Penguin is Norwegian army Colonel

Honestly

Offered without comment.

Enjoy a virtual vacation with semi-literate cranks

I have just discovered that TripAdvisor has a blog where they post "the stuff we can’t publish. Whether it’s funny, rude, bizarre, potentially libelous, incomprehensible, or all of the above, we love it, and we think you will too."

So far, this one is my favorite:

It looks like such a nice place on the pictures and brochures.

My new wife and I were so looking forward to a weekends stay, we had saved specially for it.

However, when we arrived we were greeted by the one of the worst receptionists I have ever had the misfortune to come across, it wasn't that she was rude and impolite, that i could deal with, but she kept making reference to the fact that we were not the type of person welcome at the establishment.

It wasn't until later in the evening that I found out why we were not the right type of clientele. At around eight in the evening I heard the roar of what sounded like a thousand blood hungry lions outside the hotel. It was to my wifes distaste to find out that they were indeed hells angels, apparently this is regular stop for them on Friday evenings. Now being a jovial character i thought maybe my wife and I could plead with brutes to move on to there next destination. I thought it was going well until one of them a chap named "B----" with a "I hate my mum" tatoo on his forhead took a particular interest in my wife "---------". She spent the whole evening with this rogue whilst his fellow angels......well all I want to say is humiliated me in ways that I do not feel comfortable describing.

Well to cut a long story short, they are now engaged after B----- paid me visit to enourage me to give her a divorce, which I had no choice he threatened to shoot me up my bottom and feed the bits to his doberman.

I will not be visiting again!

My Third Annual Christmastime Fun

This year watching the ramp-up to the UK Christmas single from afar has been quite interesting, as quite a number of folks seem to be hard at work attempting to rescue the spot from "The Winner of X-Factor." This seems to have caused a few ringers to appear.

I was thinking that the trend seems to be songs by people who are now dead, but looking closer we see that it is in fact duets by people of whom one are now dead.

Eva Cassidy & Katie Melua - "What A Wonderful World"

Pogues Ft Kirsty MacColl - "Fairytale of New York"

John & Yoko / Plastic Ono Band - "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"

and perhaps by the time I post this:

Mark Ronson Ft Amy Winehouse - "Valerie"

I'm sorry. That was mean.

So here we go.

40) John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band - "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" About twenty years ago, I would have thought I would be sick of this song by now. Of course, I would have also thought that it would completed the trajectory that it was on at the time and become totally irrelevant. Dammit.

39) Foals - "Balloons" As with previous years, I haven't heard many of these songs, so some of them I just have to take a shot at. At New Year's Eve parties, balloons are frequently dropped on party goers at midnight.

38) Rihanna Ft Jay-Z - "Umbrella" If you don't want balloons landing on your head, you can open an umbrella.

36) Chris Rea - "Driving Home For Christmas" For years, I thought that Chris Rea and Tommy Roe were the same person. I just now find that they are not. On the plus side, both of them are still alive! On the minus side, I now have "Sweet Pea" stuck in my head. Dammit.

27) Band Aid - "Do They Know It's Christmas" I'd take odds that this is the original one, and not one of the follow ups. For the obsessive: The Wikipedia entry on Band Aid has a handy chart of exactly who sings which line in all three versions.

23) Shakin' Stevens - "Merry Christmas Everyone" Here's some goofy trivia. "Do They Know It's Christmas" was the Christmas Number One in 1984 and this song was the Christmas Number One in 1985. And here they are on the same chart two decades later. Perhaps next year "There's No-one Quite Like Grandma" by St Winifred's School Choir will be back on the charts. I would love to see that. Particularly as I won't be able to hear it.

22) Slade - "Merry Xmas Everybody" This was on the charts last year, and I didn't realize that it was a reissue. But Slade is still together, so that's nice to see. Merry Xmas, Slade!

21) Andy Williams - "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" He's still alive too! That's amazing! Good for him!

20) Shaun The Sheep - "Life's A Treat" Please, someone tell me this is a cartoon character. [Update: Yes. It is a cartoon character. [Update: No. It is not a cartoon character, it is a claymation character.]]

16) Wizzard - "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" Wizzard broke up in the seventies. This is the fourth Christmas that this track has had a shot for the number one. Not yet.

14) Wham! - "Last Christmas" This is the fourth Christmas release without a number one for this track as well. That's just silly.

11) Mark Ronson Ft Amy Winehouse - "Valerie" I don't think that this is a Christmas song per se, I'm just hoping that this is a cover of the Monkees song.

