Drinking whiskey clear!
Lisa and recently stopped by our local Dollar Tree to pick up some stuff, and I couldn’t help but laugh at this poster:
Yes, because when my life is on the line, I want to stock up on questionable canned food from Nigeria, flashlights that may or may not work, batteries of dubious quality, first aid supplies from the lowest possible bidder, and tape that strains to hold two pieces of paper together, much less anything else!
A man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”
The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”
Daughters of the King is a “spiritual sisterhood of women dedicated to a life of Prayer, Service and Evangelism”. It is, for brevity’s sake, a convent for Episcopalian women. Over the years, however, DOK has expanded their order by admitting women from Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran (ELCA) and Roman Catholic churches.
However, the mania currently engulfing The Episcopal Church has taken over some members of the Order, and at the DOK convention this past Friday there was a motion to limit membership to only those in “approved” Episcopal churches. While those members from Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches would have been kicked to the curb, Anglican women were the real target of what amounts to a beer hall putsch.
Thankfully, the Episcopalian women of DOK voted down the change in the by-laws! BabyBlue says that
[a]t the end of the day and through much debate – some of it quite painful – the DOK Triennial voted down all the amendments and the bylaws in place that include all the members of the Order remain unchanged. The non-Episcopalian members were reseated and the Triennial continued into Saturday.
At least someone with “Episcopal” in their name is acting rationally these days!
Read more about it here.
Hotel Babylon
Season 4, episode 3
Aired: July 3, 2009 on BBC1
SYNOPSIS
This episode begins with a flashback to 1973. Harold Kelly, a jewel thief, is on the run from the cops, and he rushes through the service entrance to Hotel Babylon. There he hides a cache of giant, flawless emeralds behind a painting. He’s then arrested and sent to prison, where he is given a life term.
What does any of this have to do with Hotel Babylon today? Well, it seems that Kelly’s autobiography was recently published (posthumously), and in it he left several clues to the location of the stones. Babylon is soon overrun with curious treasure hunters, and the staff start finding them all over the hotel. Sam and the rest of the staff are convinced that the whole thing is a hoax… except for Anna, who spies a clue right under her nose.
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Happy Birthday, America!
I’m sure some of the liberals out there are racing to publish “America’s first birthday with a black president and what it all means” stories.
Me? I’m gonna sit on a chair made in China and get tanked on Irish beer and listen to English bands whilst eating German sausages with French mustard along with some Belgian fries… and I’ll do it wearing a shirt made in Honduras, jeans made in Malaysia, boxers made in India, and boots made in England but sold only through a Slovakian website… ‘cos that’s how I roll! Too bad I don’t have a Japanese car to drive to get to the party, no?
Seriously… Happy Independence Day, everyone! Have fun, but be careful out there!
Amusing true story: I stole the above graphic from the Bunny Ranch’s website. Here’s the NSFW page from Google’s cache.
You’ve probably heard the French band Nouvelle Vague before. Their music has been used in several TV shows and commercials including Sugar Rush, and a popular promo for the show L.A. Ink (which prominently featured Nouvelle Vague’s cover version of Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself”).
For what it’s worth, the band’s name is a clever play on words: it’s French for “New Wave”, and it represents their “Frenchness” and “artiness” (after the ’60s “new wave” of French cinema), the source of all their music (cover tunes of old punk and New Wave favorites), as well as their actual style of music (which is bossa-nova, which is Portuguese for… “new wave”).
Anyway, the band has a new album out. This one is simply called 3, and it features an awesome cover of the Violent Femme’s “Blister In The Sun” on it. It sounds like it would be great to play at parties! Have a listen and tell me what you think:
[audio:blister.mp3]
Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire whose consecration set off a firestorm in the Anglican Communion, dissed the new Province in a recent interview. Robinson, derisively known as the “Simple County Bishop” (SCB) by conservative Anglicans, said in an interview that
“A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people – I don’t see a future for that.”
Oh yes, Gene… because that’s been a huge problem for the Catholic and Orthodox churches in the past 2,000 years!
Robinson could not explain why the Episcopal Church only gets smaller and smaller as it becomes more and more “inclusive”.
So I’m reading a book called The Great Mutiny: India 1857, which is about a rebellion of native Indian troops against their British masters. Like most rebellions, there were several underlying causes, but the impetus of the rebellion – the spark if you will – was when the British tried to introduce a new type of rifle cartridge that was supposedly covered in both tallow and lard, which offended both the Hindu and Muslim soldiers in the East India Company’s army.
I was struck by one passage in particular, which discusses what the British did to some of the rebels when they were finally tracked down:
Only those with the strongest stomachs, however, could remain unaffected when prisoners were blown away from the mouths of cannon, a punishment inflicted in the days of the Moghul emperors and subsequently adopted by the British in India…. The victim was lashed to a gun, the small of his back or pit of his stomach against the muzzle, then ‘smeared with blood of someone murdered by a member of his own race if such could be procured’. When the gun was fired the man’s body was dismembered. Usually the head, scarcely disfigured, would fly off through the smoke, the fall to earth, slightly blackened, followed by the arms and legs. The trunk would be shattered, giving off ‘a beastly smell’, and pieces of flesh and intestines and gouts of blood would be splashed not only over the gunners but also any spectators who stood too close. Vultures would hover overhead and with grisly dexterity catch lumps of flesh in their beaks.
It’s not that the actual method of execution is so cruel. I’m sure if you were unlucky enough to be strapped to the cannon, all you’d see would be a flash of light and it would be over. But what a message such an execution method sends! Don’t mess with John Bull, eh?
Here’s a list of all the songs heard on the show Ashes to Ashes, updated to include season 2.
UPDATE: Here’s the final playlist, with season 3 included.
Episode 1
Ultravox – “Vienna”
The Clash – “I Fought the Law”
Tubeway Army – “Are Friends Electric?”
The Stranglers – “No More Heroes”
David Bowie – “Ashes to Ashes”
The Passions – “I’m In Love With A German Film Star”
Duran Duran – “Hungry Like the Wolf”
Duran Duran – “Careless Memories”
Roxy Music – “Same Old Scene”
Episode 2
Tenpole Tudor – “Swords of a Thousand Men”
Madness – “The Prince”
Imagination – “Body Talk”
The Flying Lizards – “Money”
Visage – “Fade to Grey”
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – “Souvenir”
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – “Geno”
The Pop Group – “We Are All Prostitutes”
Heaven 17 – “Fascist Groove Thang”
Jon and Vangelis – “I Hear You Now”
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – “Show Me”
Chas and Dave – “Gertcha”
Continue reading “Ashes to Ashes: the definitive playlist (updated)”