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 [...]

I haven’t seen anything in the Japanese press, but this Straits Times story is a giggle anyway. According to the ST, Japanese pundits were expecting to concentrate on one thing when Mr Jenkins stepped off his flight in Jakarta:

The quote in all the obits for OED superhero Robert Burchfield is his description of English as “a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib”. Even if French dogs did like accordions as much as their masters are alleged to, it would do little to encourage the terminally oppressed Quebec [...]

If I’d been running Homeland Security yesterday I’d have arrested every grubby fruit vendor I could find. To my knowledge no US president has ever been shot or blown up on July 4th but, as Doctor Zebra notes,

In the Middle Ages anyone of any commercial talent (and his/her mum) had visions and stored some human bones in the new toilet chapel extension of the pig shed nave of the temple next to that handy spring holy source on the hillside. Here, extracted by moderately cunning device from Amazon, is the relevant part of the ToC of Eileen Gardiner’s (not completely exhaustive) Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook:

This afternoon round the back the cat took a chunk out of a monk with San Francesco d’Apussy delusions. Here, then, are two gateposts from a small estate over the back of Collserola:

Reports the Chicago Tribune:
New Lenox’s newest cop barks, or at least understands, only a foreign tongue. So when canine officer Bear joined the force five months ago, his partner, Officer John Conroy, learned to give commands to the Czech born and bred German shepherd in his native language. “It is a bit of a twist,” [...]

Gisteren tijdens een wandeling kocht ik een Pirulo, een veelkleurig ijsje dat ik erg lekker vind. (Volgens mij hebben ze de naam gepikt van een Madrileense graffitioot, maar goed.) Toen ik het stokje schoonlikte ontdekte ik tot mijn grote verrassing de woorden “Pirulo Gratis”. Naar de winkel, en ja, nog eentje.
De Pakistani aan het strand [...]