The pains of wealth

Richard Branson is a billionaire UK entrepreneur and businessman, who is known for his numerous business ventures and his high energy style.

Last week he was in Vancouver, British Columbia touting Virgin Airlines service from the city, along with BC Premier Christy Clark.   Based on news reports, Branson apparently invited the "delightful" Premier (his words) to come Kite-surfing on his back with him.  However, it appears that he had initially failed to mention the dress code and placed the picture below as an example of the requirements on his blog!

What every businessman yearns to be!

Clark's liberal government has nearly zero chance of being re-elected next year and she personally has extraordinary low polling numbers amongst the electorate.  In response to Branson's bravado she gave the following response:

I think when you meet with the CEO of a billion dollar company who wants to do business with your province, you can get a little bit more respectful treatment than that.

Frankly she missed the boat (or kite-surf) on this one.  She should of ran with it and told the public that as a divorced woman she'd enjoy frolicking in the waves like that, but her duty is to country first and helping local businesses be more cocky like Branson in the global marketplace, unlike the wealth destroying socialists of the NDP or the anti-tax crackpots of the BC Conservative party.


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If there was a better advertisement for capitalism and the benefits of the free market system over the sclerotic and dismal prospects of socialism, I'd like to see it.   Mothers, make sure your sons grow up to be businessmen!

Sarah Palin sacrificing herself for interracial harmony!

Could I have been wrong all these years, that Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) is actual not a racist and loves (really loves!) other people and races?

News reports based on the yet unreleased book by Joe McGinniss titled "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin" claims that Palin has a fetish for black men, has used illicit drugs, and has had marital affairs.  It has been suggested by Caribou Barbie that Mr. McGinniss, -who was invited to live in Sarah Palin's neighbor's house and observe the Palin family- is a pervert and maybe even a pedophile!  As everyone knows, Sarah doesn't pull punches when this hockey mom with lipstick gets angry.

Sludge like this is better left in the pages of tabloid newspapers, preferably owned by arch-douche bag Rupert Murdoch.  There are probably far more damaging and news worthy stories about Palin, which has been richly covered elsewhere.  However, my contempt of Palin and the entire faux-populists and deranged crypto-fascists of the Tea Party movement demand me to at least bring to light these allegations.

McGinniss has some choice words about Palin that have raised my eyebrows:

• He describes in the book "that Palin had a sexual ‘fetish’ for black men and had a one-night stand with Miami Heat player Glen Rice while dating future husband Todd Palin. Rice is said to have confirmed the encounter to the McGinniss."
• States that Palin "married her husband only after being impregnated, saying that her first child, Track, was born eight months after the wedding."
• Palin engaging with Brad Hanson, her husband’s one time business partner, in a six-month affair that lead to the dissolution of the two men's snowmobile dealership.
• Palin furthermore has in the past used marijuana and cocaine

Some of these things are pretty lame, while others are just typical low class shenanigans.  The whole black men fetish I find amusing.  It's awfully cold up there in Alaska and a piping hot thick drink of black goodness is maybe what she really needs.

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Really though, I think more attention should be given to a documentary that is currently being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, called "Sarah Palin - You Betcha."  The documentary, profiled in the Guardian newspaper, is by British film maker Nick Broomfield, who says that Palin "represents the forbidden in a weird and mischievous way" to the minds of evangelical Christian men in the Republican party.  People who are most knowledgeable of her, describe Palin as "dangerous", a "sociopath" and "disrespectful to intelligence".

The Guardian article summarizes Palin in a more coherent manner:

[Broomfield] has her down as a political opportunist who'll simply try to fill any power vacuum – a theory that fits neatly with the portraits offered of her as an overgrown prom queen, a beauty pageant back-stabber (there's some great footage of her puffing on a flute during Miss Alaska 1984, a dead spit for Rula Lenska) who thrives on gossip and vendettas and formulates policy with populist short-sight. Any allegiance to intellectual or fiscal ideologies is flaky at best. Her erratic decision-making meant she left Wasilla with a £22m deficit after her stint as mayor, then, as state governor, slapped an enormous tax on oil companies in Alaska. "She got that through with Democrat support," says Broomfield. "Most of the Republican party were against it."

The dangerous stupidity of this woman and her equally imbecilic followers should not be underestimated.

Flow Chart of human hookups, first-dates, and relationships

I'm not sure how accurate any of this data actually is, but it's interesting just to think about in the idle spaces of own existence.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e2013489aeda81970c-popup

(h/t to Andrew Sullivan's the Daily Dish)

Things I found interesting:

1. 5.4% of people die without ever getting married.
2. 56% of people claim to be unhappy with their sex lives (Forget viagra and other boner drugs!  I see an opening here for subscription based tantric sex lessons offered at the local Learning Annex!)
3. Largest reason for breakups is a loss of interest (that seems accurate based on my own experiences)
4. 22% of people worldwide have engaged in infidelity (again, based on hereditary disease profiles I've reviewed that seemed entirely correct)

The Lunacy of the Tea-Baggers!

