What Would YOU Do with $83,000?

Probably nothing nearly as cool as what this mook did:

Miljenko Parserisas Bukovic at the top of his game

The gruesome details:

Parserisas, a 56-year-old newspaper seller from Mexico, revealed his inked artwork in a photo shoot in Valparaiso city.

He has so far spent a million Mexican pesos (just over £51,000) for the 82 tattoos. The newspaper vendor's obsession with tattoos of Roberts started after he watched her in Erin Brockovich.

In the film Roberts plays a legal assistant who brings down a US energy company single handedly.

The American actress is tattooed all over Mr Parserisas' body in artwork inspired by a number of scenes from the film.

The Roberts fanatic has said that he has plans to get more faces inked on his chest, back and arms.

As long as he has the space on his body and the money, his tattoo tribute will continue.

(courtesy metro.co.uk)

I guess if you can't figure out a feasible way to have sex with your (questionable) celebrity crush, you might as well (semi-) permanently ink her face all over your naked body and get your picture in the papers so she at least has an opportunity to fly down to Mexico and make your dreams come true before you die from unfulfilled lust (the silent killer).

 

Celebrities do that all the time, after all--make dreams come true. They're very generous people who unfortunately cannot afford good public relations personal and so they get a bad rap as greedy selfish millionaire Vanity Smurfs afraid of intimacy, aging, death, and--most of all--obscurity.

If you see your favorite celebrity today, give them an awkwardly-long hug and kiss them softly on the neck with moistened lips. It'll make everything they do finally seem worthwhile. If you DON'T see a celebrity today, cash out your Roth IRA early and head to the nearest tattoo parlor to cover every square inch of your flesh in their likeness (worth it). It's the next best thing you can do for them.

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The News Just Keeps Getting Worse

Courtesy Huffington Post:

There's a mysterious phenomenon in which some men, immediately after having an orgasm, come down with a flu-like illness. Now Dutch scientists are saying these men may be allergic to their own semen.

The condition is known as post-orgasmic illness sydrome, or POIS.


Waldinger also identified a treatment for POIS, known as hyposensitisation, which essentially desensitizes the recipient of the treatment. The men were given skin injections of their own semen -- first highly diluted and eventually increased -- and after one to three years symptoms were greatly reduced.

Symptoms of POIS include fever, runny nose, extreme fatigue and burning eyes. They come on straight after climax and can last up to a week, reported The Sun.

Considering Dutch researchers have already identified at least 45 men in Holland alone who have been diagnosed with POIS, that does not bode well globally if that percentage holds. Assuming (incorrectly, I know, but it's just easier) that 50% of the population is male, here is how it breaks down in some larger countries:

Holland - 16,642,000 people - 8,321,000 men - 45 unfortunate men

U.S. - 311,904,000 people - 155,952,000 men - 844 unfortunate men

India - 1,192,870,000 people - 596,435,000 men - 3226 unfortunate men

China - 1,341,800,00 people - 670,900,000 men - 3629 unfortunate men

So, in approximately 41.5% of the world's population, we are looking at a group of 7,744 men who are allergic to their own semen. Allergic to their own semen! Can you imagine going through life becoming miserably ill immediately after having an orgasm? Can you imagine how many men who are afflicted by this will never tell anybody about it?

I think we need to get these 7,744+ names on paper and cross-reference that list with lists of serial killers, murderous dictators, mental patients, heroin/opium addicts, and pathologically depressed men.

Something tells me there will be a strong correlation...

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The Last Two Feet are the Hardest

Tales from the Front:

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- A doctor involved in an "on-again, off-again" relationship apparently tried to force her way into her boyfriend's home by sliding down the chimney, police said Tuesday. Her decomposing body was found there three days later.

Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac, 49, first tried to get into the house with a shovel, then climbed a ladder to the roof last Wednesday night, removed the chimney cap and slid feet first down the flue, Bakersfield police Sgt. Mary DeGeare said.

Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac, 49, first tried to get into the house with a shovel, then climbed a ladder to the roof last Wednesday night, removed the chimney cap and slid feet first down the flue, Bakersfield police Sgt. Mary DeGeare said.

While she was trying to break in, the man she was pursuing escaped unnoticed from another exit "to avoid a confrontation," authorities said.

