Let's Play 'Spot the Difference'

Between the Conservatives' "Road to Recovery" poster

and this, an iStock/Getty Images picture taken by one Alexander Burzik near Weimar

This photograph of specimen morons, on the other hand, does not resemble a road in Weimar

A Pareidolic Christmas to One and All

 
Readers: Oh my, it's those Ancient Egyptians at th'Temple of Seti I at Abydos a-and they got attack helicopters an' fighter-bombers an' underwater killer boats a-and
                                                  an eight-legged bee
                                                                                   from th'Astronaut Gods!

Blogaeologist: Worry not, my little pals, is probably the names of Seti I and Ramasses II, one cut over the other, or a similar SNAFU. Just pareidolia, that's all.

Pareidolia: perceiving the distinct and meaningful in obscure or random stimuli.


Readers: Phew. That explains it. Th'eight-legged bee, f'rinstance...

Blogagogue: Try this one...

Winter Solstice + 1

Missed posting on the Winter Solstice by a day because I fell asleep. Oh well, only 87 days to go to the Vernal Equinox and the sun can start warming me old bones.

Women Are From Venus, Men Are Idiots

A fine research paper brought to us by the BMJ: "Sex Differences in Idiotic Behaviour", an analysis of Darwin Award winners...

To qualify, nominees must improve the gene pool by eliminating themselves from the human race using astonishingly stupid methods. Northcutt cites a number of worthy candidates. These include the thief attempting to purloin a steel hawser from a lift shaft, who unbolted the hawser while standing in the lift, which then plummeted to the ground, killing its occupant; the man stealing a ride home by hitching a shopping trolley to the back of a train, only to be dragged two miles to his death before the train was able to stop; and the terrorist who posted a letter bomb with insufficient postage stamps and who, on its return, unthinkingly opened his own letter. 

Never won a Darwin Award myself, but it's on my bucket list.

Mr. Lovenstein

Mr. Lovenstein for all your Christmas Cheer needs.

Jim'll Fix It

Yoicks! I just found two billion pounds and I'm going to give it all to the NHS!

Yoghurty yoghurty! Merkel merkel!

Hope I don't sound too much like Jimmy Savile.

Glurk! I just found two and a half billion pounds and I'm going to give it all to the NHS!

That's more than that other fucker just found!

Turkety turkety! Crimbo crimbo!

Hope I don't sound too much like Jimmy Savile.

1599

The Theatre (left, with the flag) and the Curtain (right), in 1598.

It was dawn on December 28th 1598 and through a great snowstorm that had blown up during the night a group of heavily armed (with "swords, daggers, bills, axes and such like") men, William Shakespeare among them, trudged through Shoreditch to the Theatre at the north-east of Finsbury Fields.

The Theatre, England's first purpose-built theatre, stood on land owned by Giles Allen (brother of a former Lord Mayor), the land being leased by Richard Burbage for the player's company the Chamberlain's Men. Burbage had died, the lease was expiring and Allen was not going to extend it, apparently intending to demolish the Theatre for the salvage value. The place had been vacant for two years and the company had been forced to move to a temporary home in the nearby Curtain.

So that day the Chamberlain's Men stole the Theatre - took the frame apart piece by piece, loaded the timbers onto carts and carried them away.

The next year a long cold spell delayed the completion of new foundations in Bankside, Southwark, on land the Chamberlain's Men had leased for thirty-one years from Sir Nicholas Brend. In late summer the Globe theatre opened for business, Shakespeare's new play Julius Caesar being among the first productions.

The Globe and the Bear Gardens in 1600.

I am not going to go into ecstasies about James Shapiro's book 1599, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, because I am lazy and dull.

If you have never read anything about Shakespeare, or have read everything except this, read it!