As anyone who has ever seen a rap video knows, if you dress like a pimp you get the diamonds, the respect and most importantly the girls. To help those of you who might be aspiring to pimpdom, this sterling steel pimp stick  promises to "keep 'em in line just fine." Pimp hats, suits and shoes are also available.

In Berlin meanwhile a pizza delivery service, Pimp My Pizza , is also promising its very own brand of edible bling-bling. Presumably the pizza is delivered by medallion-wearing ghetto boys.

But there are signs of a backlash against the pimp. Metafilter  has a rant about the adoration of the pimp, while the LA City Beat blog  writes that the pimp phase is "out of control and must cease. I have nothing against whores, hookers, or any other subdivision of sex workers, but pimps are something else.... The pimp philosophy is that, for a small initial outlay, the investor is entitled to live idly off the sweat of the ho in perpetuity, and any challenge to this given certainty will be met with escalating violence." And you thought that being a pimp was just about having a cool set of wheels.

German Politicians Hit the Dance Floor

It has been an hotly contested debate here at SPIEGEL ONLINE International since we launched last October: How much German is too much German. Our answer to that question has always been to avoid the Teutonic language altogether. But today, we are breaking our own taboo in order to link to some of the funniest sites related to the upcoming German election. They are all conveniently collected  in one central spot -- named after Angela Merkel of the opposition Christian Democrats -- and listed on the right hand side of the page.

The best ones include the "Friseurenecke" allowing you to see candidate Merkel with a variety of new haircuts, "Der Kanzlergenerator,"  which lets you mix and match the various party leaders and create a political monster of your own making, and "Tomatenschlacht"  which has you throwing tomatoes at the political leader of your choice. But to really have some fun, head to the Bundesdance to watch your favorite candidate get down to moves you program. 

Do-It-Yourself Deities

Let's review. We have radical Catholics preaching against the use of condoms in Africa, radical Jews fighting for their right to remain in illegally occupied territory in the West Bank, radical Muslims blowing themselves up in cities across the globe, and a radical born-again Christian (Pat Robertson to be precise) calling for the United States to assassinate a world leader. Is it any wonder that many are not terribly drawn to any of the world's leading faiths?

All this extremism at least partially explains the existence of do-it-yourself religions -- and we're not talking about Scientology. Rather, the tendency for otherwise sane people to identify themselves as "Jedis"  when asked for their religion in census surveys, for example. But while the Jedi prank was something of a short-lived phenomenon, some wacky religions have surprising staying power. Like the decades-old Church of the Subgenius , whose belief structure is decidedly difficult to grasp for most mortals. And then, as written about in our pages today, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster , founded in response to the Kansas Board of Education's decision to teach "intelligent design" alongside evolution in state schools, is growing by the day.