The content on this webpage contains paid/affiliate links. When you click on any of our affiliate link, we/I may get a small compensation at no cost to you. See our affiliate disclosure for more info -----------------------
Last updated on May 20th, 2017 at 06:55 am
New posts in a day or so.
In a day or so?!?! You’re kidding, right? We can’t go a day or so without your…hey, wait (Thinking, thinking, more thinking, fantasies arising… oops, wrong fantasy! Gotta stay focused. Note to self: Get back to that fantasy later. Possibilites…Eureka! yep, that could work!) Okay, Tim. We’re good with that!
Posted by Deborah Leigh on 2008 05 01 at 01:14 PM • permalink
Hopefully you’re doing hard labor at one of Howard’s Work Kamps to atone to society for those boots.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2008 05 01 at 01:57 PM • permalink
No new posts?! My ovaries scream in despair! Which way’s the liquor cabinet?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 05 01 at 02:38 PM • permalink
What? Too busy to put up a one letter post? “j” was an inspired work of literature.
All your good stuff is spent Tim. Spent.
Posted by wronwright on 2008 05 01 at 03:21 PM • permalink
I remember way back when we counted for something. Give a man a job…
Posted by Gary from Jersey on 2008 05 01 at 03:28 PM • permalink
Psssst! I’ve got the key to the mead locker. Who’s up for a party?
Elizabeth
Imperial KeeperPosted by Elizabeth Imperial Keeper on 2008 05 01 at 03:44 PM • permalink
Story inspired by this article
Part I
There was a quick rap on my office door before the thing was flung open and Wronwright entered, practically running over Sheila, who was showing him in. She cocked an eyebrow, gave me a sarcastic look and announced my visitor. “Sir Walter Raleigh to see you, Paco.”Wronwright, completely missing the dig at his ungentlemanly haste, walked straight up to my desk, opened a canvas sack, and dumped a rock on my desk. “There!” he said, with something of outraged triumph in his voice.
I picked up the stone and gave it the once-over. “Very nice. Are you saving up for a new patio?”
He pursed his lips. “It’s a fake!”
I looked it over more carefully. It appeared to be half of a more or less spherical rock that had been split open. “I don’t know, Wronwright, it seems to be a perfectly genuine, if not a particularly interesting, rock. What makes you think it’s a fake?”
Wronwright gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s not supposed to be a rock, Paco. It’s supposed to be an authentic piece of fossilized dinosaur dung! From the Jurassic era! I bought it at auction and paid almost a thousand dollars for it! And it’s fake!”
I fished a gasper out of the silver cigarette box on my desk, struck a match on Wronwright’s rock, lit the cigarette, and leaned back in my swivel chair, studying my visitor closely. “Let me get this straight. You spent a grand on a piece of tyrannosaurus poop?”
He now not only pursed his lips, but narrowed his eyes smugly. “That”, he said, “was a dinosaur from the cretaceous era. This was probably from a brontosaurus or other sauropod.”
The rock wasn’t all that big, so I put it to him. “So, given the size of the animal that squirted this turd, what you actually did was pay a thousand bucks for a dinosaur dingleberry? And it’s not even real? Wronwright, honestly, sometimes I think you need a keeper…”
“Here! Look at this.” He pulled a torn piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. “I accidentally dropped the rock when I was carrying it down the steps to my subterranean museum of antique artifacts…”
“Your unfinished basement, you mean.”
“AS I was saying, I dropped the rock going down the steps and it hit the concrete floor and split in half. I found that” – he pointed to the fragment of paper he had placed in my hands – “embedded in the rock.”
I looked at the paper. It was a piece of a candy wrapper; Nestle’s Crunch Bar, to be precise.
“No wonder brontosaurs got so big,” I said. “They stood around eating chocolate all day.”
Wronwright rolled his eyes; I could see him silently counting to ten. He didn’t quite make it. “Listen, wise-guy! What I’m saying is that I paid a lot of money for what I thought was a prehistoric artifact, and I’ve been robbed! I took this crap – this figurative crap, mind you, not the real McCoy at all – to a geologist to analyze after I discovered the candy wrapper inside it, and he told me that the thing is just a chunk of composite material – you know, like they use in construction. Some worker probably dropped the garbage from his snack into the mix before it hardened.”
“Did the geologist say anything else?”
“No, he was too busy laughing. Anyway, Paco, what I want you to do is help me get my money back.”
“What auction firm did you buy it from?”
“Prehistoric Artifact Collections Online.”
“Hmmm. Something about that name rings a tarnished bell.”
