Tired Of The American Sense of Humour.

I'm tired of the cheap slander that passes for American humour concerning the French.
The French have a rotten society. But the French are not cowards. Societies go rotten from the top down.

The man in the picture is one General Koenig, a French general(probably an Alsatian with that moniker).
In 1941 he was in comand of a fort at the Southern tip of the British 8th Army's Gazala Line.
He was under the authority of the 8th Army, and commanded 3600 Free French men.

Rommel went South and outflanked the line.
Two Panzer Divisions went into the British rear and cut communications.

Koenig and his men were isolated.
The Italian 'Trieste' Armoured Division and the 90th Light Panzers attacked them.
The Free French were therefore outnumbered 5 to 1 and were facing tanks.

They waited until the Axis tanks were at point-blank range, and then let them have it.

Over and over and over again.

Rommel recalled the elite 15th Panzer Division from behind British lines and threw it into the attack.

The Free French held the three axis divisions off for two weeks, until their ammunition and food ran out.

Koenig got on the radio to 8th Army and obtained permission to 'break out'.

On the night of the 10th June 1941, Koenig's men attacked.
2700 of them reached the British lines.

So let's hear no more anti-French bullshit.

Ach,Ze Famous British Sense of Humour!

First, a poor picture of a pretty, pretty car.
This is another Smart Sportster.
The notch at the back can be exchanged for a window panel that turns the car into a Fastback Coupe.
That looks even nicer.

Now.

A joke.

In Iraq, a new Captain takes over an outpost.
On his first inspection, he spots a lone camel tied up by a tent.
"Sergeant?"
"Sah!"
"Sergeant, what is that camel doing here?"
The Sergeant looks embarrassed.
"Well, sir, there are 250 men on the post; they tend to get, well, 'urges'. That's what the camel is for sir."
"I see. Very well, Sergeant, keep the camel."

After a few weeks, the Captain gets a few urges of his own.
He asks for the camel.
The Sergeant ties it outside the Captain's tent, with a step ladder behind it.

The Captain climbs the ladder and shags the camel. In fact he spends an hour having insane sex with it.

When he's done he climbs down.

"Well, Sergeant, is that how the men do it?"
"No sir. The men climb on top, ride it into town and find a girl."

Play up, play up.....

....and play the game.
The first picture illustrates the game of Cricket.
Cricket. A game invented as a light relief from the real importance of real life in the real world.
A means of relaxing. In spare time.

But the British went a bit silly, a bit soft in the head.
They started to pretend that real life itself was some sort of a game.
The real people smiled and humoured this nonsense of the popular culture and happily went on changing the world.
Men like Sidney Reilly
were willingly recruited to the success story that was Great Britain; while the best of British was expanding horizons, the stay-at-home heroes were taking charge.
The game's the thing. Politicians played 'the Great Game'.
With lives, usually.
Reilly was there to act as their agent; the man from Brazil, the illegitimate Russian jew with half a dozen spoken languages and half a dozen physical ones, he was recognised and rewarded as a uniquely capable man who made his work look like a game.
But look at his face.
Do you see him trading tennis balls at a Vicarage match?
No.
The game mentality was running riot in the minds of the British, drunk as they were with the success of their best people.
So much so that it was thought to be enough just to be British.
This
is General 'Chinese' Gordon, who was sent to Khartoum by a bunch of optimists to prevent the Mad Mahdi's uprising.
He was killed. By Islamic Fundamentalists.
It took years, an army, and another general, Kitchener, to destroy the rebellion and return the Sudan to relative peace.
But it was an indication of the future, in which culpable fools are allowed to make up conformal society and dispose of able men(like Gordon and Reilly) even to the point of sending them on suicide missions.
(Reilly finally voluntarily went on a suicide mission in the Soviet Union, to expose a mendacious policy of Stalin).

British Etiquette-Advanced Options

And now back to business.
There are many variations on the basic abusive cough.
All variants are rooted in the presumption that it is 'okay' to feel superior to somebody else, which of course is the true root of the Holocaust.
But over here it is a little Holocaust, a coward's Holocaust where they don't actually murder anybody outright.
This is supposed to be 'civilised', giving them something else to feel superior about.

