Words: Then and Now

The word is "vampire".

So...

Vlad the Impaler, Prince of Wallachia and Scourge of the Turks, of "Dracula"?


Or Brad the "Impaler", prince of lonely goth girls, of every post-Anne Rice vampire novel?

Time Magazine After Newsweek's Job as Obama's Publicist?

My Mom has a Time magazine subscription, so the mag appears faithfully every Monday morning on the grill of our gate.

Now, the magazine comes with a paper cover, ostensibly to have a place to put a subscriber's address on and to put an odd ad or two. (These days, its usually Thai Airlines.)

So, I rip open the paper cover, and lo and behold, what do I see but this:

                                                [Obama: Cam-Whore]


"Obama's Moment"? There's a war in Georgia, the Potemkin Olympics have just concluded, and the best Time can come up with is a loving tribute to Obamessiah?

Fuck this. I have refused to open Newsweek because I know those morons jack off to a picture of "President Obama" every night. But...Time? Jeez, I thought that the venerable old magazine had some self esteem. Looks like its just as much an acne-ridden school girl in a junior high dance as Newsweek is when it comes to this jerk.

I pray to God John McCain wins the US presidential election in November. Just watching the US "news" media's collective head explode as their "Anointed One" falls off his high horse would be worth the price of admission.  If that happens, somebody call me. I've got a lot of popcorn.

A Moment of Zen #2

The Future of Bangsamoro-stan

In light of GMA's recent attempt at a territorial firesale of Mindanao territory, here is a glimpse of what that hellhole Bangsamoro-stan will be like in a few generations had our gutless negotiators got their way with that stupid deal.

"The biggest obstacle to justice is the families themselves, who are unwilling to speak out against the teachers. Government officials say they cannot think of another case where the family has brought charges.

"Some people may say bad things about me. Even my own village is against me," says 40-year-old Moussa Biteye, the father of the twig-like boy. "But I think I am within my rights."

The respect for Islamic schools comes from a centuries-old tradition of families sending their sons to study the Quran and till fields in exchange for food. In the 1970s, as drought devastated West Africa, schools moved to the cities and Islamic teachers sent children out to beg in the streets. These days, boys as young as 3 are beaten not for failing to master the Quran, but for failing to bring back enough money - a change families often are unaware of."

I know this is in Senegal, a poor African Islamic nation. But considering the types who are agitating for partitioning Mindanao, and the kind of Islam bred in its mosques and madrassas (hey, there's a reason Jemaah Islamiyah likes it there), this kind of future is not too far-fetched.

Somebody ought to bury this damned MOA-AD, now.

Johnny Plays Director

My first time as a director of any sort...co-directing Gabun with Joem.

Here are the show dates: 

Aug 19 (TUE) - OPENING NIGHT- Gabún & Biyernes, 4:00 N.H. @7:45pm
Aug 20 (WED) - Sierra Lakes @7:45pm
Aug 21 (THU) - Sacraments of the Dead & Wayside Café @7:45pm
Aug 22 (FRI) - Sierra Lakes @7:45pm
Aug 23 (SAT) - Gabún & Biyernes, 4:00 N.H. @4pm / Sierra Lakes @7pm
Aug 26 (TUE) - Sacraments of the Dead & Wayside Café @7:45pm
Aug 27 (WED) - Gabún & Biyernes, 4:00 N.H. @7:45pm
Aug 30 (SAT) - Sierra Lakes @ 4pm / Sacraments of the Dead & Wayside Café @7pm
Sept 2 (TUE) - Sierra Lakes @7:45pm
Sept 3 (WED) - Sacraments of the Dead & Wayside Café @7:45pm
Sept 4 (THU) - Gabún & Biyernes, 4:00 N.H. @7:45pm
Sept 6 (SAT) - CLOSING NIGHT - Gabún & Biyernes, 4:00 N.H. @4pm / Sacraments of the Dead & Wayside Café @7pm

Ticket Prices:
P 130 (multiple entry: 3 showdates)
P 50 (single entry: 1 showdate)

I have a couple of Php 130 ones if anybody wants 'em.

I just cribbed this poster off of Bok...I have no idea where to get a graphic for a Gabun poster.