“No doubt. I tried calling their telephone number and got a ‘disconnected’ message.”
“Well, give me a couple of days, and I’ll see what I can find out.”
- Part II
Wronwright left, momentarily placated, and I buzzed Sheila on the intercom. She came tock-tocking into the office on her stiletto heels. “Sheila, do me a favor and call Sam, the janitor. I want to borrow his shovel.”“What’s Wronwright on about now, Paco?”“Oh, it’s just some bad shit.”
Sheila lowered her perfectly symmetrical eyebrows in a frown. “You don’t have to be crude!”
“No,no. I mean…Listen, let’s go to lunch and I’ll tell you all about it. Er, on second thought, let’s go to lunch, and I’ll tell you all about it when we get back.”
********
After lunch, Sheila brought me the janitor’s shovel and I filled her in on the details of the case. “But Paco,” she said. “It would probably cost Wronwright more to recover his money than he paid for the rock in the first place.”
“I know. But I figure that I can find him a…well, a kind of substitute. Now, how about that shovel? Oh, and by the way: where’s Bogan?” Bogan – half Tasmanian wolf and half German shepherd – was a sort of unofficial member of the firm.
“I saw him out in the alley a while ago. I was trying to shoo him away from the garbage cans. It looked like he had gotten into a box of Ex-Lax.”
“Ex-Lax? Perfect!” Grabbing the shovel, I ran to the elevator and then out into the alley. “Bogan! Here, boy!”
- Conclusion
Answering my telephone summons a week later, Wronwright came bounding into the office. “”Well, Paco, did you get my money back?”I rose from my desk, walked over to Wronwright, and patted him on the shoulder. “I did better than that! I forced the auction outfit to cough up – as it were – something of equal value.” I guided him over to a table by the window and handed him a plastic bag filled with a flat, slightly dried-out organic item.Wronwright looked at it skeptically. “What is it?”
“This, my friend, is a baby mammoth patty, recently dug up in the Siberian tundra. I guarantee that it’s worth more than a mere piece of fossil feces from a commonplace reptile. And here: a letter of authentication from Professor Tim Flannery, the famous Australian paleontologist. And yes, I know; many people have remarked on the similarity of our signatures.”
Wronwright gazed at the bag with unmixed pleasure. “A baby mammoth patty! Wow! Thanks, Paco! What do I owe you?”
“Nothing, my boy, nothing whatsoever. Hardly any, er, spade work necessary at all.”
Wronwright turned to leave, but halted abruptly, still staring at the bag. “Hey, wait a minute. There’s a piece of paper in here. It says, ‘Ex’…and the rest of it is missing.”
I had failed to notice the paper; it was a portion of the wrapper from the Ex-Lax box. But I hadn’t become the scourge of the underworld by thinking slow on my feet. “Oh, that. Yeah, that was the original tag on this specimen. It originally said, ‘Excavated in, er, February of 2008’. It was damaged during shipment, but all the relevant information is in the certificate of authentication.”
“Oh, ok. Thanks, again, Paco.”
“My pleasure, Wron, but from now on, remember: caveat emptor.”
“You can count on it! From now on, I buy all my fossil poop from Sotheby’s!”
I hate to be serious…no I don’t… but I find intriguing the suggestion that AGW may be pausing for some unspecified time. Maybe the time is long enough so the punters will forget all about the furore, and the AGW “scientists” can gently move to some other cash cow, such as proving the left is genetically superior.
Santa Claus is also real, it’s just that he will be required to wear a fake beard and pillow-stomach for at least another decade…
It seems that as soon as Blair gets to work on his column, there is no distracting him.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 05 01 at 06:42 PM • permalink
Decades ago he chronicled the stories of part-Aboriginals taken into care because of the harsh treatment they received in bush camps as children.
“I was told by many of these people that because their fathers were white, they had no totem or ‘skin’ name, and that made them non-people according to the traditional Aborigines they lived among with their mothers,” he told me.
“So, the girls were used, willy-nilly, as the camp tramps even before they were in their teens, and both the boys and girls were often treated brutally.
linky:
we should be shocked:
When he raised the matter with Lois O’Donoghue, then chairman of the dysfunctional ATSIC, she lowered her voice and told him she was “well aware that these were some of the most sordid places on earth, and that the children were physically and sexually abused, but added that nothing could be done about it and it would only increase ‘racist’ feelings among white people towards Aborigines if the facts about these places were revealed.”
This is why so many want the permit system to continue. To protect the wicked.
