03 February 2010

03/02/10

More than 2000 people in the town of Cesena were killed by the troops of Pope Gregory XI in 1377.  Tulip Mania in the United Provinces crashed in 1637.  New Zealand's worst natural disaster, an earthquake at Hawkes Bay, killed 258 in 1931.  And in 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (JP Richardson) were killed when their plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa.

Born today:  Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1947), Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), Simone Weil (1909-1943), Dave Davies (1947), Melanie Safka (1947), Henning Mankell (1948), Lol Tolhurst (1959) and Isla Fisher (1976).

It is the Festival of Setsubun in Japan.

73 comments:

  1. Boo, Radio4 sounds like it's being recorded through a crumpled paper bag. May be forced to switch over to R3 and actually do some work.

    New flatmate moved in yesterday, let's see how this goes. Spent our first evening together watching 'The Peacemaker' in French - ah, Nicole Kidman back when she thought method acting just meant dyeing her hair...

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  2. This is funny...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKfNyfzYipU&feature=player_embedded

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  3. Ha ha! Bachmann on the homeopathy thread:

    I'm dissapointed you haven't mentioned Budweiser in this expose. Me and a mate once drank twenty eight bottles of the stuff and didn't get remotely pissed or hungover.

    Priceless.

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  4. Hi folks!

    I just love threads about "worst movies" , especially when some people mention revered flicks like "The Piano"

    Still, I find "Batman Forever" worse than "Batman & Robin"; an out-and-out self-confidently camp movie about heroes in latex suits is always preferable to a wannabe-camp movie about heroes in latex suits.

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  5. Right on, Dot. As everyone should know, the plural of "anecdote" is "data".

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  6. Now, I like the cut of this jib..

    Kietzche
    3 Feb 2010, 4:08PM

    Avatar.

    AvatarAvatarAvatarAvatar.

    I've loved film since I was a kid, but that crock made the whole industry leap the dogfish, the media included especially. The film that turned everybody into lobotomised AyeAyes trapped inside a rich idiot's racist kaleidescope of furry porn.

    Film can fuck off, and so can Empire.

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  7. You can't annoy me today elementary, one of my experiments worked!

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  8. Ah, the defence review.

    Bob Ainsworth sounding like a total berk on PM.

    "You're oversimplifying the situation"
    "I'm quoting you"
    "Yes, I know that, anyway..."

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  9. interviewer now talking to Ainsworth with the patient coaxing tone of a nursery assistant trying to get George to come out from under the sand-tray and say hello to mummy...

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  10. Evening everyone.

    Snowing hard here. If it goes on like this all night we'll have to dig ourselves out in the morning.

    Re worst films - the only film I have ever walked out of was Gangs of New York. Was abysmal.

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  11. Re that business we were talking about yesterday - Hezbollah/Hamas gearing up for an attack on Israel. Still not convinced but the link below is interesting:

    Lebanon's AK-47 index may be pointing to war

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  12. Duke, see you got the supercilious neo-liberal sneer from Mr Bracken...

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  13. any scientists present, head to the homeopathy thread and check out truthandjustice28 posting at 5.51.

    I'd copy bits in but somehow that would interfere with its...coherence (in the purely linguistic, rather than logical, ssense)

    you will not regret it...

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  14. Hi Alisdair,

    yeah I saw that as well.

    I've never had direct interaction with him but in he goes being extremely rude.

    He's typical of the right wing posters who post on CiF- constantly demanding evidence whilst rattling away with their own 'fatuous and glib'(sic) evidence free rantings.

    I do like his highbrow tone though, it's most amusing.

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  15. your grace - plus, he is a bit of a looker.

    not quite as cute as mrmondypops or some of the other pet-derived avatars, but there you go...

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  16. Hi everyone.

    Snowing again & no recent gritting whatsoever on the roads I've been on today. Including the M1. The slip roads are, well, slippery.

    sheff

    It's looking really bad out there now. Dig ourselves out tomorrow or work from home? Umm, tough choice.

    Dot

    Pleased to hear about your experimental success!

    BB

    Re: your link last night - "causing destruction and behaving in a disorderly fashion is not the outcome we are wanting to achieve on this protest." So let's behave on this march, then, but we're still open to causing destruction on another occasion(s). Charming. Absolutely charming.

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  17. PhilippaB
    "he is a bit of a looker."
    That is rhyming slang, right?
    Otherwise, consider all diplomatic links severed, ambassador recalled and troops moved to the front line.

