Ain't no party like an airbrushed truck party

Sometimes the view from my front door is too wonderful for words:



Later on the A-Team van, KITT, and Magnum's Ferrari stopped by for mai tais.

The art of the headline

From the BBC News England page today:

'Nuns' go on the run for charity
Heroes remembered by canoeists
Two-year-old becomes Mensa member
Prince starts ancient custom walk
May Day frolic on Dorset giant
Dad uses internet to deliver baby
Meerkats 'not very good as pets'
Pagan refuses to leave Stonehenge
Pupils ill after bulb put in soup
Customers watch armed robbery

What an interesting place that England must be.

Breaking and Censering

Its been an exhausting weekend of (scripted) drama this weekend: I made my biennial pilgrimage to the altar of the late Cubby Broccoli (aww, man. I giggled- giggled at at least two of the stunts, I love the new Bond direction so much) and we finally watched the conclusion of The Wire. As a consequence I'm a touch knackered and a little brain dead. So instead of a long, considered post on arts, culture, politics, economics, and life (hmm...) I would like to share this gem from the BBC:

Russian church 'taken by thieves'

A 200-year-old church building has disappeared from a village in central Russia, officials from the Russian Orthodox Church say (the rest...)

The spotty seventeen year old pretentious intellectual within me wants to yell "Oooh! Oooh! A church stolen, not stealing: the irony!" but he is afraid the 35 year old me will clock him one with a frying pan.

"Hope" even touches spammers

I just received my first spam email offering pictures of a n*de Michelle Obama. Now, despite the existence of any such photos being as likely as there being pictures of John McCain naked draped in sausage links and raw steak (you are welcome) one has to admire the chutzpah of the spamographers. When all else is lost, they keep repeating "yes we can!" and send out teases and requests for off-shore shelters for smuggled diamonds.

Bless their little cotton socks. Keep striving, spammers.

They are preparing McCain's meatkini, just in case I'm wrong.

Hands Across the Ocean

Blind Belgian breaks speed record

I believe he has been made an honorary citizen of Massachusetts.

A common sight after an attempted left hand turn in the Bay State

Crikey

From the BBC:

Pirates off the coast of Somalia have seized a Ukrainian ship carrying 30 T-72 tanks, an official has said.

My analysis? We are all safe until they reach port. Secondly, do you think they might start flogging these out of suitcases in Battery Park? If so I'm on my way to New York with used bills...

Fell off the back of a freighter, mate

The Arms Trade Reaches Out to Pinnepeds

Who is selling the tiny cannons to elephant seals? An anxious world demands answers.

Wetter, Crapper, Less Complete

Memo to:

Lord Sebastian Coe, Chairman
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic & Paralympic Games (LOCOPG 2012)
1 Churchill Place
Canary Wharf
London, E14 5LN
United Kingdom

9th August, 2008

Dear Lord Coe;

I watched the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympiad last night with great interest. Upon its conclusion, I turned my thoughts to the opening ceremonies for London 2012 and it is to that element of your event I turn my attention now.

Unless you can persuade the Queen or one of her heirs to run around the roofline of the stadium suspended from a wire-fighting rig and then light the cauldron with a Dunhill desk lighter and one her own majestic rose-scented farts, you are screwed. I also think its a safe bet that the British version of the grand pageant of history as symbolized by dance, flash cards, fireworks, and percussion instruments will be a bit rubbish. The Chinese also had genuine Scottish bagpipers, which I imagine annoyed you to no end, as it makes your plans to include Chinese opera seem very derivative.

And that's before we consider the chance of rain.

Sincerely,
Wisdom Weasel
Floreat Expatria
17 Dungrumblin Towers
Rock-around-the-clock-land, Maine.

How Britain will light the Olympic cauldron, 2012

Newsround

OK gangsters, here's your update:

(From RPS): German Journo Calls in Bomb Hoax to Delay Plane
This is why I hate Euro 08: Axis powers, the Central Powers, occupied runt countries, and lily-livered neutrals playing poncy soccerball- all covered by arseheads.

