Maintenant, réchapper à MacDo!
Who is the world’s second-biggest consumer of tasty MacDonald’s fast food? The French. I shitteth thee not.
In a move that makes The Narrative cower in the corner, whimpering, a mob of angry Frogs from the town of Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise has marched to demand somebody finish building our goddamned MacDonald’s toot sweet.
The courts put a halt to construction (seen above) because the site was zoned for industrial or artisanal activities, and a MacDonald’s is a commercial one. The suit was brought to court by a company that runs a dump nearby. I mean an actual dump, a “refuse site.” Mon dieu!
The townspeople are eyeing the 30 or so jobs the restaurant would bring and also, of course, those crazy tasty Big Macs and fries.
Anyhoo, their FaceBook page is oui oui au macdo st pol. MacDo. I really like that. Much better than Mickey D’s. I hated it when some marketing droid foist that off on us, and I hated it even more when I heard myself using it.
From now on, MacDo for me, in solidarity with my French brothers and sisters. Won’t you join me?
Good weekend, all!
May 30, 2014 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 34
GAH!!
Do you ever go to Pravda Online? I do from time to time. I’m never sure how seriously I’m expected to take it. The articles range from absurdly jingoistic to just absurd.
Worth a browse, if you’re bored. Especially in times when Russia’s in the headlines.
Anyhoo, at the bottom of Pravda today: pencil sketches of Hollywood stars. No explanation. Jesus. They have to be images sent in by children…don’t they?
Be sure to look at them all. I’ll have you begging for ass bruise pictures.
May 14, 2014 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 12
Happy Walpurgis Night!
It is the 30th of April, the night before the Feast of Walpurga, AKA Walpurgisnacht. Walpurga was an 8th C English missionary to Germany, and that’s enough about her, because it’s mere coincidence that she was canonized on the 1st of May.
Walpurgis Night is the Germanic version of Beltane or May Day. It’s halfway between Spring equinox and Midsummer. A remnant of pagan “welcome Spring!” celebrations. But with witches and bonfires.
I burned some shit in the garden tonight, but for the comfort and safety of my neighbors, I kept my blouse on.
April 30, 2014 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 8
A tale from the Kattholt
This saucy Icelandic lad is Birkir Fjalar Viðarsson. The cat is Örvar. Seven years ago, Birkir got a puppy, and Örvar said, “see ya!” and boogered off.
Reykjavík is a smallish place, Örvar was microchipped, so Birkir checked with the shelter regularly hoping to get him back. No joy.
But here they are, reunited, seven years later. It would have been sooner, but when Örvar turned up at the shelter, all his microchip info was outdated and they had to Google for Birkir. Cat is skinny but otherwise well.
A pretty ordinary story, I realize, but it does give a small glimpse into the feline brain. The cat reacted strongly to the first sight of Birkier, apparently — lept to his shoulder and obsessively sniffed his hair and beard. If you scroll down this Icelandic version of the story, you’ll see pictures of the cat burying his face in the man’s hair.
Be careful if you translate the page, though. You’ll get a bit more information and a bit more weirdness.
For example, Google Translate tells me Kattholt is Icelandic for shelter. But Birkir Fjalar Viðarsson means Green Helen Foster Hematology. And, you know, I’m not sure that’s entirely right.
April 24, 2014 — 10:10 pm
Comments: 18
Wait, what?
If I may continue my theme for another day, have a gander at this thing. It’s called the Mold Gold Cape (it was found in a place called Mold in Wales in 1833).
It’s an extraordinary thing. It’s sort of a shoulder cape hammered from a single piece of gold (the raw gold must have been about the size of a ping pong ball), then decorated all over with repoussé. They reckon it’s nearly 4,000 years old.
Four thousand years. That is a stunning level of craftsmanship for the time. Moreover, though there was mining in the area, there were no big cities nearby, no great dynasties that they know. Just this amazing thing buried on a hill in the middle of sweet fuck all.
It was dug up with a skeleton by workmen. This being 1833, they divvied up the gold (the cape was already broken in bits by time and earth) and scattered anything else they found. Fortunately, the British Museum got wind of it through a local and managed to buy back most of the pieces right away, though there are still a few fragments missing, and almost none of the other grave good survived.
I learned about this from a popular BBC Radio Series called a History of the World in 100 objects. It’s one hundred fifteen-minute podcasts about interesting and important objects in the British Museum, arranged in chronological order, chosen and narrated by the chief curator. I’m pretty sure if you hit the link, you guys are allowed to download and listen to this one. Great history in handy bite-sized chunks (if a little lefty in parts). Mucho recommendo.
The Mold Gold Cape is episode 19, and here’s how it starts:
For the local workmen, it must have seemed as if the old Welsh legends were true. They’d been sent to quarry stone in a field known as Bryn-yr-Ellyllon, which translates as the Fairies’ or the Goblins’ Hill. Sightings of a ghostly boy, clad in gold, a glittering apparition in the moonlight, had been reported frequently enough for travellers to avoid the hill after dark. As the workmen dug into a large mound, they uncovered a stone-lined grave. In it were hundreds of amber beads, several bronze fragments, and the remains of a skeleton. And wrapped around the skeleton was a mysterious crushed object – a large and finely decorated broken sheet of pure gold.
The fuck, BBC? We’re just going to walk on by that, really? See, this is where Brits can be entirely too blasé.
