Across Difficult Country

Merry Christmas from everyone at ADC. Posting resumes in January, until then celebrate the season by re-rediscovering the rediscovered manuscript .

In the Whitby Gazette Jacqui Carter (no relation) writes: Banana bread help I would be grateful for your readers’ help as I have lost my banana bread recipe; I have bananas but no recipe. Can anyone send me one and a bread and butter recipe. Poor, naive, Jacqui Carter (no relation), believe me when I say you will receive no help from the wicked inhabitants of Whitby, for Whitby is an accursed town of the damned . Loyal ADC readers, on the other hand, are nice people known for having jugs of Christmas spirit. I'm betting they can find it in their hearts to give Jacqui Carter (no relation) a banana. Send bananas to: Jacqui Carter 101 Millbrook Avenue, Middlesbrough TS3 9EA, UK

From Bauhaus to Our House . Tom Wolfe. Funny look at ugly buildings. Speculations . T.E. Hulme. What A.R. Orage described as “fragments for a cyclopean architecture.” Pure Pagan: seven centuries of Greek poems and fragments . Selected and translated by Burton Raffel. “Europa costs you a dollar. No one cares, including her.” – Antipater of Thessalonika. A Balthus Notebook . Guy Davenport. The secret motion of people and things. The Voice Imitator . Thomas Bernhard. 104 pages, 104 stories. Journey to the Land of the Flies . Aldo Buzzi. Philosophical travel. The Abbess of Crewe . Muriel Spark. Satire of Watergate set in a nunnery. Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths . Karl Krauss. “Where shall I find the time to do all this non-reading?” – Karl Krauss.

Glassbau seele .

The slob-orgy that is the ‘holiday shopping season’ coming on the heels of the festival of stupidity that is Thanksgiving with my family always dangerously heightens my already considerable loathing of humanity. To cool my spleen I put down my rifle and turn to the pages of The Tide News: This is a bizarre story that unfolded recently in one of the communities in Rivers State where a vulture was said to have turned to a woman. Small Talks was told that the said vulture was in company of three other vultures that perched on a tree close to a building where a young man recently died and had been buried in the community. On seeing the four vultures, since in African setting, vultures portend evil omen, relations of the deceased young man were said to have chased them away. While three of the other vultures fled the scene, one of them was said to have remained firmly rooted to where it was perching. According to the story, when pebbles were cast on it, it surprisingly turned to a woman. [...

“The harder I work the more I need to smoke because tobacco is the handmaid of literature.” – Sir Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972). Author of nearly 100 books, Mackenzie by his own estimate smoked half a ton of tobacco by the time he was 74, starting with his first cigarette at age four. He once described tobacco as “one of the greatest boons ever conferred upon humanity.”

Unedited, uncensored, unpleasant, and unpredictably updated - behold Craptocracy . Political commentary, all the latest news from the campaign trail, and more.

Those of us warning homosexualist marriage would to lead inter-species unions were proven right last Sunday when a man in Southern India married a female dog named Selvi. Alas, the honeymoon was over before it ever really started : "During a feast attended by some 200 guests after the traditional Hindu wedding ceremony, Selvi grew restless and ran away." But the newlyweds may have patched things up: "She was subsequently recaptured and returned to her husband who gave her milk and a bun to eat." It’s is easy to foresee what comes next: gay inter-species marriage, followed by increasingly disgusting combinations unpleasant to even imagine, leading inevitably to a transsexual marrying a bowl of pudding.

Exciting news from the Islamosphere : An ‘Islamic’ car, complete with compass to find the direction of Mecca and a compartment for the Koran, could soon be under production in Malaysia, Iran or Turkey... Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir, managing director of Malaysian carmaker Proton, told the agency during a trip to Tehran “We will identify a car that we can develop to be produced in Malaysia, Iran or Turkey”. "The car will have all the Islamic features and should be meant for export purposes," he continued, adding that the vehicle was an Iranian initiative. I once invented an ‘Islamic’ TV set. It was an ordinary television with two black bands painted over all but the middle of the screen allowing Mussulmen to safely view Western shows featuring women. It never caught on, which ought to tell you something.

Was Jesus a descendant of black extraterrestrial time travelers? The Canadian , Canada’s finest newspaper, investigates . In other news, novelist and vulgarian Norman Mailer has died . While no one reads his fugging books anymore (much like Norman himself, as they aged they only became more rancid) his film Tough Guys Don’t Dance is now widely recognized as the second best movie of 1987.

