The Soprano who went Koo-Koo

There is certain crap you just can't make up. In a piece of news I expected to find in the Odd News section of a respected website, I learned that a Soprano went through 3 consecutive steps to ensure that she dies.

Daul Kim – the penetrable beauty

Daul Kim, Karl Lagerfeld muse, has passed away. Requiescat In Pace, Daul!

I wish I could tell you why she did it, but I don’t know. The best I can do is try to figure it out and speculate. Her death reminds me of Ruslana Korshunova’s suicide, who was also beautiful beyond belief yet empty inside, suffered from depression and apparently chose to end her life.

There are some troubling circumstances surrounding Ruslana’s death. Her family raised questions but the police was unwilling to oblige. Her hair had suddenly become shorter, and her body was not where it would have ended up after a fall from her apartment.

Daul Kim’s death is however more likely a suicide. She is the 9th Korean celebrity to commit suicide this year. She was fascinated by kinky Klaus Kinski (the deliciously crazy German actor) and collected forks as a hobby. She was also a painter. But despite these outlets, she felt a void in her existence. She had quit school at 15.

As far back as 2007 she had left often violent posts of self angst related to self-mutilation and suicide and, exhausted in April 2007, had posted “I am going to smash my face… My life as daul was so miserable and lonely. Please join my loneliness in another world. I love you all. Daul.” She then added. “KIDDING. I'm fine. Just tired.”

Find a playlist with the soundtrack to her death below.

Sources / More info: telegraph, wiki-daul, wiki-ruslana, blog, yt-ruslana, yt-music, yt-daul

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VerbaVolant, model, models, modeling, modelling, ruslana, daul, daul kim, ruslana korshunova, suicide, murder, mdk, beauty, inxs, michael hutchence, michael hutchense

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

Was Hemingway a KGB agent or is that bull?

Recent revelations of a former KGB agent seem to suggest that Hemingway had been recruited by KGB. To add insult to the injury, he was apparently dropped because he was no good. They didn't like his prose, I assume.

Most of us know Hemingway from one of the books listed below and know little about his fantastic life. Yet he was a war hero, he fought on the left side most of the time, especially in the Spanish civil war, he enjoyed traveling for long periods of time and he committed suicide only when life had become unbearable in a body worn out by the war and more recent Kenyan (mis)adventures and accidents. The following list of documentaries, interviews and Hemingway-centered video clips attempt to cast some light on the lesser known corners of this ensemble.

 

 

It is this proximity to left-wing causes that fuelled the growing acceptance of the claim, made by a former KGB agent, that Hemingway was at one point a KGB agent, but was let go as his information was generally useless. Those who love him for his writings, raised to his defence pointing out that he was highly courageous and always open about both his past as well as his present. It is quite possible that the KGB agent thought he was listening to an informant, while Hemingway thought he is pouring his heart out to a sympathetic stranger during one of his frequent alcoholic fog episodes.

Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games.

"'Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.'"
- Chapter 2, The Sun Also Rises

To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.

When we recently learned about a Spaniard being gored to death in what has been termed one of the wildest Pamplona bull races in years, and that in related news, a horse died in Canada after a race of a heart attack we could not help thinking of the old man and his sea of novels. This is also why we added the scenes of the goring and Pamplona race at the end of the playlist above.

A recent study shows that living abroad enhances creativity. So great is Hemingway’s association with being worldly that the Economist use him as an example, closing their article with claiming that merely traveling without living abroad extensively does not help much:

Packing your beach towel and suntan lotion will not, by itself, make you Hemingway.

In another book, the Spanish war is seen as a precursor to WWII:

“IN SPAIN two vast world forces are testing each other out: if Franco conquers, Europe will be black or Europe will go to war as soon as Hitler and Mussolini are ready.” That was the correct prediction in 1936 of Louis Fischer, an American journalist so convinced of the dangers of Franco’s fascist rebellion that he joined the International Brigades to take up arms on behalf of the Republican government.

As such, Hemingway was on the right side of history – though spying for Stalin would have been definitely wrong, even though at that time Stalin’s and Mao’s crimes and genocides were largely unknown.

