dinsdag, juni 22, 2004

Super Baby Rooney!

Yes, once again, the headlines of Desultory Turgescence scream no political obscenities as we continue our sabbatical from reality and plunge into the warm bath of the Euro 2004.

Last night, England's dreams were acknowledged as their 18 year old phenom, Wayne Rooney scored two brilliant goals to lead them past Croatia 4-2 and advanced to the quarterfinals of the tournament where they will face the hosts, Portugal.

So here is what the Italians think about Super Rooney

while speculation, the hypsters favourite tool, runs rampant as some ask the absurdist question du jour, Better than Pele?

Wayne Rooney: The Nation's Hero (well, certainly a cut above Blair, isn't he then?)

In other words, Roo-Mania Takes Hold:

THERE are no words left to describe Wayne Rooney — the dictionary has run out."

"more the teenage wonderkid inspired England to victory with a sensational double and won us a place in the quarter-finals of Euro 2004 against hosts Portugal.

Rooney was once 50-1 to be the top scorer in the tournament but, this morning, he leads the way — ahead of a string of illustrious strikers — with four goals to his name.

Well done to anybody who put a tenner on him.

After his brilliant performances against France and Switzerland, Rooney was again unstoppable — earning his second man-of-the-match award in a row."


Perhaps in a pique of jealousy, Iran Seizes 3 British Navy Boats and Detains 8 Sailors in a Territorial Dispute on Iraqi Border. Not playing very fair, the little bastids. See if they're invited to the next World Cup.

Oh yeah, arch-rival France are also through after a 3-1 victory over the hapless Swiss who will go home to their cows and chocolates and secret bank accounts, yodel a lament and eat some cheese fondue.

maandag, juni 21, 2004

Olé!



30 years of hegemony defeated as Portugal eliminates archrivals, Spain, 1-0 to advance to the Euro 2004 Quarterfinals.

(Sorry - it is difficult to discern whether there is a true dearth of legitimate "news", if the reruns of the same old "news"; ie, terorrism, Bush, 9/11, EU backroom politics, etc, are just too boring to contemplate OR if all such trivialities and work of others pale in comparison to the only events of interest these days in the world -

EURO 2004.

So yes, enough depressing information. Allow the depression and anxiety to creep forward in the form of eleven men running around in shorts kicking a ball around a pitch. Tonight, England have at it again, this time against the Croatians.

And thus, Desultory Turgescence jumps OFF the bandwagon of international news, the symantical, cryptic bullshit of politicos and partisanship, and officially joins the parade of misinformed, disinterested, futbalisticos.

Besides kids, it's summer for crissakes. Let's have a break!

donderdag, juni 10, 2004

Bush Says Chirac's the Cat's Meow and The Great Satan's Eight Are Back In Business

If we are to believe the propaganda, The Great Satan's Group of Eight Summit, where three quarters of the evil in the world is painstakingly plotted out, has been a smashing success. Everyone is so goddamned happy being with each other, rolling naked in blood and oil and a variety of currencies, that they even considered extending the meeting into an all summer long orgy of happiness and comraderie.

The headlines might want to sing hosannas about the new love affair between President Chirac and President Jesus Bush, but this unphotoshopped photo clearly demonstrates the degree of disdain Chirac holds for President Jesus Bush.

Just examine the look of nausea in his face, the squinting revulsion as he spies Bush leaning forward and extending his right hand in offer of a shake as though Chirac were Bush's dog being called upon to perform a trick.

C'mon Jacques-y-boy! Put her there! Let's have that paw!" Bush whispers through the right corner of his mouth, the corner of the mouth that is out of the camera's line of vision.

Chirac's face, no I've got it wrong. It isn't a look of nausea, it is a look of amused disbelief perhaps, as though a quadriplegic had just risen from his chair and performed a brief dance for the President of France. Perhaps Chirac is wondering to himself what this American cowboy, the true spawn of Ronald Reagan, is trying to prove with his idiotic look of sincere, begrudged friendship in his pinched, evil eyes that stare down at his own, firmly proferred hand as though he doesn't believe himself that he is actually going to offer his hand to this cowardly French paper shuffler. Chirac is no man. By Christ, he's almost a woman! What did HE do to fight terrorists like me? Bush is likely reminding himself. I'm killing all the bastards and this French faerie wants to make love to them! Chirac doesn't even deserve to LICK my hand, let alone shake it, Bush is muttering to himself with his inner voice.