Three possibilities. One – it isn’t true; there weren’t any such sightings (but it’s hard to get a more rigorous source than the British Effing Museum). Two – hells yes, a ghost haunted this treasure for forty centuries (I’m not of a mystical bent, but what the hell – humility is the essence of science). Three – distant memories of a grand and famous burial persisted in local legend for four thousand years.
Holy cats.
April 2, 2014 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 7
Anybody missing a cleaning lady?
As we discussed below, they are ALlllways digging up stuff here. Every time they enlarge a parking lot or put an extension on an elementary school, they find some lot of poor skeletons huddling underneath.
Know what happens to them? Unless there’s treasure buried with them, not much. They’re catalogued, packed away in boxes and stored by the county council, more or less unexamined. There’s all kinds of stuff they can learn from DNA analysis and tooth enamel these days, but that shit costs money. And, as I said, there are so many, many old bones lying around.
We watched a program recently that went back and looked at some pretty ordinary Stone Age bones stored away in a warehouse somewhere. They discovered little holes drilled in many of them, post mortem. From the position, they deduced the holes were used to articulate the skeletons. Thing is, they weren’t awfully fussy that the right man’s leg bone was connected to the right man’s hip bone.
So, think on that. They were — I guess — digging up the ancestors, stringing skeletons together from random bits and — I dunno — hanging them up at parties? Does that blow your mind? That blows my mind.
Every once in a while, a local council gets a lottery grant to do some actual archeology, which recently happened in Eastbourne. They had 300 skeletons kicking around in storage, from 1,500 to 4,000 years old and they got £72,000 to do some science on them.
They dated and sexed them all (my goodness, that doesn’t sound nice) and singled out 12 for particular analysis. That lady in the header was the real surprise. She lived her whole life in Sussex and was buried in Roman times, about 245 AD, but she’s from sub-Saharan Africa. The Roman empire didn’t extend that far. What’n the heck was she doing here?
She was healthy, lived to about 30 and grew up on a plentiful diet of fish and vegetables. Wife, mistress, slave. They have no idea.
I guess I just thought we knew a whole lot more about early Britain — or, at least, had done everything we could to find out. Turns out, not.
April 1, 2014 — 10:08 pm
Comments: 5
I’m sure it’ll all work out…
My mother always warned me not to order anybody around unless I had an answer to the question, “or what?”
Oh, well. I worry about this whole Russia thing, then I remember Dear Leader is a master of four-dimensional chess and I chillax.
Good weekend, y’all!
March 28, 2014 — 10:55 pm
Comments: 20
Things that are crazy
Mad Jack, as he looks tonight relaxing on the sofa. Since you haven’t seen him in a while. I don’t know why he looks grumpy (maybe because I’m pointing a camera at him). The weather is finally improving a little here (sorry, ‘Muricans) and he’s having a spectacularly good time dashing up and down the lawn. Oh, how we worry about the road.
In other insane news, did you catch this thing in the New Republic, about how Vladimir Putin actually might be a little cray-cray? I know, I know…TNR. But this is their hired Putin-watcher, and it’s worth a read. This is Vlad at today’s press conference:
So I don’t know what happened there. It’s unclear. But did you see the bullets piercing the shields of the Berkut [special police]. That was obvious. As for who gave the order to shoot, I don’t know. Yanukovich didn’t give that order. He told me. I only know what Yanukovich told me. And I told him, don’t do it. You’ll bring chaos to your city. And he did it, and they toppled him. Look at that bacchanalia. The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn’t the first time they’ve done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these people…these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing experiments, like on rats. You’re not listening to me. I’ve already said, that yesterday, I met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you’re not listening. It’s not that Yanukovich said he’s not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they’re not as bad as in Ukraine.
She (the reporter) claims that’s pretty close to verbatim, and he rambled on like that for an hour. Also, Angela Merkel (who’s pretty sympatico with Vlad) said he was in “another world” after talking to him on the phone. Also (I can’t source this, I forgot where I read it, but ever’body’s talking about it) he claims those aren’t Russian troops in the Crimea. They’re locals, loyal to Russia, who just bought themselves Russian military uniforms, which you can totally get at Wal*Mart. Or something.
Honestly, I think the only reason our top guys never go entirely nuts is that they have a maximum of eight years to go loopy in.
March 4, 2014 — 11:54 pm
Comments: 9
Giddyap
Two contradictory observations. One, I’m not sure the situation in Ukraine is as dangerous as it looks. And two, when powerful nutjobs and geopolitical forces are on the move, scary unexpected chainreaction bad things can happen.
Oh, and three — Putin’s nipples scare me.
March 3, 2014 — 10:18 pm
Comments: 20
My ladybits need this
Ladies and gentlemen, Viktor Yanukovich’s gold-encrusted bidet. You know, the ex-president of Ukraine who just did a runner.
I was a little uncomfortable with protestors raiding his house, but it turns out his official salary was less than $22,500 a year and — holy cow, you should see this place.
They’re dredging papers out of his personal lake that help document the corruption, and corruption it certainly is. He’s been in government since 1996, and before that he was regional head of a trucking company for twenty years, and before that he was a petty criminal, apparently. The ex-prosecutor-general Viktor Pshonka has skipped town, too, leaving a lavish palace behind.
Gold. Encrusted. Bidet. It’s a pity you can’t buy good taste.
p.s. Not, let’s be frank, that our lot are much better. There’s no possible way a legislator can rack up millions in office that doesn’t involve something very crooked and wrong.
February 26, 2014 — 11:45 pm
Comments: 12