Scared sheepdog, Mumford and Sons and Jessica Harper

The above four legged fellow is named Ci (no, I don't know how his name is pronounced either - Sy?). Anyway, Ci is a sheepdog in the west of England. Except as a sheepdog, he's rubbish.Why so? I hear you cry. Because he's scared of sheep, that's why. Apparently sheep, despite their reputation for being - well - sheepish can be quite aggressive and if they sense that they have the upper hand will gang up. They gang up on Ci, sensing his fear, and he backs off. Like soooooooo...... Notice how the sheep look well in control. Unlike Ci. His owner wouldn't swap him for the world despite the fact that she has to be her own sheepdog. Another heartwarming animal story from rabbit central.

The rabbit has been following Glastonbury from the comfort of his armchair rather rather than in the middle of a pile of mud with Wayne Rooney for company (apparently the egregious scummer and Colleen are doing Glasto this year accommodated in a £100,000 Winnebago). Last night he caught Mumford and Sons (yes I know it's Mumford & Sons but embed can't cope with the ampersand), of whom he was generally aware of Mumford & Sons as a folk rock type band of some recent note but no more. Instant conversion! They are good! They are better than merely good. The rabbit is a total fan. Here are the rabbit's new heroes with Winter Winds

By way of contrast as regards the rabbit's estimation, after mature reflection the rabbit concludes that it is inevitable that Wayne Rooney (below before and after hair transplant) should be awarded the third rabbit Knob Of The Week award in succession to Grant Shapps and 'Cranmer' for (a) turning up at Glastonbury in a Winnebago (b) being a scummer (c) being himself.

Finally a plea to all readers of goodwill. Fellow blogger, actress and all round sweetie Jessica Harper has entered the Next Model Competition 2011. Jessica just wants to come in the top 250 but languishes at the time of writing at 721. Be good sports and vote for her! It only takes a few seconds and voting ends in a couple of days. In a way, it's a kind of experiment. Let's see if the power of the blogosphere can create a flashmob in support of Jessica. There's nothing to say that you have to be UK resident to vote and there are only 2 days left for voting. Go on - vote for Jessica - and tell everyone you know to do so too. Let's move her up the rankings!

 

Clarence Clemons 1942-2011

Another light goes out with the death of E Street Band saxophonist (and lots of other things too) Clarence Clemons. I've never thought of the saxophone, tenor or otherwise as particularly rock and roll but Clemons could do things with that instrument that were very special indeed. Okay working with Springsteen would have to give anyone a huge running start (yes I know that there are people in this world - even readers of this blog among them - who don't think Springsteen is a genius but I say he is) but Clemons brought a very special gift to the party. His size (he wasn't commonly known as 'Big Man' for nothing) and startling taste in suit colours made him stand out but mostly the verve and raw honesty of his saxophone playing stood out - raw, moody and eloquent. Try his playing here on Drive All Night - a rabbit Springsteen favourite - something very special...



Two random Clemons related facts (1) He was married five times - which to some may seem like overdoing it, and (2) his middle name was Anicholas. Don't ask me why.

A kiss is just a kiss (or possibly not)

 

The rabbit confesses to not having ever heard of the Vancouver Canucks or the Boston Bruins until a day or so ago. They are ice hockey teams and played in the final of something called the Stanley Cup this week. The Bruins won 4-0  whereupon the Canucks fans rioted. This strikes the rabbit as distinctively Un-Canadian behaviour. The rabbit is familar with - and largely in favour of - Canada, and Canadians do not generally riot. All very odd. The rabbit also pronounces himself in favour of the Bruins winning for reasons not to be gone into at this very moment (Hi Carol!).

In any event, a Canadian photojournalist named Richard Lam took the above photo in the middle of the riot. It looks as if a pair of young lovers are engaged in a passionate embrace, oblivious of the mayhem around them. Too good to be true?

'Fraid so...

Here is a second image, showing people gathering round. Are they concerned? Or simply preternaturally nosy? It's the former. The young couple are Scott Jones, a 29-year-old Australian and his girlfriend Alex Thomas, a Canadian. A police line had rushed the crowd and the couple tried to stay together but couldn't react in time and were knocked over my two riot police officers.  Alex Thomas was knocked over and landed head first on the pavement with her boyfriend landing partially on top of her. She was in visible pain, crying, but the two officers gave them a parting shove and moved on. Bystanders went to go make sure she was all right.

So that's it. No passionate embrace - just human concern. But the posting title is plainly cue for a song..

It seems that the young couple are both okay. Ice hockey? Yes, I quite like it. Best to keep the violence on the rink, though. And on a completely different topic and in case you have missed it, here is a rather hungry lioness and - erm - intended dinner...