"Driving home, with canals, slums, and giant toll-roads passing by outside, the invisible fumes made it hard to breathe. And sadly, the pollution came not from a factory or a machine, but the moist armpits of my toothless Javanese driver. Indonesia, it seems, is content to fall behind its neighbours, Thailand and Malaysia, not only in education and science, but now in standards of personal hygiene as well. Indonesians may be overcoming the Krismon and building democracy, but along the way we’ve abandoned the basics: soap and deodorant. It’s not just the men, either. Ladies, cheap perfume — no matter how much you lather on –- cannot hide the pungency if you’ve been wearing the same panties for days. A guy wants a woman to smell like a Jasmine flower or a Rose, not a raw, week-old Gurame fish!" - Achmad tells it like it is .

Dear The New Criterion, In the current issue Jeffrey Hart writes : Jacques Barzun was so eminent a figure that it is surprising to me that he remained so accessible and encouraging to much younger men. Then and now, when I think of Barzun, I recall the Oxford clerihew about the great classicist and polymath Benjamin Jowett: My name is Jowett Of Balliol College; If I don’t know it, It is not knowledge. Alas, that is not a clerihew . Neither is it an accurate quotation. The famous verse about Jowett was: First come I. My name is Jowett. There's no knowledge but I know it. I am the Master of this College, What I don't know isn't knowledge While we’re at it, the January 2006 issue arrived in my mailbox minus its cover. While vandalism perpetrated by a Leftist postal worker can’t be ruled out (why are so many postal workers Communists?), it seems likely the missing cover is the result of a mishap at the printing plant. I would be much obliged if an intact copy were sent as a re...

He raised alarm "Eye witness account informed our reporter that three women had approached the man at Nwaja round-about opposite the Tantalizers restaurant Trans-Amadi, Port Harcourt, and asked him to assist them with the sum of N100 as they have run short transport fare. According to the account, the man who told them that he had no money later started feeling a sensation inside his body. The man who later spoke to The Weekend Tide under condition of anonymity said, “as soon as I told them that I had no money, I discovered that my penis was disappearing, so I raised alarm." - Irate crowd strips woman naked , a terrifying true tale of terror from The Tide News Online . Reptoid Musulman "Villagers in a suburb of Katerini, a small city at the foot of Mount Olympus in northern Greece, claim to have seen a brown Reptoid prowling around their homes…Residents of the Katerini area are wondering if the Reptoid is a scout for an alien force. Or if he is perhaps an escaped prisone...

Was a cow really attacked by a carnivorous tree in Padrame (or Patrame), India? 1 Skeptics have repeatedly pointed out how unlikely it is a tree, which after all only has slender branches to strike with, would attack prey as large as a cow. Birds, rodents, or other small game perhaps, but a cow, the skeptics argued, would be too bulky, and honest cryptobotanists conceded they had a point. But now, thanks to the fieldwork of intrepid reporter Melka Miyar , we have more details on the case, including a photograph of the injured bovine, a photo which changes everything . Everyone assumed the animal in question was a big fat Texas-style cow, the kind white men turn into delicious steaks and hamburgers. In reality it was a tiny jungle cow, roughly the size of a large dog, the kind men who wear towels around their waists instead of pants worship as a god. The tallest of pili maras wouldn’t dare attack the former, but even a small pili mara would have a no problem taking a bite out of the l...

In the village of Padrame in the Uppinangady forest range of India cows are being attacked by carnivorous trees : According to reports, the cow owned by Anand Gowda had been left to graze in the forests. The cow was suddenly grabbed by the branches and pulled from the ground. The terrified cowherd ran to the village, and got Gowda and a band of villagers to the carnivorous tree. The cow escaped after Gowda and the villagers beat the hungry tree into submission. Locals call such trees ‘pili mara’, or tiger trees, and many believe snacking pili mara are the reason so many of Padrame’s cows have been coming home at night with missing tails.

“By the way, building the pyramids would not have been so difficult, if the stones were lighter at the time; they might also have been, these stones, very porous, which helps (and I say helps) explain why the Egyptians appear to be able to walk sideways, and through walls. It is as if they, the Egyptians were actually two-dimensional. Only later did the pyramids actually unfold, if you can imagine that! This reminds me of that cardboard Pirate Ship my grandmother gave me...” - Lloyd Mintern posits an alternate Egyptology .

