Better than the Drones?

Member since 2006

Voted in on the first ballot...Maybe, with some hard work, you can make it as well...

The Brockton Blockbuster

"Oh there they go. There they go, every time I start talkin 'bout boxing, a white man got to pull Rocky Marciano out their ass. That's their one, that's their one. Rocky Marciano. Rocky Marciano. Let me tell you something once and for all. Rocky Marciano was good, but compared to Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano ain't shit..." - Clarence


Rocky Marciano died on this date in 1969, he was 46 years old.

49 wins, 0 losses, 43 by KO

He was the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion from September 23, 1952 to November 30, 1956. Marciano was one of very few champion boxers in the history of the sport to retire with a perfect winning record. He was the only champion to retire undefeated in the heavyweight division. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.

Jack T. Ripper

August 31, 1888,
Mary Ann Nichols was found murdered in London's East End in what is generally regarded as the first slaying committed by "Jack the Ripper."

Glenn Ford RIP

Glenn Ford (1916-2006)

Obit

News from Mayfair...

It is I, Basil Seal, with things swimming along as you can see...Anyway, I was over at bobgirrls trying to leave a snide comment or two and as her blog would not cooperate, and I could see nothing but funny footwear pictures (not into feet by the way) I began poking about and ran across a few sites of interest. That is of interest to me, not bobgirrl...

I have looked into Chasing Vincenzo before, a site dedicated to the Bistro lifestyle, and found it funny and witty and all that rot, but today I noticed a section entitled "A Legion of Well Dressed Men", well that would fly in Mayfair, so I signed up post haste, as it were. I just like the look and feel over there at Chasing's place, what with pictures of clothing that I actually wear and cigarette holders and monocles obviously purchased in Bond Street, and the post on "Blogacho" is a lark, as well as very true, please visit and leave your card.

One member of the Legion mentioned above is a Mr. Joke, who has the same thing, only different...His picture of himself in pinstripes, getting tight about Miami in a most debonair manner lured me in right away. He also has some fine posts about the same thing, only different, plus Wodehouse was mentioned which gets one an automatic spot on the blog roll thing-a-ma-jig...He also mentioned His Girl Friday and Trading Places...If I find he is a fan of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, then he is the chap!

I have put them up on the link thingie over there for your convenience and pleasure.

All for now, pip, pip Cherrio!

The Best Southern Short Story Ever?

" Without ever leaving her hideout in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O’Connor knew all there was to know about the two-lane, dirt and blacktop Southern roads of the 1950s—with their junkyards and tourist courts, gravel pits and pine trees that pressed at the edges of the road. She knew the slogans of the Burma Shave signs, knew the names of barbecue joints and the chicken baskets on their menus. She also knew a backwoods American cadence and vocabulary you’d think was limited to cops, truckers, runaway teens, and the patrons of the Teardrop Inn, where at midnight somebody could always be counted on to go out to a pickup truck and come back with a shotgun. She was a virtuoso mimic, and she assimilated whole populations of American sounds and voices, and then offered them back to us from time to time in her small fictional detonations, one of which she named, in 1953, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”..."

A Good Writer Is Hard To Find: The Search For Flannery O'Connor

"Moscow calling collect sir, will you accept the charges"?

In 1963, the "Hot Line" communications link between Washington and Moscow went into operation.

Note: You have to be of an age to recall that we used to fight the pinko commie bastards...Now we just import their good looking women, an export they seem to have in plenty.

The Battle of 2nd Manassas

(The Second Battle of Bull Run )
August 28-30, 1862

In order to draw Pope's army into battle, Jackson ordered an attack on a Federal column that was passing across his front on the Warrenton Turnpike on August 28. The fighting at Brawner Farm lasted several hours and resulted in a stalemate. Pope became convinced that he had trapped Jackson and concentrated the bulk of his army against him. On August 29, Pope launched a series of assaults against Jackson's position along an unfinished railroad grade. The attacks were repulsed with heavy casualties on both sides. At noon, Longstreet arrived on the field from Thoroughfare Gap and took position on Jackson's right flank. On August 30, Pope renewed his attacks, seemingly unaware that Longstreet was on the field. When massed Confederate artillery devastated a Union assault by Fitz John Porter's command, Longstreet's wing of 28,000 men counterattacked in the largest, simultaneous mass assault of the war. The Union left flank was crushed and the army driven back to Bull Run. Only an effective Union rearguard action prevented a replay of the First Manassas disaster. Pope's retreat to Centreville was precipitous, nonetheless. The next day, Lee ordered his army in pursuit. This was the decisive battle of the Northern Virginia Campaign.

