I was walking past a garrigue-hidden cottage this afternoon when, to my considerable surprise, a woman leant out of an upstairs window, let fall her dress, and suggested I come in for something cool.

Even phenomenally successful paranoid loons like Mr Moore–having his sheikh and eating it–fail to achieve their market potential because of the sheer diversity of irrational fear clamouring for comfort. Enter Fabio Rinaldi:

The bad news is that the UK is about to become a net importer of hydrocarbons; the good news, that we are now selling services to fascist regimes in Central Asia as well as colonising the lexicons of Middle Eastern analysts who, it seems, have stopped measuring oil supplies in barrels:

Meet Animalsontheunderground.com (thanks to the DG).

Everyone’s falling for the salute this morning. Seems Naomi Klein’s a Kerrycrat (although she still prefers Messrs Arafat, Chavez & Hussein, you know the kind of stuff), and even the Spanish are getting in on the act … slowly. Here’s Catalan economics councillor Antoni Castells working that old mirror magic:

Brian in London is photographing the Billion Monkeys. My strategy is not as chic but does suppose some material benefits: I have spent recent years in The Hague, Cambridge, the City and now Barcelona attempting to get included in Japanese tourist photos–preferably in an attitude implying some intimacy–so that when I go to Kyoto everyone [...]

Discreet enquiries suggest that Chuck D is out of the office and being a Public Enemy on a beach somewhere until September, so we’re going to have to sort this one two three four out ourselves. I completely agree with Eric Bakovic and Mark Liberman that the big problem facing the phrase “Ain’t how that [...]

Re this post by Eric Bakovic, I reckon that when Chuck D of Public Enemy sings
Ain’t how that God planned it?
he is using “how that” where standard English speakers would use “how”, and that the pronoun “that” is assumed in the “ain’t” or what precedes it. The “how that”/”how” swap turns up in a variety [...]

I thought this was rather special, especially when you consider all the one-note-samba rubbish still floating around: an early C20th recording (MP3) by El Canario Chico which concentrates a maximum of micro-variation within a minimal compass. More here on the Centro Andaluz de Flamenco site. A prior engagement with a tarantula means I’m not [...]

I’m terribly sorry: I meant conservative in the sense of a nostalgia for things just past, which does, I think, make Habermas and Derrida conservatives. Mark Liberman, on the other hand, is nostalgic for times long past, for the Enlightenment–buckled shoes, open drains, and, quite possibly, beating well-loved columnists with clubs–which makes him not so [...]

(Denver Post) Trevor is Dutch and has just returned to Barcelona from Holland when I spoke with him. He plays a didgeridoo, a long, hollowed-out eucalyptus tree branch. The Aborigines of Australia developed the musical instrument, which makes a beautiful, deep, throbbing sound. His first day back in mid-November has gone well, he says. The [...]

For a client I need a shared hosting solution with storable.pm installed. WebFusion/HostEurope/Pipex won’t do it. Any ideas?
(Update: thanks for a couple of suggestions, but I’ve decided to dive into PHP.)

From Christian Science Monitor.

From Kitten. There’s lots of good stuff coming out of the WordPress community, but not what quite a lot of people seem to have been requesting for a while: a functional multi-author system. At the moment WP trumpets its various user levels but no mention is made of the fact that same-level users can all [...]

… lives up behind Montesquiu castle in Osona.

Re Mark Liberman’s European Politics 101, I’d have thought that one would describe Derrida and Habermas as conservatives not because of any association with any particular dogma but because they both clearly long for times past. The 70s, let us not forget, were a period which combined rampant collectivism with reasonable sales for the writings [...]

Toast oven => PC. There’s loads more good stuff on GeekDIY.com.

Americans are crippled by political correctness so it’s usually the Japanese and the Brits who make the weirdest games. However there’s not much out there to beat Chimbam from Korea. Think Dutchmen/dykes.

