Merely the bleatings of empty headed sheep looking for their second in the sun I tell ya MM!



Even though Camoron looks more like a stuffed pigeon than a sheep.

Bringing out a crap album just before he conked was a master stroke. It has confused the twits and facebugs no end.

Pathological grief, especially upon the death of a stranger, is symptomatic of (amongst other things) bipolar tendencies. There is a branch of psychology that allows bipolarism to be, in some cases, a socially reinforced condition and therefore susceptible to contagion. When the illusion of a mutually shared experience, as presented by the death of a well known popular singer, is added into the mix then the public reaction is actually a very good indicator of a particular society's general state of mental health. Just saying.

[url= 48-year-old audit manager comes to work with lightning bolt make-up] [/url][url= 48-year-old audit manager comes to work with lightning bolt make-up] [/url][url= 48-year-old audit manager comes to work with lightning bolt make-up] http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/48-year-old-audit-manager-comes-to-work-with-lightning-bolt-make-up-20160112105259[/url]

nordmann wrote:

Bringing out a crap album just before he conked was a master stroke. It has confused the twits and facebugs no end.

Well, I may be a bit of a twit at times, but I'm neither a tweeter nor a facebug and I think it's good. Lazarus is excellent. Don't judge Blackstar too hastily, nordmann - you may find it grows on you. Although I do concede the videos are dangerously near to being just too "arty" - but then Bowie always came perilously close to pretension at times. He got away with it because he always looked so good. But the music's superb.

And you were quite wrong about Wolf Hall (the BBC production), if I remember correctly - terribly censorious about its artistic merits when the rest of us were left speechless at its brilliance. You thought that was crap too.

I'm glad I'm not bipolar, then. Can I stop taking the pills?

What a grotesque - and sad - story. Not sad about the chicken (RIP), but about people who desperately need to express something somewhere and can only do it with teddy bears and such.

Grotesque too in that you (I mean one) cannot help but laugh.

Reminds me of something I read once about tragedy: "Don't you see nowadays tragedy isn't possible any more?...A farce, that's what. Today farce is the only thing possible. A corpse is no help at all."

Gulp.

PS I see the incident happened ten years ago. The Telegraph reported it as Murder Most Fowl and ended their article about the unfortunate bird with this:

Conservative MP and Telegraph columnist Boris Johnson was forced to apologise last year after the Spectator magazine, which he edits, claimed that Liverpudlians typify "the mawkish sentimentality of a society hooked on grief".

I still think it's sad, but then I was born in Liverpool - not my fault, of course.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1501380/Mourners-lay-wreaths-for-dead-chicken.html

Good grief!  Explain this phrase, if you will, Temps. Perhaps it's something else I had better not say - the list mounts.

Don't know, P. Interesting.

PS Please confirm - as you have heard me speak on the phone - that I do not have a Liverpudlian accent. I'll admit to the odd flattened vowel now and again - but that's Manchester, not Liverpool, and therefore acceptable - presumably even to Boris.

What a snob I am.

I did not notice any odd flattened anything, nasal twang - nothing but pure posh, Temps. Why we two loiter round this lamp post I have no idea!

They're dropping like flies...

RIP Alan Rickman

I loved Alan Rickman. RIP indeed.






A coffin does unfortunately seem to be the latest fashion accessory for us baby-boomers. I keep thinking of Peter Pan's comment: "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

Oh well.

A favourite of mine as well. Just reading Nordmann's comment and I'm a bit shocked, I hadn't realised he was ill.

Alan Rickman also stole the show as Eamon de Valera in the 1996 film Michael Collins.

A great loss.

What a deadly weekend it proved to be ...


Sir Michael Terence Wogan (1938-2016)


Frank Finlay CBE (1926-2016)


Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane/Starship (1941-2016)

As a tribute to them all


Frank as the Witchsmeller Pursuivant ...


Terry's brief meteoric ascent (and equally meteoric plummet) as a chart-topper. Hold your ears.


Jefferson's White Rabbit with Paul on rhythm guitar

I see from this morning's news that authors Harper Lee and Umberto Eco have both just died.

   

RIP, Umberto. The Name Of The Rose was good, but for me his most re-readable novel is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, one of those books that you are sad upon first reading because all the time you are aware that it must come to an end.

And a god in the field of semiotics - I had the privilege of attending a lecture he gave once in Dublin on the value of gibberish and how meaning always has to be warped or destroyed in the act of communication for anything sensible to be understood by the recipient. A wise, wise man.

