glamour and sex appeal, in the days after the election the glossy women's magazine "Ona" (She in English) encouraged readers to vote for "Miss Parliament", asking them to choose their favourite female MP.

So with that said, do you want to see the pictures? I mean, they are worth a thousand words, after all.













Wait a minute. What? That's it? That's it?!?! Maybe the foreign films have lead me to think that any time people do calendars that nudity will be included. Oh well. I love this quote

"Why not show we are women who aren't afraid of being sexy?"

I mean, it's about time someone took a stand on the deplorable lack of sexualisation of women in the public eye. Has a woman ever been "Afraid" of "being sexy"? Heads up, you can be a feminist and still like to feel sexy and horny, it's amazing, I know. But it's true, I swear.


Avril Lavigne?

I guess the only time someone really doesn't want to look sexy is if they don't want to look sexy for someone they're not interested in. Don't look at me like that, pervert! sort of thing.

OH MY GOD, I can see their legs AND feet! Don't look now. My favorite is the one of her brushing her teeth. Cause, I mean.. what? I guess they're cute pictures and poses. I don't know. I guess it's just a little vanilla compared to what I would normally expect one of those calendars to have.



That woman looks hot and smart with those glasses and that book. Though the book is an upside down copy of Atlas Shrugged.

I guess your average feminist wouldn't have a problem with strapless dresses and short skirts if guys went around in public showing that much skin with a straight face. But then again, double standards, right?


That's Okay love, sometimes I have trouble getting out of the bath as well.

But I dunno. I'd go around half naked all the time if I had a good enough body for it. I mean, be proud of your sexiness! Though if I had a daughter she will be wearing a potato sack until she is 18, god damn it!

I guess the real indicator of equality is for your average woman to not be judged because you wore the same work clothes three days in row. It's pretty much the definition of male privilege.

Either way, I guess you should clear room on your desk for a new 2011 calendar cause who can pass up some political figures? Pray that the U.S. senate never attempts this.

Keeping Dates Straight

Keeping Dates Straight

Some of you may already know this about me, but I'm not very good with keeping days straight. They sort of bleed into one another. Perhaps this has something to do with the calendars I keep. In stead of having one that serves a point or function of keeping me organized, I generally look for the one with the silliest theme or is just plain and simply the oddest one out of the bunch.

Last year I had a free Horizon Organic Dairy calendar. It provided me with 12 months filled with cows grazing to admire. It offered me inspiration to drink more milk and to aspire to one day be a cow. They have it easy. Eat grass all day and get your utters pulled on daily. Aside from get grounded up and eaten as a burger, they had it made. It was a strange calendar and I'm a little sad that I can not put it up without looking like a strange person.



For 2009 I'm taking it back old school. Canadian Club sent me a calendar to use. Each month has vintage pictures of what your daddy would have looked like if he was a number one playa. As well as offering strange holidays to be noted such as Tom Selleck and Tom Selleck's mustache's birthday on the 29th of this month. I also didn't know that the 23rd is National Pie Day. I'm going to make sure that I have some GOOD key lime pie in my hands then.

I used to always get the daily calendar. Either a George Carlin or Far side calendar was on my desk on any given year but after a couple of months I would stop keeping up with it and soon I would have to peal off 10 to 15 pages at a time. I have enough to do in one day, planning out when I was going to remove days wasn't one of them. Especially not after I cheated and looked ahead into them to see what the next couple of days said. It was just a bad influence altogether.


These new and old calendars got me thinking as to what

I also hated how they would usually lump Saturday and Sunday into the same page. Just because it's the weekend doesn't mean I should get cheated out of a page to look at. It was making my weekends look shorter than they were. That's not a visual I want to think of. How could you equate my weekend to the same page size as boring ass Monday?! HUH CALENDAR! HUH?!

Um.. yeah. So perhaps with this new calendar with fun filled facts like when Abe Vigoda's birthday is and when Cabaret opened. In case I'm leavin you in the dark, i'ts the 24 and 13 of February.

Calendar 2009 - Beta Pack

Calendar v2009 - Beta pack

Well, despite fears that they wouldn't get this thing out for a few more weeks due to a bug switching from winter to spring, the new 2009 Calendar demo will be officially released tomorrow afternoon at a press conference. I've been actively seeking out any and all news related to the new calendar for five months now, and happened to get a leaked copy.