And look how tightly Bush's left hand is gripping the arm of his chair. By God, he looks like he's afraid that if he lets go, his entire reality will go spinning out of control and the Frenchman across from him will suddenly smear lipstick all over his face.

More humiliating still, Chirac had the temerity to note that the food served at the three-day gathering was "certainly on a par" with French cuisine.

What French cuisine is that, Frenchy, Bush was certain to have thought to himself. Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast??!!

But it wasn't all fun and games, oh no. President Jesus Bush made a plea on Wednesday for a continued, even expanded, NATO presence in Iraq. "C'mon Frenchy," Bush was alleged to have urged. "give us some of those troops of yours, we need a few weaklings to kick around now that Abu Ghraib is off limits!"

At that time, Mr. Chirac said he saw no "mission" that would warrant his sending French troops there, a position that he has long maintained with President Gerhard Schröder of Germany.

"Why should we have our own troops killed and sniped at every day when the Americans are doing such a good job of it?" the French leader asked rhetorically.

It was a good joke both he and President Bush can share. That one, and the one about the Weapons of Mass Destruction. That one still causes even the hardened members of The Great Satan's Eight to break into hysterical waves of laughter every time.

"Have you actually SEEN President Bush do that act where he looks under the table, in his shoes, under the lampshades, for Weapons of Mass Destruction and can't find them anywhere?" President Gerhard Schröder of Germany swooned. "This is almost as funny as that time when Hitler was going around the Reichstag looking in ashtrays saying, where are all the Chews? Has anyone seen the Chews?...by god, I thought I was going to pee myself in laughter!"

The meetings will likely be available video tape and DVD in the fall and will be entitled "Great Satan Eight Summer Bash, Part Deux"

Mayor Bans Noise In NYC

Noting that he wants New York to become "the quietest place on earth", the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has vowed to make sure that anyone who makes any noise, from barking dogs, chirping birds, car horns, pounding music and ice cream vendors to cheering fans at Shea and Yankee Stadiums, people speaking aloud and wind blowing, will face heavy penalties.

Echoing his idiotic smoking ban to destroy the nature and pace of what was once the world's finest city, he has proposed a series of measures ranging from the practical to the preposterous, covering everything from how long a dog may be left yapping to the jingles permitted on ice cream vans to whether people will be allowed to voice their opinions louder than sotto voce.

"Complaints about noise are not frivolous," he said. "Noise disturbs my sleep and I don't like noise anymore. I used to like noise, but ever since I quit smoking, like everything else in my life, I've started to become more and more intolerant of it."

So his 45-page proposal includes allowing dogs a one hour window between the hours of 10 and 11 in the morning, to bark for a period of up to, but no longer than five minutes. Violators will be taken away to the pound and put to sleep. He also proposed a ban on birds chirping and pigeons cooing as they are "sufficient distractions" to the well-being of every New Yorker. "We don't really need birds chirping. Just looking at them is enough." All birds caught chirping will be shot without further notification by the NYPD anti-terrorist sniper squad.

But wildlife and domesticated animals aren't the only suspects. People too, will have to learn to stop talking aloud. "When you think about it, we are many millions of people in a small area and if everyone starts talking aloud, the noise is nearly unbearable." From now on, neighbors will only be allowed to talk to one another in shifts and there will be a city-wide imposition of sign language on residents.

Lest one think all of Mayor Bloomberg's ideas are idiotic, useless and impractical, he also announced a ban on car horns to be replaced by a surge of electricity which will be propelled from the horn-honker to the offending vehicle causing the horn-honking to begin with. All vehicles registered in NYC will be required to have this new electrical shock soundless horn fitted or will face being banned from the city streets.

The police will be able to issue noise tickets and drivers with wayward car alarms are among those liable, along with barkeepers and restaurateurs who let their din spread 3 ft (1 metre) through an open door.

Vibrations are also being considered for inclusion in the same law, a relief to thousands of city dwellers tormented by footsteps in hallways and the shaking of the earth by gently rearranging the furniture and "heavy bass sounds", the last in particular, which has sparked anger among the city's minority population who decry the ban on heavy bass sounds as being "racist" and "inherently biased".

