Monty Python: the Misanthropic Introspection Years

Hans Richter-ghosts for breakfast (1927)

Questions one Cannot Un-Ask

"Kid mullet" is not a new comic book superhero for a folically questioning age, but rather a kid who will spend a few decades trying to live down that which lives foreever on the net. Dad asks daughter why she gave herself a haircut

Ansleigh says she was just practicing, but her dad says if she practices more, she's going to run out of hair.

Sly 3 year old kids these days! They know how to post videos on the net! In a sane universe, this wouldn't happen - and if it did would be called child abuse by "oversharing".

This Would Never Have become the Subject of a John Huston Feature Film

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre The Football Mullets of Medellin: In the city of Medellin in Colombia, the mullet is not just a haircut. It is much, much more than that.

... their [sic] bitter foes but they're really singing from the same song sheet in the hair department and it may as well be the Vandals' punk celebration of the mullet.

Captain Lou is Watching You Poop

Captian Lou is Watching You Poop

It's a Polite Way of Saying "Hello, I'm Tedious and Vapid"

Berlin, a city where being individualistic always seems to mean sheepishly following one dingbat style cult or another, is holding a "hipster festival. Gack. Most of them think the former east is charming. In other words: hide the children and the livestock.

Nice Glockenspiel, Lady!

Creepy Number Station goodness, for all you wierdos out there.



I say it’s art.

Hair on the Sports Page Again

Someone, please find me a hockey fan to whom this could possibly matter:

ESPN: Kane opts for playoff beard over mullet

Bill Smith/NHLI/Getty Images Patrick Kane grew a playoff mullet instead of a beard in 2010. Youthful-looking forward Patrick Kane garnered national attention when he grew a playoff mullet two years ago as the Hawks went on to capture the Stanley Cup.

Questions no-one is Asking

About the ignoble mullet.

Should Eighties girls stick to referencing the clothes or the music rather than the hair? Do you even like Eighties-inspired hair? Is the Eighties the decade the stylish should just forget? Hi [sic] did see a great mullet/rooster harido the other day.

Heavens, no, child.

It Makes Biafra look like a Sandbox Fight!

Amish beard-cutting war out of control

They Invented Their Own Worst Stereotypes

Now iss de time on Schprockets venn ve tance.

Aging Supermodel Mullets in the News

It seems we're supposed to get excited about this: Kate Moss covers Vogue as Bowie

With her blonde hair styled into a distinctive mullet, the 37-year-old model is a note-perfect copy of the Aladdin Sane character Bowie created in 1973.

Ziggy Stardust, and the entire cultural buzz that it really wasn't predates Moss' birth by a year.

As there was no enormous rash of either UFO obsessiveness or a newfound ken for crossdressing, one could say that the entire identity engineering thing was a miserable failure. No-one tell Kate Moss that though.

File Under: No Longer Deliciously Grim

The DDR built Berlin's Funkturm tower to get million Euro make-over.

But the TV tower, a favourite with tourists for its East German kitsch and revolving restaurant at the top, will remain open while the work is carried out

It may no longer be deliciously grim, but should remain DDR-kitchy and wierd.

“The last big renovation was 15 years ago. But the expectations of the guests have increased. We will now create a smarter atmosphere and provide more comfort,”

Soviet Films: 17 Moments of Spring (1973)

Presented here with English subtitles for all of you ugly Kulaks.

Pretentious Crap, circa 1988

"Halb-Stadt" (Berlin West)

Where exactly DOES Art-Haus rubbish go when it dies?

A failure to De-Orbit

A two-and-a-half ton German-made satellite is estimated to re-enter the earth's atmosphere soon.

Back in 1999 scientists lost contact with the two-and-a-half ton satellite. It is predicted to re-enter earth's atmosphere at the end of this month.

The German Aerospace Centre said 30 'individual pieces weighing a total of 1.6 tons may reach the surface of the earth.'
ROSAT’s heat-resistant mirror in particular may not burn up upon re-entry and falling debris may include razor-sharp shards.

Unlike the UARS, this one's coming in uncontrollably. Major Tom's retro thrusters have failed. It's raining shreds. Or so forth, and so on.

Last month the German space agency estimated that ROSAT has a 1-in-2000 chance of hitting someone - higher than the 1-in-3,200 odds NASA gave for UARS, the last satellite to fall.

It must have run out of Fahrvergnügen or something.

Achtung, Baby!

They’re coming for your vapid Hello Kitty memorabilia!

Red October / Красный Октябрь

Sell everything. Sell the kids to science.

Europe's fate hinges on the willingness of the German population and it's government to pony up the dough. The next election, which could just as well go the way of the DDR-inspired "Die Linke" party of the Entitlement Libertarian "Piraten" are sure to dunk any participation in any affair that includes the word "austerity" or "Eurobond".

Basically the Piraten are as pure an expression of the politics of nanny state comfort as there could ever be. Their entire platform, guanrunteed income for all slackers, "free U-bahn for all", and "steal this book, I've sure he'll keep writing for free", are entirely bound up in an overaged adolescent's notion of amusement. The rest of it is just the usual perfunctory crap about human rights, as if they'll ever make a stand on the state of affairs in Bolivia or Equatorial Guinea.

As for "Die Linke", they are equally self-absorbed with the notion of selling themselves to society's couch-bound and unskilled by promising to appropriating stuff from their neighbors for them.

Buy canned goods and shotgun shells, because if you think the lot in charge now don't get it, get ready to greet the bunch that feel more comfortable with a paper bag over their heads.

Government Sponsored Art. It’s THAT Good!

Building North Korea-style monuments for cash-strapped countries has become a cash lifeline for Kim Jong Il's regime.

"Juche, all the way!, right?" The philosophy of self-relaiance always seems to need to do business outside of the bubble with those horrible capitalist "creators of wealth"...

Much of the unit’s output is propaganda, he said. But they also produce inoffensive nature scenes or ceramics largely bought by Chinese or Japanese customers. “There is no post-modernism, no concept of the viewer deciding the meaning,” Cockerell said. “It’s a more naive style.”

Incapable of irony as they are, expect the usual sophistication too:

Senegal's colossal statue stirs big controversy

But the centerpiece statue — of a man, woman and baby ascending a mountain — is rendered in the signature Stalinist North Korean style. The couple is reminiscent of Soviet-depicted Bolshevik revolutionaries, only with African heads.

In fact, in the original mock ups, North Korean designers hadn’t bothered to change the statue’s features from Asian to African, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told the Wall Street Journal. They were altered only after his complaints. The president was later criticized for paying the U.N.-sanctioned foreign regime $27.7 million for the statue while unemployment in his own country neared 50 percent.

These are the Bad Old Days

Between the Koreas, there is still a Radio War going down.