The Econocrisis hits Miss Venezuela

The economic crisis is proving more resilient than initially thought. After going through L and W, it is now at letter V, from Venezuela.

In short, as Reuters writes, the local "Miss Venezuela" organization -- which has landed the South American nation more international pageant titles than any other country -- announced on Wednesday it had slashed the number of national competitors to 20 from 30.

"We have had to tighten our belt a bit too," said Joaquin Riviera, organizer of the annual Miss Venezuela competition, which is wildly popular and draws huge TV audiences.

The next national winner will be chosen on September 24.

"I've asked Osmel to be a bit stricter choosing 20 girls, so we only have the best," Riviera added, referring to local beauty "czar" Osmel Sousa, who prepares the competitors.

Sousa denied the cuts, however, would mean fewer dresses or less plastic surgery for girls competing. Venezuela has one of the highest rates of cosmetic surgery in the world.

Venezuela's Stefania Fernandez, an 18-year-old brunette, won the Miss Universe 2009 title last month in the Bahamas, giving her country its second win in a row and its sixth in that pageant's history.

According to wikipedia,

Venezuela is well-known for its successions in beauty pageants. Miss Venezuela is a big event in the country, and Venezuela has received 5 Miss World, 6 Miss Universe and 5 Miss International titles.

The World Values Survey has consistently shown Venezuelans to be among the happiest people in the world, with 55% of those questioned saying they were "very happy".

How important the pageant is to the national spirit and that feeling of happiness can be ascertained from the tenacity displayed by the contestants:

Thousands of entrants apply for the pageant each year. Some young women would try for up to five or six years consecutively trying to get one of the 26 to 32 titles that will enable them to compete in the final pageant. Venezuela's 23 states, capital, and two regions of Zulia state are always represented; some years other regions of the country will have representatives in the pageant.

Once a candidate is shortlisted for the pageant, she begins an intensive training program which can last for six months. She receives coaching in speech, physical fitness, make-up, modelling, and all the other skills required for the competition. Plastic surgery and cosmetic dentistry is optional and some delegates use padding. As the Miss Venezuela broadcast lasts up to four hours long, with countless musical numbers and dances, rehearsals require weeks of preparation. Contestants also participate in official photoshoots (lately done by Iván Dumont, after several years by Daniel Alonso) and also fittings by fashion designers. The evening gowns worn by candidates are a major source of politicking by Venezuela's domestic fashion houses, with top designers such as Mayela Camacho, Ángel Sanchez, Durant & Diego, and Jose María Almeida selecting candidates that they will dress for the final night, while other, newer designers compete to present designs for the pageant. As a general rule the evening gowns are always custom-designed for each of the candidates on the final night, and always by a Venezuelan designer. (…) The winners chosen to represent Venezuela in the major pageants undergo continuous preparation before they compete internationally. These efforts are funded by corporate sponsors like Pepsi Cola, Palmolive, Colgate, Ebel and Lux who were attracted to the pageant by its high ratings.

Competing in the pageant can get a contestant noticed and launched on a successful television or print career. At least a dozen well sought models come out of the pageant. Virtually all of Venezuela's female top models and television personalities are alumni of the pageant, including Maite Delgado (who competed in 1986 against future Miss Universe Bárbara Palacios, Alexandra Braun (Miss Earth 2005) and Dominika van Santen (Top Model of the World 2005)

There. Now ye know.

Sources / More info: Reuters-Ms-Venezuela, wiki-venezuela

OhIHt, miss, beauty, crisis, cutbacks, austerity, cuts

ye dopes!

Stratford is known as the location of the Shakespeare Theatre Festival. It is now also the place where people get sick after stealing a marijuana cousin.

The latest hoopla that wakes people up at night in Stratford is not Shakespeare, but rather the illness resulting from confusing hemp with marijuana:

Stratford Police have issued a public alert after reports of people – “adults and youth” – helping themselves to a crop of commercial hemp that looks like marijuana but instead of delivering a high can make users “violently ill” with severe headaches, nausea and vomiting.

The crop, located just south of the Festival Marketplace Mall off C.H Meier Blvd., has become the target of thieves, police say.

“People, both adults and youth, have been going onto the property and stealing the crop, thinking it is marijuana,” said Insp. Sam Theocharis.”

