A Barcelona scrap-metal dealer only has 12 on the favicon on his website.

An etymological hop from kite-flying with Juan Marsé back to Concha Piquer’s greatest hit.

But where does the buck stop?

And it’s free.

Joan Txàpal strikes at the heart of dorkness.

• French farmer tells him, “Get off my land!”
• Did a Pakistani Dracula turn Brad and Angelina into zombies?

From saviour to saved to savoury: the de-/remystification of bodily imperfection.

I wondered here whether pew-beating as a means of reliving medieval pogroms was a nineteenth century invented tradition. It was a rather naive question, and confirmation that the practice was already popular in Barcelona in 1848 is to be found in this Libro Verde entry for today, Holy Wednesday.

Is Silvio a cyborg?

Witness accounts from the records of the Spanish Inquisition in Córdoba.

The cottaging zone is getting so popular they’re having to pipe the stuff in.

Statues are designed to be bird-friendly on the orders of a mysterious avian deity, which may have held sway over Luis Buñuel.

From an off-the-record report of a departmental seminar somewhere in the UK.

Cruise companies don’t appear to regard original copy as an important differentiating factor.

Local “anarchists” showing Nestor Makhno, paysan d’Ukraine this Friday.

Dead space is newish horror survival game set on board a stricken interstellar mining ship. You play an engineer fighting a polymorphic, viral infestation which turns humans into grotesque alien monsters. Reviewing it Seth Schiesel asks:
When did fear become fun?
I’ve been thinking about that a lot as I’ve played Dead Space, the new, delectably [...]

Artful Mr Kokon notes that the number of items in Goya’s Black Paintings is the same as the number of one of the buses used in the campaign–14–, that the number of items in a series of morbid wood engravings by Hans Holbein the Younger is the same as the number of the other–41–, and [...]

More traditional building for Colin Davies:
Real stone is expensive and makes it hard to plug holes and to plaster, so in Spain@Disney you stick (pre)machined chunks or carpet tile-type stuff onto the concrete prefab with glue.
Chorus: Cladding imitates but also improves on reality.

The sun dog is seen above reborn, having previously mysteriously died at the end of the solar year:

While its soul wanders the underworld, its old and weary body is barbecued and consumed in dark hovels by fearful peasants:

I’ve forgotten who it was who believed the Old Testament was originally written in English, or some predecessor [...]

Pleased to see that the marvellous Baldus–a vague subterranean source of inspiration for the world’s wildest walking wisness–is getting a wider hairing. I’ve read chunks of the French translation and am looking forward to the English.