I will be spending the rest of the week attempting to acquire adequate socks. 1 (Was it Jeffrey Apern, or Apern's butler who said, “Every sock goes on one’s foot, and not another sock”? 2 ) Despite our differences, I think we can all agree it would be nice if posting resumed Monday. And maybe it will. 3 1 Something which requires more drinking than you might imagine, at least for me. 2 See comments to the entry of 14 October. 3 Extraneous Notifications would make a good title for a blog. Feel free to use it.

Why is the ocean salty ? Galen McKinley, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may finally have the answer to this age old question. According to his theory, “The saltiness of the sea comes from dissolved minerals, especially sodium,” or, to put it in layman’s terms, the ocean is salty because it has a lot of salt in it . Where does science go from here? Look for a major breakthrough determining why BLT's are so bacony delicious.

Readers who’ve been following the persecution of Across Difficult Country’s legal counsel Judge Florentine Floro will be delighted to learn Judge Floro has shown up in comments and provided links to the text of all the Philippines Supreme Court decisions regarding his case, to local and international media coverage of the controversy, to his various blogs, to his Myspace and Facebook accounts, to videos of himself on YouTube, and to some other stuff. He’s also listed his email addresses and his telephone numbers (cell and land line). (If you call him, tell him I say “hi”.) I’ve taken the liberty of forwarding this material to my Congressmen, my Senators, the White House, The White Stripes, The Tide News Online (“ A commitment to truth ”), Art Bell (broadcast journalist and former resident of the Phillipines), Wynne Jones (Manager of Arts, Leisure & Cultural Events for the town of Whitby, the United Kingdom), Doudou Diène (United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms ...

From a recent book review : The plains stretch for many cold and lonely miles, but Haven Kimmel fires her bittersweet Indiana novels with a warm sensibility and a compassionate understanding of the people shaped by the chilly, conservative and remote landscape. Kimmel was raised in Mooreland, Ind., population 300, "the dearest postage stamp of native soil a person could wish for." Author of two coming-of-age memoirs, she has a homegrown yet unromantic tenderness for the rural towns rusting quietly away as family farms vanish, and methamphetamine labs and vigorous megachurches flourish, the latter so cavernous they include indoor basketball courts and other secular amenities. I'm reminded of scene from my own life. I'm 16 years old, walking down a side street on an October afternoon... “Hey, you!” It was Jessica. She was with some friends from school: Olivia, Chad, Emily, Rocco, Hampton, Lionel, Chloe, Frijole the exchange student from Mexico, Biff, and Biff’s sister G...

From Missouri comes the sad tale of a man facing a 30-year prison sentence for stealing a doughnut : Scott A. Masters, 41, of Park Hills, Missouri, has been charged with felony second-degree robbery in the theft of a 52-cent doughut [ sic ] from a Country Mart in Farmington, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south of St. Louis. Store employees said he slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying last December, then pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store. But what kind of doughnut was it? Chocolate? Jelly? Those ones with the sprinkles? The story doesn’t say. How could the AP reporter omit what is the most telling detail? It must be something taught in journalism school, where being boring is considered a virtue. For crime news done right we must turn to the Philippines. In the sordid story “ Jailed cop tags mistress the killer ”, notice how hard-hitting reporter Jay Dooma Balnig saves the telling detail for last, to devastating effect.

Free movie blurbs : “An intriguing masterpiece that will have you leaving the theater scratching other peoples heads.” “A groundbreaking documentary which unflinchingly unmasks the Chomsky/Sasquatch connection. “A poignant coming of age tale you and your whole gay family will love.” “Chilling. The most terrifying movie since The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants.” “Cars, a fat guy, there’s this girl. Set in a large city somewhere. Music goes boop boop beep. Some other stuff happens. Irresistable.” “Hello Crudup? It’s Oscar™ calling!” Free book blurbs : “A masterpiece. If this book had a shoe it would take it off and hit Jonathan Franzen up side the head with it.” “I couldn’t put it down! The best scroll since those Dead Sea ones.” “A real page turner which unflinchingly unmasks the Chomsky/Mothman connection.” “A must read for anyone thinking of buying a new alarm clock.” “A delectable romp of a book that even non-vegetarians will be tempted to cook and eat.” “Hello Danticat? It’s Pullitze...

