Showing posts with label offbeat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label offbeat. Show all posts

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Rotten luck

Maybe God exists, and He cares for all of us, even those amongst us who happen to be sinners… and criminals. But there are times when everyday crooks are likely to be so dismayed by their amazing rotten luck that they might be forgiven for wondering whether the Creator is indeed making an effort to protect them. Worse still, these run-of-the-mill lawbreakers, whose only preoccupation consists of trying constantly to earn a dishonest penny, might even be led astray into atheism of the worst kind…

Consider, for example, this item of news from rural France. Etampes is an ancient and charming small town to the south of Paris, midway between Chartres and Fontainebleau, which has often been used as a setting for movies.


As an enthusiast of pumpkin scones [click here to see my blog post on this subject], I’m impressed by the beauty of a famous red pumpkin variety that bears the name of this town.


Surrounded by such celebrated places as Paris, Orléans and Chartres, Etampes has always found it hard to shine in the domain of historical celebrity. In other words, it’s a quiet town, where nothing much ever happens these days. There’s not even an autoroute or a high-speed train line in the vicinity of the town, whose residents must get fed up with constant allusions to Etampes as a “gateway” into the Ile-de-France region surrounding Paris.

All in all, it’s the kind of environment in which low-level robbers might hope to earn a modest living, without taking too many risks. In any case, that was the intention of two naive delinquents who used a pistol, late last Wednesday evening, to hold up a young couple who happened to strolling through the wintry streets of the sleepy town. What could be more straightforward, more normal?

Now, to understand the rest of this trivial story (which nevertheless made its way into all the French media), you have to know that the outskirts of Etampes were chosen as an ideal site to set up the training school of the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group [GIGN = Groupe d'intervention de la gendarmerie nationale], the elite special-operations squad of the French Armed Forces, trained to perform counter-terrorist and hostage-retrieval missions throughout the world.


And sometimes, of an evening, both male and female members of this army unit are likely to don civilian clothes and go for a walk through the deserted streets of Etampes. Well, the future robbery victims chosen by the above-mentioned delinquents happened to be a pair of GIGN trainees (a young guy and a girl)… who noticed instantly that the pistol pointed at them by one of the would-be robbers wasn’t equipped with a charger. Now, that was indeed a silly omission, particularly when you happen to be holding up two members of the GIGN, in the hope of getting hold of their cash. Things happened so quickly that the pistol-wielder didn’t know what had hit him. His unarmed mate escaped, but was rapidly cornered by local police.

Normally, when residents of Etampes happen to get a glimpse of these GIGN guys engaged in training activities, they’re easily recognized, because they look something like this:



But how can an unskilled everyday delinquent be expected to recognize GIGN personnel when the crime-fighters don’t even go to the trouble of wearing their distinctive gear? Indeed, if GIGN members are allowed to roam around the quiet streets of Etampes of an evening dressed in civilian clothes, they must be considered as a potentially grave danger for unwitting robbers and miscellaneous delinquents... and there should be a law against situations of this kind.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Fit to be worn by an Aussie PM

This morning, I was browsing around on the Internet, looking for stores that sell long winter underwear... which is the ideal solution for keeping warm whenever I'm wandering around outside in the snow. I took a look at the website of the French textile company named 3 Suisses.


Now I can already hear some of my readers complaining: "William is such a staunch Francophile that he's trying to pull the wool (or synthetic textile) over our eyes by suggesting that the 3 Suisses company is French. But we know enough French to realize that this company, in view of its name, is obviously Swiss." I'm sorry to disappoint such bright readers, but the explanations I'm about to reveal might enable them to succeed in a future French trivia quiz. In 1932, Monsieur Toulemonde set up the offices of his company in Roubaix, in the north of France. Opposite his office building, there was a bistrot run by a Monsieur Suis, who had 3 daughters. Customers got around to referring to the bistrot as chez les 3 Suisses. And that name rubbed off onto the textile company on the other side of the road.

After World War II, the annual 3 Suisses catalogue became required reading for families throughout France. And, as early as 1998, the 3 Suisses company glided effortlessly into the Internet era... almost as if they had been waiting for it to happen.

