There have been a lot of talks about Russian brides, about pros and cons marrying a russian girl. Here is an example of somebody who nevertheless made a positive decision.
This bride is naked? Well, almost. Let’s take a closer look:
While looking at her dress I had only one question - is it made of some sort already unecessary underwear or was ordered as a new one, without using third party underwear parts?
And another question, I wodered why didn’t her future spouse wear something like this. He is wearing some crumpled suite, but he could put on something really worth of his bride, maybe some boxers.
After looking on this dress I thought it might be another reason for a man to find himself a Russian bride.
On September 30, about 900 volunteers participating in a hands-on rice farming tour began the annual harvest of the Inakadate village (Aomori prefecture) rice paddy art, which this year depicted a pair of famous Hokusai woodblock prints created with four different varieties of rice.
View more photos of rice paddy art HERE.
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Fireplace screens don't have to be boring. Fireplace tools don't have to be ordinary. Re-thinking the function of fireplace screens and tools can add a new dimension to these items and attract customers like moths to a flame.
The idea is to view a fireplace and its accessories as another work of art. Like a painting that hangs on a wall, a fireplace screen should attract the eye. It should command attention, coordinate with a room's décor, and adhere to its basic function of protecting against flying embers.
The examples shown are intended to help you look at fireplace hardware as accessories that reflect the theme of the home and, perhaps the personalities of the people who own it.
Metals shops and artist blacksmiths have an opportunity to outdo the factory made, stamped out, fabricated screens by thinking outside the hearth. If you create customized fireplace hardware, homeowners, builders, and decorators will beat a path to your facility and you will shovel up, and sweep in profits.
Natural Theme
Study carefully Craig A.Kaviar's fire screen with hanging tools and log basket (Figure 1) that is the focal point of the Belliarmine College Library in Louisville, Ky. It reflects the building's environment among a tree-studded campus. Observe how the tree's branches extend above the rectangular fireplace. The tree trunks are hinged to create doors so subtle they almost appear nonexistent. The same is true for the vines that camouflage the severity of the rectangle and also provide the door handles. 
When it comes to using themes and scenes in fireplace hardware, Glenn A. Gilmore's work stands out. Gilmore, from Hamilton, Mont., has customized fireplace screens throughout the country. Give him a theme or someone’s special interests and he will incorporate them into stunning fireplace accessories that could easily outshine any painting or sculpture in a room. The dog screen (Figures 2 and 3) illustrates a commission for a homeowner who wanted to memorialize his pet.
Gilmore has woven clients' special interests, such as baseball, boating, running, hunting, fishing, and water sport themes into his fireplace accessories. He incorporated a captain's wheel in the fire doors for a home with a nautical theme (Figure 4). []For a den with a sports theme, he created a screen that depicts joggers navigating a path along the screen's lower center. The fire tool shafts include a golf ball. A bat in the center has carved symbols of a baseball team and the baseball is autographed. The fireplace area serves as a display for the owner's treasures and is still fully functional.
Staying True to Style
Tailoring a screen's design to the home's architectural or decorating style seems like an obvious choice. 
Yet, left to the taste of a homeowner, it's not unusual to see a Spanish style screen in a contemporary home. The artist blacksmith schooled in art history and architectural styles is in a position to strike a happy balance between the fireplace hardware and the home's style. Jerry A. Coe of Berkeley, Calif., has designed unique fireplace screens that reflect art deco, art nouveau, and elements from different cultures (See Figure 5). He always adds his own fillip in the form of a small carved or cast animal, bird, or other object.
Telling a Story
A screen that tells a story is not a new concept. Historical examples of fireplace screens often included mythological images. This screen (Figure 6) by Edward Gustave Trinkkeller, produced for the Hearst Castle, San Simeon, Calif., about 1926, depicts Satan dancing around a fire. The andirons have basket shaped tops with a cooking pot suspended from the poker that rests across two spit hooks. The design is symmetrical.
Asymmetrical Beauty
Today's artists incorporate symmetry most of the time, but they may deviate from that design concept. Roland C. Greefke, of Gilbertsville, N.Y., forged this wrought iron asymmetrical three-panel folding screen (Figure 7) for actress Bette Midler. It shows her personal symbols and a phrase that had special meaning for Ms. Midler.
Asymmetry also can present a different look when used for andirons, grates, and baskets, and provide a compelling design challenge to the smith. Douglas E Wilson of Little Deer Isle, Maine, illustrates a design for an asymmetrical andiron that he forged in iron (See Figure 8). 
