I Don't Speak German.

Can someone help me with Der Spiegel's opinion of the Republican field? 

"Twitter Calling. For @MarkDavidson"

This has been flying around Twitter, deservedly, this morning. @markdavidson is probably not happy about it.

Is it true? I don't know. Perhaps it's a juvenile prank. But anyone who has done any ghostwriting will enjoy it. I figure it won't last the day in the original spot, so I post the clip here. Click to enlarge.

Explanation for UK Riots?

O.C. man upset with church teachings convicted of hate crime - latimes.com: "Izad Chavoshan, 32, who lives in Huntington Beach, set trash cans on fire in front of the Orange County Church of Christ on three separate occasions in October 2009, prosecutors said.

Chavoshan was a former church member who disagreed with the church's teachings against masturbation, according to the Orange County district attorney's office."

Three and More

Olympic Logo

I'm a sucker for a nice hat.

Well done.

Though I didn't see these at the Tumblr photoshoplooter , these and more riot-inspired fun image manipulations can be found there.

A Few More-or-Less Amazing Things.

• Coming in 2013, a film of At Swim-Two-Birds. It's one of the two or three funniest Flann O'Brien books, which makes it among the funniest things ever written.
• I saw i/Fran_Liebowitz">Fran Liebowitz today. In a K-Mart. Impossible to fathom.
• BBC iPlayer is soon going to launch in countries other than the UK. Make it to the US soon, please, and expand from just the iPad. I will be glad to pay for that service (just don't make it extortionate, Auntie Beeb).
• The resolution of the debt ceiling is terrible. And most terrible of all, variants of it will get played out for the rest of our lives and it appears Democrats can't play to win any of these hissy fits. Looks like the long decline of America will feature a few people on platinum-armored yachts kept afloat by compliantly dysfunctional instutions and the destitution of millions of dolts who vote to thicken the platinum cladding.

Edited to add: After I wrote "variants of it will get played out for the rest of our lives..." Yglesias wrote a post explaining.

Anna Crilly Radio Controls Porridge

Anna Crilly (probably most well known as Magda from Lead Balloon ) is on Radio Five Live. Anna asks the host if she can try something with her dog, Porridge.

Someone at home with Porridge films the results.

Fastidious. About Taxonomy.

Man with dead weasel accused of assault

"The victim asked, 'Why are you carrying a weasel?' Police said the attacker answered, 'It's not a weasel, it's a marten,' then punched him in the nose and fled."

Simon Greenall and the World Service

Simon Greenall is one of those "Hey, it's that Guy!" performers in the UK. He's excellent in a great deal of quality -- usually comic -- material. But he's not a star per se.

He appeared on the BBC World Service program The World Today on 27 May, 2011. The stated reason was because Cheryl Cole was dropped from the US version of The X Factor due to her Geordie accent. Since Greenall is famous for doing the unintelligible Geordie accent of Michael in It's Alan Partridge, he showed up to speak. Here's the video of the Michael-Partridge bit they played on radio:



It was an inspired choice by the producers of The World Today. In about seven minutes, Greenall performs an array of accents and accent-variants, including Geordie, Lancashire, Northern Irish, Glaswegian, American newsreader, and more. It's an entertaining display and he manages to make a few points that I largely agree with about the relative friendliness of the UK and the USA to regionalism in accents.

It's criminal that the UK Government cut the World Service budget.

Management Tips of the Stars

By Ken Levine: Roseanne's latest insane rant:

"Since there was so much turnover in the writing staff and she had no desire to learn anyone's names, she made them each wear numbers around their necks during runthroughs."

Adorable.

Graham Parker

Graham Parker: Hotel Chambermaid


Not related to recent news, really. I've just been hearing the title phrase more in the past week than I have previously in my life. And it's a good song. But unrelated.

Monuments of the 16th Century

Click for larger image.

Portrait of a Young Boy holding a Child's Drawing, ca. 1515
Giovanni Francesco Caroto (Italian, ca.1480-1555

This is one of those paintings I wish I could view in person. Even on the screen, I spent minutes trying to divine the expression on this child's face and imagining the sounds emanating from the subject. Giggles? Sighs? Italian?

Found at About.com's Art History site.

Monuments of the 21st Century

Behold the Venn Pie-agram created by reddit user HungryHungryHippy.

I first saw it thanks to Duncan Geere

Peter King, meet Kenneth Salvesen

Plaque in honor of those killed in the

1985 IRA bombing of Harrod's in London.

Peter King, who is now busy on Capitol Hill generating much heat but little light about Muslims, was (and is) a fervent supporter of the terrorist group the Irish Republican Army. King "still insists the rebel army was a "legitimate force.'"

As to how he can support such a band of murderers, King told The New York Times:

Of comparisons between the terrorism of the I.R.A. and that of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, Mr. King said: "I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States."

However, in addition to killing many Irish, English, and others, the IRA did kill and injure US Citizens. For instance in the Harrod's bombing about a week before Christmas 1983, three American citizens were injured and Kenneth Salvesen, a US citizen from Chicago, was killed.

A bit over a year after that bombing, Peter King was grand Marshal for the New York St. Patrick's Day parade. The Irish government boycotted it due to King's support for the terrorist IRA.

Many people, including Americans, were killed and injured by the group King supported. I hope someone questions King about whether he knows who Kenneth Salvesen is and can bring himself to justify his support of terrorism to whatever of his family still remains.

pi.z.z.a

One this page which bears the legend "Mind blown," there is a comment that is even more mind-blowing to me than the image up top:

While we're at it, the volume of a pizza of radius z and thickness a = pi.z.z.a

Astounding, really.

Original link via Graham Linehan.

