Archives for May 2013

First off a quick warning for the more adventurous among you. More and more people are tossing up your sexy pics on sites without your permission. And, since people give them to them there is nothing you can do about it. Not really anyway. You can threaten and you can sue and, when all is said and done, your naked booty is still online. So you might want to consider if that candid of your privates is really that important to send. Can’t you just show your special someone in person? And, if not, should you be showing them in the first place? That public service announcement is tangentially related to today’s blog. That’s the good news. The better news is that I have never sent anyone a naked pic off my cell phone. So, even if you do surf those type of sites, there is no chance your eyes will bleed after seeing me nude.

You’re welcome.

Back on December 8 I mentioned a mother / daughter porn team. Of course they’re from Florida, why even bother asking? Anyway I figured that their moment of fame would fade quickly. It turns out I was wrong.

Our old pal, David Moye, reports that they are upping the ante by trying to hook up with a father / son porn team.

A mother and daughter duo who make porn films together are looking for a father-son team willing to join them on camera.

Jessica Sexxxton, 56, and her daughter, Monica, 22, have been shooting sex scenes together for the last 18 months for their own self-titled website, sometimes sharing the same partner, but not at the same time and never with each other — a technicality that keeps their films from being legally considered incest.

Now the Tampa, Fla.-based twosome are hoping to take their unorthodox relationship to the next level, with a nationwide search for a real father and son willing to shoot a porn film scene with them.

“It’s something we’ve considered for a while,” Jessica Sexxxton told The Huffington Post. “We once dated brothers in real life on and off for a couple of years. They were closer to [Monica’s] age, but we haven’t done a father and son in real life or on camera.”

Like the Sexxxtons, the father and son won’t have sex with each other, but Monica already has the scenario for this sordid family affair in mind.

“Something like, ‘Hey Dad, my girlfriend’s got a hot mom,'” Monica hypothesized to HuffPost. “But we’d probably cater to the fantasy by having the father have sex with me.”

The Sexxxtons tried casting a scene before using non-related actors as the father and son, but Monica said she didn’t like the results, because the man cast as the “Dad” “looked too much like the “Cockroach” guy from that movie, ‘Men In Black.'”

Family-oriented porn is a common fantasy scenario. But it’s rare to have real family members work together in movies.

In 1998, “Three Brothers,” a gay porn film, featured three real-life brothers, Vince, Shane and Hal Rockland, in a sex scene with an unrelated male. The brothers didn’t have sex with each other.

The Milton twins, Cali Marie and Cherish, have done scenes together since 2004, usually not touching. In 2008, porn star Elli Foxx filmed a scene with her mother, Desi, for a film called “Wanna F*** My Daughter Gotta F*** Me First 2.” They made sure to stay at least 10 feet apart while filming.

Adult industry historian Bill Margold said he’s “never even heard of rumors involving a father/son entity in porn.” He said the closest was an uncle and nephew who worked together.

The Sexxxtons may change that with their campaign, which will end, appropriately (or inappropriately) enough, on Father’s Day.

The women will then decide which father-son duo fits the bill and arrange a test scene, provided the son is of legal age and both the dad and son successfully pass tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Jessica Sexxxton said she is not attracted to a particular type — although she wouldn’t turn down Sean Connery. She said she hopes any applicants are “somewhat good-looking and not fat.”

“Obviously, they’d have to be somewhat open-minded sexually in order to be okay doing this with their son,” Jessica Sexxton said. “I do prefer men who are clean-shaven. And that means the face and the whole body — anywhere but the arms and legs.”

Monica Sexxxton said she wants any dads and sons who work with her to be able to do the job.

“They need to be able to perform so I’m not standing around,” she said. “This is a little different than sex in real life. People don’t kiss. They don’t really make eye contact. They just go at it. [Filming porn] takes the spontaneity out, but it’s still sex, so it’s still good.”