8) Pogues Ft Kirsty Maccoll - "Fairytale Of New York" Cards on the table. I want this to get it this time. I would have before, but know that I know that this getting number one this year will bring more media attention to the fact that it took the BBC twenty years to realize that this song contained the word "faggot" will just make it all the more sweet.

4) Mariah Carey - "All I Want For Christmas Is You" I've erased about nine different comments about this. Snarking on this is like kicking a puppy.

1) Eva Cassidy & Katie Melua - "What A Wonderful World" Sometimes I have this weird dread that some day they're going to discover that the form of cancer that Cassidy died from can be caused by recording too many demo tapes. I think they may have finally run out of demo tapes as this is one of those things where they dub a new singer onto an old tape, thus creating a duet. Perhaps some day someone will take one of those tracks and add another person in, creating a trio. In centuries to come there will be videos of huge choirs of celebrities across time singing standards of the 1940's to 1960's. What a wonderful world that will be.

I take a moment to step back

I've had a little blogging vacation (a vacation from blogging, not a vacation that I blog from) due to work, snow, illness and something in the basement that we have decided to rename "Frankenboiler."

As I start to nudge myself back on-line, I'm going to be taking a chance to think about just what it is that I am doing here compared to what it is that I set out to do and what I would like to do.

To prepare for the process, I notice that there is a meme going about where the blogger is required to list and discribe the first post of every month of 2007. Let's have a look.

• January - I discuss my then ongoing Jean Shepherd phase. The phase died out after I hit a few too many instances of race related humor that, while not hateful, could be described as "of its era."
  
• February - I briefly note my unwilling participation in the "2007 Boston Mooninite Scare."
  
• March - I discover the existence of a "Stephen Fry Talking Alarm Clock."
  
• April - A perusal of the first episode of Spender invites me to ponder on how my brain compensates for driving on the opposite side of the road when I am abroad. I don't spell it out, but the thing that inspired it was the subject of the screen grab - the hand-held camera is being operated from the front passenger seat, but my brain translates it to being the driver's seat. This freaked me out as I momentarily believed that someone was actually operating a video camera while driving.
  
• May - Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls!
  
• June - I apologize for not blogging.
  
• July - I share a video of Brother Ali in performance. The second half of the selection is his "Forest Whitaker" rap, which I am quite fond of.
  
• August - I enjoy a collection of maps from the end papers of old books.
• September - I share a youtube video of the film His Girl Friday with all of the words removed. Youtube seems to have deleted the clip, thus completing the process.
  
• October - In the course of looking at New Yorker ads, I muse on the Triumph TR7. A commenter joined in with memories of the family TR7: "The electrics went and it didn't start on damp days (not a good thing for a British car). My father sold it to a teenager who took it on a test drive on a sunny day."
• November - I discover that my blog is written for the reading level of a college undergrad. (Semi-related snatch of overheard conversation between two English Lit professors yesterday: "You know, I am always surprised by how much the undergraduates enjoy Rabelais.")
  
• December - Inspired by my accidental purchase of Peril Island, by Percy James Brebner, I vow to write a post on every chapter, thus wringing value from mishap.
  

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 60

The ads are frequently not scanned with the same care as the rest of the content. I might be the only person on the planet who cares about such things - and to be fair, if they upped the quality of the ads to the level that I would enjoy, there would be a need for perhaps another DVD-Rom or two. So it's completely understandable to treat the ads with less care so the cost of the set can be fifty bucks cheaper.

But it's times like this that make me wish that I could get a better look at the ad, just to have a better sense of the pattern. In the text, we are asked to pay attention to "the scoop neck and the tie." I've spent more time than I really want to looking for any evidence of a tie, either a necktie or anything that might be used to cinch this garment together. I'm stumped.

It would be marvelous to see this in color, particularly in the green and white, but the ad is in black and white, so we can't fault the New Yorker people for that.

I also wish I had a better idea of what the hell was on her head.

Google street view expands!

Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh; -- a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush -- this the light dust-cloth -- which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still.

View Larger Map

Addendum to the thing I learned yesterday

I think that if Robert Conquest and Robert Service were the same person, the world might be a slightly better place. Somehow.

Hello, my computer generated baby

One Froggy Evening, remade with CGI. Not as bad as you might think.

I'm just surprised that anyone admits to writing it

At least four people claim to have written "Footprints."

Be sure to look at the comments.

The thing I learned today.

Robert Conquest

Robert Service

Not the same person.

The statue of Ramona in Portland Oregon scares the bajeesus out of me

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 59

"Seeing everything wonderful and being seen looking wonderful wherever you go."