Sources / More info: wiki-hemingway, guardian-hem, laht-hem, nyt-pamplona, telegraph-pamplona, reuters-oddly, economist-spain-war, economist-abroad, cbc-horse, yt

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Hardcover) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	The Sun Also Rises (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)
A Farewell to Arms (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	For Whom the Bell Tolls (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition (Hardcover) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)

Verba Volant,hemingway, ernest, ernst, kgb, secret services, pamplona, goring, gored, bull, bullfighting, youtube, video, documentary, video clips, videoclips, bull race, stampede, sanferminas, san fermin

Better suicides

Every month, a significant number of Afghan women choose to end their marriage and “hopefully” life through self-immolation. There is yet another way of interpreting this Al-Jazeera video..

Afghan women are so frustrated at the abuse suffered in the hands of their fathers or husbands that they choose to burn themselves rather than continue to live like that (self-immolation). This involves pouring petrol on top of their head and setting themselves on fire. This is a particularly painful way to die. The few who survive, are condemned to live a much shorter life in atrocious physical pain. Furthermore, in a failed state such as Afghanistan, it is unlikely that anybody can take care of them, so they most likely end up in the care of those whose “will to power” they were trying to escape.

While horrifying, the situation described by the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera seems to suggest a better way to die for would-be suiciders. Rather than burn yourself in a slow, painful death like Afghan women, one could choose the much more civilised Western way. It’s the way warrior westerners die – namely in long, drawn-out, vitality consuming, never-ending, Kafkaesque trials. Or the alternative reserved for Muslims: imprisonment at Gitmo, or CIA renditions to torturing states.

Sources / More info: rferl-afghan, wpr-afghan, rawa-march-8, yt-self-immolation

VerbaVolant, suicide, discrimination, sexism, afghan, status, women, woman, arab, muslim, islam, feminism, self-immolation, burning, death, kafka, kafkian, kafkaesque

Actor slits his own throat

While performing his routine suicide scene, an actor slit his throat when the prop knife turned out to be the real one.

Daniel Hoevels, 30, came awfully close to dying on stage after the knife he used many times to end the life of his character failed to fail, giving his spectators the thrill of the year.

He…

…slumped over with blood pouring from his neck while the audience broke into applause at the "special effect". Police are investigating whether the knife was a mistake or a murder plot. They are questioning the rest of the cast, and backstage hands with access to props; they will also carry out DNA tests.

Things went wrong at Vienna's Burgtheater as Hoevels' character went to "kill himself" in the final scene of Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart, about Mary Queen of Scots, on Saturday night. It was only when he did not get up to take a bow that anyone realised something had gone wrong. Though bleeding profusely, Hoevels survived because the knife missed the carotid artery as it sliced into his neck. Wolfgang Lenz, a doctor who treated him, said: "Just a little bit deeper and he would have been drowning in his own blood."

One officer told Austrian TV news: "The rumours are wild, with some claiming that he was the victim of jealous rival. We don't know anything for sure yet; we have to work through everyone." The knife was reportedly bought at a local shop; one possibility is that the props staff forgot to blunt its blade. "The knife even still had the price tag on it," an investigator said.

After emergency treatment at a hospital, Hoevels declared that the show must go on, and returned to the stage on Sunday night with a bandage tied around his neck, ready to once again meet his mock demise.

Source: grdn

Overheard,actor, acting, Daniel Hoevels, Burgtheater, knife, throat, carotid, Mary Queen of Scots, Austria

Top 10 Basic News Stories

In a recent article, a management consultant opines that the "so-called Third-Wave age of information, as futurist Alvin Toffler named it, the commercial news process is actually imprisoned in a Second-Wave model, i.e. an industrial model of news production". We are quoting at length from this captivating article.