We Had All the Good Signs

Satire from bystanders may cut both ways, but satire and humor from participants can be simultaneously funny and apt.

From Wisconsin:

Photo by Dave Weigel

Oddly enough, the sentiment in the placard may be in response to some "pox on both houses" satire by Jon Stewart in recent days.

There is quite a lot of funny stuff from Wisconsin, intentionally and otherwise.

I noticed that the uprising in Egypt was full of comic protest, too. Anna Louie Sussman writes about humor in the Egyptian revolution for the Atlantic, including this little jibe travelling in email:

Dear Egyptian demonstrators,

Please do not damage the pyramids. We will not rebuild.

-The Jews

---

The title of this post is a variant of a line from Tom Lehrer's song "The Folk Song Army."

Just a Second -- Tickle in my Throat

As previously investigated here, bygone times are full of hilarity -- if one didn't have to live through them. For instance, we've previously spotlighted Habitina, a concoction sold to help drug fiends kick the habit by ingesting a blend of morphine, heroin, and alcohol. I fear it didn't work as advertised.


There is little doubt, however, that The Allenbury's Throat Pastilles (tin pictured above), did indeed provide relief for sore or scratchy throats. The blend of diamorphine (another name for heroin) and cocaine would certainly combat throat discomfort.

I found it via the enjoyable twitter feed @VictorianLondon, curated by Lee Jackson. In recent days he's been on a tear with countless riddles and jokes from Victorian sources, such as:

"Why should a teetotaller not have a wife? Because he cannot sup-porter." joke, 1900

Which reminds me of one of my favorite jokes, as written by Samuel Beckett in one of his novels:

Why did the barmaid champagne?
Because the stout porter bitter.

Lee Jackson has been kind enough to set up the Random Victorian Joke Page. It's worth a page refresh or two.

Pyrite

Jerks worthy to pester, those cash for gold scammers.

Cumberbatch as Rickman

Benedict Cumberbatch performs Candle In the Wind in the style of Alan Rickman.

Happy New Year, 2011!

Unrelated

There goes a man who’s won his spurs in battle
The butcher, he. And all the others, cattle.
The cocky sod! No decent place lets him in.
Who does him down, that’s done the lot? The women.
Want it or not, he can’t ignore that call.
Sexual obsession has him ini t s thrall.
He doesn’t read the Bible. He sniggers at the law
Sets out to be an utter egoist
And knows a woman’s skirts are what he must resist
So when a woman calls he locks his door
So far, so good, but what’s the future brewing?
As soon as night falls he’ll be up and doing.
Thus many a man watched men die in confusion:
A mighty genius, stuck on prostitution!
The watchers claimed their urges were exhausted
But when they died who paid the funeral? Whores did.
Want it or not, they can’t ignore that call.
Sexual obsession has them in its thrall.
Some fall back on the Bible. Some stick to the law
Some turn to Christ and some turn anarchist.
At lunch you pick the best wine on the list
Then meditate till half-past four.
At tea: what high ideals you are pursuing!
Then soon as night falls you’ll be up and doing.

---

Related to nothing except I heard something about Brecht today and it reminded me of this fabulous song he wrote with Weill for the Threepenny Opera. And Ute Lemper is wonderful.

Regular service will return at some point.

Send In the Clowns

Placard from the Sane or Not?
offshoot of the Sanity/Fear Rally.

I keep reading "serious" writers penning mainly humorless thumbsuckers complaining about the performance (The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear) by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert scheduled for this weekend. Most such complaints seem to boil down to the following sentiment: "If I could put together such a thing, it would include a Will Rogers and would be way more awesome than these Colbert/Stewart events. "

To which I have two responses: 1) No, it wouldn't. and 2) "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

As showbiz, I guess the Rally will be entertaining in bits amid the filler. But I don't expect it to be a truly political event so I won't judge it that way. It would necessarily disappoint.

In September the Financial Times invited several satirists to write on the theme "Has political satire gone too far?" The only piece that stuck with me was by Jonathan Coe, whose novel What a Carve Up! (released in America as The Winshaw Legacy: or What a Carve Up! ) is a spectacular work of literary satire. He wrote, in part:

As the years go by, in any case, I become less and less convinced that satire is good for democracy. When I wrote What a Carve Up! in the early 1990s as a response to the Thatcher years, Yes Minister was a huge source of inspiration. It still impresses me that a show could be so thoroughly cynical and yet so full of warm, loveable characters: an amazing trick to pull off.

However, far from tearing down the established order, most satire (except in a few very great, very extreme cases – Swift’s A Modest Proposal being the obvious example), does the exact opposite. It creates a welcoming space in which like-minded people can gather together and share in comfortable hilarity. The anger, the feelings of injustice they might have been suffering beforehand are gathered together, compressed and transformed into bursts of laughter, and after discharging them they feel content and satisfied. An impulse that might have translated into action is, therefore, rendered neutral and harmless. I remember a recent edition of Radio 4’s News Quiz where the comedian Jeremy Hardy brought this up: after cracking a series of (brilliant) jokes about failed bankers collecting enormous bonuses, he suddenly said, “Why are we laughing about this? We should be taking to the streets.” He was right.

True, I think. But I recall that for many months the Bush administration was not taken seriously to task for anything by the mass media -- except on the Daily Show and Colbert. There were marches and other "action," and they didn't do much, in part because the media lowballed them. I'm sure the largest anti-war events before the Iraq war were larger than the biggest tea party rallies, and yet they got far less purchase. There was little questioning in mainstream media of the grounds for the Iraq war until years after the deed was done.

In such a routinized media culture sometimes it's either satire or nothing. I'll choose quality satire.