Just standing

A man stands in mid-air suspended by one hand stick to the side of a shop building as an advertisement in a replica of German artist Johan Lorbeer's still-life performance 'Tarzan-Standbein' (Tarzan-main pillar) in Tokyo on September 17, 2009. Customers gazed at a man simulating Lorbeer's installation as they queued to enter a newly opened shop in Tokyo which was giving away 1,000 free pairs of glasses as a promotion.

If you’ve ever wondered what to do with unwanted hotel key cards, then think no more.

Because, providing you've somehow amassed 200,000 plastic slips, the solution is simple – use them to build your own guest house.

That, at least, is what one hotel chain decided to do.

Plastic palace:  Bryan Berg sits in the hotel bedroom he made from key cards

Relaxing A woman takes a rest on a sofa in the hotel, and is if she plays her cards right she might get room-service

Holiday Inn’s Key Card Hotel, which opened yesterday in New York, includes a guest bedroom, bathroom and lobby, all fully equipped with life-sized furniture all made out of, yes, well, you get the point.

The 400 sq ft, two-ton construction in Manhattan , which will be in business until September 21, was built by world record-holding 'card-stacker' Bryan Berg.

He said: ‘This is my largest card-stacking challenge to date and the only card creation I have ever made at full human scale.’

During the five day event, Mr Berg will build a freestanding 9ft replica of New York’s Empire State Building in the lobby using Holiday Inn playing cards.

'You'll slot in nicely here': Manhattan's Key Card Hotel reception

'Your card, madam': The hotel is made from 200,000 cards weighing two tons

It marks the relaunch of the chains 1,200 hotels around the world.

Kevin Kowalski, senior vice president of global brand management at Holiday Inn, said:

‘The Key Card Hotel is a fun and interactive way to showcase the changes

Mr Berg first broke the world record for World's Tallest House of Freestanding Playing Cards in 1992 at the age of 17, with a tower 14ft 6in.

Since then, he has been commissioned to break his own record ten times.

Key feature: A toilet showing how the cards are arranged using both sides

Cardstacker Bryan Berg tries out the flush on his toilet at the New York hotel

His most recent tallest record was a 25ft 9in inch tall tower built at the African-American Museum at Dallas, Texas.

For this record, he tried a new technique involving stacking cards vertically instead of horizontally, which reduced the number of cards needed by nearly half.

In 2004, Guinness created a new record category for World's Largest House of Freestanding Playing Cards to recognize a project Mr

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1214284/House-cards-Too-easy-Heres-hotel-key-cards-200-000-fact.html#ixzz0RYVWz4Nc

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1214284/House-cards-Too-easy-Heres-hotel-key-cards-200-000-fact.html#ixzz0RYVTU7bf

By Julian Gavaghan
Last updated at 9:53 AM on 18th September 2009

I thought this was pretty cool. Creative way to promo and set up a catwalk AND cause a stir!
Catwalk undertaken in Berlin!

Underground Catwalk

I would shoot him too

And the kids like this one

And I thought the balance was going to topple over the 'diva' side!

Continuing to plug away on her new music video shoot, Mariah Carey did a little bit of cross-dressing outside the Plaza Hotel in New York City on Monday (June 29).

In one scene dressing as a chauffeur, the Grammy winning singer also paid her respects to Eminem during the course of her “Obsessed” shoot.

As for the recently released track, it happens to be featured on Mimi’s soon-to-be released album called “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” - due out in stores on August 25, 2009.

The track happens to be a much-deserved response to Eminem’s recent lyrical attacks of Miss Carey and her hubby, Nick Cannon.

In the song, she sings, “Why you so obsessed with me/ Lying that you sexing me.”

Something I would watch

Read this on the news website.

Now this is the opposite of love. It's nothing like the couple I saw tonight!

Dear Bossy: I love my girlfriend, I think she’s great, she’s sexy, we have fun together, I’m supportive of her (or at least I try), I love giving her massages and thoughtful birthday prezzies and home-cooked candlelit dinners, I have no intention of leaving her, I want to be with her long-term, and I might have kids with her someday.

However occasionally I have sex with other women friends. Maybe 2 or 3 times in 6 months.  (Yes I’m careful with protection.) So 99% of the sex I have is with my girlfriend, and 1% with other women (friends not random strangers, and not one-night stands).

I don’t tell my girlfriend when I have sex with another woman, but if she asked me, “Did you have sex with that woman?”, I’d reply, “Yes and it was hotttt” (even if I never touched her).  i.e. I think Clinton’s response was stupid.

As far as I know, my girlfriend is monogamous and wants me to be monogamous.  I’ve indicated a number of times that I don’t think much of monogamy or marriage.  I’ve never agreed to be monogamous.

I’ve suggested to her that for my birthday prezzie, she bring home one of her good-looking female friends for me, but she rejected that idea and gave me something else.  Oh well, I’m not surprised.  I would have been surprised if she had agreed to it.  Actually she half agreed to it—she said she’d bring home a big fat friend.  I hastily declined that offer.