"It is not necessary for such person to determine the title, specific words or artist of such music," reads the proposed law.

"We like heavy bass in our music and whitey don't, because whitey can't dance" complained Yolanda Ramirez, of the She-Bitches Loisada Social Club. "This is a racist law against us!"

Noise is the number one complaint in New York, far ahead of problems with landlords. The city's information and help line deals with about 1,000 calls a day on the subject. The city hall defines an offensive sound as one that takes place between 10pm and 7am and is seven decibels above the general sound level of the given area.

Between 7am and 10pm, the threshold rises to 10 decibels.

The proposed regulations require noise management plans on building sites, sound barriers and noise jackets for jackhammers and other loud tools, and free earplugs for any resident requesting them.

And they will let police officers issue noise tickets without recourse to sound meters, relying on a "plainly audible" standard. "If we can hear it," Bloomberg said with a smirk as his cravings for a cigarette drives him progressively madder by the day, "Then it's too loud!" he whispered.

maandag, juni 07, 2004

All This Useless Beauty - Elvis Costello

It's at times such as this she'd be tempted to spit
If she wasn't so ladylike
She imagines how she might have lived
back when legends and history collide
So she looks to her prince finding he's so charmingly
slumped at her side
Those days are recalled on the gallery wall
And she's waiting for passion or humour to strike
What shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?
All this useless beauty

Good Friday arrived, the sky darkened on time
'Til he almost began to negotiate
She held his head like a baby and said "It's okay if you cry"
Now he wants her to dress as if you couldn't guess
He desires to impress his associates
But he's part ugly beast and Hellenic deceased
So she finds that the mixture is hard to deny

She won't practice the looks from the great tragic books
That were later disgraced to face celluloid
It won't even make sense but you can bet
If she isn't a sweetheart or plaything or pet
The film turns her into an unveiled threat

Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they're the gods of antiquity
If something you missed didn't even exist
It was just an ideal -- is it such a surprise?

zondag, juni 06, 2004

Bedtime For Bonzo
"Facts are stupid things." --Ronald Reagan

The first man to both star in a movie involving a chimp and actually play a starring role as a chimp who became President of the United States is finally dead at the age of 93, lasting some 20 years beyond his official use as a human being.

Ronald Reagan, the Godfather to America's current conservative idiot fringe on a mission from God to destroy the dying embers of America's goodness, was the oldest man elected to the presidency at age 69 and helped turn America into a 1980s alptraum with his famed "Reaganomics" trickle down theory of economics, which involved the absurdist notion that the wealthier fat corporate pigs become, the more of the overfilled trough they were feeding themselves from, would slosh over on to the ground for the lesser peasants to enjoy. Instead, the typical crowd of fat cats got fatter, there was a burst of economic boom on Wall Street allowing a new bread of leaches to suck the blood from the life of middle class America and in all ended with a spectacular stock market crash when the world realised America was too far in debt to ever pull itself out again. (Hmmm, sound familiar?)

Among Reagan's other "accomplishments" to earn him icon status in the conservative party was to get away with the Iran/Contra scandal by feigning ignorance. For those of you too young to know or too embittered to want to remember or too distracted by the current brand of "fuck the world, I'm for me" conservatism and hysterical war mongering in the form of the War on Terrorism to be able to remember, the Iran/Contra scandal, in bitter, reductionist terms, was about his administration performing a neat little circumvention around something called democracy when it served the purposes of their ideological war in Nicaragua, by selling arms to alleged arch-enemy, Iran, in order to "free" hostages and then used the sale of those weapons and arms to fund their little war in Nicaragua after Congress had wisely cut them off. Worse still, it brought an ideological pissant like Oliver North surfacing to the light of day.

The good old President Reagan, like current conservatives, preached family values to the world in a hypocritical whinge whilst neglecting his own family. He was, after all, considered a grandfatherly figure by most Americans, time and time again escaping the wrath of an angry public opinion for his misadventures with his "awe shucks, I'm just a regular guy" style of method acting.

He oversaw the bullying invasion of the evil empire of Grenada in October, 1983, coincidentally coming just days after the humiliation and shock of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, yet another imperialistic invasion misadventure conducted under the auspices of bringing American-style "peace and democracy" to a country that wasn't interested in it.

