Look away now. || I laughed and I’m not sorry. || Maybe a bath. || Giant cat roams British countryside. || Today’s word is suboptimal. || Does both ends, you know. || He does this better than you do. || High drama. || Kinship detected. (h/t, Julia) || The thrill of fertilisation. || Modern fretting. || Wait for it. || You want one and you know it. || At last, an hour of whale probe ambience. || First-person parkour with balloons and monkeys. || Tape recorders of yore. (h/t, Things) || Light and layered glass. || More glamourous than thou. || It has “autonomous steaming technology.” || Snow in Nagano. || Not a lot happened, then quite a lot did. || And finally, the heroic intervention didn’t go entirely to plan.
Wait for it
Where's that guy who adds rubbery, wavy arms onto video clips?
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 15, 2021 at 00:16
A colossal hand-bound book, with no printing, no writing of any kind, no illustrations of any kind..... 908 pages of blank paper.
Do click on the link. It's much better than it sounds, and really quite lovely:
https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1349726353034153984
Posted by: Captain Nemo | January 15, 2021 at 00:16
Recipe of note:
https://twitter.com/NasheedWallace/status/1349407757636665344
Posted by: Captain Nemo | January 15, 2021 at 00:23
908 pages of blank paper
Book title is "What Exists Outside of Leftist Bubble".
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 15, 2021 at 00:30
autonomous steaming technology
Reminds me of the military rations, self-heating cans of soup. Culd be life-threatening
Posted by: asiaseen | January 15, 2021 at 01:40
“You want one and you know it.”
Oh, hell yes. It's like a giant one of these. Which, were I in a position to throw 100 quid away on stuff I have absolutely no use for, I'd buy without a second thought.
Posted by: Sam Duncan | January 15, 2021 at 02:26
Recipe...
Reminds me the recipes I ran into while studying Sam Pepys diary.
They often started something like this:
Take a Bushel of Water and a Lot of Good Beef...
Posted by: Fred the Fourth | January 15, 2021 at 02:36
It's too bad there weren't video cameras when me and my cousin (at age 3) were being interrogated after painting our family Buick. We blamed each other.
Posted by: rtw | January 15, 2021 at 05:13
Maybe a bath.
Brilliant. Actual handwringing.
Posted by: Liz | January 15, 2021 at 06:25
"You want one and you know it."
It's astonishing how often this is actually true!
Posted by: JuliaM | January 15, 2021 at 06:36
Morning, all.
Actual handwringing.
As parent-small boy negotiations go, it’s quite a thing. I get the impression it’s not their first rodeo.
I wonder if I could adopt them.
Posted by: David | January 15, 2021 at 06:59
We blamed each other.
I vaguely recall a similar negotiation taking place after my parents discovered that an old writing bureau, a can of silver spray paint and an unsupervised four-year-old is not an ideal combination.
I think it was the first time I saw that you could be told off by people who are trying not to laugh.
Posted by: David | January 15, 2021 at 07:05
we blamed each other
I have three boys and many stories, some of them involved the dog and many were expensive. How the youngest survived we don’t know. We regale each other with them on family occasions. The story always ends with “and that boys, is why mummy drinks”.
Posted by: Felicity | January 15, 2021 at 09:03
Maybe a bath.
LOL Cutest bad guys ever.
I get the impression it’s not their first rodeo.
Definitely not. :-)
Posted by: Em | January 15, 2021 at 10:02
Definitely not. :-)
Oh, there’s history there. It’s the line, “Maybe if we think about what we’ve done…?”
Cunning yet adorable.
Posted by: David | January 15, 2021 at 10:07
"You want one . . ."
As soon as I get the hobbit hole I want.
Posted by: kfg | January 15, 2021 at 12:14
Snow in Nagano
Er....
Posted by: Karl | January 15, 2021 at 13:42
Er....
Answers on a postcard, please.
Posted by: David | January 15, 2021 at 13:45
More glamorous?
Wouldn’t have been out of place on the recent thread about A Flock of Seagulls and others of that era.
