A Pregnant Britney Spears Poses In The Nude

The thin man with short blond hair and a small gold-hoop earring in his right ear sat at the large 30-inch Apple monitor. He was operating Adobe Photoshop and examining the images of Britney Spears as they were being photographed just 20 feet from where he sat. The editor of Harper’s Bazaar stood behind him.

“She looks awful,” said the editor.

“She’s fat,” said the thin man.

“She’s pregnant. Of course she’s fat. I’m going to re-think having children,” said the editor.

“Did you see Angelina Jolie when she was pregnant? She wasn’t fat. She looked hot,” said the thin man.

“Yeah, well, that was Angelina Jolie. Britney looks like an old hippo,” said the editor.

“I saw the food they delivered to her dressing room. Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. And American Spirit cigarettes. That’s pretty gross,” said the thin man.

“She ordered cigarettes?” asked the editor.

“Well, they were on the tray,” said the thin man.

“What did you just do?” asked the editor.

“I used one of the brush functions and layered it over Britney. It gets rid of all the fat and cellulite and other disgusting lose flesh. See,” said the thin man.

“Can you give her a tan?” asked the editor.

“You mean like that?” said the thin man as he pressed a button, obviously ahead of the editor.

“Yeah. Yeah. Jeez, she looks absolutely beautiful now,” said the editor.

“Is she going on the cover?” asked the thin man.

“I bet she is now. I don’t have the final word. But I just think you got her on the cover,” said the editor.

“You want me to remove the double chin?” asked the thin man.

“Oh god, you didn’t do that yet. Yes. Yes. Remove the double chin,” said the editor.

“You got it,” said the thin man.

Britney Spears was re-posing herself based on the directions of the photogrpaher. She was breathing heavily and moving with effort. The photographer coaxed out of her a smile here and there, trying to capture a moment of youth and spirit. Trying hard. He thought to himself that this was hard work, and he thanked god for the thin man in the back with the Mac computer and Photoshop.

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Sheik Hassan Nasrallah Prepares To Declare Victory For CNN

The sun stated to rise over the eastern hills of Beirut, the beams cutting through the clouds of dust that hung in the air from the Israeli bombs that fell several buildings. Most of the automobiles on the streets in this southern neighborhood of Beirut were crushed under rubble. There were even fee appliances on the street, like refrigerators and stoves as well as furniture. On this strip, the center of the Beirut Shia community, there were sofas and upholstered chairs. An odd collection of pancake cars, kitchenware, living room furniture and an occasional bed. And everything was covered in light grey dust, the product of blown concrete and wallboard. In the center of this street were the remains of what was once a very large building, formerly fourteen stories tall and a block. It had been the offices of Hezbollah, as well as the Hezbollah health clinic and various charities. A pyramid of rubble, maybe four stories in height, formed a symbolic citadel in the center of the Hezbollah neighborhood.

Several armed Hezbollah officers were picking through the rubble, removing cinderblocks and twisted metal. When they created a large enough hole in the bottom of the pyramid, it became apparent that they were revealing a steel door that was unscathed by the pounding received by the building. The door opened, and the Hezbollah officers immediately snapped to attention and saluted with their right hands, a ritual that seems to have been adopted by all the military cultures around the world.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah emerged from the steel door. Nasrallah was covered with dust, his hair was filthy from the lack of bathing in the last two weeks, and as he collected himself, adjusting his shirt and torn pants, he spit out a large wad of wet wallboard dust that he had sucked into his lungs as he hoisted himself up the six flights of stairs from the deep basement bunker below the building. Nasrallah rubbed his eyes and saw the Hezbollah officer holding the Hezbollah flag. There was another officer holding the Lebanese flag. The officers awaited instructions.

“Today we plant the Hezbollah flag on top of this building to show the world we have not only survived, but that we declare victory,” said Nasrallah.

“Yes, sir,” said the officer holding the Hezbollah flag.

