….trust nobody. We’re all potential terrorists.

Some days I really miss The News Blog. This is one of those inane blog problem column letters that Steve Gilliard and the News Blog commenters would have really gotten their teeth into (if you’ll excuse the lame pun):

From Chowhound’s Table Manners blog:

Is Fido Invited?
When it’s not OK to bring your dog to a party

By Helena Echlin

Dear Helena,

Why are some people so weird about dogs? Ours gets lonely at home, so sometimes we take him out with us. He is a pit bull but has a sweet personality. Recently we took him to a drinks party. He got a little hyper with all the attention he received and was jumping up and begging for cheese straws. Anyway, the hostess got in a snit and told her husband to ask us to take the dog home. I was a little annoyed. He wasn’t making a mess. He was being cute. In fact, his antics were making people let down their guard at kind of a stuffy party. Were we wrong to assume he’d be welcome? —It’s Not a Party Without Dog Drool

No, no way. That has to be a fictitious email. They take their pit bull to parties and they still get invited places? Helena’s reply boggles the mind too:

An uninvited dog could do worse than monopolize the conversation. It might frighten the children, send someone into a sneezing fit, chew on the draperies, or defile the shrubbery. Says Magee: “Sometimes if we go somewhere with a back garden and the other person has a male dog, the dogs tend to get into pissing contests, and Baker may piss on a plant that might be one [the hosts] like.”

Or something even worse could happen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Especially for Martin, here’s Amsterdam comedian Hans Teeuwen with the Nostradamus Song:

He looks alright!

..and pretty damned hilarious it’ll be too. Japanese gameshow football, played in binoculars and candystripes and totally SFW:

Via Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub comes the sad example of Jennifer Marohasy, who doesn’t believe in global warming but still feels qualified to talk about science:

I have become curious about something. The core of the Earth is alleged to be molten. It’s also a fact that the deeper you dig into the Earth, the warmer it gets. Where is that heat coming from… surely not from the Sun. What’s the possibility that the Earth generates some of it’s own heat from geothermal processes?

Oy gevalt.

The disasters that have been Iraq and Afghanistan had sort of silenced all the humanitarian interventionists, decent leftists, war liberals and all the other surviving members of the “let you and him fight international brigage these past two years or so, but boy did the War for South Ossetia bring them back. Suddenly they have a new purpose in life, a new spring in their step: the Russians are back and everything’s all right with the world. No longer do they have to trouble themselves with tawdry, unwinnable wars in dusty countries nobody really cares about but for the oil; the Russian Bear is back and it’s happy party time for the Cold Warriors.

And nowhere more so than at the Henry Jackson Society, where Mark Attila “it’s the Serbs! The Serbs!” Hoare has been moved to ever highers flights of fancy in his descriptions of What’s To Be Done. As Aaronovitch Watch commented: “We have occasionally described the Henry Jackson Society in the past as the “I’ve got a cardboard box on my head and I’m a tank commander” element of British Decency - the breakfast cereal must be ankle deep on the floor at Peterhouse College today”

But he got competition, from none other than Denis “failed New Labour minister McShamne”, exhorting us at Comment is Free to stand Shoulder to shoulder against Russia:

As Sir Roderick Braithwaite, the astute former ambassador in Moscow and a man sympathetic to Russians pointed out some time ago, Russia has done far more invading than it has been invaded. Napoleon and Hitler failed to conquer Moscow but Russian armies – Tsarist and Soviet – have occupied every European capital east of the Rhine.

[…]

President Sarkozy’s remarks that Russia had some rights in Georgia sent a chill down the spine of Baltic states which have Russian speaking citizens, installed after Stalin’s invasion of these small countries in 1940. Finland, which fought a war with Russia in 1940, shivers at what the new Putin doctrine might mean.

[…]

Putin may have thought that sweeping the Georgian pawn off the board was the end of the game. Alas, it is is only the beginning, and Britain cannot betray Poland and its fellow EU and Nato allies as Chamberlain did in the 1930s.

McShane does seem to have a talent for distilling all the cliches uttered about Russia’s “aggression” in Georgia to the purest grade of wingnuttery, doesn’t he, with his talk about not betraying Poland “as Chamberlain did in the 1930s.” It’s great stuff, but to me Marko still has the edge, as he wouldn’t make such schoolboy errors in his rants.

All this bonkin’, s’exhaustin’….

From The Pendulum, Elon University’s Student Newspaper :

Global warming could be causing a kitten boom, experts say
by Alyse Knorr
July 25, 2008

WASHINGTON - Global warming and kittens. While it may seem hard to see the connection between the two - a climate phenomenon that melts glaciers and acidifies oceans, and cuddly, 4-ounce balls of fur - experts say there could be one.