Posted by: John Lewis | January 15, 2021 at 13:59
Snow in Nagano looks like a still from a Miyazaki film.
Posted by: John Lewis | January 15, 2021 at 14:02
Errrr
The car on the right seems to be rather curiously parked.
Posted by: asiaseen | January 15, 2021 at 14:04
Answers on a postcard, please.
You all, being yte supremacist racists, see a PoC caricature, I see a victim of yte imperialist colonial supremacism, a poor tortured soul with flash burns from Hiroshima.
I am just woke that way.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 15, 2021 at 14:08
I'll ruin the joke and point out that giant-headed mascots outside businesses, even ones as small as convenience stores, are a common thing in Japan.
Posted by: Daniel Ream | January 15, 2021 at 14:23
whale probe ambience
Well, that is more soothing than what I was listening to!
Posted by: Karl | January 15, 2021 at 14:29
giant-headed mascots ... are a common thing in Japan
Well that Kumamon has seen better days 🤔
Posted by: Karl | January 15, 2021 at 14:39
I have a couple of friends who live there and the Japan you see in film and TV is very different from the reality. The country is in the middle of a massive demographic crisis, it's been in an economic malaise for decades resulting in a kind of genteel shabbiness outside the major tourist centers, and it's still fantastically xenophobic.
It's a fascinating place to visit, in the same way Cuba was.
Posted by: Daniel Ream | January 15, 2021 at 14:43
autonomous steaming technology
Reminds me of the military rations, self-heating cans of soup. Culd be life-threatening
I assume you've never encountered Scottish army field rations?
Posted by: Nicholas | January 15, 2021 at 15:08
Well, that is more soothing than what I was listening to!
[Proffers ironic OGT handshake.]
Posted by: Novus | January 15, 2021 at 15:15
Er....
Mystery solved.
Posted by: David | January 15, 2021 at 15:23
Mystery solved
I beg to differ:
"Tanukis have legendarily been known to use their testicles as makeshift raincoats, as weapons, and as drums."
Posted by: Karl | January 15, 2021 at 15:27
Posted by: cayleygraph2015 | January 15, 2021 at 15:31
been known to use their testicles as makeshift raincoats, as weapons, and as drums.
Blimey.
Posted by: David | January 15, 2021 at 15:34
Today’s word is suboptimal.
Is that the built-in cigarette lighter?
Posted by: Mike | January 15, 2021 at 16:10
autonomous steaming technology
Reminds me of the military rations...
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 15, 2021 at 16:25
The woke left, according to Anton Chekhov, is not civilized.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 15, 2021 at 16:27
Giant cat roams British countryside.
Is it hunting killer cars?
Posted by: pst314 | January 15, 2021 at 18:16
I love coming across things that explain things.
How to refine a font for sheet music, including an amazing program (Score) developed in the '80s.
Why the Music in Cats is worse than you thought. Including digressions about why Cats worked on stage, ALW's two ways of writing a song, how singers express themselves, and how sound engineers realized director Tom Hooper's insane idea that makes listening to the movie equivalent to applying a high-speed drill against your cranium.
Posted by: Uma Thurmond's Feet | January 15, 2021 at 18:21
Why the Music in Cats is worse than you thought.
One might suggest that the podcaster record his digressions as separate recordings. One was amused for ten or twelve minutes, but the magic wore off after that.
Oh, wait -- did he produce an overly long, overly padded rant about Cats on purpose?! Diabolical!
(The sheet music special was enthralling, btw. Maybe my patience was tested by Cats guy because it suffered by comparison.)
Posted by: Governor Squid | January 15, 2021 at 21:55
@ Karl
I beg to differ
A subtle reference to Villa Incognito perhaps?
Posted by: asiaseen | January 15, 2021 at 21:55
Wile E. Coyote shouts "We was kings!" while blowing self up.
Via the same link, French police raid Antifa bomb factory.
Posted by: pst314 | January 15, 2021 at 23:54
a subtle reference
You flatter me sir.