Some – well, pundits as well – believe that the relationship between pundits and the media is symbiotic at best, if not far more intimate and polarized. Rarely do we see pundits biting the hand that feeds them, like Dr Karl Albrecht does:

Any subject expert who is regularly called upon to appear in news cameos (such as I am, as a business consultant) soon discerns the unmistakable factory-like hum of the news operation. The process by which video editors interweave the live performances of news readers, the cutaways to remote units at the crime scene or the lawn of the White House, the obligatory establishing shot of the professor walking across campus to the laboratory, and the stock footage (the Rodney King beating, the Clinton-Lewinsky hug, or the lab technician testing the DNA samples) pays little homage to Toffler's Third Wave concept. Instead, it's straight out of the Industrial Age. Probably the closest product analogy to the news is a fast-food operation, something like making hamburgers or baking pastries.
Each little piece of news rolls down the line like a tidy, production-controlled PopTart (with due respect to Kellog's popular product): flavored, sweetened, glazed, and baked to perfection. Whatever the sacrifice in depth or insight, the fast-food news model is undeniably efficient and remarkably cost-effective.
What makes any industrial production process efficient and cost-effective is the use of standard products. In the news industry this translates into a few well-proven, reliable story structures. A basic inventory of about ten standard news stories makes the process of baking the news easy to manage.

Here’s his top 10 cookie cutter news report phenotypes:

1. Shock and Horror. ..Murders, especially multiples, acts of unusual violence, brutality, or sadism, shark attacks, and the carnage left by explosions..
2. Tragedy. ..natural disasters, airplane crashes, and hotel fires..
3. Hot Sex. ..It ranges from the intimate lives of celebrities to "socially responsible" stories about teen-agers having oral sex. It also includes derivative pornography, such as stories about the exotic dancers at the local club who are fighting to unionize..
4. Scandal. ..misdeeds of government officials or corporate bigwigs..
5. The Fall of the Mighty. ..powerful people get knocked off their high horses..
6. Conflict. ..whether in the schoolyard or in Taiwan's Parliament chamber, conflict and the imminence of physical violence will always arrest attention.. War.., conflict between political parties, or among advocacy groups pursuing various social agendas..
7. Worry. Journalists seem to suffer from a constitutional aversion to being perceived as naive or overly optimistic. As a result, they seem compelled to find the dark side of just about any issue..
8. Voyeurism. The bizarre, the perverted, the weird, the sick and twisted, and the deviant, ..suicide jumper, the hostage standoff, the execution, and the demented old lady living with the 300 cats..
9. Dilemmas. ..conflicts that can't be solved. The abortion issue, cloning, capital punishment, euthanasia, and the right to die, all arouse strong feelings and polarize opinion.. The frequent use of two-sided moral Dilemma stories helps perpetuate the myth of "objective journalism."
10. Gee-Whiz Stories. ..usually has to be a novelty segment, a curiosity piece, or a heart-warmer. The local spelling bee, the dog that rescues the baby, astronauts in space, the Olympic athlete's mom crying tears of joy, and the President's hemorrhoids..

It’s not enough that journalism is dieing. We now have a vivisection!

(Or was that death followed by autopsy?)

Sources / More info: ka, pt

VerbaVolant, news, media, mass-media, newz, network, top10, top 10, top ten, journalism

2010 Darwin Awards

The Darwin website has published the results of the annual vote and accordingly gave out its prizes. As almost every year, there’s also a book: Chlorinating the Gene Pool.

The prizes are given each year to commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it:

DOUBLE DIP (2009 runner up - 7.4, 2074 votes)

For the first time ever, a woman--yes, a member of the safer sex--made it into the year's Top Darwin Awards Contenders! 2009 Antepenultimate Winner is the North Carolina woman who jumped into a swollen creek to rescue her drowning...moped.

On June 3, Greensboro was inundated and cars were stranded on flooded roads. Rosanne T., 50, hopped on her moped and drove the convenience store where she “possibly had a beer,”, according to her mother, to whom she said on the phone “my moped has two rubber wheels, Mom, I'll be fine”. Ms T had acquired her moped 2 years ago after a DUI conviction suspended her driving license. The roads were blocked, but she drove right past the Highway Patrol and road blocks then promptly fell into the creek. The officer rescued her, then she jumped again never to resurface. Her mother thought that it was the moped’s fault: "She loved that thing." (da)

DYING TO GO (2009 runner up - 7.8, 247 votes)

We've all been in his shoes, taking that fateful whiz at the side of the road. After all, "You don't buy beer, you just rent it." Wanting to take a leak while stuck in traffic, Shawn M. got out of the car on that fateful April 12, 2008 day near Pompano Beach, Fla. He then proceeded to jump over the low concrete wall and fell 65 feet to his death, as the car was idling on an overpass above the railroad. "Shawn didn't do a whole lot for a living. He got along on his charm, just like his father" explained his mother. Look before you leak! (da)