“Our biggest concern is from a public-safety standpoint. Hemp is not meant for ingestion and the user will become violently ill and may very well require hospital care.”

Hemp has many industrial uses (health supplements, fibre, paper, textiles and even building materials), while marijuana is only “recreational”. The active ingredient in marijuana, THC (tetrahydrocannabino) is also present in hemp, but with a much lower concentration. Historically, one had to consume a very large quantity of hemp in order to get the high obtainable from only a few grams of marijuana, and would never get there, because of getting sick long before getting high. Furthermore, lately, because of hi-tech weed cultivation, the concentration of THC in grass has steadily increased over the years. As such, there’s no way you can get high with hemp. Just stick to your pusher, maaaaaan.

Sources / More info: lfp-dopes

Verba Volant,marijuana, dope, pot, grass, weed, smoke and mirrors, smoke, smoking, steal, stealing, hemp, thc, tlc

Europe wealthiest, like a French suicide

If you're like me, you're almost conditioned to whisper "fries" the moment someone says French (you might also say kiss, but that usually happens when you're close to losing your virginity; I'm not).

Boston Consulting Group is elbowing out Forbes magazine with wealth statistics and hierarchies, claiming that Europe has elbowed out North America to become the wealthiest region in the world, which happens first since 2003. Here’s the numbers:

World’s wealth is down to USD 92.4-trillion in 2008 from 104.7-trillion in the previous year, trend side-stepped by Latin America, which is the only region where assets under management increased 3%. Though millionaire households fell by 17.8% to 9 million, USA still has the most millionaire households – nearly 4 million. Singapore rules in terms of concentration of millionaires, with 8.5% of households being there. Europe’s Singapore, from this perspective, is Switzerland, which also is world’s largest offshore centre. Apparently, wealth has started to grow again at the end of 2008, will increase about 4% p.a. and will catch up with pre-crisis levels in 2013.

Interestingly, Europe has become the wealthiest just as the poor narrowed the gap, say WSJ:

The crisis also narrowed the gap between the wealthy and non-wealthy, with wealth owned by households with less than $100,000 in assets increasing by 2% last year, but declining in all other segments.

Europe nudged ahead because it only fell 5.8% (which compares positively to North America’s 21.8%). This is most likely because North America (USA+Canada) have the most wealth in stocks.

You might wonder (I did!) what are the Europeans doing with their new wealth?

You wanna make it / Suicide France

There have been 22 suicides at France Telecom since 2008 and 13 attempts. This has prompted CEO Didier Lombard to claim he will do everything he could to “stop the infernal spiral”.

The unions blame chronic restructuring and work pressure at France Telecom for the wave of suicides, saying that some staffers are being left behind in the firm's transformation from a staid government agency to a private company with profit targets and intense competition. The pace of incidents at the firm which employees 102,000 staff in France, has picked up lately, with a man stabbing himself in the stomach during a staff meeting on Wednesday and a woman throwing herself out of a window on Friday, the company said. (…) France Telecom also announced other measures, such as a temporary halt to relocations and reassignments as well as 100 additional human resources staffers to monitor employees.

Suicides are definitely bad for business, unless they are a song by INXS. For example, when Gary Hoy - the Toronto lawyer who won a Darwin Award for throwing himself against windows until one gave in – died, his firm also eventually closed shop. I guess it just wasn’t the same without him.

The jump from death to sex is small. The French actually make it very often – perhaps top five in Europe – calling orgasm “the little death”. So it should come as no surprise that the Swiss (who include a sizable French and German speaking population) have combined cadavers and sex in a show..

Gunther von Hagens and his wife Angelina Whalley show corpses prepared using a technique invented by von Hagens called "plastination," that removes water from specimens and preserves them with silicon rubber or epoxy resin. "It's not my intention to show certain sexual poses. My goal is really to show the anatomy and the function," Body Worlds creative director Whalley told Reuters in an interview, adding the sex exhibition may open next year.

USA tightens the screw

While the Swiss indulge in the confluence of their national fetishes, prudish USA indulges its own favourite pastime: bacteria obsessions and denying help to the poor because of sexual hang-ups.