Re the vice versa, I definitely prefer my girlfriend to be monogamous, but I wouldn’t leave her if I discovered she had (protected) sex with someone else—leaving her or verbally abusing her for that reason would be highly hypocritical, considering my own behavior.  So I’m pleased with her being monogamous with me, but I couldn’t require or demand it.

I’m happy, and I don’t feel guilty, and I don’t feel like I’m “cheating”.

I highly respect your advice, Bossy (even if I don’t always agree with it), so I’m very curious to know:  What do you think?  Is this wrong?  Immoral?  Do I have a problem?  Am I a “cheater”?  Should I change my behavior?  If you were the girlfriend in this situation, would you leave me?

Bastard in Love

Bossy says. I think you probably work in sales or advertising. Or PR. You are certainly pretty good at spin.

I can’t say sleeping with other women while you are in a relationship is “wrong”. I mean if this worked for you and your girlfriend who’s to say it’s a bad choice? The problem is you are lying to your girlfriend. You’ve sold her one relationship and then presented her with another.

I don’t buy your theory that because you never said out loud you were monogamous that lets you off the hook. Your girlfriend thinks you are in a monogamous relationship and you continue to let her believe that even when it’s not so. This is called lying by omission.

You also say you would tell her you had slept with someone is she asked. You have suggested she bring over a friend for a threesome. You act as though this puts you in the clear. Of course approaching something as a joke is not the same as telling someone outright. That’s lying too. It’s why when we say something sarcastically we are asking people to see that we mean the opposite of what we say. Communication is about more than the words. It’s about the way we represent those words. And if you making something out to be a joke, that doesn’t mean you have told her the truth.
It doesn’t really matter what I would do in your girlfriend’s position. It matters what she would do. For the record though I would probably dump you. And oddly enough, while it would obviously upset me that you were sleeping with other women, the real reason I’d dump you would be because you were not the person you made yourself out to be. I’d be distressed because you sold me a lie.

Are you a cheater? Yes. Is what you’re doing immoral? It depends on which moral compass you use as a guide. It is not immoral by your compass. But you suspect it would be by your girlfriends. Should you change it? That depends on how much you really care about your girlfriend and whether her feelings and emotions play any part ion guiding the way you act.

I believe it when you say you are not bothered by this. That comes across loud and clear in your letter. But I also think you know your behaviour is far from honourable, no matter how you serve your spin.

My suggestion if you want to continue being with your girlfriend but sleeping with other women is you let her know you want an open relationship. You’re a good salesman; you just might pull it off. At least then the real parameters and boundaries of your relationship would be clear, not buried under childish excuses like “I never said I wouldn’t cheat.”

I doubt you will follow my advice. People usually only change when there is a reason to do so. I’m not sure there is any impetus for you to do things differently. You like the life you have and it doesn’t make you feel bad, why rock the boat?

I guess the clearest reason to change would be for the sake of your girlfriend, because even if she doesn’t know you are still being deceitful. You are still being a bit of an arse. You would stop because you wanted to change that. You wanted to be honest and fair.

I don’t think you can pull off a lifetime of cheating without her finding out. Be as discreet as you can but one day someone will talk. When you are married and have a couple of little kids running around and she finds out you shagged a workmate will you really be able to look her in the eye and say “I never said I’d be monogamous?

Good luck with your journey, Bastard in Love. I don’t think everyone on the planet needs to live by the same code, but if you want to make a life with someone it’s fair you at least try to share one with them. Doncha think?

The nation's favourite department store chain, Marks & Spencer (M&S), has been forced into an embarrassing backdown over the price of bras amid outrage at the extra  £2 ($4) it was charging for sizes DD and above.

Big-busted women all over the country accused the chain store, famous for its comfortable undergarments, of discrimination and effectively enforcing a "tax" on them simply because they needed a little extra coverage and support.

They argued that other clothing prices don't change just because of a person's size, so why should bras be any different.

But M&S, which sells about 20 million bras a year, insisted the extra cost was justified because it cost more to make larger size bras.

Their explanations didn't wash with women, with more than 8000 signing up to support a Facebook campaign run by Busts 4 Justice, which branded the extra charge for bigger bras an "unfair tit-tax".

National newspapers joined their cause, attacking M&S over its pricing policy and recruiting all sorts of voluptuous celebrities to comment on how unfair they thought it was.

The mass market Daily Mail began offering discount M&S vouchers so its readers wouldn't have to fork out any extra for larger size bras.

The Sun tabloid, famous for its Page 3 topless models, also urged M&S: "Hands off our boobs".

Finally after days of controversy - and bucketloads of negative publicity for M&S - the retailer's dapper chief executive Sir Stuart Rose backed down and announced an end to the bigger bra cost with the simple admission: "We boobed."

By Friday M&S was running full page colour ads in major newspapers apologising to customers and proclaiming "the storm in the D cup is over" and offering customers a two-week bra sale with 25 per cent discounts for all.

Britain's buxom women cheered with relief.

