In conclusion, sometimes it is very difficult to avoid loving the English.
True indeed.
Life imitates art (in this case, the Goon Show).
Especially "Mrs. Dallinger." I would like to have her babies.
Apo, thanks so much for this link. It provides much-needed new theoretical fodder for my MLA paper.
What a lot of fuss over nothing. Everyone knows pigeons can't be killed, they are immortal and immune to bullets.
Awesome.
Awesome:
I dont believe that no one has come out and stated the obvious yet. These creatures need to be put to use which is simply achieved by boreing small holes into their skulls (which are thin) and inserting microprocessors. These pigeons could then be forced electronically to write blogs and perform basic programming tasks. How nice.
I liked that one too, w-lfs-n. So, the question seems to be: Which well-established dadaist internet community got ahold of this article's comments section?
I think it's disgraceful, the way that people are abusing the privilege to post replies to this article.
When I was young, my father would have given me the strap for behaving with so little respect.
Youngsters nowadays have no respect and cannot see that they are wasting hard working taxpayers' money.
I am going to write to the Daily Mail at once. You have been warned.
Remember that stuff that went down about kids in hoodies hanging out in shopping centres? They never got culled. Yet pigeons, who aren't into mugging old ladies or nicking electrical goods - not ever - we get it in the neck everytime! It's not on.
Your pal
Brian Pigeon
Jack: I am optimistic and have faith, and believe that it's the work of the uncommonly nifty local citizenry.
Why not genetically engineer half of them to be cats, hey-presto, problem solved.
At least half of those posts have got to be coming from the same guy/gal. Whoever it is, though, s/he's hysterical.
It's really tempting to basically reproduce that entire comment thread over here by quoting the best bits. I'm especially fond of the ones that start out by seeming as if they're not piss-takes.
On a serious note - I don't consider it acceptable to propose the wholesale slaughter of these pigeons. Some of them could be quite decent fellows. They should be interviewed individually, put at ease perhaps given a nice warm glass of flat beer. . .
No, on second thought, my favorite part is that the news site left the comments up.
The second best thing is that it is quite likely both 8 and 14 are incorrect. There is a bit of history of this sort of thing, after all.
Fabulous. This is why I immigrated to the UK. That and not having to work nearly as many hours as in the US.
Kingston isn't really a proper town, by the way. It's a fairly posh London borough. Where the pigeons speak in a hoity toity accent.
Yeah, I'd move to the UK in a heartbeat, I have to admit. Even if they don't have anything that counts as a beach.
Instead they have strands.
Which are completely useless, being cold and rocky but lacking interesting tidepools.
But they do occasionally have men with hats in their hands and on their heads.
19: Absolutely, although for me the problem would lack of a proper shower. Apart from the bathing, the week I spent in London was just fantastic.
Th UK has some great beaches. Not many, but a few.
Dorset has some incredibly beautiful sandy ones, and on the west coast of scotland, particularly the islands, there are mile long deserted sandy expanses.
They're deserted because they're freezing cold at all times of the year. Right?
Sounds kind of attractive. Desolate, sandy, pummelling waves, probably always grey… I'd go.
22: Carrying a hat while wearing one just looks really dorky.
Instead of sharpshooters, I think they should just call in Shaun Ryder. I don't think he's had much work lately.
29: Yes, but what if the hat on your head blows away? Those beaches can be windy, so it's always nice to have a spare in hand.
They're deserted because they're freezing cold at all times of the year. Right?
Also ignorant armies usually clash there by night.
But they do occasionally have men with hats in their hands and on their heads."
OR on their heads.
Or sometimes strategically placed on their laps.
Actually the islands on the far west coast of Scotland are smack bang in the gulf stream*, so in the summer it's pretty warm. Golden sands, lots of sunshine. There are, bizarrely, palm trees in the far north of scotland, on the far western coast.
It does rain quite a bit, though. As you'd expect.
* Until global warming turns it off, obviously.
Well, the far west coast of any place that actually has mountains is always good.
36: UK only manages bumps though. How about Vancouver? That way you still get the rain and overcast.
Vancouver, Seattle, both good. I'm telling you: west coast, mountains, pacific ocean = yes, please, I'll have some more.
Or sometimes strategically placed on their laps.
That's non-canon, I'm afraid.
I booow before the people of Kingston. Maybe they're Fafblog!
Coast of Chile is wonderful for these reasons; beautiful place to be thrown from a helicopter.
B, have you considered taking your good news door to door?
Th UK has some great beaches.
Cornwall actually has palm trees. And an annual surfing contest.
Beaches are overrated.
Not in So. Cal.
1. Good waves for body boarding and/or surfing.
2. Tons of scantily clad hot women.
I'll grant you #2, but the water's fucking cold.
It's not bad in the summer, and wetsuits don't cost much.
good surf much further north too, for that matter. Less scantily people, more 8mm or 10mm suits.
I don't like beaches. They smell funny and there are jellyfish in the ocean and crabs that will eat me.
good surf much further north too
Are you one of those nuts getting towed out into Mavericks? That's some evil large stuff up there.