Anyway, back to your regular programming.

Geek: Is It In You?

Are you both insecure without your 20-sided dice AND hardcore?

Do you not care for feminine company at all? (or masculine, if a femi-geek)

Are you immune to the three words "what" "the" and "fuck"?

If the answer to all these questions is a high and shrilly "YES!!" (in all alien / quasi-mythological languages), then head on over here and grow yourself some elf ears.

Geek: When Real Life and D&D Collide, Something Has to Give....

(Cross-posted over at One Wrong Turn)

One Wrong Turn

http://onewrongturn.blogspot.com/
A Group Blog by people with way too much time on their hands...me, Joao, Cima, and hopefully a few others more.

And You Thought Higher Education in the Philippines Was Bad

Here's an article written by a poor, beleaugered Harvard professor...

Apparently, teaching the rich stinks...

Will have more thoughts on this later.

All i can say is, I can feel your pain! 

And Now, Writers...

I present the winners of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction-Writing Award. It is a contest wherein writers are asked to submit the worst possible opening sentences to imaginary novels.

Our proud winner:

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

Garrison Spik
Washington, D.C.

Real World Defies Pol. Eco.

I still remember our discussions during political economy classes regarding the death of so-called "hard power" in this new age of interdependence.  Look at the U.S. bogged down in Iraq, blah, blah... It's all about "soft power" etc., etc. All well and good, then.

Suddenly, while we're all not looking (eyes transfixed on Beijing's dog and pony show), Russia comes out and proves decisively that hard power still lives, that hard power still works, and by God, hard power is here to stay.

For as long as we remain the children of Adam, war will be with us, raging in every heart. All it takes is just one to take up the sword to spark a conflagration.

We who sleep too soundly in the night will wake up to find the world in flames.

A Potemkin City

In 1787, in order to mask the awful conditions in the Ukraine and Crimea from the Russian Empress Catherine II, Prince Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin allegedly constructed whole villages of cardboard. From this event we get the term "Potemkin Village", something so blatantly contrived in order to mask something much darker underneath. Communist countries are especially adept at the art of the Potemkin Village.

However, Prince Potemkin has nothing on Hu Jintao and his cohorts. Beijing 2008 is the greatest masterpiece of Potemkin village-making. Its practically a Potemkin City...something not even Kim Jong Il could have dreamed of.

So much so that if I could, I would propose that the term be re-made. Potemkin has been eclipsed. The term should now be a Jintao City.

I Wonder What William Coats Was Trying to Say...

When he designed this particular water tower...


And, how would poor Lord Demetrios Ypsilantis feel having his bust placed right in front of it?

In case you didn't know, this is the Ypsilanti Water Tower, which was...umm...err..."erected" by the city of Ypsilanti, Michigan in the year 1890. (At least, according to Wikipedia.)

Maybe William Coats likes odd-shaped mushrooms?

Ads as Personality Indicators

Its no secret that Google goes all Big Brother on internet users these days. (Google analytics anyone?) I believe they do these so they know which wonderful ads to plaster onto your website. As such, because these ads seem to be based on some words you supposedly use a lot, they're supposed to be a somewhat effective guage about the content of your website. Since blogs supposedly reflect the personality of the blogger, would the Goggle ads on a blog be an indicator of personality as well?

Let's try it out:

Ads for this blog as of today:
"Did Jesus Lie?" ; "Feminism Research" ; "New Culture Art" ; "Do You Believe in God?"

So...I'm a skeptical feminist interested in crappy art who has declared Jesus to be my personal Lord and Savior? Huh? I must be schizophrenic or something. Okay, so it isn't very accurate.

I wonder about others though...

Joao's blog:

"Political Science Online" ; "earth" ; "Global Government Events" ; "Vienna Boys' Choir"

Joao apparently is a political scientist who likes the planet Earth (in Spanish)  to be governed by one world government, and likes watching young boys sing.... Okay...

Bok's blog:

"Postmodernism Research" ; "Oscar for Heath Ledger" ; "The Dark Knight" ; "Great Christian Speaker"

Bok is apparently a post-modernist Christian who really, really (and I mean REALLY) likes the Dark Knight... Hmmm...