On the lighter side, his fantastically expansive Star Wars speech is thought by many to have been the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire and after a disco bombing in Berlin, Reagan authorised the 1986 bombing of Libya whose success was alleged have led to the quieting of renowned terrorist Muammar Gadafi. Of course, Gadafi was so terrorised, it took him almost two years to organise the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, and then another 16 years and two invasions of Iraq later, to finally perform a questionable about face to learn to love the West. Another Reagan foreign policy success.

Ah, with this news of Ronald Reagan's death, so many memories come to the surface like bile rising from the back of the throat. Thanks for the memories, Ronny baby, as the old song I Shot Reagan by Suicidal Tendancies goes, you're forgiven in hell.

zaterdag, juni 05, 2004

Pope Lectures Bush On Killing

ROME -- On Friday, Pope John Paul II, frail as a junkie going cold turkey, lectured President Jesus Bush about the conflict in Iraq, reminding the president of the long history the Catholic Church has in killing people who oppose it and advising the President that he is "not killing heretics and terrorists fast enough" to meet historically high papal standards of misery and the butchery in the name of God.

The pontiff also called for a the gradual return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people under United Nations auspices once the Iraqi oil industry has been properly and legally annexed and distributed by Vice President Dick Cheney to himself and his colleagues at Haliburton, but warned against giving Iraqis sovereignty too soon noting that they aren't well-versed in democracy and may need the occasional jackboot of foreign interventionists to help them make that all important "encouraging step" in that direction.

As a misfortunate result of Italy being a Democracy led by the most democratic and fair leader in modern Italian history Silvio Berlusconi, shortly after Bush's audience with the pope in the richly appointed halls of the Vatican, a very tiny, tiny number of Italian anarchists and fanatics, terrorists and thugs chanting anti-Bush demonstrators were allowed to parade like jackals through the streets of Rome to protest his visit and register opposition to the Iraq war. The Pope and President Jesus Bush denounced them all as bitter that democracy is taking hold in the world and the good side is winning.

Some 10,000 security officers -- some heavily armed and in full riot gear -- were mobilized to keep the marchers away from Bush as he traveled around Rome and to kill those who were out of camera view. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, although the marchers left a trail of angry graffiti, empty beer bottles and other debris in their wake because, as we well know, protestors are heathens, hippies and dangerous members of society.

In addition to meeting with John Paul, the president commemorated the 60th anniversary of the city's liberation from the Germans by spray painting swastikas at the site of a notorious Nazi massacre. He also met with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally on Iraq and a fellow lover of Democracy.

Bush's activities kicked off a weeklong excursion in international diplomacy that is to take him to the Elysee Palace in Paris on Saturday, to Normandy for D-Day ceremonies on Sunday and to the annual G-8 summit of Evil in Georgia next week.

At the Vatican, after a 15-minute private meeting with Bush, the pope -- who has demonstrate the robustness of Christianity in his every spasm and eye twitch -- read a statement in a slow, halting voice. His hands trembled as he held the pages of his text.

John Paul told Bush that his visit to Rome "takes place at a moment of great concern that not enough heathens and terrorists and thugs are being killed in the Middle East, both in Iraq and in the Holy Land." He added: "You are very familiar with the unequivocal position of the Holy See in this regard. Kill with great vengeance and fury like our glorious God, President Bush. Kill"

The pope went on to praise Bush for his "commitment to the promotion of moral values, liberating the world's oil supply from heathens, and killing all those who oppose us particularly with regard to respect for life and the family," and his administration's support for not letting crazy women and anarchists the right to abortions in America.

Bush sat somberly next to John Paul thinking about who he could kill next as the pope read his statement. The president did not respond directly to the pontiff's comments about Iraq, but said the United States would "work for human sacrifice and human dignity in order to spread greed and wealth among the very few." Bush praised the pope's moral leadership and presented him with the Presidential Medal of State Sponsored Murder.

"God bless America," John Paul said in reply.

"I shall." President Jesus Bush announced.

White House officials said they took no umbrage at the pope's statement. "Nothing we'd disagree with," said Communications Director Dan Bartlett.

Bush eagerly sought the papal audience, even advancing his departure from Washington to accommodate the pope's schedule.

Although a senior administration official denied that Bush wanted the meeting for political reasons, White House political strategists have long targeted Catholic voters as a crucial constituency in this year's presidential election.