I don't like beaches. They smell funny
All beaches not equal. I remember my wife's cousins talking up Padre Island when we had a reunion down there a while back. Man, what a shithole.
How can anyone do _anything_ in a 10mm wetsuit? I feel like I'm spring-loaded in a 7mm suit.
Ah, the great white shark excuse not to learn to surf as a Northern Calilfornian!
It's a Scottish national cliché, but also true, that we used to go to the east coast (i.e. the bit that sticks out into the North Sea and which Billy Connolly describes as 'the arctic ocean, once it goes round the corner') and swim there on holidays. In one case, I remember doing it in April. You have no idea how cold that is. It's absolutely fucking freezing.
So basically, the English are endearingly quirky while the Scots are just crazy and violent.
52: Nah, although I know people who've surfed it. Mavericks is crazy. Santa Cruz is nice and more sane. I'm thinking much further north than that, though (BC). Good winter surf there (not that I'm a surfer, just been a few times).
As for 10mm, that's more of a diving weight, but people have winter suits with 8 or even 10 mm chests, 6-7 mm legs, maybe 5mm arms for motion. 5-6-7s are pretty common much of the year. People walk out through snow to surf though, so it's a different game than SoCal.
You forgot alcoholic, and smart. We do engineering, the hard sciences and the humanities, really well. And killing . And swearing. And being drunk.
Not so strong on the quirky humour, dentistry, nutrition** or dressing well. Oh, and we're all short and squat, too.
* especially the stabbing and beating kind, guns are for effete weaklings ...
** although we have perfected the use of deep-fried intestinal products.
I remember (ocean) swimming in scotland being much like swimming in the pacific above, say 49th parallel.
especially the stabbing and beating kind, guns are for effete weaklings ...
The design of the bolt action on the Lee-Enfield rifles was James Paris Lee, a Scot. Was standard issue in the British military for over half a century.
ttaM did claim that the Scots make good engineers.
As someone who is Scottish and who lives in Vancouver (which is sort-of on the Pacific above the 49th), I can say that yes, the Scottish do make good engineers. My dad was one, and he said so.
Also said that Canada's west coast was the most Scottish-looking place on Earth that wasn't Scotland.
43: That would require me to talk to people.
What, you don't like talking to people?
We aren't people; we're amus-O-bots.
Oh, c'mon JM. Don't be so homophobic.
Amus-o-bots don't dance, B. You want the anus-o-bots, down the hall.
Don't be silly. Matt Weiner [rest of comment redacted due to violation of sincerity code, subsection 46.95.]
74: I actually had originally read Ben's comment as referring to anus-o-bots, in fact. Alas, no.
So basically, the English are endearingly quirky while the Scots are just crazy and violent.
Last savages in Europe, teo. There are bits of Glasgow (Calton) where the life expectancy for men is lower than it is in Baghdad, thanks to a combination of fried food, knives and Special Brew. (Don't ask.)
as ttaM says - it's bloody Baltic on the east coast. I learned to swim there, in very short lessons to avoid the onset of hypothermia. You see people sunbathing in sweaters and woolly hats. This is basically the explanation for the British Empire and Commonwealth: a long succession of (mainly) Scots who woke up one morning and thought "It's shite being Scottish. I'm going to leave home, find some country with good food and warm weather, and pwn it."
77 - This Baltic beach is pretty warm througnout the summer.
Hm. Like Scotland, the Czech Republic (I think) has a pretty low life expectancy for men, and god knows a lot of alcoholism. And yet both nations' men are extremely good-looking.
I think it's all a plot of the dough-faced white guys to get laid by eliminating the competition.
It's because there aren't all those old people bringing down the curve.
If a lot of young people emigrate from a country how does that affect the country's life expectancy statistics?
Life expectancy is PROPERLY measured at a particular age (e.g. a 40 year old has life expectance of 75...a 75 year old has life expectance of 85) - it doesn't make sense to measure it for the entire population - so it shouldn't affect it.
What do people mean when they say "the life expectancy in this country is 45" anyway? That statement makes no sense unless you specify which people you're talking about. Is it implied that it's the average of newborn boys and newborn girls?
Or is it the average age at which people have died in the past year? That shouldn't really be called "life expectancy".
It's the former. Life expectancy for a country is the expected years that a newborn will live. That's why it's usually a bit of a lowball number, since medical science keeps confounding the models by the time the little 'uns have grown up.
The Brit solution to no or few good beaches back 'ome is to travel to Spain, which has the added bonus of providing an excuse to be as obnoxious as possible, seeing as it's a foreign country and all.
79: Ah, but Czech women:Scottish women::Madeleine Stowe: Madeleine Albright.
Now that this is the Madeleine Stowe thread I would like to say that I thought her fake American accent in "Twelve Monkeys" was terrible and I spent much of the movie trying to decide whether she was Engish, Scottish or Australian. But she's actually American.
Wales has nicer beaches than England. And less mindless violence than Scotland.