The Sexxxtons said if they don’t find a father-son team that appeals to them, they won’t shoot a scene. Even if it happens, there’s no guarantee the movie will be a hit.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest the opposite, according to Nicole Prause, an assistant researcher at UCLA in the Department of Psychiatry who studies sexual arousal in response to porn.

“Research shows sexual acts between any parent and child leads most people to report feeling high levels of disgust, especially women, so the strong reaction to their films is unlikely to be seen as more acceptable over time,” Prause said.

Yeah, I have no idea who the target market for this stuff is but I’m pretty sure they should be locked up.

Or at least come with warning signs.

Now, question of the week: At what point do you ask your kid to star in a porno with you and think that it’s a good idea? How do you even begin that conversation?

“Honey, now that you’ve flunked high school again, what say we do tag team porn?”

“Wow, you’re such a great mom!”

2 Latina Lesbo’s and 1 Creepy Old Dude from Timmy T

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Oh joy. It’s time, once again, for the idiot infused fear mongers to pollute our universe. Not satisfied with reality these losers will waste perfectly good oxygen by continuing to breathe. You know the miscreants I am loathing. The ones who prey on the gullible with their preposterous “end of times” scenarios. Bible.ca has listed 242 alleged occurrences of Armageddon. In case you’re easily confused, not one of them caused the end of the world. However, we live in a world where people think that “governments” can cause tornadoes, so we are clearly not surrounded by geniuses. Sadly, I came down with an incurable case of scruples years ago or I’d be a zillionaire thanks to these morons. Just Google Armageddon Survival Kits to see what I mean. People are tossing millions of dollars at stuf they will never, ever, need. The odds are better that I will have sex with Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry at the same time than the world ending due to a prophecy. And I have never even met the young ladies.

Still, that doesn’t slow down the dense among us. Ray Villard, at Discover News, has a list of the impending Amrageddons you’ll need to plan for.

Take a deep breath; Dec 21, 2012 is behind us. The Mayan calendar end-of-world debacle is over: zip, zilch, gone!

The silliness, anxiety, and paranoia leading up to the predicted end of times was so bad that on Dec. 21st — the appointed doomsday — a worried citizen left a message on my office phone that accused me of skipping town to escape Armageddon.

If history is any example, the next cosmic doomsday prediction is always right around the corner. The Mayan blowout was just the latest in many centuries of bad calls by prognosticators who have the audacity to think they can divine the End of Everything.

So, to be a little preemptive, let’s look at just three cosmic events that might start another pop culture panic. Thankfully these aren’t born out of mythology, psychics, and misinterpreted archeoastronomy. They are real events that will inevitably be embellished by the imaginations of modern day soothsayers.

The Comet of the Century
Last September, the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) near Kislovodsk, Russia, discovered comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). Though its closest approach to Earth is a year away, the celestial visitor is already billed as the “comet of the century.” That’s because it may be a first-time visitor to the solar system that will warm and then erupt with a lot of outgassing from pristine ices.

On Nov. 28, 2013 the comet will skim above the sun’s surface at a distance slightly greater than the separation of the Earth and moon. Not doubt there will be pseudoscience predictions of the comet wreaking havoc by raising tides on the sun. The exact opposite will be the case. The sun’s tidal pull could tear apart the comet into small pieces, as has been the case for previous sungrazer-class comets.

Comet ISON is due to pass within 37 million miles of Earth in January 2014. I’m expecting to see all types of outrageous claims that the object’s feeble gravity will yank on Earth to trigger volcanoes and earthquakes.

Comet ISON has been compared with the Great Comet of 1680 (in above illustration) which, according to contemporary accounts, caused New Yorkers to be “overcome with terror at a sight in the heavens such as has seldom greeted human eyes.” A day of fasting and humiliation was set-aside in order that “the wrath of God might be assuaged.”

Likewise, soothsayers will quickly note that the comet will be at it brightest one month before Christmas 2013. “This comet, if it lives up to its billing, certainly could point to the glorious soon coming of the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven!” predicts one religious website.

