At 190, Jonathan the Tortoise Is the World’s Oldest: He will likely celebrate with some of his favorite activities: sunbathing, sleeping, eating, and mating:
"In spite of his age, Jonathan still has good libido and is seen frequently to mate with Emma and sometimes Fred - animals are often not particularly gender-sensitive"
In the case of the ( Read more... )

I don't know if anyone else has seen this: Over 90,000 people have joined r/SemenRetention in the hope of storing their sacred male energy, which sounds like a ponceyer version of the Anti-Fap movement, what with the invocation of Ye Antient Wisdome of Ye Orientale Sages* (why not, we ask, Ye Antient Wisdome of all those Victorian and Edwardian ( Read more... )

There's quite a meaty article in today's Guardian, apropos the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, based on the book about them that I am currently reading myself.
However, is it not odd that nowhere is mentioned the current exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery (wot I went to see last week), which is curated by the author of the book, and to which the book ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Many Mansions, which went in rather different directions than I'd anticipated (with a good deal less of the horrid young man than I'd feared).
Also finished the Delafield, and while one could have hoped for more EMD and less extended quotation, I guess it was intended as an anthology-type affair.
Mated to the Meerkat: enjoyable ( Read more... )

I suppose, if politicians are going to invoke stereotypes of Some Other Exoticised Culture as a model for the UK in dealing with the elderly, it is possibly some cause for reassurance that at least the stereotype is one about care and respect.

Rather than sticking the aged out on the ice-floes when they can no longer contribute and become a burden ( Read more... )

A selection of my pictures of Dresden:

( Fountain by the tramstop )

I was torn between Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich for the music for this one, and The Kinks' sexually confusing Lola, met down in some dive in Old Soho (of which I was reminded when doing Monday's post - 'she said, dear boy, gonna make you a man').

Anyway, Soho: that is weird pic, because theatreland pretty much encloses and forms one ( Read more... )

Dept of pedantic nitpickery: surely, when talking about Darwin's relationship to a whole range of contemporary correspondents feeding him info, you should refer to them as 'other amateur' scientists, rather than as 'amateur scientists'. Somewhere in the text it does point out that by the early C20th
[S]cience itself became professionalised within ( Read more... )

Just realised (Duh! Duh! hits side of head) that the rape scene early in The Corn King and the Spring Queen - realistic, painful, traumatic - was surely riffing off the famous Wromantic Wrape scene in E M Hull's notorious piece of orientalist rom-porn, The Sheik (filmed with Valentino doing intense smouldering). What with the horseback chase ( Read more... )

Dept of You Couldn't Make It Up: A retired teacher who now spends his time campaigning for improved literacy has revealed that he taught classes for 17 years even though he could not read or write.

Evidence from the Berlin Film Festival suggests that Madonna should stick to her last: Madonna reinvents herself as film director (let's all do the ( Read more... )