As those of you lucky enough to receive email from me will know, I’m "accompanied by a shocking entourage of assorted reprobates, including a fire-eater, a mulatto fortune-teller, a chimney-sweep, a village idiot, a cardinal, several snuff-addicts, and a mischievous Barbary ape".
The proof is over the fold.
If you’re a decent American, for the love of God assassinate Congressman James Sensenbrenner for proposing the worst, most Stalinist law ever.
This kind of mad shit (two years *minimum* in jail for failing to grass up stoners to the cops; up to three years in jail for buying someone a bong) makes me positively glad that we merely live under NuLab’s mildly benevolent and tolerant tyranny…
Although just as I’m saying that, some poor bastard over here gets eight months inside for a stupid drunken bomb joke that wasn’t even made at a security check.
On the other hand, just as I’m saying *that*, I find that the Yanks have gone paranoidly mental about an aeroplane that clearly isn’t being hijacked, diverting it to Canada under fighter escort ("well, even though it isn’t being hijacked, we may as well divert it anyway so we can pretend our jobs are worthwhile. And who gives a fuck if it crashes into the Canadians?" is presumably the Yankish attitude here…)
Chill out, everybody. Terrorism isn’t worth worrying about; there are about four terrorists out there [*], and they’re all rubbish. There’s no fucking Evil Conspiracy, apart from the conspiracy to keep us scared and to create the kind of climate where people who joke about bombs get thrown in jail.
[*] Hyperbole, but more accurate than most of the estimates in the other direction.
A good post from Tim Worstall on the value of a life. If you disagree with it, you’re a sentimentalist loon.
"The hunt is on for an Indian Army brigadier who allegedly betrayed his country for 20,000 rupees, selling battle plans to bankroll his wife’s passion for preserving fruit and vegetables." – from the Telegraph (so probably made up).
As Anthony says, you have to admire someone willing to betray their country for quite such, well, camp reasons…
Jamie at Blood & Treasure points out that the techniques used at Guantanamo shouldn’t be compared to the Gulag. They’re far closer to the Khmer Rouge.
Browsing my iTunes has revealed that I own (as in, legitimately paid for) *five* Boo Radleys albums. What was I thinking? Although I do also own seven Nick Cave albums, so maybe that makes up for it.
Also, Cold Case is a surprisingly good piece of television. Having an episode of a CSI-ish murder drama that’s also a Rocky Horror Picture Show homage and that features Barry Bothwick is far cooler than anyone has any right to expect.
(or female equivalent)? If so, and if you still have your exes’ email addresses, I recommend you sign up for Shagster.net. If not, I recommend you don’t.
This may be the worst Internet community idea I’ve yet encountered (and as the erstwhile co-founder of I-Create.co.uk, the Online Exchange for Creative People, I’m more qualified than most to talk about bad Internet community ideas).
Many sensible people would vote for the Tory party if it stopped Paki-bashing, toned down its Europhobia, and instead focused on cutting taxes and regulation. With someone broadly sane like Oliver Letwin in charge, it would then be in a position to win back Liberal and Blairite voters in posh bits of the country.
Unfortunately, Tory members believe the party should step up the Paki-bashing and the silly ‘yob culture’ rhetoric; not cut taxes; and take a strongly Europhobic foreign policy line. They want David Davis or David Cameron, and they hate Oliver Letwin and Ken Clarke.
Oh well. Maybe one day we’ll have an effective opposition.
Worthy. Very worthy.
Via Tim, a new silly meme. Pick a song of which you’re a big fan, translate it into German using Babelfish, translate the translation into French, then translate the French back into English. Then see if anyone can guess what the hell your song was…
"It said that it satisfied figment of the speech. And I said to you, ‘with illustration of means?’ And she said, ‘No, figment’, because she could never present herself to arrive to him, however him. When we meet initially, I have play the boy timid and like it me for the first time it have speak, my nose the have start, purge.
"Have estimate the remainder the following day be go we on a voyage of bus to vat and as nobody be come gather well our tariff, have know me that then, this special something can not think me with it, himself stop be and each time if I have put the radio in circuit, somebody be there different to which a song sing more some the both of we him be. It was as its on a fast voyage to precisely funfair the kind that you would like to receive far, because it is furchtsam and that then, at once that you are far from you, the right back top to receive to still want.
"But our love is strange and owes with that equalizes you to me crunchy takes to accept, it started to expire with Mr Potato Head IT was, when me that it acted at house with the parking space with its layer of it the shoulders to which I was carried out, and to which saw together of both of them, thought, until the water of cold bath around me.
"I go think of it in eyes and the curve of its chest confronted and on the point, in whom his bodies met me, on it. I said ‘that I am the single person unleserlichste in the city.’ And she said, ‘Yeah which is, why I can never include/understand these stupid letters which send me to you.’ And then, a day arrive it that it have cut their hair and that I me be stop to like it it."
Indeed.