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Articles of faith (= you can't make it up)

Vienna Boys' Choir caught up in sex abuse scandals

by Roger Boyes

Leather Fair Draws International Community

The three-day long All African Leather Fair (AALF), organised by the Ethiopian Leather Industries Association (ELIF), ended on a note of satisfaction.

- Ethiopian News, February 2010

Touched By The Unknown

- a nun from beyond?

Actual headline from this week's Sunday Times (SL).

InDefinition - 12

saxoporn, n. musical genre, originating in '80s Demi Moore movies, now found also in chain coffee-shops, DIY superstores and branches of LUSH.

InDefinition - 11

titter, v. traditional schoolboy reaction to mention of jugs, norks, boobies, and other adolescent synonyms for jubbly fun-bags.

'Dicks unhappy with referee'

(but ain't that always the way?)

Seriously, though...

Happily remarried

For the twenty-second time.

Why read The Onion?!

ID vs ego

From the Sri Lankan Department of Immigration and Emigration Residence Visa form:

12. Any identification Marks of Peculiarities? [sic.]

Until otherwise instructed, I'm going to assume I don't need to attach a picture of my Prince Albert...

Captions of the day so far

• Fruity: According to Mr Simpkins, the lime has a 'particularly lurid' expression on its face during its encounter with a lemon


• Debauched: The lime enjoys a similarly smutty experience with a willing pair of cherries

Taken from here.

(Thanks to RN)

Graft

Over the last thirty years or so, it has become almost a Parliamentary rule that disgrace visits the two main parties in different ways. Tories are busted for sex, and Labourites are busted for graft.

- Julian Barnes, writing for The New Yorker... in March 1990)

Apart from Barnes' telling prescience (or, at least, his accurate analysis of the cyclical inevitability of political sleaze) I am reminded that, thanks to the many and various evils of the English language, 'graft' can mean - as a noun, in the political sense - 'rifling the public petty (and not-so-petty) cash box' and - as a verb, in the rugby-playing, gruff-Northerners-tilling-the-fields kind of sense - 'working hard and (implicitly) earning legitimately and (for added virtue) by the sweat of one's brow'.

But, because this is English, though the word simultaneously has these two meanings, it cannot, (of course) mean them both at the same time.

I'm a pervert

I can never hear the lyrics

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And you put the load right on me

without thinking... well, you know what.

Minnie offences

My (gorgeous) friend/landlady Rebecca is (deliberately) feeling morbid today. At least she was, until she saw this news item, and sent it on to me:

Man Convicted of Groping Minnie Mouse at Disney

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 11, 2009

Filed at 12:48 p.m. ET

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- A 60-year-old man has been convicted of groping a woman in a Minnie Mouse costume at Walt Disney World.

John William Moyer of Cressona, Pa., told the judge he is innocent. His son said before sentencing that his father would never inappropriately touch a woman.

He was convicted Tuesday of misdemeanor battery and sentenced to write the victim an apology, serve 180 days probation and complete 50 hours of community service. Moyer must also pay $1,000 in court costs and possibly undergo a mental evaluation.

The victim says she had to do everything possible to keep Moyer's hands off her breasts.

(NYT - yes, really)

Despairing Adolescent

Two important notas you should bene about Rodin's Despairing Adolescent, no date, terracotta:

1) He has no date (see above).

2) He has no dick (see below).

Young Republiguns

Best of PJ O'Rourke (before he became an old republicun'):

On the bourgeois condition

When the gods would form an ass,
First they make him middle-class,
Give him comic cares and woes,
And let his wife pick out his clothes.

On education

Education is not just a matter of learning things. There's a difference between learning and knowledge. It's the difference between Christy Turlington's phone number and Christy Turlington.

On arguing with the women in your life

If you can't prevail over an aged woman whose every weakness and foible you know and with whom you have been contending your entire life, how do you expect to do against a team from out of town?

On war

I know why most societies don't allow women in combat. Combat is just a battle to the death. You don't want it to turn into something really ugly like a marriage.

On writing careers

There is one thing worse than writing (I mean, other than getting a real job or cancer) - promoting what you've written.

On nascent writing careers

Good reporters don't ask any [interview] questions because they are too busy getting drunk with the author. The only decent questions come from the young reporters, who ask "Is writing really better than getting a real job or cancer?"

On music

Rock lyrics don't give rock musicians adequate scope for full intellectual expression because so few words rhyme with boogie.

On anatomy

For a purely untrustworthy human organ, the memory is right in there with the penis.

On fashion

Miniskirts caused feminism.

NB This all from one chapter - 'Essays, Prefaces, Speeches, Reviews and Things Jotted on Napkins' - of Age And Guile (beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut)

NB'issimi Age And Guile (PB edition) was a loving and generous leaving present from my fellow Amnesiac... who naturally kept the hardback copy for himself.

No shit

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The perfect mensch

[Thanks to Jewdas]

Right! Who borrowed my phone?

I was trying to send someone a message the other day that required the use of the word frump.

Needless to say, my phone did not recognise it; but what it did have - DEF, PQRS, TUV, MNO... (feel free to check) - was '3SUM'.

As though I'd ever spell it like that!

Spam du jour

Masturzo Nogoda
ministers

(No, I didn't open it.)

Essential info