The fact that the comet is anticipated to get as bright as the moon will only fuel religious and mystical speculation about its timing and significance as an omen. Chill out folks, it’s just another 4 billion year-old primeval chunk of ice from the solar system’s deep freeze, the Oort cloud.

Asteroid Apophis
NASA keeps cataloging more Earth-threatening asteroids every year. But the asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian spirit of evil and destruction, is legendary because it will be a record-breaker.

On April, Friday the 13th of 2029 Apophis will skim below the orbits of communication satellites and briefly be a naked-eye object scooting over the mid-Atlantic ocean.

Earth’s gravity will deflect the comet’s trajectory. The worst-case scenario is that the chances of it striking Earth on its return on April 13, 2036 will increase to 1 in 5,500.

Apophis is the length of over three football fields. It packs enough kinetic energy to wipe out 10 million people with the power of 100,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs. Even in this worst case scenario a direct hit would not obliterate all life on the planet. But it certainly would not be a good day for the human race.

People will get very squeamish over the possibility of Apophisgeddon despite the best low-probability collision estimate from astronomers. Parallels no doubt will be drawn to Biblical prophecy. This is especially true because the potentially destructive path of the asteroid crosses Middle East. South America and the west coast of Africa are also along the ground track.

Congress might even debate if steps should be taken to deflect the asteroid. But given that so many legislators are tone-deaf to global warming, I wouldn’t expect any preemptive actions to be funded.

Planetary Grand Alignment
Like clockwork so-called planetary grand alignments have taken place in 1962, 1982, and 2000. This does not mean that the planets line up like pearls on a string. But they sort of gang up on one side of the sun within an angle of roughly 10 to 30 degrees — so the definition is a but mushy.

The uneventful year 1128 A.D. saw one of the tightest planetary alignments.

The doomsday best seller The Jupiter Effect in 1982 spelled out an improbable chain of events that would be triggered by the planets’ tug-of-war with the sun: tides raised on the sun’s surface would increase sunspot activity, build up the solar wind, that would effect Earth’s weather, and subsequently, Earth’s spin rate, which would then trigger earthquakes.

No geological disasters happened in 1982 short of a 6.0 magnitude earthquake that killed 1,500 people in Dhamar, northern Yemen. In fact the celestial alignment allowed for NASA to pull off the Voyager 2 “grand tour” of the four outer gas giant planets from 1979 to 1989.

Jupiter contains more mass than all the other planets combined, and yet it is still less than 1 percent of the sun’s mass. Therefore Jupiter’s influence on the sun is inconsequential.

Alien astronomers could measure Jupiter’s gravitational tug as an insignificant 270 mile-per-hour cyclic change in the sun’s radial velocity over the planet’s 12-year orbital period. Only if Jupiter was moved so close to the sun that its orbital period was measured in days, would some serious tidal effects be seen. This is observed with so-called “hot Jupiters,” the exoplanet WASP-18 being the most extreme case.

Running an ephemeris forward in time, with the ease of throttling H.G. Wells’ time machine, the next closest thing to a grand alignment comes in 2163. Unless we have bombed ourselves back to pre-Columbian society by then, people in 2163 will be too science savvy to give this any thought. They will be bemused by historical accounts of the feared Jupiter Effect by their science-illiterate ancestors.

What’s ironic is that any casual surfing of the Internet shows that a lot of people are preoccupied with doom and gloom based on mythology, psychics, and patently flaky ideas. The real Earth-threats, such as global warming, seem to be too easily shrugged off as lacking solid scientific evidence. Go figure.

If you want to jot this down on an index card to help you through your day, feel free.

(1) Global warming is real. It is not all man made, this is true, but enough of it is to cause serious concern. The natural ebbs and flows of the planet are being severely impacted by pollution and that is a solvable problem.

(2) As of today, not one single biblical prophecy has come true.

(3) As of today, not one single Mayan prophecy as come true.

(4) As of today, not one single televangelist’s prophecy has come true.

Are you beginning to see a trend here?