And on a completely different (again) topic, there hasn't been too much music on rabbit central of late. Regular readers will know of the rabbit's partiality to sixties stuff and here is something for the weekend - Northern Soul classic from The Flirtations - Nothing But A Heartache - enjoy!



You want some more sixties soul? oh okay then. If you insist.

A surreal reprise...

There was a World War II catchphrase - endlessly recycled - 'careless talk costs lives'. Above is an example from  the wall of a military bunker underneath Dover Castle. Below is a poster from the same era - I do like the 'Mr Hitler' - he may have been a homicidal maniac we were at war with, but there's no excuse for bad manners as I am sure all will agree.



 

Bizarrely, the Ministry of Defence has just done a reprise of the 'careless talk costs lives' routine. On YouTube! It is a warning to service personnel and their friends and relatives as regards putting information about their whereabouts and activities on social networking sites. And bizarre stuff it is too. Take a look...

This is video 2 but the more fun one in the rabbit's opinion. Mother has put a load of indiscreet stuff on facebook and then has the nice young terrorist round for tea. As you do. For the sake of completeness, here is video 1 in which two navy personnel go out for the evening with unintended consequences, complete with terrorists strutting their stuff in the disco. .

All very odd. I think I prefer the World War II posters. While on the subject of very odd, there has been a lot of guff in the papers recently about Gully Wells who had a relationship with Martin Amis. And then didn't. Blah. Drone. The thing that puzzled the rabbit was 'why name your child after a (cricket) fielding position?'

At least she wasn't called 'Square Leg' or 'Extra Cover'. It turns out on further researches that her real name is Alexandra and Gully is a nickname. Don't ask me why...

Endearing animal picture time...

For overseas readers and the one person in the UK who has missed this by virtue of having been under a stone for the past however long it has been, here are the 10 orphaned/abandoned owlets whio have been rescued by the St Tiggywinkle's wildlife hospital. The little chaps and chapesses (don't ask me - I'm not very good at owl sexing) will be released back to the wild when fully grown.

Apparently owls invariably hang about in pairs in the wild so the non-related group of ten is something of an oddity. Big talons, though! The rabbit is still time poor having just moved hutch yet again (he is now a resident of Croydon - which will do for the time being) but still has good intentions as regard to getting down to more blogging and visiting many more blogs).

And here is a warning to the new, more sociable type of owl from old bill with Hat Tip to Old Holborn 

Quite so...

Now this is beyond ridiculous...

The above person - who has hitherto escaped the rabbit's attention - is named Jim Shannon. He has recently achieved fame as having been voted Britain's least sexy MP. Mr Shannon - who it emerges is Member of Parliament for Strangford in Northern Ireland - appears to have taken this all in good part.

'When I married my wife 24 years ago, I did so because I thought she was the sexiest woman in the world, and hopefully she thought I was the sexiest man, and that is all that matters to me' pronounces Mr Shannon.

Bless!

What is going on here? I hear overseas readers and the sensibly hitherto ignorant ask. The short answer is that some jokers have set up a website called sexymp.co.uk which invites the public to rate MPs in terms of their - erm - sexiness. What horrors follow is illustrated below - viewers of a sensitive disposition should look away now.

Above is Ian Paisley Junior, voted Northern Ireland's most attactive MP. Now the rabbit may be no judge of male beauty and Mr Shannon may not pose serious competition but...

BLOODY HELL!!!

Viewers are offered a choice of mixed, male and female MPs to rate for sexiness. The home page has pictures of two MPS and the question...

"Which MP would you rather have sex with?
Choose one"

Generally the only sensible answer is 'no thank you'.

Or in many instances...

YOU MUST BE BLOODY JOKING!!!

All right then... I'll stop the air of superiority as regards this stuff. I can hear you ask. "Okay rabbit. If you really, really had to vote who would it be for?"

Ermmm...

Ummm...

*shuffling of feet*

If really, really forced to vote the rabbit would cast his vote for Charlotte Leslie, the member for Bristol North West. 'Tis pity she's a Conservative as John Ford  didn't quite put it.

Rabbit Review: Attack The Block

The inevitable search for points of reference and the fact that it was produced by the same guys has inevitably resulted in comparisons between Attack The Block and Shaun of the Dead. The comparisons are not helpful. Shaun of the Dead was North London and overwhelmingly white, Attack The Block is South London, seriously multiracial and funnier, scarier and with an underlying moral grounding not to be found in Shaun of the Dead. Don't get me wrong - Shaun etc is a quality film, sharp and sassy but Attack The Block is a different class.

