Makeup Beats Photoshop Anytime

It’s no secret most of the drop-dead gorgeous knockouts you see in those glossy magazines have been heavily photoshopped. We’ve all come to accept it as a fact of life (and marketing) – so there. It just seems these days just about everyone likes to retouch their snapshots before sharing it on Facebook or even with family. Hell, your local church is doing it. So are the other parents at the daycare center when you look over the row of snapshots hanging over the kids’ coat racks. What’s with that?

Photoshopping your mug before displaying it to the world isn’t all that new. In fact, people have been photoshopping way before Photoshop came around. Don’t believe me? Haven’t you seen the pic yet?

That’s right. Makeup has been playing tricks on guys since the fucking Dark Ages. Most dudes assume they know about it but they don’t really. The difference between your average girl-next-door and that untouchable killer babe is about half an hour alone-time with their arsenal of paint and powder. Girl power!

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Russians Love Their Cars

Russian paychecks and weather conditions generally don’t allow for the kind of luxury Westerners are used to. So if these folks buy a car, they need to make it count. That Chaika, Lada or Gaz has to last you some, oh, 40-odd years. And let’s not panic when gas is unavailable, shall we?

Seriously though, you have to admire these people for making the best of a dire situation. Let’s just hope the integration of the Balkans (well, chunks of it) into the European Union results in more Euros to go around for everyone.

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Crazy Asia

Don’t ask me why, but most of the craziest images floating around the web seem to come from Japan. We’ve all heard of their bizarre gameshows, but it doesn’t end there. It’s much more pervasive than that.

Guess you wouldn’t wanna mess with the “yellow gang” there, huh.

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Seduction Fail

Some girls try their very best, but FAIL nonetheless! These village hotties are posing for their boyfriends. They don’t quite seem to have the seduction thing down to an art just yet…

Though you’ll have to admire their, um, zeal, right?

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I’m sure they all got it down in the end though!

Dangerous Hiking

Now here’s a treat. If you think that mountain hike last year was a real thrill, we’re about to help you put things in perspective. Literally. And no, we’re not going to show you a bunch of professional mountaineers hanging from a ledge by their pinky toes. While that’s certainly most impressive, it’s not a situation lowly citizens such as us would would likely encounter. It doesn’t appeal to our own imagination as much as, say, some of the ancient trails in remote mountain villages. These people did a tapdance with Death on a daily basis.

Most people agree two of the most awe-inspiring walkways on earth are El Caminito del Rey in Spain and Hua Shan in China. The Spanish pathway was finished in 1905 as a means for workers of a nearby power plant to cross the El Chorro gorge. El Caminito del Rey translates to The King’s Little Pathway – a name it picked up after King Alfonso used the path in 1921 – when the Guadalhorce dam was completed. Its condition has since deteriorated severely and El Camino is now rightly considered a highly dangerous route. Numerous villagers and hikers have fallen to their deaths over the years and after a series of widely-publicized fatalities in 1999-2000, the local authorities decided to close it. More recently though, a $9 million restoration plan has been budgeted to stimulate tourism in the region.

Hua Shan may well rival The King’s Little Pathway in sheer insanity, though. These are a network of ascent trails leading to the different peaks of Mount Hua – which is part of the famous Qin Ling Mountain Range that divides China. These mountains play an important role in the country’s history; The traditional trail in Hua Shan was in active use as early as 500 AD. It was deliberately built as a difficult and tedious route, since the Hua Shan area had traditionally been used as a retreat for religious hermits. It was intended to be inherently dangerous – so only the most determined and focused could find “the way”.

Safety measures have since improved, but a quick glance at the images below will confirm that’s quite a relative statement. If that’s the improved walkway, it sure makes you wonder what those hermits had to go through…

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