Love Songs: Cute or Creepy?

Milow's song "You And Me (In My Pocket)" at first glance seems to be a really cute, fluffy song about how someone who is so in love that he wants to be with the person who loves all the time and everyday, a feeling probably everyone who has been in love once can relate to. The last lines of the song are "I really wish that you were smaller/Not just small but really really short/So I could put you in my pocket/And carry you around all day", which makes for a really endearing image somehow.
 However, the way the song describes the other forms this wish takes is beyond creepy, destroying any possible romantic conotation. The second verse begins with "I wish you were a little bigger/Not just big but really really fat/Doors you would no longer fit through/In my bed you would have to stay". Not only is the choice of words anything but flattering but downright insulting and inconsiderate of people disabled due to genetic obesitiy or other diseases, it also suggests that the lyrical I would not mind their partner to be sick and immobile to the point of them being tied down to their bed, which again has loads of unfortunate implications. The next lines take the repulsive imagery even further: "I often wish that you had feathers/I'd keep you in a giant cage/All day long I'd sit and watch you". What at first sounds as if it could be an allusion to the beloved person being a winged angel is in fact the degradation of a human being to an animal being kept locked up as a pet, solely for the entertainment and pleasure of its owner. The last line tries to compensate for that, saying "I'd sing for you and that would be okay", trading the lyrical I's love and affection for the beloved's freedom. The chorus "Oh you and me/It would be only you and me" becomes a morbid promise, because the song hardly even hides that it has a rather psychopathic point of view: "I wish you were a little slower/Not just slow but paralyzed/Then I could plug you into a socket/So you could never run away". A promised love song in exchange for what basically sounds like the life of a hostage tied to the bed of someone obsessed over them? That is anything but romantic, that is more alike to the plot of Stephen King's book "Misery", and definitely not an ideal topic for a chipper love song.

Extreme Makeover - Home Edition

The TV show “Extreme Makeover – Home Edition“ is presenting itself as a charity show assisting poor families by remodeling their houses, but in fact, they are doing nothing of long lasting effect to actually help the people. While shoving upon the affected families a new house and all sorts of technological gadgets for free, the show ignores that future bills, maintenance costs, and taxes will increase for the family, while their income will most likely not. Since most families are presented to be in a tight spot even before receiving the house, this begs the question just how they are supposed to afford keeping it in the long run. Instead of providing a more substantial, long-running help, the show drops a huge burden onto the family, and then moves on, making it more of a self-serving display of charity for the TV network than an actually functioning social charity project.

[Please excuse the delay, I was experiencing some trouble with my google account for some reason.]

On why Germany should reintroduce death penalty

Germany has abolished any form of capital punishment in 1949 in response to the crimes against humanity committed during the Third Reich and in an effort to become a more humane state. While it is true that the right to execute criminals has been misused in the past, there are cases in which capital punishment should be applied today. The maximum jail sentence in Germany is fifteen years, which can only be extended by preventive custody. This option is used for convicts who are too dangerous to ever be released again. These individuals spend their lives in imprisonment, but with an abundance of comfort such as free healthcare and accommodation, while Germany has an increasing number of homeless and has to mourn the death by freezing of some of them each winter. So why can the state pay for individuals who ended up in jail due to their willfully committed crimes, but not for people who ended up living on the streets not due to their own wrongdoing? In an effort to become more humane, the state has become cynically unjust as to who they really want to help – a homeless or a mass murderer of children. I personally think that by now the state can be trusted not to misuse this sentence, and that it is necessary to reintroduce it.