Sub-titled Inner City meets Outer Space. The plot is set around a gang of feral teens from a South London estate and a young nurse who they make the acquaintance of (by robbing her) played by Jodie Whittaker shortly before aliens starting crashing out of the sky to the estate and surrounds. The first alien crashes through the roof of a nearby car just after the robbery and Moses, leader of the gang (played by John Boyega - the star of the show)  kills it. Bad move. Given psycho aliens with row after row of dayglo razor sharp teeth it's best not to piss them off.

The script zings. One exchange I liked was...

Q Why of all the places in the world would aliens attack a shitty council estate in South London?

A Maybe they were looking for a fight.

The aliens get a fight from the teen gang as they defend their estate ('the block'). There are verbal and visual gags aplenty plus a lot of street slang. How the slang will play before wider audiences remains to be seen. Some of it, I suspect, would be incomprehensible in North London let alone North America. I can only wonder how information about a collison between a whip and a bully van plays elsewhere. Having lived in South London for longer than I care to remember and having been involved in the criminal justice syatem for almost as long, I was in the loop but wondered about those outside it. The slang is cleverly limited and repeated so context provides assistance and some is altered for comprehensibility. "Low (pronounced to rhyme with cow') it" becomes "allow it" which helps to make sense of the expression but has never previously seen the light of day save in police versions of things said popping up in criminal trials from time to time. The police generally have a tin ear for street slang and make and endlessly reproduce mishearings (notably 'blood clot' for 'blood clat' (long 'a'), a Jamaican obscenity now absorbed into street English English but I digress.

It's even scary. My companion for the evening screamed (rather loudly) at one point! She went in to see the film unenthusiastically expecting to hate it but came out saying it was brilliant.

It even has a moral. You start off understandably seeing the teen gang as your worst nightmare. They rob Sam, the nice young nurse, at knifepoint in the street. But there is a worse nightmare in prospect - the aliens. Gradually and warily (on both sides) they form an alliance and then a bond with Sam. The unfolding drama becomes redemptive for Moses - some critics have suggested this does not work. I thought it did. Go do yourselves a favour - go see it.

On a personal note, I've had a lot to deal with on all sorts of fronts but I'm still standing and my fur barely singed. More blogging will hopefully follow soon. In the meantime here is some informative stuff.

Of odds and ends and bloggers...

The rabbit was amused and entertained by a couple of gems from the Guardian this morning. The first relates to a tv quiz programme called Million Pound Drop. The general idea is that you start with a million pounds and lose money by giving wrong answers. Yup, we are heading into stupidity territory. Deep into stupidity territory. As in really, really deep.

Here is a question for plucky contestants Andrew and Vanessa...

 'In 1954 Roger Bannister was the first man to...

• Run a sub 4-minute mile
  
• Go into space
  
• Put the toilet seat down

(There is a pictorial clue as to the right answer for the hard of thinking above)

After much hesitation, Andrew and Vanessa went for.....
 
Yup... The toilet seat option.
 
Such stupidity is truly on the heroic scale. They should be given a medal or something.
 
On the other end of the intelligence scale, there was a piece by Sarah Churchwell touching on the vexed question of British and American spelling issues. Professor Churchwell, an American herself, mounts a spirited defence of American spellings. The rabbit considers himself better informed but less than convinced.

Meanwhile John Hirst aka Jailhouselawyer e-mails the rabbit with cartoon from the Torygraph attached asking what I have been up to. The answer is of course nothing. And even if I had been up to anything I would not be seeking a super-injunction (overseas readers - please google - they are injunctions to protect very important people and are so secret you can't even mention their existence - or something like that), The rabbit has always approached rumours about him on the basis that they should be admitted especially if untrue.

The above woodcut is of Thomas Cranmer, sixteenth century archbishop of Canterbury having a full and frank exchange of views with a Doctor Cole shortly before being carbonised for heresy. The rabbit mentions this as Cranmer has a contemporary imitator who seems a rather thin skinned fellow. For why? The rabbit described the Cranmer impersonator in a (fairly) recent posting as an 'irritating blogger'. Oh dear! Our hero picked up on this description and commented as will be seen here.

Calm down dear (to borrow a phrase). And please also understand that the rabbit writes any old rubbish that comes into his head without even the pretence of fact checking. Get over it. If you like religious blogs Nick Baines - who has the virtue of being a real as opposed to pretend bishop - does a much better one. 'Cranmer' may consider himself awarded the second (in succession to the egregious Grant Shapps) Knob of the Week.

Finally on bloggers and commenters, a comment by Alconcalcia to an over one year old posting 'Did you know an anagram of Gideon Osborne is "Go soon, inbreed'

Ummm, no Al (if I may call you Al). Didn't know that...

Royal Wedding Cut Out And Keep Souvenir

What exactly is going on above is a matter for some conjecture. Suffice it to say that from the page girl (or whatever she is called)'s reaction, it must be very noisy. Hat Tip to Charles Christian via Charon QC.

