By Pete “The Feet” “Ooh Me Back!”:

NYC is dispossessing newsstand owners in order to make the streets more monotone and generate ad revenues:

According to a book by ex-spook F Hoekstra, the Dutch Secret Service (BVD) set up a Maoist party, the Marxist-Leninist Party Netherlands (MLPN), to figure out the extent and nature of Chinese influence among students and scientists in the 70s. Operation Mongol was so successful that Holland’s genuine Maoist parties didn’t get any of the [...]

There’s a good post over at Confrontación about the current Telefónica hard sell, which involves pestering hapless consumers with something worse than they’ve already got. Someone I know down south just had to wait four months for a line to be put in, and no, I really don’t want to hear your own Telefónica story.

Check over at John Pawlenko’s (scroll down) for photos of the goons trailing the elderly man who says–convincingly–that Chupa Chups owe him a couple of hundred grand and who Chupa Chups have managed–unconvincingly–to haul into court on charges related, it seems, to assaults on people 20-30 years younger than him.

One of the stupidest pieces of evidence cited in anonymous briefings by the regional police in their attempts–based as far as I am aware purely on inter-corps rivalries–to pin Islamic terrorism charges on the 10 Pakistanis detained here on the 15th is that the gentlemen in question used Western Union to send and receive money.

John Pawlenko’s excellent Chupa Chups exposé is turning into the longest post in the world (scroll to 27th Sept), but you need to read it for one simple reason: Catalonia appears to share with Burma and parts of rural China the distinction of having a judicial system which collaborates with the influential to the extent [...]

Dedicated to MG Cole of Bala

Someone told me this morning that the Royal Ulster Constabulary used to be known as the Trevors. It’s unclear to me whether this is a reference to the low incidence of the name in Catholic families, to Tacitus’ pigheaded Treviri, or to something completely different–please tell me if you know. Here, anyway, to strike terror [...]

Reading (and trying to sing) bits of Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues over lunch, I came across the following in the 118th chorus:

Price estimates had dropped so rapidly following recent news that the accountants figured it would be cheaper just to keep him locked up in the town hall until the next elections. 11,000 lots are up for sale–mostly office attributes–but I’m going to be bidding for the Flatiron Building, in which I plan to house my [...]

In tribute to this noble undertaking, here a select list of blogs written in English by would-be Spaniards currently resident in the Cambrillish Empire who were bitten this morning on the calf by a tiger mosquito and are wearing a pink fluorescent wig to soothe the pain:

Kaleboel

You can’t expect me to keep that thing on [...]

Go over to John Pawlenko’s Barcablog and read this story of how, it seems, Chupa Chups think they can poo all over foreign entrepreneurs (like they attempted to poo all over the Spanish taxman) and get away with it. Why has no Catalan journalist covered this? Because they wouldn’t dream of biting the hand that [...]

The Times of India writes of the late Raja Ramanna that

I hope that Europeans realise that it really only is absence that makes their hearts grow so strangely fond of Noam Chomsky, and that they don’t take up Eric Bakovic’s suggestion and deprive the Empire of a major source of export revenues. I first bumped into Chomsky when an ambitious professor thought it would be [...]

Someone claiming to be in LeMeaux has mailed to refute M’s suggestion that our mayor, Joan Clos, had made some kind of artificial addition to his beloved Hampton Wick. So what the hell’s wrong with him then?

Quake and quiver, countryfolk, for Sicilian gentlemen will shortly be beating Berkshire’s bushy byways for the Great British Truffle Harvest of 2004; the principal threats to Catalonia’s black diamonds, on the other hand, are Alzheimer’s–forests seem very big when you’re with an 85-year old who can’t remember where the buggers are–and wild boar.
Wild boar are [...]

André Hazes, the notable (but not notably abstemious–he famously lit up in the no-smoking cinema in which his life-film was being premiered) Dutch singer, died yesterday morning. RIP, one would think, but the Dutch music industry is smart–and tacky–enough not to miss a fiscal-friendly moment like this: Enschede a/ Zee has scanned the condolence ad [...]

