Good article on Georges Franju's Eyes Without A Face. An unsung classic of the horror film indeed.
10:11 PM | link
Jesus Christ—with you always. I'm not entirely convinced that there's no satirical intention at work here, but the comments by artist Larry Van Pelt about being called by God to show people going about their ordinary everyday work and showing the presence of Jesus in their lives as they do so have a disturbing ring of sincerity to them. Still, if these pictures are accurate in any way, Jesus has great hair and a pretty spiffy beard too...
9:48 PM | link
The name game. Interesting article on the meanings of names and how people use them.
8:46 PM | link
Andrew Ford reviews Granta 76, the theme of this collection being music. What makes me happy, though, is the notice at the bottom that Ford himself has a new collection out shortly as well called Undue Noise; I always liked his stuff in 24 Hours when I used to read that regularly back around 1993-95 (after which I got tired of it and now only buy it on rare occasions; nowhere near as good as it used to be), so I'm hoping this will be good too...
8:44 PM | link
Owners of dogs which attacked and killed a woman get jailed for murder and manslaughter.
8:34 PM | link
Even AOL/Time Warner have difficulties getting AOL's email software to work properly for them. For some reason I'm glad I've always resisted the temptation to try those CD-ROMs you used to get on computer magazines offering an AOL setup with 100 free hours use.
8:01 PM | link
Article on alternate histories from the Sydney Morning Herald. With recommendations for further reading in this field, such as this Australian-based alternate timelines site, which features things like what might've happened had Gough Whitlam refused to go after being dismissed by John Kerr in 1975.
7:50 PM | link
More people naming their kids after food. I feel sorry for whoever it is has got parents who've made them go around in the world named Cappuccino.
7:39 PM | link
So humans are genetically wired for violence? God, that should be a revelation to about, oh, six or seven people...
7:37 PM | link
Three pictures from The Two Towers. I saw Fellowship of the Ring for the second time through the week and loved it all over again. Here's hoping Peter Jackson's been able to keep that up for the next two films in the trilogy, which I can't wait for...
7:35 PM | link
The Louvre putting its entire collection online. Apparently this includes 130,000 paper works most visitors never see because they're too fragile to be exhibited normally. Since those paper works account for most of their collection (it has about 35,000 other works), that sounds pretty damn good...
7:27 PM | link
African National Congress disputes existence of AIDS. The five million or so people who apparently have HIV in South Africa may be surprised to hear this.
7:16 PM | link
The Absurdity of the Year Award. I can see those gold toilet bowl prizes becoming sought after.
7:12 PM | link
Spammer sues email address list providers. Apparently not only were they full of non-existent addresses, they contained "people who hadn't asked to receive commercial marketing messages". Since when has the fact that people don't want to receive advertisements by email prevented spammers from sending them anyway? I don't buy this story either.
7:57 PM | link
Sarah Michelle Gellar doing the girl-on-girl action thing again. Sadly, the scene in question will apparently not be included in the forthcoming Scooby Doo film; I'll bet, though, that when the DVD release is announced, there'll be mad petitions for it to be included as an extra...
7:31 PM | link
Spammers beware: this man wants you to pay him for reading your crap. Indeed, one court case later, one spammer's been ordered to fork over a few thousand bucks to him. A story to put a smile on the face of anyone who's ever been shat to tears by spam, including all of Hotmail's customers...
7:28 PM | link
That kid who was expelled from school over having that breadknife in his truck is going back to school. Meanwhile, so is this teacher, despite being sacked for being caught using cocaine. Like the man says in the article, they expel the kids for taking aspirin or No-Doz...
7:24 PM | link
Why the Soviets never went to the moon. And no, it's apparently not because the whole race to put a man on the moon was a Cold War political stunt and the Russians thought there was no point once Messrs Armstrong and Aldrin beat them to it.
7:21 PM | link
Tony Blair warns Saddam not use weapons of mass destruction against his boys on pain of being nuked. And I know I shouldn't, but I find this terribly amusing for some reason.
7:10 PM | link
Richard Nixon on drugs. Not literally, I should add, he's just talking here about the insidious effect of drugs. But he kind of sounds like he was on something. How else to explain a rant like this? (I quote here from the article)
"That's been going on for years, centuries, but when the popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual. . . . Now, that's what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root them out, they don't let 'em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what they do with them."
"Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They're trying to destroy us."
God bless the former Soviet Union, eh! They may have been dangerous Red menaces trying to undermine the security of the Free World, but at least they were straight.
7:06 PM | link
The Simpsons: making learning about mathematics fun. Unfortunately I was never any good at maths, and must be so innumerate that I've never noticed any of the maths-based jokes, especially that one about Fermat's Last Theorem, described herein.
6:58 PM | link
Church of Scientology orders Google to pull anti-Scientology websites from its listings. Of course, Xenu and Clambake are still around (apparently they're based in Norway, hence why the CoS can't use US laws to have them whacked), it's just that they will apparently no longer appear in the first page of links churned out by Google when you go looking for Scientology-related sites.
6:54 PM | link
Book banning alive and well in the US public library system. A sad story indeed.
6:39 PM | link
The Keanus have been announced! I'm surprised Black Hawk Down didn't get the Most Transparent Revision of History award, though, given the way it almost completely skated over the fact that the US' mission in Somalia was a failure.
6:37 PM | link
Now I'm angry. I tried posting a few items at lunchtime today while I was at TAFE (we have Net access in the classrooms and several folks use them for email purposes, as do I—mostly to try and whack spam from my email account before downloading it off the ANS mail server at home in the afternoon—and today I chose to do a bit of blogging), but something fucked up somewhere along the way and the blog wouldn't show up. It wasn't a temporary bug either, as there was still nothing there when I checked at home about seven hours later. I've deleted those posts (fortunately there were only six of them, and none of them were long since I didn't have time to write extended commentary), which seems to have cleared up whatever problem there was, but I still don't like it. From scratch, then...
6:26 PM | link
By the way, I forgot to mention I did write that letter about Sneers Akerman which I threatened to write, and it was duly published in the Telegraph today, saw it this morning before leaving for TAFE. Unfortunately they lopped off the last paragraph in which I called him a bigoted right-wing hypocrite and toady for a retrogressive government; still, nice to see one's name in the funny pages like that...
10:25 PM | link
A story to strike terror into the hearts of bibliophiles and authors everywhere. I mean it, I'm aghast at this. And I'm sorry, but the comment about how the books aren't being killed, they're being recycled, does not cut it with me.
7:10 PM | link
"Chicken hawks". I like that term. Basically it's used to describe those folks who are out there acting as cheerleaders for the War on Terror™, what our American friends refer to as "hawks", but were too chicken to do military service themselves back in the day when their number came up—including Dubya himself, who apparently has a noticeable gap of some 18 months in his National Guard service which has not been accounted for. Here's a list of assorted "chicken hawks" who managed to dodge active service; I daresay most of these names may be familiar only to people really up on their US politics, but there's some surprisingly familiar names in there...
6:41 PM | link
Elton John mocks Liza Minnelli's latest wedding. Still, at least it wasn't a sham concocted to try and make her appear to really be heterosexual, unlike the weddings of some people we could name, Reg...
6:20 PM | link
Policewoman dies after being shot in police station toilet. The death is not being treated as suspicious, apparently. Why should it be, indeed? After all, that sort of thing happens daily, doesn't it?
6:17 PM | link
Saudi newspaper forced to retract comments about how Jews use the blood of Muslims and Christians in making Purim food.
6:12 PM | link
Two guys who are old enough to know better slugged for letting off fart gas in shopping centre. "I don't want to be known as the fart guy," one 65-year-old defendant claimed. Should've thought of that before pulling that spray can out...
5:52 PM | link
Plastic surgery will soon be able to give us wings. Why the hell you might want wings, especially since you wouldn't be able to fly with them, is another matter.
5:46 PM | link
Teachers forced to resign after showing R-rated movie to kids. Which reminds me, I recall the teachers at my high school once showing us Apocalypse Now, and a bunch of friends of mine were reportedly also shown Death Wish during some class or other. Both of those are R-rated too, and that's the Australian R rating at that, which actually makes it illegal to exhibit those films to people under 18. In America on the other hand, an R rating means people under 17 can only watch the film with adult supervision, which you could argue (though admittedly it'd be a tenuous argument) the teachers were providing. It was no doubt foolish of them to show History of the World Part I to a group of special education students, but I don't see that they've actually done anything illegal as such...
