Wrong again! The worst thing of all is in fact people licking ice cream cones.

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone–a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. … Eating on the street–even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat–displays [a] lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. … Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. … This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.

– Leon Kass, founder and director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, explaining the rigorous reasoning underlying the administration’s opposition to stem cell research. 

My mistake! This is the worst thing. 

Gonna be a long election.

This.  This is the worst thing.

(explanation)

Ireland suffers from a nightmarish plague of “ghost nets!”

I haven’t had a chance to read the full article yet so I’m not sure exactly what that means, but my advice is: stay the hell out of Ireland.  You don’t want to take any risks with this sort of thing.

UPDATE! I dont want anyone getting the wrong idea, I didn’t mean this as a happy or celebratory post, this isn’t a good thing, there’s no point in taking any particular satisfaction from it. This won’t hurt Kevin James’s career, or even slow him down. You or me or any sane person would shrivel up and die from the shame of it but James will just keep going. Maybe — maybe — he’ll stew in bitterness for a few hours, but bitterness fuels him and will only make him stronger. Maybe he’ll go home and slap his wife and kids about a bit, if we’re very very lucky he might get angry enough to drive his car into a tree, but even then so what? There are thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands more creatures exactly like him, smooth and blank as robots, ignorant of everything except today’s talking points, yelling and yelling and yelling and jabbing their fingers and yelling and sneering and yelling and yelling. Some of these creatures are still just getting started in college-level political ratfucking, some of them are technically women, millions of them are not yet born. This sort of thing works. Idiocy is a winning strategy. Look how hard Matthews had to work even to fleetingly embarrass just one of them, and think how rarely it happens! They can’t be stopped. They will replace us the way we replaced the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were slow and sad and soulful and they invented cave-painting and burial ceremonies but they weren’t vicious enough to hold their own against us, and we won’t be vicious enough to hold our own against Kevin James. America will fill up with them, then the world. This is what the future looks like, this is what the future sounds like. When the icecaps melt and the seas rise the last habitable mountain-top on earth will be jam-packed with the last of these awful slick post-human monsters yelling and jabbing their fingers at each other and accusing each other of being illegal immigrants. It won’t be over ’till the last of them drowns and even then their bodies won’t biodegrade properly.

It has now been nearly two weeks since the mad tyrant Boris Johnson became Mayor of London, plunging that ancient metropolis into a nightmare from which it seems it may never wake.  [I, II, III, IV]

The borders are sealed.  The media are barred from the city.  And now the world has moved on, and London has been forgotten.  The Ordnance Survey has removed the city from its maps.  Posh and Becks have returned from Los Angeles, and have been crowned King and Queen in the Hilton Hotel in Manchester — the new capital of a London-less England. 

And of what the people of London — what kind of life can they be living, under the iron heel of the mad brute Johnson?  We know almost nothing of their suffering.  That is why I am so pleased and so proud to be able to bring you news of the city – emailed to me by a courageous cockney chimneysweep, from inside the heart of Boris’s London.  This is his story.

God bless you, guv’nor!

Blimey, but it’s been a funny old week, and no mistake.  The lads from the old Pig & Parrot have had a hard time of it, what with Chaz gettin his call-up papers to go off and fight the Isle of Doggers, and poor ol Barry had to pay the Mayor’s new Left Foot Tax, so now he’s hoppin about on crutches and he’s still goin mmfff from when the Mayor’s men had his mouf sewn up for talking common.  Still, you got to laugh, right?

Not to mention Del had that spot of zombie bother.  But we’ve all had zombie bother lately.

I don’t like to get me spirits down.  Nobody likes to see a chimneysweep wivvout a smile an’ a cheery whistle, do they?  But sometimes it all gets a bit much.  Last week we all got our hopes up a bit when Chaz heard Barry heard Leroy who works at the ice rink heard that the Yanks were sendin Mayor Bloomberg over to negotiate with Boris.  Way we heard it the brave little Yank chap was goin’ to offer Boris a magic crystal apple in return for his hostages.  And you know, we knew Boris was goin’ to eat the Yank and keep his magic apple anyway and send back an empty T-shirt, we all just knew it.  But you still get your hopes up, don’t you? 