Very often, the 'cough' is a Gambler's Cough, whereby they try to sound big, tough and convincing, because they've just seen somebody slightly different and they are not sure whether they feel superior or not-but assert superiority 'just in case' they really aren't.

The victim is supposed to react with supine subservience(the lesson inculcated by a million 'coughs'), so that the loss of expression and the slump of the shoulders give sociological validation to the abuser's gamble, confirming the superiority he asserted-extra courage or extra strength of character or (especially) superior wit; if the victim tells the guy to 'Fuck Off', the reaction is one of shock, of fear, and incredibly,(this is the British bit) outrage!
Actually, if you do this once or twice in England, word goes around that you are some kind of undesirable loony!
And as for the 'superiority' of courage in choosing to imitate a cough, go figure.

Going beyond this, when they know that you would like to lash out and floor them,(and assuming that they are not a huge bully),and also knowing that the 'Law' would protect them from this("miss,miss,he started it!")they just do it for hatred's sake.
This type will sit and watch you, usually behind as usual, and cough every time your natural movements become too fluid for him to bear(because LIFE is their number 1 hate), or when you lift your glass, or drink your beer, or bite your hamburger.

One countermeasure is to enjoy the beer or the burger or the fish&chips excessively obviously; thus it is they who reach their limit, and I have quite often taken an amiable glance in their direction to see the result.
Usually it is naked hatred.

As for hiding yourself, this works when you are with people such as co-workers who know you well, but otherwise, forget it.

You can't hide.
We are the Living, and they are the Dying.

Nobody seems to talk about this massive and glaringly present subject-ever-and we all know who this silence protects.

A little light relief.

Here is a picture of somebody's garage.
In the back garden they have several different classics in various stages of repair, but I didn't want to trespass, so I satisfied myself with this glimpse of an MG-TC (or is that a TD?).

The end of America as we never knew it.

Above is the first US flag.
The USA came into being after a struggle with the orthodox British. Much has been said about this struggle, mostly in the blindspot nether-regions of ignorance.
Facts and events are recited in conjunction with feeble analysis about causes that is now repetitive orthodoxy itself.
And that is the detail wherein lies the Devil.
Look at it simply; the British had the repressiveness of class even then.
They had their 'sense of humour' even then.The sense of humour that is the weak 'nudge-word' rebellion against real crushing evil from above.
Every twisted little Englishman knows his place, but he knows how to wield even that pathetic status to discomfit his 'superiors'. The game goes on to this day.
Anything but a straight word.
A society so twisted that honesty is rudeness, truth is naivety and final reaction is far, far too late!

Meanwhile, 3000 miles away from the crucible of this nonsense, with a continental hinterland behind them, another breed of men was growing up; they would wake up each morning with the green Earth and blue skies, and wonder what sort of heathen articles required them to defile this world in worship of self-evident nonsense.

That truth really was self-evident.

And that was all it took.

Today we have any amount of sacks and bandages being applied to bind America into a three-legged 'Western' race with Europe and Britain in particular, now that it is all 'grown up'..

America has big problems.
It puts barriers up to keep people out, so that the only immigrants it accepts are not those freaks who have grown up American in the world of slavery, no, they are exiled.
The only people it takes are those who reach amnesty after ignoring American Law for ten years.

If America is still a beacon, it is an unreachable and bigoted beacon, a beacon which is exclusive instead of inclusive, a fading light which replaced Liberty with embarrassed fumblings over notions of American Race.
And so, the more that the 'American Dream' is touted, the more it is reduced to a few syllables of noise contained in the words 'American' and 'Dream' with no meaning other than the shallow symbolism which lends itself like a whore to any anti-American hostility.

The American People are essentially healthy, but they have acquired rulers, who seek to circumvent every aspect of the Revolution, merely by flaunting their rule, even if it is, ultimately, only a fictional rule.

And hope is murdered on cue, worldwide.

Which came first....

The chicken or the egg?
By which I mean, did the British character lead to socialism today, or did socialism create the modern British idiom?

What about all this 'back-biting' I have been comenting on? Was it ever thus?