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  18. habib

    Agree, he doesn't ring my bell.

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  19. Evening all

    Tired. Long boring day prosecuting a case I knew I would lose because the other side had an expert witness and those remarkably clever people at the CPS thought we could get away without one. Seeing as all the defence had to do was establish on balance that he was of abnormality of mind at the time and didn't know what he was doing, I was scuppered.

    Good as I am at cross examination when I have me wits about me, I am not a forensic psychiatrist and had no evidence on which to be able to question him as to his findings that the defendant was legally insane at the time of the offences and should be acquitted (it was the mags court so no "fitness to plead", hospital orders and the like).

    Still, I hear the defendant will now be offered a job in the local CPS offices...

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  20. MsChin, perhaps I was a bit unfair, after all love is blind.

    BB
    Tough day at the office, huh? I hate fighting battles I can't win - respect to you. Unwind, relax, have a sip, you'll get him next time.

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  21. Have to agree with Philippa on the 'looker' comment, although the posts are vile.

    Headed back to homeopathy for a good laugh....

    Oh, but I feel a bit shallow about that as I've just read Robin Cook's aide's piece over dinner and should probably be going into that.

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  22. Well on the other hand, I guess if he was genuinely ill - and he appears to have been on the face of it - we shouldn't have been prosecuting him anyway. It just makes for a really boring day though. The CPS don't allow us to think for ourselves and drop a case if we don't think it's a runner, which is bloody stupid, but they are all about ticking boxes. Ah well.

    Got an Old Speckled Hen with my name on it here :o)

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  23. I'm battling it out on the BNP thread as usual. Never got over my teenage Anti Nazi League fervour about the fash :p

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  24. Philippa -

    take my cat, for example

    Priceless!

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  25. BB - do you not find that Old Speckled has a highly offensive effect on the odour of one's, er, water?

    Drank the stuff once. Never again.

    (I fully realise that this is not scientific proof and may well be complete coincidence.)

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  26. Thaum

    Actually it does. But I don't care, because it is the Best British beer evah! :o)

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  27. BB, good luck on the BNP threads - you do like an unwinnable battle, after all.
    Old Speckled Hen? Damn, that's a good beer. Making do with Kilkenny from a can. Hmmm... for some Jura whisky right now.

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  28. "Best British beer evah!"
    Nah!!! Sam Smith's in Tadcaster!

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  29. BB - phew, glad it wasn't just me, then.

    This truthandjustice bloke is getting funnier and funnier:

    what if the way that Homeopathy works is a way as yet not covered by the scope of Scientific knowledge ?
    then perhaps normal water and Homeopathic water would seem the same because the essential difference is not showing up on the scientific radar

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  30. Museum Ale. Why did they stop making that?

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  31. Had a look on the BNP thread and sterling work from olching (as ever), RapidEddie, clunie and BB.
    That was a great comment from AllyF as well.

    BB, do you have a Woody Guthrie inspired ''This machine kills fascists'' sticker on your work briefcase?

    As for English beers- Only Timothy Taylor Landlord will do.

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  32. Pah! English beers.

    Every ful kno that Guinness cures a fuck of a lot more ailments than homeopathic remedies.

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  33. Best British Beer....Tenant's Super...ice cold
    Second Place.........McEwan's Champion.

    The English can't make beer

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  34. "Guinness cures a fuck of a lot more ailments than homeopathic remedies."
    Creates 'em, too.
    Tim Taylor Landlord - good call.

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  35. monkeyfish, I knew I rechhhognised yer from our parkhhhh bench! You still owe me a cig!

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  36. Habib

    Creates 'em, too.

    Whaaa? Listen, mate, you don't want to start an intercountry war, do you, not with Six Nations starting at the week-end?

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  37. McEwans - fair enough. But Tennant's Super? Bleugh!

    Your Grace - I need to get a sticker like that! :o)

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  38. Haven't looked at the homeopathy thread yet - will take a peek now

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  39. MF - correct me if I am wrong, but are those not lagers rather than beers? I refer you to Bachmann's comment up-thread. (Although I grant you the ones you mention are vastly superior to that bat-piss.)

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  40. Thauma,
    "you don't want to start an intercountry war, do you"
    as we speak, my brethren are smuggling marker pens across the borders into Limerick. At a given signal, we will take over and daub real poetry over all your walls!

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  41. Habib - well, considering that your countrymen have tried to appropriate a disproportionate number of Irish writers as Englishmen, or even Brits, we breathlessly await your "poetry".