Tool Art
Jerry A. Coe's fire tools, forged in bronze and copper (See Figure 9), show an Art Nouveau design (left). The tool set at right is based on cattails in forged brass and copper.
Shape and Form
If you're tired of making scrolls, acanthus leaves, and French rococo designs, think of using geometric shapes in repeat forms as your basic element, as in this forged iron screen (Figure 10) by Jeff Fetty, of Spencer, W.Va.
Your Artistic Side
Hopefully these samples of fireplace art will inspire you to explore your own creative metalworking talents. If you would like to see more examples of the featured artists’ works, enter their names into your Web browser. Be inspired!
A trip to The Linux Café today and stumbled upon an event for Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. To my surprise there was a table full of what appeared to be Windows Home Server coffee! I had to have it. After I got the Windows coffee home, upon closer inspection I realized that Microsoft’s people simply wrapped cans of Boss coffee in their product logo. Still, it’s kind of nice to dream that one day you might be able to visit a place called the Linux Café and drink real Windows coffee. A geek can dream.
Microsoft Employees Drink Vista Kool-Aid, Er, Soda
A local newspaper reporter spotted cans of LEMON LIME WINDOWS VISTA in a Microsoft employee free-drinks fridge. Cans of Talking Rain sparkling water have been modified to internally promote the Windows Vista web site in an apparent effort to get random employees to eat the Vista dog food and drink the Microsoft Kool-aid (download and try the Windows Vista beta).
Hollowing out the Coca-Cola pet bottle, the part which it made color figured knitting everyone and others is the clothes of the form like the armor which it keeps constituting with the transparent thread.In the first place, it was something which is requested because of the Coca-Cola promotion, but in multiplying the part private interest side, as a result settled in the form, armor.
The authority in the fashion boundary, haute couture is supported the time that and in time the high-class material, the needle child which becomes skillful arranges the material. When the technology is applied to recycling and [riyusu], whether how it becomes, if the pet bottle is diagnosed, traces the origin in span call and the jewel, the diamond also the petroleum and the coal to be the waste of the earth, because it is the case that it is the resource.
Gisele Caroline Nonnenmacher Bündchen (born July 20, 1980), is a Brazilian supermodel who has been acclaimed as the highest-paid model in the world. Since her introduction onto the fashion scene in the 1990s she has appeared in countless billboards and magazine covers, as well as numerous TV and print ads. Bündchen is currently the face of more than 20 brands from different countries such as United States, Russia, Brazil, Italy, France, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, South Korea, Germany and Switzerland. According to Forbes, she made $33 million in 2006, adding to her estimated $150 million fortune. She is currently listed in Guinness World Records as the "world's richest supermodel".
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Like an inhabitable billboard, the Single Hauz – by Poland's front architects – proposes cantilevering domestic living space from a central mast. The house can then be installed above a variety of ground conditions, from the middle of a meadow to an urban core. Personally... I'd put it in a lake.
The cool thing is that I've actually spent the last 11 months of my life staring up at some of the Herculean billboard structures out here in Los Angeles; they tower over intersections on streets from Venice to Sepulveda and often seem as large as houses. But how much weight could a billboard carry?
Could you build a house up there? Could you use the mast-and-cantilever model for other types of architectural structures, whether those are single-family houses – whole cul-de-sacs lined with modernist billboard homes! – or even restaurants and public libraries? The Single Hauz shows how beautiful the effect could be.
For more projects by front architects, check out their website (though I couldn't find any information in English).(With huge thanks to a commenter named munditia, who first pointed out this project to me).
[Image: The Single Hauz by front architects].
Artworks by handicapped people
Zheng Jieping, handicapped calligrapher from Shanghai, writes during an exhibition held at the Handicapped People's Art Center in Shanghai, east China, Aug. 22, 2007. A total of 134 artworks by the handicapped were displayed in the five-day exhibition, opened on Thursday. (Xinhua/Wang Rongjiang)
Pimp my rice paddy
Each year, farmers in the town of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety. This year’s creation — a pair of grassy reproductions of famous woodblock prints from Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji — has begun to appear (above). It will be visible until the rice is harvested in September.
The residents of Inakadate have been drawing pictures with rice since 1993. Here are a few crops from the recent past, found at this site.
2006
2005
2002
While Inakadate is Japan’s most famous rice paddy decorating town, a couple of other places in Japan have joined in the fun.
Yonezawa, Yamagata prefecture, 2007
Yonezawa, Yamagata prefecture, 2006
Nishio, Aichi prefecture (2005, 2006)
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