Their full-frontal assault on one of Britain's biggest retailers had worked.

If only they could give a similar boost to the country's economy.

SARCASM may be the lowest form of wit, but scientists are using it to diagnose dementia.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic.

The study, described by its authors as groundbreaking, helps explain why patients with the condition behave the way they do and why, for example, they are unable to pick up their caregivers' moods.

"This is significant because if care-givers are angry, sad or depressed, the patient won't pick this up. It is often very upsetting for family members," said John Hodges, the senior author of the paper published in Brain.

''(FTD) patients present changes in personality and behaviour. They find it difficult to interact with people, they don't pick up on social cues, they lack empathy, they make bad judgements,'' he said.

"People with FTD become very gullible and they often part with large amounts of money," he said, adding that one in 4000 people around the world are afflicted with the condition.

Researchers began studying the role of sarcasm in detecting FTD because it requires a patient to spot discrepancies between a person's words and the tone of their voice, Mr Hodges said.

"One of the things about FTD patients is that they don't detect humour - they are very bad at double meaning and a lot of humour (other than sarcasm) is based on double meaning," he said.

The research, conducted in 2006-07, put 26 sufferers of FTD and 19 Alzheimer's patients through a test in which actors acted out different scenarios using exactly the same words.

While in one scenario, the actors would deliver the lines sincerely, in others they would introduce a thick layer of sarcasm. Patients were then asked if they got the joke, Hodges said.

For example, if a couple were discussing a weekend away and the wife suggested bringing her mother, the husband might say: "Well, that's great, you know how much I like your mother, that will really make it a great weekend."

When the same words were delivered sarcastically and then in a neutral tone, the joke was lost on FTD patients, while the Alzheimer's patients got it.

"The patients with FTD are very literal and they take what is being said as genuine and sincere," Mr Hodges said.

TWO randy shop workers sneaked in to a work bathroom for sex but found themselves locked together when the woman suffered a cramp.

Naked Italian Salvatore Mazzi, 37, and his companion Angelina Marcelo, 26, were found by her enraged husband, who had been waiting for her to finish her shift.

Medics freed the pair at the clothes shop in Bergamo, Italy, reports London's The Sun.

Salvatore, a security guard, was kicked out by his wife and sacked for having sex during work.

His young woman friend Ms Marcelo was also dumped by her man, but managed to keep her job after her boss decided she had already finished her shift when she was caught.

Link

Anonymous millionaire employs New York matchmaker Janis Spindel to find him a wife

HOPING to prove money can buy love, a self-made millionaire has employed a matchmaker to find him a wife.

The bachelor, who is 44 and drives an American-made car, wants a family and is keeping his name secret until love comes knocking, the Detroit Free Press reports.

He has hired Janis Spindel, a New York matchmaker with 867 marriages to her credit.

Ms Spindel, whose fee starts at about $50,000, is heading to Detroit next week, "tearing the town apart until I find a wife for a really, really handsome, awesome man".

"He ... has obviously been working like a madman and looking for love in all the wrong places," Ms Spindel says. "He's had a billion horrific blind dates."

And so just what is this man of money looking for in a potential partner?

Ms Spindel says women need to be at least 165cm tall and have the "four Bs" - beauty, brains, a good, healthy body and a balanced life. 

Interested women can apply at Ms Spindel's website: www.janisspindelmatchmaker.com

If the application is accepted, bidders will be charged $US25 and next face a phone screening. 

The short-listed candidates will meet with Ms Spindel after parting with another $US50.

And finally candidates will have the opportunity to meet this man of mystery.

A WOMAN has been slapped with an Antisocial Behaviour Order after magistrates were forced to sit through tapes of her loud love-making sessions.

Caroline Cartwright, 47, was also fined £515 after being found guilty of breaching a noise abatement notice served on her after 25 complaints to police about her marathon sex romps with husband Steve.

He escaped prosecution because he was less noisy than his more enthusiastic wife.

Their sessions were so loud that one partially-deaf neighbour of the English couple told the court she hadn't had a decent night's sleep in two years, The Sun reports.

Environmental Health placed recording equipment in the flat next door to the couple’s house in Washington, Tyne and Wear in Sunderland.

The Cartwrights’ neighbour, Rachel O’Connor pressed a button on the machine every time she was disturbed by noise from next door.

She said: “I heard sounds of a sexual nature, they were really loud, and there was a lot of moaning and groaning and screaming as if in pain.

“It wasn’t just the woman, it came from both parties.”

Ms O’Connor told the court that when she first moved in around November 2007, the noise started at midnight and lasted until 3am.

Now, she said, the noise started at about 6.30am and lasted until 9am.

Environmental Health officer Pamela Spark, told the court she had heard 23 recordings of the couple having sex.

She said: “There was an excessive screaming female voice on the recordings.

"I felt that the noise was a clear breach of the abatement notice at that level.”

Another neighbour, partially-deaf Margery Ball, said she had not had a decent night’s sleep in two years because of the Cartwrights.