I'm late but yesterday the news informed of Harper Lee's death (she of "To Kill a Mockingbird" fame). I never read the book but I've seen the film on TV a few times and liked it.  I've held off from reading the book because I've wondered if I would be disappointed in any differences between the film and the book, though of course the book came first (I've said my piece about being disappointed in the 1967 (68?) version of "Far from the Madding Crowd" having a blonde Bathsheba Everdene before).

In the book Atticus is probably a less sympathetic character than Gregory Peck played him in the film, LiR, though no less principled for that. This aspect to him surprised people who read her recently published Go Set A Watchman, but I think really only for people who - like you - had known the character chiefly through the film portrayal. I recommend both books. To Kill A Mockingbird contains some details and sub-plots that the film omitted for different reasons, but which are integral to the story and enhance your enjoyment of it if you liked the film also. Go Set A Watchman was a rap on the knuckles for those who over-sentimentalised the original story, and showed that Harper Lee wasn't just a clever observer of the society she grew up in but was also very clear-sighted and unromantic about racism's legacy for her generation and into the modern day.

This won't do : I'm agreeing with everything nordmann says at the moment. How boring.

LiR - do read the books. I'm sure you'll enjoy them. It's a pity Watchman was never revised - it's really just a first draft. My favourite bit is when Dill dresses up as the Holy Ghost.


EDIT: I posted this last year on the Religions The Benefits thread:



Reverend Moorehead possessed a singular talent for fascinating children. He was a whistler. There was a gap between between his two front teeth...which produced a disastrously satisfying sound when he said a word containing one s or more. Sin, Jesus, Christ, sorrow, salvation, success were key words they listened for each night, and their attention was rewarded in two ways: in those days no minister could get through a sermon without using them all, and they were assured of muffled paroxysms of delight at least seven times an evening; secondly, because they paid such strict attention to Reverend Moorehead,  Jem, Dill and she were thought to be the best-behaved children in the congregation.

The third night of the revival when the three went forward with several other children and accepted Christ as their personal Saviour, they looked hard at the floor during the ceremony because Reverend Moorehead folded his hands over their heads and said among other things: "Blessed is he who sitteth not in the seat of the scornful." Dill was immediately seized with a bad whooping spell, and Reverend Moorehead whispered to Jem, "Take the child out into the air. He is overcome."


The children then hold their own revivalist meeeting and Dill dresses up in a sheet as the Holy Ghost. He incurs the terrible wrath of his Aunt Rachel, who, when she discovers the children, yells:" I'll Holy Ghost you, Charles Baker Harris! Rip the sheets off my best bed, will you? Cut holes in them, will you? Take the Lord's name in vain, will you? You get out of there!"


Truman Capote, Harper Lee's childhood friend, was the inspiration for Dill. I wonder if Capote ever did dress up as the Holy Ghost? I like to think he did.

A perturbed Temp wrote:

This won't do : I'm agreeing with everything nordmann says at the moment.

Don't worry, ma'am. I'm sure it will pass soon ...

Well at the moment my bedtime reading is a thriller by the American writer Linda Fairstein but I'll think on what Temperance and Nordmann say about reading Harper Lee's work.  I'm also wondering about playing catch-up on the BBC "War and Peace" (people I know have been less than kind about Lily James as Natasha, though to be fair I can only judge if I watch it myself). I will probably wait for a BBC repeat showing rather than watch on iplayer though, because I don't want to use up too much of my monthly internet allowance.

The man described as Britain's greatest pilot has died aged 97;


Eric "Winkle" Brown

I hope they will rebroadcast his "Desert Island Discs" - I found that very interesting.

This is on this evening, Gil;

Britain's Greatest Pilot

Just watched it - interesting comment about Hitler & Jesse Owens. Brown says he saw Hitler shake Owens' hand - not what popular myth proclaims!

I'm pretty sure Jessie Owens himself always said that Hitler shook his hand. It was Roosevelt that snubbed him. In Germany he'd stayed in the same hotels as his fellow American competitors, but back in the US had to stay in segregated hotels. He was never invited to the Whitehouse nor received the usual congratulatory telegram from the President.

Frank Kelly died today aged 77. Known in the UK mainly for his character of Father Jack in the 90s comedy "Father Ted", he will be remembered in Ireland for his contribution to a long-running RTE programme which, through some very weird, hard, and often very tragic times, kept us all a little saner ...



RIP Councillor Mooney ...