Last night I had one of those dreams where you dream you’re chewing on a big fluffy cake and wake up to find yourself gnawing on medallions of lamb tenderloin that have been flash cooked in a small wok with hoisin, garlic, and chilies to enhance the lamb’s natural flavors. The Senoi is a tribe living in the mountainous jungles of the Malay Peninsula which have made dreaming central to their existence. In his seminal essay “ Dream Theory in Malaya ” anthropologist Kilton Stewart writes: Dream interpretation...is a feature of child education and is the common knowledge of all Senoi adults. The average Senoi layman practices the psychotherapy of dream interpretation of his family and associates as a regular feature of education and daily social intercourse. Breakfast in the Senoi house is like a dream clinic, with the father and older brothers listening to and analyzing the dreams of all the children. At the end of the family clinic the male population gathers in the council, at which t...

“When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.” - The Testament of Dr. Mabuse . More strange news from Whitby : A MYSTERIOUS oil spill has covered the roads around Whitby and has brought chaos to the town. Police were forced to hold up traffic at locations around the town while sand was put down. One witness described seeing pedestrians fall in the street and cars skidding as they struggled for grip in the wet conditions. Sgt Paul Delaney described the source of the spill as a "mystery". Notice the mysterious oil spill is both more elaborate (it’s no simple task to not only spread that much oil, but do it undetected) yet less physically destructive than ordinary vandalism. Why would someone do this? Because it brought chaos to the town . This is what links the bizarre and seemingly disconnected events of Whitby - the senseless crimes , th...

In Malaysia, lesbian Orangutans are tearing off women’s pants (probably because they know they can’t be sued for sexual harassment). Cambodian police have placed bounties on the heads of a group of macaque “ gangster monkeys ”. The macaques’ crime spree includes acts of theft, burglaries, assaults, and sabotage of internet lines. According to deputy district governor Pich Socheata, “Authorities tried several times to get the unruly monkeys to eat eggs laced with sleeping pills, but had always been outsmarted.” Are monkeys getting smarter? These types of incidents suggest that’s the case, leading me to conclude the Flynn effect has been occurring not only in humans, but in monkeys and apes as well. Humans, as I’m reminded by my family every year at Thanksgiving, are primates too, little different from the hairier primates. In human crime news, Things Move Around has been doing some looting. Or has he?

PIERO DI COSIMO. Perseus Frees Andromeda . 1515. The Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462 – 1522) hardly ate anything other than eggs. He would boil 50 at a time (who counted?) and nibble on an egg held in one hand while painting with the other. The time saved allowed him to get a lot of work done, though some claim he wouldn’t cook other foods because he suffered from pyrophobia, or fear of fire (how did he heat the boiling water?), but I think he just loved eggs. ___ First published in 1886, Phantasms of the Living is a two volume, 2,000 page compendium of the research of the Cambridge educated psychologist Edmund Gurney, the poet Frederic William Henry Myers (he coined the term ‘methetherial’), and the postal worker Frank Podmore (who, when not delivering letters, did things like suggesting the name for the Fabian society) of ghosts, precognitive dreams, precognitive visions, and telepathical hallucinations. In the pages of this pioneering work of parapsychology we encounter th...

Cartoon by John Leech .

Across Difficult Country's legal counsel Judge Florentino Floro Jr. is in the news again, this time on the front page of the Wall Street Journal . As readers surely remember, Judge Floro was declared psychotic and removed from the bench for being in psychic contact with three invisible “mystic dwarves” 1 named Armand, Luis and Angel. Angel, Judge Floro tells the Wall Street Journal , "is the neutral force", Armand "is a benign influence", and Luis,"whom Mr. Floro describes as the "king of kings," is an avenger." Now the Supreme Court which fired him is persecuting him again, issuing an “en banc resolution asking Mr. Floro to desist in his threats of 'ungodly reprisal.'” While not stating explicitly, the Court appears to be blaming Judge Floro for a series of unfortunate events, including a “mysterious” fire which “destroyed the Supreme Court's crest in its session hall”, and a string of accidents and illnesses numerous members o...

It's obvious to anyone with eyeballs that the liberal brain, by its very nature, is more susceptible to fads and fashionable nonsense than the conservative mind. Now, if a new study is correct, there may be scientific proof : Frank Sulloway of the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study, said results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity." Based on the results, Sulloway said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas. The compulsive acceptance of new social, scientific or religious ideas is, of course, a major reason why liberalism is so corrosive and destructive. For most new ideas are wrong , if not harmful. As David Stove wrote, in his brilliant essay "The Columbus Argument": “No doubt it is true that, for any change for the bette...