CRUSHING DEBT (2009 Darwin award winner - 7.7, 202 votes)

And the winner is... deceased! The city of Dinant, Belgium on September 26 is the backdrop for this rare Double Darwin Award involving two bank robbers attempting to make a sizeable withdrawal from an ATM. Overestimating the amount of dynamite needed, they actually demolished the bank building and perished in the event. In hindsight, a debit card would have been safer.(da)

PRIEST VISITS BOSS (2008 Darwin award winner)

Finally, we retroactively announce a new Darwin Award Winner from 2008, posted too late to earn that year's top spot. The most popular story of the year 2008, beloved by millions of fans, presenting the ludicrous case of the Balloon Priest, Adelir Antonio. He wanted to publicize his plan to build spiritual rest stops for truck drivers where no hookers are allowed so he tried to set a record for clustered balloon flight. Though he packed a survival suit, used a buoyant chair, had a satellite phone and GPS and could have parachuted while over land, he did not manage to set his record, as you have to survive in order to be considered. He could have parachuted while over land but didn’t. He eventually called the coast guard, but his cell phone died while he fiddled with the GPS unit. He probably did the same shortly thereafter. (da)

 

The actual votes and marks seem to be slightly different than the above:

Sparkleberry Lane 7.8 (297 votes) July 31, South Carolina

• 23-y.o. James T. painted his face gold to rob a store. He died from pain toxicity.

Saw It Coming! 7.7 (2136 votes) June 27, New York (possible urban story)

• Miecyskaw Mil, 64, angry over a power brownout, decided to cut a live powerline with his circular saw. Police and firefighters guarding it tried to stop him, but he “won”.

Tennessee Pee 7.7 (736 votes) mid-80s, Middle T State Univ

• A young frat boy gained entry to an electrical installation and seeing a wasp nest hanging from a transformer, climbed on top of it and peed. (possible urban story)

Painkiller 7.6 (574 votes) October 26, 17 - Minnesota

• Lucas William Stenning, 32, avoided registration –required for predatory offenders- by leaping from a moving vehicle and dying. He was trying to get hospitalized in order to get painkillers.

Trifecta Electra 7.4 (995 votes) October 12, Florida

• A Palm Bay couple and their 15-y.o son were putting up a ham radio antenna one evening and hit a power line lurking on top.

She Talks Faster Than She Walks 7.3 (2313 votes) May 30, Louisiana

• Tamera B, 22, claimed that he BF wasn’t driving fast enough, so she opened the door and stuck her foot out while the vehicle was on the highway at normal speed.

Wetting The Bed 6.5 (307 votes) October 27, Arkansas

• Devan LeAnn, 31 decided to “float” on a swelling lake on a egg-crate style mattress which is non-buoyant, “vanishing from sight” shortly thereafter.

Fool's Gold 6.5 (566 votes) February 5, India

• Pravin Kuse dreamed that a pot of gold is buried under his house, an abandoned 100-year-old building. He dug a 15 feet tunnel in a rather long time, which eventually caved in, burying him alive.

Race To The Bottooommm 6.2 (1578 votes) September 5, Oregon

• Jake, 18, went down Saddle Mountain in a “controlled slide” down the cliff face. His body came to rest in a steep ravine 1000 feet below.

Missed (But Not Missed By) The Bus 6.2 (280 votes) August 13, Quebec

• A 24-y.o. woman tried to flag down a bus she had just missed by jumping into a restricted area of a bus terminal. She did not succeed.

Collateral Damage 5.6 (2462 votes) April 30, York, UK

• A 41-y.o. attempted to demolish a large brick garden and succombed to a cement slab.

Nutty Putty Cave 5.5 (385 votes)

• Made of soft brown clay, this naturally formed thermal cave is 1400 feet long. John J., a veteran spelunker, went into a small cavity head-first and never came out, despite 137 trying to save him. He died after 27 painful hours.

Sources / More info: www.darwinawards.com, amazon-darwin, yt-DA-puku, yt-DA-gnooble

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