I'm pretty sure that this will be the best version yet.



Some upgrades:

In previous years, the calendar has had the weekends separated by the week. Finally, after a lot of user feedback, they've combined Saturday and Sunday together. No more waiting all week just to get the second part of your weekend. I'll be happy that I can finally take a date on weekend vacations; it just wasn't feasible with only one day and then a week in between.

Seems they're really pushing the patriotic shit down our throats this year though with all the different days: veterans' day, flag day, memorial day, presidents' day, patriots day, independence day, etc. I guess nobody is too low to stoop to making a profit off 9-11. There have been calls to retire the day 9-11 and add a completely new date, but for now we're forced to remember the tragedy.

After the leap year experiment, it was decided that it just wasn't worth it. It posed a risk of triggering more blue moon situations. So they have axed the 29th day in February, back down to just 28. The theory behind 29 days in February is sound, but more work needs to be done on the algorithms. I know that the team in charge of it is still employed, so maybe we can hope to see it put back in at a later date when they've ironed out a few more of the bugs?

Left out:

Despite rumors and speculation, this release failed to include any web 2.0 systems for including user generated content. It's only a matter of time, they can't fight this for much longer. Oh well, here's to next year.

Known Bugs:

They couldn't start the new year at the beginning of the week without making the new version incompatible with the old one, but that's been one of those things most of us have grown used to, and it hardly even seems to matter anymore.

In the event of the Apocalypse the calendar will probably stop working correctly. It does not have any provisions for the enforcement of dates in a Mad-Max style wasteland. Future releases may address this, but they're being pretty tight lipped about it.

Calendar v2009 will come included with the v2008 one second bug fixed. It should have never been an issue and the extra second was easily patched. With the beta release of Calendar v2009 being released means we can play around with it to see if it's the Calendar we want to use. Only downside is that we can't install and run the program till Thursday at midnight.

Concerns:
Calendar 2009 will be crafted from the finest materials, with high quality standards. I know that a few of you got to July and then noticed that your calendars became unreliable, but this year promises to be a much better suited to a year of use. My grandpa is still using his calendar from 1969, so I know the technology is out there to make a sturdy calendar that will last, and let's hope that there will be a return to that sort of quality this year.

You'll have to throw out your old calendars, they just wont work once you upgrade to this version. A lot of people I know just cut them in half and turn them over and use the pictures on the back, frame them or something. It's a good way to get a little extra use out of your old useless calendar.

I know a lot of people have been comparing the use of Gregorian Calendars vs Mayan ones. Just because Mayan ones have a sleek design, don't believe the lies in their ads to "Think Differently." Mayan calendars may not have to get new versions every year but you wont have any support after 2013.


F.A.Q.

Q: Why is Monday still on the calender? Nobody likes Monday. -LasagnaloverCat@yahoo.com

A: Excellent question LasagnaloverCat@yahoo.com. The reason why Monday is still on there is because the attempt to create a new beginning of the week with another S would only confuse matters.

Q: I heard that you had to lose a Saturday in March because of the economy, is this true? I notice you didn't mention that at all in your literature. If so it sickens me and you should really be ashamed. -JohnSmith@gmail.com

A: It is sadly true that we did have to lose a Saturday in March due to budget cuts. The pirating and illegal download of Calendars of years past left us with no other choice. If that Saturday in March is important to you, you may want to look into importing your calendar from Japan this year.

Q: Will you be continuing to support previous years' calendars? My company is still using Calendar 98. Will we have any backward-compatibility issues?

A: I'm afraid not. The only way to benefit and use Calendar 2009 dates is by upgrading your companies Calendar software. Perhaps you should talk to your bosses as we do provide lower business rates for software to companies looking to upgrade.

Q: Is this going to affect my sundial's Preferences? I just re-installed it with a shovel and donn't want to mess around with it.

A: Your sundial's software should still work as normal under your preference settings. Your dial may be off around spring and fall when the time changes, but it should not effect you more than normal.

So with all this out in the open, I'm looking forward to the new Calendar v2009. I used v2008 for a whole year and while it had some bumps in the road, it still worked great all year round in telling me what day it was. Made planning and organizing days a breeze. Here's hoping v2009 is great for you as well.