Unobtainable

One of the best ways to avoid being made redundant is not to take phone calls of any nature midweek. It’s an interesting comment on Maragall’s competence that he chose to reshuffle at a moment when, due to holes in the mobile network, one of his victims couldn’t have answered even if he’d wanted to.…

Domestic bliss

Half the Spanish population is sedentary, while the other half undertakes periodic top-up trips to the kitchen.

M

Some of you will know at least one of the ladies in this photo.

Vespaña

Ander Izagirre is checking the paths and byways of The United National Realities on a Vespa. This is a Good Thing. (Pedro de Miguel proposes, on debatable grounds, that he call himself Vespasian.)

Why I like McDonald’s

The burger chain’s resurgence explained. Anti-American trash here are circulating a “boycott the gringos on May 1” mail, so I may have the extra fries with my menu that day.

Dragon exhibition in Paris

“It has the piercing gaze of the living and the fixed stare of the dead,” says dragonologist Jean-Marie Privat, “[and] breathes only in the shades of a strong, structured, nay, monotheistic state. It is both a representation of, and a figure of the transgression of, power, as testified by its presence in carnival. It is…

Falcon chase

Re this post, this remarkable image of a falcon scattering starlings, which won Manuel Presti the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. (Via esprit azul@après moi, le deluge)

Great dictator

A nice piece of historical trivia: many of Castro’s 60s slumberfests were held in Havana’s Teatro Chaplin. (The speeches veer between the grotesque and the hilarious. Check Fidel in 1959 asking Venezuelan students whether he should dedicate himself to the revolution or to signing autographs.)