Apparently I’m not the only admirer of the retarded brilliance of Fletcher Hanks: "There is a man in a blue suit and a green and red skullcap piloting a red plane across a yellow sky. Crossing a lush jungle valley, he spots thousands of “gigantic royal panthers” and instantly declares: “I CAN USE THEM IN MY PLAN TO WRECK CIVILIZATION!” Though the colorful and crudely drawn adventure comics gathered in I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets ! read like the fevered imaginings of Henry Darger’s bully older brother, they are, in fact, the garish and terrifying work of Fletcher Hanks." [ More ]

The anti-Swiss slander campaign continues. Writing for Foreign Policy , deep thinker Preeti Aroon claims the proposal by the Swiss People's Party (SVP) to deport immigrant families if their children are criminals is part of “a larger general trend of racism and anti-Semitism brewing in the region.” And once it’s fully fermented, the toxic Swiss brew will spill over, and hordes of Swiss will sweep across Europe, stabbing every minority in sight with the corkscrew attachment of their army knives, as they’ve done so many times in the past. This charge would be stupid even if we weren’t talking about Switzerland. Aroon concedes “not all Germans, Swiss, and Austrians are cold-hearted extremists” (how generous) but threatens “history is replete with examples of populations that have been radicalized quite fast. This German-speaking part of the world should be kept on our radar screens.” Step 1: Lock target on radar. Step 2: Commence bombing. The Independent takes up the issue by askin...

Korean scientist Dr Mi-Jeong Jeong has discovered certain genes in plants which can be activated by sound. When researchers directed sounds toward the plants at specific frequencies : Two genes, called rbcS and Ald, became more active at 125 and 250 Hertz, and less active at 50 Hertz. Both genes are known to respond to light, so Jeong's team checked out what happened when the test was repeated in the dark -- and found that the two genes still responded to the sound. This breakthrough has far reaching implications, As any student of palaeontology knows, in the distant past of long ago (what specialists call “dino-time”) nearly every inch of the landscape was overrun with stupid looking plants, and among this dense growth roamed gigantic, preposterous animals. Obviously, with a few exceptions, that’s no longer the case. There have been many explanations for why things changed, all unsatisfactory. But Dr. Mi-Jeong Jeong’s work provides a crucial clue, one that leads to a new hypothesi...

A Swiss political party’s proposal to deport immigrant families “if their children are convicted of a violent crime, drug offenses or benefits fraud” has provoked hyperbolic reaction , within Switzerland and without. The Swiss Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism dishonestly equated the policy to “the Nazi practice of "Sippenhaft" — or kin liability — whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for his or her crimes and punished equally”. AP reporter Frank Jordans even invoked Stalin and Mao, claiming, “Similar practices occurred during Stalin's purges in the early days of the Soviet Union and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in China, when millions were persecuted for their alleged ideological failings.” Mr. Jordans seems to have a novel notion of what reporting is, and and a novel notion of what the word “similar” means. The UN has also condemned the proposal , suggesting it may violate European law, an odd complaint considering Switzerland is not a memb...

John Donne on climate change : As the world is the whole frame of the world, God hath put into it a reproof, a rebuke, lest it should seem eternal, which is, a sensible decay and age in the whole frame of the world, and every piece thereof. The seasons of the year irregular and distempered; the sun fainter, and languishing; men less in stature, and shorter-lived. No addition, but only every year, new sorts, new species of worms, and flies, and sicknesses, which argue more and more putrefaction of which they are engendered. And the angels of heaven, which did so familiarly converse with men in the beginning of the world, though they may not be doubted to perform to us still their ministerial assistances, yet they seem so far to have deserted this world, as that they do not appear to us, as they did to those our fathers. Julian the Apostate on racial differences and their consequences: Come, tell me why it is that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are,...

From the Australian outback comes the gruesome story of a woman killed by her own pet camel : “The 10-month-old animal knocked the woman, 60, to the ground, stomped on her head and then lay on top of her.” A policeman on the scene, Sen-Constable Gregory, reports the camel had a history of odd behavior: “It had a bit of a habit with a goat, knocking it over and sort of straddling it and laying on top of it.” There’s little to be said after such a tragedy, which didn’t stop local “camel expert” Paddy McHugh from weighing in: Townsville-based camel expert Paddy McHugh said the behaviour was “extremely unusual” for a camel so young. “That’s a characteristic of a camel out of control,” he said. Mr. McHugh said camels still made great pets, “often better than dogs”. Yes, except for being six feet tall and weighing over a thousand pounds and occasionally stomping your head in because they are acting out some psycho-sexual urge, camels are much better pets than dogs. Why must animal experts al...