“And when do we hoist the Lebanese flag?” asked the officer standing next to the soldier holding the Lebanon flag at an angle, letting the tip of the flag drag on the dust pavement.

“When the time is right. But that time is not now. Get the cameras and let the CNN reporters into the area so they can show the world that we declare victory. But get to the top of the this mess with the Hezbollah flag before CNN gets here, and put away the Lebanon flag. When CNN arrives, we shall plant the flag,” said Nasrallah.

The soldier holding the Lebanon flag ran down the street to hide it. And the officer with the Hezbollah flag started to climb the pyramid of rubble to get ready to plant the flag at the top.

“And get me cleaned up for CNN. I can’t claim victory looking like this,” said Nasrallah.

One of the Hezbollah officers thought that Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was a genius. Nasrallah always made it a point to appear filthy and bedraggled for his army, showing them that he was in the fight along with them. But for the world, he would clean up and show them that he came out of battle unscathed. The Sheik was a master of leadership. They had fought hard, thought the officer. And though his Shia neighborhood lied in ruins, though Lebanon’s ecopnomy was destroyed, though hundreds of civilians’ lives were killed and thousands misplaced, Hezbollah was declaring victory. As the officer stood among the Shia ghost village in southern Beirut, he felt pride . He was not sure what the victory was, but it did not matter, because he felt pride as he watched his fellow officer stumble up the rubble to plant the Hezbollah flag. Afterall, a flag is more important that food, running water, hospitals and schools. A flag meant you were a survivor. And to survive means pride. And to feel pride is really what it was all about.

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Saddam Hussein Wishes He Could Help The Americans

The bang of metal on metal woke me again. It was always the same wake up call. The barrel of an American rifle hitting the metal bars on my little room. The walls were cinderblocks, the floor was poured concrete, the cot was a metal frame. The toilet was missing its cover. The desk was metal, as well as the chair. The sounds of metal on metal, hard surfaces against hard surfaces surrounded me, all night and most of the day. The only thing soft in my life was the mattress and the sheets. My flesh. My flesh was soft. The Americans at least gave me new white sheets every day, and my soft flesh would nestle in the sheets every night, but also often during the day. My flesh was getting less soft, though, as the days passed. I am on a hunger strike, you see. I have not eaten in days, maybe weeks. I drink. The Americans give me water. I know they are putting some vitamins or minerals in the water to secretly provide nutrition. That’s OK. I let them think that I do not know, but I like it just the same. Afterall, this is for show, my hunger strike. It is a symbolic thing. So if everyone thinks I think that I am not getting nutrition even tough I am, then that is just fine with me.

The Americans rotate the Marines so no one ever develops a relationship with me. Sometimes I think that is good. Sometimes I think that is bad. I would like to talk to someone. I do know English, sort of. I can understand the American Marines when they talk to each other. I want to tell them how to run things in Iraq. I want to tell them how to do it. I actually wish to help them because my whole country is falling apart and the Americans do not seem to know how to glue it back together. They do not seem to understand that I was actually more like them than they fully understood. Religion is a big deal here in Iraq, but I tired to make it less of a big deal. Because I understood something that the Americans seemed to not understand, and that is many of my fellow Iraqis, mostly the Shia, desire to convert the world to their point of view, and so the only way to keep them from pursuing their mission is to make them concentrate on something else, like staying alive.

I kept the Shia on edge. I kept the Kurds on edge, who were really a different problem. I liked the Kurds. They were good fighters and they were organized, and they were sensible. But they had a lot of oil and they felt that they should control it, and they also wanted their own damn country. So I had to get tough with them. But now that I think about it, I should of forged an alliance with them so we together could undercut the Shia. But now the Americans have unleashed the Shia, and they are raging and they are mad and they are itching to start spreading their shit. Look how fast they have moved since unleashed. Of course, they have the help of the Iranians. The Iranians are on top of the mountain now. They are sitting high and mighty with lots of money, with their loudmouth president, and thinking that they are somehow more moral than everyone else.

