From whenever to whenever because I'm not all that interested at the moment

Wherein The Child discussing the house on the corner: "If they don't cut their grass soon, it will be like a jungle. And then there will be flying monkeys and everything."


our Diamond Jubilee sixtieth quiz

1. Carrie Nation correct
2. Switzerland correct
3. Never read it, never saw it. I'll guess German. incorrect
4. ????
5. ????
6. Only 17 correct
7. ?????

**********************************

Referee rested. No kidding it was a mistake. Horrible call and denied Liverpool a well-earned victory.

**********************************

Deconstructing Mr. Whipple:

There's so much to work with here, but the thing that jumps out at me is that end-date: 1989. I have long had the sneaking suspicion that a disproportionate amount of Cold War-era pop culture quietly packed it in once the Berlin Wall fell. I will not be surprised when Mr. Whipple is revealed as a paid agent for the Congress for Cultural Freedom, meeting at semi-covert conferences with various Kristols, Kagans, and Podhoretzi.

**********************************

The nightmare continues

for the widow of Pule “Ace” Ntsoelengoe, the soccer legend who died under mysterious circumstances 14 months ago.

Thato Ntsoelengoe revealed exclusively to Sowetan yesterday that she is “stressed” by unending calls from women who claim to have children by her late husband.

“Fifteen other women have come forward claiming that Ace fathered their children,” said Thato yesterday.

She believes callers – such as Tshepiso Manana from Kagiso – are liars clamouring for a share of Ace’s estate.

**********************************

Unhinged rants:

Finally, the closing paragraph. Let's examine the subtext of this paragraph more closely. What is this writer really saying? Let me paraphrase, 'I know you, the sophisticated, urbane, and engaged reader of the NYT would never buy all this ghastly crud for your precious and brilliant children. But like so many of us, you still have extended family who live in fly-over country, and as those relations are want to do, they'll send you this crap (or even worse, take your child on shopping excursions to that Disney-fied travesty unfortunately called "Times Square"). I know you'd never do this, your obvious intelligence is exemplified by your very reading of my own brilliant words, but you can't prevent other people from showering gifts on your little brats, uh, I mean precious children.

**********************************

Meet the 2007 Princess Kay Candidates. Winner to be announced Wednesday. Butter sculpting to commence soon after.

**********************************

Illegal immigrant = runaway slave? Buuullshit:

Well, the law is the law. The United States has a duty to control who migrates into this country. So I’m not shedding any tears for Elvira Arellano (who got booted out in 1997 and snuck back in again).

But I heard a sound bite on the radio this afternoon that made a couple of my orifices clench.

Juan Jose Gutierrez, of something called “Latino Movement USA,” said: “It seems to us that the mentality and behavior by law enforcement of the runaway slave is alive and well.”

Oh no he di-in’t. He did not compare illegal immigration to black slavery... did he?

**********************************

Do I remember Duckman? Only one of the greatest television comedies:

an animated series based on Everett Peck's comic books about a perverted, incompetent, duck detective (voiced on the series by Jason Alexander). Duckman is sort of a cartoon duck version of Dan Fielding from Night Court -- which Reno and Osborn also used to write for -- and his only real redeeming quality is that he's clearly hurting over the death of his wife Beatrice (except that he accidentally caused her death, as he causes most of the horrible things that happen on the show). His sister-in-law Bernice (Nancy Travis), who loathes him, moves in to help take care of his kids: the spaced-out Ajax (Dweezil Zappa) and Charles and Mambo, two kids who share one body. He's usually bailed out of trouble by his super-competent partner, Cornfed Pig (Gregg Berger).

The So Quoted list of greatest sitcoms. Others are good, even great-like, but these are the ones sitting at the cool table:

Bob Newhart Show
Coupling
Duckman
Fawlty Towers
Green Acres
News Radio
WKRP in Cincinnati
30 Rock

**********************************

In the years preceding war, American diplomats had driven a hard bargain with the Japanese, constraining them with naval arms treaties and holding out the threat of boycott and embargo to compel them to walk the line. Americans watched but did not seem to appreciate the fervor with which Japan was seizing control of the Asian mainland. Weary of war, some believed that messy foreign entanglements could be avoided, saving their suspicions for their own military or for Wall Street financiers and arms traders who they thought had profiteered during the Great War. In June 1940 the U.S. Army's total enlistment stood at 268,000 men. It was inconvenient to contemplate that during the first six weeks of the Rape of Nanking, nearly half that number of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war, as well as some American civilians, had been slaughtered by the Japanese Army.

The naivete of the isolationists concerning Imperial Japan's ambitions was matched only by the ignorance of the average enlistee concerning its capabilities. Most American servicemen saw the Japanese as too many newspaper cartoonists sketched them: bucktoothed simpletons who would wilt when faced with U.S. Marines and tough sailors in their impregnable ships. But the oerking belligerence of the Japanese dispelled any such misguided popular stereotypes among U.S. military planners. They saw the threat.

Ship of Ghosts, The story of the USS Houston, FDR's legendary lost cruiser, and the epic saga of her survivors. James D. Hornfischer