One of Moscow’s trendiest nightclubs recently hosted a night called “Marry a Millionaire”, which is your night of nights if you’re hip young (preferably very young) Russian “millionaire hunter”. You will probably also enjoy the event if you’re seedy cashed-up mafia boss with a taste for women half, a third or perhaps a quarter your age.

The article is a quote goldmine, but this would have to be the money shot:

“He should be smart, really handsome, tall, with a really good body, like some kind of prince. Black hair, really green eyes. He should have around $US45 million.”

Those are the words of “Vikki Kurova, 17, who drives a Porsche and whose father is in the steel business”.

The steel business? Perhaps something was lost in translation, but most Russian Porsche owners are in the “stealing business”. Perhaps for her 18th birthday Vicki could ask daddy to tell her what he really does. Wait a minute. Whats a 17 year old doing in a nightclub anyway? You’ve got to love that good old Russian sense of irony – nightclub “face control” involves looking at everything but. Especially the one on the ID card.

But lets hear a bit more Vikki wisdom:

“I spend a lot of money – in a week $US300 or $US400. I couldn’t marry a guy that’s not rich because I want to live like I live now,”

Wow, that is a lot of money, Vikki. And thinking ahead to when daddy is in jail. Good girl!

Great to see a girl who knows what she wants. But does Vicki know what her hazel-eyed prince charming may be looking for in her?

“If you want to be a millionaire’s wife, you should be young, and of course beautiful. All millionaires love young girls.”

And what do those millionaires do when those young, beautiful girls get old, Vicki? I should mention there’s a big difference between the Russian and Australian definition of “old”. Like, about a 30 year difference.

But things always balance out in this world, so for every airhead bimbo seeking a prince there’s an airhead princess out there scrubbing’s someone’s floor for attention (ok, perhaps its not exactly a one to one ratio):

Although Diana’s life was been covered in excruciating detail, [..] Brown provides details of Diana’s detachment from reality, such as telling Brown over a lunch that she thought she could solve the conflict in Northern Ireland.

“I’m very good at sorting out people’s heads,” Brown quotes her as saying.

[..]“Marks and Spencer have got these very clever little meals that you just put the timer on and press the button and it’s done for you!” Diana is quoted as telling her therapist, Simone Simmons.

[..] She would also spend the day at [her Pakistani heart surgeon boyfriend Hasnat Khan's messy one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, where she would vacuum, do the dishes and iron his shirts.

Alas, contrary to popular belief (in Russia, anyway) being Royalty doesn't get you everything:

[..] but her efforts were in vain. Dr Khan’s mother had no intention of letting her son marry anyone other than a Pakistani Muslim girl.

Well, I suppose its nice to know at least someone in this world still listens to their mother.

Episode three is on youtube and four was also posted up today. Love it!

Go to the Clitoraid website to “Adopt a Clitoris”, read some “touching testimonies” or make a donation for the construction of their “pleasure hospital” in Burkina Faso, which is due to start next week.

I reckon you’d have to be pretty brave to let these people anaesthesize you. But then, who in Burkina Faso has even heard of Raelism?

(h/t Right Truth)

The caption for this photo on Spiegel online reads: “A police officer in Hamburg gives a demonstrator a massage after he strained his back while throwing a bottle.”

I’d be careful, you may get sued later for pressing too hard.

UPDATE: Its back rubs for young and old in Germany at the moment.

Green with envy or just green? The banner reads “Ram and Sink the G-8!”

Where’s my fucking massage?

Oh no, its the anarchists!

In other great “You did what with that nuclear waste?!” moments in history (as opposed to cartoon life as above), I wonder what kind of images Arthur Kesller’s father used to sell his “atomic” product:

[Arthur Kesller] was born in Budapest in 1905 to assimilated Jewish parents. His father was a businessman who failed most of the time but who occasionally hit the jackpot: immediately before and during the first half of World War I, he made a fortune (soon lost) by manufacturing and selling soap that contained radium. Radioactivity was then a recently discovered phenomenon, and many believed the rays to be life-enhancing and disease-curing.

A marketer’s dream that soap surely would have been. Well, several decades after initial deployment anyway. I can picture it now: Three long glowing legs kick out of the bathtub caucetishly, soapie splashes mushrooming around it; the camera mists up like a window on a crisp nuclear winter morning as it closes in on her radiant smile. Fade to black. Beautiful.

Chapter 1: “Life’s little contradictions”, by Tim Blair
Chapter 2: “A Self-Hater’s Guide To Science”, by P. Granate

Thats Evo “Bunny” Morales from now on. The resemblance is truely striking.

Meanwhile some of Evo’s countrymen are trying to take the ‘coca’ out of Cola-Cola, claiming the “sacred plant is part of Bolivia’s cultural heritage”, according to FP Passport. I think Coca-Cola should counter-attack and demand a reclaimation of their other brandname currently tarnished by the South Americans – Coke.

And these days troops is something of an elastic term, too. In Norwegian, it means “fighting men who are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, as long as they don’t have to do any fighting and there are at least two provinces between their shoulders and the American ones”. That’s to say, Norway is “participating” in Afghanistan, but, because its troops are “not sufficiently trained to take part in combat”, they’ve been mainly back at the barracks manning the photocopier or staging amateur performances of Peer Gynt for the amusement of US special forces who like nothing better than to unwind with five acts of Ibsen after a hard day hunting the Taliban.

Alas, even being in the general vicinity of regions where fighting is taking place got a little too much so the Norwegians demanded a modification of their rules of non-engagement and insisted their “soldiers” be moved to parts of Afghanistan where there’s no fighting whatsoever by anyone at all. Good luck finding any.

No, Mark. Their mission is something far more sinister. Oh, they are trained alright. Here’s the real reason why the Norwegians are stationed two provinces away from the Americans:

“We never really know what happens after we go. Tough luck for Kosovo.
Croatia, Albania, somewhere near Romania. Its Euro and Nato, why the hell did we go…
We’ll kick their ass and then we’ll see how it goes… and then, we really don’t know – that sucks for Kosovo.”

“TV4 in trouble for vagina dialogues”:

Baffled, the woman replied that she had never had any reason to believe she would gain financially from the vocal vaginas.

“Woman stabs boyfriend after disappointing sex”:

A 40-year-old man from Luleå received life-threatening injuries after being stabbed in the lung by his 28-year-old Russian girlfriend. The pair were staying at the man’s apartment in the northern Swedish town when they got into a heated argument about their relationship.

The 40-year-old says that his girlfriend was disappointed with the quality of their sex that evening.

I believe she was a victim of false advertising.

Drunken school teachers ruins an otherwise pleasant evening for Swedish heavy metal band:

A Swedish school teacher was treated for concussion at a Warsaw hospital at the weekend after getting into a drunken hotel room brawl with a Swedish heavy metal band.

[..] Up in the hotel room the teacher and the band shared a few beers and listened to some music.

“It was very pleasant,” said a band member.

But soon the night took a turn for the worse when the teacher had a few too many and began insulting the band. After he had managed to upset a few people the teacher was asked to leave the room.

Had he not begun banging on the band’s door a simple hangover might have been the only consequence of his wild night…

Having recently watched the documentary “Metallica: Some kind of Monster” I understand just how sensitive heavy metal bands can be. (Although I am not quite sure why it was on the World Movies channel.)