The thirtieth anniversary of something I don’t remember
Sunday is the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. He was walking home from the movies with his wife when he was approached by a gunman and shot dead.
Sometimes I like to play a game with True Crime books: I shuffle to the picture section and, without reading the captions, try to figure out from their faces who’s the victim, who’s the perp and who’s the policeman. In this case, though, it’s easy — dude on the right is a druggy who was picked up for the murder three years later after Mrs Palme picked him out of a lineup. That’s about all the evidence against him, though, so the case is classed as unsolved. A hundred and thirty people have confessed to the murder and been dismissed.
It’s officially the biggest murder investigation in history — bigger than JFK’s, bigger than Lockerbie. And it’s still active. Sweden even scrapped their 25-year statute of limitations on murder to keep it going (which is fine. There shouldn’t really be a statute of limitations on murder).
He was a hard left anti-Imperialist, pro-Revolutionary, the first Western head of state to visit Cuba and speak in favor of Cambodia’s revolutionaries. So you can imagine the prevailing theories.
The Turks say the Kurds did it, the Kurds say the Turks did it. There was a Yugoslavian, and a LaRouchie. Indian gunrunners. Chilean fascists. The Masons. The CIA. I’m not even kidding. If you like this sort of thing, this is just the sort of thing you’d like.
Not me. I hate the unsolved ones. Good weekend, all!
February 26, 2016 — 9:19 pm
Comments: 10
beautiful and tragic
Welp, it must be Spring — I’ve got the itch for more chickens. A chicken jones, as it were. Yes, I have been chicken shopping.
My flock is down to three, which is no kind of flock at all. But I have a bit of a dilemma — my henhouse will comfortably hold four, but you have to add them in pairs, at least (every hen needs a buddy — that whole ‘pecking order’ thing is deadly serious).
I was kind of hoping the henhouse would fall to bits this Winter. I emphatically am not hoping to lose my oldest bird, who is my favorite chikken EVAR, though that too would have solved the problem (they live six to eight years, and she’ll be seven next month; please send a happy thought Mapp’s way). I’m thinking maybe throw caution to the winds and buy a newer, bigger henhouse and add three new chikkens to the flock. If I can find the chikkens I’m looking for.
Him? That fine-looking specimen in the picture? I found him in the free ads. He’s what sucks the fun out of chikken shopping in the classifieds: people desperate to get rid of surplus roosters (“free to a good home, very friendly bird, pleeeeease!”).
I’m always tempted, but not really tempted. See, some sneaky bird from my flock would surely lay a few eggs in the hedge and, next thing you know, I’d be desperate to get rid of a surplus rooster. And it would be kind of startling to introduce my hens to sex at this time of life.
Also, bantam cockerels have a crow that could peel wallpaper.
February 25, 2016 — 11:36 pm
Comments: 23
You’re welcome
Yeah, it’s getting increasingly hard to find things to say that aren’t the election or the EU referendum. I’d’ve given you a cat picture instead, but I was too lazy to camera.
February 24, 2016 — 10:32 pm
Comments: 24
Oh.
Recognize this face? Nay? It’s Chris Crocker, the leave Britney alone guy. Yeah, some people are caressed by the warm terrycloth bathrobe of puberty, and some people get smashed in the face with the puberty brickbat.
The Metro tells me he tried doing porn for a while. You needn’t ask what kind of porn, and you shouldn’t Google it if you don’t want to see free willy.
I have got to stop reading the Metro.
So…how ’bout that Twitter, huh? If you want a good roundup of the current state of play, yesterday’s overnight thread at Ace’s has some links (in the middle of the post). Short version: Twitter goes SJW, bans righty, many righties quit in protest.
I’m a Twitter nonentity. I went back last Sunday and spent a lazy day reminding myself why I never really cottoned to it: it’s like being shouted at simultaneously by dozens of deranged door-to-door salesmen.
February 23, 2016 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 14
Useless me.
For some reason, I’m tired and useless tonight. I’ve done nothing but dinner prep (just the prep; Uncle B does wok duty) and browse /r/badtattoos.
Nothing cheers me up quite like stupid people and the bad decisions they make.
Only, I beg to differ on the one in the picture (color here). This is an excellent piece bit of mechanical draftsmanship. I only wish I could read the flow chart.
Join me? Skip Reddit and go right to the Imgur album for /r/badtattos.
Bonus: today is Imgur’s seventh birthday, apparently. If you have an account (at least, I suspect you have to have an account), you get to click on a present icon and are served a Bazooka-bubblegum-worthy lousy stinking rotten joke.
February 22, 2016 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 12
Toy.
I mentioned earlier this week I was hoping to go to a work-related seminar today, and so I did. It was about conservation of historical documents and it was, for the most part, very interesting.
The best nugget was learning that the British Museum’s whole object catalogue is online. You can browse the database of nearly four million objects (and growing), with good descriptions and high quality photos. (Try the advanced search. Nobody uses the advanced search and that makes the head of cataloguing very sad).