DeGeare said the two were in an "on-again, off-again" relationship.

The man's identity was not revealed by police, but the man who resides in the home is William Moodie, 58.

Moodie, who runs an engineering consulting firm, said Kotarac was a superb internist who often provided service and medication free of charge to her patients.

Kotarac apparently died in the chimney, but her body was not discovered until a house-sitter noticed a stench and fluids coming from the fireplace Saturday, according to a police statement. The house-sitter and her son investigated with a flashlight and found Kotarac dead, wedged about two feet above the top of the interior fireplace opening.

Firefighters spent five hours late Saturday dismantling the chimney and flue from outside the home to extract Kotarac's body, DeGeare said.

Officials said Kotarac's office staff reported her missing two days prior when she failed to show for work. Her car and belongings remained near the man's house.

A cause of death has not been determined, and an autopsy was scheduled or Tuesday. Foul play is not suspected, though investigators have been looking into the incident as suspicious.

(courtesy Huffington Post) 

Let me get this straight--a man hears his girlfriend trying to get into his house by crawling down the chimney, leaves for three days--in order "to avoid a confrontation," and hires a housesitter (over the phone?) who eventually smells something funny / sees stuff dripping into the fireplace?

What sort of person's first two choices for forced entry into a residence are a shovel and the chimney? Was this Moody guy holed up in some kind of impenetrable fortress? Were there not windows that could have been broken? I mean, the houses in Bakersfield were not exactly built to last...

And where did this guy go all of a sudden, anyway? Was he across town, in bed with some other broad, making this poor sap the laughing-stock of the community, as she breathes her last breath in his chimney--no doubt immediately post-vow to haunt him for eternity?

Probably.

Also, why does it matter that the woman was a doctor? If she were a garbagewoman [Do those even exist? Why are women not forced to represent 50% of the garbage collectors? -Ed], would this article have read "Garbagewoman Dies in Chimney Trying to Break into Boyfriend's Home?"

I think not. You see, we expect that kind of behavior from garbagewomen--when doctors do it, it's newsworthy. It sells papers.

"A doctor did it? Hmmm...well, there must be some kind of juicy story behind this...doctors are usually so put-together and never have to worry about money...oh, look, it says here she was a 'superb internist'..."

-Woman reading aloud to her cat while eating her third bowl of Kix

Meanwhile, the carcasses of her last twelve cats decompose in the nearby chimney, totally unnoticed by the world until Hoarders comes through and turns that ole garbagewoman's life right-side-up in thirty minutes of too-hot-for-TV, soul-crushing depression and feigned re-birth.

Don't miss it!

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Sunday is a Good Day for Regret

Anything you should have done differently? Is there still enough time to change every single thing about you?

You have the day off, probably, so why don't you just sit back, take stock of your life, order another couple martinis, and figure this shit out once and for all.

After all, there is still time. For most of you...

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Mood Swing, in Pictures

Depressing:

(screen capture from teens.aol.com - yes, it exists)

Exciting:

(Photo courtesy Getty Images, via the Guardian)

The lesson to be learned here, world, is that fairy-tale building decor (and wardrobe/kitten to match) is not only much more exciting, but also healthier for you than the existence of a couple of media-groomed little shits with blow-dried hair who have way more money than everyone you know (combined) for no good reason.

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Is 'Green Day' Really Punk?

You have been warned:

Green Day's album American Idiot has been turned into a musical by fanboy Michael Mayer, who "discovered American Idiot while he was still in the early stages of directing [Tony-award-winning] Spring Awakening, Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's musical about the pubescent struggles of 19th-century German youth."

Discovered? I think 'assaulted by' is more appropriate.

How do you discover something that is as omnipresent as the sun? We're not talking about some obscure, self-produced punk 45 found at a garage sale--we're talking about a pop album that sold 12 million copies, that played everywhere in the world for what seemed like forever. We're talking about a band that everybody and their parents know about--a Green Day song (Time of Your Life) played over the ending montage to the last Seinfeld episode, for Devil's sake!

As if only to encourage me, Mayer goes one further:

I can only hope this wasn't a thought he had while listening to Mozart, although, sadly, I can't take that for granted at this point.

Get your extremely expensive tickets through Ticketmaster soon, or all your Abercrombie-punk friends will make fun of you until you intentionally overdose on Advil in the suburbs!!!