Joem's blog:

"Photos" ; "Work in Toronto, Canada" ; "Job Openning" ; "Free Chat / Blog"

Joem is apprently a chatty photographer who can't wait to leave the Philippines. Yikes.

Norm's blog:

"Millimeter Wave Terahertz" ; "eServercomputin" ; "Free Games Toolbar" ; "Apple Game Store"

Norm is apparently a bored systems administrator. Meh...

X's blog:

"Watch Bollywood Trailers" ; "Hindi Movie Videos" ; "Poetry Writing Software" ; "Visit Forklift, Ohio"

X apparently is an Indian film geek from Forklift, Ohio who also writes poetry. Uh huh...

I wonder if this post will affect my Google ads...

Hehe, I'll continue this series when I find some more interesting ad combos.

Where's King Solomon When You Need Him?

Poor Japanese baby is born into really mind-blowingly stupid circumstances.

One wonders who is to be blamed. Do we blame the idiots who thought surrogate pregnancies were a good idea? Do we blame the couple for divorcing with a paid-for baby on the way? Or do we blame whatever bureaucratic hiccup is preventing the father from taking his baby home?

I vote for all of the above.

I have seen the future. It blows. 

We Cherish What is Ours Because We Bled For It...

Here is the inimitable John C. Wright on Robert Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky", a work he suspects is Heinlein's answer to "Lord of the Flies". I am instantly reminded of what it was about Heinlein's work that I loved. Sure, the guy was crap when harping on sexual morality, and was something of a Malthusian, but he does get something right when it comes to the exposition of "manly" virtues. From Mr. Wright's review:

"Heinlein, no matter how radical in other areas, was profoundly conservative about some things. For example, there is quite a striking scene when Rod returns from his expedition to find a better campsite. He is overdue by months, and when he returns, the camp is now a town. He has indeed found a much better site, and logic says they should uproot and move there. However, in a dramatic scene where the townsfolk hold off a stampede by carnivorous pests, the town mayor dies defending the wall of the town. And Rod, the new mayor, out of sheer stubbornness, sheer grit, refuses to uproot and move to better land. The reason? He and his have shed blood here, and they are too proud to be moved from it.

For good or ill, that is the essence of conservatism. We cherish what is ours because we bleed for it. It was sober and realistic of Heinlein to touch on this theme."

If only for this story and "Starship Troopers", I am grateful for the Dean of Science Fiction. And, I think I have an idea for my next contest entry....

This Is Why I'm Hot...

Weather for Manila, Philippines

 -
31°C

Current:Mostly Cloudy
Wind: W at 32 km/h
Humidity: 75%

Sun

31°C | 25°C

Mon

32°C | 26°C

Tue

33°C | 25°C

Wed

31°C | 26°C

Note the irony of the Sunday icon...*sigh*

I've Always Hated Coldplay...

And now, I have a legitimate reason to do so! Yay!

Bad history meets bad theology in another pop culture turd brought to you by our Masters of Culture.

I hate it when people actually make me want Bono to kick someone's ass.

And to think these bastards recorded in churches...

Way to stay classy Chris Martin.

A Moment of Zen

Petting My Inner Monarchist

I just stumbled onto this blogpost on the funeral of Archduke Carl Ludwig Maria Franz Joseph Michael Gabriel Antonius Robert Stephan Pius Gregor Ignatius Markus d'Aviano, son of Blessed Charles, by the Grace of God, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, of this name the Fourth, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, and Galicia, Lodomeria, and Illyria; King of Jerusalem etc., Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Duke of Lorraine and of Salzburg, of Styria, of Carinthia, of Carniola and of the Bukovina; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwtiz and Zator, of Teschen, Friuli, Ragusa and Zara; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trent and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and in Istria; Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg, etc.; Lord of Trieste, of Cattaro, and in the Windic March; Grand Voivode (Grand Duke) of the Voivodship (Duchy) of Serbia etc. etc.

The funeral was held on December 2007. I like the fact that they kept this fine tradition, last performed for the funeral of Carl Ludwig's mother, Empress Zita:

"In 1989 Zita, the last empress of Austria and the last queen of Hungary died. The day of her funeral, 8,000 mourners filed out of Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral and fell in line behind the hearse drawn by six black horses. Two hours later the procession concluded at the Capuchin Church. There, in keeping with tradition, a member of the funeral party knocked on the door and a priest asked, “Who goes there?”

