Bogotissimo!

The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.

The incident itself is hilarious, but this description (by then Press Secretary) is pure genius.

massive bubble blowing in Manchester.

Mamihlapinatapai (a veces escrita incorrectamente como mamihlapinatapei) es una palabra del idioma de los indios yámanas de Tierra del Fuego, listada en el Libro Guinness de los Récords como la “palabra más sucinta del mundo”, y es considerada como uno de los términos más difíciles para traducir. Describe “una mirada entre dos personas, cada una de las cuales espera que la otra comience una acción que ambos desean pero que ninguno se anima a iniciar”.

(found in ehqcd, who also found it elsewhere)

We all have a favourite bad poem, something so cringe-inducing, excruciatingly bad you get a thrill off like a 10-year-old might get off a gory movie. A poem you revisit every six months or so, to find with delight that it’s even worse than you recalled.

Well, at least I do. It’s called “The Night Abraham Called to the Stars”, by Pulitzer prize winner Robert Bly, and it is supposed to be a Ghazal, though not a very strict one - actually, it bears no resemblance to the Ghazal form whatsoever, which consists of rhyming couplets and refrains, but I guess Bly needed the ethnic bonus points. Bly entertains us with corny, obvious imagery which he then proceeds to cornily explain, and then finishes the poem with the most absurdly awkward imagery I have ever seen. All the while making very gratuitous use of enjambment, in actual rhythm stead - repeatedly.

Here it goes. Enjoy:

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
The stars? He cried to Saturn: “You are my Lord!”
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

He cried, “”You are my Lord!” How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life

Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

Also: notice how he can’t make up his mind about how many people he is addressing - “friends” in s2, “Friend” in s6. I like to imagine there was a crowd at first, but by the end of the poem there was only one man standing in the audience, loving this as much as I do.

Barbados needed to win the game by two clear goals in order to progress to the next round. Now the trouble was caused by a daft rule in the competition which stated that in the event of a game going to penalty kicks, the winner of the penalty kicks would be awarded a 2-0 victory.

With 5 minutes to go, Barbados were leading 2-1, and going out of the tournament (because they needed to win by 2 clear goals). Then, when they realized they were probably not going to score against Grenada’s massed defence, they turned round, and deliberately scored on their own goal to level the scores and take the game into penalties. Grenada, themselves not being stupid, realized what was going on, and then attempted to score an own goal themselves. However, the Barbados players started defending their opponents goal to prevent this.

In the last five minutes, spectators were treated to the incredible sight of both team’s defending their opponents goal against attackers desperately trying to score an own goal and goalkeepers trying to throw the ball into their own net. The game went to penalties, which Barbados won and so were awarded a 2-0 victory and progressed to the next round.

It’s from Snopes, there’s a “true” tag and even a small video, and I can’t stop laughing.

madiju at flickr

hi. My feeds piled up and it will take a few days to catch up, so.

Web Zen tackles Processing

A whole new gallery of Damien Hirsts going on auction in September. Expect stock markets to crash.

And troubles in Hamburg, small town in Good Home Iowa: The town’s sheriff’s 17 year-old niece climbs up a stage and strips off her clothes, the art card is played on the behalf of those involved, and controversy ensues: Is stripping art? “Dance has been considered one of the arts, as is sculpture, painting and anything else like that. What Clarence has is a club where people can come and perform,” says laywer. “(…) While she was there, she felt like dancing so she got up and danced on the stage and then she took her clothes off. Trouble with that is she’s the sheriff’s niece.” (btw: no pictures)

This reminds me of another, more troublesome court case in Canada a few years back. I’ll see if I can google it later.

Bookseller buys stash of books from old lady, whose husband had recently passed away. Arriving home, he checks the material and finds hollowed-out books packed with pornographic polaroids of said deceased husband and what must have been his lovers. Uncertain what to do with such treasure, he asks the Internet.

(Apropos: I had seen a step-by-step guide to assemble hollowed-out books some time ago somehwere on the Internets. I don’t remember where, though, and I doubt I have the manual skills to pull it off decently. Are they difficult to come by? What are the secret mercadolivre keywords?)

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Paid for by Stride Gum, this guy traveled to 42 countries and danced a silly dance in each one of them.

via pink tentacle.

Pac-Txt!

You awaken in a large complex, slightly disoriented. Glowing dots hover mouth level near you in every direction. Off in the distance you hear the faint howling of what you can only imagine must be some sort of ghost or several ghosts.

–

Choose your own Adventure: Pong

(CNN) — A 31-year-old woman who lost part of her leg when she stepped on a land mine has won the unusual title of Miss Landmine Angola 2008.

via the blog of “unnecessary” quotation marks

from Indexed: