16 July 2009

Daily Chat 16/07/09

This date in 622 marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In 1661, Stockholms Banco issued the first banknotes in Europe. The District of Columbia was established as the capital of the United States in 1790 and the Mont Blanc tunnel, joining Italy and France, was opened in 1965. Celebrating birthdays today: Anita Brookner, Corin Redgrave, Margaret Court, Ruben Blades, Pinchas Zukerman, Stewart Copeland, Tony Kushner, Michael Flatley, Miguel Indurain and Will Farrell. It is the feast day of St. Helier.

57 comments:

  1. What do you reckon the first Michael Jackson conspircay will be? An assasination by Mossad? A neo-con plot to destabilise Russia?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Queen did it to prevent it leaking out that Jackson and the Duke of Edinburgh were lovers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ooh, will have to look out some Rubén Bládes this evening!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Some good comments on that MacShane thread already, but I’d like to nominate Pikey for the “even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then” award (we’re still running that one, aren’t we Jay?)

    ** “He deserves support”

    Yeah, first a trapdoor, then just the rope. **

    ReplyDelete
  5. Enjoyed that one andy - (although from Pikey it may not be original but I haven't seen it elsewhere)

    I am incapable of anything with an edge as far as Blair is concerned. As soon as I see his name or face it's blind and crude invective from me. My lack of self control becomes absolute and I have to try to contain the frothing at my mouth. My dislike is powerful.

    In homage to the self discipline of Jay I did get to call Blair a cunt (on the 500th post just before 10 last night) on the comments of the original Kinnock article yesterday. Last time I looked it was still standing after 12 hours and thus far I've not even been put on the step! I'm not boasting, no doubt I will be called upon to pay a price it was after all just blind angry crude rant on my part.

    Regards to Sheff this am and I hope the problem is turning out to be no more than a summer cold.
    deano

    ReplyDelete
  6. Deano: I know what you mean about Blair.

    I thought Jay was very restrained (unusual for him).

    I posted the following comment, which was struck down for some reason (?):

    * I’m surprised (and not a little disappointed) that the CiF Massive have been relatively restrained in their responses to this thread.
    Where’s the vitriol? Where’s the hoards of people calling Blair a c**t? Where’s the Moderation blood bath? And where the hell is HankScorpio when we need him?
    Not criticising any particular individuals for not mounting a bayonet charge against the machine guns, but it all seems a little TOO polite.
    “I say, jolly bad show, sign an online petition.”
    And I never thought I’d agree with William Hague... *

    It must have been when I said I agreed with Hague!

    Your comment’s gone now too. The new shift of Mods must be feeling tough today...

    ReplyDelete
  7. And 40 years ago today, Apollo 11 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Centre on its way to the moon, with Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin on board.

    One of America's finest achievements.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Swifty - how did I miss that one when I was getting today's thread ready? Poop. I still remember watching it on tv and then looking up at the moon and thinking, "There are people up there right now!"

    My comment from the Glenys Kinnock thread got cut. I just asked how long she'd had the crack addiction. What's wrong with that?

    ReplyDelete
  9. elementary_watson16 July, 2009 11:53

    Well, Montana, at least you are now forewarned that on Monday, you can post about the arrival of Apollo11 on the moon.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Good god my sometime wife's grandfather was still alive then Swifty - I remember saying to her that he had had an extraordinary lifetime having gone from horse drawn vehicles through motor cars and then finally to a man on the moon.

    He had even served as a barman in Leeds' most famous pub Whitelocks (off an alley in Briggate) when Victoria was on the throne!

    As they say how time flys...

    ReplyDelete
  11. @MW:

    Get your pen ready for 20th July old girl, that's the really exciting bit.

    On that day, 40 years ago, a two and a half year old boy sat on his grandad's knee in the front room of 6 Williamson Gardens, Ripon, and watched man land on the moon.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Your grandad must have had a bloody good telescope, Swifty.

    ReplyDelete
  13. FIO: Whitelocks famous Leeds pub-

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/content/articles/2006/05/19/local_history_whitelocks_plaque_feature.shtml


    I think the chance of that working as a link is not too good but I'll give it a try.........

    If it does across the alleyway outside of the pub is what used to be a bakery - when wife's grandfather was a barman there in the nineteenth century he met his future wife and started a chain of events that later resulted in our children amongst other things...

