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Post by nautiker on Feb 27, 2013 10:09:58 GMT
thanks, bixaorellana, I am really touched by your kind offer - looking forward to my 'normal life' after death...
highlighting today another lowlight: 80th year anniversary of the Reichstag fire, one of the capstones of the Nazi seizure of power back in 1933. there'll never be clear evidence about who set the fire, not that it would make any difference today...
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Post by Kimby on Mar 10, 2013 12:34:59 GMT
40 years ago today Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon in the US. (Brits had to wait 2 weeks to get theirs.)
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 10, 2013 16:40:21 GMT
But the US is paying for it now by having to wait ages before getting whatever season of Downton Abbey that Brits are already enjoying. Today also marks the 100th anniversary of Harriet Tubman's death. I read this interesting article about her last night which helped me imagine her life more fully.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 9:57:40 GMT
Today is the 2nd anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I hope that it will remain one of the worst events of the 21st century and not be beaten out by some other catastrophe anytime soon.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 22:49:06 GMT
Also, on March 11th, 1978, Claude François, one of the biggest pop stars in France, accidentally electrocuted himself in the shower.
His apartment is sort of an urban legend, because the previous owner committed suicide by slashing her wrists in the same bathroom.
After the death of Claude François, the new owner decided that the bathroom was a bad place, so he reversed the location of the bedroom and the bathroom in the apartment. However, his wife later committed suicide by blowing her brains out in his bedroom -- at the exact location where the other two had died.
I don't know if the place was exorcised after that, but there appear to have been no deaths there in the last 30 years. Nevertheless, it would be a good start for a new horror movie.
Naturally, people like to tack on extra information to this type of story, so it has also been said that Claude François was a great believer in fortune tellers and had been told that he would become famous quickly but that he would die young. (He was 39 when he died.)
And he also told his sister two months before he died that he was having dreams about a woman with a terrifying face. A nun gave his sister a bottle of holy water which he sprinkled all over the bedroom, and the dreams about the woman stopped, but he dreamed that he was dying instead. And then he died.
I love this kind of bullshit.
(Have I already mentioned that I was hired as Claude François' personal assistant two months before he died but that I quit after the very first day?)
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Post by htmb on Mar 12, 2013 3:15:47 GMT
Can you tell us why you quit after only one day, Kerouac?
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Post by Kimby on Mar 12, 2013 13:37:39 GMT
Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts of the USA. 101 years old today.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 12, 2013 14:17:55 GMT
Agent 99 is 80 today! How is that possible?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 15:32:50 GMT
Can you tell us why you quit after only one day, Kerouac? I could tell that he was a neurotic tyrant. Remember, this was 1978, but he had a wall of TV screens like in a James Bond movie of the epoch. He had every other office in the building under videosurveillance and he would suddenly scream at the people on the intercom if he saw them doing anything that he didn't like. Strangely enough, he was charming during the interview, which I was not expecting at all. A really fascinating biopic about his life was made last year. (As you know, he was the author of the song "My Way" later adapted by Paul Anka.) If you watch the trailer, there is a little scene where the fans are pawing at his car and screaming. I actually rode in his car that day and experienced that.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 15:41:20 GMT
Today is the 400th birthday of André Le Nôtre, creator of French formal gardens.
He spent 40 years working on the gardens of Versailles, but he also did Vaux-le-Vicomte, Chantilly, Saint Cloud, Sceaux and the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens in Paris -- among many others. He sent the design for the gardens of Windsor Palace but never went to see what they did there.
He was definitely a real gardener because he did not write a book or even a gardening manual.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 12, 2013 15:47:54 GMT
Quite a few real gardeners have written copiously about gardening.
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Post by htmb on Mar 12, 2013 23:10:46 GMT
Can you tell us why you quit after only one day, Kerouac? I could tell that he was a neurotic tyrant. Remember, this was 1978, but he had a wall of TV screens like in a James Bond movie of the epoch. He had every other office in the building under videosurveillance and he would suddenly scream at the people on the intercom if he saw them doing anything that he didn't like. Strangely enough, he was charming during the interview, which I was not expecting at all. A really fascinating biopic about his life was made last year. (As you know, he was the author of the song "My Way" later adapted by Paul Anka.) If you watch the trailer, there is a little scene where the fans are pawing at his car and screaming. I actually rode in his car that day and experie...... Thanks, Kerouac. Very interesting, and it sounds like you made a wise choice in getting away.