'Socialism' George Orwell wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier (1936), draws towards it 'with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England'. Warming to his theme, our man's tirade against such 'cranks' is memorably extended in other passages of the book to include 'vegetarians with wilting beards', the 'outer-suburban creeping Jesus' eager to begin his yoga exercises, and "that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat'.

The quote came to mind in relation to the Royal Wedding. I start by saying that the rabbit had little to no interest in this event and only caught a few minutes of it as it was on a great big screen in front of his exercise bike down at the gym. The only thought the coverage provoked was that the much traduced Rowan Williams would make a splendid Gandalf. And yes, as previously outlined in White Rabbit, the Windsors are an utter shower.

And yet. And yet. Oh and you can knit your own royal wedding if so inclined.

Some of the reaction to the Royal Wedding has been graceless in its splenetic nature - a classic example is the commentaries of charmless lump Tanya Gold (google if you can be bothered). It does strike me that we are rapidly developing a British variant of the 'culture wars' that have paralysed US politics for many years now. The effect is a social and intellectual paralysis as two camps who hold large numbers of their fellow-citizens (the other camp) in a kind of uncomprehending contempt, pass the time glaring at each other and exchanging insults. As the memorable line in Educating Rita has it 'there must be better songs to sing'. Roll on the republic. But nicely.

Then I am brought back to earth by the news of - talking of Orwell - Orwellian 'pre-emptive arrests' by notably the Metropolitan Police. Prominent among these was Chris Knight, a 68-year-old retired anthropology professor, his partner, Camilla Power and 45-year-old friend Patrick Macroidan on the eve of the wedding near their home in Brockley, south-east London on the charge of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance (sic).  Knight's group, the Government of the Dead, (doublesic) was planning to behead an effigy of Prince Andrew with a theatrical guillotine in an act of street theatre on Soho Square in London.

As you do.

The clunking mindless authoritarianism of this grates. Even vegetarians with wilting beards have rights. Including the right not to be incarcerated for hours before being released without charge on the grounds that they may do something embarrassing. Probably mostly to themselves.

Keef, Dann, scum and Keira....

Okay, lets start with a review. The rabbit has just read the less than imaginatively titled Life by Keith Richards - or more accurately by Keith Richards with James Fox, a journalist acquaintance of his. Which is okay. Unsurprisingly it reads like spoken reminiscences, surprisingly for those of a cynical bent, Keef not only remembers but also makes a good raconteur. He actually succeeds in making the reader like him - a kind of guarded, qualified liking but a liking nonethelesss.

Some of the best bits are his early years, before he became famous and in particular being brought up in Dartford. For those fortunate enough to be unacquainted with Dartford, it is just outside London on the Kent side of the Thames estuary and it is a dump.'Everyone in Dartford is a thief'' explains Keef. Uh-huh. The rabbit had the dubious 'pleasure' of going to the Dartford Magistrates Court regularly as a baby barrister and it was full of them but I digress.

One of a  number of redeeming features of the ageing bad boy is that he is plainly and genuinely in love with the music. This produces occasional delicious little gems such as the information that the Bo Diddley riff is called 'shave and a haircut - two bits'. Do try this one at home. It works. Verbalised it becomes 'Bo Diddley Bo Diddley, have you heard? My pretty baby said she was a bird'. There is of course a lot of that sort of thing about...

Many years ago the rabbit went to see UB40 live (no, I don't know what came over me either). they were backed by Bo Diddley. He completely stole the show and ripped the place apart. Pure quality but I digress again.

Back to Richards and the early years, one delicious little piece of information that appeals to the surrealist in the rabbit is that the early Rolling Stones would sometimes play Popeye the Sailor Man in concert on the grounds that no-one was listening and they couldn't be heard anyway because of all the screaming. The Stones' groundbreaking record contract with Decca was secured after an audience with the then chairman of Decca, one Sir Edward Lewis, who was drooling through the meeting. Not drooling over them but literally drooling. I suppose he secured a pretty good deal from Decca's point of view, drooling notwithstanding.

Of course the drugs figure prominently in the narrative. Through the seventies he was a heroin addled mess. His then girlfriend Anita Pallenberg didn't help. She was a bigger mess. She indicated her intentions towards him by giving him a blowjob in the back of a  car. Some people shake hands... He was lucky not to go to prison and, if he tells it like it was, hasn't touched heroin for about 30 years. This may surprise many people - reputation can proceed before you - but I'm inclined to believe him. He also deals with a number of other urban myths (the Mars Bar - false), the total blood transplant (false), snorting his father's ashes (true - sort of). A lot of the musical stuff is actually fairly technical. i didn't for example know that he dispensed with one string on his guitar and plays with 5. You want an explanation - read the book. It's technical.

