Catching up on my Tom Tomorrows. Haven’t read it for a while.

More here.

Top search term for June:

clown sex

My goal for July is to make it to the top 5 google hits for “mime sex”.

Post script. There is a site about Clown Sex. It’s pretty funny.

Because clowns do not naturally “ride” bicycles, stand on their “heads,” or “jump through rings of fire,” whips, electric prods, and other tools are often used to force them to perform.

The smaller and poorer the blue movie production, the more limited the clowns’ access may be to water, food, and hairdressing care. But whatever the size of a clownsploitation flick, the clowns inevitably suffer

Ever have one of those moments when you are sitting in your favourite chair sipping wine and you are like, what’s that smell? Smells like dead mouse. and you have a look around and, sure enough, there is a dead mouse.

I just did.

Roger Cohen has a devestating round-up of the Bush years in the NY Times.

When it’s dusk in America, the shadows spread wide.

Was going to write a review of The Battle of Algiers but it is so much easier to copy/paste from Roger Ebert.

At the height of the street fighting in Algiers, the French stage a press conference for a captured FLN leader. “Tell me, general,” a Parisian journalist asks the revolutionary, “do you not consider it cowardly to send your women carrying bombs in their handbags, to blow up civilians?” The rebel replies in a flat tone of voice: “And do you not think it cowardly to bomb our people with napalm?” A pause. “Give us your airplanes and we will give you our women and their handbags.”

Pontecorvo has taken his stance somewhere between the FLN and the French, although his sympathies are on the side of the Nationalists. He is aware that innocent civilians die and are tortured on both sides, that bombs cannot choose their victims, that both armies have heroes and that everyone fighting a war can supply rational arguments to prove he is on the side of morality.

His protagonists are a French colonel (Jean Martin), who respects his opponents but believes (correctly, no doubt) that ruthless methods are necessary, and Ali (Brahim Haggiag), a petty criminal who becomes an FLN leader. But there are other characters: an old man beaten by soldiers; a small Arab boy attacked by French civilians who have narrowly escaped bombing; a cool young Arab girl who plants a bomb in a cafe and then looks compassionately at her victims, and many more.

The strength of the film, I think, comes because it is both passionate and neutral, concerned with both sides. The French colonel (himself a veteran of the anti-Nazi resistance), learns that Sartre supports the FLN. “Why are the liberals always on the other side?” he asks. “Why don’t they believe France belongs in Algeria?” But there was a time when he did not need to ask himself why the Nazis did not belong in France.

Had a pleasant conversation with a friend last week about whether McCain intends to keep American forces in Iraq forever, or just indefinitely. I think we concluded (at least I did) that both McCain and Obama would, at some point, decide that enough Americans had died and that the political situation was not improving and that the best way to force the issue would be to start withdrawing troops.

Here’s McCain, from 1993 and 1994, on when America should “wave the white flag of surrender” and when the deadline for withdrawal should be set and on whom the responsibility would lie should more Americans die.

“I can’t allow my husband to go grocery shopping with me because whenever we get to the salad dressing aisle he has to shake each bottle of salad dressing whose solid contents have settled to the bottom. Italian dressings and oil based dressings are particularly bad for him. Depending on the size of the salad dressing section this can take up to a half an hour. Also, I don’t keep dressings like that in the house because he will shake them each time he opens the refrigerator door. Sometimes I suspect he goes to the fridge for that purpose and no other.”

I just wasted a perfectly good hour going through this entire site - http://iamneurotic.com/ - putting Gs or Ks next to every entry.

“Whenever I enter a room, I have to say “Hello, room.” It doesn’t matter if there are people in the room or not. People generally make the greeting a bit more awkward, but I feel disrespectful if I just walk in without saying anything. This is also necessary when I get in the car.”

I don’t do exactly this, but whenever we move house (which is quite often - see Where we used to live) I have to say goodbye to every room.

“Sometimes the way people chew makes me twitch. Apples and Cheetos are two of the most common offenders. If I ever go on a killing spree, you’ll probably find that someone was chewing ice next to me at the moment I snapped.”

Oh dear. I think I know the woman that wrote that one.

“When riding in a car on the highway, I feel compelled to imagine a ball bouncing over each telephone/electrical pole in succession. Uneven spacing is a serious problem, as the imagined ball is sort of sluggish.”

I did this when I was little.

“Sometimes I get really scared that a loved one is going to drop dead and I have to call them to make sure they’re still alive. If they don’t answer I freak out a tiny bit more than is called for.”

Or doesn’t turn their computer on so they can be Skyped? Or when there is a fire within 200 miles of a loved one? Or ….

Final score: 9 Ks, 12 Gs.

I look forward to reading your scores in the comments.

Click Map for gory details.

Had a fine time retracing the adventures of my youth on Blogabond

Click map for gory details.