Brave little chap.  Sad.

Anyway, you don’t want to hear me complainin.  Spirit of the Blitz, right?  I don’t have a lot of news.  I already told you Chaz got called up to fight the hun on the Isle of Dogs, didn’t I?  One of their rockets hit the bookies on Needle Street and that was a shame, but it knocked a hole into the back room of an abandoned Pizza Express and let me tell you that was a nice little bit of luck!  The cheese wasn’t hardly manky at all! 

I took as much as I could balance on me bike and I hopped it before the syrups could show up.  Was me mum ever pleased to see me, wiv all that cheese!  She works down at the Pigeon Debeakery, what used to be the old National Portrait Gallery.  Order of the Mayor, see — all commoner women over 55 have to work in the Debeakery.  There’s a lot of pigeons out there, so they’re always busy and cheerful and covered in feathers!

And me big sister Beryl’s still stuck in the big Droit De Seigneur queue outside City Hall.  That’s all commoner women 16 to 25, by Order of the Mayor, they all have to take a turn to — well, you know.  The queue runs halfway down the river and Beryl’s been there since Day Five and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure the queue’s really moving any more, and it rains a lot, not to mention it mostly rains ash these days, so Beryl and the girls were happy for some cheese.  Beryl’s pretty mate Sharon gave me a peck on the cheek, and that warmed me cockles, I don’t mind sayin!

Me? I do a little bit of this, little bit of that.  Not much call for chimneysweepin’ these days, not since the Mayor banned fire, but I make ends meet. 

Still got a lot of cheese left.  Tomorrow I might get back on me bike and take some out east to the Front, see how Chaz is gettin on.  God bless you, guv’nor, and keep safe.

From Assessment of pain: a community-based diary survey in the USA, by Princeton’s Alan B. Krueger and Arthur A. Stone:

The data reveal a strong pattern by socioeconomic status (SES), with lower income associated with significantly higher pain occurrences and severity. The average rating is twice as high for those in households with annual incomes below $30,000 those in households with incomes above $100,000.  [. . .] Participants with less than a high school degree reported twice the average pain rating as did college graduates.  [. . .] Blacks and Hispanics had higher values than whites and Asians. . . .

(via)

To the person who came here via the following google search string:

 Is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright a mulatto?

Really?

In 2008? Really?

Would you like to explain yourself?

It has been seven days since the mad tyrant Boris Johnson became Mayor of London.  [I, II, III].

The city is sealed, and there are no reporters left within.  Terrible rumours spread in the seaside refugee camps at Brighton, Worthing and Bognor Regis.

Now — at last! – one young Londoner, a reader of this blog, has been able to communicate with the outside world.  Boris’s straw-wigged goons — his Legiones Borae — long ago confiscated all computers and telephones, but my resourceful correspondent was able to steal a wireless-capable BlackBerry from the pocket of a banker’s corpse, as it swung in the gibbets on Westminster Bridge.  Last night he emailed me, and asked me to bring his story to the world. I will be publishing his emails, unedited, in all their stark horror.  (And what will happen when the BlackBerry’s battery runs down? Perhaps then the last desperate voice of London will be silenced forever).

My correspondent has asked me to conceal his name, but he wants you to know that he is a typical Londoner — a cockney chimneysweep.   This is his story.

God bless you, guv’nor, for your “blog.”  It keeps the spirits up, knowin’ the world ain’t gone and forgotten us, know what I mean? I read out the good bits to me mum and me sister, and it warms the cockles, bless ‘em.

Blimey.  Strange old world, innit? Still, Spirit of the Blitz, right?  Spirit of the Blitz.

