Talk About Kitsch

The Chinese, are famous for architecturally taking as a challenge the expression if the mountain wont come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will have to go to the mountain .... an expression by the way, that originally comes from the Francis Bacon's 1625 essays, retelling the Turkish proverb of the time "..... Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."

Will The Real Venice Please Stand Up ... one of these is fake

But in this case, I am referring to cities ..... famous tourist cities of the world such as Venice, or Paris etc. They simply copy all the good bits of these cities somewhere in China, and Chinese tourists can experience them all in one theme park day. Dalian, in north-east China is one such spot. There they have recreated a mini Venice, frescos and all .... with 2.5 miles of canals and over 200 copied buildings for tourists to experience the city by gondola.

Zuistar's Ziggurat

Now according to the figures on Statistics Iceland, just over 80% of Icelanders are registered as Protestant Christians, mostly as members of the Lutheran Church of Iceland (230,000). BUT some 1% of Iceland's population say that they are Zuists.

Zu, Imdugud - TheThunderbird - One Of The Sumerian Gods

Now I thought I was pretty hot on the worlds religions, from Jedi Knights, to Jesus Christ, and all view points in between, but Zuism is something new to me. It is in fact a 'pagan' (depending upon your point of view) religion, based on ancient Sumerian beliefs ... or at least what modern people know about that religions rites and passages, and first appeared in an Icelandic context in 2013.

Sympathy For The Devil

In a scene like something from a horror movie, or the Ken Russell movie 'The Devils', Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione of the Palma di Montechiaro convent in southern Italy, woke after a fainting spell on the 11th of August 1676, with her face covered in ink.

Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione And Her Letters

She held in her hand several letters that she had apparently written whilst unconscious.

Hair Too Sexy For TV

We have commented before on the strange obsession that Iran has for what it deems to be un-Islamic hair ...

Devil May Care Hair ...

Usually the objects of the regimes angst are 'rebellious teens'. Who not to put too fine a point on it, often sport what we in the West would consider to be rather old fashioned 'mullets'.

Cardboard Celebrities

On line you can buy life size cardboard cut-outs of celebrities. I hesitate to use the word 'Stars' these days as the term celebrity and star are no longer synonymous with each other ....

Elvis Jailhouse Rocks Life-size Cardboard Cutout – 179cm.
Yours for Approx £30.00 ($40)

You usually see them in young fans bedrooms (film, sports or music), or occasionally in collectors displays.

Thin Skinned Top Dogs

As China rises ever closer to being top economic dog ~ 2029 is the latest prediction for when they overtake the US economy for that number one spot ~ its inhabitants are becoming ever more thin skinned.

China's Illegal Imperial Territorial Claims ... Top Nation Style

This doesn't just reflect in their ignoring of international legal rulings over their land grab in the South China seas, but in the smaller petty things that a big nation should be able to laugh off. 

Robbed Of Retirement

The average life expectancy in most countries is just that, the average age of those who have died in the preceding decade.

Life Expectancy Rates Vary Greatly Across The Globe

..... At least that's usually the case in the West and rich countries.

Insulting The Incels

I freely admit that I had never heard the term Incel until very recently, when the Toronto van attack brought both the term, and one who defined himself by it, to world attention.

Alek Minassian Wont Be In A Cell Alone Too
Often Over The Rest Of His Life Behind Bars  ...

The Toronto attacker, Alek Minassian, is a man with many issues (which probably goes without saying, given his actions), but he also describes himself as an Incel and faces 13 Murder charges (mostly women).

Cure Worse Than Disease

A 50-year-old from China was constipated and looking for relief from the debilitating condition ...

Aubergine -  Not A Traditional Constipation Cure In China

.... now there are plenty of concoctions and powders on the market to cure this predicament.

Drugged Up Jehovahs

In November 2017 in Nisku, Canada, a white BMW sedan apparently rammed a pick-up truck in an industrial park, causing the BMW to end up disabled in a snow filled ditch.

Royal Canadian Police At Scene ... Struggling With BMW Occupants.

Inside the car were five naked people, this despite there being snow on the ground and the temperature hovering around 10C below zero (14F).

Diva Donald

This picture went round the world this week

The Lecture .....

It shows a rather petulant President Donald Trump, apparently disregarding the arguments of the USA's world allies .... the body language is a classic of its type.

Bombast And Bluster

♫ ♪ Boastful and vainglorious ... long to Lord over us, God save Donald Trump♪♫

Nobel Prize Nominee Donald J Trump

..... or so we should expect from Nobel Peace Prize nominee Donald J Trump.

The Sheep Who Follow Celebrities

Now I am not actually referring to the planks who 'follow' celebrity Tweeters or Facebook posters in order to be one of their 800,000 'friends'.

Clever Sheep Soon Worked Out Cattle Grids .....

In fact the story is that the University of Cambridge conducted experiments on eight sheep using photographs of 'celebrities', mixed in with random faces to test their cognitive abilities.

Save Us From Idiots

The picture below was a still taken from a Facebook video advert by the Superdry clothing brand ....

Banned Free Runner Advert For Superdry Clothing Brand

 

... it was banned because it was 'irresponsible'.

Sex Sucks

The reported syphilis cases in the UK are at their highest levels since 1949.

AIDS A Warning From History

There were 7,137 new cases diagnosed in 2017. The rise is fuelled by homosexual males who make up nearly four fifths of the cases. The highest risk age group is the 25-34 group.

Colourism ~ A Taboo Subject Too Far

There has been the usual white angst driven PC crappola on the web sites about the fact that fairer (whiter) skinned black women do better in show business than dark skinned black women. Frankly it made me laugh, because as usual they couldn't bring themselves to really say what the underlying issue is.

Skin Lightening Products Sold In Asia And African Diaspora ......

It isn't that white people are less discriminatory against paler toned black people .... it is in fact an internal colour prejudice within the black and Asian communities.

The Viking In The Machine

Or as I could have said 'Juti ex machina' ("A Viking from a machine"), if you'll excuse my pig Latin .... Ingvar Orn Karlsson or as he is now known 'The Berserker', is a firefighter in the southern Biskupstunga area of Iceland. He was/is also the local candidate for the Nytt Afl (New Power) political party, in the 26th of May elections.

The Last Berserker ....

Unfortunately for him, he's not able to control that Viking ancestry as well as is expected of modern politicians these days, and was asked to step down from his candidacy for the Bláskógabyggð municipality.

Stupid Prats

There's no doubting that the Arab world is more full of idiots than most. Their lawyers are no exception to the hyperbole that surrounds a world view, in which wild life is considered to be Israeli spies. They believe that every event is a plot against Islam and Muslims ....

Arab World Conspiracy Theories Are Sign Of Their Mindset

... Heck, half of them think it was Zionists or US who attacked the twin towers in New York on 9/11 (or at the very least, organised it using gullible Saudi boys).

Backside Backfires

In North Korea it is virtually a death sentence to defile or damage any images of the leadership, especially images of the Kim family.

Don't Dis The Kim's

Similarly, this is the case in the other despotic regimes around the world.

Battle Cry Of Backwardness

Why do Jihadists think that shouting the term "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is greatest" in Arabic), just before you murder someone, is a good advert for the self-styled 'religion of peace'?

A Believer In Peaceful Religion ....

Because of course there is little peace in Islam (which is also the term used for 'submission') these days, if there ever was .... so only the most blinkered optimist has ever interpreted it as peaceful. Except possibly in the context of 'as peaceful as a morgue'.