    It's a pity there aren't some photo's of the pub's inside, last I was there it was still untouched Victorian. A fine place to lunch and laugh and enjoy life all on a summers day.

    ReplyDelete
  14. @andy:

    Ho ho, nice one mate.

    I love all the moon landing stuff. Probably because of said grandad's collection of National Geographic magaziness, brilliant for a young lad, what with all the maps of the lunar surface, schematics and cutaways of the lunar lander, African tribeswomen with their tits out, erm I mean, pictures of the Apollo space missions etc etc...

    ReplyDelete
  15. More so than the moon landing, I like the theories that there never was a moon landing...

    ReplyDelete
  16. @deano:

    I love the big city centre pubs in Leeds. Used to like the Wrens as well. I'm up in Leeds on 7th August for the cricket so will no doubt be crawling out of one pub or the other on Friday night before a big slap up curry at the Shabab on Eastgate.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Vari,
    I heard that the moon landing was faked with 'Action Men' in some blokes shed.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Swifty: I don’t remember watching the first moon landing, but I do remember watching A moon landing at school on one of those funny TVs on a high post with doors at the front.

    I didn’t start school until 1969, so it must have been shortly after that. Seem to remember a moon buggy being involved as well, though couldn’t swear to it.

    Gives me a chance to link to a song with the great couplet

    We were brought up on the space race
    Now they expect you to clean toilets


    Shame Jarvis doesn't get a chance to finish his story - I wonder how it ends...

    ReplyDelete
  19. I love a good conspiracy theory Colin....

    ReplyDelete
  20. Is it me, or is there absolutely nothing of any interest on Cif today?

    ReplyDelete
  21. Don't think its you thauma, but I also don't think its just today. I sound like a proper moaning minnie, but to my mind CiF has been getting progressively more dull over the last couple of months.

    They need to put out a BuBiBuBi, and fast!

    ReplyDelete
  22. It was actually a Postgate/Firmin co-production.

    Here's the troof.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Probably I'm just more bored today and am looking harder for something - anthing! - interesting to comment on.

    Maybe we should nominate BuBiBuBi for an OBE.

    ReplyDelete
  24. thaumaturge,
    Hanson defending Kafkaesque courts any good to you?

    ReplyDelete
  25. Colin, Vari, Swifty, three words:

    Tin...
    Foil...
    Hat

    ReplyDelete
  26. Wearing it mate, and the Y fronts, just in case they go for the goolies.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Hi Colin,

    Yes, I've had a peek at that one. Am keeping an eye on it!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Yea loads of great pubs all over the UK from the SW to the NE and all other points too. Often tucked away up odd alleyways although well known to locals.

    (Some good ones in Rochester too as I recall it Stoaty)

    What I enjoy about them is that idea that men and women have been drinking at lunch and evening time in them for hundreds of years. You can almost scrape the bawdiness of the walls in some of them.

    They have been at the pop at Whitelocks for almost three hundred years. They started in 1715. All that falling over, all that fine food and porter and all those lewd and improper suggestions bandied around.

    Gives me real pleasure to know that some of my kids antecedents witnessed some of it at first hand. Just about possible that old grandad would have served people who knew people who were alive in the eighteenth century.

    I always like a yarn that plausibly begins with I knew a fella who knew a fella.......

    Ah the very thought it..........

    deano

    Goes without saying that I'm pissed off wi CiF as well.

    ReplyDelete
  29. deano,
    They are struggling though. The brewerys don't help.

    ReplyDelete
  30. @colin:

    Strobes is always interesting on the subject of the dreaded "pubco".

    ReplyDelete
  31. SwiftyBoy,
    Strobes?
    I remember when a pint in a pub cost one and a penny, about five and a half p.
    For the price of 3 beers bought in a pub now one can become totally paralysed at home with stuff bought from a supermarket. Unfortunately in front of a computor sometimes.

    ReplyDelete
  32. @colin:

    Sorry, Private Eye. There was a long-ish piece in there a fortnight ago.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Oh my word....

    Check out the open thread on CiF, and tell me that conspiracy theories are cracked....

    ReplyDelete
  34. Swifty,


    Oh that Strobes, gotcha.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Vari,
    Just plagiarised myself on that one.