These days, when Internet users are reading the French news, they often find images of scantily-clad females, wearing 3 Suisses garments, floating across the top of the screen. And I know from experience that, whenever I've been tempted to take a closer glimpse at such a creature, I've been bombarded constantly, for days afterwards, by all kinds of 3 Suisses ads for female clothes... which are generally of a quite pleasant nature.

This morning, though, I was hit in the eye by the following 3 Suisses publicity:


I peered at the name beneath the photo on the left, and said to myself that this was no doubt a joke. Somebody had surely created this hoax name and image on the 3 Suisses website. No genuine manufacturer would dare to call his company "Aussie Bum". Maybe the site had been hacked by a gay guy from Down Under who was still under the spell of Mr Rabbit's budgie smuggling.


Well, it seems I was wrong. The company in question really exists, and you can click here to view their range of big-bulge products.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Dad drinks

After an evening of heavy drinking up on the Gold Coast, an Australian fellow decided wisely that it would not be a good idea to attempt to drive his automobile. So, he asked his 7-year-old son—who had probably been drowsing on the back seat of the car, waiting for his dad—to take the wheel. At 3 o'clock in the morning, police stopped the vehicle after noticing that it was being driven slowly without headlights. Needless to say, they were surprised to discover a child at the wheel, and his drunken father in the passenger seat.

I reckon the kid should receive some kind of award for simultaneously obeying and taking care of his dad. I've always been moved by the little boy in this famous photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson [1908-2004]:


The child's vaguely supercilious expression—looking down his nose as if to say "We've all got a job to do, and I do mine well"—suggests that he's immensely happy and proud to be bringing home an appreciable quantity of precious nectar for his dad... who was probably already too inebriated to make the journey to the local wine shop. And I love the fleeting regard of the cute little girl in the background, who seems to be exclaiming to herself: "Wow, what a dutiful kid!"

Monday, June 17, 2013

Language miracle in Australia

In Mark 16:14-18, we must imagine that Jesus has already been raised from the dead, and he is giving an amazing short pep talk to some of his followers, who appear to be far from convinced that it's real.
Still later he appeared to the eleven while they were at table, and reproached them for their incredulity and dullness, because they had not believed those who had seen him after he was raised from the dead. Then he said to them: "Go to every part of the world, and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Those who believe it and receive baptism will be saved; those who do not believe will be condemned. Faith will bring with it these miracles: believers will drive out demons in my name and speak in strange tongues; if they handle snakes or drink any deadly poison, they will come to no harm; and the sick on whom they lay their hands will recover." So after talking with them the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.
I've always imagined Jesus seated alongside his father, looking down upon earthly happenings, and asking sarcastically: "Dad, do you think the silly bastards will really believe that crap about deadly snakes and poison?"


I've heard that certain believers in the USA have got around to snake acts... but their numbers are diminishing. As for the bit about speaking in strange tongues, it's designated by a weird technical term: glossolalia. And I have the impression that there might be a spectacular case of this miraculous happening down in Tasmania. Click here to read this true story. An aspect of this tale that amuses me is the idea that ordinary Aussies would indeed be capable of recognizing a French accent. And it's so funny to gather, reading between the lines, that the last thing in the world that the unlucky Tasmanian lady desires is to be mistaken for a bloody frog. Meanwhile, it would be a good idea to examine her hands to see if there are traces of stigmata.

Yellow submarine

You've got to admire the marketing flair of the fellow who had the brilliant idea of setting up a fleet of yellow amphibious vehicles (converted army equipment), in the Beatles city of Liverpool, known as duckmarines.


Click here to see the Royals themselves taking a trip around the Liverpool docks in one of these vessels. Now, it's important to understand that these amphibious vehicles are nevertheless not meant to operate as submarines. That's to say, in normal circumstances, they should never descend below the surface of the water. But that appears to happen at times, as you can see here. And, when one of these vessels goes down, as has happened twice in the last few months, passengers have no more than a few seconds to get out of the metallic carcass and start swimming to safety. Imagine the consequences for the kingdom if an accident of this kind had taken place when the royals were aboard!


On the other hand, a jolly rollicking new song could have been obtained simply by changing slightly the original lyrics:

They all drowned in a yellow duckmarine...

