(0623) Fairly cool or chilly just now … stay rugged up, all you in similar clines … I unnerstand they’re in shorts in Bama. (0646)
10. Moosh corner
There may be less Moosh for a few days … family gathering.
9. It’s all crooked, with ulterior motives
8. Usually one gets just a few retweets or acknowledgements
… but now and then, a topic is picked up on.
7. The lady who knows
6. It’s a labyrinth, the whole bleedin’ thing
(0529) Morning all … have a good weekend. I see either snow or frost out there … either way, it’s wet. We have a double bday on our hands here …. have not had permission to name yet. (0605)
5. Don’t underestimate the diabolical intelligence
… plus the endless funds required to keep everyone shtum or dead. Drug trade, trafficking of women and kids, foreign criminal govts … but it still requires some materminds. As a Christian, it’s dead easy to say the devil, henchmen and women, placemen and women at all levels … or you can comp,icate it and go the Jeremy Irons route in The Time Machine.
Less fanciful is sheer bureaucracy … everything tabulated from the ages … what worked, what did not, what worked for a period of time … what fell away, requiring a new scheme of misery-bringing. Enough to make a person turn to drink or God.
4. The plan to bring down Trump
3. Steve at 1244
2. Writing on the wall for Brennan?
1. DAD at 1244
a) Small victory for common sense: European Council decides against using Russian Assets to finance Ukraine….
b) b) ….more information on a)….The real reason the EU just stopped the $105B seizure of Russian Assets by Alexander Leo Smith.
c) France: now without a Budget for the Year ahead.In Paris, each and every government attempt to reach a budget agreement has failed miserably.
d) An investigation is underway to identify the driver who injured two gendarmes from the Remiremont motorcycle brigade…. The investigation, currently classified as attempted murder, has been entrusted to the Remiremont research brigade.
e) Finally….NANTES, yet again. A 17-year-old boy tries to sell a sweater on Le Bon Coin (a French online marketplace). He falls into an ambush and is stabbed by three teenagers aged 14 to 15.
(1752) Evening all.
11. Moosh corner
10. Erika’s eyes
Now have a look at NOWP. I saw this too:
“No, a daughter’s eyes aren’t always the same as her mother’s because eye color is a complex trait from multiple genes, not just one, meaning a daughter gets a unique mix from both parents, potentially skipping generations or showing different shades (brown, blue, green, hazel) depending on dominant/recessive genes inherited. While they often share similarities or a dominant color, variations are common, and sometimes traits reappear from grandparents.”
9. As the lady says
8. The govts’ purpose behind allowing this in each western nation?
7. More Uke corruption
“I have a sort of mission to track down and see all of Fritz Lang’s American movies and welcomed the opportunity to watch this post Second World War Drama starring Gary Cooper. The film has its longueurs but on the whole tells a good story and contains at least one memorable set-piece by the great director.
Cooper’s Hollywood roles tended to fall into two broad categories – shy bumbling whiter-than-white innocents ( see “Mr Deeds…”, “Meet John Doe” or “Ball Of Fire”) or calm, grace-under-pressure heroes like here. For me he does both equally well and while you can see that the man has aged as he enters the twilight of his career, he still carries off with aplomb the lead role.
He also convinces in his relationship with his younger love interest, Lilli Palmer, who besides her good looks, displays maturity and sensitivity in her role as a behind-the-lines Resistance fighter.
The story has a topical theme too, the race to the Atomic bomb and Coop’s character gets in a hefty diatribe early on about the perverse uses that science is being put to by men before he’s drafted by an old comrade, now in the American secret service, to attempt to rescue a pair of fellow-scientists from enforced collaboration with the Nazis.
For me the story hangs together well, the acting as indicated, is good and the cinematography throughout is fine. The story does drag a bit in the middle as Cooper and Palmer start to get to know each other but is enlivened by the memorable “dirty-fight” between Cooper (and Palmer) with a pursuing enemy agent. No hay-maker punches here with enhanced sound effects, instead the fight encompasses face-gouging and finger bending before erstwhile peace-loving scientist Cooper dispatches his protagonist by strangulation.
Lang then piles on the suspense with a scene reminiscent of “M” as a little boy’s ball innocently bounces to where the fresh corpse lies, threatening discovery, only for Cooper to quickly improvise a cover-up. The fight scene (indeed some of the plot elements too) surely entered Hitchcock’s thoughts when he produced his 1960’s Cold War thriller “Torn Curtain”.
Lang also doesn’t shirk the brutalities of war, for instance the German nurse’s brutal slaying of elderly, maternal scientist number one and the casual announcement later by a female Nazi agent that the second scientist’s kidnapped daughter has also been cold-bloodedly slain.
On the whole a good, solid movie, not without its faults but another worthy entry on my Lang-watch list.”
Always having previously gone to the Test in either Melbourne or Headingley (think I once went to the WACA for a one day, never the Gabba, Lords nor The Oval) … I did see something about snipers on the roof of the cricket …
… maybe it was being fixated with Christmastide, maybe with so many being fixated on snowy landscapes (wishful thinking before New Year here, even on the NE coast) … well my mind was not on the cricket until I saw this:
Oh my goodness … Boxing Day Test at the Gee! I would have been there for sure, living a half mile away in Richmond. Then I took a second look … what’s this 2026 thing? Shirley it goes Boxing, Sat, Sun, rest day Monday, then Tue, Wed. Yikes … I’ve completely forgotten, must look it up.