The one false note he strikes is in dealing with Altamont. For young people and the otherwise uninitiated, the cliche about Altamont is that if Woodstock was the dream, Altamont was the nightmare. In circumstances that remain controversial and there are a number of (I suspect) self serving narratives, Hells Angels ended up in some sort of security role - for free beer. Drunk and off their faces on acid and amphetamines the Angels were at the core of an increasingly violent atmosphere. Monty Balin of Jefferson Airplane was attacked by an Angel while performing and the Grateful Dead refused to perform because of the violence and left. The Stones did perform. One may wonder why. The defensiveness on this question comes through very clearly on Richards' incomplete narrative of the event. An 18 year old named Meredith Hunter is on film trying to climb on the stage and pulling a revolver. He was then stabbed to death by a Hell's Angel named Alan Passaro who was tried but acquitted on a defence of self-defence. The question remains. Why did the Stones play in this context (they didn't actually know of the killing at the time but did see the violence at close quarters (Jagger was attacked before he even performed). Richards in terms says that not performing would have served no purpose. If Nick Kent (his Apathy For The Devil reviewed by the rabbit whenever) is right, it was about money. The Stones had paid a substantial sum to have their performance filmed. They were going to get their moneysworth. Grubby as that...

The Stones did end up something of a corporately sponsored monstrosity. Let it be remembered that before they were sponsored by Coors etc they were once a very decent rythmn and blues band. As is demonstrated here...



Otherwise permit the rabbit a little digression on matters footballing. The rabbit went to see Leeds lose at Crystal Palace yesterday with the larger of the small rabbits, who, being of an analytical bent commented how Championship players are generally unreliable and lacking in ability compared to the very top players. It is true. Leeds were awful and Palace were worse. It's just that Palace nicked an early goal and then defended like an away team. At several points all 11 Palace players were in their penalty area. The best player on the pitch was the goalscorer - a man previously unknown to the rabbit and named Neil Danns.He scored the only goal, generally ran his socks off and got sent off two minutes before time for a moment of overenthusiasm which earned him a second yellow. He's out of contract in the summer.

Danns is on the right in the red shorts for the footballingly challenged. At least he lasted 8 minutes longer than the character on the row behind the rabbit who spent 80 minutes abusing his own team's players in a highly unoriginal manner. The repeatable word was 'silly'. All other words began with 'f' or 'c'. He then left with 10 minutes to go and his team 0-1 down. The Leeds obsession with matters Manchester manifested itself as usual. Man U supporters - characterised as 'scum' - are merely glory supporting twerps from the leafier parts of Surrey. The real scum are the Millwall supporters who recently produced an array of Turkish flags to mark the anniversary of the fatal stabbing of two Leeds supporters at a game in Turkey ten years ago

Gloating over dead young men - althogh not uniquely wicked in terms of things done by football 'supporters' - well words fail me..

Yesterday was rounded up more sedately by going to the Comedy Theatre to see the distinctly non-comic The Children's Hour starring Keira Knightley and Elizabeth Moss (of Mad Men recent note). Pausing to wonder what either - let alone both - were doing in a not full not very big theatre, I have to say it didn't quite work. A rabbit theory - cinema (being essentially visual) stretches out dialogue, theatre (being essentially verbal) compresses dialogue. This does not work very well when seemingly just about every line is delivered in an angsty shout. Keira Knightly was fascinating, though. Every movement - even the smallest - seemed to have been weighed to an exactitude. Nothing was out of place, seemingly not by a millimetre. At least that was amazing to watch.

Apologies, kleptomaniac, Jackson and burqas...

The rabbit apologises to his readers for the recent stony silence. I think that though it is partly due to various demands on my time but it is probably also on some level a catching of breath and taking a little rest from blogging. But here are a few things to be going on with. The cheeky chappie on the left above is Václav Klaus. He is President of the Czech Republic and was on an official visit to Chile when the above clip was shot. Mr Klaus likes pens. He plainly likes them a lot . Now watch what he does. One wouldn't want to use ugly words like 'steal' but he is being just a little naughty. Apparently the population of the Czech Republic have taken pity on their pen-challenged President and are sending him gifts of pens in huge numbers. An ironic statement by the population, I can only conclude...

This is old news in the UK (well about ten days old) and a bit like shooting fish in a barrel but for the benefit of overseas readers here we go anyway. The pile of junk above is of course a truly bad taste statue of the late Michael Jackson. It cost £100,000 and has been erected outside Fulham football ground by Mohammed Al-Fayed - owner of Fulham Football Club and big mate of the deceased monkey fancier. The - erm - connection is that Jackson once went to see a Fulham game with Al-Fayed. Unsurprisingly, this object has not been universally well received. If I were a Fulham supporter, I'd be incandescent.