We might imagine Elizabeth and her husband going down in Titanic style if the royal yacht (which no longer exists) were to spring a leak... along with their son Charles and his wife, too, if possible. Truly, a drowning accident in a duckmarine in the Liverpool docks just doesn't sound noble enough. But it would appear retrospectively that the world was just a hair's breadth away from such a great front-page story for the British tabloids.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Toys for almost everybody

This simple graphic struck me as funny... but my sense of humor might well be atypical, if not frankly perverted:


I don't have a Facebook account, and I certainly don't want one, since I have no desire to get engulfed in so-called "social media" of that superficial kind. Consequently, I don't know the identity of the bright folk who gave us this graphic, retweeted by Richard Dawkins.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Now we know how he did it

I think that one miracle in particular has become more famous than all the others, for the simple reason that almost everybody has tried to perform it, at one time or another... and nobody has ever succeeded unquestionably in repeating the accomplishment of Jesus. I'm referring, of course, to the marvelous story about Jesus walking on the surface of the waters of the Sea of Galilee.

It was now late and the boat was already well out on the water, while he was alone on the land. Somewhere between three and six in the morning, seeing them labouring at the oars against a head wind, he came towards them, walking on the lake. He was going to pass by them; but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But at once he spoke to them: 'Take heart! It is I; do not be afraid.'
— Mark 6:47-50
According to Matthew 14:28, Peter decided spontaneously to have a go at this feat, and it seemed to work for a few seconds. But his faith collapsed almost instantly, and he started to sink into the water.

Recently, a small team of determined athletes, equipped with special water-repellent running shoes (of a brand that I'm not allowed to name here, because of my sporting sponsors), succeeded brilliantly in racing some 20 meters across the surface of a lake.


But these courageous fellows haven't yet deciphered the great Jesus secret that consists of having sufficient pure faith in God to believe totally that He will hold the walker's body above the surface at all times, making it possible to stroll peacefully and fearlessly across the water.

There was a gigantic breakthrough recently when marine archaeologists discovered a massive ancient stone structure under the surface of the Sea of Galilee. Click here to see this fascinating story. A diagram from Shmuel Marco makes it clear at last, after two millennia of mystification, exactly how Jesus was able to carry out his trick.


At that time, the depth of the Sea of Galilee was slightly less than it is today, which meant that the tip of this huge but hidden stone "iceberg" lay just below the surface. So, Jesus—who had no doubt practiced this feat tirelessly, to get it right for the day of his celebrated demonstration—simply paddled around on a small more-or-less flat zone at the tip of the structure, creating the illusion that he was walking on the water.

Archaeologists say that they can't explain who might have built this underwater mound. Nor why and when it was erected. I'm surprised by the archaeologists' lack of imagination. To my mind, it's clear that Jesus himself had collected funds enabling him to employ a team of stonemasons to build this structure, for the sole purpose of performing his spectacular miracle. In nearby Egypt, various pharaohs had found the means of erecting far greater masses of stone, the pyramids, in order to promote their theories of an afterlife. Since miracles play such a fundamental role in Christianity, I find it perfectly plausible, indeed normal, that Jesus might have gone to the trouble of building his own relatively small tumulus. Besides, since it was underwater, it didn't have to be as fancy as the Egyptian models, because the whole idea was that nobody should see it.

The only authentic miracle in this rather shabby tale is the fact that, as far as we know, no fishing boats ever ran aground on this big pile of rocks.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Champion liars

For celebrities who happen to be stupendous liars, the prestigious Pinnochio Award—which I'm thinking of organizing—will be a kind of annual Nobel prize.


Several brilliant candidates have already appeared on the scene. Ever since the interview of 17 January 2013 with Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong has been a n° 1 contender for the award.


Between now and the end of the year, however, many things can happen. Many monstrous untruths can be propagated. And it's quite possible that various excellent liars will be making an effort to overtake the Texan... which has become a perfectly feasible task now that Armstrong has stopped absorbing his customary cocktails.

In France, for example, the politician Jérôme Cahuzac provided us with a spectacular performance of blatant lying, not so long ago, when he swore to his comrades, in an eye-to-eye declaration, that he had never had a bank account in a foreign tax haven.

