World's Ugliest Cars In Amsterdam!

I have spotted both official world's ugliest cars in Amsterdam. As far as I know they are not even sold in the Netherlands, so their owners must have gone to some lengths to procure them. Both times I didn't have my camera, so I'll post pics gleaned from the net.

The obviously LSD-inspired Pontiac Aztec was designed by a committee of design gurus at GM. In 2007, two years after the Pontiac Aztek went out of production, the 25 vehicles that were sold were brand new from the dealership. Little wonder, innit?















Described by Top Gear Magazine as a car "that looks like it got bottled in a pub brawl and stitched back together by a blind man", the Ssangyong Rodius was designed by the former director of the London School of Design. I figure they must have fired him as unfit for the position and the Rodius was his revenge on the world.

Sa Dingding - The Chinese Wonder

This kind of Chinesey New Age music style is nothing new, Oliver Shanti has been doing it since the 80s but Sa Dingding's (薩頂頂) music is nevertheless lovely. Coupled with her striking looks and memorable imagery of her videos it makes a nice package. She is poised to be heavily promoted in the West in advance of the Olympics in Beijing. I am looking forward to her success here.



For those interested, here're the lyrics:

嗡, 班炸薩多沙嘛雅 嘛奴巴拉耶
別炸薩多爹奴巴的叉司左咩巴哇
蘇多卡欲咩巴哇 蘇浦卡玉咩巴哇
阿奴囉多咩巴哇 沙爾哇司地咩渣也叉

沙爾哇 噶爾麻 蘇渣咩即打司哩任
古魯吽 哈哈哈哈 呵巴噶問
沙爾哇 打他噶打 班炸嘛咩母渣
班至巴哇 嘛哈沙媽耶 薩多啊
吽呸。

It's the Mandarin transliteration of a Sanskrit mantra, a sort of Buddhist prayer.

The Social Politics Of A Shaven Head

Years ago my Thai cousin Jim who is doing now her Ph.D. in Social Studies introduced me to such a sub-discipline as the "language of body parts", how non-verbal communication takes place by what meaning we as a society ascribe to our body parts and how it differs culture to culture and so on.

Bizarrely enough, before too long I had the opportunity to see how it works across cultures. I had my head shaven when on vacation in Bulgaria - locals were teasing me by chanting Hare Krishna wherever I went. A while on, when I went to the Thai Embassy in Moscow, they all took me for a Buddhist novice monk. But next day when I lingered on near the Yaroslav Railway Station in Moscow looking to buy something to bite on, I nearly got arrested by Russian police because they seem to have assumed that I was a freshly released criminal.

That was the last time to date when I had my head shaven.

Why We Have To Sponsor The Realty Bonanza

I remember reading in Het Amsterdamse Dagblad (no link can be provided as they have no online edition) a few years ago that it costs about 25,000 Euros to build a new apartment in Amsterdam. Then they go on to be sold at a whopping 200 thousand plus. Without that shameless profit margin any family would be able to effortlessly afford their own place in just a few years. But then all the construction contractors, realtors and housing corporations bosses would have to suffer without their custom-made German cars, third homes on the Mediterranean and diamond trinketry for their bitches so, in all probability, we are going to have to keep financing their expensive habits for all the years to come.

Bush Backs Ukraine & Georgia On Nato Bid

It is bizarre that no major news service offered any analysis of why would US want NATO's eastward expansion so badly. The very learnt ladies and gentlemen would not have to go to great lengths to find out that since the times of Zbigniew Brezinsky's The Grand Chessboard became the handbook of American foreign policy it is a cornerstone of the US geopolitical strategy to see to it that "no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America."

After the Soviet collapse the EU had become a major threat to this, so at least last 15 years everything has been done to sow dissent within Europe and create or sustain hot spots of conflict on the continent. Almost every part of US involvement in Europe pursues the goal of undermining any possible increase of the EU's political influence in its own backyard. Cleverly exploiting historical divisions and nationalist sentiments, American strategists manage to divide and rule the affairs across the ocean. What amazes me that Europeans (appear to) to stand powerless in face of such a blatant manipulation and basically swallow whatever the US feeds them.

Just a few examples: the manhandling of the Yugoslavian conflict and leaving so many festering conflict spots in its wake, the ongoing waging of anti-European influence via the "special relationship" with UK, creating a chasm within the Euro ranks by making pledge allegiance to the Iraq war, alienating Russia from the mainstream European politics in every possible way - and now backing the NATO's eastward expansion. I see how that last one serves American interests so well, but I am really in awe with the European leaders' stupidity (or the unwillingness to react in any meaningful way). Can it be that all capable strategists have left Europe for fatter American paychecks and there is no one to advise Euro bosses on their own best interests? Or does the Franko-German axis hope for the spoils from it all?

Best Selling Musical Artist Ever

I know what you are thinking: Madonna. Well no, it's Russia's Alla Pugacheva. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, she sold more records than Michael Jackson: over 250 million. She did have the advantage of performing in a tightly controlled market but even under Communists nobody was making Russians buy any particular artist's records, so the tally is fair.

Throughout her career spanning over 40 years she has reinvented herself on many an occasion and stayed immensely popular in the Russian-speaking world. Author of many of her songs, she's quite a Russian phenomenon and just like our greatest national poet Pushkin is untranslatable.

Desperate Production Of Desperate Housewives

It started off so well: created by the same producer as Sex And The City, Desperate Housewives promised to be original and captivating. However, the pressures of keeping the public titillated and excited about such a, let us admit it, boring and easily exhaustible subject as suburban married life, season in season out, finally proved too much. The Desperate Housewives went shark-jumping.

First, with the producers having to keep the ratings high and the writing team going through some major writer's blocks, they had to put Mike Delfino in coma. That was the beginning of the end, the show went down the daytime soap opera way. More trite gimmicks followed with hastily contrived and unnaturally ended sub-plots crammed into a very limited episode time frame.

While Sex And The City at least purported realism and natural kind of acting, the way the desperate housewives get lined up in a row to deliver punch lines reeks of As The World Turns and The Days Of Our Lives. Scores of relatives and old time friends conveniently popping out of nowhere and vanishing into nothingness again, story lines cropping up and abruptly getting cut (probably prompted by the actors' raise demands), stock facial expressions and mannerisms - all signs tell of how desperate the production team must be using all the oldest tricks of trade to sustain viewers' interest.

One thing missing from Desperate Housewives now is canned laughter.