Lindsey Beyerstein, a prominent left-wing blogger, excoriates the mind-numbing idiocy of newly minted GOP Senate candidate for Delaware in her posting "Anti-Masturbation Crusader Christine O'Donnell is Master of Her Domain in Delaware."

In it she outlines Ms. O'Donnell's predilection with sexuality and her bizarre notions that persons who have AIDS deserve no sympathy, because they've brought that ailment upon themselves by not adhering to strict Biblical tenants.

Good Laugh here:

Anti-masturbation crusader Christine O'Donnell beat establishment favorite Rep. Mike Castle last night in Deleware's GOP senate primary, with a helping hand from the Tea Party Express.

O'Donnell first rose to national prominence as the founder and president of the SALT, an anti-masturbation youth ministry. In 1996, she and her fellow salteens appeared on MTV's series "Sex in the Nineties" to explain why masturbation is a form of adultery that will render your future married sex life irrelevant. "[I]f he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?” O'Donnell asked earnestly.

The following year, while representing SALT on C-SPAN, O'Donnell argued that people with AIDS didn't deserve to be called "victims." A guy called in to say that he had a hard time feeling sorry for people with AIDS because their disease was their own fault. In his opinion, feeling sorry people with AIDS was like feeling sorry for "bank robbers who get shot in the head" while they're robbing banks. "He makes an excellent point," O'Donnell replied.

Lest you think SALT was just some youthful indiscretion, O'Donnell is still listed as the contact for the group in this internet directory, which was last updated in 2009.

I hope Democratic senate candidate candidate Chris Coons cracked open a bottle of Astroglide to celebrate O'Donnell's victory. With any luck, the wankers of the great State of Delaware will grease his path to Washington.

The Huffington Post also posts a segment Ms. O'Donnell did on Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" in the 1990's, where she is posed with a hypothetical situation if she would lie to Nazi soldiers seeking whether she was hiding any Jews.  Using the false consistency argument, she states that it would be wrong to lie and that she implicitly would side with the Nazi's seeking to exterminate Jews!  I suppose she never realized that by hiding the Jews in the first place she would be lying to the Nazi's to begin with, and secondly her admission to those roving death squads would certainly have lead to her and her family's death.

Welcome to Fascist America!  Please check your frontal cortex at the gates, if you intend to visit.

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Update: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow highlights O'Donnell's youthful "don't touch myself" campaign from the 1990's (h/t Crooks and Liars).  Ugh!

Although I don't take this seriously, there has been studies done that indicate a correlation between increased access to pornography through the internet, and a decrease in sex crimes. If this is the case, Ms. O'Donnell's earlier campaign would if given national scope, in fact increase violent crime and decrease public safety.

All Means to Attract and Distract...

  

As Thomas Frank said in his book What's the matter with Kansas?

These voters are far more concerned with the frustrations and indignities of everyday life than with scholarly rigor or objective material interests, they suffer from old man’s disorder, their deafness to the insincerity of their leaders is a cultural marvel, it is a place where hatred trumps bread, and I have worse to say.

Yes, we know all that, but what will Tiger Woods think!  And more importantly, since Elin was married to the world's greatest sex-freak, will she ever be satisfied with anyone else between the sheets!  Again, what do the sheeple think?

Quote of the Day: Dawkins on the Corpulence of the Vatican

From Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, atheist, and professional shit-disturber when it comes to all things religious, speaks on the credibility gap of the current Pope and his personal involvement in concealing the pedophile epidemic within the Roman Catholic Church:

“Should the pope resign?”

No. As the College of Cardinals must have recognized when they elected him, he is perfectly – ideally – qualified to lead the Roman Catholic Church. A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part; a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence: in short, exactly the right man for the job.

He should not resign, moreover, because he is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization whose character he fits like a glove, and of which he is the absolute and historically appropriate monarch.

No, Pope Ratzinger should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution – while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

If there isn't any doubt about the perversity of these deviants, take a look at the urinals found in the Vatican.  Nothing bizarre about urinating into the porcelain vagina of the Virgin Mary!

Pole Dancing: A potential Olympic Sport

I'll have to admit I don't really watch any women's sports; in fact I rarely watch any sports.  While I think female sports is something to be pursued and awarded, I don't believe those sports like boxing, muscle-building, and other sports that attempt to emulate the physical strengths of men are necessarily the best outlets that highlight female athleticism.