This is why so many want ATSIC to stay dead and buried.
Uhoh, just noticed a Paco story.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 05 01 at 06:53 PM • permalink
#19 Rod, you’ve got to admire the pirrouette the Warmenizers are performing:
It’s still getting warmer, but just for a few years it won’t, then it will again… and we’re all going to fry
.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 05 01 at 07:01 PM • permalink
- #28
Kevin Rudd.Oops, sorry. That’s an old one.#27
Disappointed that Gympie has no gymps? You are awful!You realise that traveston and travesty sound similar… imagine the placards…
were you here to witness the protests when Posselt got there to protest the dam?
I have no problem with their objections to the dam… as long as they give up water for the rest of their lives.
Why is TIME pissing in Kev’s pocket?
Isn’t he wet enough already?
- “I’m busy doing nothing, Nothing the whole day through, trying to find lots of things NOT to do.” Press Gallery awaiting the next Epstein/Secord breathtaking press release
#30 Time Warner wants some deal okayed. Again watch for the next Epstein/Secord breathtaking press release on how much Rudderless is helping Oz advance after some many years of <insert Howard policy> not helping the poor and downtrodden.
Rudd just another Bob Carr Tony Abbott – April 30, 2008 linky Carr and Secord did nicely thank you, NSW. Now they are doing nicely thank you, Oz.Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 05 01 at 08:16 PM • permalink
You better be polishing tomorrow’s column like crazy. I want it so shiny I can see my face in it.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2008 05 01 at 08:37 PM • permalink
Let us hope by the end of the day that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is the new mayor of London and that Ken Livingstone can remember which rock he crawled from under and return.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2008 05 01 at 09:01 PM • permalink
Was it a Seinfeldian humiliation? Or did it reach South Park levels of self-degradation?
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 05 01 at 09:08 PM • permalink
And the attentive reader will spot an example of beclownment being called out.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 05 01 at 09:11 PM • permalink
#8 You forgot the link to what must be the internetal dumb thing.
I fear this will last as long as the internet. It’s as if we were to watch it a million times, it would be different on the million and thirteenth.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 05 01 at 09:21 PM • permalink
- Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 05 01 at 09:23 PM • permalink
I find intriguing the suggestion that AGW may be pausing for some unspecified time. Maybe the time is long enough so the punters will forget all about the furore, and the AGW “scientists” can gently move to some other cash cow*
Global warming in hibernation?
*The consensus at Bolta’s; be interesting to follow the career moves of Karoly** ‘n all …
**This is a map looking down on the North pole. And it shows here with this thin line the extent of the arctic sea ice in a minimum in Sept. this white area is the previous minimum arctic sea ice set in Sept of 2005. And this is Sept of this year the arctic sea ice is dramatically reduced 25 % less than the previous minimum. What that means is that global warming has led to much reduced sea ice its much less than even the climate models are predicting.
We can see that now there is a navigable passage where [commercial] ships can sail through the nth west passage from the Atlantic through to the pacific ocean which has never been possible in the past.
There is no doubt in my mind that the climate change we’ve seen over the last 50 years is primarily due to human activity.
It’s remarkable to me that Australia has not signed the Kyoto Protocol. Mainly because Australia has the highest per person emissions in the world.
It is critically important for the government to take leadership in setting emission reduction targets, irrespective of which political party is in government.
It’s not too late to do something now because we can still reduce the worst impacts of climate change, but it is too late to slow down climate change for the next 30 years because for the next 30 years, the warming is committed.***
What I’m trying to do as much as possible, is communicate the seriousness of this and the urgency.
***F*cktard
#30 Rudd’s elevation to the TIME list is more a measure of the decline in TIME than of Rudd’s influence.
See TIME quoted urine-swiller Cate Blanchett to justify his selection. Her starring role at Rudd’s 2020 and now this international ego massage are likely to cost the taxpayers a lot of money in the budget, either directly to Blanchett or more likely to the Sydney Theatre Company she runs. This will be one theatre company that won’t have to work within a budget for a long time.
Great chance for Blanchett and her husband to squander money on personal indulgences instead of actually working on something wothwhile.
#33 & 38 It’s right up there with my favourite.
- #43
Influential my arse.He’s been in less than six months and achieved 4/5 of 5/8 of SFA.He’s dismantled anything useful installed by his predecessors (AWA, The Intervention), and he’s trying to reassemble things he’s dismantled with a different name (AWAs) and reassemble useless things previously dismantled/disbanded, with a new name (ATSIC).