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The Trouble With Baby Boomers

Jeffrey Skilling, age 1

'Baby Boomers'

Such a cute moniker. It makes them seem cuddly, permanently wrapped in soft blue and pink blankets, shaking their rattle, full of innocence and limitless potential.

The truth of the matter is much bleaker, however.

Baby boomers in the media, at work, around the family dinner table, like to chide the members of younger generations for their cynicism, sarcasm, apathy, and selfishness.

Well, is this not a product of the sociopolitical climate they have presided over for far too long?

Flagrantly corrupt, immoral, and hypocritical politicians. A government ruled by special interests. An environment ravaged by their greedy corporations and their greedy disposable lifestyles, their mentality that the world will always be one of plenty, that resources and landfills are not finite. A military/industrial complex that is rapidly leading to a guerrilla World War III. An illogical, strict intolerance for gays, abortion, immigrants, and alternative energy. A refusal to solve health crises, because (as Chris Rock once said) the money is in the treatment, not the cure. Pure, unadulterated greed. A dearth of heroes, a plethora of villains.

It must have been nice to grow up in a world where people would have jobs after college. Where somebody with a history degree might end up becoming a CEO, an advertising executive or a college professor. Where you didn't have to acquire an MBA to answer phones, a master's degree to teach kindergarten. Where you worked only 40 hours a week and had full health and pension benefits. Where only one parent had to work and you could afford a house and a car and food on the table. I suppose it makes sense--such luxury must have spoiled you rotten.

Baby boomers, do you not see how drastically that world has crumbled on your watch? There are no jobs. College tuition has tripled, quadrupled. Housing costs have skyrocketed. Wages have failed to keep pace even with mere inflation, much less the artificial rise in costs of products due to the corporatization of every major industry, every type of retailer, big or small. A cup of coffee costs $3. Minimum wage is $6.55/hr. Health benefits have disappeared. Asking for a pension would be laughable. Doctors and hospitals are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. The same diseases linger. Art has become a commodity, ruled by fearful bean counters. Confidence in government, medical professionals, financial managers, and just about everybody else is at an all-time low.

And it is not at an all-time low because we are being cynical and enjoy hatching conspiracy theories just to fuck with you, to rebel. It is at an all-time low because even if we only look at the people who have been CAUGHT for the evil deeds they have done, our cynicism and 'crazy' theories and critical thinking have turned out to hold much more water than your idea of blind trust in professionals and leaders. Your idea of 'put your nose to the grindstone and never look up, people are inherently good and will take care of you, have a little faith' suddenly holds no water.

How many of you trusted Bernie Madoff? How many of you trusted your financial managers who told you the market will only go up? How many of you trusted your doctor when he put you on bum, possibly even unneccessary, medication that made things worse or killed you? How many of you voted for Ronald Reagan/George Bush/George Bush? How many of you now blame Obama and 'crazy young daredevil traders' for the problems their policies and cronies caused?

I do not mean to imply that all Baby Boomers are necessarily complicit in our societal downfall--but the fact of the matter is the multitude of innocents among them have done little or nothing to stop things. Protest? They make fun of protests! That was something hippies did! That is something crazy youngsters on drugs do! [Nevermind that they would have just been tear-gassed and wrongfully imprisoned by the man if they had protested, if there hadn't been enough of them to overrun the Bastille and start beheading people]

99% of Baby Boomers fall into one of two categories: the perpetrators and the gullible lambs led to slaughter. They did not question authority; they had faith in the integrity of their leaders; they trusted blindly. And look where it got us.

Yet they chide us kids for our fact-based, knee-jerk, implicit mistrust in those in power.

They are at retirement age. Most of them are still working, holding on to jobs that should be ours, would have been ours, if they had acted like their parents and actually retired at 55. Many are well into their 60s and going strong. Why are they still working? Because they are greedy, they have gotten used to having a ton of money coming in, used to being able to buy a vacation house, another car, a boat, going on lots of vacations, piling up more and more savings for retirement, playing the game.