The Georgia Peach

On August 30, 1905, Ty Cobb made his major-league debut as a player for the Detroit Tigers, hitting a double in his first at-bat in a game against the New York Highlanders. (The Tigers won 5-3.) He was 18 years old at the time.

Ty Cobb may have been baseball's greatest player, if not the game's fiercest competitor. His batting accomplishments are legendary - a lifetime average of .367, 297 triples, 4,191 hits, 12 batting titles (including nine in a row), 23 straight seasons in which he hit over .300, three .400 seasons (topped by a .420 mark in 1911), and 2,245 runs. Intimidating the opposition, "The Georgia Peach" stole 892 bases during a 24-year career, primarily with the Detroit Tigers.

Elected to Hall of Fame by Baseball Writers in 1936, Player
222 votes on 226 ballots 98.23%

Sir John Betjeman[bet´jumun]

Britain is marking the centenary of its late poet laureate Sir John Betjeman...

Betjeman: "a whim of iron" by Brooke Allen

A Subaltern's Love Song

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament-you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won.
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we talk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double=end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

the Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads 'not adopted', by woodlanded ways,
she drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car-park the dance has begun.
Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us, the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice,

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

Sir John Betjeman

The Dream Woman

Attention bobgirrl...Louise Brooks...What a LULU!

The Original over at Irish Elk

Brigham Old, Brigham Young, Just Brigham...

August 29, 1877, BrighamYoung, second prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dies...

"...Young was perhaps the most famous polygamist of the early church. Young married some 50 women and had 57 known children. In 1856 he built the Lion House to accommodate his sizable family. This remains a Salt Lake City landmark, together with the Beehive House, another Brigham Young Family home. A contemporary of Young wrote: "It was amusing to walk by Brigham Young's big house, a long rambling building with innumerable doors. Each wife has an establishment of her own, consisting of parlor, bedroom, and a front door, the key of which she keeps in her pocket"..."

Good work, if you can get it...

Clubland Mayfair

Dateline Mayfair: Pluto has been blackballed at the Planet Club...

Serves the cad right!

Elsewhere: Pluto no longer in the 'Bigs'...Sent down for reassignment

Life is Nasty, British, and Short

for Robert Ll...


"Was Anyone Hurt?": The Ends of Satire in A Handful of Dust by Jonathan Greenberg

"...If Waugh's fiction offers a useful case study in the paradoxes of satire, it is equally valuable for the questions it opens in understanding modernism. For Waugh's attitudes toward both modernism and modernity more generally are similarly vexed. As George McCartney has written: "Waugh's response to the modern was marked by certain fruitful ambivalence. In his official pose he was the curmudgeon who despised innovation, but the anarchic artist in him frequently delighted in its formal and thematic possibilities" (Roaring 3).2 Although Waugh later in life repeatedly denounced modernist formal experimentation, his early fiction nonetheless came to embody a modern sensibility in its apparent rejection of the novel's traditional ethical obligations. Even in matters of form, he didn't consider himself a traditionalist, but rather grouped himself with writers such as Firbank and Hemingway who deployed what Waugh sometimes called, following Wyndham Lewis, an "external method."3 Indeed, in Waugh, the satiric and the modern often look very much alike; while the author may claim to satirize a decadent modernity, the disruptive mechanism of his satire fosters the very modern decadence he decries..."

Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies

Friday night in Mayfair...

I just love the look on his face...

Art by Fritz Willis

Vacation over...

Back from vacation...Your regular scheduled programming will resume soon. Give me a minute...

Holiday Road

Off for a bit o'vacation in the Wagon Queen Family Truckster...Be back soon. In the mean time, visit these interesting folk:

Mr. and Mrs. P. dining with real linen napkins and using the correct flatware at all times

Mr. Cusack a younger, slimmer Waugh...

The Llam-o-nators be careful, they spit...

Girl with bobb, 4 martinis, without future ex-husband and with new kitchen in California

HQ of Mongers, Hatemongers that is...

Bad Boy and Boy Mulcaster

Banned in Boston and elsewhere I'm sure...

Most Exalted Worshipful Grand Villain enthroned in the East

Meaning it to sting in Maryland

Large Irish quadruped trapped in wrong state

Or, just start clicking on all those link things to the right...I believe this is what the Llamas call "link-whoring", is this correct? I like it.

Enjoy

ASBO

Chavs, Hoodies, Neds, Townies, Kevs, Charvers, Steeks, Spides, Bazzas, Yarcos, Ratboys, Skangers, Scutters, Janners, Stigs, Scallies, Hood Rats, whatever you know them as, this site is about them, Britain's peasant underclass that are taking over our towns and cities!

How to spot a Chav...

ASBO

Persnickity, moi?

Persnickity?