Interest rates are skyrocketing and business confidence has dived, he’s probably influenced that, maybe that’s what they mean. Good ole influenza Kev, worse than Bird Flu.
I just wrote a great comment and it disappeared when I submitted it.
OK, liquor cabinet’s open! wronwright, hold onto this prybar for a minute while I get out of these sweaty latex gloves…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 05 01 at 10:46 PM • permalink
The BBC has just published its projected national vote share. Conservatives 44 per cent, Lib Dems 25 per cent, Labour 24 per cent.
ConservativeHome is calling London for Boris.
Conservatives have picked up majority control on at least eight councils, including Southampton.
All together now: Happy day are here again…
Posted by Apparatchik on 2008 05 01 at 11:14 PM • permalink
#49 – A pint of bitter and lashings of spotted dick for all! Hooray for Britain!
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2008 05 01 at 11:17 PM • permalink
WRONWRIIIIIIIIIIGHT! Who authorized you to release the Secret Headquarters Information to Lileks?!
Karl wants a word….
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 05 01 at 11:32 PM • permalink
#49 Good show, old beans.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 05 01 at 11:35 PM • permalink
#58 actually I’m feeling pretty sympathetic to her. There’s a good chance that the worst thing that anyone in the family has done is smoke pot from time to time.
Posted by daddy dave on 2008 05 02 at 12:17 AM • permalink
Meanwhile, Malcolm Fraser advertises for a friend:
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser places an ad
I wonder why no-one wants to hang out with him? 😉
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2008 05 02 at 12:29 AM • permalink
#61 – Maybe we could hook him up with this geezer.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2008 05 02 at 12:52 AM • permalink
- #22
It seems that as soon as Blair gets to work on his column, there is no distracting him
Rather like this little chap, eh, MM?
#27
I know the feeling! No Albanians in Albany, etc.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 05 02 at 12:56 AM • permalink
#27 – there’s a lot of bumholes in Bunbury though.
Posted by mr creosote on 2008 05 02 at 01:02 AM • permalink
Look at this tragic story on the global food crisis. It made me cry.
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2008 05 02 at 01:03 AM • permalink
- #64
I know the feeling! No Albanians in Albany, etc.
No albinos either?Posted by daddy dave on 2008 05 02 at 01:06 AM • permalink
#60 Think Red Ken is like Melbourne’s John So and Sydney’s Clover Moore. People keep voting them in because they think it is a joke.
“Our Lord Mayor’s makes totally incomprehensible speeches,” say chortling Melburnians.
“Oh yeah, well we have a transsexual called Clover who wears dog collars to hide her Adams’ apple!” respond giggling Sydneysiders.
Nope, no Albinos. No Albigensians either.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 05 02 at 01:29 AM • permalink
If the media has taught me anything of late, it’s that a man can not be a State Opposition Leader if he makes ribald jokes amongst colleagues, but he can rise to the position of Prime Minister if he attends strip clubs so pie eyed, he thinks his elbows his arsehole.
I am not out of the contest to lead this country yet!
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2008 05 02 at 01:30 AM • permalink
And as for this place… don’t even ask.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 05 02 at 01:37 AM • permalink
I think this headline is funny. That is all.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 05 02 at 01:56 AM • permalink
#66 – buying a case of water? What happened to using what comes out of the tap.
Sheesh. No wonder they can’t afford to eat.
Posted by mr creosote on 2008 05 02 at 02:29 AM • permalink
- 74.
Ill see your headline and raise you one.
This from the local paper today.
Man fined for sex toy assaultA stroy of such vital importance most of the front page was devoted to it.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 05 02 at 03:35 AM • permalink
While Wilco was entering its 15th year last February with a five-day, career-spanning Chicago residency, No Depression magazine was announcing its intention to cease publication this summer.
Named after the Carter Family tune “No Depression in Heaven” (which Wilco predecessor Uncle Tupelo later shortened to No Depression for the title of its 1990 debut album), the magazine had spent 13 years covering the alternative country/Americana scene that Wilco had helped popularize.
Harp, another national rag that at least initially championed the alt-country movement, declared bankruptcy a month later.
#77 I am more of “We skipped the light fandango turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor” fan.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 05 02 at 05:54 AM • permalink
OT. Am off to Japan for three weeks on Monday with she who is obeyed always.
And have spent some time perusing Lonely Planet Japan.
At the moment it looks like 4 days in Tokyo, one day in Takayama, and the rest heading south through Kyoto down to Hiroshima and then back via Matsue.