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Post by nautiker on Mar 21, 2013 5:56:15 GMT
today, ten years and one day ago started the 2nd Iraq War, based on an extremely thin justification...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2013 6:12:30 GMT
You mean "He was mean to my daddy" ?
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 21, 2013 6:44:17 GMT
today, ten years and one day ago started the 2nd Iraq War, based on an extremely thin justification... day of shame
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2013 6:49:49 GMT
We must be only a couple of days away from the 10th anniversary of the invention of freedom fries.
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Post by nautiker on Mar 21, 2013 7:40:34 GMT
You mean " He was mean to my daddy" ? that's a pretty speculative reasoning here, kerouac, I prefer to put it with Rumsfeld's words: „There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.“ (I truly admit I never considered him capable of something so profound) wiki says freedom fries already had their anniversary back on March 11th. it further claims them to be related to the hot dog and the (alas forgotten) liberty cabbage back in the WWI-days...
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Post by bjd on Mar 21, 2013 10:33:05 GMT
Nautiker -- Rumsfeld was never profound. Obviously, he just started talking and didn't know where to go from there, so just kept repeating "known" and unknown" until he could conclude the sentence.
Whatever happend to him anyway? Is he giving highly-paid talks somewhere in the States? Playing bridge in a bunker with Cheney? On the board of directors of an arms manufacturer?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2013 12:33:57 GMT
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Post by nautiker on Mar 22, 2013 14:27:38 GMT
yes, I was giving him too much credit, it was either his ghostwriter or hazard - however I stick at that remark being philosophical.
I understand he's become member of an exquisite circle by now: Agathidium rumsfeldi (along with Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi and Agathidium vaderi)
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Post by Kimby on Mar 22, 2013 20:34:02 GMT
50 years ago today, the Beatles released "Please Please Me". How time flies!
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Post by Kimby on Mar 27, 2013 14:18:07 GMT
15 years ago Pfizer released the little blue pill that shook up the sex lives of senior citizens. And not always in a good way.
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Post by bjd on Mar 27, 2013 16:55:06 GMT
When I just checked the rumsfeldi, bushi and cheneyi agathidia (is that plural correct?), the first picture to come up made me think they were too attractive, given who they were named for. But then I read that they are slime-mold-eaters, so that makes it better.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2013 17:35:05 GMT
I thought they were slime mold themselves rather than slime mold eaters.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2013 12:26:11 GMT
Holy Thursday leading up to Easter Sunday AND Leonard Cohen performs in NOLA at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts tonight!!!!!!!!!!!
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Post by nautiker on Mar 29, 2013 10:57:06 GMT
there's a proverb over here: 'you are what you eat' - surely it exists elsewhere, too?
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 29, 2013 16:05:17 GMT
Casimira, are you still with us or did you swoon completely away? (how was the concert?) Nautiker, yes, the saying exists in probably all the English-speaking countries. And confusion existed in my tiny brain until I figured out you weren't responding to the Leonard Cohen post. ;D
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Post by nautiker on Mar 29, 2013 16:41:32 GMT
@ bixa: ;D, sorry, I should have been clearer. I'm not too familiar with Mr. Cohen, but if the proverb is so well spread, it should be possible to conclude his choice of food, too, shouldn't it?
(btw, is it permissible to shorten your handle like this?)
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 29, 2013 16:47:47 GMT
It was my fault for trying to read before ingesting sufficient coffee. (coffee drinker = hot & bitter)
Oh, of course you can shorten the handle. It's actually two words anyway ~~ Bixa orellana ~~ & people have made Bixa, Bix, Bixie, & even Biscuit out of it.
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Post by nautiker on Mar 29, 2013 17:15:04 GMT
thanks - it seemed inpolite not to ask...
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