Sadly, while Ray may think that we will be a smarter race in 2182, science says otherwise. Research shows that humans are getting dumber with each passing generation.

Human intelligence may have actually peaked before our ancient predecessors ever left Africa, Gerald Crabtree writes in two new journal articles. Genetic mutations during the past several millennia are causing a decline in overall human intellectual and emotional fitness, he says. Evolutionary pressure no longer favors intellect, so the problem is getting exponentially worse. He is careful to say that this is taking quite a long time, so it’s not like your grandparents are paragons of brilliance while your children will be cavemen rivaling Hartman’s SNL character. But he does posit that an ancient Athenian, plucked from 1000 BC, would be “among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions.”

In other words, in am millenia or so, people will look back and marvel at the genius who wrote this blog.

Millionaires “Party Like A Millionaire” from millionaires tsm on Vimeo.

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Regular readers know that I am not a big fan of McDonald’s. There is a whole section of our search engine dedicated to eviscerating them. I have written about everything from how their food will not decay, which is not natural, to how performance artists use Mc-food to kill insects. Just so we’re clear, I am not a fan. Now, that being said, I must give credit where credit is due. Charles Ramsey, the hero in Cleveland who rescued those three young women, has turned down reward money and tried to live a normal life. But there is one reward he will not be able to ignore. He likes to eat his lunch at McDonald’s. Well, someone has to or they’d go out of business. Anyway, without any fanfare or fuss McDonald’s quietly gave Mr. Ramsey a gift certificate which will allow him to have free burgers for the rest of his life. It was only when a reporter followed up with Mr. Ramsey did the world find this out. That was a classy move by a company not exactly known for its subtlety. So, for today, McDonald’s get a pass from me. I might even try a burger.

Well, let’s not get crazy.

Now let’s look at a few companies that could take lessons from the nice folks at Mc-Corporate. First up are the owners of the Russian ship, Lyubov Orlova, which was being sent to Canada for scrapping due to debts. It’s filled with toxic waste and is in poor shape. Naturally they lost it. That’s right, somewhere in the Atlantic is a ship full of poison that, if it sinks, could do untold amounts of damage to the ocean and the life it contains. You might think that knowledge would spur them into action to find it. You would be wrong, but you can be forgiven for thinking it.

Canada, for its part, doesn’t seem too broken up over the loss, as the boat had been abandoned in Canadian waters in 2010 after a reported financial dispute between the owner and a charter company, per Fox News. Once the ship drifted into international waters, the Canadian government largely washed its hands of the issue. As The Globe and Mail reported back in February, Canada’s transportation department said in a statement it was “very unlikely that the vessel will re-enter waters under Canadian jurisdiction.”

The boat’s whereabouts have received a good deal of attention in the international pressu, and the mystery surrounding the vessel has even spawned a website, “Where is Lyubov Orlova?”

On a sobering note, however, if the boat has wrecked somewhere, it could be leaking toxic fluids into the water, according to French environmental organization Robin du Bois.

“In case of a collision or sinking or any accident, the Lyubov Orlova will immediately release fuel … other toxic liquids, asbestos … mercury and other non-degradable floating waste,” the group declared in a statement, according to LiveScience.

But other than that everything’s fine.

Speaking of catastrophic meltdowns, I would be remiss if I ignored the fun loving couple who owns Amy’s Bakery in Arizona. After getting dissed on national TV by Gordon Ramsey (no relation to Charles) and issuing one of the most profanity laden Facebook rants in history, which they blamed on a hacker who seemed to imitate their speech patterns perfectly (sure, I believe them, and I believe in the Easter Bunny, and ….), they decided to reopen their restaurant. They did this quietly since people didn’t show up.

Finding out how the place is run by douchebags will do that to a business.

But, to make matters even more fun, it turns out that the husband half of that daffy duo may be in the country illegally.

Oops.

Ryan Grenoble has the whole story.

Amy’s Baking Company has had a rough go recently, and it may yet get worse: Sami Bouzaglo, one of the restaurant’s owners, may be facing deportation.