Al-Fayed has grumped back. 'If some stupid fans don't understand and appreciate such a gift this guy gave to the world they can go to hell' he pronounced with typical moderation. 'If they don't understand and don't believe in things I believe in they can go to Chelsea, they can go to anywhere else'.

Hell is one thing, but threatening to send people to Chelsea is a bit uncalled for...

Al-Fayed has previous for putting up statues. Here's one he stuck up in Harrods in 2005 showing Dodi, Diana and feathered friend. It further proves the truism that just because you have money doesn't mean you have taste.

More immediately in time terms - since last Monday to be exact - it has been illegal  for people in France to cover their faces with a burqa, a niqab - or indeed a hood or a mask while in a public place. The penalty is a fixed financial penalty and - absurdly and bossily - attendance at a course on French citizenship. The rabbit's position on this? I'm against it. I am neither a woman nor a muslim and cannot understand why anyone would wish to go about thus attired. But I cannot see what business of the state it is to tell people what they may or may not wear in the street. Just as Thomas Jefferson observed 'it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg', it does me no injury if my neighbour wears a burqa, a niqab, leather hot pants or just a few strategically placed feathers.

I can see the argument that in many instances burqa wearing is not genuinely voluntary but the result of  social pressure - including severe social pressure but I fail to see what the countervailing severe pressure of a blanket prohibition adds to the situation - except creating a kind of double victimhood. I can't imagine that the French law will survive a challenge to the European Court of Human Rights either. We shall see...

Lookalike...

The rabbit is still time poor but here is a little goodie from rabbit on the hop to keep the readership going. A house in Swansea (that's in South Wales, overseas readers) has achieved some notoriety as bearing a remarkable resemblance to the Late Adolf Hitler. They could have been seperated at  birth, I'm sure all will agree. This one has been doing the rounds on Twitter, much to the bemusement of the 70 year old occupier of Casa Adolf (no, it's not really called that) who doesn't even know what Twitter is.

A neighbour is quoted as saying 'People are joking that the house is the third on the Reich and that we live on the Western Front. You have to see the funny side of life sometimes'.


Indeed you do. To this end, and with Hat Tip to mahal, here is some informative stuff from The Onion. In the meantime the rabbit has found time to start a heated debate in the Guardian letters page concerning whether horses know it is their birthday. Here are links to my original letter -it's the bottom one - also printed in the paper edition I hasten to add - as was this reply published today. I don't know what to say in reply to Mr Spooner. Anyone got any ideas? Oh - and here is Einstein - the horse who sparked this debate - and friends - or do horses have friends?

Here comes trouble.....

Gadaffi is undoubtedly a loathsome toad and not playing with a full deck. This is a bad combination. If unrestrained he will undoubtedly butcher as many of that sector of his population as he can - and then lie about doing so. This Gadaffi is of course not to be confused with the reformed chaacter we could do business with and friend of T. Blair.


The Libyan rebels are brave and fighting against an undoubted tyranny. And yet. And yet. Something deep down inside me tells me that no good will come of this - and may even make Gadaffi some sort of grotesque hero.

The rabbit will simply for the moment tender an article by arab journalist Abdel al-Bari Atwan from yesterday's edition of the rabbit's usual dose of liberal rhubarb. We shall see...

He asks an interesting question - why was there no 'no fly zone' over Gaza 2008-9?'

Ermmm...

Ummm...

That would be because...


On a less grave matter and following on from the obituary of Owsley Stanley, we consider the Grateful Dead dancing teddy bear. Owsley, commonlly known as 'Bear' and who used the dancing bear on his - erm - LSD commented...
The bears were actually doing a high-step march-not dancing'.

Discuss.

Owsley Stanley

The rabbit is supposed to be having a brief sabbatical but finds himself with a few free moments to record the death of Owsley 'Bear' Stanley (left in pic - well obviously) in a car crash in Australia aged 76. Owsley was mostly noted for manufacturing LSD but also was the Grateful Dead - a popular beat combo's -sound engineer.

Eccentric doesn't do justice to the guy. Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze is a reference to his acid. Owsley's acid was mostly called - erm - Owsley's acid and figures in the rabbit's first (unpublished) novel White Rabbit - sorry had to slip that one in! He started manufacturing LSD when it was legal but carried on after it became illegal. In the end he was inevitably busted and ran the highly amusing (or at least the rabbit is amused) defence that 350,000 tabs of acid were for - erm - personal use. Result: 3 years inside.

Stanley's eccentricities did not end there - he believed that carbohydrates poisoned the body and vegetables interfered with nutrition. In 2005 he contracted throat cancer, attributing his survival to starving the tumour of glucose through diet. Well - erm - apparently it worked. As a sound engineer, the fact that the Dead's archive is hugely with us is down to his diligence but as an obsessive, his sound systems were often less than practical and took forever to put up and take down.