5:39 PM | link
The latest batch of Rock n Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Eddie Vedder makes himself look foolish by claiming his new self-inflicted mohawk was a reaction to "bombings and world events". Shit, Eddie, those things make me angry too, but I'm not getting a stupid haircut because of that...
5:32 PM | link
Art for puke's sake. Look, I know that a lot of modern art frankly just puzzles me, even though I do try and understand, and I know that things are considered art these days which go beyond the old norms... but I really don't see how a bunch of embalmed human corpses is art.
5:14 PM | link
Utah governor sued for deleting his email. Apparently there actually is a law whereby people like him in official positions have to announce that they're going to delete old messages. Does that extend to whacking spam?
5:08 PM | link
Adam Baer on the Oscars' film music awards. He is not impressed.
5:03 PM | link
Religion's influence fading in America. So says some poll or other. I don't believe it, though. Even were it not for the fact that these polls are invariably inherently flawed and untrustworthy (hence why it galls me when people do take them seriously, let's face it, the Religious Right has power in the US right now. We may mock John Ashcroft's musical pretensions, but let's not forget his prominence within the US government...
4:58 PM | link
North magnetic pole looks like leaving Canada. What interests me is the bit where it says the location of the pole fluctuates daily and migrates 10-40km each year. Never knew it did any such thing.
4:51 PM | link
And a big hello to Terry Sedgwick, who sent me an email this evening with kind words. View his work here, here and here.
10:49 PM | link
Even the military's getting in on the reality TV game. How is it that I don't have a reality TV show of my own? Well, sure, you can make the case that my life is too boring, meaningless and empty to be worthy of TV... but shit, how is that any worse than some of the specimens of humanity on Survivor or Big Brother?
10:18 PM | link
Interesting-looking exhibit at the AGNSW. I may be going to check this one out myself sometime.
9:57 PM | link
Internet child porn ring busted. John Ashcroft says, and I quote: "It is clear that a new marketplace for child pornography has emerged from the dark corners of cyberspace." Is this really news to anyone other than Johnny Boy?
9:56 PM | link
Aeroplane passenger pronounced dead at end of flight may have been dead before he got on. What was I saying before about observational skills?
9:45 PM | link
US Operation Anaconda in eastern Afghanistan officially over. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is where exactly...?
9:43 PM | link
The Icelandic penis museum. Words honestly fail me.
9:35 PM | link
World's oldest living person living no more. RIP 115-year-old Maud Farris-Luse.
9:34 PM | link
Asteroid passed Earth by only 288,000 miles, and no one noticed until four days later. If it had hit the atmosphere it could've had the force of a 4-megaton nuke and flattened a city. This really gives you faith in the observational abilities of scientists today, eh...
9:23 PM | link
Attack of the vampire pharmacist. This is utterly weird.
9:19 PM | link
The 100 best fictional characters since 1900. But Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance circa 1890, did he not? I presume he's a great 20th century fictional character in much the same way as the AFI's 100 Best American Films list (it was theirs, wasn't it? Oh who cares) considers The Third Man and Lawrence of Arabia to be great American films. Still, good to see the immortal Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces at 17 on the list.
9:15 PM | link
Dave Barry on the Oscars. Sample: "I was there once, in 1987, along with the movie critics, who are very bitter because they know, in their hearts, that their teeth will never look as nice as the teeth of the people they write about."
9:10 PM | link
The automatic complaint letter generator. Spits out up to 10 paragraphs against a target of your choice. I can't resist including some of the statements it made when I entered Dubya's name:
Well, I knew it was coming. In fact, I predicted it quite a long time ago when I said that George W. Bush would mold your mind and have you see the world not as it is, but as Bush wants you to see it. [...] He has two imperatives. The first is to represent a threat to all the people in the area, indeed, possibly the world. The second imperative is to pose a threat to personal autonomy and social development. Not to belabor the point, but Bush sometimes uses the word "honorificabilitudinity" when describing his mottos. Beware! This is a buzzword designed for emotional response. [...] Or perhaps you don't have to say anything specifically about Bush for him to start attacking you. All you have to do is dare to imply that I should defy him. [...] If we contradict him, we are labelled crass killjoys. If we capitulate, however, we forfeit our freedoms. [...] It is no news that Bush's deputies all look like Bush, think like Bush, act like Bush, and reinforce the impression that ill-bred pickpockets—as opposed to Bush's confreres—are striving to base racial definitions on lineage, phrenological characteristics, skin hue, and religion, just like Bush does. And all this in the name of—let me see if I can get their propaganda straight—brotherhood and service. [...] So please permit me to appropriate and paraphrase something I once heard: "Bush's prophecies are a vehicle for the expression of prejudice, ignorance, and enmity about people who are different from Bush." [...] The truth is that Bush is always prating about how it is better that a hundred thousand people should perish than that he should be even slightly inconvenienced. (He used to say that people don't mind having their communities turned into war zones, but the evidence is too contrary, so he's given up on that score.) [...] Continue to appease Bush, and he will unmistakably inaugurate an era of bestial alcoholism.
