Afghan national anthem

Abdul Bari Jahani told IWPR, “This is in fact not a poem, but a list of tribes.” The old Yugoslav one worked on the same basis, with each republic having a section of its own anthem included, which is why it took hours to play at football matches.

La Vanguardia misreports S&P on the Estatut

La Vanguardia really does struggle at times. Here‘s roughly what Juan de la Mota of S&P said yesterday: El consejero delegado de la entidad en España, Juan de la Mota, explicó hoy en rueda de prensa que, aunque todavía quedan muchos detalles por definir, la calidad crediticia de las autonomías debería salir beneficiada de estos…

Chinese liberation music

I am told that, during a recent Shanghai performance of The Messiah, the tenors got confused and lost during the chorus “Let us break our bonds asunder,” presumably for fear they’d be despised and rejected thereafter.

WTF is Icum Spicome?

I’ve a little bottle in my brisses pocket, which I call Icum Spicome, Spinto of Spain Which brings dead men to life again Here Jack take a sup out of my little bottle And let it run down thy throttle Arise and fight for ten thousand.

Thatwhich

Baron von Gizman (or whoever) threads his way round the that/which dilemma by using both on the No Kill I site. (No Kill I is a band thatwhich I have never heard, and thatwhich has been involved in a disturbing voodoo chicken situation.)

Migration

Weather and currency stuff has been evicted and rehoused here to stop it slowing this demn thing down. Even proper caching didn’t help.

Bush is worse than …

‘“Bush is worse than Stalin” -Hitler’ gets 30 ghits while ‘“Bush is worse than Hitler” -Stalin’ gets 822. Is this because the people who make this kind of comparison (a) haven’t heard of Stalin; (b) think Stalin was uniquely awful, an ÜberBusch; or (c) think Stalin was actually a nice guy with some bad press?…

Bus

Here are photos of the Wiebe bus. Can I have this side, please? (Here‘s the Stroadlfest brochure, for if you’re in Oldenzaal 31/12.)

Latina wanted

From The Tatler, 1709: THIS is to give notice, That if any able bodied latine will enter into the Bonds of Matrimony with B[illegible] Pepin, the said Palatine shall be settled in a Freehold [of] 40s. per Annum in the County of Middlesex. I wonder if this is an in-joke, because 40 shillings isn’t very…