                                       — photo AFP/Jean-Pierre Muller

His claim to the Pinnochio Award must be taken seriously, since this was the first known case of a French minister telling lies to the president himself, then being revealed as a liar and obliged to resign. There are rumors, too, that Cahuzac has amassed vast financial funds, from mysterious donors, enabling him to envisage lobbying operations on a grand scale for the greatly-desired Pinnochio Award.

This morning, we heard of a humble but determined Pinnochio candidate from an unexpected domain: the Jewish religious hierarchy in France.


Gilles Bernheim, the 60-year-old chief rabbi of France, had admitted that his book Quarante méditations juives [Stock, 2011], created with the assistance of a ghostwriter, contained plagiarized excerpts. Prior to resigning, the distinguished rabbi also pointed out that he had falsified his curriculum vitae. Contrary to what has been declared in Who's Who and other places, Bernheim has never obtained an agrégation (high-level French academic distinction) in philosophy. Definitely not nice...

I would be a liar if I did not admit that, personally, I've been wondering whether I myself could maybe be considered as a serious candidate for the much-coveted Pinnochio Award. In that sense, let me start the ball rolling by revealing a well-kept secret. Up until now, I happened to be one of the rare individuals who knew that the French rabbi seen dancing in the following famous video was in fact Gilles Bernheim, disguised by means of a false beard, when he was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris (where he picked up doctorates in molecular biology and cosmology).


I swear to God—cross my heart and hope to die—that the secret I've just revealed is absolutely true and easily provable.

POST SCRIPTUM: In the Jewish folklore arena, I must include this hilarious image, for those who haven't seen it yet elsewhere on the web:


Apparently the passenger in a bag is an ultra-orthodox Jew who is using transparent plastic in an attempt to protect himself, during a flight to the Holy Land, from unspecified obnoxious emanations. Since the gentleman appears to be calm (sleeping?), we might suppose that this interesting method does in fact work. On the other hand, I must point out that I've been unable to find any factual evidence concerning the physical state of this pious passenger when he reached his destination. Was he still alive? Indeed, there's a credible rumor going around that the individual in the plastic bag was already dead when the photo was taken. Other passengers (well and truly alive) were simply taking their deceased relative back to Israel for burial on the slopes across from Jerusalem. It's surprising however (to say the least) that the corpse would have been accepted by the airline as cabin luggage.

Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins has dragged out a spectacular video:


When you look at things objectively, compared with all these crazy cries and gesticulations (which might disturb, not only other passengers, but the flight crew), a few tiny lies in a curriculum vitæ or a few borrowed paragraphs in a book are neither here nor there. I can comprehend, in a way, why a distinguished religious leader might find it worthwhile to employ dubious methods in order to enhance his intellectual reputation. But I remain totally totally incapable of understanding what might be going on in the heads of those guys in the airplane.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Australian scholarship

If you're interested in big pricks, a pair of researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra are sure to attract your attention. One of them is Michael Jennions, a biology professor.

                                    — photo Jay Cronan

He and his doctoral student Brian Mautz certainly deserve an Ig Nobel Prize [click here for explanations] for their earth-shattering discovery that heterosexual ladies appear to prefer king-sized male genitalia. Let's listen to the professor presenting their findings.


In the domain of painting, miniatures have always exerted a fascination upon countless art collectors. Maybe the Australian researchers might move beyond their present big-is-beautiful preoccupations and pursue a fascinating and little-known field of investigation: the refined tastes of a female elite who prefer tiny little pricks of an exquisite kind that are best observed under a magnifying glass. Other possible penis-oriented research topics might be gleaned from this excellent song by the Frenchman Pierre Perret:

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Chain-saw attack of the Sun King's elephant

If this story had emerged in the press next Monday, I would have concluded immediately that it's an April Fool's Day tale. We learned this morning that an unfortunate animal in Paris was incapable of resisting the attack of a maniac armed with a chain-saw. In any case, the beast in question—an elephant that been given to Louis XIV in 1668 by the king of Portugal—had been dead for ages, and was residing in peace (up until last night) in the natural science museum in the Latin Quarter.