“The Hand of Glory is the hand of a man who has been hung, and is prepared in the following manner. Wrap the hand in a piece of winding sheet, drawing it tight so as to squeeze out the little blood which, may remain; then place it in an earthenware vessel with saltpetre, salt, and long pepper, all carefully and thoroughly powdered. Let it remain a fortnight in this pickle till it is well dried, then expose it to the sun in the dog-days till it is completely parched, or, if the sun be not powerful enough, dry it in an oven heated with vervain and fern. Next make a candle with the fat of a hung man, virgin wax, and Lapland sesame. The Hand of Glory is used to hold this candle when it is lighted. Wherever one goes with this contrivance, those it approaches are rendered incapable of motion as though they were dead.” – Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders , by William Henderson . It’s also believed those knowledgeable in the arcane arts can use a Hand ...

Mass immigration makes the United States increasingly “diverse”. Now Daniel Henninger, a member of the open borderist Wall Street Journal editorial collective and a supporter of mass immigration, has discovered : “People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other. “Social capital” erodes. Diversity has a downside.” What’s to be done? Henninger suggests: “What's needed now is for a younger black, brown or polka-dot writer to recast the idea in a way that restores the worth and utility of assimilation. Somebody had better do it soon; the first chart offered in the Putnam study depicts inexorably rising rates of immigration in many nations.” He recognizes we are already at the point where certain arguments won’t be fairly heard unless advanced by non-whites (notice the absurd inclusion of a “polka-dot writer”, done to maintain the pretense race never matters, even when it’s being argued race matters). He recognizes the situation is on...

Gildercliffe hoodlums are stealing vans then using them to launch attacks on Whitby : Reckless Ben Stanley, 18, of Gildercliffe, Scarborough, became intoxicated at a friend’s birthday bash before setting off to steal a Vauxhall van. Despite being more than twice over the limit, Stanley – who does not have a full driving licence - then embarked on a terrifying drive all the way to Whitby, regardless of the dangers to other drivers and residents. He smashed into two parked cars and a wall in the Bog Hall area of the town. Not to condone Reckless Ben Stanley’s senseless mayhem, to a certain degree Whitby has it coming. In other crime news, a three-ton meteorite has been stolen from UFO researcher Yury Lavbin’s compound in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Perhaps the meteorite is a large enough object that remote viewers could locate it? They’ve certainly had no luck identifying the small curio which sits on the left corner of the shelf above my desk, despite the offer of a $1 million prize for do...

In Cameroon urine drinking is suddenly so popular Cameroonian health minister Urbain Olanguena Awono was forced to issue a statement urging quaffers to stop, warning those promoting the practice may be prosecuted. Said a piss drinker named Emile: "I used it to treat my haemorrhoids. Everyone uses it in secret. But you need to be brave." Though rarely mentioned in the history books, Gandhi was an aficionado of the ‘yellow wine’, and in his younger days became known for badgering unwitting guests at parties with his odd notions, diaper clad, glass of pee-pee in hand. Soon Gandhi stopped getting invited to parties. Instead of changing his ways, he became angry, and channeled his resentment into politics. I think you know how that turned out. If you thought Nigeria had more than enough unpleasant worms already you obviously don’t think like God, because a new ‘ mystery worm ’ is invading Nigeria’s Sokoto State. The worms, named Ba Susa , which means ‘no scratching’, infest the ...

...posting should resume next week.

A pair of homosexualists is sending John Lennon’s piano on a tour of America’s “most horrific sites of violence, death and destruction.” Places the piano has already appeared include Virginia Tech, Ford’s Theater, Columbine High School, and the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. It’s hoped the sight of the piano can displace painful thoughts of these location's terrible events by triggering in observers memories of the ‘Imagine’ song. Personally, I’d rather contemplate an assassination or a mass murder than recollect the plodding chords and insipid lyrics of that tune. For one thing it’s more relaxing. I don’t think I’m alone in this. This project has inspired me to send the instrument once owned by pioneering free-jazz alpehornist Fritz Entegeliebter to various places which have banned indoor smoking. Entegeliebter will accompany the instrument, and play it in the hope his frenetic sqonkings will cause any anti-smoking zealots in the vicinity to reflect upon what complete an...