Alas I am more Baskin than Tom.
Posted by: Karl | January 16, 2021 at 02:22
I’m so old I remember Chiffon toilet paper!
Also, easily the weirdest thing on the Internet, at least I hope it is: smurf torture!
http://bluebuddies.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/1/1960.html
Extra-credit weirdness: it took the audience ten years to realize what the story was actually about.
Posted by: Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat | January 16, 2021 at 06:34
I’m so old I remember Chiffon toilet paper!
Was it everything the adverts promised?
Posted by: David | January 16, 2021 at 09:23
Probably not.
Posted by: Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat | January 16, 2021 at 10:40
The woke left, according to Anton Chekhov, is not civilized.
Wokelings tend to disdain reciprocation, which is pretty much the foundation of being civilised, even denouncing it as, for instance, “respectability politics” and a “bad idea.”
Hence their principles, so-called, are not in fact principles, merely excuses.
Posted by: David | January 16, 2021 at 11:50
Can endorse.
[ Wipes chin. ]
Posted by: David | January 16, 2021 at 12:24
Science !™
I think the best part is the rags stuffed in the ends of the flutes.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 16, 2021 at 13:18
There was also a Chiffon margarine. Never tasted it—Mom was Parkay all the way.
Posted by: Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat | January 16, 2021 at 13:26
There was also a Chiffon margarine.
See how far we’ve come.
Posted by: David | January 16, 2021 at 13:39
There was also a Chiffon margarine.
It’s a bit like using Diaphanous as a brand name for lard. Promising more than it can deliver, really.
Posted by: David | January 16, 2021 at 13:41
Chiffon toilet paper
Meanwhile, back in the Old World, Bronco and San Izal were the shiny, hard papers of choice for real people.
Rather curiously, my old boarding school had it's name printed on every sheet of the rolls.
Posted by: asiaseen | January 16, 2021 at 14:58
There was also a Chiffon margarine.
"If you think it's butter, but it's not...it's Chiffon."
It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Posted by: Steve E | January 16, 2021 at 16:06
It’s a bit like using Diaphanous as a brand name for lard. Promising more than it can deliver, really.
Until very recently you couldn't sell yellow margarine in Quebec. It had to be coloured white. This all done, supposedly, to protect the dairy industry.
Posted by: Steve E | January 16, 2021 at 16:10
There was also a Chiffon margarine.
Their jingle...
...phrasing is very important.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 16, 2021 at 16:14
Until very recently you couldn't sell yellow margarine in Quebec.
An internet search shows that the change was made in 2008. Good grief: even Wisconsin repealed a similar law in 1967.
Posted by: pst314 | January 16, 2021 at 16:26
Until very recently you couldn't sell yellow margarine in Quebec.
But you could mix in a packet of provided yellow food coloring.
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 16, 2021 at 16:27
But you could mix in a packet of provided yellow food coloring.
True. My uncle was in the bakery supply business and assures me there was a black market for out of province yellow margarine. Although he never made it clear where it could be purchased. I have mental images of back doors and déppaneurs.
Posted by: Steve E | January 16, 2021 at 16:36
...phrasing is very important.
Yes, best not to elide "it's not".
Posted by: Steve E | January 16, 2021 at 16:40
But you could mix in a packet of provided yellow food coloring.
I remember doing that as a very young child, with margarine packets smuggled across the border.
Ironically, we bought margarine partly because the Health Authorities told us it was healthier than butter. Once their findings were shown to be false and fraudulent, we went back to butter.
Posted by: pst314 | January 16, 2021 at 16:54
assures me there was a black market for out of province yellow margarine.
Anyone who traveled out-of-province or out-of-state could, if they wished, make a little money buying such goods in bulk: margarine, liquor, tobacco, etc. And more recently non-low-flow toilets and faucets from Canada to the States. One didn't have to do it in bulk--no truckloads--just a trunk full of goodies to sell to grateful friends and acquaintances. I vaguely recall people talking about this back in the 70's and 80's.