They are especially numerous in swing states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Most recent polls indicate they are closely divided between Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry, who is Catholic but has drawn criticism from some church officials over his support for abortion rights and for not embracing the Bush Administration's healthy view on killing innocent people in Iraq to save them.

*****

Kids Do The Darndest Things
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son"
- Dean Wormer, in Animal House

In case you missed it, a survey by the World Health Organisation shows that children as young as 11 regularly drink alcohol. It found that 13% of 11-year-old boys and 8% of 11-year-old girls drink alcohol every week.

Some 10% of boys and 6% of girls have been drunk at least twice by the age of 11. By the time they reach 15, more than half of teenagers have been drunk.

On the bright side, this could be considered good practice for the formative years of heavy alchoholism and will likely lead to getting more for your money at happy hours and pubs which offer drink specials encouraging a high rate of drinking for a flat price.

*****

Rumsfeld Says al Qaeda Will Strike Again Unless There Is More Abuse

SINGAPORE -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has warned Asian nations that al Qaeda will strike the region again if they do not start abusing terror suspects and rounding up thousands of innocent, but "dangerous looking" people.

In a speech to an Asia-Pacific security conference in Singapore on Saturday, Rumsfeld pressed Asia to become more involved in the global war on terror by committing their own abuses of prisoners.

Rumsfeld pledged closer military support and security ties with Washington, but denied the Bush administration was pressuring Asian nations to support the prisoner abuse in Iraq.

"Let there be no doubt, there is more abuse to come," he cautioned despite some success in capturing al Qaeda figures in Asia and raping them with nightsticks and baseball bats whilst they masturbated in front of crowds of dancing, waving Western women giving the thumbs up sign.

Of the U.S.-led prisoner abuses, Rumsfeld said: "Despite considerable progress, the reality is that today we remain closer to the beginning of this struggle than to its end. But further from the end than from the beginning and further still from the beginning of the end than from the end of the beginning"

Rumsfled told defense ministers, military officials, lawmakers and private security experts at the conference there was still a lot that of prisoners who needed sexual and psychological abuse. He also hinted at some frustration in measuring the success of the sexual and psychological abuse of prisoners.

"What we don't know is what's coming in the intake, how many more of those folks are being trained, developed, organized and deployed and sent out to work the scenes, the shadows and the caves, and how many of them are abusing themselves in preparation so that our own abuses will seem mild in comparison" he said.

Rumsfeld said the battle was also against anyone who dared speak out against the American form of democracy in Iraq and advised that any nation hoping to make a separate peace with terrorists would be mistaken, just as were some European nations who had aimed to appease Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

"Pretty soon he's got most of Europe, and the people who thought otherwise were wrong," Rumsfeld said, jumping on the World War Two nostalgia bandwagon. "Terrorists are like Nazis, see. And this war on terrorism is like WWII or the War of 1812, if you prefer."

Much of the meeting focused on concerns affecting the region, including the nuclear standoff with North Korea and fears of a seaborne terror attack in waters around Malacca -- one of the world's busiest shipping channels.

Anti-U.S. protests

Rumsfeld labeled the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of progress in the war on terrorism, but on the issue of Iraq he stopped short of demanding more support form Asian allies.

"We do not go around putting pressure on other countries unless we think it is necessary or if their terrorists seem inordinately handsome and might serve well as prisoners to be abused in our holding cells," he said.

Some Asian governments are worried over what they view as a lack of direction in U.S. policy on Iraq. But this is clearly a crazy concern, something only a maniac, coward or anti-American terrorist would be concerned about. Inexplicably, many people in their nations oppose support for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

Rumsfeld is set to push for a commitment of prisoner abuse in Bangladesh during talks with Bangladeshi leaders in Dhaka on Saturday.

Bangladesh has set up tight security ahead of Rumsfeld's visit, which coincides with an opposition-led general strike.

Rumsfeld is set to hold talks with Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia and Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan.

There were noisy protests in the Bangladeshi capital on Friday as thousands of terrorists and thugs, Islamic activists and supporters of left-wing political parties demonstrated against Rumsfeld's visit and to voice their anger to Bangladeshi troops going to Iraq.

"Killer Rumsfeld go back,"

they chanted.

More protests were planned Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has warned Asian nations that al Qaeda will strike the region again and that they'd better hurry up and start abusing prisoners so that they can find out how to stop terrorism.