I couldn't have put it better myself. Here's what I got when I put my name in for a one paragraph screed:
I've reached a point where I feel the need to express my disappointment with James G. W. Russell. Here's my side of the story: Russell wants to inject his lethal poison into our children's minds and souls. You know what groups have historically wanted to do the same thing? Fascists and Nazis. None but the deplorable can deny that it's a pity that two thousand years after Christ, the voices of rapacious, illiterate jokers like him can still be heard, worse still that they're listened to, and worst of all that anyone believes them. Russell's epigrams are as troubling as his insistence that he is a paragon of morality and wisdom. The sooner he comes to grips with that reality, the better for all of us. Okay, I've vented enough frustration. So let me end by saying that James G. W. Russell has a one-track mind.
I surely do. Lethally poisoning children is what I'm all about.
9:02 PM | link
The Underground Literary Alliance. I still don't know if this sort of confrontational stance really achieves much beyond aggravation, but it's interesting nonetheless.
8:35 PM | link
Yes, it's that damn Inglis place again. So I have an unhealthy fascination with this story. Want to make something of it? This is quite a long, interesting article, with some interesting bits where the author of the piece remarks that Carolyn Risher's declaration was handled more like a Voodoo ceremony than anything else, and when one of his interviewees remarks that Satan was upset by the proclamation. What an image that summons, the Horned One weeping and begging on his knees to be allowed into town, and Mrs Risher politely but firmly telling him no. I don't know, though, reading about Inglis itself, it sounds like such a pissant little place I can't imagine what Satan would want to be doing there...
8:32 PM | link
Happy Birthday Harbour Bridge! The 70th anniversary of the opening of the giant coathanger was today. Given the fuss which was made around its 60th birthday ten years ago, which I still remember fairly well (largely because the walk across the bridge which was organised to mark the event proved to be an utter logistical disaster), I was astonished to see the 70th had crept up on me today. Didn't even know until I saw the paper this morning. Have I just missed it, or has there really been very little hype about it? I wouldn't be too surprised if the former were the case, knowing me, but I don't think so somehow...
7:40 PM | link
Piers Akerman's latest bilespit. Yawn. Let us merely note these paragraphs:
I want my daughters to inherit an Australia which has a culture that encourages people (men and women) to intelligently debate issues without fear of being personally attacked.I want them to live in an open society that encourages transparency, that does not bring down the shutters on inquiries into judges or others because they may be privileged.
Piers wants intelligent debate rather than personal abuse, yet on the evidence of other columns of his I've read, there seem to be few methods of attack he himself likes better than the ad hominem. As for transparency, was it not uncle Piers himself who, during the unsightly business with the Tampa and the boat people, demanded in a shrill tone that journalists and other individuals wishing to investigate the government's documentary and photographic evidence surrounding that little spat must not be allowed to do so? I think I may write to the Telegraph about this one...
6:58 PM | link
Man accused of killing family found hanged in cell. So much for that, it seems. Incidentally, my Mum reckons she actually met the man's wife, who he allegedly killed, she used to come into the post office where Mum works.
6:49 PM | link
The wearisome tale of Justice Michael Kirby and Senator Bill Heffernan comes to an end. Somehow I can't help but agree with a few folks on aus.culture.gothic newsgroups who reckon the Kirby/Heffernan business has worked as a bit of a smokescreen, obscuring not only l'affaire Hollingworth, but also this interesting tale. If true, this latter bit of business amounts to an appalling potential parliamentary scandal, and yet I don't think there's been much coverage of it...