His final eccentric project was - believing that global warming was part of a natural cycle and not man made and anticipating a new ice age as presumably the next stage in the cycle - moving to the Australian outback as the safest place to be in for that sort of event. He had four children including a son called Starfinder and a daughter called Redbird. Let Garcia have the final word: 'there's nothing wrong with Bear that a few billion less brain cells wouldn't cure'.

Oh and he also created this...

intermission...

I'm afraid the rabbit is too time poor to blog for the moment but may come up for air again around next weekend. In the meantime please direct anything to the usherette who will be on full-time duty.

Dildo, President, Zion and Christine

Ever at the cutting edge of legal blogging, a case in a place called Gurnee - which is apparently in Illinois - has not escaped the rabbit's attention. The above chapess is called Carolee (seriously) Bildsten and, finding herself lonely and hungry on November the 9th last year, she repaired to a local establishment named Joe’s Crab Shack. She ordered a glass of wine, and dinner. And then another glass of wine. At the end of the meal, our heroine reached into her pocket to take out her credit card – only to find much to her surprise - that it wasn’t there.

She told the bartender that she was going to go home for the money, set off (despite a broken foot) and fell over. 'Partly, I was intoxicated, so that had something to do with it' Carolee helpfully explained. A police officer pitched up, told her she would be arrested if she didn't pay Joe's bill and was 'kind enough to take me home' as Carolee later elaborated.

How was the officer's kindness repaid? Not well I fear. Carolee went to her bedroom when the officer entered thus startling her. The police allege that she raised a 'clear, rigid feminine pleasure device' over her head and went at the officer. In other words threatened him with a dildo. She is running self-defence.

Carolee sounds a bit of a sad case, she has a degree, worked for many years as a dietician but is 'currently unemployed' and an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. 'I’m working on improving my life to avoid any further police encounters' she said.

Very wise too. Let's hope for the best for her.

On a completely different subject, in case anyone has missed it, here is The King's Speech parody, The President's Speech. What can this mean? Hat Tip to Mahal.

Above is the London 2012 Olympic logo and pretty stupid it is too. The Iranians have claimed that the logo spells ZION and are threatening a boycott. Let the rabbit put their minds to rest at once. Of course the logo doesn't spell ZION. What a silly theory. It is of course Lisa Simpson committing a sex act. Trust this clarifies matters.


Imagine the rabbit's surprise when yet another e-mail from Christine O'Donnell pops into his inbox. I wonder if Christine knows that there is legislation against stalking in this country. I expect she would claim it was an act of love. That's the usual explanation given by stalkers. Anyway, Christine explains that she has been asked to participate in Dancing With Stars, which is apparently the American equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing. Sadly Christine has declined the invitation on the ground that she is too busy writing a book. A great shame, I'm sure all will agree. She could have become the American equivalent of that other dancing right wing politician Ann Widdecombe here doing her impersonation of Kate Winslet in Titanic on Strictly Come Dancing. Very convincing too, I'm sure you'll all agree. They must have been seperated at birth.

Say what you will about Ann Widdecombe, and indeed Christine O'Donnell but they have never threatened anyone with a dildo. Well, not very often anyway..

Sort of Rabbit Review - The Royals

As regular readers will know, the rabbit is of republican opinion (in the British sense as in being in favour of a republic as opposed to a monarchy). Purely for reasons of research - he has a literary project in mind - the rabbit has just read Kitty Kelley's The Royals. Nothing else would drive him to read a book about the Royal family but it has to be said that Kitty does a good scurrilous read - this is after all her stock in trade. The book - which is now of some age (you get reviews when the rabbit reads them, not when they are published!) but with an update taking the reader to last year - can be irritating to the British reader as despite a claimed four years of research, Kitty hasn't quite got the hang of a number of aspects of British life and the British constitution. She also does a lot of 'translating' for an American readership - for example the utterly superfluous (to British eyes) information that a budgie is a budgerigar parrot (sic). Nonetheless, she seems a reasonably reliable historian - when a rumour is unsubstantiated, she still passes it on but says that it is unsubstantiated..

Here is everything you need to know about the British royal family. Okay, more than you need to know. I start with generalities and will come on to individuals next. I would have said - all things being equal - that republicanism is not personal. It's a matter of principle and not an attack on the personalities of the Royal family. I'm trying to hold on to that thought even if - if a tenth of what is said about them is true - they are the most dreadful shower.



Generally:

Despite their enormous wealth, the Royal family have obsessive financial meanness as a common characteristic.

They hate children and farm them out to hired help to bring up.

