"Christ, I miss the cold war"....

[selenak]

It is weird not to have a current show on the air during the entire week. Penny Dreadful, I miss you already. When does Doctor Who start again, August? I've heard there were leaked scripts, and can only hope everyone who does like to get spoiled will discuss them below a cut, because I really don't want to know anything.

Meanwhile, there's always that farcical soap, reality. Seems we've arrested our second American spy today. This one wasn't working for the BND but he did work for the German defense ministry. Meanwhile, the US press has started to notice there might be a problem but assures us Obama didn't know a thing about the first spy. (Presumably even less about the second.) This, strangely enough, is not reassuring. Spare some pity for Hillary Clinton who is currently in Europe promoting her book and had all her interviews both on tv and with the papers circling not said book but about the US spying on minions allies instead. (At least she didn't use the same lame Casablanca quote which everyone, from Obama downwards, used when discussing the previous American-German disaster.)

Deliberately amusing instead of farcical: JKR wrote a Rita Skeeter gossip columm on Harry Potter and friends showing up at the World Quidditch Cup, and it's a hoot. I've always suspect she had great fun spoofing the tabloid style for the Rita articles quoted in the later Potter novels (and of course for the excerpts of Rita's scandalous tell-all Dumbledore biography), and here she's doing it again ("Does Hermione Granger prove that a witch really can have it all? (No – look at her hair.)"), complete with Rita insinuating Harry's forbidden love for...no, not Draco: As their devoted fans and followers will remember, Potter and Krum competed against each other in the controversial Triwizard Tournament, but apparently there are no hard feelings, as they embraced upon meeting (what really happened in that maze? Speculation is unlikely to be quelled by the warmth of their greeting).

Harry/Victor: surely someone has written that already?

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

The British national anthem actually has two official verses, along with a third verse that is no longer sung because it boasts of "crushing" "rebellious Scots". Maybe it'll be revived soon?

[kalypso]

They must have cut that a long time ago, as I know three verses but the embarrassing one (and the only one that isn't about the monarch) is this:

Oh Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!

[jesuswasbatman]

Ah yes. I checked and the anti-Scots version was an unofficial one from 1745.

[selenak]

This reminds me of Boswell's experience during his first lengthy visit to London:


Wednesday 8 December 1762: At night I went to Covent Garden and saw Love in a Village, a new comic opera, for the first night. I liked it very much. I saw it from the gallery, but I was first in the pit. Just before the overture began to be played, two Highland officers came in. The mob in the upper gallery roared out, “No Scots! No Scots! Out with them!”, hissed and pelted them with apples. My heart warmed to my countrymen, my Scotch blood boiled with indignation. I jumped up on the benches, roared out, “Damn you, rascals!” hissed and was in the greatest rage. I am very sure at that time I should have been the most distinguished of heroes. I hated the English; I wished from my soul the Union was broke and that we might give them another battle of Bannockburn. I went close to the officers and asked them of what regiment they were of. They told me Lord John Murray’s, and that they were just come from the Havana. “And this,” said they, “is the thanks that we get – to be hissed when we come home. If it was French, what could they do worse?”

[nenya_kanadka]

I always loved that one! It's so unapologetically partisan. (Less hilarious if current-day, more funny if dudes from way back when, I admit, at least to me.)