The lowlight was a presentation about trying to bring diversity to historical research. The speaker carefully never defined diversity, but told us the measures they’d taken (they who? The Arts Council, I think) to increase ‘diverse’ trainees in history. Like, eliminating the degree requirement for entrance and ultimately limiting the program to London. And even then, they had a three in ten dropout rate. This was after a day of being told the pool of jobs was shrinking.
It boils down to: taking scarce jobs away from qualified English people who want them to foist them upon unqualified, unspecified ‘diverse’ people who don’t.
And with that depressing thought, I bid you a good weekend!
February 19, 2016 — 10:24 pm
Comments: 7
Meow.
Happy World Cat Day (not to be confused International Cat Day) (or, for that matter, National Cat Day, National Feral Cat Day, National Black Cat Day or any of the other silly made up cat holidays). Yes, you have guessed — this sad excuse for a post means I still feel like shit, though I did go into work for an hour today.
Whoever warned me to be careful of whisky and ginger wine, you were right. I was wrong. I have paid for my foolishness.
I’m hoping to post a miraculous recovery from here; there’s a seminar I really, really want to go to on Friday. But it will involve getting up at the crack of dawn and walking to the train station, just for starters.
Gin and tonic never hurt anyone, right?
February 17, 2016 — 11:11 pm
Comments: 13
Watch out for falling…ones of these
Somebody stole a giant model triceratops out of a park on the Isle of Wight and left it in the middle of the road. As the Telegraph drily observed, drink was probably involved. If not before, it surely would have been afterwards, if I had run across this in the street.
I woke up this morning with an awful headcold and called in sick. I don’t usually skive off work for a mere cold, but my current gig is a little different: I’m the youngest person in the group, by a lot. I’d feel pretty shit if one of my cow orkers got carried off by my rhinovirus.
I’ll be fine; the British version of Nyquil is called Nite Nurse.
Also, whisky and ginger wine.
February 16, 2016 — 10:58 pm
Comments: 9
Dang.
Well, poop. HotAir has just announced they’re turning their comments over to FaceBook. I don’t totally get how that works — I’ve not seen this done before — but it means the main articles still appear at HotAir.com, but to comment you’ll have to be a member of, and logged into, FaceBook.
And comment under your own real name. In front of your grandma and your boss and everything. On a conservative political site. In 2016.
How do you say “no, thank you” in rage-fuelled gibberish?
HotAir was never a great site and it’s been in decline for some time. The best thing about it was always Allahpundit, and he’s been mighty quiet since Salem took over. But still, it was my favorite straight-up, minimal-commentary news aggregator and I’ll be a little lost without it.
Can anyone recommend another? I want something that links to the top two dozen mainstream news stories (of interest to a righty) every day, preferably with a sample or synopsis so I don’t have to click through if I don’t wanna. More stories than Ace, more MSM than Breitbart. More meat than Drudge. And open comments, pls.
p.s. Sober readers will recall that I do have an FB account in the name of Stoaty Weasel. I opened that before I knew it was a TOS violation. They have since cracked down on anonymous and second accounts, but they somehow missed ol’ Stoaty. Still, I log in with a different browser to access it and I hardly ever do. I’m sure if I pop up and start commenting on the new HotAir, I’ll get rumbled and shut down in short order. I’m accepting suggestions of fun and creative ways we can send Stoaty down in flames.
February 15, 2016 — 9:02 pm
Comments: 30
witches and how to disinvite them
In the comments to the thread below this one, there was some brief mention of the hex marks in Badger House. I thought I’d posted extensively about it once before, but all I can find is this brief mention.
Well. This house was built some time between 1505 and 1610. It’s a timber-framed Tudor farmhouse, with the timbers exposed on the inside (they probably were originally exposed on the outside, too, but this place has seen a LOT of alteration over the centuries). There are things scratched into the beams at various points, and we didn’t think anything of it. Just old graffiti, we thought. But, as it turns out, what we have here are classic ‘witch marks.’
Or, if you want to sound all sciencey and shit, apotropaic marks. Click that link, and you’ll see tons of examples that look exactly like these two pictures from Badger House. And we have since taken many pictures and had many a conversation about them in National Trust properties.
The one above is a hexafoil or daisy wheel, the most common apotropaic mark in English houses. It’s believed to be a very ancient sun symbol. Like prehistoric. It both brings good luck and wards off evil. This one is in the main beam above the downstairs fireplace.
The one at right, that looks like “TW” or “IW” we just assumed were somebody’s initials (they appear more than once in our house, above the fireplace in the master bedroom), but it’s another terribly common mark. “T” and “O” ward off evil somehow and the “W” is actually Marian — an interlocking “V V” for virgin of virgins, or an upside down “M.”
Or, you know, everyone is talking out their asses and no-one really knows. Some of the straight marks we’re convinced were made by the builders and had a more practical purpose. In a house near here, a series of room beams are marked, in order, “I” “II” “III” “IIII” and — tellingly — “V”.
If you want to read more about it — and, believe me, this is a real fun Google rabbit hole to fall down — try a search of witch marks, ritual protection marks, house magic or the charmingly named Wookey Hole. (It’s a cave. They age cheese in it).
Good weekend, folks — and keep them witches out!
February 12, 2016 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 19