Well, from the few uncorrupted sources I can glean out of the stream of disinformation that assails the modern spectator, I deduce that at the turn of the 19th/20th century, British culture was in rudely rational health; the monarchy was a hair's breadth from being swept away by Republicans in Parliament, along with the House of Lords.
Tower Bridge was being built, and the engineering press was campaigning for the essential aesthetic honesty of leaving the structure visible.

Yet....the monarchy and Lords remain, and the bridge was completed in absurdly Gothic style.
This was the triumph of 'Romance' over 'Reason', as if there was a difference.

So.
We have some regression, and the advent of the Union Movement.
And yes, they had to fight for their Rights, and yes, it was a battle. They won.
But socialism?Socialism?
The Great War came and spread grief throughout the land, grief because the world had changed and youthful Death was not normal anymore. Into this tired and sobered population was injected the message that the bosses were fools, culpable fools, warmongers and arms dealers.

Socialism claimed to offer peace, brotherhood and plenty.
Few believed it.

Meanwhile, what of the British idiom?
Well, a class system had been embraced by the Victorians, possibly because they had an exploitable desire to echo the structure of industrial life in a more general social context, but by now it was under attack by the socially mobile, immigrants like (Sir) 'Montague Burton', who founded the largest tailoring factory on Earth in Leeds.
In order to survive the system had to admit people like him, with Knighthoods and so on.
But it was the refuge of snobbery and the source of the 'trickle-down effect' regarding derision and sneering about alleged position.

This remains.
Came the Second Great War, and people rebelled against this abominable repression; but rather stupidly they chose to replace social disfunction with Political Repression, and voted the Labour Party into government, a government promising the Garden of Earthly Delight, but rather giving the game away when it proclaimed "We are the masters now!"

And since then, the snob clique has had to adapt again, by showering honours on the new 'elite'(ie politicians), and giving a nod to popular 'culture' by giving the Beatles OBEs and making Geldof 'Sir Bob'.
Industrialists were honoured a little for a while, in obeisance to the 'forces of conservatism', but this happens less and less now, even as the cultural icons like Richard Branson are paraded more and more, like an Italian village Divinity parade every Christmas.

Meanwhile, the actual struggle goes unreported, ignored and sidetracked, a huge blind-spot covering the viciousness that grows unchecked, reflected only in the crime figures until they, too were covered over and prevented from contributing to the general neurosis by way of justification for it.

The rulers and the class-conquerers sit and chatter and drink Chianti, arrogantly callous about the fate of the British, and the British suffer because they have nowhere to go except as reviled intruders, tolerated for their tourist pounds, and overall it's "only the fear that keeps us standing up".

British Etiquette.

British Etiquette-first let me say that this has been exported with various degrees of success to many countries around the world.

These days, what it consists of, mainly, is coughing and sniffing.
Of course, coughing is a natural response to throat irritation. What I am talking about is fake coughing.
Fake? Do grown human beings actually have so little self-esteem that they actually go round pretending to cough?
Yes!

Why on Earth would they do that?
Well, after years of research into decoding the events generated by these sad little people, I have determined that the fake cough is supposed to be unanswerable attack/criticism, which, by sheer repetition, is designed to break the spirit of the victim.

It is so clever!Are they coming or are they going?They do it (most often) behind one's back, to remain unseen.
So they are all pathetic cowards then?Doubly so, since they are imitating something natural, and doing it out of sight?
Apparently.
Sometimes they 'cough' when you are not looking, particularly if you are doing something requiring concentration, to try and make you have an accident.

So, to sum up, then, these 'people' (I use the term loosely) are pathetic, cowardly, snivelling scum, who are incapable of any form of beneficience or honesty, truly vicious and thoroughly corrupt, that turn the social climate of any society they infest into a cesspool of bitterness, hatred and defeat.
They make this country a country of angry cowards.

Apparently.

Greetings From Sociable England!

First, an English joke:
What is the difference between an Englishman and his photograph?
The photograph is developed.

And now, the end of a British stereotype.
The British do not all have bad teeth.
Some of them (unlike the chap above) use dentures.

