Link and the Whole World Links With You

Ah, so the savoury bits of rural Warwickshire life are too tantalising to completely masticate in one mouthful and world events seem predictably renewable (days without picking up a newspaper without interruption are inevitably interrupted by a peeping tom curiosity of the world's reported events, "oh, that again", before putting it back down and returning to the idle gaze at sheep and cattle going about their grass eating and subtle noises) so we must now shake up the hi-fi and let the world of links back into the picture, rely upon others to yank us through the vodka-starry nights of a Siberian Soul Express...

*****

**For those who have grown weary of neither parody nor all things Friedman, global expert of his own opinion, there is the create your own Thomas Friedman Op-Ed column brought to you by McSweeney's, discovered via Maud Newton...

**I like this idea, good news Saturdays 2004 from Winds of Change:

"Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. In that spirit, our Saturday posts to this blog will always be "good news". We'll share wisdom from groups like the Sufis, Hasidim and Zen Masters, highlight the acts of good and decent people, laugh at humourous events, and point to amazing discoveries that could benefit humanity. It's a great break from the week, and something I think the blogosphere could use more of."

But since I already celebrate Saturdays snout first in a pint of beer, leering over at the Premiership match unfolding on a large screen television in the village pub as the rain pours down outside and I thank God again for hops and football and days away from wretched news of the human capacity for self-destruction and Saturdays become little more than an anesthetiser of Sundays, I will celebrate the Good News Saturdays in ordinary fashion because it pleases my masses...

**Goddamnit! I knew there was something wrong with Modern Literature!

"Stendhal once famously compared the novel to a mirror being carried down the road, innocently catching all the angles of life. By contrast, Wood argues, contemporary novelists too often treat their pages more like flypaper, ready to cling on to any randomly floating bits of cultural debris: 'How to make the best Indonesian fish curry! The sonics of the trombone! The drug market in Detroit! The history of strip cartoons!'

**Poemas de Pablo Neruda:

Para que tú me oigas
mis palabras
se adelgazan a veces
como las huellas de las gaviotas en las playas.

**Always interesting, through the eyes of Satan's Laundromat

**SPAM
Jaapstijl Looking to buy cheap affordable medications?
Looking to buy cheap erections?
Looking to buy cheap, unaffordable medications?
Looking to buy sheep on medication?
Looking to buy expensive affordable lifestyles cut out of magazines?
Looking to buy cheap explosives?
Looking to buy terrorists hiding in caves?
Looking to buy cheap whores?
Looking to buy cheap sheep hormones on affordable wives?
Or just looking?

**For those long drawn out evenings at home, the eyes still blurrily sodden with Cognac and sunset, draw down the shades and get ready for Bush vs Kerry Bareknuckle Boxing!

**From the Plot Never Seems To Thicken and The Broken Record Keeps Skipping Department:

A GLIMPSE OF WAR'S HELL-SCENES
by Walt Whitman (from *Memoranda During the War*, 1875.)

"In one of the late movements of our troops in the valley, (near Upperville, I think,) a strong force of Moseby's mounted guerillas attack'd a train of wounded, and the guard of cavalry convoying them. The ambulances contain'd about 60 wounded, quite a number of them officers of rank. The rebels were in strength, and the capture of the train and its partial guard after a short snap was effectually accomplish'd. No sooner had our men surrender'd, the rebels instantly commenced robbing the train and murdering
their prisoners, even the wounded. Here is the scene or a sample of it, ten minutes after. Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant of regulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragg'd out on the ground on their backs, and were now surrounded by the guerillas, a demoniac crowd, each member of which was stabbing them in different parts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinn'd firmly to the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into the ground. These two officers, as afterwards found on examination, had receiv'd about twenty such
thrusts, some of them through the mouth, face, &c. The wounded had all been dragg'd (to give a better chance also for plunder,) out of their wagons; some had been effectually dispatch'd, and their bodies were lying there lifeless and bloody. Others, not yet dead, but horribly mutilated, were moaning or groaning. Of our men who surrender'd, most had been thus maim'd or slaughter'd. . . .

Multiply the above by scores, aye hundreds -- verify it in all the forms that different circumstances, individuals, places, could afford -- light it with every lurid passion, the wolf's, the lion's lapping thirst for blood -- the passionate, boiling volcanoes of human revenge for comrades, brothers slain -- with the light of burning farms, and heaps of smutting, smouldering black embers -- and in the human heart everywhere black, worse embers -- and you have an inkling of this war."

**1/0 the birth of a comic strip becoming a comic strip becoming a comic strip...via Left Blank

**It doesn't really matter that Super Size Me won the Best Director of the Sundance Film Festival 2004. What really matters is that the website has a very very familiar little game called Burger Man.

And so on it goes. The missing links.