I'll have to also admit that when I think of pole dancing I don't think of athletics; but there are those that do.  Twisting, contorting, and moving provocatively for the crowd won Katerina Witt a gold medal at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.  Female sexuality when coupled with raw talent has catapulted many women to international fame.  Anna Kournikova was never a great tennis player, but she did appeal to many male fans with her above average appearance.

So the thought of women pole dancing for the "gold" versus dollar bills slipped into a garter, doesn't strike me as obtuse.  No one doubts that a great deal of physical strength, endurance, and talent is necessary for the event.  So why then if sports dominated by prepubescent children as in gymnastics or sports that are dominated by artistic merit like figure skating, shouldn't pole dancing at least be given a chance to entertain the masses while allowing the ladies to strut their stuff.

According to pole dance advocates, "After a great deal of feedback from the pole-dance community, many of us have decided that it’s about time pole fitness is recognized as a competitive sport, and what better way for recognition than to be part of the 2012 Olympics held in London."

Sucky, Sucky, Mr. Jones?

Apparently the real emerging market is not to be found in the Mekong delta or in the bustling streets of Rio de Janeiro, but rather in the pants of lonely Western men, who are desperately in search of that perfectly porcelain-skinned oriental beauty.

Some cunning Beijing entrepreneur (or at least that's the claim) has come up with an i-phone application that allows any man who has fallen victim of a restraining order in the West, to exhibit his worldly grasp of Mandarin through this app and seek the ideal oriental mate.

The creators of the application ask worthy consumers whether they have ever "found [themselves] speechless while dating a Chinese girl?" How one lands a date with someone, who doesn't speak the same language is another question. Although perhaps when the creators of this application talk about dates, they are actually speaking about the nightly rituals and exchanges of bodily fluids that occur in Shanghai's less than refined nightclubs.

Angry Asian Man finds the whole thing sad. Not me! Given that the Chinese have stolen all these jobs from these hard working American men, it is only fair that they have at least the chance to strike back at the heart of their nemesis. As I'm sure Confucius once said, "All's fair in love and trade wars caused by globalization Mr. Jones."

Chillout Session: Rammstein ("Das Model")

No sex for us please, we're Ants!

Ant has given up sex completely, report Texas researchers

Shared via AddThis

To the horror of every heterosexual male out there, scientists have discovered a species of ant, Mycocepurus smithii, that reproduces without fertilization and the absense of males altogether. Apparently nature has decided that in certain cases, males are just too much of a hassel to have around and need to be "laid" off!

Most social insects—the wasps, ants and bees—are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate.

"Animals that are completely asexual are relatively rare, which makes this is a very interesting ant," says Rabeling, an ecology, evolution and behavior graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. "Asexual species don't mix their genes through recombination, so you expect harmful mutations to accumulate over time and for the species to go extinct more quickly than others. They don't generally persist for very long over evolutionary time."

France falls out of love with topless sunbathing | World news | The Guardian

France falls out of love with topless sunbathing World news The Guardian


Sacre bleu! C'est terrible!

I've officially cancelled my trip to the French Riveria this year and all following years unless this travesty is rectified.

Historical feminist writing details how the row over toplessness was a struggle for women to do what they liked with their bodies. What has been projected on to it today are different values, identified, not with equality but desire, sexualisation of the body, voluptuousness and the body perfect.

It's less about women feeling at ease and free. It has been linked to the harsh cult of the body beautiful, where no imperfection is tolerated.

Will these feminists make up their bloody minds!

First they were shouting, "pants down and tits out." Now they've aligned themselves with the religious right in demanding everyone cover up!

Do you want Cheese with that?

"Yeah that's right... seven Inches of dark hot meat?"

Burger King over the past few years has made a marketing decision to pursue the hunter class of consumers; "young men after the largest possible amount of meat and grease, who aren't so concerned with cost." There aren't any Thai salads, leafy goodness, or nutrition, just plain old meaty excess.

Sexualization of advertisement is hardly new. Tarted up 'Bratz' dolls for young girls, chesty Hooter's girls serving chicken wings, and Viagra for grandpa commercials are the norm. So it's hardly worth noting when a company goes after the pimple-faced and fatty-kid demographic, whose only encounter with the opposite sex involves them stalking one in a virtual X-Box game. Aware that providing "There's something in Mary" DVD's in happy-meals may not go over well with the general public, they decided to go to the next level.

Initially the ad looks more like a satire of machismo culture that would better fit Argentina rather than the American Midwest. I'm sure the Andrea Dworkin crowd is already making the claim that this ad promotes "wife-beating" and infidelity. On the other hand, I wonder if South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is a fan of this ad? Either way, other than creating hype for the BK franchise, I'm not sure promoting heart-stopping and artery clogging meat-on-a-stick really does much for the rest of us.

Burnin' for you

I've heard of smokin' double barreled guns before, but even Prince (or the artist who formerly had talent) never went this far!