    We'll still kick your arse come the rugby day of reckoning. :-P

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  42. And what rough beast,
    Its hour come around again,
    Shuffles toward Twickenham to be born
    (on 27/2)?

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  43. Or, to really fuck up the scanning:

    And what green beast,
    Its 90 minutes come round again,
    Shuffles toward Twickenham to be victorious?


    Could add:

    The whites lack all conviction
    While the greens are full of passionate intensity


    ... if that didn't have negative connotations when compared to the original!

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  44. Duh! 90 should be 80, obviously.... Must be time to hit the sack!

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  45. Show of Hands on the radio right now, Radio 4.
    Hell yes. What a band.

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  46. Why is Tenants Lager like sex in a canoe?

    They are both fucking close to water...

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  47. LOL Turminder

    Bitterweed - watching the film of The Avengers. Kitch as f00k but quite funny. Ralph Fiennes as Steed and Uma Thurman as Emma Peel. So stereotypically British - the Americans must love it! :o)

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  48. Oh and Thaum - I very much fear you are right. Sigh.

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  49. Indeed, kitch.
    And indeed, come and watch England, a team who can play boring rugby *and* lose...

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  50. "Get back to your tellytubby dream world of la la land because your out of touch with the real world."

    Yeah BB!

    Ha ha, god the fucktards are out tonight

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  51. BB

    Forgive the naivety but what does the AH signature on the f*cktard's comment mean?

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  52. btw BW, thanks for Show of Hands - good stuff.

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  53. LOL I was busy watching telly and haven't looked.

    AH prolly stands for Adolf Hitler. Some of the Stormcunt numpties do that, or have the numbers 18 (A being the first letter of the alphabet and H being the eighth) or 88 (Heil Hitler) in their nicks.

    Scum.

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  54. Cheers Mschin !
    Yes, they are splendid - here's nmy fave again, cos it's fookin marvelous

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt2Svy-e0x4

    Don't know where you lot get the patience to even debate the neo-nazis, I really don't. Good stuff though, all
    BW
    x

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  55. Heh

    Just responded.

    As I said in summary, considering they are so proud to be English, they can't even fucking spell their own language.

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  56. I'm away to my bed, so I'll leave you to it. Whatever it may be. Night.

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  57. thauma
    "We'll still kick your arse come the rugby day of reckoning."
    I don't really care about rugby, but because you threw down the gauntlet, I'll remember you said that.

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  58. thauma
    take my cat, for example

    If the cat was typing it would make more fucking sense, really...

    mind you, that would be funny

    truthandjustice28kitty
    10.32
    I don't get this homeopathy schtick. I mean, when my human gets himself into a scrape (stubbing his toe on a copy of 'I'm OK, you're OK', singeing his sideburns with a Hopi ear candle, that ind of thing) I just slip a couple of valium into his tea and it calms him right down. But he's not all bad - if I get into a fight, I always get an extra dinner. Mind you, I use E45 for the scarring - gotta look good for the ladies, you know?

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  59. heyhabib
    damn right, stranger things have happened ... ah .... 2003 ....

    Night.

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  60. There's a Ugandan priest on Newsnight apparently urging Rohan to reject sodomy.
    Does this explain why Eowyn was still a shieldmaiden?

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  61. Shadowfax must have ridden him hard !!!

    Badoom - tish !

    Later

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  62. Shadowfax? Shadowfux more like. Riders of Rohan indeed.
    As for Grima Wormtongue...the mind boggles. Blowing Helm's Horn? Helm's Deep Throat?

    Shit, I think we've uncovered Theo's Den of Vice.

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  63. If the Riders of Rohan don't get their Shadowfaxion, they could always use their bilbo.

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  64. Did I say that?... I didn't say that.

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  65. There has got to be a Rolling Stones cover in there somewhere.
    [and yes, yes you did]

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  66. I can't get no Shadowfaxion blah blah
    [Jagger, Richards, Saruman]

    When I'm hidin' in my tower
    And that Sauron sends some ringwraithio
    Sayin' some goddamn Ent formation
    Is ending my domination

    I can't get no etc

    When I'm watching my palantir
    And that man comes on to tell me
    How white my wizard can be
    But he can't be a man cause he doesn't smoke
    Longbottom Leaf like me
    I can't get no hey hey hey

    Anyway, that's my bash. Sad enuff for ya?

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  67. Speechless, Fence, speechless.

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  68. I'm expecting to see three or four better by tomorrow. LOTR + rhyming. Perfect UT storm.

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