    ReplyDelete
  36. @colin:

    Just plagiarised myself on that one

    And me with the Clangers reference, you weasel, I mean stoat.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Afternoon all

    Not got the flu - just a cold - but enough to make me irritable and post on that shit Hansons piece. Had hard time not being really rude.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Halp - have just been exposed to second-hand swine flu! Silly mother whose kid has it had the gall to come to work....

    ReplyDelete
  39. thauma: the dangers of swine flu have been much exaggerated.

    But there’s obviously something wrong with the first “e” in your post, which has mutated into an “a” ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  40. @colin:

    Not a problem old man, anyone can go in to bat for me over there just now, I can't be arsed with it all at the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Do you think that CiF Eds surf this site to get ideas for CiF?


    If so, can you ask Bindel to perhaps tap out something? Dosn't have to be a specific topic, just pop her in front of the keyboard and let the creative juices flow.....

    ReplyDelete
  42. Not sure about CiF eds, Vari, but I know one thing:

    Charlie don’t surf!

    ReplyDelete
  43. Julie Bindel's in the G2 section today - she sure doesn't like Lars von Trier's Antichrist - mind you it does sound a bit grim.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Colin - apparently there are moves afoot to have an EU president although the Irish have to sign up to the Lisbon Treaty first.

    Guess who is being mooted for the job? Blair! Even if its just a ceremonial role we'll still have the bastard back strutting around with that oily smile of his - doesn't bear thinking about.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Sheff,
    How lovely, he wont have any power or a fancy hat but there will be shit loads of money I bet.

    Come to think of it how can he be President without an election?

    I would like to vote for some foreign chap who is probably just as bad but hasn't been given the opportunity for destruction that Tone has.

    ReplyDelete
  46. It should contine the Wim Kok, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Jan (?) Kronk (or was it Pronk?) tradition of amusingly named Europoliticos. I'm praying there's a Dutchie called Arsvlaap van Roondebend or Ken Wank.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Hi Fencewalker: I almost missed you.

    Don’t forget Arsvlapp’s brother Trans Roondebend.
    traneroundthebanned is me though, as you possibly guessed.

    I haven’t actually seen that many bees at Hatfield Forest this year, but it seemed like a good way to hoax you over here again.

    No time to chat tonight; hope to catch you over here again sometime though :-)

    sheff & stoat:

    My recollection is that it’s not just the Irish who have yet to ratify that Lisbon thingy, but I’m sure the Euro-bureaucrats will find a way round that problem for us all.

    And Blair doesn’t need to be elected. Are you kidding – he’s the anointed one – touched by the hand etc...

    ReplyDelete
  48. Sorry, that should be COAX you over...

    ReplyDelete
  49. My comment got swallowed up so here goes again:

    Spare a thought for us over here - we'd have to live with Blair. Brussels is so small I'd be bumping into him everywhere.

    The Dutch do have fun names - there's a historical reason for that. During one of their many occupations in the mists of time, many of them invented silly names as a form of resistance to the conqueror and then had to live with the consequences. The Flemish, who speak the same language, have completely different sounding names.

    However nothing beats the Korean gem -
    Mr Suk-Bum.

    Got to go, slightly whacked from heavy-duty socialising last night and the sultry weather which has returned with a vengeance.

    Off to immerse myself in a good thriller.....

    ReplyDelete
  50. Coaxed works for me.
    Flemings: Perhaps this is that famous Vlaamsbollocks we've been hearing about.

    ReplyDelete
  51. fence
    I like your 'name the President' idea. Just can't think of any ...
    apart from Bols, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Actually, I don't think there's a chance in hell of TB being selected as president - it's just wishful thinking on Labour's part. At least I hope so.

    Has anyone else read the very moving article in Tuesday's G2 about old people's homes, and yesterday's follow-up? Both my grannies have gone down that road, and it wasn't pretty.

    My personal opinion is that we are prologing people's lives too far through drugs. I was particularly devastated by the death of my father's mother, as she brought me up and was the single person in the world I loved the most. (She died on my birthday two years ago.) I would have had her living for ever, but the fact is that she had not enjoyed life at all for several years and was more than ready to go. It was selfish of me to want to prolong it.

    The thought of living in a nursing home is horrifying to me as the thing I value above all, probably, is my privacy - and autonomy.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Felíz cumpleáños, but ya kno what I meants...

    ReplyDelete