Zita’s titles were read aloud: “Zita, Queen of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia. Queen of Jerusalem. Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Cracow . . .”

“I do not know her,” came the voice from within the crypt.

The funeral group knocked a second time. “Who goes there?”

“Empress Zita,” was the more simple reply. Still the door remained shut.

The mourners knocked yet a third time. “Who is there?”

“Zita, a poor sinner,” was the answer. That answer was the right answer and the procession was allowed to enter."

As I am not a rabid zealot for democracy, and considering the unjust circumstances surrounding the abolition of the House of Austria, let me conclude this post with hope for the restoration of the once-glorious Hapsburg monarchy.

Plus ultra!

Reflection on a Giant of the Age

I remember Joem telling me that the instructors for UA&P's Modern Literature subject were supposed to have the 19th century Russian literary giants as the standard when selecting which pieces of literature to feed the young minds. That meant the literature had to be in the near vicinity of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. (Makes me wonder why I got frickin' Harry Potter for mod lit... I wuz robbed!) The funny thing about those two men was how little they were understood by those they wrote for.

In the 20th century, another similar fate befell another Russian giant. He was called a traitor in the USSR, and a cranky monarchist anti-Semite in the US. But Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had their number. He knew, just as Dostoevsky knew, what darkness lay in the hearts of men. And because of that, he knew precisely the greatest weaknesses harbored by the competing ideologies of his time. I'll let him speak for himself.

"More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God."
 
                       - A. Solzhenitsyn, Templeton Prize acceptance address, 1983

A simple analysis from Russian elderly: men have forgotten God. In its simplicity, it cuts through the Gordian knot of rationalizations we have put up as a culture to justify our decadence. At the end of the day, we the enlightened have forgotten God, and that is why, for all our material prosperity, we are much less happier than the Russian peasant who celebrated ecstatically over a good harvest or a new life born. We have shed more blood in the 20th century than in all the religious wars we have decried in the past combined. Yeah, yeah, we had better weapons. Heck, we made them.

At the end of the day, the generations of the 20th century, including my own, will have much to answer for.

Solzhenitsyn knew that his analysis was not just true for Russia. It was true even for the West. It was universal. (Why can't our over-hyped local intelligentsia come up with anything like that?)

"The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West's own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.

Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the "pursuit of happiness, "a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make daily concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism. If a blasphemous film about Jesus is shown throughout the United States, reputedly one of the most religious countries in the world, or a major newspaper publishes a shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what further evidence of godlessness does one need? When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?

Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis--race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain "equality"--the equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today's free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance--the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.

This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.

Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God."

                       - A. Solzhenitsyn, Templeton Prize acceptance address, 1983

This may well be written for the Philippines. Daily, we are beginning to make our little concessions. Soon, we may have a new reproductive rights bill that throws condoms at every johnson without a conscience, and soon we will wonder why there is no sexual conscience at all. We decry the corruption of our leaders, just before we give a little grease money for someone to make our sins go away. Our media lords sings their own self-righteous praises as they sensationally condemn everyone else, and wonder why so many people want to shoot them. Our "art" is already a showcase of the debased. Much of it is devoid of love. "Serbis", that disgusting abortion of a movie we used to represent ourselves to the rest of the world at Cannes, is not a bug in our local "art" scene; it's a feature. Like the rest of the West, we are conceding our souls, and to the delight of our mortal Enemy, we are getting naught but rot in the process.

But all is not lost...

" But there is something they did not expect: that in a land where churches have been leveled, where a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of a century, where the clergy is utterly humiliated and deprived of all independence, where what remains of the Church as an institution is tolerated only for the sake of propaganda directed at the West, where even today people are sent to the labor camps for their faith, and where, within the camps themselves, those who gather to pray at Easter are clapped in punishment cells--they could not suppose that beneath this Communist steamroller the Christian tradition would survive in Russia. It is true that millions of our countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an officially imposed atheism, yet there remain many millions of believers: it is only external pressures that keep them from speaking out, but, as is always the case in times of persecution and suffering, the awareness of God in my country has attained great acuteness and profundity.