“Lisa Peterson, 46 years old, says the main reason she sports a robe in public is because "it alerts the world that I am in relaxation mode and that I am pampering myself because I believe I'm worth it." But the communications director for the American Kennel Club, who lives in Newtown, Conn., says it also makes her feel "a little bit naughty."” - The Great Hotel Cover-Up , Wall Street Journal , 27 July 2007. Miss Peterson (if it’s Mrs. condolences to your poor husband), there’s really no need to alert me you’ve gone into relaxation, or any other mode, and are pampering yourself (this is one of those rare occasions when I’m confident most of the world completely agrees with me). If anyone needs to be alerted it’s the cardboard-tube fighters , who could partially redeem themselves by giving you a solid drubbing.

Fantastic day, in the span of a few hours I observe a midget riding a scooter, a man with an artificial leg, and an albino. Seeing one, two, four or more midgets is good luck. Three midgets together is bad luck. Three midgets encountered separately means something terrible is going to happen. Seeing a person with an artificial leg is neither good nor bad luck. Seeing an artificial leg without a person attached to it portends the start of a period of increased improbability. Seeing an albino means your packages will be arriving on time. Unless the albino is left handed, then your shipment will be delayed. Seeing an albino midget with an artificial leg would be so sad just thinking about it makes me laugh.

Strange lights were observed hovering over the heavilly flooded town of Stratford-Upon-Avon. As one witness described it : “The objects were there for about half an hour. It was very eerie because they didn't make any sound and they stayed still before moving slowly beyond the horizon. There were no stars in the sky, just them.” Like most people, I was instantly reminded by the concurrence of inexplicable lights in the sky and a deluge of “ The appearance of the Lights at Scheveningen and Flood ,” an event so shrouded in mystery I've been unable to determine when exactly it took place.

At a Seattle area park last Sunday a group of involuntary celibates convened to stage a cardboard tube fighting tournament: "Two dozen fighters obeyed the tenets of cardboard-tube fighting Sunday, battling for the glory of becoming the champion. They took to a concrete surface at Seattle's Gas Works Park, wielding their weapons: 3-foot-long cardboard tubes that look like the kind used for gift wrap. Most fighters employed a two-handed grip; the more assured used one hand. Those who break their tubes do not advance to another round.” Every day I find it harder and harder not to hate my own country. One exceptionally pathetic contestant remarked: "I knew I had to go," he said of the tournament. "It sounded like something that was amazing and it was. This was the only thing we found to do that was entertaining all week."

Trans-Dniester has a new political party, Fair Pridnestrovie. Fair Pridnestrovie joins the Respublika party, the Renewal party, the Breakthrough party, the Pridnestrovie Communist Party (PKP), the Communist Party of Pridnestrovie (KPP-CPSU), the Patriotic Party of Pridnestrovie (PPP), the Liberal Democratic Party of Pridnestrovi, the People's Will party, and the Social Democratic Party, to bring the total number of ridiculous political parties in Pridnestrovie to ten. Meanwhile in Chisianu, the President of Moldavia Vladimir Voronin has been running around claiming Jesus was a Communist , noting "Nowhere in the Old or New Testament you will find anything bad said about communists.” Voronin’s remarks were scoffed at by local religious leaders. Spokesman for the Socialist Party of Moldova, the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, the Democratic Party of Moldova, the Social Democratic Party of Moldova, the Christian-Democratic People's Party, and the Peasants...

The results of the first ADC customer satisfaction survey which asked How can ADC be improved? are in. 18% want more frequent posting, meaning 82% of readers think I’m posting enough or too much. 18% want to see more travel posts. We all have dreams, I suppose. No one wants more political posts, meaning 100% of readers agree with me democracy has failed, and discussing politics only serves to distract from time better spent stockpiling guns and ammunition. Counting my own vote, one person wants to see more Whitby posts. Meaning no one, except me, cares the little town of Whitby was nearly smote by a tornado (that’s right, a tornado) and no one, other than myself, wants me to explain how the source of this freakish weather event is undoubtedly Whitbian diabolists trifling with storm demons the Chaldeans called shedu . Bastards. 27% want more Hegel posts. Hegel once wrote : General gravitation must be recognised for itself as a profound thought, which constitutes an absolute basis for...

Up till now, for two hundred years, people in England have imagined that every problem could be solved through Freedom, and could let opposites correct one another in the free interplay of argument. But what now? The great harm was begun in the last century, mainly through Rousseau, with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. Out of this plebs and educated alike distilled the doctrine of the golden age that was to come quite infallibly, provided people were left alone. The result, as every child knows, was the complete disintegration of the idea of authority in the heads of mortals, whereupon of course, we periodically fall victims to sheer power. In the meanwhile, the idea of the natural goodness of man has turned, among the intelligent strata of Europe, into the idea of progress, i.e. undisturbed money-making and modern comforts, with philanthropy as a sop to conscience.... The only conceivable salvation would be for this insane optimism, great and small, to disappear from peo...

