February 2012
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“If you don’t eat chillies, you won’t be a revolutionary”
– Chairman Mao
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The Palace Under the Alps: The Gorges du Verdon,... →
palaceunderthealps:
The gorges of Verdon are sometimes compared, a bit unfairly, to the Grand Canyon. Although this series of gorges north of St. Tropez cannot begin to match the scale of their American counterpart, they are wild, spectacular, and unrelentingly beautiful. There’s nothing like it anywhere else in…
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Flappity, Floppity, Flip! The Mouse on the Möbius Strip The Strip revolved, The Mouse dissolved In a chronodimensional skip.
- Frederick Winsor
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“…Mario [Lopez]’s vain sexcapades during his years on SBTB culminated...”
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Dustin Diamond, Behind the Bell
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WatchI’ve met Scott Bakula. He’s so dreamy.
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The Palace Under the Alps: The World's Best... →
palaceunderthealps:
One of the great curses of twentieth-century life is the development of the suburb. In a world teeming with these dreary, soulless places, Tapiola Garden City comes as a refreshing - and probably unique - change. In the 1950s, 12 Finnish architects were chosen to build a model community six miles…
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M&Ms Rant
The Super Bowl is known for its expensive advertising spectacles. It’s where the three Budweiser frogs debuted, it’s where Apple introduced the Mac in a 1984 commercial directed by Ridley Scott, and it’s where a scantily-clad Cindy Crawford slowly drank Pepsi in front of children.
This year M&Ms showed the world their latest anthropomorphised character,...
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The Palace Under the Alps: The Most Haunted... →
palaceunderthealps:
There are, at a conservative estimate, some 6,000 ghosts in Britain. They range from the phantom bus driver of Holland Park in London, who is still said to cause occasional consternation late at night by driving a red double-decker bus through walls and other solid objects, to the invisible but…
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A couple of years ago I was spending Christmas at a girlfriend’s parent’s house for the first time. This is undoubtedly a Big Thing. Several days in the company of people I don’t know all that well where there’s going to be a buzzing atmosphere of festive spirit and an expectation of merry joy.
We were playing a Scrabble-like game and with my first batch of tiles I managed...
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Russell and Whitehead and Hegel and Kant! Maybe I shall and maybe I shan’t.
Maybe I shan’t and maybe I shall. Kant Russell Whitehead, Hegel et al.
- Frederick Winsor
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“…nobody’s hairstyles went through more changes than those of the...”
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Dustin Diamond, Behind the Bell
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January 2012
40 posts
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Probable-Possible, my black hen, She lays eggs in the Relative When. She doesn’t lay eggs in the Positive Now Because she’s unable to Postulate How.
- Frederick Winsor
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“…I was administering a sort of self-imposed silent treatment with the rest...”
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Dustin Diamond, Behind the Bell
The Palace Under the Alps: Horseback Riding in the... →
palaceunderthealps:
In 1079, when kings were kings and people were mere impediments, William the Conqueror plowed under 26 Saxon villages and usurped several thousand acres of land to create the vast hunting preserve still known as the New Forest. He informed the startled locals that the would be blinded if they so…
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LEGO at the UK Toy Fair
There’s always a stigma attached to an adult with no children perusing the toy aisles in shops, so attending London’s Toy Fair was a nice opportunity to legitimatise this practice with the added advantage of seeing toys which would be available later in the year and in the build-up to Christmas.
To kick the show off there was a briefing from Director General of the British Toy and...
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A chat with Andrew W.K.
You’re most likely to have heard of Andrew W.K. from his 2001 hit Party Hard. His song catalogue boasts other tracks in a similar vein such as It’s Time to Party, Long Live the Party, Party Til You Puke, Dance Party, Party (You Shout). He recorded a track for an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force creatively titled Party Party Party, and just last year released an EP in Japan called...
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Incredible Hulk Quiz with Stewart Lee
Me: Which popular mutant first appeared in...
Stewart Lee: Wolverine! In issue 189 isn’t it?
Me: It was 181.
SL: Are you sure it isn’t 180? Because his hand appears in the final frame.
Me: Oh, I think you're right... in which issue did the grey Hulk first appear?
SL: I can’t remember actually – about 84?
Me: No, it was issue 1!
SL: Of course. I do that fucking joke myself in the show and I’ve forgotten it; he started off grey and the printing didn’t take so they changed it, yeah, yeah.
Me: As well as limitless physical strength, resistance to most forms of injury and super-speed, name one of the weirder skills the Hulk has.
SL: He can clap really loudly. And make a sonic wave. From clapping.
Me: I’ve got that he can see astral forms and is unaffected by alcohol.
SL: I bet there’s been one where he’s got drunk.
Me: Which is the best Hulk film of recent times?
SL: The last one I couldn’t get more than ten minutes into it. The editing was so bad it was unwatchable. I couldn’t stand it, it was shit. There were bits of the Ang Lee one that were absolutely beautiful – the bits in the desert when he was jumping around and it would cut to these close ups of moss and lichen. Basically they gave an art film director the job of directing The Hulk and then complained when he delivered an arty film and then lost their nerve. They got Iron Man and the first couple of Spider-Man films totally right; it makes you wonder why they made such a mess of Daredevil and did it like a fucking goth band video.
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Little Jack Horner Sits in a corner Extracting cube roots to infinity, An assignment for boys That will minimize noise And produce a more peaceful vicinity.
- Frederick Winsor
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Three-Way High Street Double Cheeseburger Off
It was the 31st of December and having tasted some of the best burgers in London in 2011, I decided to cap off the year by tasting some of the worst. Two friends and I would compare and contrast double cheeseburgers from each of the major UK high street burger outlets.
An afternoon of Googling led me to conclude that the only place with a Burger King, a Wimpy and a McDonalds within easy reach...
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“Elizabeth [Berkley], like everyone else, was extremely sweet in the beginning,...”
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Dustin Diamond, Behind the Bell
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The Palace Under the Alps: Britain's Oldest Pub,... →
palaceunderthealps:
There are 77,000 pubs (or, more properly, public houses) in Great Britain, far more than anyone could possibly visit in a single lifetime, though you could happily die trying. Even if you faithfully visited a new one every day, it would take you 210 years to see them all. So recommending one out…