According to a report in The Arizona Republic, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are investigating Bouzaglo, an Israeli citizen, regarding time he spent in prison prior to his immigrating to the United States. Bouzaglo’s immigration lawyer did not disclose details of the case to the Republic, but the paper, citing a “high-ranking law enforcement source,” reports that Bouzaglo’s international record hints at involvement in “drug distribution, threats, and extortion.”

The Scottsdale, Ariz., restaurant originally soared to infamous heights after a disastrous “Kitchen Nightmares” episode appeared to trigger a self-destruct sequence on the company’s Facebook page. Owners Sami Bouzaglo and his wife, Amy, later stated the bizarre, profane posts (“You people are all s**t,” “I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE,” among others) were the work of a hacker.

More recently, the restaurant’s PR firm, Rose+Moser+Allyn, which was hired specifically to manage the resulting storm of negative publicity, quit. Company spokesman Jason Rose diplomatically explained to Fox News, “It’s fair to say, that while we were in agreement on some approaches, there was disagreement on others.”

The report of Bouzaglo’s deportation hearings comes less than a day after Amy’s Baking Company marked its “grand reopening.”

I know someone who lives in Arizona and had eaten there before. He said it was bland food for bland people and the service was sketchy. He would not go back a second time.

All things considered their bankruptcy would be a gift from above.

I’m just saying that anyone stupid enough to steal their staff’s tips while being filmed deserves what they get.

But the biggest meltdown appears to have started when a guy’s speech from 2006 resurfaced a couple of weeks back. Mike Jeffries, the C.E.O. of Abercrombie & Fitch, claimed that his store only cared about selling clothes to the “cool kids.” I once did a video for an A&F party in NYC, so I guess I was, for a brief shining moment, a cool kid.

Anyway, since the speech reared it’s self absorbed head on the internet A&F sales have plummeted.

Abercrombie and Fitch suddenly has much bigger problems to deal with than an overly-opinionated CEO.

The retailer announced Friday that U.S. sales fell 17 percent in the first quarter of the year, and that future profit forecasts have been cut, according to the Los Angeles Times. On a conference call, the company’s CEO, Mike Jeffries, cited inventory shortages as the root of the problem.

The declines in sales actually came before controversy erupted over Jeffries’ 2006 remarks, in which he defended the exclusivity of his brand and said the company markets to “cool, good-looking people.” The comments’ reemergence sparked massive protests from teen activists, bloggers and media personalities alike, who called on Jeffries to start making plus-size clothing for women.

Abercrombie was forced to issue not one, but two apologies about its CEO’s off-the-cuff remarks. In the first apology, which was met with severe opposition on Abercrombie’s Facebook page, Jeffries said that he “seriously regrets” that his “choice of words was interpreted in a manner that has caused offense.”

The retailer was forced to make another apology after a group of teen activists went to Abercrombie’s headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, to protest Jeffries. After meeting with the activists, Abercrombie issued a statement stating that the brand is committed to “anti-bullying in addition to our ongoing support of diversity and inclusion.”

They’re diverse as long as you wear a medium or smaller and their inclusive as long as you have cash to buy their tiny clothes.

Look, A&F have never hidden the fact that they have a target market. They want the young and edgy. Why else would the release an ad that bordered on gay teen porn? And that was one of their more normal ads.

What happened here is the perfect storm. People are suddenly far more sensitive to the feelings of others and are trying to be more inclusive of various lifestyles and suddenly here’s this narcissistic billionaire jerk saying how he only takes money from worthy people.

By the way, to the guy who gave A&F clothes to the homeless, I got the joke. Unfortunately I think that using homeless people as props so you can make a political statement is degrading to them and counter-intuitive to your purported statement since you are clearly saying “Here are the ugly and unworthy people and I’m making them dress up like emo whores!”

You might want to try that again.

Kat Curtis – Screw You, Times Square (NSFW) from steve prue on Vimeo.