You dern tootin', why you young whipper snappers, gosh darned right, you low down varmits....


For extra credit name the actor...You long eared galouts!

Whore chasing with your daddy, I'll bet...

Camelot my arse!

What Kennedy magic?

"...At practically all material times, the Galahad of Camelot was pumped full of drugs that affected his mental and physical ability, and was concomitantly obsessed with a need to demonstrate “potency.” That this led him to adopt something like a Marilyn Monroe doctrine is indubitable. Even the smitten Barbara Leaming is shocked to note on how many vital occasions the president of the United States was closeted with his official procurer, David Powers, and a couple of hired women. Eros may be a tried and tested way to ward off Thanatos, but it is alarming to discover from Leaming’s book how long Kennedy had brooded on the likely brevity of his own disease-haunted life, and how casually this allowed him to gamble with Thanatos for other people..."

"...Looking at the extraordinary contrast—between what is now known of the Kennedy administration and the continuing infatuation with it—one is drawn to an explanation of the difference that may still be slightly delicate to mention. If this vulgar hoodlum president had not been survived by a widow of exceptional bearing and grace, his reputation would probably now be dirt. Sheer discretion and consideration, exerted on her behalf (and partly demanded by her in return for “access”), conditioned many of the founding chronicles and continue to influence the successor ones. Perhaps even this spell is now not too strong to be broken. Professor Giglio approaches the question, at last, in a matter-of-fact way. We have all understood for a long time that Kennedy did not even attempt to shield his wife from the humiliation caused by his whorings. He seldom invited her to bear him company on his out-of-town forays, and she often declined to accompany him. I had not appreciated, though, that until November 22, 1963, she had never been at his side on a domestic presidential political trip. And she might have missed that one, too, had it not been felt that a charm offensive was needed to heal the breach in the Texas Democratic Party, and had she not just spent too much time being photographed half naked on the cruise ship of her future husband Aristotle Onassis. On the first couple’s last night in the White House together prior to departure for Dallas, staff and press accounts coincide in reporting an emotional row on the Grand Staircase. And the next day, she had parts of his skull in her hands. But all this was almost half a century ago, which is surely enough time for the dispelling of our remaining illusions..."

Absolute Bastard...

"That the V&A should have run an exhibition on heroic image of Che Guevara, even though it has later been appropriated for laudable commercial uses is a disgrace. Decent people should boycott it. Cuban refugees in America were angry enough to try to get it closed down when it was shown at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles. However, even though they are victims and refugees who have suffered, they are not defined as such by the politically correct minority, so they got nowhere.

Imagine by contrast the hypocritical fuss there would have been over an exhibition of official portraits of General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, the hero of the free world who overthrew the KGB supported Allende (an ex-Nazi), saved not only Chile but Latin America from Communism and with the Chicago Boys created the economic "miracle of Chile". Pinochet was responsible for far fewer deaths, mistreatments and infringements of human rights than those evil monsters Castro and Guevara who are feted by our left-wing media. Viva Pinochet!

Che Guevara was an absolute bastard. He lived the life of a murderous psychopath and died in an obscure ditch, shot by an insightful Cuban exile attached as a CIA adviser to the Bolivian armed forces. If only Lenin, Hitler and Osama bin Laden could have been disposed of in the same way at an early age..."

Franz II, Heiliger Römischer Kaiser

In 1806,
200 years ago, the Holy Roman Empire went out of existence as Emperor Francis II abdicated.

Nuke'm till they glow, shoot 'em in the dark...

On Aug. 6, 1945,
during World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 140,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.

Relax with Basil

1. Picture yourself near a stream.

2. Birds are softly chirping in the cool mountain air.

3. No one but you knows your secret place.

4. You are in total seclusion from the hectic place called "The World."

5. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

6. The water is crystal clear.

7. And you can easily make out the face of the person you're holding under the water.

A Bachelor Dinner At Castle Howard

Help from Mrs. P...

The teen mum’s confused choice...

"It has long been an official pretense in Britain that we have so many teenage pregnancies—the most by far in Europe—because British girls don’t know where babies come from. The answer to the problem, therefore, is yet more sex education: ever more children putting ever more condoms onto ever more bananas at ever-earlier ages..."

The Artist as Socialite and Soldier: Rex Whistler:

"...It is often said that Evelyn Waugh based Charles Ryder of Brideshead Revisited on Rex. Certainly, it makes sense if we then see Stephen Tennant, a great friend of Rex's, as Sebastian Flyte. The differences might be that Rex's origins were far humbler than Ryder's are posited to be, and his art less easel-based than one gathers Ryder's is. Rex wasn't nearly rich enough (though successful), nor classy enough (his father was a builder and his grandfather - appropriately - a painter and decorator) to be a serious contender in the marriage stakes he observed around him.