The 20-year-old attacker, who had succeeded in crudely hacking off the elephant's left tusk, was captured in a nearby street by police who had been alerted by the unfamiliar morning sounds of a chain-saw inside a museum. We must of course presume that the alleged chain-saw assailant is innocent, at least up until a law court were to condemn him. Whatever the precise description of the crime with which he'll be charged, the fellow will be better off than if he'd been charged by the living beast itself, back in the days of the Sun King... who would have promptly had the culprit drawn and quartered for daring to touch the tusks of the royal elephant.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

The end is near

Here in France, it's still only 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the penultimate day. So, everything still exists here, and it's business as usual. But, at the moment I'm writing this blog post, New Zealand is no doubt starting to fade out forever as a civilized community.


And my native Australia should be getting ready to go Down Under. Everywhere, particularly among the enlightened folk in Byron Bay, there's a feeling in the air that the end is near.


The great Jim Morrison once expressed this doomed feeling in a poignant style:


TV reports inform us that French highways are already crammed with vehicles heading to the south-west.


Their destination, of course, is the tiny village of Bugarach, whose mountain allegedly has room for some 30 million survivors.


As I've already pointed out in this blog, I persist in believing that Mayan cosmologists got their computations slightly screwed up, and that the right place to be protected from extermination is in fact the magnificent magic mountain just across from my house at Gamone: the Cournouze.


Consequently, I'll be packing up here this evening and wandering across to Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne, with Fitzroy and the two donkeys. In the middle of the forthcoming dark night of celestial tribulations, if I can find an operational Internet connection in Châtelus, I'll write a blog post to describe what's happening here. Before publishing it, I intend to do a quick check, of course, to see whether I still have any potential readers throughout the world. Otherwise, there's no point in carrying on my blogging. So, if you hear from me within the next 24 hours, that will be good news both for you and for me. Meanwhile, to all my still-existing readers: Happy Apocalypse!


BREAKING NEWS: Here on the edge of the French Alps, I'm happy to say that my constant belief in the magic survival powers of the great Cournouze mountain seems to have paid off, because the alleged Final Day has dawned and everything's fine, including the weather. On the other hand, the Antipodes worry me greatly. There are rumors on the Internet that every sign of normal humanity in New Zealand has been wiped off the face of the earth, and that only the Hobbit population remains, hidden deep in Middle-earth. As for feedback from Australia, I'm getting no intelligible signals whatsoever from Byron Bay, not even from their flourishing Raelian community. (In an initial version of my remarks here, a regrettable slip of the pen caused me to write "intelligent" rather than "intelligible".) So, I'm forced to conclude sadly that the good old days of whale spotting from the lighthouse, surfing among the sharks and drinking beer in the local pubs are almost certainly a thing of the past. The world will miss you all...

BUGARACH CALLING BYRON: Trying to get through. How many survivors in Byron? Everything normal Bugarach. Extraterrestrial visit this afternoon. Nice fellows.


Byron received extraterrestrial visits? What color? Can we forward you Bugarach extraterrestrials?

Friday, December 14, 2012

Beware of flooding

Imagine a millionaire, with a constant urge to make more millions. At a religious level, let's suppose that our millionaire happens to be a young-Earth creationist. They're the crazy folk—like our Aussie nitwit politician Steve Fielding, evoked here—who believe that God spent a busy week making the world, before being overcome by a psychopathic desire to destroy the results of his week of toil by means of a huge flood, designed to exterminate mankind. Finally, let's suppose that our rich creationist is Dutch. That's to say, he resides in a land that could rapidly be flooded dramatically if ever sea levels were to rise as a consequence of global warming... or because of an act of God in another homicidal mood. If the fellow whom I've asked you to imagine were to actually exist today, in flesh and blood, what would he be doing? The answer is obvious. He would be building an ark.

That's exactly what Johan Huibers has been doing over the last couple of decades. Construction of the huge vessel has been completed, and it was officially launched a few days ago. And Johan is henceforth awaiting, with confidence, the Apocalypse: first, the Mayan business, then maybe, with a bit of luck, a tidal wave or two. In any case, even creationists never know the surprises that God's got up his sleeve...


The replica uses measurements obtained from the Bible, but the builder has taken the liberty of incorporating various features that God and Noah overlooked. For example, the Dutch ark can welcome up to 1500 visitors at a time, and these Biblical tourists have access to a big restaurant and a movie theater. As far as non-human animals are concerned, they're mostly sculptures.