Appropriately and delightfully, today we have confirmation that Father Ted was indeed a documentary.

"Catholic coke head priest: Father Stephen Crossan snorted cocaine surrounded by Nazi memorabilia"

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/catholic-coke-head-priest-father-stephen-crossan-snorted-cocaine-surrounded-by-nazi-memorabilia-1546490

Bye bye George, a dead Kennedy who's actually going to be missed.

nordmann wrote:

Frank Kelly died today aged 77. Known in the UK mainly for his character of Father Jack in the 90s comedy "Father Ted", he will be remembered in Ireland for his contribution to a long-running RTE programme which, through some very weird, hard, and often very tragic times, kept us all a little saner ...

18 years to the day after the death of Father Ted himself, Dermot Morgan.


Spooky.

Farewell George Martin, 1926 - 2016.



Before he was ever the fifth Beatle he was of course the second Spike and, prior to his success with some scouse gits, he graced the borders of the Poppermost as the producer of this marvellous paean to the fickleness of Cupid's aim. I dare you to listen to its opening cadences without in some small way being transported melodiously onwards six or so years to the hallucinogenic environs of Pepperland.

Cliff Michelmore has died aged 96. Here is a clip from the Tonight programme from 1964, with another recently deceased guest;




Paul Daniels dies as well;

Paul Daniels

Oh I saw about Cliff Michelmore on the news.  I liked his style of reporting back in the day though I appreciate presenting styles have changed over the years.  That clip with David (still Jones not yet) Bowie was hilarious, Trike. (I nearly made a typo and called Trike, "Tike", sorry Trike).

I'm not sure what Mr Garner would make of this most recent addition to his heavenly fraternity. But if Johan brought a ball along I'm sure he'd soon show them all ...


Hendrik Johannes «Johan» Cruijff (25. April 1947 to 24. March 2016)

Back in the 80s I saw an interview of James Garner and his daughter when they were in the UK and post-interview they were scheduled to go to Wembley for "the match".

I want to add to this someone you will never have heard of: Dr Elizabeth (Libby) Wilson who has died aged 89.

I first encountered her around 1980 while I was working with teenage girls who were caught up in the Care system. She came up the path, a plump middle aged woman with a tight grey perm looking as if she was heading for a Women's Guild meeting but was greeted with cries of, 'It's the Johnnie woman'.

She was indeed a pioneer of fertility control and worked with many of the most disadvantaged and chaotic women in the city, often coming up against opposition from the churches and the medical and legal establishments. Utterly committed to extending autonomy to her patients, she used new, sometimes quite experimental treatments, to give women control of their own bodies and they in turn were devoted to her.

After a career improving lives, she then set about improving deaths as chair of Friends at the End, an organisation promoting autonomy of choice in death and was the first person in the UK to be charged under the new regulations regarding assissited suicide.

She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and declined paliative care so died a month later at home with her family.

A long life, well lived: may she rest in peace.

I think Jim Rockford will appreciate this one though ...


And it's Goodbye from Ronald Balfour Corbett (1930 - 2016) ...

Four candles for that man!

Iraqi born architect Zaha Hadid died yesterday as well.

One of Hadid's designs;  the Riverside Museum in Glasgow;

Last night:

Today the last former resident of St Kilda died. Rachel Johnson was born on St Kilda in 1922 and was eight years old when the remote island, 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides, was finally evacuated in 1930.

Here she is in a St Kilda school photo, taken in about 1929 - she's in the middle, her face obscured by the little lad in front:



And here she is again (third from right) back on St Kilda in 1980 amongst other former residents gathered together on the island for the 50th anniversary of the evacuation.



Truly the end of an era.

Victoria Wood has gone now, aged 62;

A Sign O' The Times ....

The former artist formerly known as Prince Rogers Nelson



1958 - 2016

Gosh - I remember the film of that concert. Was it 1988ish?

I loved the drummers.

The very sexy girl drummer - Sheila E. - had my husband transfixed, I remember. She was featured on another track which he watched over and over again, much to my disgruntlement. She was very good though.

Lord, this is getting ridiculous: whose turn to go next?

Another "unknown" for you all to contemplate.
John Rafferty, of Coven, near Wolverhampton, served as a Royal Navy mechanic during the St Nazaire Raid of March 28, 1942, during which he was captured by the Nazis and kept as a prisoner of war for more than three years.
Operation Chariot saw the British disguise the redundant destroyer HMS Campbeltown as a Swastika-emblazoned German warship and pack it with explosives in a ploy to blow up the key German-occupied port in Normandy.