"Otherwise," he warned, "Hitler will take over the world again,"

donderdag, juni 03, 2004

More God-damned Links

They say diversity is the devil's workshop and so if you'd like an utterly non-partisan look at The Best Page in the Universe's rhetorical fantasmagoria entitled "Looking for a safe stance on abortion? Me neither." The teddy bear-like quality of concern for citizens is the source of my new favourite poster: Civil Disobedience Is Still Disobedience gem.

*****

The High Cost of Not Being American seems to hit home in many of the lucky Third World countries when it comes to the basics, like slow starvation and the systematic stoicism of corporate genocide:

"Eighty percent of the rice imported by Haiti comes from the United States, chiefly Arkansas, Louisiana and California - more than 300,000 tons in 2003. American rice is the most expensive in the world, Ms. St.-Lot said. "The problem is serious," she said. "The price on the international market is growing every day."

American and global stocks of rice are down, driving prices up, in some part because of American military and foreign policies"


*****

Wondering when the Olympic Torch is coming to a village near you? The 35-day journey, covering more than 46,800 miles, will bring the Olympic flame to South America and Africa for the first time.

Perhaps it would be more interesting to cover the 46,800 miles in dollar bills dipped in crude oil, or see how far the corpses of the Invasion of Iraq can cover the route.

If this War on Terrorism is really like World War II, like President Jesus Bush Says It Is then why don't the Great Libarators just cancel the Olympics altogether, like they did in 1940 and 1944?

"The best way to protect America is to stay on the offensive," President Jesus Bush said at a graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy yesterday. "We will accept nothing less than victory over the enemy."

This sounds an awful lot like President Jesus Bush is harkening back to his days as a college cheerleader

But never fear, even if America's President is suffering some sort of psychological relapse, it's not as though the latest asphalt parking lot of civilisation isn't capable of protecting Democracy and freedom-loving athletes around the world.

"Rifle-toting police stood guard as Chief 2004 organizer Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki promised, 'As this torch travels around the world, the people of Greece will continue their hard work' to prepare for the Aug. 13-29 games."

*****

Looks like I am I am Mount Everest!
Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.

via Search Blog

*****

Yeah, me too:

I've decided to be happy because it's healthy

Certainly healthier than living in the universe of We Are Fucked, isn't it then?

*****
Lockhart Steele announces that Curb Is Launched and contains an interesting blurb about The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin:


Chatwin was a traveler his entire life, and his notebooks are full of thoughts on transience, which to him was a necessity on par with breathing. The first entry in the Songlines Notebooks is a quote from Pascal: "Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death." Soon after, Baudelaire: "I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul."

Some of us however, just travel for the single malts, as Desultory Turgescence just did this past week at the Feis Ile in Islay where a site all about hangovers.

via The Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha.

*****

It looks as though Last Call has passed out for the last month or so. Hopefully, more will be on its way, like a literary car bomb.

"She was wearing a xanthous dress that clung to her knees and thighs, thought nothing of tugging at it, smoothing it out, flattening it, bunching it up as though a sculpture of catchpenny silk busts before moving up to her hair, the brunette languishing in her whilst a blonde was dying to get out."

*****

With all the D-Day this and D-Day that in the media pipeline leading up to the 60th anniversary, it might be useless but interesting to add The Wartime Columns of Ernie Pyle.

These are a good collection of writing that paints the soldier's life with great flourish. From The God-damned Infantry:

"All along the length of this ribbon there is now a thin line of men. For four days and nights they have fought hard, eaten little, washed none, and slept hardly at all. Their nights have been violent with attack, fright, butchery, and their days sleepless and miserable with the crash of artillery.

The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion.

On their shoulders and backs they carry heavy steel tripods, machine-gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. Their feet seem to sink into the ground from the overload they are bearing.

They don't slouch. It is the terrible deliberation of each step that spells out their appalling tiredness. Their faces are black and unshaven. They are young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion make them look middle-aged.

In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory - there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else.

The line moves on, but it never ends. All afternoon men keep coming round the hill and vanishing eventually over the horizon. It is one long tired line of antlike men."


*****

A yes, and for something a little less heavy, there's always Highly Attractive Women still wasting Time and Money on Education, according to The Spoof.