No prize to the first person to figure out why Yves Rocher (France) might not be particularly thrilled that the following product of theirs was being sold in the Carrer Ferran Yves Rocher franchise:

A picture of Roy Horn, recovering from being mauled by a tiger, is giving rise to an ironic exchange of views here. My favourite comment is one I’ve been anticipating keenly for some time:

Good to see that Mayor Clos has joined in with the Kaleboel rant against ripoffs in tourist zones. Not particularly surprising to see that sidekick Jordi Portabella (is he really a Danone heir?) has got his poor little mind mixed up again and thinks it’s all our fault for wanting free markets.

American presidential campaign commercials, 1952-2004. The first Adlai Stevenson one is deranged. No, wait, they all are.

From an AP report:

It’s good to see that some papers are spelling the name of the new president of the European parliament, Josep Borrell, with only one “l”. Borrel is Dutch for “drink”, including in the sense of a Friday afternoon booze-up.

From an alert, Preventing Deaths of Farm Workers in Manure Pits, issued by the American National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health:

And the attractions of Anglo hippies.

Nick Lloyd is posting literary references to the miserable state of the costa. I believe that we should learn to accept that it is destined to be repeatedly laid waste by entrepreneurs:
Everyone … could see with their own eyes the desolation of the Spanish, French, and Italian coasts, thanks to the pertinacious infestation of these [...]

Mr Lychee doesn’t seem to have nabbed the Forum trouble, but he’s got some very nice ones of Finders Keepers. Now I am batting for the establishment it is more difficult to bring home junk, which is probably good for my immortal soul but still a bit drab.

Seriously, if I write this blog in Portuguese, will someone invite me onto Orkut? Or am I better off just heading down the Brazilian bar down the street? All these do-good schemes always end up in trouble - just check the story of rioting at the Forum over in Lorna’s Shorts.

John 1:1 says:

I’ve had a couple of beers, so now seems the moment to upgrade to MT3 and migrate from the Berk DB to MySQL. If that works, then the next step will be to dump MT for either Wordpress or Expression thing. This is all because I can’t see MT getting round its rebuild problems and [...]

Re Sony’s PlayStation Portable:

The Taoiseachracy got sick of being hassled during the Irish presidency of the EU by lobbyists for various unloved languages, so here’s a little bit of revenge that should end discussion of EU institutional language policy for the next decade:

Says GhanaWeb, which also contains the strange account of the Al Qaeda and Taliban gangs at Kumasi High School chopping each other up with cutlasses whilst of the belief that a session of cutlass juju had made them undismemberable. Ghana is down from 128th to 131st place in the latest UNDP rankings, principally because people [...]

Paul Welsh writes:

I know it’s just a formula, but I still don’t like the tag on the Allawi quote:

LONDON (Reuters):
The Butler report on Iraq intelligence has sparked accusations that Prime Minister Tony Blair has adopted a presidential style and runs “government by sofa” with a coterie of unelected advisers.
This is very worrying since, as every student of history knows, it were all them Grand Vizier geezers sitting around on sofas smoking with hookahs [...]

Mr Wang Qin, “credit officer of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd”, who has a not very well “concealed business suggestion” for me involving Ibrahim Moussa and US20M and culminating in an offer to provide me with Tiscali broadband @ £15.99/month. The mail is sent from wang_qin24@tiscali.co.uk, although I assume he means wang_qin24*7@tiscali.co.uk.

John Prescott was actually being extremely clever when he announced yesterday that Labour “will reduce and probably eliminate the homeless by 2008.” Eliminate, says the OED, comes from eliminare, to thrust out of doors, expel (e, out of + limen, liminis, threshold), so it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr Prescott was constructing [...]

It seems that the local parasite class is going to stop moaning about Bush and his Saudis for long enough tomorrow to welcome Prince Sultan ibn Salman, apparently secretary-general of the Saudi “Supreme Commission for Tourism”, who is here to open some anti-democratic jamboree down at the Forum, to which local women’s groups presumably haven’t [...]