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The world has never stopped looking for alternative food sources. And they have found some doozies. From the deep fried bug market in Thailand to the horse sashimi fetish in Kazakhstan, it seems that humans are always finding ways not to starve. And, I suppose, that’s a good thing. If we all starved to death who would we make fun of? Or, more importantly in our self centered world, who would make fun of us? For the record, I have tried a wide variety of foods. Including bugs and horse. For the most part, except for raw horse, you probably wouldn’t know you were eating anything odd unless someone told you or your counted the legs and feelers before you chewed. Back in 1973 Richard Fleischer directed a film about how to recycle humans into food called Soylent Green. It scared the living bejeezus out of a lot of folks. My mom wouldn’t touch chili for years after that.

Of course that was back in the day when world hunger was just becoming an international issue. Now things are okay, right?

Wrong.

Thanks to greedy dictatorships, inefficient distribution methods and downright corruption the world’s food is not getting to the world’s hungry. And, don’t get me wrong, there is enough food to go around.

So what to do?

Scientists at NASA have decided that throwing a little money at the problem might lead to a big solution. And by “little” I mean about what one third of what an NFL rookie makes at league minimum.

Eric Pfeiffer, at Yahoo News, has the whole story.

Call it food for thought. Or perhaps thought for food: NASA has given a six-month grant to a company developing what could be the world’s first 3-D food printer. And the project’s developer, reports Quartz, an online digital news site, believes the invention could be used to end world hunger.

Quartz explains that the printer is the brainchild of mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor. Being developed by Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corp., it will use proteins, carbohydrates and sugars to create edible food products.

Contractor says one of his primary motivations is a belief that food will become exponentially more expensive in the near future. The average consumer, he told Quartz, will need a more economically viable option.

Some alternative food source options that may be used with the printer include algae, duckweed, grass, lupine seeds, beet leaves and even insects, according to TNO Research, which is working with Contractor on the project.

“I think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t supply 12 billion people sufficiently,” said Contractor. “So we eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food.”

One of Contractor’s first prototypes will be a 3-D pizza printer, and he hopes to begin building it over the next couple of weeks. Contractor, reports Quartz, explained that it will print “a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, ‘which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil.'” Lastly comes the “protein layer.”

Contractor also hopes that people will be able to share recipes via an open source coding system.

“One of the major advantages of a 3-D printer is that it provides personalized nutrition,” Contractor told Quartz. “If you’re male, female, someone is sick—they all have different dietary needs. If you can program your needs into a 3-D printer, it can print exactly the nutrients that person requires.”

NASA is certainly a believer: The six-month grant comes to $125,000. The agency specifically interested in using the 3-D printer to feed astronauts on long space voyages.

“Long distance space travel requires 15-plus years of shelf life,” Contractor said to Quartz. “The way we are working on it is, all the carbs, proteins and macro and micro nutrients are in powder form. We take moisture out, and in that form it will last maybe 30 years.”

You will notice that taste wasn’t mentioned. Ever since THX-1138 presented the idea of food paste as opposed to Star Trek’s version of a replicator that could make a gourmet meal, people have held low hopes for flavor in space.

But, more importantly and closer to home, if this works these printers could easily be distributed throughout the world and the hungry would need be hungry no more.

And, as I have noted before, people who aren’t hungry or desperate tend to concentrate on living normal lives and not fomenting rebellion.

Oh, and they frolic. In fact, we should all frolic right now in a show of non-hungry unity.