Read more at http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2016/04/25/farewell-to-last-hero-of-st-nazaire-world-war-ii-raid/#8Grf4RfUvLP9qAHs.99

I was sorry to read that Caroline Aherne of The Royle Family and Mrs Merton had died of cancer at just 52.  I liked her humour though I suppose it may all be down to individual taste.

Eli Wiesel, who died yesterday aged 84, was one of very few in many senses - one of the few who survived the atrocities inflicted upon his people by a German regime intent on their elimination from the face of the earth, one of the few of those survivors who managed - just about - to hold sanity and a sense of morality and purpose intact throughout his ordeal, and one of the very few afterwards who managed - when describing a horror that surpasses mere words to encompass - to relate to successive generations of readers in his book "Night" what it had been like for the adolescent boy he had been to endure this experience.

I am loathe to advise that any book, especially one with merit, should be compulsory reading in schools - the effect of the requirement can often work to the disadvantage of the content. But Wiesel's books, and especially "Night", should be available to every adolescent for generations to come. Written fifteen years after Wiesel's liberation and while still a young man it is impossible to read it and not understand that for Wiesel, like so many others, there would always be a part of him which would for ever be captive in that inhuman obscenity. His genius, and his courage, was to revisit that hell and relate it through the eyes of the young adolescent that he had been. No one can read his account and not understand that but for an accident of location and time at birth, this also would have been their story too.

Nordmann,

thank you for mentioning Elie Wiesel.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1617.Night
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Elie-Wiesel/dp/0374500010
And about Elie Wiesel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel

However, and I weigh my words, with all his humanity perhaps also some in my opinion lesser sides in his personallity?
From the above wiki:
In 1946, after learning of Irgun's bombing of the King David Hotel, Wiesel made an unsuccessful attempt to join the underground movement. In 1948, he translated articles from Hebrew to Yiddish for Irgun periodicals, but never became a member of the organization.^[21] In 1949 he travelled to Israel as a correspondent for the French newspaper L'arche. He then was hired as Paris correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, subsequently becoming its roaming international correspondent.^[22]
Wiesel often emphasized the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and has criticized the Obama administration for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt East Jerusalem Israeli settlement construction.^[63][64] He stated that "Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture—and not a single time in the Koran.... It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city..."^[65][66]

Perhaps it is all understandable from his past experience...but nevertheless...

Nordmann?

Kind regards, Paul.

Farewell then Jean Alexander: take out those rollers, paint over the muriel and lay the flying ducks to rest - Hilda Ogden has gone to join her beloved Stan in the celestial Rovers Return.

I haven't watched Corrie in years but still remember fondly its glory days when it portrayed working class life in the North with humour, affection and respect.

ferval wrote:

Farewell then Jean Alexander: take out those rollers, paint over the muriel and lay the flying ducks to rest - Hilda Ogden has gone to join her beloved Stan in the celestial Rovers Return.

I haven't watched Corrie in years but still remember fondly its glory days when it portrayed working class life in the North with humour, affection and respect.

Don't forget Auntie Wainwright either.

ps - I reckon soaps lose all contact with reality the moment they go over 1 hour broadcast in a week.

Gil,

"ps - I reckon soaps lose all contact with reality the moment they go over 1 hour broadcast in a week."

yes, Dallas an example...the wife is looking to the never ending German series of "Sturm der Liebe"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_of_Love

But you have to take the difficulties of the text writers in concern, if one of the actors has an accident, one of the female ones get pregnant, one isn't for some mental reason not able anymore to do the stage, they have to invent some irreal causes to dismiss them from the series... a cancer, a murder, a blow up in a plane accident, a plot with a pregnant actor as she is really pregnant...and all the other cases you can imagine...
Sometimes I followed it together with the wife, but at the end it got boring for me...after the twelfth time a couple got isolated in the wine cellar, or for the fifteenth time a couple being out of reach with their GSM in a montainous environment refuge I got a bit nervous...perhaps the general public don't botter about all this but they forget that some individuals as I always remember former episodes...but of course I don't weigh on the viewing ratings...and yes what after eleven years each day they have to invent to be original...at the end I will have empathy with the text writers...


And there is not that much changed in three quarters of a century, when each week there was an episode of Tom Mix ending always in a dangerous life threatening situation...next week the rescue of the hero...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mix

Kind regards, Paul.