Posted by: pst314 | January 16, 2021 at 17:00
we went back to butter.
It is difficult to improve on butter.
[ Thinks back fondly to butter-drenched muffins. ]
Posted by: David | January 16, 2021 at 17:01
butter-drenched muffins
Band name.
Posted by: Jen | January 16, 2021 at 17:17
even Wisconsin repealed a similar law in 1967
Do not underestimate the power of the dairy lobby in Canada. You know the show Banshee? Where all the crime is controlled by a psychopathic Amish meat packer? It's like that, but with milk.
Posted by: Daniel Ream | January 16, 2021 at 17:21
Oops.
Posted by: Darleen | January 16, 2021 at 17:33
butter-drenched muffins
Band name.
Martha and the Muffins. Actual band name. In keeping with a previous thread's playlist.
Posted by: Steve E | January 16, 2021 at 17:35
UCF is just down the road from me. This is funny. Looking forward to the day when we can rat our our friends and neighbors anonymously. Hey, they asked for this shit.
Posted by: WTP | January 16, 2021 at 18:05
In which the Washington Post, through the efforts of Philip Bump, pleads the "Carl Douglas" * defence for Antifa &c.
*As it is known in our household- "Well, they may have been beating the living crap out of each other, but they were doing it with expert timing so that makes it OK".
Posted by: Lancastrian Oik | January 16, 2021 at 18:36
butter-drenched muffins
I do believe I saw a delightful piece of adult cinema once with that very title.
Posted by: semi retired conservative | January 16, 2021 at 18:53
defence for Antifa &c.
Shorter WaPo: "It's good for black people to riot, burn and murder when a black thug is shot by the police." Also: "We love Marxist revolutionary thugs."
Jonah Goldberg of the National Topsider is quoted.
Posted by: pst314 | January 16, 2021 at 18:55
From WashPo to the New York Times, that bastion of world-class journalism, whose editors saw fit to publish the following, and Twitter - in no way run by leftwing activists - thought I needed to know about it
https://twitter.com/i/events/1349409058785292289
"Jobless women selling nudes on OnlyFans are struggling to pay bills"
Posted by: Henry | January 16, 2021 at 18:56
Good lord, that WaPo spewing was painful.
9 months of looting, riots, cities burning, Leftwing politicians encouraging it, enabling it "who said protests were supposed to be comfortable?" because the nation REALLY is systematically racist and commits genocide against "black bodies".
But several dozen escapees from a Village People LARP session who occupy the capitol briefly are worse because this was the Most Fair and Transparent Election EVAH!!!
argh
Posted by: Darleen | January 16, 2021 at 19:04
This is strange, but that Greta doll has less of an uncanny valley effect on me than does the real Greta.
Posted by: Cloudbuster | January 16, 2021 at 19:53
UCF is just down the road from me.
Well, this will wipe out what the university is best known for.
Posted by: Uma Thurmond's Feet | January 16, 2021 at 20:38
Martha and the Muffins
Possibly inspired by Mojo Nixon's "Stuffing Martha's Muffins" to honor MTV VJ Martha Quinn.
And no, I'm not going to look it up to check. Why ruin innocent fun?
Posted by: Uma Thurmond's Feet | January 16, 2021 at 20:42
Can anybody provide a translation of the Japanese text accompanying that Greta doll? I have a suspicion that it would add to the hilarity.
Posted by: pst314 | January 16, 2021 at 20:54
Why ruin innocent fun?
I'm not going to.
There were actually two Marthas in Martha and the Muffins. Martha Ladly left the band after they recorded their second album. She was a visual/graphic design/artist. She went to work with Peter Saville Associates, a graphic design firm that designed many album sleeves for Factory Records.
To really bring this home, Ladly suggested the album title "Architecture and Morality" (referenced by David in an earlier thread) to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Posted by: Steve E | January 16, 2021 at 21:44
Laser-etched glass sculpture of caffeine molecule. Not to mention many others.
Posted by: pst314 | January 17, 2021 at 00:12
“...a massive demographic crisis [...] and it's still fantastically xenophobic.”