But I do think that among you are many who have done the Japan thing in great depth and could offer some sage like advice.
Kudasai.
#85 I prefer “Winding your way down on Baker Street Light in your head and dead on your feet”
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 05 02 at 07:27 AM • permalink
- #85
KaeWron is shafe right noww an… an.. he’s here wid me. We were checking out shum sub baser… bazement… bugger is SHELLARS. Yesh. sellarz.Found one wot shaid ‘Imperial VRWC brandy shtore. Do not enter. By order of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Lot of dese old bottle here. Someting called Napoleon brandy. Must have been made yeshterday afternoon. Saysh 1809 on dis bottle.
Umm. Wron shaysh to send soda. An some limes. he ish singing real good now….
hic
MarkL
Minionmas…. ah stuff it.
What the hell is pienot noyer?
Posted by dean martin on 2008 05 02 at 07:46 AM • permalink
- After all the years we had to listen to the media bitching about Howard & Co.’s lies, we now have media endorsment of various big lies (including that one kae links to above).
Without honesty in our media you can guarantee that honesty in our governments is doomed. Various state governments already illustrate this syndrome.
Tribalism is alive and being encouraged. I’m not just referring to the perennially affronted indigenes (take that, Lowitja), but to the idiotic sponsoring of multiculturalism and over-tolerance of intolerant and (by PC fiat) unassimilable migrant groups.
1. Buy a railpass
2. Accomodation is usually smal in size, v clean and not as expensive as you may think
3. In Tokyo go to Asakusa, Kabuki-Cho (the red light district, check out food underneath the large department stores, and oh so much more
4. Kyoto is great. You can travel between temples by local bus or cab. Kiyomizu dera, golden and silver temples are all worth doing.email me if you need any specific details
#87 Al Stewart “On a morning from a Bogart movie In a country where they turn back time You know sometime you’re bound to leave her But for now you’re going to stay In the year of the cat “
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 05 02 at 07:57 AM • permalink
#91 ALP-media are a revolving door. Most media have worked for the ALP. I do not believe most stories written today. Why is the WA ALP getting away with the Times affair?
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 05 02 at 08:11 AM • permalink
- Mehaul,
one more thing, if you haven’t been to Japan before, the amazing thing is that it can conform to almost every stereotype you have of the place in a single day. I was last there a few weeks ago, I moved between temples amid snowflakes to watching Kimono clad ladies to Blade Runner style lights and alleys in a matter of hours. I love it.
Another Rudd conference, this one organised by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 05 02 at 08:34 AM • permalink
I would like to emphasize that paco’s hastily written yet unedited doggerel writing is a work of fiction. I did not purchase that ball of dino poop, some other sap in Ohio did. My guess is someone in Cleveland. Which makes sense if you know Cleveland.
Of course, if it was factual, I’m sure Sheila and I would have become very close friends. Close I say!
Posted by wronwright on 2008 05 02 at 11:12 AM • permalink
#90—It’s kinda like a shabliss but not as sweet…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 05 02 at 11:16 AM • permalink
mojo: Are you sure those are rabid wolverines and not 16-year-old girls who’ve just been grounded? They sound about the same…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 05 02 at 11:26 AM • permalink
- Posted by wronwright on 2008 05 02 at 01:45 PM • permalink
#76 Man fined for sex toy assault
The court heard the couple, along with two other people, were engaged in a consensual sexual act when the 34-year-old man produced a large rubber sex toy and hit the 27-year-old woman on the buttocks up to 30 times.
$1000.00 fine?! Hey, it was consensual! Why wasn’t the couple fined, since they were participating? Yeah, yeah. I know I’m overthinking this. That’s what happens when Tim leaves us alone. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Posted by Deborah Leigh on 2008 05 02 at 02:24 PM • permalink
#108 In these dark and difficult times of this new millenium, shouldn’t we return to the desperate measures of ritual sporting events? C’mon guys! The Thunder From Down Under and Chippendales can ride to save the day!
Posted by Deborah Leigh on 2008 05 02 at 02:57 PM • permalink
I’m a little late to the thread, but here’s my two cents on Japan:
From Hiroshima, I highly recommend catching a ferry for a day trip to Miyajima Island. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Take the cable car to the top of the Mt. Misen and hike the rest of the way to the top.
Also recommend visiting Nara (old capital of Japan). Lots of history and a lovely place. Relatively easy to get to from Kyoto.
Have a great trip!
Posted by Polish Frizzle on 2008 05 03 at 08:16 AM • permalink
Out shopping for a new wardrobe, I hope.