What do 'they' say? 'They' say that people are the same everywhere. This lie is designed to render escape impossible; for you, Tommy, the war for happiness is over.
Here is my own assessment:
If you walk down the street in Toronto, you might get abused once or twice in a week, if at all. And then one of those will be a mistake.

If you walk down the steet in Leeds, you will get abused ten times a day.
Or five on a good day.

If you walk down the street in London, England, you will get abused every three feet. You will not resent this, since if you do you will get physically attacked.
If you are lucky, you will reach the end of the street.
If you are unlucky, you won't be able to walk anymore.
In any case you won't want to walk down any streets again.

People ask why I might like to go to Canada to live.

Well, you don't have to be a genius to work that out.

Cultural Solidarity?

This is the unfortunate slogan on the side of a local newspaper van just days after an unarmed woman Police Constable 'bought it' in Bradford.
The farmm, that is.
She and another WPC were responding to an emergency call in Morley Street, from a Pakistan International Airlines agent.
The agent was in possession of a large amount of money collected for earthquake relief in Pakistan.
Two 'Black' men and one 'Asian' were stealing it at gunpoint when the two rookie women arrived.

They were both shot.
One, a mother of five, died.
It was her youngest daughter's 4th birthday.

Well well.
The investigation switched to London, and five arrests were made.
Why does this not surprise me?
Maybe it's because I used to live there, and I know what sort of scum infests that place.

I hope that they have got the right people.
And I hope that they lock them up.
In Westgate.

Cold Weather Recently.....

When it gets too cold, I like to find a pub somewhere with good beer and an open fire.
This was the scene today near York.


The beer was £1.36 for a pint, with no recirculation pipe and a recent mention in the 'Good Beer Guide 2006'.

Cut-Price Excellence From England

This is a real-life car on the streets of Yorkshire.
It is a Lotus Elise, reckoned to be the best-handling production car money can buy.
And it doesn't take that much money.

Lotus was a company started by Colin Chapman in the late fifties, producing lightweight Formula1 racers that actually carried off several Constructors World Championships in the sixties and seventies.
They stopped racing shortly after Colin died.

The Lotus 7 lives on as the Caterham, which can be bought ready-made or assembled by the owner.
The Lotus Elan was Emma Peel's car in the sixties show 'The Avengers', and was the inspiration for the posey Mazda MX-5,which even(originally) copied the pop-up headlights slavishly.
Modern-day Lotus has changed owners several times, and I believe may be currently Korean-owned, with a large interest from General Motors, who use Lotus Engineering to liven-up their Opels and Vauxhalls, particularly the VX-220 Vauxhall sports car.

I believe there are a couple of those in North Leeds.
I'll keep my camera ready.

Courtesy of MSN-Breaking With Tradition.

This picture isn't 'in the wild'.
It isn't even mine.
But it is the fastest production car in the world-so fast, it has to have new tyres if you go near the maximum.
It is the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, made in France and seen at the Tokyo Motor Show, photo from MSN.

Approaching a milestone.

By the end of today we will see our seven hundred and fiftieth unique visitor to owlsarentwise.

As the ancient Chinese proverb says, do not despise the snake, for what is a snake but a dragon without legs?

This worm-that-turned is now a snake.
Perhaps, in the next year, we will become a dragon?

Another Rare Catch!

This?
I knew it was a Riley.
But I had to ask the cheerful gentlemen sitting inside what sort.

It is a 1952 Riley MRE.

Riley was a real company until it was swallowed(like most of the rest) by Austin-Morris(BMC) in that tragic orgy of Marxist obeisance in the sixties.

It went from building real cars like this to being a badge on the front of a bastardised Mini in the early sixties, designed to appeal to snob value.

It didn't work then(with the Riley 'Elf'), just as calling all the rump companies 'Rover', didn't work; they have all disappeared too.
For now at least.

Anyway, doesn't Nero Wolfe ride in one of these on TV?
Or is that a Daimler?(British Daimler, not Daimler-Benz).

Have You Heard This One?

Once again it is only the truth(science), which suffers.

I have argued with life-forms which try to pretend that 'reputable' scientists don't use words like 'truth'.
This diabolically stupid and evil bullshit is not my concern this time.