Another, more disturbing reason, is that they have been a generation so used to working hard--because, I commend them, most came from very humble beginnings, and have earned what they received by working loyally and diligently--that most of them wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they retired. The men cringe at the idea of sitting around the house with their old wives all day, with nothing to occupy their time, because they rarely acquired any hobbies or interests beyond sitting at the office or in front of a TV screen; the women cringe even more at the thought of having to deal with their husband being around the house all day, when they have grown accustomed to their peace and quiet. And so the men continue to work and the women let them.

It is too bad that they don't realize we are a generation that works even harder, even longer--for much less. And that sad reality only makes us want to work less, only fuels our cynicism, only further chips away at our faith in humanity, at our hope for the future.

I want every Baby Boomer reading this (are there any?) to look at themself in the mirror and think about what kind of world--moral, intellectual, physical--he or she has left us.

What reasons do we have not to be cynical and apathetic?

Hey, Broseph--pass the bong and let's disappear into a fantasy world once again...it's so much better than reality. You get that job at Starbucks yet? Oh, you just finished your stint at Coffee University and are waiting for an offer? Shit. I should do that--I'd love to make $10 an hour...


***


Bonus thought for the day:

As Lord Acton once said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

I think it is interesting that most people repeat this quote as "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." It leaves out one of the most important aspects of his insightful observation. Power corrupts, sure--but, more importantly, more simply, power attracts the wrong kind of people. And so we are smart to be wary of them, to keep watch over them, to be fearful of ulterior motives. To not do so would be ignorant and emboldening to them. As they have proven time and time again...

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It certainly seems that way...

But maybe there'll be a devastating failure of the annual carb crop, followed by a government-mandated, one-year-long 'Run for Your Life...for Cancer' and we'll all be saved?

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I Wonder What Happened to that Little Ugly Duckling...

www.uglychic.blogspot.com

maybe she turned into a swan?
and has a new job doing red-carpet interviews for E!?

or maybe she died from an overdose of Chunky Monkey

dare to dream, America!

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Gotta Love A Crazy Bitch

So, Leona Helmsley, who married her way into a multi-billion-dollar real estate empire only to become one of the most infamous bitches of our time (figure that out...), is still causing trouble almost a year after her death.

The woman notorious for her assertion "we don't pay taxes--only the little people pay taxes," as well as for her subsequent 19-month stint in prison on charges of tax evasion, not only left $12 million to her dog, Trouble (pictured above), but also, it turns out, left the bulk of her $5-8 billion estate to a charitable trust that is required to spend that money on dogs.

In a mission statement attached to her will, Helmsley laid out her goals for the vast fortune she would leave behind.

"The first goal was to help indigent people, the second to provide for the care and welfare of dogs. A year later...she deleted the first goal." (courtesy nytimes.com)

Very wise--I don't care what anybody says, dogs are more important than humans. The indigent people of the world thank you, Ms. Helmsley, wherever you are (lying lifeless in a limestone mausoleum on 3/4 of an acre in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Westchester, New York, which is to be acid-washed once a year, according to her will).


Now, all this stupid bullshit aside, I find it interesting that one's last wishes, which seem in this case to be very clearly stated, can still be legally altered.

A judge in New York has already reduced Trouble's inheritance from $12 million to $2 million. The same judge has also given $10 million dollars to two grandchildren deliberately left nothing in the will. Talks are already underway as to how best circumvent Helmsley's mission statement, in order to spend money on projects unrelated to dogs.

As much as I agree that the money could go to much better causes--such as indigent people, education, conservation--the fact of the matter is that this was not her choice. Her choice was to spend the money on dogs. So...why is it even up for discussion? Why is there even a 'case,' as it were? Strange...

I mean, if she wanted to buy $46-worth of scratch-offs for every one of the 172 million estimated pet dogs in the world...who are we to stop her?


Bonus -- My favorite Leona Helmsley story:

"On March 31, 1982, Leona's only child, Jay Panzirer, died of a heart attack. Leona sued her son's estate for money and property that she claimed he had borrowed; Mimi, her son's widow, (who lived in a property Leona owned) received an eviction notice. Mimi later said the legal expenses wiped her out and 'to this day I don't know why they did it.'" (courtesy wikipedia.org)

Who Cares About Basketball?

When there's so much beauty in the world?


Have you spoken to your neighbor recently?

One of the Most Depressing Things Ever

Click on the title above, read post, then thank every god you know that you are not the person who wrote it.