Month: May 2006

Troubled agents

Next we’ll be told Arnold Otegi is a secret member of the Ávila PP.

Sweet broom

Here’s an old foreshadow–give or take the odd sacrifice–of a recent nocturnal trip in the English translation by Grace Frick of Yourcenar’s Hadrian: A few days before the departure from Antioch I went to offer sacrifice, as in other years, on the summit of Mount Casius. The ascent was made by night; just as for…

Unexpected finds

A couple of days back, Mr O sent me a list of URLs, none of which is quite as radical as it may first appear to a number of you: http://www.cummingfirst.com http://www.expertsexchange.com http://www.penisland.org http://www.scatissue.com http://www.childsexpress.com http://www.teacherstalk.co.uk http://www.budget.co.ck http://www.therapistfinder.com I commented that they were seriously undervalued, rather as http://burger.com would be if used to promote civic…

Spanish omelette trick

From John Henry Pepper, The Playbook of Metals: Including Personal Narratives of Visits to Coal, Lead, Copper, and Tin Mines; With a Large Number of Interesting Experiments Relating to Alchemy and the Chemistry of the Fifty Metallic Elements (The Author reserves the right of translation) (London, 1861), chapter entitled The Tricks of the Alchemists: Another…

The humourless German, © German nationalists

This is re Margaret’s post re Stewart Lee’s. The first references I know to the stereotype are not British but are to be found in the early German romantics. They note (1), as does Lee, the various expressive possibilities afforded by various languages; (2) the failure of German writers to exploit these former to the…

Corny or not?

At one point in Marcel Carné’s 1939 realist drama (and Mussolini Cup nominee), Le jour se lève, François, the factory sand-blaster (Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. no. 379, 1925: “probably the most dangerous of all the mineral-dust hazards”), enters a variety hall where Françoise, his beloved, is preparing to make eyes…

Coaching

Two Italian bodybuilders in the gym, one lifting great heaps of metal while the other stands over him and shouts in his ear things like: “STUFF YOUR DICK IN YOUR MOUTH, WHORESON” and “I FACK YOUR MOTHER”. I wonder if the Italian army is like this. (It is a common misconception that the first hint…

Spain, a moral good

Just about the only folks who subscribe wholeheartedly to the same stark raving dungbrain discourse as the separatists (albeit without the latter’s threatened recourse to arms) are our bishops.

Etymology of “the dog’s bollocks”

Wondering idle & aloud whether the origins of that outrageous compliment “the dog’s bollocks” are to be found in a time when we appreciated the finer cuts of dog. Brewery De Klok (“The Clock”) in Zottegem in Belgium used to produce a beer called Poepentsoe. This means literally “the pig’s hole (ie posterior orifice)” but…