fashion beach

Amid the predictable furore over actress Emma Thompson's attack on sloppy language (good for her, I say), there seems to have been little comment on her statement in the same interview that she would not consider having cosmetic surrgery, something she described as "psychologically dysfunctional".

This may be a good career move on her part. With the passing of Gloria Stuart at age 100, there is hardly an older actress left in Hollywood who isn't trapped in some weird unnatural timewarp of facelifts and Botox. Therefore when a producer needs an actress to play an old woman convincingly, he picks up the phone and makes a Transatlantic casting call to Judi Dench or Maggie Smith. When they retire or pass away, Emma will be the natural choice for such roles in future.

Incidentally, she is not the only entertainer to object to the current misuse of the word "like" - Loudon Wainwright III cleverly wrote a song attacking the practice without ever once mentioning the actual word in the song. Unfortunately I can't remember its name right now.

PS - it's called Cobwebs and you can find it on Loudon's Grown Man CD.
Disclaimer - I get a small commission from Amazon UK if you buy the CD through the picture link here.

Rima Fakih is an amazingly beautiful and extremely sexy Arab woman. She is so beautiful that she won the title of Miss USA 2010 representing the state of Michigan. I know what you’re thinking: Michigan? There aren’t that many Arab women in Michigan. Well, that may be so, but this is one of them and probably the most beautiful among them. As a Muslim and an Arab, it is rumored that she is the first woman of her ethnicity, religion, or nationality to be named Miss USA. Fakih is originally from Srifa, a small city in southern Lebanon. After her reign as Miss USA, her plans are to attend law school.

This picture is a lot more artistic than I like to display, but it does show how sexy this luscious Lebanese girl is. It is in black and white, but you can still see her best attributes like her long flowing hair that looks silky smooth in this picture. You can also see a great view of her nice big breasts. They are covered somewhat, but you can still see that they are nice and firm. Then you can’t help but notice the fishnet stockings on her long, long legs. Finally, her lips are so full and kissable in this picture that it just makes you weak.

This picture is definitely an argument for Arab women showing more skin.

Sexy Hot Arab Women - Rima Fakih

The BBC reports today that Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler are to become judges on American Idol. No big surprise, but the picture they used on their front page amused me - it looks like one of those "mother and daughter" shots - add 30 years to Lopez's age and see what she could look like. Yuck!

Yesterday was supposedly No Car Day (not a smart time to choose, on a Chinese festival evening when everyone in Hong Kong leaves work early and rushes home to celebrate with their family). So of course senior members of the government were all seen making their token once-a-year trip on public transport. But you just know that they'll be back in their chauffeur-driven Beemers and Benzes today. In three decades in Hong Kong I have only once seen a LegCo or ExCo member on public transport - Szeto Wah, when he was still in LegCo, sat across from me on the MTR one evening. So next time you wonder why public transport fares are allowed to go up by more than the rate of inflation, or why there are so few cycle paths in urban Hong Kong, ask yourself how these decisions look through the eyes of decision makers who have no idea how the ordinary person gets around.

Ulaca has already commented on the speech by 1967-rioter-turned-Home Affairs Secretary Tsang Tak Sing announcing Hong Kong's exciting plans to bid for the 2023 Asian Games. However, it simply cries out for another of our Orwellian deconstructions of politicians' utterances. Let us quote it first:

"It will put Hong Kong on the map and reinforce Hong Kong’s position as Asia’s World City, which will bring in long-term, though perhaps intangible, benefits."

What does this mean in plain English?

It will remind people [unnecessarily] that Hong Kong exists and has pretensions to being a world city. We can't think of any other real benefits at the moment, but we want to go ahead anyway.

Whenever a politician talks about intangible benefits, you can be sure that the tangible benefits are rather thin on the ground.

This case raises a number of interesting points about Hong Kong's peculiar system of governance. For a start, it will no doubt give the government an excuse to construct another quasi-national stadium, when we already have a very good one which is criminally underused. This is largely because the government caved in to pressure from a handful of nearby residents and refuses to allow it to be used for concerts, thereby both wasting a valuable community resource and denying Hong Kong people the opportunity to enjoy performances by major stars for whom no other venue in the city is capacious enough. The fact that there was already a stadium on the site long before most of the residences around it were built, and that the inhabitants should therefore have expected occasional noise when they moved in, seems to carry no weight.

This plan also illustrates the tendency for such schemes in Hong Kong to be cooked up behind closed doors. Witness the presence of Timothy Fok, the man the media like to describe as Hong Kong's Olympic supremo, at the announcement. Despite having the worst attendance record of any Legislative Council member, Fok seems to be able to persuade the government to go along with anything he wants to do.

Fok also exemplifies one of the failings of the Functional Constituency system - despite supposedly representing the Sport, the Arts and Culture constituency Fok, ubiquitous at any major sporting event, doesn't seem to know his arts from his elbow. When was the last time he was seen at a Hong Kong Philharmonic concert or a performance by the Hong Kong Ballet? Effectively, this means the Arts are unrepresented in LegCo, with no one to fight for funding for them

Another point illustrated by this case is Hong Kong's warped financial priorities. The government is happy to spend money it admits will be unrecoverable on a sporting event, while insisting there is no cash in the kitty to invest in the city's future by taking advantage of falling birth rates to reduce class sizes in secondary schools. The schools already exist, the teachers are already trained - at public expense, and it is almost universally agreed by educationists that smaller classes obtain better results, but the government claims that using these already existing resources would be too costly. What can you do with people who think like this?

In the latest spat over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, Chinese demonstrators have been calling for a boycott of Japanese goods. This is an excellent way to punish Japan - if no one buys their products, it will force Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sanyo, Canon, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, NEC, Toyota, etc., etc. to shut down their factories in China, throwing millions of Chinese employees out of work. That'll certainly learn 'em...er...hang on a minute...

Well thought out, indeed. Equally thoughtless are China's calls for the immediate release of the fishing boat captain at the heart of the row. This seems to be a case of double standards - if a Japanese boat ran into a Chinese coastguard vessel in disputed waters, does anyone seriously think China would just give him a token slap on the wrist and put him on the next plane home? So why should they expect Japan to do so?

Note: I take no position on the rightful ownership of the disputed islands - frankly I have no idea which nation has the better claim to them. I comment only on how the dispute is handled.

So George Michael has (again) joined the long list of celebrities found driving under the influence of various substances, legal or otherwise - a list that in the last few years has included Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie and Mel Gibson.

What puzzles me is why? These people have truckloads of money - Michael's estimated fortune is US$90 million; Hilton inherited less of her father's fortune than she expected, but makes millions herself each year; Lohan reportedly makes US$7.5 million per film, though relatively poor Richie has to make do with a net worth of a mere US$5 million (still more than many people earn in several lifetimes), far less than Gibson's estimated US%850 million pile (about to be severely depleted by his impending divorce, but still leaving him enormously wealthy). Any of them could easily afford to hire a chauffeur. So why is it that someone who thinks nothing of ordering a thousand dollar bottle of champagne is seemingly too mean to fork out a hundred bucks for a taxi ride home after a night on the town?

Is it simple stupidity? Or could it be that their egos are so swollen they truly believe their desire to drive themselves is more important than the safety of everyone else on the road? Or both?

Incidentally, the word stupid is etymologically related to "stupour" (stupor for Anericans), which is what George Michael seems determined to spend the rest of his life in. A great pity for someone so talented.