July 09 2007
Choice Links
posted by Ana Samways at 9:08 am
Billy Redden is an actor best known for his role as Lonnie—the “banjo kid”—in the 1972 movie Deliverance. And he’s been typecast ever since (via Cynical C)
Those whippet girls on The Apprentice are always walking around clutching a bottle of water. That’s because Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on iPods or movie tickets.
How to initiate conversation: Lifehack says be polite, keep it light, don’t be a prude and be yourself.
Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature: Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn’t sexist, and blonds are more attractive. (Via Psychology Today)
This German aristocrat got a cracking obituary: “Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.
Living in Three Centuries: Photographs of people who are older than 107 years-old.
Young African William Kamkwamba built his own windmill to power his family’s house and charge mobile phones in the village. His blog is here.
Robbie Williams has posted a bizarre video on the internet claiming he has found God. In the video, a dishevelled Robbie sits in a dark room, smoking a cigarette and singing a new song full of “sunshine”, “lifeline” and “died for me” lyrics.
July 9th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
You can’t beat the telegraph for a good obit. My favourite was that of Graham Mason, which started:
“GRAHAM MASON, the journalist who has died aged 59, was in the 1980s the drunkest man in the Coach and Horses, the pub in Soho where, in the half century after the Second World War, a tragicomedy was played out nightly by its regulars.”
It goes on to include the following gem:
“In one drinking binge he went for nine days without food. At the height of his consumption, before he was frightened by epileptic fits into cutting back, he was managing two bottles of vodka a day. His face became in his own description that of a “rotten choirboy”. At lunchtime he would walk through the door of the Coach and Horses still trembling with hangover, his nose and ears blue whatever the weather. On one cold day he complained of the noise that the snow made as it landed on his bald head.”
Priceless, and I can only hope that when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil someone will write such brutally gorgeous prose about me.