the blog quebecois

'Everyone on our estate had it tough. Nobody had any money. You've got to pick a pocket or two. You had to know how to make money and not get caught. And at the same time not to turn into a thief or burglar. That sort of working-class community didn't wear anyone parasiting on their own. But that kind of code of conduct doesn't exist now. England's a violent place. Too violent for me. That's why I prefer it here. For a gun-toting nation, Americans are surprisingly passive. This place suits me and the wife.'

The Telegraph with a piece on the surprisingly-reflective Johnny (Lydon) Rotten, the Sex Pistols' frontman.

If middle age hasn't completely tamed him, he seems a lot happier (and saner) than I'd have predicted. In fact, he sounds like a fascinating character to share a pint with.

He's even gently courteous to a young, awe-struck Japanese fan. It's enough to make you spit razor blades.

Snow is good-soft, deep, drifted snow. Snow is lovely. Remember that you are the pilot and your body is the aircraft. By tilting forward and putting your hands at your side, you can modify your pitch and make progress not just vertically but horizontally as well. As you go down 15,000 feet, you can also go sideways two-thirds of that distance-that's two miles! Choose your landing zone. You be the boss.

What to do if the plane you are travelling in suffers what the engineers coyly call "catastrophic integrity failure." Meaning that you've suddenly got bigger problems than the yakker in the next seat.

If you keep your wits about you, though, and employ these elementary principles of physics . . . well, you'll probably end up like a smashed bug anyway.

Yet people have survived falls from a similar or even greater height before. Here's how they did it.

A TV tower in žižkov (can't find the upper-case HTML code for that character), Czech Republic. The above humanoid/tapewormish sculpture(s) weren't part of the original design; they were added later by a local artist, David Černý, for reasons best known to him.

More pictures here.

for not coming up with a better book title than A Brief History Of Time. Hmph. What am I supposed to do with that?

A Brief History Of LEGO? Lame, even by my standards.

Curse you , Stephen Hawking.

Logan Aube from Aurora, Ontario, is presently near or at the top in the CBC's contest to replace the Hockey Night In Canada theme song. The cacaphonous entry (with professionally-done animation) on YouTube:

He is so far playing it commendably straight, as this quote from the National Post indicates:

My love for hockey is reflected quite well in this piece I feel. The intense percussion symbolizes the hard-hitting excitement of the sport, while the cat samples are used to demonstrate the feline qualities players must possess: speed, cunning, agility, and fearlessness. The other animal noises reflect the rich domestic history of the sport; I remember my grandfather who grew up on a farm used to freeze a rink in their field every year so that they could play the game, while the animals watched on.

The happy child was used to symbolize the child-like wonder many Canadians feel every time they turn on this great game. The climax of the piece brings it all together, bringing the excitement to its peak and then finishing it off with a buzzer. Goal!

However, the CBC is being gamed. Aube, a regular (under the handle "Lowgain") on the Something Awful forums, put out a plea there and on Facebook for votes. It seems to be working.

Via Waxy.org

The happy ending. Note the Russian officer midway down, a dead ringer for Leonid Brezhnev.

Politico:

"I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet," she says impatiently when questioned. "I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy."

If this were a movie, you'd be hearing nothing now but the piteous wails of The Kid Who's Too Young To Die.

Really, if the planet needed "saving," Nancy Pelosi would be my 2,000,001th choice to do it. Right after my drunken uncle Herbert.

And I don't even have a drunken uncle Herbert.

Joshua Hoffine, whose (Photoshop- assisted) work looks at childhood phobias. His site seems to be down but there's a selection of it here.

Warning: Some might find the images unsettling. Not me, of course. Because I was always "Mommy's special little soldier." :)

. . . tackle? Nope. Mastertacklers? Nope.

Truly, the pun is the lowest form of humor. 'Cause I'm just not getting it.