Snakes & Saints: Angels Enrich our Spiritworld

Parker Says Snake in Weeds Promo Is Real

Associated Press 08.18.07

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Posing naked for a publicity photo for her offbeat Showtime comedy series "Weeds" was no big deal for Mary-Louise Parker. It was the snake that bothered her.

"I didn't think I was going to do it actually," the 43-year-old actress told AP Radio News in a recent interview. "But then, they were there and the snake was there, and I didn't want the snake to win, so I put the snake on.

"And actually, I grew to really love the snake - by the end of the day."

Parker is shown with the snake over her shoulder and down her back. In one Showtime ad, David Duchovny, who stars in the new series "Californication," is shown with the snake coming over his back, its head on his bare shoulder. He's tossing an apple, with a big bite taken out of it, into the air.

"I've been naked quite a bit, actually," Parker said of posing for the photo. "You Google me, you'll see it all."

The third season of "Weeds," which also stars Kevin Nealon, Elizabeth Perkins and newcomer Matthew Modine, was to premiere Monday night, followed by the series premiere of "Californication."

Parker stars as a widowed suburban mother who starts selling marijuana to support her family in "Weeds."

The actress won an Emmy Award for "Angels in America." She's won two Golden Globe Awards, one for "Angels in America," the other for "Weeds," and had a recurring role on NBC's "The West Wing." Her screen credits include "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Boys on the Side" and "The Client."

Showtime Networks Inc. is a division of CBS Corp.

http://bombshelter.org/



Virtual Sex Machine Spawns Lawsuit

Aug 18, 11:44 AM (ET)
By PHIL DAVIS

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Kevin Alderman didn't bring sex to "Second Life." He just made it better.

The 46-year-old entrepreneur recognized four years ago that people would pay to equip their online selves - which start out with the smooth anatomy of a Barbie or Ken doll - with realistic genitalia and even more to add some sexy moves.

Business at Eros LLC has been brisk. One of his creations, the SexGen Platinum, has gotten so popular that he's now had to hire lawyers to track down the flesh-and-blood person behind the online identity, or avatar, that he says illegally copied and sold it.

The $45 SexGen animates amorous avatars in erotic positions. It is software code, written in the scripting language of "Second Life" and placed in virtual furniture and other objects. Avatars click on the object and choose from a menu of animated sex acts.

Alderman filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Fla., last month alleging an avatar named "Volkov Catteneo" broke the program's copy protection and sold unauthorized copies. Alderman, who runs his business from home in a Tampa suburb, allows users to transfer his products, but prohibits copying.

"We confronted him about it and his basic response was, 'What are you going to do? Sue me?'" Alderman said. "I guess the mentality is that because you're an avatar ... that you are untouchable. The purpose of this suit is not only to protect our income and our product, but also to show, yes, you can be prosecuted and brought to justice."

Catherine Smith, director of marketing for "Second Life" creator Linden Lab, said she knew of no other real-world legal fight between two avatars.

However, Linden Labs itself has been sued more than once by subscribers over seizures of virtual property. In 2005, Japanese media reported that a Chinese exchange student was arrested for stealing virtual items from other players in an online game, "Lineage II."

"Second Life" isn't a game. There are no dragons to slay or other traditional game objectives. San Francisco-based Linden Lab describes it as "an online digital world imagined, created & owned by its residents."

Linden Lab provides a free basic avatar, a 3-D virtual representation of the user in male or female form. Everything else costs real money. A 16-acre virtual island costs $1,675 plus monthly maintenance fees of $295. Virtual money, called Lindens, can be exchanged with real dollars at an average rate of about 270 Lindens per $1.

Avatars can be equipped with flowing gowns and tiny tattoos, and users with programming and Photoshop skills can reshape themselves into a virtual Greta Garbo or just about any shape imaginable. With a little cash, users can also have people like Alderman transform the avatars for them.

At Alderman's "Second Life" shop, shoppers can try out a dragon bed powered by one of his SexGen engines. Along with programmers and designers, he employs a sales staff who hang around the shop like real salespeople to pitch the perfect sex toys. He is investing in a $25,000 motion-capture suit, a low-end version of one used to create digital characters in movies, to create more realistic sex moves for "Second Life" avatars.

