Spam

Odd as it may seem, I get a lot of spammish stuff in comments on old posts here. Most direct you to some electronics or movie site. Some have no discernible point. The watchdog on this site is effective and catches and rejects almost all of them. This was in the cull list today:

What a great web log. I spend hours on the net reading blogs, about tons of various subjects. I have to first of all give praise to whoever created your theme and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an fabulous article. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only very few posses and honestly you got it. The combining of demonstrative and upper-class content is by all odds super rare with the astronomic amount of blogs on the cyberspace.

I love it; would that it were real.

A forwarded headline

from herself with subject line reading 'brave new world':
"A Chicken Chain’s Corporate Ethos Is Questioned by Gay Rights Advocates"
I didn't read the story and don't think I want to know the rest of the story. Strange times, folks.

The graven image

Friend of mine forwards this pic with the note, 'Jasper, Arkansas, apparently has a different visual concept of God than other folks.' I think this would be the divinity that Lloyd Blankfein spoke of when he said that Goldman Sachs was 'doing the Lord's work.'

Oh, the horror!

The students at an MLK Day banquet in – where else? – California managed to feel offended because the menu featured fried chicken and waffles. The egregious human-rights violation occurred at Cal-Irvine.

UC Irvine student Ricardo Sparks, the 20-year-old co-chairman of the university's Black Student Union, lodged a formal complaint with the administration.
. . . . .
[The director of communications for the Black Student Union said], "It takes all the radicalism and activism that we tried to do with the symposium and then [the cafeteria] serves chicken and waffles and takes away from all the stuff that we did."

Read it all here. The university, of course, did the obligatory ritual grovel for the silly bastards. Nothing undercuts your revolutionary agenda as badly as fried chicken and waffles. When the biggest bitch you can muster is chicken and waffles, you've pritnear run out of bitches. Give 'em the same gray roast beef and soggy peas that everyone else gets.
"There is nothing quite so enjoyable as a huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm." – Anthony Trollope, "Can You Forgive Her?"

Merry mustellids

Get a load of these otters all atwitter about the prospect of dinner:

I can understand that attitude.

World's wonders

I am constantly amazed at the wonderful things the Internet brings to our desk by the window. Friends send me photos of odd things, manmade and natural. I can get the latest on-scene news from faraway places. People I love can communicate instantly without intruding. I'm leading up to this delightful blog I found in the comments section of a site I fancy. The author lives in the East End of London and shares what he sees. Writing about an old craftsman:

Make no mistake, Maurice [Franklin] is a virtuoso. When rooms at Windsor Castle burnt out a few years ago, the Queen asked Maurice to make a new set of spindles for her staircase and invited him to tea to thank him for it too. “Did you grow up in the East End?” she enquired politely, and when Maurice nodded in modest confirmation of this, she extended her sympathy to him. “That must have been hard?” she responded with a empathetic smile, although with characteristic frankness Maurice disagreed. “I had a loving family,” he told her plainly, “That’s all you need for a happy childhood, you don’t need palaces for that.”

Read the rest of Maurice Franklin's story here and spend time with other people in the East End.

Jes cause I happened on the guy

An Aussie surf guitarist:


Guy's great. You practically need subtitles to understand him. I like surf guitar. It seems in some way optimistic and cheerful and full of fun. I can figure out pessimistic, gloomy, and dark on my own. It's always seem a quintessentially American form, but I guess those other Brit descendants on the Pacific could figure it out, too. Don't see Hong Kong surf guitar.