Great Moments in Wikipedia Vandalism

Chunky Mario Delight!

Home decorating tips

The English Buildings blog alerts us to Derek Jarman's cottage in Dungeness.

I am particularly struck by the photo of John Donne's "The Sunne Rising" added to one side of the house in raised wooden letters.

I want to do this to my house!

(I am also reminded that every time I read the poem, I am filled with a desire to call somebody a "Sawcy pedantique wretch.")

I have absolutely no idea why I was looking at this,

But now you can too:

The Norwegian Submerged Floating Tunnel Company.

The submerged floating tunnel is an innovative concept for crossing waterways, utilizing the law of buoyancy to support the structure at a moderate and convenient depth. The tube like structure is flexible with respect to cross section, length and water depth. It can be held in place by columns, tethers or pontoons.

What could possibly go wrong?

So what becomes of you, my love?

A while ago, I commented on the worldwide proliferation of remakes of The Office (Next in line: Russia!)

Need Coffee provides an update with video. And Wikipedia has a handy chart.

Noted: Martin Freeman's haircut translates into all cultures!

Yeah, what he said

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

--Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale

I want to read the transcripts.

From the Wikipedia page for Jaffa Cakes:

Under UK law, no VAT is charged on biscuits and cakes — they are "zero rated". Chocolate covered biscuits, however, are subject to VAT at 17.5%. McVities classed its Jaffa Cakes as cakes, but in 1991, this was challenged by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise and the case ended up before the courts. This may have been because Jaffa Cakes are about the same size and shape as some types of biscuit. A question that the court asked itself was "what criteria should be used to class something as a cake?"
McVities defended its classification of Jaffa Cakes as cakes. In doing so it produced a giant Jaffa Cake to illustrate that its Jaffa Cakes were simply miniature cakes.
McVities argued that a distinction between cakes and biscuits is, inter alia, that biscuits would normally be expected to go soft when stale, whereas cakes would normally be expected to go hard. It was demonstrated to the Tribunal that Jaffa Cakes become hard when stale. Other factors taken into account by the Chairman, Mr Potter QC, included: name, ingredients, texture, size, packaging, marketing, presentation, appeal to children, and manufacturing process. Contrary to a commonly held belief, whether something is considered a 'luxury item' is not a test for VAT purposes.
Mr Potter ruled that the Jaffa Cake is a cake. McVities therefore won the case and VAT is not paid on Jaffa Cakes.

Tangents.

The most frequent subjects of posts that never make it to actually being posted here involve me back tracking my path to whatever I find myself looking at.

A couple of months ago, the Cool Blue Shed had a revamp and a separate music blog was spun off. This is excellent, as there have been a number of posts about interesting groups that I've never heard of.

One of the posts was about his local music festival. I decided to click through and see who was playing. On the list: Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams. They will be making their UK premiere at the festival.

Now, GMatSCoD has been one of those groups that I keep hearing about but never have actually heard. So I decided to do some digging and snagged a few songs from eMusic.

There are some groups that people don't "get" until you see them live, and I suspect that this is one of them.

This clip might not be the best representation, but I thought it was clever so that's what you get.




And here's a silly Amazon widget to listen to:



Also, I see the festival offers "premium 100% beef burgers and Dutch treats. Don’t expect to see greasy tinned 50/50 hamburgers at Rhythm Festival!"

Now I'm going to have to find out what a 50/50 hamburger is.

Curiosity is a harsh mistress!