From Popbitch:

Right headline, wrong story from Deutsche Welle: what the DB Vorstand really wanted to communicate is that German rail privatisation will proceed according to plan, and that under a new CEO, one Kurtis Blow, trains will be marketed to a wider public by using them at night for 70s-style hiphop parties.

Catalonia Today is deservedly taking a beating, but it is worth recalling that for really bad English you should try “quality” paper La Vanguardia’s plagiarist nitwit in London, Rafael Ramos.
Just thought I’d mention that.

I’ve turned on the blog feature that requires me to OK commenters first time round. This is to stop a gentleman not a million miles from here who has been spamming the comment sections. It provides me with no more information about you than I already have, and no legitimate and reasonably sane person will [...]

It may come as something of a surprise to Europeans that Geoff Pullum and Prentiss Riddle expect a bus company to provide clearly articulated, comprehensive information.

If the items here from The Bugle’s Dicktionary are the best Andrew Pegler can come up with, then either we’re being conned and there are lots of dirtier books out there or the Australian language (why’s it not in Strine?) is dying out for lack of manure:

Belated congratulations to blogger/journalist Pere Marí, now being sociocultural for El Diario de Mallorca. He had an interesting piece last month on the 70th anniversary of Balearic publishing dynasty, Editorial Moll, which I can’t link to because of DdeM’s moronic policy of redirecting everything to their front page. Anyway, the news from current boss, Francesc [...]

Fascist China still unable to cope with survival of splittist.

Mistress Puss has departed for the hill, so it’s time for another beast to abuse, kill and eat the 5-6cm American (they’re actually African) cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) which are displacing their smaller German cousins here and which crawl upstairs every time the sewers flood or the bar downstairs runs out of tortilla. A farmer I [...]

These three dancing Spidermen (Scripting News > Xavi Caballé)

From the Baltimore Business Journal (Trevor’s strong):
Dancing shoes required for Charleston Group’s Pazo
Julekha Dash
Following months of anticipation and delays, Charleston Group restaurateurs Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman have announced the details for their latest venture, Pazo, which will debut in November.
Pazo — which means “noble house” in Catalan — will offer Mediterranean cuisine from select [...]

Everyone’s getting excited about the following advert for El País, Spain’s principal socialist-atavist newspaper, sourced here, which says something along the lines of “A day is enough for a lot. Imagine what can happen in three months”:

Taken from the back cover of Donald K Burleson’s new Oracle9i UNIX Administration Handbook, this has to be the worst ever, worse than the lounge at Luton, worse even than divorcee cruises out of Miami, although possibly not as hard on the liver:

I don’t normally read David de Ugarte, but this is strange:

If the gentleman opposite were to imitate Stefan@MemeFirst’s excellent unlicensed extension of the 1776ft Freedom Tower scheme, he’d be able to give his building two names: for official purposes, The Tiberias Building Building, and in recognition of the illegal storey he has balanced on top, The Fidenae Stadium Collapse Building.

This morning’s revelations of a depression Prozac symbiosis are nothing more than a variation on the old Guinness-is-good-for-you pub therapy industry. The trick is to recognise it as such and manage it effectively. While it is evident that Hank Williams failed in the latter respect, I think that one of his songs contains a [...]

Anyone know what the hell Vid is up to, c/o Yotro?

I thought you’d like to know that the first bandoleros in the OED are Catalan and to be found in James Howell’s Epistolae Ho-Elianae (1645):

Here’s who the public thinks Graeme Souness will punch first in his new role as manager of Newcastle FC:

Arnie’s put a stop to their dirty games.

If the annual ceremony bemoaning the arrival of liberal centralism in Catalonia is beginning to seem kind of boring, here’s one you’ll surely enjoy, organised by The Popular Front for Solidarity with the Chechen People and his increasingly nervous dog:

Andreu@Raïms notes moves by the local train companies to crack down on the 60% (source?) of travellers who under-declare the number of zones crossed, to say nothing of the large number who don’t pay anything at all. What surprises me is that I haven’t yet heard anyone use the words “fascist aggression”.