Miss nip-and-tuck

Miss World 2003

Wannabe beauty queens (and these days, it looks like everyone) take note. A new pageant is ready to take off in China, and there’s only one condition for sending an entry — you must have had a nose job, or a tummy tuck, or an implant. In short, it’s a contest reserved for those who’ve felt impelled to help Mother Nature along by going under the scalpel. The concept of ‘Miss Plastic Surgery’ was mooted when a woman was barred from entering a regular beauty contest since she’d had a number of cosmetic surgeries. China’s thriving economy is seeing a boom in the beauty business with over six million people employed by beauty salons. So it pays to keep women alive to their imperfections...

Faster, higher, stronger

Looks like there are more ways than one to raise your, er, hopes and achieve, er, a high. Pfizer’s wonder drug Viagra, known for its potency in helping those with performance anxiety, is now being put to new and imaginative use by the younger generation — it is increasingly being used as lifestyle drug by those in the 18 to 45 age group. According to a study published in the International Journal of Impotence, Viagra sales have gone up three times among younger men, making them, without any doubt, the fastest growing segment of Viagra users.Priced at around $ 9, the pill would be an expensive recreational agent even for the most affluent. Nevertheless, in 2003 Viagra notched up worldwide sales of $1.9 billion. Looks like the whole world’s partying.

lafter breaking hearts in Arthur, Keira Knightley is now ready to kick some butt in Domino. The movie will have the leggy beauty playing someone who tracks down criminals for a price. Who wouldn’t want to get nabbed?

After breaking hearts in Arthur, Keira Knightley is now ready to kick some butt in Domino. The movie will have the leggy beauty playing someone who tracks down criminals for a price. Who wouldn’t want to get nabbed?

Get hooked on this

This has to be the best way to enjoy lazy afternoons. The new fad among California youth is to spend any spare hours dangling from meat hooks on a sandbar. It goes like this. Erect a tripod, fix the hooks on it, drive these spikes into your body and dangle from them. Simple and pleasurable. In fact, when coast guards found a young ‘hanger-on’, they could hardly do anything to take her off her perch. There’s no law against this.

Road rage

The bike Dolmette

Harley owners can take a walk now. Dolmette will give these bikers a run for their money. Designed by brothers Andi and Roetger Feldmann, it’s a bike which is sure to wake up your neighbours when you rev it up. Not surprising, since the bike actually uses 24 huge chainsaw motors to power itself ahead. Produced by the brand Dolmar, the bike is currently being tested on the roads in Germany. The picture shows Andi riding his invention in the northern town of Weitze-Jeversen on August 2.

AWARD OF THE WEEK

Goes to the three young techies Revathi Rani, Adesh Prakash and Sunil Kumar S.V. from Bangalore who have been chosen to represent India at the 2004 Teen Summit of the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network to be held at Boston.