As customers demand more real life in their "Second Life," though, these virtual creations can collide with reality.

"Virtually every aspect of real life is getting duplicated, and all the laws that can be applied to the real world are being applied in 'Second Life,'" said Jorge Contreras Jr., an intellectual-property attorney in Washington, D.C.

Last year, "Second Life" was rocked by a scandal over users who had modified their avatars to look like children and simulated pedophilia. Last month, Linden Lab shut down gambling in "Second Life" after concerns arose that virtual games of chance might violate U.S. gambling laws when members cashed in Lindens for real money.

Now comes Alderman's SexGen suit, which was filed July 3 and seeks unspecified damages. It accuses the unknown owner of the Catteneo avatar of violating copyright and trademark protections by copying, distributing and selling copies of Alderman's software.

Alderman's attorney, Francis X. Taney Jr. of Philadelphia, said the lawsuit has gotten a lot of attention because it involves sex, but is fundamentally about long-established law.



The Strange, But True Tale of a Communist Cowboy

A new German documentary, "The Red Elvis", tells the extraordinary tale of
Dean Reed from Denver, Colorado who became a star behind the Iron Curtain.

http://newsletter.dw-world.de/re?l=evvz99I44uhbrxI7




Elvis Fans Boost Economies of 2 States

Aug 16, 6:34 AM (ET)
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Even from beyond the grave, Elvis Presley still generates big bucks. That's even more true this week.

Fans from Europe, Asia, Australia, South America - and even from exotic locales like Kansas - are spending their hard-earned money for T-shirts, coffee mugs, salt and pepper shakers, refrigerator magnets and other trinkets during the events commemorating his death 30 years ago.

Many are making the 110-mile trek from Memphis, Tenn., where the King of Rock 'n' Roll enjoyed his fame and gaudy fortune in Graceland, to Tupelo, the northeast Mississippi city where Elvis came into the world on Jan. 8, 1935, in a tiny shotgun shack built by his father.

They're also filling hotel rooms as far away as northwest Mississippi's casino row in Tunica and are spending money on meals, rental cars and gasoline, giving a significant, although difficult to quantify, boost to the area's economy.

Dick Guyton, executive director of the Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation in Tupelo, estimated that fans will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars there and at area hotels and stores this week, which - even at the birthplace - is the busiest of the year for Elvis tourism.

The more lucrative earnings are in Memphis. Last year, Graceland took in $27 million in revenue, and the overall Elvis business brings in more than $40 million a year for CKX Inc. (CKXE), the New York-based company that controls most Elvis enterprises.

That made the King the second-highest grossing dead celebrity in 2006, behind only Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, according to Forbes magazine.

About 3,000 people went to Tupelo this past Saturday for an annual Fan Appreciation Day, and Guyton predicted the visitor totals could reach 5,000 by Friday.

Lillian Dunk, a 65-year-old homemaker from Birmingham, England, said she and her financial-broker husband have traveled to Tupelo every year since 1997 to feed her Elvis addiction.

"I'm just absolutely mad about Mr. Presley," said Dunk, who uses her favorite Elvis tune, the inspirational "If I Can Dream," as her cell phone ring tone.

Dunk said she and her husband are traveling with her sister and sister's husband for the 10-day trip. They're staying at a casino hotel in Tunica, about 20 miles south of Memphis. And, she wasn't shy in saying she and her husband were planning to spend about 4,000 British pounds - roughly $8,000 - not including air fare.

"I get withdrawal symptoms if I don't come every year," she said in a telephone interview from the birthplace. "I just absolutely love the place. I adore it. I just feel so relaxed here."

In Memphis on Wednesday, thousands of Presley fans braved 105-degree heat as they wound down Graceland's driveway in a graveside procession in advance of the 30th anniversary of the singer's death, on Thursday.

The heat led to the death of a fan from New Jersey, a 67-year-old woman. The Memphis Fire Department said it also treated at least six people overcome by heat, including an 8-year-old boy who was hospitalized.

Steve Martin, spokesman for the tourism division of the Mississippi Development Authority, said the agency doesn't specifically track spending for Elvis tourism. But he said for all tourists, the state figures two people traveling for three days will spend roughly $750.