6:47 PM | link
Cartoons fall victim to political correctness again. This time it's Speedy Gonzales being damned as a racial stereotype. I mean, God, if you're going to come down on the mouse, come down on him because the cartoons he was in were by and large the mediocre-to-bad ones from the declining days of Warners...
5:48 PM | link
Harry Knowles from AICN claims to have seen Attack of the Clones already. This sounds weird to me. Anonymous person meets him on a book tour, slips him an invitation to a secret private screening of a rough cut of the film, which no one even from Fox has seen yet. Like, that happens in real life, doesn't it, kids? Anyway, Harry reckons it's fantastic, and promises us that while the appearance of Jar Jar Puke... er, Binks is painful, it's short-lived; he's apparently only in the film for a couple of minutes in total (at least so says The Drudge Report, reporting on this story). That's a very interesting, not to mention heartening, claim, and it's how we'll know whether Harry's telling the truth or feeding us a fib. Cos if Jar Jar's in there longer than Harry says he is, a lot of people are going to be baying for his blood...
5:20 PM | link
Man buried alive for murder in Mexico. Human rights activist claims Mexican justice is "unbalanced". Methinks we have just found the understatement of the year.
5:09 PM | link
Man blinded in lover's quarrel. What intrigues me is the opening statement: "A pensioner has allegedly lost his sight after his eyeballs were torn out of their sockets by his gay lover." If the man has no eyes, how can he have just "allegedly" gone blind?
5:07 PM | link
Romanian tourist board tries to convince people the home of Dracula is actually a good Christian country.
4:50 PM | link
German researchers say TV is fine for kids. It's at times like this I'm grateful I don't have offspring of my own. Imagine the scene: "You're not watching those fucking cartoons, Billy, you're going up to your room and do your homework." "But Dad, this German guy I read about on the Internet said TV is good for kids." WHACK. "Don't talk back to me, boy. Just do your damn maths homework..."
4:48 PM | link
Paul Boutin and Patrick Di Justo examine that "missing Boeing" story. I posted to that back on the 12th, you may recall; a link to the original French website is included in this piece.
4:32 PM | link
Poodle called to do jury duty. Next: Maltese terrier appointed as High Court judge.
4:16 PM | link
Margaret Thatcher blames Europe for all the world's ills. Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit no doubt is nodding enthusiastically. I'm puzzled by her claim that Europe was responsible for Marxism, though; after all, though Marx and Engels may have been German by birth, Engels' first book was called The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on his experiences of working in a Manchester factory office in the early 1840s... as Lenin said, "It was not until he came to England that Engels became a socialist." Still, methinks there would be no point trying to tell the Baroness this; like many politicians, she strikes me as the sort of person who would maintain in the face of all evidence that her views are self-evidently correct, regardless of whether or not they actually correspond with reality.
4:10 PM | link
Shihad finally settle on new name. I personally think it's fucking outrageous that such a move would be considered necessary at all, and I'm faintly disappointed in the band themselves for caving into it. Though I don't know. Have they actually been told that no one will book them or play them on the radio because the band name looks like the word "jihad"? If so, by who? The bookers and DJs themselves? It's weird, and very sad.
8:23 PM | link
Russell Crowe's band going nowhere. The new album sold a mere 156 copies in its first two days of British release. I like the spokesman's spin on the event, too: "the album release was always intended to be a soft-launch". Fair enough, but don't you think that's slightly too soft? I'm glad this bloke's not working as my publicity man...
8:14 PM | link
First it was an eating disorder, then it was depression, now it's arthritis. What will Daniel Johns from silverchair suffer next? Eat some fucking meat, boy!
8:12 PM | link
Joanne Lees lashes out. The story of Ms Lees and the disappearance/death of her boyfriend in the Australian outback is adequately described in the article, so no need for me to go into it here. What does strike me is her accusation of the woman who looked after her for a few days of exploiting the situation by talking to the media. Like Joanne's not exploiting it herself by accepting a reported $82,000 for the TV interview wherein she took these potshots? Like the woman in the Telegraph today said, we shouldn't judge her on that account, but at the same time she shouldn't be getting judgemental either...
8:08 PM | link
Interesting interview with Jon Ronson, author of Them: Adventures With Extremists. This is a book I've seen for sale lately and thought hmm, that might be interesting; after reading this, I think I'll definitely have to check it out...