The guys in the image went to ACORN, a poverty advocacy group dressed like conservatives pimp & prostitute. Though they are certainly dressed weird, if I were to see them on the street I’d be thinking they’re trying their Halloween costumes early. To me, they are unconvincing, but then again, I don’t meet pimps and prostitutes all the time. If they were to walk into my office, I’d think that they’re playing a prank and it’s a test. I might even think that it’s a test done by leftists (or “liberals”, as some call them), so I’d play along accordingly

It seems that many conservatives had a beef with ACORN, whom they accused of voter fraud because this group canvassed and help many of the poor register to vote.

O'Keefe, who majored in philosophy at Rutgers University, said he and Giles funded the project themselves. This kind of undercover, guerrilla tactic is the "future of investigative journalism and political activism," he said. Inspired by "Rules for Radicals," Saul Alinsky's bible for rabble-rousing, more often associated with the left, O'Keefe said he has been targeting and exposing the "absurdities of the enemy by employing their own rules and language." "If you can make impossible demands on your enemy, you can destroy them," he said. So he began using a hidden camera "in a location I'd rather not disclose" and started visiting ACORN offices around the Northeast.

See their video below.

As for getting clean, the shower scene, so overused in horror movies, has now a newfound lease on life: germs lurking in the showerhead can give you lung infections. Apparently, an analysis of 50 showerheads from 9 US cities done by University of Colorado at Boulder found that about 30% harboured high levels of Mycobacterium avium. After scaring almost every American, they declared:

"This really shouldn't concern average, healthy people. The main concern is for people who are immune-compromised," researcher Leah Feazel told Reuters Health. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, are based on tests of about 50 showerheads taken from nine U.S. cities, including New York, Denver and Chicago. The researchers said showerheads are not the only potential bacterial dispersants in the home, however. Feazel said more research is needed to measure bacteria levels in household devices like humidifiers and evaporative coolers.

Sources / More info: france-suicide, gm-europe-wealthiest, pimp-hooker-nyp, telegraph-mit-rickrolled, wsj-europe, wiki-garry-hoy, us-showerheads, suicide-blonde-INXS

Verba Volant,europe, europa, european, wealth, economy, economic crisis, tradeoff, trading block, eec, nafta, france, french kiss, french

The State of the Nation’s gut

Not long ago we learned about a few prisons starting to refuse certain inmates because they were overcrowded and ill-equipped to deal with the morbidly obese (sic)k. Not long ago, such an inmate was able to smuggle a weapon inside the prison by hiding it inside his flabs.

It is a known feature of our era that just as we become fatter, we want to see thinner models. Kate Moss would’ve never been famous in times of lower average weight. Likewise, if corn wasn’t used in everything… actually, forget that, it’s a different topic altogether.

George Vera, 25, who had been charged with selling illegal copies of compact discs, was found to have been hiding a 9 mm gun in his 500-lbs flabs of fat. At that point, he had been transferred through several jails and searched multiple times, but nobody found his gun until he himself bragged about it.

Perhaps the biggest uproar was caused by Lizzie Miller, whose photo by Walter Chin appeared in US Glamour Photograph. Apparently, she’s considered too fat to model even for plus sizes..

Luckily, Lizzie has started receiving more work after the photo was published, and her agency told her that she does not need to lose any more weight.

Yet there are signs that things are changing in the fashion industry. Back in 2007, not long after a couple of models died from not eating enough, photos of a 27-year-old French model Isabelle Caro were blown up and shown to passers-by in a campaign by Nolita and having the blessing of the Italian ministry of health. As one could expect, the man behind the campaign is none other than our main man (as Ali G. would say), Oliver Toscani, the Benetton master.

The ad is shocking, but a necessary wake-up call in an industry where public opinion seems focused at the far end of the spectrum:

Designer Giorgio Armani queried the link between fashion and anorexia, commenting that "even people who take no notice of fashion get anorexic", while designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana described anorexia as a psychiatric problem with "nothing to do with fashion".

Luckily, there are models who are happy modelling plus sizes, though to you and me they still are thinner than most people. Crystal Renn’s career took off only after put some of the lost weight back and started modeling “plus” sizes.

Here’s what some designers think, as quoted by the Guardian:

Renn's agent, Gary Dakin, of New York's Ford Models, which represents models who are UK size 12 to 22, says that their novelty use is coming to an end. Instead they will be photographed for one simple reason: because they are beautiful.