The latter may be the only thing preserving it through the former.
Posted by: Squires | January 17, 2021 at 01:17
You know you want one.
Posted by: pst314 | January 17, 2021 at 01:20
Man I dunno from legal scholarship but this is some epic digging. Delineates the crazy spread of craziness from the bones to the heart and mind of Yank jurisprudence. Thought you Thompson guns especially might like it -- the monkish rigor of this oddball #TimonofPhilly. His findings are dry as dust but pardon me fuckin' appalling. https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/intersectionality-goes-to-court/
Posted by: EarnestCanuck | January 17, 2021 at 05:54
The standard trajectory.
[ Added: ]
It must be quite strange to go through life knowing that your woke pieties, on which your in-group status depend, are a complete sham. A transparent lie that’s easily uncovered, such that your own petty traps and games of Gotcha! can be turned against you. With farcical predictability.
It doesn’t sound healthy.
Posted by: David | January 17, 2021 at 09:44
His findings are dry as dust
That was hard work. Back in the last century there was an English judge who insisted that counsel submit the gist of their case on a single side of A4 paper. Timon of Philly would do well to learn the technique. It would help him to improve the comprehesibility (if there is any) of his writing.
Posted by: asiaseen | January 17, 2021 at 10:58
You know the show Banshee?
No, but it certainly looks interesting. Bonus that Homelander is in it.
I will have to check it out.
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 17, 2021 at 13:06
Well, this will wipe out what the university is best known for.
Actually, UCF had become a pretty good computer science and engineering school. They once were known as Florida Tech (not to be confused with FIT, Florida Institute of Technology further down the road in Melbourne). Many people who worked at Kennedy Space Center graduated from there. Not that one should be as terribly impressed as that sounds but that's no reflection on the school. They have also expanded into the medical field with some success. But yes, it is all to laugh.
Posted by: WTP | January 17, 2021 at 14:39
Banshee.
I second that endorsement.
It's completely nuts, but great fun
Posted by: Lancastrian Oik | January 17, 2021 at 16:22
Britain's inevitably downmarket version of "Tanuki"- "Buster Gonad".
Posted by: Lancastrian Oik | January 17, 2021 at 16:28
No, but it certainly looks interesting
It's a crime noir version of The Count of Monte Cristo, and like a more serious version of a Cohen Brothers film. Oh, and on Cinemax so lots of sex and nudity but oddly non-gratuitous.
Also there's Amish crime lords.
Posted by: Daniel Ream | January 17, 2021 at 17:26
Also there's Amish crime lords.
Clop, clop, clop, clop, Bang! Clop, clop, clop, clop.
Posted by: pst314 | January 17, 2021 at 18:02
Amish crime lords.
Band name.
Posted by: David | January 17, 2021 at 18:29
Amish crime lords.
Straight Outta Elkhart
Buggies in the Hood
One Upon a Time in a Cowpasture
The Pennsylvania Connection
Rural Caesar
Goodfarmers
Posted by: pst314 | January 17, 2021 at 18:54
😄😄😄
Posted by: Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat | January 17, 2021 at 18:59
A Fistfull of Wheat Stalks
Posted by: pst314 | January 17, 2021 at 19:12
Martha Ladly (of Muffin fame) also played keyboard on the Associates excellent single Party Fears 2.
Posted by: John Lewis | January 17, 2021 at 20:27
Rumspringa Rum-Runners
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 17, 2021 at 20:30
Martha Ladly (of Muffin fame) also played keyboard on the Associates excellent single Party Fears 2.
Also sang back-up vocals on Roxy Music's Avalon and was in Robert Palmer's back-up band for a short stint.
Posted by: Steve E | January 17, 2021 at 20:51
Seriously, though, check it out. Along with Justified and The Americans it's consistently solid. Fifteen seasons worth of entertainment to get you through lockdown.
Also Justified has Nick Searcy in it.
Posted by: Daniel Ream | January 17, 2021 at 22:36