The 41st world custard pie throwing championships has been held in Kent.
You think this is quaint and eccentric: it isn't, it is "whacky" and annoying, like loud waistcoats with evening dress and comedy glasses frames. To whit:

"The national skipping championship and the Kent Welly Throwing Championship also ran alongside the pie event on Sunday".

Bush compliments Sarkozy on wife
Also: he gooses Gordon Brown, asks Angela Merkel if she is a 'goer', and slaps Silvio Burlesconi on his bald patch a la Benny Hill and his little old pal.

Mrs. Sarkosy (really). Bush wonders if he can get Laura to pose with an accordion and her flannel nightie in response.

Only a few leaves ever stand between Britain and chaos

From the fantastic When The Wind Blows
Courtesy of the BBC:

Nuclear threat sparked tea worry
The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, documents reveal....Government officials planning food supplies said the tea situation would be "very serious" after a nuclear war.

"It would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week could be ensured," they stated...

Radiation burns, mass death, the collapse of central government, and a return to the lifestyle of the middle ages we could just about take. But to do it without a cuppa- oh, the humanity!

Wherein Basic Predjudices Long Unexamined Doth Boil Up

I personally don't belong to any faith and find the whole business of mumbo-jumbo and mystery in general to be a tremendous cop-out from embracing the truly exciting concept of the universe being powered by chaos, random events and competition between natural systems. That said, I was raised in the warm bath of generalized British soft protestantism and so when the Pope recently came to the United States for a visit I had the following reactions:

1) Ugh, the Pope.

2) Look at him, all conservative and hypocritical.

3) Wait a minute, who are all those cheering people?

4) Bloody hell, there is a significant percentage of the world's population who love the Pope and think he's a force for good.

5) I think I need to work on my empathy.

The Pope, as I've always seen him and his predecessors. Not a view shared by all, nor even the right one?

By Xenu!

I don't intend to be a water carrier for Scientology, Tom Cruise, or Katie Holmes but I must admit to rolling my eyes recently at one of the "Shock! Horror! Tom and Katie's baby is a freak!" stories the supermarket tabloids love to emblazon on their covers.

Apparently Cruise and Holmes are so kooky and intent on indoctrinating their toddler into the ways of Scientology that little Suri is not allowed to "watch TV or eat Happy Meals".

If that is the standard for way-outside-the-norm- cult-brainwashing-parenting- philosophies, then the majority of parents of my generation I know must be fully paid up Operating Thetans.

In reality the closest anyone I know has come to Scientology is the occasional eating of hubbard squash. Unless their reluctance to force nutritionally empty McDonalds food and Days of Our Lives onto their children reflects a secret adherence to dianetics of course.

The Horrors of War

As threatened, the Iraqi refugee clown story:

Exiled Iraqi clowns cheer refugees

Rahman, Ali and Safi are members of Happy Family Clowns group, established in 2004 to put smiles on the faces of Iraqi children. A few months ago the group started receiving death threats warning them against continuing their show, entitled A Child is as Scared as a Country.

But the clowns kept going, until two members of the troupe were murdered.

This was enough to drive the surviving three to leave Iraq.

"We don't know why they targeted us. We were entertaining children," says Rahman....

No you weren't. And while I don't advocate clownicide, I will just say that you can't squeeze in to a tiny car without the occasional accident.

A Boot to the Balkans

Ladies and gents, be upstanding for the newest (and crappiest) of all the superheroes, Captain Kosovo


Pity the nation, for 'tis the place that launched the career of pained troubadour James Blunt.

Wow

While I have a deep respect for their intellectual approach to metal I can't stand System of a Down's music, so I have never paid them much attention. This morning however I happened to turn to VH1 while eating breakfast and caught the video for "Empty Walls", the new solo effort by SoD's front man Serj Tankian:



Brilliant in so many ways.