"I have been in this business for 11 years and I have seen this debate ripple through the fashion world a number of times," he said. "This time, though, the momentum of the debate feels different." Style arbiter Stephen Bayley agrees. Bayley's book, Women as Design, is published this week and looks at how definitions of female beauty have changed over the centuries. "In periods when we are impoverished, as now, there is a vogue for voluptuous women," he said. "

But designers are, slowly, beginning to agree that larger models have a role. Antonio Berardi has talked of the trouble he has finding girls with a womanly shape. "We have to spend days altering things," he complained. "We add padding and pieces that work inside the clothes to exaggerate their bodies into a more female form. I don't want all those girls with pale skin who look the same. My family is Italian – I am inspired by a womanly aesthetic."

Roland Mouret agrees: "I see advertising going back to that powerful 1980s mentality, when girls like Linda [Evangelista] were ideal. Back in the 80s, when supermodels were several sizes larger than top models today, the clothes worked on bigger bodies," he added. "They were bright, bold, curve-enhancing."

Kate Smith, a size 16 and the highest earner at Hughes Models, said: "The number of plus-size models in the industry has quadrupled in the past few years, but we're still a tiny percentage of the whole modelling business.

"What does my head in is that I'm a model but I can't buy designer clothes that fit me. Everything is crawl-walk-run. We'll get to the point where every shape and size will be represented on the runway, but maybe not in my lifetime."

Sources / More info: glamour-lizzie, guardian-big-beautiful, guardian-the-pic, huff-vera, msnbc-vera, drivesunuts-vera,

Verba Volant,obese, overweight, fat, fat of the land, crime, weight, weight-problem

i had to drive - mommy was tired!

Episode 4 (season 3) from Mad Men featured grandpa teaching his granddaughter how to drive on a quiet neighbourhood street, as probably many people were doing in the 60s. Today, if a child is driving her stoned mom home, it’s news. Should it be? Really?

Our society has changed a great deal since the 60s. We live in one big safety bubble, with the president and vice-president no longer interested in upholding the US Constitution, but rather concerned with the nation’s safety at all costs. Was it that long ago that Benjamin Franklin said his famous words, warning against trading off freedom for security, as we’ll end up with neither?!?

Well, anyhow, two moms were busted for being so stoned / drunk that their kids did a better job driving. The first, had her 6-year-old drive the car because, as the kid said, mommy was too tired to drive after smoking that smelly stuff:

In the second news, mom was too drunk, ending up driving her child to the wrong school:

Said the admission officer at Harvard: “to get into our school, you have to smoke crack and your father must be head of the CIA. Then, you have to sleep in crypt. Wait, scratch that last one; it’s true only if you plan to run for president.”

As you can tell, the main thing the two mommies have in common, apart from kids, is a certain aristocratic flair – even the MILF descriptor would seem like an insult.

Here’s the sneak preview of S03E04 of Mad Men, where a grandfather is teaching his young granddaughter to drive on a residential street:

This is not the first time that show is playing with the safety and youth obsessions that have come to define our age. It wasn’t long ago that safety was not paramount and kids enjoyed a less greenhouse-bound existence, better preparing them for real life. Today, this can be seen only in developing countries..

Sources / More info: msn-stoned, msn-drunk, mad-men-ep-4, yt

Verba Volant,mom, mommy, drive, dui, stoned, kids, driving, joyride, pot, dope, marijuana, grass, smoke, weed, w33d

Is Mad Men really changing?..

..and if it is, is it for the better? Mad Men is my favourite TV series. That does not say much, however, since I do not watch much TV and don’t even subscribe to Cable or Satellite. And that’s fine, really, because Mad Men, though a TV series, is not traditional TV. It is rather a serialized movie, and you can even buy it on iTunes.

After watching the first three episodes, I’m inclined to believe that in this season women will play a much greater role. As the frustrated British “Secretary” who insists on being called “Mr.” puts it, “this place is a gynocracy”.

Here are my quick notes on the first few episodes. They might not make much sense to you, but to me, these are the most relevant and memorable quotes – the kind of stuff you had to be there to understand :)

Is the show’s metamorphosis a coming of age or ageing? Perhaps the more than 30 video clips, interviews and comments in the playlist below might answer this question..

Sources / More info: consumed-consumer-mad-men, mad-men-face-book, yt

Verba Volant,madmen, mad men, tv, television