7:20 PM | link
Women jump off building, take cat with them. Poor cat, I say. No one seems to know why they felt a need to make the cat join in the suicide pact, nor why they apparently came to Berlin exclusively to kill themselves. Weird story.
7:06 PM | link
Sebastian Bach, late of Skid Row, arrested over bar fight. "Don't you know who I am?" he reportedly kept shouting at witnesses. Why yes, Sebastian, we do. We remember mediocre early-90s hair metal bands like yours tragically well.
7:02 PM | link
Canadian government proposes "mp3 tax". Portable mp3 players will be slugged with a huge price hike, up from $600 to $1000, and blank CDs, MiniDiscs and tapes will also go up in price. Apparently this is in the interests of protecting artists' copyrights, and the money raised from this tax will go to them. I'm all for the rights of artists, I may add; much as I like mp3 from a consumer's perspective (i.e. the try-before-you-buy thing, making available out of print songs, rarities, etc), I can understand the consternation of recording artists when faced by it. I don't think the Metallica method of dealing with it was the right one (way to alienate yer fans, boys), but I can, to some degree, understand the fear involved. No one wants to lose money on a thing. But I don't really see how this is going to be much use... after how, it's fine to say the extra tax will go towards artists, but how? And which artists will benefit by it? Or is it going to be just like every other tax in the world where the only ones who benefit are the tax office?
6:53 PM | link
School board member fired for sprinkling "voodoo powder" outside a superintendent's door.
6:30 PM | link
The "Chinese Columbus" theory gaining interest. The theory that the Chinese beat European sailors to Australia, though, is hardly a new idea; my 20-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica claims there may have been Chinese explorers here in the 1430s.
6:26 PM | link
Thousands of miniature Union Jack flags for the Queen's jubilee actually made in Germany. That creaking sound you can hear is thousands of World War veterans rolling around in their graves at the irony of it all.
6:21 PM | link
Parents cry foul over kids' spelling bee. A spelling bee. I mean, shit, I could almost understand the parents getting worked up over a sporting match, but... a spelling bee?
6:15 PM | link
French intellectuals deployed to prove non-existence of God to Taliban. Fortunately this is satire.
5:34 PM | link
Inglis still hung up on Satan. If it weren't so risible in some ways, it'd be a genuine worry. Actually, it is a worry. This Mayor Carolyn Risher is clearly obsessed with the Devil, and we've seen where that's led people and communities in the past. I also like her comment regarding the recent theft of the posts with her anti-Satan proclamation: "All I know is, it couldn't have been Christians who stole them. Christians don't steal." I'll bet she thinks they don't kill, either...
4:38 PM | link
Michael Jackson plans literal moonwalk. I don't suppose NASA would be considerate enough to leave the silly bugger there, would they?
4:32 PM | link
Mexican military keeps making incursions into the US. I don't hear Dubya threatening them with nukes, though...
4:28 PM | link
The wit and wisdom of Steven Wright. You have to love someone who says that when he dies he'll be leaving his body to science fiction.
4:25 PM | link
Woman donates clothes to charity, mistakenly puts life savings in clothing bag as well. This surely is about as idiotic as it gets, made mildly stranger by the fact that the police (who've recovered about half of the money) are treating the situation as a theft. Something about that don't seem quite right to me...
3:12 PM | link
"A herd of co-dependent minds". Nicely sums up my feelings towards the "blogosphere" with its hawkish right-wing tendencies that I've noticed so much of during the month or so I've been operating in the blogging world myself.
2:21 PM | link
John Woo: stop the violence! (scroll down for story) That's Woo saying that, by the way, not someone telling him to turn it down. Slightly rich from the man who brought us The Killer, Hard-Boiled, Bullet in the Head, etc, no?
1:58 PM | link
School outlaws "vulgar" dancing. Long live the generation gap. Did the people outlawing this activity never do anything like it themselves when they were young? Or do we assume they were never young?
1:51 PM | link
US sends 10 million school books to Afghanistan. The French will no doubt now send a planeload of philosophers to go with it. And is it just me, or does anyone else think Dubya's not exactly the right person to be educating others about tolerance?
1:46 PM | link
Polish police set fire to suspect. That's novel. In the US they just sodomise them with broomsticks or else shoot them dead outright. Never heard of them setting them on fire, though...
1:43 PM | link
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