In Tennessee, no one keeps exact figures, but the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau estimated up to 75,000 people would be drawn to town for the anniversary week.

Even hotels, museums and restaurants not specifically targeted for Elvis-related events may have reason to hope, authorities said.

"We would have a crossover with the Elvis fans in terms of blues music," Martin said. "If they're that close to the birthplace of the blues, they might go other places, too."

http://www.elvis.com



TALKING TO ANGELS
Norway's Princess To Teach How To Talk To Angels

Norwegian Princess Martha Louise announced that she is clairvoyant and wants to help people by teaching them how to talk to angels.

The 35-year-old trained physical therapist and daughter of King Harald and Queen Sonja said on a Web site for her alternative education centre that she has been communicating with angels since childhood.

The Astarte Education centre which she co-founded promises to teach students to "create miracles" in their lives "with angels and with your own force".

"I've always been interested in alternative forms of treatment," Martha Louise said in a statement on Web site http://www.astarte-education.com.

"It was while I dealt with horses that I first got in touch with angels. I later came to understand the value of this enormous gift and would like to share it with others."

The Royal Palace confirmed that the Web site accurately reflected the Princess's views but declined further comment.

Martha Louise's younger brother, Crown Prince Haakon is next in line for the Norwegian throne.

The alternative centre's three-year programme costs 24,000 Norwegian crowns ($4,191) per year.

http://www.astarte-education.com



Mysterious Blonde Appears Nude In German Shop

A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday -- wearing nothing.

A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday -- wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.

The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday.

"I wasn't surprised because she's come in naked before -- she's a very nice woman," Swoboda said, adding none of the other customers was bothered. The woman could have faced charges of creating a public disturbance if anyone had complained.

A quick-witted customer did, however, snap pictures of the woman believed to be about 30 years old as she walked back to a waiting Ferrari and climbed into the passenger seat. Several of those photos appeared in the German media on Monday.


Wanted: Naked adults for Greenpeace:
August 18 and 19 on Alpine Glaciers

Geneva - Greenpeace said on Wednesday it was looking for hundreds of volunteers to parade in the nude on an ice-cold Swiss glacier for an environmental campaign about global warming.

The Swiss branch of the environmental group said it was looking for as many adult volunteers as possible to take part in the publicity campaign, to be shot by photographer Spencer Tunick.

The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to melting Alpine glaciers, a clear sign of global warming and man-made climate change according to the organisation.

Greenpeace said the human body was as vulnerable as the glaciers and the world's environment. The campaign group hopes the sight of people exposed to the cold will help mobilise public opinion and politicians.

"We have to act without delay, otherwise it will be too late," Greenpeace Switzerland campaign director Markus Alleman said in a statement.

"Even though the facts are clear, they're obviously not enough to make the decision makers act. It's time to stir people's emotions," he added.

Tunick is renowned for his spectacular photoshoots involving hundreds if not thousands of naked people grouped in carefully chosen poses around landmarks. He calls them "living sculptures" or "body landscapes".

His backdrops have include the Gateshead Centre for Contemporary Art in Britain (2005), the Biennale in Lyon, France (2005), a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio (2004) and Grand Central Station in New York (2003).

About 18,000 nudes posed for the US-born photographer in Mexico City's Zocalo Square in May.

The Alpine photo session at an undisclosed location in Switzerland is being scheduled for August 18 and 19, when summer sunshine normally soothes the impact of freezing temperatures at high altitude in the mountains.

Volunteers applying on Greenpeace Switzerland's website were promised that they "won't be naked for very long".

http://www.greenpeace.ch/tunickglacier


Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a baby...

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman -- but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the baby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realizing their baby was "for real."

They decided 4Real was the best way to write it, but the name was rejected because the registrar said a name had to be a sequence of characters.

Pat Wheaton said he was considering appealing against the decision through the courts, but whatever happens he won't be budged on his choice.

"No matter what its going to stay 4Real," Wheaton told the Herald, "I'm certainly not a quitter."

A spokesman for the Department of Internal Affairs, which operates the registry told the Herald discussions with the Wheatons about their son's name were continuing.

The baby is now two months old, after the Wheatons first applied to register his name in later June.