Who cares about the pull-on polyester pants and snappy print shirt? It's that sentence that just makes the ad over-the-top amazing.

Bonus: She seems to be standing in front of some sort of a cartoon duck.

I love the Kansas City Public Library's new parking garage

Classics
Originally uploaded by davidking

Viking Kittens?

Yes. Viking Kittens.

Plushie!

I can only think of one use for an inflatable pig.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 57

And now the new style for 1976, it's 1961!

Thank you driver, for getting me here

An advertising suppliment in a recent music magazine consisted of postcards of concert photographs of some rising musical acts. Unfortunately the sponsor, Greyhound Buslines, neglected to inform the acts in question or the venues that they were performing at of their participation in the campaign.

Dan Deacon, one of the "featured" performers, was a little upset.

in the december issue of XLR8R magazine there is an ad for greyhound bus service that uses a photo of me at a show did at silent barn, a diy venue in brooklyn. no one asked me if this was ok. no one asked silent barn if it was ok to associate them with the company.

i first heard about it from jason of wzt hearts, who are also used in the ad, also without permission or even the courtesy of letting us know.

But what does he think of Greyhound as a company?

greyhound bus company is one of the worst run, bullshit companies i have ever had the misfortune to use. they are a total monopoly and take advantage of that with poor service and price hikes and route cancellation. they have bought all the other smaller companies and run them out of their office in dallas. they treat both their employees and customers like shit. they are a cancer.

since i do not drive i used to use them to get to shows (when nothing else was available). on many occasions i had to cancel shows because the bus would be late, my luggage would get lost/stolen, the over sell their buses, and fuck i fucking hate them.

it really upsets me that i am being used to promote them. if i had my way i would see all their buses transport guns to all the people they have fucked over.

like many evil companies they are trying to use subversive advertising and i will not allow myself to be a cog in their wheel of lies and deceit. these rats stink like rotten cum. fuck them with 1000 fires.

via Idolator

Pop culture mysteries solved!

It is impossible to count the number of times I have woken up in the middle of the night in a screaming panic because I had no idea what happened to Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose from The Hours.

Now I can rest easy.

Residents of Hazelton, PA do love their football.

Well, some of them anyway.

via Google Maps

I am trumped again

My piffling attempts to observe the UK Christmas single pales in comparison to Steve in South Korea, who has devoted an excellent blog to nothing but that.

It's a Muppet Christmas Miracle!

Hopefully this will be my last post on the subject, but Lawrence Miles is now back to posting on The Beasthouse and the takedown has been taken down.

Hopefully this starts to bode well for the coming year.

It's said that in the nineteenth century, actors who portrayed ghosts on stage would often use phosphorous as make-up, since it gives the skin that all-important "glow-in-the-dark" effect (q.v. the big green dog in The Hound of the Baskervilles). Of course, it also has a tendency to kill you. Any number of actors might have died from the long-term effects of phosphorous poisoning, which raises the technical question: what happens if you're haunted by the ghost of someone who died while made up as a ghost? We might imagine that the ghost-ghost would glow twice as brightly as a normal ghost - fitting, for a dead prima donna - but we might also imagine that such entities would be pariahs amongst the rest of their kind, and that walking into a meeting of ghosts while covered in glowing green phosphorous would be much like walking through Brixton while made up as a Black and White Minstrel.

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 56

I stalled out on these two. We've seen both of these vendors before, so I wanted to say a little more about them, but there really isn't much.

Brazil has always seemed like the kind of place where someday someone will tell me, "Guess what! We're sending you to Brazil!" And then I say "Oh good! I knew this would happen sooner or later."

Hasn't happened yet. Maybe next year.

Not sure how to parse bow and arrow guy as an advertising element. "Come to Brazil! Get shot at by the disgruntled natives! Like Indiana Jones!"





Put your architects on danger money.

Himmel!

Book One, Chapter One - In the Casino at Boulogne

(Yes, you read that right - it's divided up into three books!)

Our nameless narrator is having dinner in Boulogne with his friend Bobbie Harrington, Harrington's aunt and uncle, the Boussets, and the Boussets' mysterious friend Lefevre.

The nameless narrator and Bobbie (it takes half the chapter before we can confirm that they are both male) have one more night in Boulogne before they head off in their yacht, so the five decide to have a night at the casino.

If you would like to go to Boulogne to visit a casino, you should read up on Northern France in a spiffy guidebook.