Considering that this post was going to be about the sidebar pic, one of Irina’s. Thing was … in Russia, we never needed to fantasise about snow … coming up to New Year, it was always there, soft new snow on top of the hardpacked as we walked to the state opera house across the square, snow in the air. And on the weekend, short drive from town … long, snowy lane for walks and shaslik in the clearing. Toboggan too.
Fantasyland? Together with the army of females dressed in fur, with hoods … yes indeed. But these three days now have also been divine, talking to so many up and down the land, in the Antipodes, in North America, Greece, France, Russia too.
It’s a bizarre situation, it messes with the head … I’d love to go all Little Englander but just can’t these five days … every time I try, one of the friends from another land writes. We’re forced into our own sort of “good” globalism. Fight them? Would I heck as like, even were they lefty.
However, should they attack, alongside the infidel invader, seriously attack … well of course I’d have to go after them alongside our patriots. But I’m having enormous trouble these three days having anything but a lovely time, filled with food and liquid, wanting to snooze every few hours.
Not sure how you’re placed where you are.
…..
(1332) Hmmmmm, no rest day, started Christmas Day … appalling. Seems the pitch was doing too much with the ball, suppresses the strokemaking. As a former medium-fast (lower district level), obviously I favour the ball, esp. for spin but there’s such a thing as way too much. I once bowled on a shocker of a pitch and there was no skill involved … it was near unplayable. (1336)
… on the Second Day of Christmas:
First up is the hammered dulcimer. As one wag noted … if that’s the hammered, how good will the sober dulcimer sound?
Next is our Steve’s offering … Once in Royal David’s City” | The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge:
And the one I dropped from the main list to accommodate IYE’s:
Was going to run Chuckles’s version of Jingle Bells, just to annoy Dearieme but thought … why not annoy him with this instead:
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is about it in the carol department for 2025. Eyes now set on New Year’s Eve.
… otherwise known as St Stephen’s Day, otherwise known as the Second Day of Christmas (there being Twelve Days altogether)… otherwise known as Boxing Day. Originally a day of giving, it’s now just a commercial buying and selling day.
However, there is but one carol for this day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_King_Wenceslas
(0836) In bed, soon came good, ready to roll again.
10. Addressing the (hopefully) inanimate
9. Now this one
Imagine they arrived en masse and the local council urged us to take two or three in for diversity’s sake.
8. There was a X clip of a child running to escape a paedo
… seemed farfetched but point was, she ran to the nearest woman, mother or not … looking after kids, animals, women, seems part of our operating system in the west, not with monsters from other cultures.
I’m also thinking … if you were out driving and saw this below, would you not stop and buy at least something?
7. Let’s keep our eye on these bstds
6. Steve with a question
… whoever heard of a skinny Santa?
(0526) Greetings all, this Boxing Day. (0613)
(0723) Heading back to bed for some time, not 100%, need to hit it on the head. (0824)
5. Ron speaks
4. Steve at 1243
3. There are certain names among pundits
… as has constantly been pointed out … who are high value, while others touting themselves with “shows” as megapundits are of “some” value in reality … my view on the latter is the same as my view on High Pointy-hatters and Incense Swingers in churches. My view on the former is that if they drop something, we need to drop ours and have a shoofty.
Patrick Byrne is an anomaly. Hardly respectful towards much of DJT’s doings, he’s still essentially onside with MAGA … former cyber badboy … weeeell, at least see what happens … he’s in with Emerald.
2. DAD at 1243
a) Considering the demographic and political trends in France and the UK that are “aligned with Islamism,” Vice President JD Vance expressed concern about the nuclear weapons possessed by these countries….
b) Macron pushes Germany to reintegrate Russian nuclear energy to EU system. In the coming weeks, German authorities are expected to decide whether to approve a controversial licence application by Framatome….
c) Elon Musk, on his social medium, mocks Air France for not daring to wish people “Merry Christmas”, unlike the Arab airline Emirates, which doesn’t hesitate to do so.
d) Von der Leyen cancels trip to Brazil to sign Mercosur deal after farmers descend on Brussels….
e) The EU dream is dying and nobody wants to admit it – cold, brutal mathematics that Brussels desperately hopes you’ll never understand.
1. Bit of an Op Ed
Still one day ahead in this three day festivity … was not expecting Christmas Eve to be so full-on and today is the easing out of the festivity. Verdict … pretty good, actually. In terms of present haul … ran out of space to put them, ditto with food in the fridge.
I compare that with Samantha Taghoy (now Smith), the rapee as one of the “groomed”. It was a sad letter she penned on X … all the people in her family she lost … and that then leads to the Veterans on the streets. Sorry to use that word in Britain as we called them returned servicemen and women but Veterans is more universal now between allies.
Toodles has sent another link I have to bury … IYE (bless him, hope he’s coming out of it) would be interested I’d think. Possibly at UHC under Toods’ name. Most interesting.
Still dark here, no real plan for the day, expecting one more visitor … one of the pressies (Oz vernacular?) was Italian milk bread with fruit … quite yummy with tea or coffee. Best start posting our chaps’s fayre plus my backlog … have a good Boxing Day … anything planned there?