The Gallica website recently displayed here a small series of beautiful medieval images of the Biblical ark. As soon as we analyze these images, however, it becomes clear that artists in those days (the Middle Ages) must have had a terribly fuzzy conception of reality. Consider, for example, this presentation of the construction of the vessel:


It looks as if they're putting the finishing touches to a carnival float representing a big walnut. There's no way in the world that this thing they're building might sail upon the flood waters with a gigantic cargo of specimens of all of God's creatures. But my negative remarks are unkind, and they merely reveal my lack of faith. The following image proves that Noah's adventure got off to a delightful start:


I wonder what role the lady in red will be playing during the voyage. Would this be Lady Noah? Her clothes are not quite right for work as a deckhand, feeding the animals and shoveling out their dung. The following image is meant to show us how everybody has been housed aboard the vessel:


Here's another depiction of the ship's quarters:


The respective sizes of the various creatures have been handled by the artist in a very loose fashion, as if he wasn't greatly worried about reality. I wonder if he actually noticed that his ducks were bigger than horses, or whether this trivial detail escaped his attention.

Believers (like the crazy Dutchman) would probably tell me that images such as these must be taken merely as symbols, rather than realistic diagrams. Fair enough; nobody in his right mind would ever consider this artwork as realistic. But symbols are a convenient notion for trying to hide the obvious fact: namely, that there can be no plausible reality whatsoever behind the story of Noah.

Finally, the voyage went over well. And the following image suggests that, when they were about to return to dry land, many of the supplies stored down in the lower hull hadn't even been touched.


I would imagine that it had been such a fabulous and exciting trip that none of the passengers had even thought about eating. I hope that visitors aboard the Dutch ark won't behave like that, because Johan Huibers will be needing a constant flow of hungry clients in his big restaurant. Otherwise, no white dove will descend from the heavens to tell him that there's a fortune in cash on the horizon.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Don't throw bananas onto the track

A 30-year-old Japanese sprinter, Kenichi Ito, has just established a new world record of 17.47 seconds for the 100 meters. Click here to admire a video of his performance.

In an Olympic context, if I had to choose between synchronized swimming and running on all fours, I wouldn't hesitate in preferring to watch the monkey business. In fact, when I observe some of the swimmers' contortions, I wonder whether some of these women might not be able to turn themselves into top-level monkey runners.


As far as exciting spectator sports go, I would even place monkey running ahead of curling.


There again, maybe there could be some sort of amalgam between the two sporting disciplines, by requiring curling competitors to slide around on the glass on all fours, in the style of seals, with their noses down at the level of the granite stone.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Restoration of the holy image

I was inspired by Cecilia Gimenez for her restoration of Ecce Homo.


The original was indeed a bit dull, and it needed fixing.


Like many other Internet artists, I felt like getting involved in this fascinating field of restoration. And I was inspired, too, by Clint Eastwood's recent contribution to the Mitt Romney circus.


You can find a huge collection of masterpieces here.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Darwin nomination

You've probably heard of the prestigious Darwin Awards:
In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival.
So, the winner of a Darwin Award [click here to visit their website] is necessarily a dead idiot whose disappearance inspires us in the sense that we would like to see more individuals of his kind removed forever from our gene pool. The award winner is the posthumous symbol of a branch of humanity for whom our dearest and deepest (unspoken) wishes would be extinction.

I've just found my personal candidate for the forthcoming award. I'm happy to present this silly dead bugger to my readers. First, you need a few elements of US backwoods culture, straight from Monsanto. You see, folk in that part of the world have met up, for ages, with a legendary apelike creature known as Bigfoot, whose rare sightings are awesome. The following image of Bigfoot proves that he exists.


But, even in Monsanto, lots of folk refuse to believe in Bigfoot. So, they need a little nudge, otherwise belief in Bigfoot might subside, which would be a state calamity. A bit of military gear does the trick.


This outfit is known as a Ghillie suit, used as close-combat camouflage, and you can buy one through the Internet.


