Despite the fact my language of choice is that of a far better empire, Kaleboel comes in at no 839 on the list of “more than 10,000” participants in la blogosfera hispana, as calculated by Bitacoras.com. The infinitely superior Puerta del Sol–also in English–is down at 843, presumably because Jonathan doesn’t include as many pictures…
NYC is dispossessing newsstand owners in order to make the streets more monotone and generate ad revenues: Mary Whalen, whose family has owned a newsstand at the corner of William and Wall streets downtown since 1922, said her stand is “an institution” — not just a structure. “We’re part of what makes New York New…
Someone claiming to be in LeMeaux has mailed to refute M’s suggestion that our mayor, Joan Clos, had made some kind of artificial addition to his beloved Hampton Wick. So what the hell’s wrong with him then?
Mistress Puss has departed for the hill, so it’s time for another beast to abuse, kill and eat the 5-6cm American (they’re actually African) cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) which are displacing their smaller German cousins here and which crawl upstairs every time the sewers flood or the bar downstairs runs out of tortilla. A farmer I…
Our present troubles may seem like extremely dark shadows in what I am convinced is otherwise a remarkably beautiful picture, but I wish AP had put this slightly differently: A deadly car bombing outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta left bloody corpses and severed human remains strewn across the busy commercial street. [snip] “I can’t…
There is no sound quite as revolting as an ex-street cat on heat and with ferocious nasal congestion licking its posterior end, and the smell is not exactly Scandinavian pine either. Jimmy Rushing on his 1944 recording of Harvard blues sings I don’t keep dogs or women in my room but omits mention of pussy,…
Burglar and ex-Libertines singer Pete Doherty was caught in June carrying a flick knife. “If the law was to send me to prison it wouldn’t be able to look itself in the eye,” he commented after yesterday’s hearing, in what critics are taking as a clear rejection of the post-Surrealist aesthetic currently sweeping East London…
Whatever’s happening in Najaf today, it’s never going to be half as frightening as South Africa. IOL tells of a newsreader trying to interview an on-the-spot reporter while, unbeknown to her, the latter is being robbed by a gunman: As Katopodis crossed live to Thaw at the first take, his cellphone stayed on – with…
From an alert, Preventing Deaths of Farm Workers in Manure Pits, issued by the American National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: On July 26, 1989, five farm workers died after consecutively entering a manure pit on their farm. The pit measured 20 by 24 feet and was 10 feet deep. The victims were a…
Seriously, if I write this blog in Portuguese, will someone invite me onto Orkut? Or am I better off just heading down the Brazilian bar down the street? All these do-good schemes always end up in trouble – just check the story of rioting at the Forum over in Lorna’s Shorts.