So, It Must Be Nice…

Jade Jagger (yes Mick’s daughter) who is a jewelry designer was commissioned by Belvedere Vodka to create an ice pick.

The ice pick has an 18-carat white gold hilt studded with 13 carats of brilliant-cut diamonds and 42 pieces of pale sapphire, inlaid with a blue lapis lazuli above the blade. The handle is bound with a twisted thread of white gold and crowned with a giant moonstone and lapis lazuli bead.

The “Jagger Dagger” will be sold at high-end retailers, including Harrods.

I still think it is really cool that I can get ice out of the door of my fridge…

must be nice…

Auctioned off in Paris recently was the most expensive comic book ever.

It was an original TinTin comic with cover art by the series Belgian creator Herge.

Expected to sell at $400,000 it actually fetched more than $1 Million.

So, what must it be like to drop a million dollars on a comic book?

must be nice…

So, who is John Paulson?

Well, he is a former investment banker and currently runs his own hedge fund firm and last year took home US $3 billion as his paycheck.

As Maclean’s magazine points out, that is “$26 for every single household in the US, 13 times what Oprah makes (a mere $225 Million), and enough to buy the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Rangers and have half a billion left over to buy hot dogs”.

Apparently he is looking at trading up from his $19 Million Hamptons digs to a $41 Million compound down the street.

must be nice…

Hello Kitty is getting a makeover for Japanese Vogue’s June issue.

She will be staring in her own campaign for John Galliano’s Dior autumn and winter collection.

“Of course this is the first time the historic fashion house of Dior has had a cartoon character model their entire collection,” said an official at Conde Nast Japan, publishers of Vogue Nippon.

“Fashion people all know her name and face and always say they love her. That’s why we at Vogue wanted to do something involving her.”

They all know her name and face! We are talking about a cartoon character! Let’s hope Hello Kitty doesn’t get a self conscious and develop an eating disorder!

must be nice…

A polyglot is someone who can speak more than one language fluently. A hyperpolyglot is someone who is fluent in more than 6 languages.

Ziad Youssef Fazah is thought to be the world’s living person who can speak the most languages.

Apparently Fazah is able to communicate in 56-60 (depends whether you count dialects as languages).

Born in Liberia, raised in Lebanon and living in Brazil since the ’70’s, Fazah is more fluent in some languages than others, depending on how much he uses them.

Here is a list of the languages he knows:

Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cambodian, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Dzongkha, English, Fijian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kyrgyz, Lao, Malagasy, Malay, Mandarin, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Papiamento, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Singapore Colloquial English, Sinhalese, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tajik, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Wu.

So what would be great about being a polyglot is that pretty much no matter where you go in the world, you would be able to ask those really, really important questions like, “Where is the bus station?”, “Where are the toilets?”, and “Do you have chocolate?”…

must be nice…

Flying Officer William Wales, known better as Prince William landed his helicopter in the backyard of girlfriend Kate Middleton’s parent’s house.

Apparently receiving a lot of flack for this apparent inappropriate landing, Prince William was defended by the Defence Ministry who said “he achieved essential training objectives”, and that “the two-hour training mission was fully authorized as part of William’s four-month RAF attachment”.

We’re all dying to know if Kate will be Queen one day!

must be nice…

photo courtesy of Reuters

Last November, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, a billionaire investor purchased a double-decker aircraft that is the largest plane manufactured by Airbus, the A380.

In December, the Daily Mail reported that his royal highness will spend an additional $177 million to customize it; that’s more than half the purchase price of the plane!

Plans for the complete Airbus makeover include a marble-paneled dining room, Bedouin-style sleeping quarters and a tilting whirlpool bath. And, of course, a missile system to defend the aircraft against attackers.

And remember this is just his plane…nevermind his various properties and houses on the ground!

must be nice…

Now at first blush you might think this post is about jewelry and wearing lots of it, but in fact, this is a post about the very popular game Bejeweled.

I must admit, details for this story are sketchy, and I apologize for that. I read about this in my local paper and when I went back to re-read it the paper had already found its way to the curb in the blue box.

So, bear with me on this one. Apparently there’s a girl (let’s call her Jane) that is obsessed with Bejeweled, she plays it all the time. And her boyfriend (let’s call him John) is a computer-programmer-hacker dude who re-programs Jane’s hand held device thingy so that when she reaches a certain level in the game, what is displayed is a diamond ring and the words “Will You Marry Me?”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh how sweet! Doesn’t every girl wish for such a unique proposal?

Jane has accepted the proposal, and apparently the maker of Bejeweled has stepped in and is offering to sponsor part of the wedding and to provide complimentary copies of the game as wedding favors.

Corporate sponsorship at your wedding, a guy who (while it may be a little geeky the way he did it) found a really cool and meaningful way (for Jane) to propose.

Now, I just want to know if the ring has a diamond the same size as the one in the game!

must be nice…

2008 Bugatti Veyron 16.4

8.0L W-16 64 valve DOHC direct gasoline injection, 1,001hp @ 6,000RPM, 7-spd auto-shift manual w/overdrive, Full-time all-wheel drive

$1.5 Million!

must be nice…

Fellow blogger and Canadian Chris Lander, author of the hugely popular blog “Stuff White People Like”, is getting a book deal!  I should also mention that in the true spirit of 6 degrees of separation, he is the friend of my sister’s friend and went to McGill.

His blog which is less than 3 months old has had over 18 million hits! (I should be so lucky)

What started out as a running gag with a friend about the things that white people seem to gravitate to (therapy, divorce, yoga, sushi, dinner parties, etc.) parlayed itself into a blog and now into a novel.

Publication date in the US is set for sometime in August, and no word yet as to when it might be coming out in Canada.

Rumours of a $350 000 fee are circulating but Lander won’t confirm anything on the record.

So I guess there is hope for us bloggers yet!  Imagine So It Must Be Nice as a coffee table book…

NOW THAT WOULD BE NICE!