'My face is my fortune.'
Vanity still exists, and how. For those who crib about their face, and have always wished they could do something about it, meet a fellow being who decided to use the Internet in his search for the perfect countenance.
Tim Whitfield-Lyne, a Web design student, set up a site asking sponsors to fund plastic surgery that would create the 'perfect' male face. Estimating a cost of at least £20,000, Tim's site says that potential sponsors will have a say in the way his features are rearranged, and adds that he is also willing to have his transformation filmed as part of a TV documentary.
And if you think it's just greed that drives him, you're wrong. "We all have choices in this world, and mine, as a unique individual, is to alter my appearance. I am not mentally unstable or have major insecurity issues. The question is can surgery turn an average looking guy into someone with male model looks? I'm happy with myself as an individual but I'm not happy with the exterior of my face when I look in the mirror."
While Tim has not been able to find any sponsors yet, he has received a lot of hate mail. The price one pays for vanity?
Images can, at times, be deceptive, as a 28-year-old Englishman found out, when he flew to America to meet his chat room 'love'. The woman he thought was 30, turned out to be a 68 year old! Apparently, Wynema Faye Shumate conned Trevor Tasker by sending him a semi-nude picture of her taken 30 years ago. To make matters worse, Tasker went back to the pensioner's flat to discover a year-old corpse of her flat mate in her freezer.
Age seems to be a popular issue at the moment. A video spoof on Britney Spears depicts the popstar at 50 and is currently doing the rounds at the official Warner Brothers site. She can also be seen in another avatar at the Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics where, in the role of a teacher, she takes you through an entire glossary of semiconductor physics terms. With photographs of the star sprinkled around liberally especially some explaining p-n junctions with graphics you are not likely to forget, this is one site that makes physics a lot easier on the eye.
Never mind faces. Lets talk about something we're equally obsessed about: Food or, more specifically, Indian curries. Apparently, we're not the only ones who love them. The Internet played knight in shining armour to English backpacker Rachel Kerr, who placed an order for a curry from her favourite Indian restaurant, the Rupali in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
"We found a website and were joking around saying, 'Wouldn't it be funny if we e-mailed them and asked them to send us a proper curry,' because we're missing it?" Four days later, Rachel received her meal atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 10,850 miles away.
For those have fantasies of another kind, here's a bit that makes for fascinating reading. An Internet game in Taiwan lets women live out their wildest fantasies by treating men as virtual pets. Women can adopt one or more males as personal pets and dump them any time by 'killing' them. Called SheSay, this Chinese language portal is extremely popular in China, where women don't really call the shots in a relationship.
Moving beyond fantasies to something more practical, there's ZappyBaby for wannabe parents. All you have to do is input menstruation dates at the site, which offers a Short Message Service for cellular phones. It then calls would-be moms when they begin ovulating. The Belgian company which started in Germany last fall initially wanted to confine the service to those two countries, but is now set to begin services in the US too. When are they coming to India? Don't hold your breath just yet.
The Net has other uses too. Brett Banfe has not spoken a single word since September after a bet with a friend saying he could stay quiet for 12 months without saying a word. The 19-year-old university student from Haddonfield uses a computer to communicate with friends and family, and a tiny keyboard with a pager-sized screen when out and about. He has also set up his own website, Notspeaking.com which he uses to raise money for charity. Read his online records to find out how quiet life can be when you keep your mouth shut!
Well, not much more that I can say, right!
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