A certain Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, Montana was apparently alarmed by the recent drop in Bigfoot sightings. He decided that the most efficient promotional act would consist of buying a Ghillie outfit and wandering around on a local highway, in the hope of arousing talk about the legendary creatures. Sadly, the silly bugger got run over, Ghillie suit and all, by a passing driver. RIP, Randy. I hope and pray that you'll get a Darwin Award. You deserve it. There should be more deaths like yours.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

The day started nicely

This morning, things started out quite well for me. After being woken up by the dull thuds of one of my donkeys (the young female) rummaging around in my pumpkin patch, I was relieved to discover that Fanette had in fact behaved quite daintily, in the sense that she'd simply gobbled up a few carrot and turnip plants, but hadn't crushed any of my pumpkins. Here are some dismal photos of the pumpkin patch in the heat of day:


The pumpkin plants were in mourning. The right adjective is "droopy".


In the midst of that stultifying droopiness, that pumpkin is probably ripe. Besides, how do you know whether a pumpkin's ripe or not?


Happily, a few hours later on, in the cool of the evening, the plants emerged from the doldrums, and all the stalks and leaves returned to their normal erect state, as if they'd always looked like that.


Naturally, a sprinkling of water made them perk up even more, as the cool evening set in. Incidentally, I'm convinced that professional photographers working for gardening magazines must operate either very early in the morning or during the evening (maybe with artificial lighting). Their editors would never accept the spectacle (authentic, nevertheless) of midday vegetal droopiness.

OK. Let me get back to my subject. I was happy, this morning, because I finally found a way of solving (I think) a challenge that has pursued me ever since I started to write this blog, back in December 2006. I'm talking of the possibility of consulting easily and meaningfully the archives of my Antipodes blog. The more I write, the more I feel that many of my past thoughts and feelings have become submerged, unfortunately, in the historical bulk of the blog. For a time, I played (unfruitfully) with the idea of a potential software tool that might facilitate access to the Antipodes archives. Theoretically, the search box up in the top left corner of the Antipodes page lets you find almost anything and everything. But readers don't necessarily know what search arguments they should enter.

In any case, the new approach I've decided to adopt is based upon the Blogger phenomenon of so-called static pages. I've started to build one such page, labeled Gamone, which you can find in the right-hand side bar. For the moment, apart from the concept itself, don't expect too much. The creation of these pages will take a lot of work, and I'm just beginning...

Well, everything was fine until I sat down in front of my faithful Mac and took a look at the major news events of the morning. And that's when the Holy Shit struck the fan. Prince Harry's bum!


For those who preferred a front view, carrot-haired Harry was obliging.


Stone the crows, I say. Enough is fucking enough. It's high time to get rid of that royal bunch of dimwits. But do whatever you please, my dear British brothers. I can understand perfectly well that your grand theoreticians have studied in depth all these questions based upon data concerning the Royals, the Games, the Pound Sterling, etc. And, even if Harry were to get involved in porn videos, the analyses of n° 10 Downing Street would continue to take everything in their stride. That's what made Britain great. But shit: Internet images of Prince Harry's bum?

Later on in the day, I was annoyed to discover that some kind of bug was infesting the Antipodes blog. Both inside the blog itself, and in associated files, every occurrence of the term "English" was accompanied by a tiny piece of software spam shit.


I lost little time in tracking down the cause of this annoyance: a nasty piece of nonsense known as Text Enhance, which invades your personal working domain and attaches little pieces of shitty publicity. When I started to complain about this state of affairs, I was amazed to receive an e-mail from the perpetrators of this shit, who directed me to a website telling me how to get rid of their nasty stuff. As I see things, I would suggest, it it were possible, that the perpetrators of Text Enhance might stuff themselves up Harry's princely bum. And we might all live happily ever after.

Yes, the day started nicely. And it ended nicely too, in wisdom. I've learned that we're really living in a crazy place. But, for an atheist such as me, adjusted to Sisyphian joy, what the fucking hell!

Thursday, August 9, 2012

French wallaby living dangerously

For the last few days, a wallaby that escaped from a property in south-west France has been gallivanting around the countryside, often alongside busy highways.


When the animal happened to stop for a rest in a roadside parking zone, French gendarmes tried to capture it, but they were dismayed to discover that the wallaby simply hopped away.

Experienced Australian readers might be able to suggest reliable methods for capturing the animal before it gets annihilated by a vehicle. Maybe the gendarmes should simply try to put salt on its tail...