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.