This is.
An American archeologist has discovered flintspearheads in the USA that span dates and techniques previously associated with a tribe from France.
He jumps to conclude(this suggestive physical material is erroneously described as 'proof' by the televisual idiots making the documentary)that the earliest human inhabitants of the USA were of European descent, not Asian.

'Native' Americans greeted this as a heresy; quite what the point of all this is, is not necessarily scientific.
If someone wanted to mount an attack on accepted conventions, this is what they would do.

If it actually turned out to be real and true, then a lot of stinking wind would be taken out of a lot of ragged sails; but this would only be a good thing if it was scientifically true.

Trouble is, while truth is the first casualty of war, that is only because lies are the first weapon.

And when lies are used to 'fight' lies, everything becomes a lie and the only loser is science.

On the other hand, if it turns out to be equally as valid as previous theories, and the theorist says so, ie they are all conjecture, then they will achieve the purpose I described, bloodlessly.

Anybody Feel Like Blowing This Joint?

These are 'Bratz'.
They are designed to take children, particularly female children, through fro the age of four to the age at which they can start buying their own records, in one, single sweep of illusion.

The illusion is the essential rightness of their world and everything allowed into it.
This microcosm is the bounding reality in which they must formulate their plans and lives.

On the outside?
Those who manipulate, and those who raid.
Those who manipulate are the legalised criminals who never do anything for which to get caught.
The others are the plain criminals, who don't care whether they get caught.

Some of the 'Brat-Pack' escape; their heads poke through the cellophane of the illusion, and they are able to see, for the first time.
The mental hospitals are filled with these, whether they need to be there or not.

The rest graduate to frenetic adherence to music groups and style-leaders, with ever more change to accommodate their ageing process.
By the time they are 40 they are mortgaged.
By the time they are 60 they are comfortably numb, and well along the path of giving up their own children.

And then there are a few, a very few, who have seen through from the beginning.
They are the deadly enemies of the manipulators.
The manipulators do their very best to prevent these people from 'getting on'.
There are a great many manipulators, and they sit growing fat off their harvest of children and don't like it when anybody threatens to upset the boat, by saying the wrong word or looking the wrong way.

They have noses as sensitive as a dog's.
They will even go so far as to offer jobs without any intention of employing my type.
They will try to interrogate(not interview), to extract what they need without paying.
They will usually try to tell you you don't know what you do know.
They will look for any excuse not to employ you.
They are the fat in the sandwich of business.
I will keep looking.
I am learning huge amounts of new skills.
I hope that, if I can't find an employer that is on my side(like I have at the moment), I will find one that doesn't give a damn.
But most of them would cut off their noses to spite their faces where real people are concerned.

I'd like to blast their world to shit.

In the meantime, take a look at the future.

A Rather More Expensive Italian

This is a Lamborghini.
I don't know what sort.
But it is a year old.
Very expensive.
Very nice.

And once you've heard the AC/DC song 'Sin City', who cares what sort?(Lamborghinis,Caviare...Dry Martinis, Shanghri-La).

A Trio To Tickle The Tastes!

Top is another Euro-German, the Smart Sportster.
In the middle is a TVR, a modern British sportscar, and at the bottom of course, just for contrast, is the Morgan.

The Smart is rare because it won't be built anymore since Smart has been unable to do it profitably.
It has two-tone bodywork where the panels fit into the chassis cage.
The panels can be changed in about an hour if you get tired of the colour. That is a Smart featured service.
The Smart is actually powered by a three cylinder 660cc turbo made by Mercedes. The real drawback is the lack of manual transmission; it has paddle-operated 'TipTronic', which apparently ruins the driving experience due to clunky operation with glacial lag.

Another reason it is on the way out.

The TVR; Yorkshiremen say that the only good thing to come out of Lancashire is the road to Yorkshire. The TVR comes from Blackpool, Lancashire, so they may be wrong.
The body is glass-fibre, but before you think that this is a 'kit-car', think again; the all-alloy six-cylinder engines are hand-finished TVR originals, not bought in like the Morgan.
Sadly(for Americans), TVR couldn't give a toss about North American emissions compatibility, so it isn't available there.
Legally.

I included the Morgan again because it is beautiful and I took a reasonable picture this time.