Each spring, the onset of warm weather and longer days drives female cats into heat, resulting in a few months of booming kitten populations known as “kitten season.”

[…]
Read the rest of this entry »

As has become depressingly usual in UK media, here’s yet another lazy British media hack blatantly ripping off a US blog thinking no-one will notice. Do they not think we can use the internet?

From the Guardian’s Money Blog, 18 August:

The incredible grocery shrink ray - why what you buy is getting smaller

US blog The Consumerist has been covering this for weeks, a quick google for ‘grocery shrink ray‘ would have immediately revealed. The pages and pages of posts, all tagged ‘grocery shrink ray’ for the ease and convenience of researchers and readers.

Is it just too much effort for Guardian bloggers even to type a phrase or a word or two into a search engine and check it out before claiming it as their own?

I don’t know what it is; does being a proper paid writer - with qualifications and everything - on a proper newspaper (The Guardian! Woohoo!) magically elevate Sandra Haurant above such plebeian tools as Google?

Granted there is an acknowledgement of sorts but it’s to the wrong person.

Jeff Allder, policy expert at the National Consumer Council, says:

“In America it is known as the grocery shrink ray and this is one trend from the US that we definitely don’t want too much of over here.”

For someone with so much paid writing on consumer issues under her belt you’d think Haurant would know all about this trend in product sizing anyway, and know the blog too, with no need to google. After all The Consumerist is one of the big consumer issues blogs out there and any competent consumer journalist worth their salt would know that. To my mind this makes her lack of attribution or a link quite difficult to understand.

But then what do I know? I’m not a proper paid writer - editor even - on a proper newspaper and above such petty concerns as boring old plagiarism. I’m just another blogging oik, and things like that bother me.

If only… the ‘eighties might’ve been a bit more fun.

Howard did always have something of the nightclub about him… oh. It’s not that Howard. As you were, then.

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I may just order one of these books for some prospective new parents I know. It’s the perfect companion to My First Cavity Search.

“What a wonderful gift for new parents! How to Traumatize Your Children includes useful chapters on narcissistic parenting, parent as best friend, killing self-esteem, the convenience of neglect - and even how to enjoy your legacy of trauma. Not only does this book provide lots of laughs, but it actually reinforces how you really should raise your kids. 190 pages, hardcover”

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If this guy is genuine, this is very very sweet and funny. If not, well then it’s more than a little bit odd:

“Is this you? Please, if you recognise this person, read on“

You’ve got to be resourceful in love these days though, so full marks for trying and extra brownie points for being cute about it.

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From the Flickr photostream of Reciprocity, this is one of a gorgeous set called Twisting Light

Animal Dance - Twisting Light #5 The next one in the series of refraction patterns formed by passing light through various shapes of moulded and formed plastic. Photographed direct on to 35mm film.

I thought that this one looked like a chorus line of long necked llamas with large floppy ears gyrating in front of the spot lights. You may think differently. :-)

To me it looks like a headless row of dancers from an Ancient Greek vase or maybe a bit of William Morris border. Or the crysanthemums on a bracelet I bought in a second-hand shop (or ‘vintage’ store, I suppose I should learn to call them if I want to be fashionable). I prefer ‘otherly-owned’.

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If you are minded to be fashionable and want to mine the past for clothes, old magazines are invaluable for getting your eye in. Vogue is putting together a searchable online archive of all its covers from 1916 to the present day. Here’s March 1960: the makeup’s nice, the colours are lovely but I do hope the shape of that coalscuttle hat never, ever comes back in again.

“The cover is described as a “spokesman for black and white, a leading fashion pair”, while the London Look is said to be “understated, soft fabrics, with sashes as a feature and lots of patent leather”.”

Things don’t change that much do they - except the cover price. Good lord, 2/6- for a magazine - that’s only 12 and a half pence! (Around 20 eurocents, or 500 bucks.)

Oops. That I automatically knew that (and recognised a coalscuttle, what’s more) says more about my own personal vintage than I really care to reveal.

Oops.

Ananova:

Builders bungle train tunnel

Bungling engineers have been left red-faced after building a railway tunnel that’s too small for trains to actually fit through.

The costly mistake was only discovered when inspectors measured the finished tunnel in the Polish capital, Warsaw, and realised the roof was so low that no trains would get under it.

Word to the engineers: if it don’t fit, don’t force it. Let it happen naturally. It would surely happen if it was meant to be….