Caged Animals : ‘All the Beautiful Things In The World’ (NSFW)
from the album EAT THEIR OWN

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We live in very odd times. There are people who are, flat out, convinced that the government (a/k/a Obama) can create tornadoes at will. This is despite the fact that salting, or seeding, clouds is so wildly unpredictable (it can cause anything from rain to drought) that no one does it any more. So if something that simple eludes science I sincerely doubt they have secret tornado generating machines hidden somewhere. It isn’t like they can just toss a propeller in the atmosphere and have at it. This isn’t like twirling your finger in a bathtub. But, stupid people aside, there is one guy who has caught a ton of ridicule for his, allegedly, infantile take on the geo-political realities in which we live. I am, of course, talking about Dennis Rodman. In March, D-Rod said that he had made a “friend for life” with Kim Jong Un, the undisputed ruler of North Korea. Then his friend for life immediately thanked him for that shout out and threatened to nuke Texas. Also Japan, South Korea, anyone named Elroy (allegedly) and so on down the list. He even went so far as to trot out an, alleged, nuclear missile, which stayed on a rack for a couple of days and then was taken away. All along Rodman has insisted that Kim Jong Un is just a soul whose intentions are good; Oh Lord, please don’t let him be misunderstood. And it’s easy to see how Americans might misunderstand someone who recently released a book entitled Let Us Carry Out the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung’s Instructions for National Reunification. Zay Smith wants you to know that it’s available in Bangladesh if you can’t find it on Amazon.

But, and this is a big but (and we all know that big butts cannot lie), what if Little Kim, we can call him that because we’re buds by association (journalistic transparency moment, D-Rod has bought me beer before), really isn’t an insanely evil dictator of an impoverished country? What if D-Rod was right and Little Kim is just a nice guy who likes chocolate? What if, after all the posturing to make the military wonks happy, all Little Kim really wants is an amusement park and some friends?

Tom Phillips, from the Telegraph U.K. office in Shanghai, says there may be more than a grain of truth to that.

Pyongyang’s take on Augustus Pugin’s iconic clock tower will feature in a theme park that is planned to open this year, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
The “miniature world” park, which will also boast a replica of Paris’ Eiffel Tower, is reportedly part of a construction boom that began in the capital in 2010.

Last year, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un vowed to bring to an end decades of austerity and hardship with the slogan: “No More Belt-Tightening.”

The Associated Press, which is the only western news organisation allowed to operate permanently inside the secretive state, reported that Pyongyang’s “transformation” had seen its downtown areas spruced up with “glossy construction” including “department stores, restaurants and high-rise apartments.” At the centre of this construction frenzy is Changjon street, in downtown Pyongyang, where a brand-new supermarket trades in Hershey’s Kisses, Coca-Cola and Doritos.

“Inside supermarkets where shopgirls wear French designer labels, people with money can buy Italian wine, Swiss chocolates, kiwi fruit imported from New Zealand and fresh-baked croissants,” the Associated Press reported.

“They can get facials, lie in tanning booths, play a round of mini golf or sip cappuccinos and cocktails while listening to classical music.”

Last month the China Daily newspaper said North Korea was also a building a “mini-golf theme park” in order to boost tourism.
But despite attempts to give Pyongyang a makeover, conditions outside the capital remain dire with food rationing widespread and the supply of electricity sporadic.

Last month, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that around 2.8 million North Koreans were “in need of regular food assistance amid worrying levels of chronic malnutrition and food insecurity.” Twenty-five per cent of North Korean children suffered from “chronic malnutrition,” the report said.

“Supplies of medicine and equipment are inadequate; water and heating systems need repair, and the infrastructure of schools and colleges is deteriorating rapidly.”

Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old ethnic Korean with US citizenship, is currently facing a possible death sentence in North Korea on charges that he attempted “to topple the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” during a visit last November.

The details of Mr Bae’s alleged crimes are unclear but reports have suggested he may have angered authorities by taking photographs of impoverished children.

For the record, as of this writing, Rodman has, correctly, noted that no one is doing anything to free Mr. Bae. He has asked his BFF for Mr. Bae to be released and has been granted a return visit to North Korea on August 1. Since this the only topic listed on the itinerary that could get interesting.

I have no idea how the world will react if professional diplomacy fails and Rodman succeeds. But I sincerely doubt if Mr. Bae’s family will be all that upset.

On the other hand, I could learn to like a world that celebrated peace through partying.

CLUBKOREA from COMMUNICATION

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