Innovative Chinese fish farmers are growing gigantic fish able to induce food poisoning in seven times as many American consumers at half the cost. Another sector where the Chinese are making gains is begging : Police said on Monday that two beggars operating near MRT stations in Taipei City and Taipei County turned out to be professional beggars from China who had entered Taiwan on business visas...Liang Yiping (梁一平), 32, faked deafness and muteness when confronted by police at Yongan Market station, but his identity was later confirmed after officers found he had Chinese currency and more than NT$10,000...After running a background check, they established that he had entered the country with Guo Anquan (郭安銓), 53, on July 12. Guo was later picked up at Ximending station...Liang and Guo had been staying at a hotel near Ximending. Police said the men claimed they were collecting money to return home...They claimed that the NT$30,000 that police discovered in their bags and clothes had ...

A bipartisan group of senators (the worst kind) is proposing the government provide health insurance for those children who not entirely poor, but aren’t entirely middle class either. These posturing windbags think it so vitally important they are willing to tax just smokers to pay for it, by raising the already unconscionably high taxes on cigarettes by 61 cents per pack. Given how tubby American children are these days the logical solution would be to tax junk food. Such a tax would in itself bring health benefits by reducing the amount of fattening swill the little piggies ingest. Fortunately our deranged president has promised to veto this monstrous piece of legislation (sometimes, as the old Irish saying goes, even the thickest Echidna-bird finds a hazelnut).

If it has a beak and lays eggs then by god it’s a bird .

“We have not released giant badgers in Basra, and nor have we been collecting eggs and releasing serpents into the Shatt al-Arab river." - Major David Gell, British Army spokesman, ' British blamed for mysterious Beast of Basra '.

Remember all the excitement surrounding lycopenes, the tiny single celled organisms that live inside tomatoes (and whose excretions are the cause of the tomato’s redness) and were thought to protect against cancer? I sure don’t. It’s best to ignore these sorts of things, in large part because they never pan out (besides, I enjoy a cigarette now and then, so it’s pointless anyway). Now the FDA says lycopenes don’t protect against cancer , and that there is no evidence tomatoes reduce the risk of "colorectal, breast, cervical or endometrial cancer." Given how science tends to reverse itself, cancerphobes (i.e. those afraid of tobacco) should probably continue to rub tomatoes on their breasts, rectums, cervixes, and endometrials as a precaution.

I’m suffering from some sort of branial condition. Today I was trying to remember the name of the 18th century philosopher who bred horses and prefigured Darwin in certain aspects, and after nearly half an hour of focused concentration the only name my brain could come up with was Wigsy Macbombo, immediately followed by my forgetting why I was trying to recall the chaps name in the first place. Another symptom is abuse (to put it mildly) of the parenthesis when punctuating.

A fascinating article in the New York Times of all places on the mapinguary (a creature previously discussed on ADC ). Also mentioned is a cryptid I had never heard of known as the boto, a "type of dolphin that is said to be able to transform itself into human form, wearing a white hat to cover its air spout, and seducing and impregnating impressionable young virgins." Where a boto keeps his stylish headgear while he's in dolphin form remains unexplained. There have been no reports of boto operating outside the Amazon basin, but if you have a teenage daughter you might want to check under her boyfriend’s cap for a blowhole, just in case. The greatly anticipated list of the New 7 Wonders of the world is out (a list previously discussed on ADC ). Selected were the Roman Coliseum, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, the Mayan city of Chichen, the ruins of Petra, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, and the the Taj Mahal. Not making the list were the Sydney opera...

When I began the incredibly popular series of reports now known as The Whitby Sequence I had no idea where my investigations would lead. That sinister forces permeated the dying town of Whitby and were influencing events there was something I sensed early on, though I badly and dangerously underestimated the magnitude of the forces at work. Why Whitby I could not explain, until by accident (or by dark design?) a strange chapter in Whitbian history was revealed to me... “IN THE LATE nineteen seventies there was something of an occult convergence upon the English coastal town of Whitby. The reason for the movement of so many occultists, ex-hippies and pothead pixies, could probably be identified only by a thorough examination of the occult current of the time, along with a good analysis of the spirit of the nation. The result, however, was not only that there was a sizeable occult population in the area, but that many other occultists were in the habit of visiting the place.” “[D]uring...