It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity."

                       - A. Solzhenitsyn, Templeton Prize acceptance address, 1983

God tends to be very resilient. "How many divisions does the Pope have?" I wonder if, when Stalin asked that question, he had considered those divisions he would only meet once he's shuffled off his mortal coil. They can shout down the children of God (I think "theocracy" is the avant-garde accusation these days, by mis-educated people who only have cartoon notions of actual theocracy.), but they only beat their heads against an unshaken wall. Heh, if your spiritual ancestors were fed to lions for the entertainment of pagans, what can they really do to you? And these morons cannot even afford tanks.

However, it is not enough to rest in smug satisfaction about one's own sanctity. There is still the Great Commission.

"To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our hands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.

Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone."

                       - A. Solzhenitsyn, Templeton Prize acceptance address, 1983

Amen.

We have lost a prophet of our age, and we won't begin to feel the sting until the night comes. Hopefully, it isn't too late.

Rest well, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. For you, the war is over. It's our turn now.

First Year College Survey

Hey, since everyone's taking it...

What section were you?
Block SI

Who were your seatmates?

God, I'm bad with names...umm...some guy named Johndy (not Mr. Borra), another guy named Jerome, and a guy named Walter...oh, and this guy named Chris.

Still remember your English teacher?
Mrs. Dadufalza

What was your first class?
Euclidean Geometry (hell yeah!)

Who were your best friends?
That Johndy guy...and Chris.

Who was your crush back then?
Umm...just one? Okay, I'll say...Pia Vergara...among others.

Made friends to the higher years?
This girl who was editor of the now-defunct school magazine. (Told you I was bad with names.)

Had a boyfriend/girlfriend?
Are you fucking kidding me?

How was your class schedule?
A shock after the rigidity of high school. Felt kinda light. Second year was the killer.

Made any enemies?
Occasionally bickered with Jerome...but nothing bad til second year.

Who was your favorite teacher(s)?
Mr. Ray Leuterio and Mr. Art Vito Cruz for Civ 102 and Fine Arts.

What sport did you play?
Basketball and Fencing, for PE.

Back then, do you always buy your lunch?
Yep. Didn't want to lug around baon after doing it for four years.

Were you a party animal?
Never.

Were you well known in your school?
A bit in High School, for mixed reasons. In college, I was so anonymous, the CIA could've recruited me.

Skip classes?
Yes. Some were boring.

Did you get suspended/expelled?
Clean.

Can you sing the alma mater?
Mumble it is more like it.

What was your favorite subject?
Christian Civilization

What is your school's full name?
University of Asia and the Pacific

Where did you go most often during breaks?
Megamall, or the library.

If you could go back in time and do it all over, would you?
Nope. I was kinda glad first year was over.

What do you remember most about 1st yr?
Getting laughed at when I tried to ask for this girl's number. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that. Though I think Nietzsche got dumped a lot too.

Hmm...interesting survey. My first year was kinda bland though. Second year was more interesting.

Life Imitates Art, but only if by "art" we mean "Grand Theft Auto"

Some dumbass in Thailand tried to recreate GTA in the real world.

This leads to a halt in sales.

All it takes is one idiot...

Losing a Piece of Historical Memory

The great Russian writer, Nobel Prize winner and author of "Gulag Archipelago", Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, has just died. He was 89.

A man who wrote about conscience in the century that didn't have it has finally gone on to meet the author of conscience itself.

Here is his Harvard address.

And my favorite Solzhenitsyn speech, his Templeton Prize Address.

Finally, an interview in Der Spiegel.

Requiscat in Pace.

China's Paris Hilton, Sans Hotel Millions

"Crouching Tiger" actress Zhang Ziyi is a bit puzzled. From a news article:

"I don't see why people are so negative. The games are about friendship," Zhang was quoted as saying in the current issue of Vogue. "I'm Chinese and I'm proud of my country."

Gee, I wonder why? It can't be that bad...

A moment of Zen, brought to you by another pretty airhead.

Cluelessness: its not just American celebrities anymore!