Last night me and some of the lads tried to ‘ave a bit of a sing-along down the old rub-a-dub.  (That’s ”pub” to you yanks, no offense).  It’s not like it used to be back in the good old days — Tommy got shot out of a cannon on Day Two, and no one’s seen Chaz since them food riots on Day Four went ugly, and the Mayor had poor old Barry’s lips sewn shut for talking common, so Barry just has to sort of hum along and bang a spoon on the back of the piano.  And anyway the Mayor outlawed sing-alongs back on Day Three, says as how they lower the tone, so as soon as the syrups hear the music they come kicking down the door and thrashing all about ‘em with their truncheons, and we all run out the back and over the fence.  Syrups — that’s what we call the Mayor’s men.  Syrups — syrup of figs — wigs.  Blond wigs, he makes ‘em wear.  ’Orrible.  

Hard to have a proper knees-up these days, but you’ve got to keep on trying, innit?  The kiddies like it.  Cheers ‘em up.  The orphan kiddies.   Such a lot of orphan kiddies these days.

Anyway!  Not a bad day so far.  Me mum’s doing all right, and me sister says hello, and Barry says “mmfff.”  They say the Mayor’s gone and declared war on the Isle of Dogs, and the troops have been moved out to Poplar, so it was quiet here in Whitechapel today, if you don’t mind the sound of the guns.  Surprising what you can get used to.  I found a dead cat,  so we won’t go hungry. 

God bless you, guv’nor. 

God bless you, sir, God bless you.  Our prayers are with you. 

Most of you are surely aware of recent events in London.  [I, II].  It is now six days since the mad tyrant Boris Johnson became Mayor of London.  Already it seems like an eternity! 

A rare photograph of the Mayor at play. Johnson is said to claim droit de seigneur over bunnygirls and bunnies alike.

A media blackout has descended on the city.  The remainder of the BBC now operates out of a satellite office in Brighton, upstairs from a gay nightclub.  Its reporters are mostly dead and its programming archives were abandoned in the escape.  To keep spirits high, it broadcasts nothing but amusing home videos of pet antics and wedding pratfalls.

London itself now communicates with the outside world only through cryptic signals — through ambiguous and unreadable acts of violence, grotesquerie and madness.  On Monday, Johnson commandeered the cannons of the Imperial War Museum, and used them to fire every one of the toys in Hamley’s out across the M25, one by one, a fusillade that lasted six pointless but brightly-coloured hours.  Was he trying to say something?  Perhaps he was in a playful mood on Monday?  Perhaps.  But the steady stream of severed human hands and feet that wash down the Thames tell a different, more frightening story.  Even the perpetual fires on London’s skyline seem to carry some terrible message — sometimes they seem to be cries for help, and sometimes they seem to spell out a warning: You too may one day suffer as we suffer. Johnson is too large; London cannot contain him forever.

It has been six days.  Already, London seems hardly to belong to this world.  It has entered our imaginations as a mythical city, a site of dreams, nightmares and madness — at last truly the “Unreal City” of the apocalyptic visions of Blake and Eliot.  We are almost embarrassed to speak of it.  The American media has returned to its coverage of the upcoming election, and President Bush has rebuffed all calls for humanitarian intervention.  The French shrug, and say, “Eh! Les Anglais sont fous,” and change the subject.  It has become all too easy to forget that Londoners are real people, and that their suffering, too, is very real.

Until now!  Now I can offer the world a first-hand account of the catastrophe.  Last night a reader of this blog — a resident of London — opened a correspondence with me.  At first I distrusted his emails, and was reluctant to send him the large sums of money he requested, but his stories have convinced me.  They have the ring of truth.  He has asked me to publish them, and I — how could I say no? — have agreed.

He has lived through extraordinary historical events, and yet he is a quite ordinary young Londoner in every respect; which is to say that he is a cockney chimneysweep. 

Over the coming days I will be publishing his tale.  Let us bear witness.