They are unintelligent with severely limited cultural horizons. all in all, a very bad advertisement for inbreeding. Have a look at the other stuff on the eILLUMINATI blog where the rabbit found this link by the way. We are in deep planet bonkers territory, but I digress.

An odd theme is how Germanic they are - and not in a good way. I don't know if Kelley overplays this but it is a constant subtext.



Specifically:

George VI - His speech difficulties are now an international obsession after the film The King's Speech. Kelley claims scurrilously but less well knownly (as it were) that the accidental monarch had - erm - certain difficulties in achieving elevation and the the present Queen and Princess Margaret were conceived by then cutting edge artificial insemination technology. I've absolutely no idea about this but it's weird enough to be true.

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother - Known as 'Cookie' due to her fondness for stuffing her face. Had fiftysomething inch waist. Downed copious amounts of gin. Showed her devotion to George VI by having an affair with Surgeon Rear Admiral 'Chippy' White en route to South Africa by ship in the late 1940s. Oh and the title Queen Mother was an invented one to massage her vanity.

Queen Elizabeth II - Recipient of conspicuously successful personality bypass. Next to nothing worth reporting about her. Cold and indifferent mother, financially mean (see general stuff), spiteful when perceives herself to have been crossed. In fairness to her probably has some delusive sense of duty as opposed to the out and out freeloaders. Suits her purpose to be married to...

Prince Philip - Boorish oaf. Likes toilet humour. Got a result by marrying Princess Elizabeth as she then was, he being stoneybroke at the time. Thereafter put it about rather a lot.

Princess Margaret - Dreadful woman and appalling snob. Drunken chainsmoking dwarf and very partial to pornography. Married and divorced...

Anthony Armstrong-Jones aka Earl of Snowdon. Drunken chainsmoking dwarf and very partial to pornography. Despite these obvious compatibilities disillusion set in quickly and the warring couple spent most of their waking hours insulting each other. Some of the insults are very funny.

Prince Charles - Oh dear... Now in sixties and still waiting for the big job - which he only gets when his mother dies. Married Diana for her alleged virginity (which may apparently have been exaggerated) and breeding potential and treated her dreadfully, starting with sleeping with Camilla Parker-Bowles the night before his wedding (his wedding to Diana that is).

Camilla Parker-Bowles - Good ole girl. Looks like a horse.

Diana, Princess of Wales - Not playing with a full deck. Serial vomiter. 'She had bad breath and wanted sex all the time' (the bounder James Hewitt). Always took a vibrator on her travels. As you do. Put it about a lot.

Princess Anne - Looks like a horse. Rude, graceless woman. Obsessed with horses 'If it doesn't eat hay or fart she's not interested' (Prince Philip). Only female competitor in 1976 Olympics not to be subjected to sex test. Hmmm. Married and divorced...

Mark Phillips - Stupefying dim and clueless individual. 'Princess Anne's grinning, speechless husband who if you whistle at him wets himself' (the late, great Auberon Waugh with the best quote in the book).

Prince Andrew, Duke of York - Boorish oaf. Likes toilet humour, was married to...

Sarah (Ferguson) Duchess of York - Boorish oaf. Likes toilet humour. Jaw dropping capacity to spend money. Puts it about a bit. Okay a lot.

Prince Edward, Duke of Wessex - Wet nonentity. Rumoured to be gay - the case against this: an annoying wife.

Enough of this. Roll on the republic.

Apologies and more dreadful album covers...

The rabbit has been very busy and has also been sent all over the country and so apologies are due for lack of postings of late and for not visiting your blogs to comment as much as I would wish. By way of compensation, here are some more dreadful album covers. Above is Thank You for the Dove by Mike Adkins. You're very welcome, Mike. Side A Track 3 is called What's Wrong With My Children?

Ermmmm.... Don't know, Mike.

I have no idea who Deerhof are or why the milk man is bleeding from injuries apparently caused by a strawberry (head) and bananas (armpit and per anum as we classicists say).

All very odd but no doubt there is an explanation.

The above gem is The Reverend in Rhythm by Father Robert White. There's something vaguely disturbing about the reverend gentleman. It's probably the way he holds his pipe.

the Handsome Beasts with Beastiality. I was actually going to post this on a previous occasion and decided not to on grounds of good taste and discernment. No such inhibitions this time! So squirm...

How Are Things in Your Town? by Ken Nordine - whoever he is. I'm told the above red thing is an enema bag.

How nasty is that? No, don't answer. It's a rhetorical question. And finally to lift the spirits, the latest in a series of wac-coe's. From Leeds United v QPR 18.12.10. 2-0 as you ask. Best supporters in the universe..

Belated Valentines Day message from the rabbit...

...actually that isn't me. I've got far more hair (he typed smugly) Hat Tip to Michael. Oh, and the message inside?