Brazilian student auctions her virginity for $780,000

[robertoart]

One of my favorite jokes/tales.

Man to Woman: Would you have sex with me for a million dollars?

Woman: A million dollars? Uh, sure.

Man: How about fifteen bucks?

Woman: What do you think I am, a prostitute?

Man: Actually, we've already established that fact; now we're just haggling over price.

Bingo!

Virtue, true virtue, is inconvenient. But it does exist, and all the rationalizing and qualifying that can be mustered only obscures that fact. It doesn't alter it.

I mean, we're all whores in some form or fashion, pretty much all of us. If you do something you really don't believe in for a paycheck, you're a whore, simple as that. C'est la vie But I don't think that any of us would glamorize our whoredom, especially to the point of recruiting others into it.

But there are those who do (and they're everydamnwhere), and the more "attractive" they're positioned, the greater the allure of doing any damn thing for money and fame gets, and sooner or later the notion of "virtue" ends up getting mocked, discarded altogether, or even worst, redefined in such a way as to serve the procurers.

This isn't about sex, not really, it's about what of yourself you insist on keeping, what part you share, what part you let go, and the terms and conditions of how it all works. It applies to the physical and the mental and the spiritual (however you define that).

And the more you can convince people that what is intrinsically theirs is really "no big deal", just a tool, a means to a bigger end, the easier it can be taken from them and put to whatever use the taker has in mind (which usually involves some form of exploitation, guaranteed).

We do not live in an age where building people up & encouraging them to stay strong and rise above is a particularly desired outcome. It's a COME ON DOWN!!!! world today, and the further down you come, the happier everybody is.

World gone wrong.

i worked for years in the employ of the Salvation Army (although mostly my paychecks were actually from the Government or community sector funding). When I first started working for them, I knew nothing of their theology. I just thought they were those good natured humanitarians who helped those in need - and felt they had to wear a uniform to do so Admittedly I didn't have too much to do with the Salvo's themselves in my day-to-day roles. Later, as I began piecing together their Religious beliefs, and realising they were stock standard - garden variety - Bible-belt fundamentalists (with the usual rabid anti-Gay and Lesbian diatribes that go along with it), I still kept taking the paycheck. And I had plenty of colleagues who felt the same way, who also kept turning up for work everyday. Plenty of them.

[robertoart]

It's just another chapter in the Culture Of Celebrity, which in turn is just another chapter in the Monetization Of Everything Human.

Is this the sort of thing that is disturbing you?

That's a bloody awful Monet I gotta say. Just goes to show even the Masters had an uneven output.

ps. the colours might redeem it a bit in the flesh.

[JETman]

It's just another chapter in the Culture Of Celebrity, which in turn is just another chapter in the Monetization Of Everything Human.

Is this the sort of thing that is disturbing you?

Just goes to show even the Masters had an uneven output.

We're music fans; we already knew this.

[robertoart]

Yeah. We know potboilers when we hear them, And see them too

Although I must admit, I've still gotten a lot of pleasure out of potboilers (both audio and visual) over the years.