What Could I Possibly Ad?

"Its mah leg! Gorn, git! Quit leanin' on me, stumpy!"
This story (reproduced here in its fantastic entirety) was made possible by the North American Goober Stereotype Perpetuation Society of North Carolina:

North Carolina pair feud over leg
A US man who stored his amputated leg in a barbecue smoker that was later auctioned off is locked in a custody dispute with the man who bought it. He wants his leg back but Mr Whisnant says he has a receipt for the smoker's contents and wants to share ownership.

Mr Wood's leg was amputated above the knee after a plane crash in 2004. He asked to keep the leg so he could be buried as a whole man when he died, and stored it at the facility in Maiden after losing his home. But when Mr Wood failed to pay the necessary rental fees, the storage company auctioned the smoker and all its contents.

After buying the smoker last Tuesday, Mr Whisnant looked inside and found a man's leg wrapped in a wire screen. He initially gave the leg to the police, who concluded it had not been removed as a result of a crime and sent it to a funeral home until Mr Wood could pick it up.

But after making money by charging adults $3 (£1.47) and children $1 (49p) to look inside the empty smoker (emphasis mine, WW), Mr Whisnant asked for it back. His request was refused by the funeral home, so he decided to try to persuade Mr Wood to share custody and profits.

"I told him I'd share custody of it..." Mr Whisnant said. "It's a strange incident and Halloween's just around the corner. The price will go up if I get the leg."

Mr Wood, who now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, has insisted he is not interested in using the leg to make money and plans to travel to Maiden as soon as possible to reclaim it.

"I just think it's despicable," he said. "I don't mind having the 15 minutes of fame, but I'm not looking to really profit off this thing. He's making a freak show out of it."

Having had his offer rejected, Mr Whisnant has threatened to begin legal action if the leg is not returned to him by next week. He says he has a receipt showing he bought both the smoker and its contents at the auction.

"Everybody knows it's mine, period," he said. "And if anyone tries to take it, I want everything they got."

Hafeeitoffski

Russia faces a demographic "time bomb": declining birth rates, poor health among its baby boom generation, and emmigration mean that the Bear could lose up to a third of its population by 2050. Therefore in an effort to boost the number of little Ivans running around dosing people with polonium, one Russian governor is offering prizes to anyone who manages to birth a baby Russki on Russia's national day, June 12.

First prize is an SUV. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

So come on lads, get cracking:



And here's one for the ladies:

Behold, a Pale Horse

I have stumbled across some information that sheds light on the the ongoing tide of apparent larceny in Iraq (where oil, money, guns and munitions have been disappearing at an alarming rate). This information is red hot and could blow the roof off our systems of government, banking, law, and celebrity. I dare not write of it out loud, lest I draw the ire of the Reptilians who really run the planet. I can however offer you pictoral clues that tell the tale. The rest is up to you, but if you figure it out be careful: they shall not rest until the holders of this knowledge are swept from the chess board of life. Consider yourself forewarned, but if you can grasp the meaning of this sequence you will know where the missing weapons are and why we really went to war in Iraq:













On top of all of this, I also learned that Kenny Loggins is a threat to pygmy elephants.

“The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. Or paws, whatever."

From Rhode Island's Providence Journal comes the tale of a highly suspicous cat:

"This cat has a sense for patients’ final hours
PROVIDENCE — Death walks silently among us, invisible except to the cat’s eyes.

The cat would be Oscar. He seems to know when people are about to die.

Doctors cannot say for sure how Oscar does it, but they insist the 2-year-old house cat, one of six cats at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, has foretold the deaths of more than 25 residents....(the rest)"

This was the last thing poor grandma saw:

Its a Bit Damp, Old Boy

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester

In a shower of rain,

He stepped in a puddle,

Right up to his middle,

And never went there again.

We'd love to have you, but we simply can't accept any refugees from the slow submerging of the British Isles, even if you are a blood relative. Sozzers!