Rex was almost a professional Bright Young Thing. He was bosom friends with Cecil Beaton, who more perfectly fits that bill. Beaton's photograph of Rex and various others as Fragonard shepherds on a classical bridge is fabulously gaudy and gleamy, but camp beyond measure. But even as he hung out with high-born figures, he must have felt the precariousness of his position. He had a relationship with Penelope Dudley-Ward, the daughter of the Prince of Wales' "friend". But he seems to have been seriously scorched by his feelings for Lady Caroline Paget..."

Shelley

In 1792, English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Field Place, England.

V is for Vulgar

Vulgar: 3 a : of or relating to the common people : PLEBEIAN b : generally current : PUBLIC vulgar opinion of that time> c : of the usual, typical, or ordinary kind

As I am home alone this week, the rest of the family off to visit relations in Dallas and obtain a break from me I am sure, I have spent some of my spare bachelor time catching up on some film viewing. I just finished the film V for Vendetta, a film which upon its release caused somewhat of a kerfuffle in right wing circles. I, of course, enjoy the actor Agent Smith, with his perfect diction and enunciation and sans the fake American accent. Here he is V, that Shakespeare quoting amateur botanist cum demolition expert with a penchant for Guy Fawkes and Ginsu knifes which he uses to great effect as a one-man slice-o-matic when confronting the eeviiil men. By the way, I thought it a bold stroke on the part of the film makers with the Guy Fawkes bit, seeing that only 12 people in the United States know who he was...

The film, which was adapted from a comic book, a first in the film industry I believe, tells the story of a future England where, in order to provide a secure environment and better health care the government is taken over by an eeviill white man (John Hurt, sans cute alien baby) who heads a party with neo-Nazi attributes who use the patriarchal cross (a coincidence, I am sure) as a party symbol because someone already used the swastika. This party, strangely named the "Conservative Party" sets about the difficult task of removing (via death) everyone but whitey from the island in order to restore and preserve order. In this future we learn that the United States no longer exists and is embroiled in a civil war. This group is aided and abetted by the Christian (Roman Catholic) Church and eeviill pharmaceutical companies.

They not only cleanse the land of darkies (read Musselmen), they also grab homosexuals, drug addicts, chamber orchestras, talk show hosts (thank God), Shakespeare, Benny Hill and anyone caught out after dark or listening to Enya. But, like I said, this is all very subtle. For instance, the film allows that if the Conservative people ever took over the major media, they would use it for propaganda purposes, which may or may not be true, but since no one has ever used the media in this way I found this something of a stretch...I also thought it strange, what with the current stories in the media, that the eeviill Catholic Bishop liked to molest little girls and not little boys, well, there is no accounting for taste with Conservatives.

Anyway, I failed to see what all the fuss was about. There did seem to be some subtle lessons that the film makers want the viewing audience to take away from this film, and because you are all simple minded sheep and must be spoon fed, I thought I would outline these lessons for you here thus allowing you to mindlessly enjoy the explosions. Now these messages were very subtle and you would miss them, so read and memorize the list below and then enjoy the show:

Warning: You will be upset with the scene in which the eeviill white men kill Jeeves, better skip past this part.

A Guide for the simple minded:

Conservative white, Christian people and Americans = Nazi party, bad, EEVIILL

Liberal white, dark, Muslim, homosexual people = GOOD

Homosexuals = Very Good, especially lesbians, especially if they are good looking lesbians

Art and Literature - Conservatives hate and want to destroy this, Liberals love this and want to protect it.

Liberal good people quote Shakespeare - EEVIILL people quote the Bible

Catholic Church = EEVIILL

Conservatives do not like roses

Sense of humour - Conservatives no, Liberals yes

People who drink warm milk - Very EEVIILL

Conservatives = lies Liberals = truth

Jukebox = good Loud Speaker = bad

Even the most poorly educated liberal person can recite Shakespeare's canon verbatim, they just can't mention his name in public or teach him in school, seeing that he is a dead white male and all.

Military = bad, but you knew this already

On the wireless...

At noon Eastern today...Don't miss it!

Bottoms Up

"Ian Fleming, the man behind James Bond, was a sadist, a narcissist, and an all-around repressed pervert. But he also saw past the confines of the Cold War..."

Hitchens in The Atlantic

Further reading:
Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett

Subsidized Stupidity

"For a license to receive television broadcasts in their homes, British households must pay an annual fee of about $200 (soon to rise), which subsidizes the once famous but now increasingly infamous BBC. This broadcasting system exemplifies two of the guiding principles of contemporary British public life: the active promotion of vulgarity and the shameless looting of the public purse..."

Read On...