Borat as Art, Geekiest Credit Card Ever?

A Canadian artist is producing a series of Borat portraits. Cool? I think so, but what do I know. Strange? Well, he's producing 999 of them in the series, that's kinda weird.

Meanwhile, in consumerland, World of Warcraft obsessives finally have their own credit card. If I were still playing....sorry, still wouldn't sign up. I'm already enough of a geek, in my own manner, without broadcasting it to cashiers everywhere.

Seven Wonders

This Post article marks the first I've heard of this, but there is currently Internet voting for a new Seven Wonders of the World. The 21 eligible wonders are decent, but in this modern age, aren't they missing a few obvious ones, like the Internet itself, or George W. Bush? (a two-term president that's as dumb as he is a modern wonder, in a terrible sort of way).

Seriously though, what about the canals of Venice (too crumbly?), the Vegas Strip (too capitalist?), the Panama Canal (too utilitarian?), or the Sistine Chapel (too arty?). Don't get me wrong, their list is fine, I'm just thinking a few of the choices aren't too stellar. The Statue of Liberty - they chose that to give the US an entry, right? The Alhambra - maybe I'm not cultured enough, but I've barely even heard of it. And the minarets of Timbuktu either look like they've seen better days, or weren't all that fantastic to begin with.

Misplaced Morality (Sex v. Gore)

Jenny and I caught John Waters' latest, A Dirty Shame, last month via Netflix. It carried an NC-17 rating, which evidently fit the story of a group of sex addicts in the Harford Road neighborhood of Baltimore, as they searched for a brand new sex act. Never mind that the movie itself was fairly innocuous, and probably won itself the taboo rating due to one brief episode of dreaded full-frontal male nudity. Yes, the horrific spectacle of the penis caused this otherwise average comedy (funny mainly due to Tracy Ullman as the lead, but defintely not Waters' finest work) to be branded with an NC-17.

Why bring this up now? When I see the trailers for a horror-gore splatterfest like Hostel, I wonder what's going on. A movie that features the male genitals for a few seconds gets the NC-17, but one that graphically depicts humans torturing other humans with power tools gets an R rating? Have the puritans who run this country's ratings boards really lost their way so badly? It's confusing to me - extreme gory torture, OK as long as you kiddies have an adult with you; naked middle-aged couple in a John Waters film, forget it children, that will warp your minds, and we at the MPAA know that better than your parents.

That is simply fucked up.