At the casino, Nameless Narrator and Mrs. Bousset are content to people watch while Bobbie and Lefevre gamble. It turns out that Lefevre is an excellent gambler, which is nice because he was a rather dull dinner guest. A pair of Germans are watching Fefevre intently. Suddenly a crazed "artist, student or anarchist, or perhaps a compound of the three" wanders in and draws a gun. In the ensuing chaos, Lefevre disappears. The crazed "artist, student or anarchist, or perhaps a compound of the three" is backed against a corner as the narrator, Bobbie and the two Germans try to advance on him. Suddenly and inexplicably, the crazed "artist, student or anarchist, or perhaps a compound of the three" is dead.

And we're off - a quick little chapter, but a nice hook at the end. While the book is not dated, my research indicates that it was published in 1924 - I have a feeling that there's going to be some politics that I have to read up on. I am also a little curious about nameless narrator and his pal Bobbie - they seem to be having quite a life gallivanting about on their yacht.

Next: "Lassie Ahoy!"

I'm in the mood for some waffles! You can make waffles with a waffle maker!

Dagwood is not a Glam Rocker

Dagwood is a Breakdancer.

Pardon me while I test something

Ghanian is a language of economy.

An item on the program for a chamber music concert that I recently attended was a piece based on folk tales of Ghana. From the program notes to the piece, I learn that

Kola Per Bir, jo kol' no op

translates to

The cat fell asleep under a tree; his enemy the mouse saw his opportunity and bit the cat's testicle, whereupon the cat promptly died.

It was three weeks before Christmas Eve in the drunk tank

The only apparently Christmassy songs on the UK singles chart this week are:

• 23 Mariah Carey - "All I Want for Christmas is You"
• 33 The Pogues - "Fairytale of New York"

also unrelated to Christmas:

• 25 Phil Collins - "In the Air Tonight"

I don't think I want to know why this is happening.

if only...

Via Strange Maps, a promo for a book on world transit maps showing a transit map of the world - every city with a metro (or a planned metro) is included a world Beck Map. I would be delighted to be on the same line as Mexico City, Bilbao, Istanbul and Beijing!

The only quibble so far is the Detroit to Seattle leg. Spot the error!

Take me out to the %#^&@% ballgame

From Yanksfan vs. Soxfan, we see a piece of baseball history that is currently being considered for auction.

This is a memorandum from league management to players regarding reports of players resorting to obscenities during game play, including enough examples that they were afraid to send the document via US Mail.

A new adventure

Two problems have come up to cause me to start a new project, one that I hope I can finish faster than the others that I have been dealing with.

1. Frequent readers will have noticed that I occasionally provide links to Amazon.com. I have done this not out of a sense of necessity but of "oh what the hell." Because of this, many of the things that I could have linked to have not been -- going to Amazon to work up the code is just a bit too much of a bother for me to have gotten into the habit. (By the way, Amazon has really been pushing me to put up links so that I can entice you to purchase a Kindle. Not gonna happen.) This hasn't been too much of an issue for me as I set the thing up because I was inclined to link to listings on Amazon anyway, so why not make a few bucks (or pounds) off it. A new service that Amazon has is a link that offers recommendations based on what Amazon feels the readers of my site will want to read. At first I thought that this meant that they analyzed the site text for content and offered suggestions that way, but it turns out that what they do is analyze based on what people who go to Amazon from my site actually buy. Some friends in Academia have used my code on their webpage related to a textbook they wrote. Because of this, the algorithms in the bowels of Amazon's processors believe that you, gentle reader, are interested in little other than books about thermodynamics. Which means that if I put up these links, I will all of a sudden have a bunch of ads for books on thermodynamics. Which is funny, but not very helpful.
   
2. One of the things that I am doing is sitting down to read the source material for all of the Hitchcock films - When I said I was starting, I mentioned that I did not have the source of his first film (The Pleasure Garden by Oliver Sandys), after a bit of time it turned up on e-Bay. I bookmarked the link to the item, and waited a few days to bid. In that time, the person putting the book up withdrew the item from bidding, but my bookmark resolved into a different auction from the same fellow. Not realising that I was bidding on the wrong book, I put my high bid in, and went on about my day. Result: I spend $62 on something called "Peril Island" by someone named Percy James Brebner.

I have a solution, but first perhaps you would be interested in purchasing a copy of the new Robert Plant/Alison Krauss CD as a holiday gift for a loved one.



So here's my solution.

I will do a close reading of Peril Freaking Island and include Amazon links in the posts. My goal is to earn back the $62 and break even. This should also show that Amazon that I'm about more than just thermodynamics.