That is the problem. The minute someone things they are more moral than the next guy, they no longer become sensible. The way I see it is, you assess a situation from a practical standpoint, not a religious or moral one, and you proceed from there. I wish the Americans would go back to their practical ways. I wish the Americans would stop with their high and mighty goals of spreading democracy and start thinking about money and power and alliances again. I would alter the way I speak of things. I would crush the Shia in the only way they can be crushed, with supreme and ugly force. They are like cockroaches. And they need to be exterminated. I understand that. It is a shame that the Americans did not consult with before they conquered me. I would have given them a little advice. Now they have created this huge mess that will keep spreading unless someone does something about it. The Shia are worse than AIDS. When will someone figure that out.

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An Iraqi Gains The Right To Vote And Enjoys His New Freedom And His Wasted Hope

The year is 2000: I am Shia. I have a wife, three sons and a daughter. I work at a factory that makes plumbing fittings. My boss is Sunni. He makes more money than me. Most Sunnis make more money than me. It is not fair. But my boss is good to me. I make enough wages to feed my family and pay the rent on the small apartment we have on the outskirts of Baghdad. My sons are 16, 12 and 10. My daughter is 9. Each of my sons goes to a school where they get technical training and conduct religious studies. My daughter also goes to school, separate from my sons, but she is receiving instruction in languages and math. My daughter is learning English, and she speaks it better than anyone in my family. My wife keeps a very clean home. We have one car, which I drive to the factory, but my wife uses the car on the weekends and the evenings. Some of my Shia friends think I should not let my wife drive, but they see that she is a better driver than me, and is careful and uses it to go marketing and do other shopping. We are sometimes visited by Saddam’s police, to check on us, to make certain that we are not doing anything that would be considered against the government. We did not mind these visits so much because we were not doing anything we shouldn’t be. But some of my Shia friends were killed by Saddam. But then, they were doing things that Saddam did not like. My wife and I agreed to just raise our family and not get involved with politics so that we would be left alone. All of my Shia friends hungered for the day when we could get rid of Saddam and his police. But it was to be far in the future, and we did not think about it everyday.

The year is 2006: I am Shia. I have a wife, one son and one daughter. My two oldest sons were killed in a bomb. I do not work at the factory anymore because no one is buying plumbing fittings from the company where I worked, not to mention the fact that my boss was killed by his fellow Sunnis for assisting the Americans. Most plumping supplies are now imported. I do not have a job, and live from day to day relying mostly on certain charities from the Shia mosques. My sons were killed in separate bomb attacks. First it was my middle son. Then my eldest. This all occurred after the Americans came and liberated us from Saddam. My wife refuses to leave the house. She is afraid. I go out to get food and other essentials. My daughter stays home with her mother. And my son accompanies me on my trips to the mosque and the market. We try to travel in such a way so that if a bomb goes off, only one of us would die rather than both of us. My wife and I are very confused by everything. My wife and I enjoyed going to the polling booth and having our finger dipped in ink. But that was months ago. I am glad I have my new freedom of speech and freedom to vote. Democracy has brought hope for the future. But I no longer remember what that feeling of hunger to free ourselves of Saddam was like. In fact, I can not even think about yesterday or tomorrow because I am so worried about the next minute or the next hour. And if I cannot think about tomorrow, then hope is wasted.

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Madonna Lectures Guy Ritchie On Islam As She Does Yoga In Her Underwear – Part Two

Continued From Yesterday.

Guy Ritchie’s wife wants to go to a mosque. Guy was not sure he heard his wife correctly. Madonna was in a twisted position on the floor of the Presidential Suite of the Westin Excelsior Hotel in Rome on the Via Veneto. The suite was the rounded corner of the famous hotel, which Madonna insisted on, or more accurately assumed she would get. The hotel had to move a Saudi oil minister to another suite to accommodate Madonna’s expectations. Guy was aware of this because the hotel manager was in a tizzy to satisfy the Saudi minister, who was only mollified when offered the Hotel’s Bugatti as a free car to use while in Rome. (more…)

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