Sydney had breakfast for 6,000 on the Harbour Bridge.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8324527.stm

Well, I saw this a few days ago...

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63407-400gallon-gas-another-cost-of-war-in-afghanistan-

Can't seem to link it but there was something in NY Post with Polanski. Now he says there was no set-up and he accepts that this was his fault. He also claims that he is the personality type that cleans messes as opposed to running from them. I guess that explains all those years in France? How nice of him to acknowledge that there was no plot against him.
That was it for me today. Sunday is a slow news day and besides, football's on!

France is opening it's 1,142nd location in Paris, at the Louvre! (France is the 2nd largest consumer of McDonalds, after America.)

Sorry Amy- don't shoot the messenger....

OOps- poorly worded. There are 1,142 locations in all of France, not just Paris.

I'd heard that the most popular McDonald's outlet in the world was in the City of Light.

People don't believe this, but when I was a little kid, junk food was better. It wasn't health food... The ingredients were mundane, but they weren't scientifically designed to be as cheap as possible and have long shelf lives, etc. I can't imagine what it would be like to take a McDonald's cheeseburger into your body nowadays. The flesh of a hundred cattle with stabilizers and extenders....
______

This is brilliant. It's worth reading the whole thing.

Also I was amused by the article Amy tweeted this afternoon about the disappointed Scientologist.

Y'know, I love a lapsed Catholic. People who turn away from Rome (or similar religious traditions) often do so through growth. They often do it without crippling feelings of resentment... Having practiced a faith demanding humility and courage, they flex those muscles even harder as they work them by their own will.

But Scientologists who leave their 'church' are never any richer for the experience. They're not kinder, they're not more thoughtful, they're in no better awareness of the feelings of others... They are always, like the hypercompetitive Haggis, just pissed off little people who want to dismiss the perspectives of others as abject and evil. That's what made Scientology attractive to them to begin with. Of course the organization never patched the holes in their personalities: It needed those weaknesses.

(It was also [almost?] interesting to learn that Cruise had turned away from the Scientology for ten years. It's fun to imagine him recanting, but he wouldn't be any more articulate or persuasive speaking against it than he's been as a supporter.)

________________

And also, as we admire the photos on that VV page, I find myself enchanted by this lesbian. It may be Manhattan, but it has a naughty-Ohio vibe.

That Sydney breakfast looks wonderful. I flew through Syd once but foolishly didn't make time to see sights. A friend once got rich and used his rich-ness to get in line for Aussie citizenship. The money vanished in the tech bubble, so he's poor now. But he's poor in Sydney, and very happy.

They like Americans down there. If they don't, they're so nice to us that we can't tell... I got drug-searched in Cairns once, but the guy was so charming it felt like he was throwing me a birthday party. Later I learned that the immigration people were photographing the whole thing for a brochure. I was freaking flattered.

Maybe we're not reading them correctly. Expat Robert Hughes once said that Americans think of Australia as being "Texas by other means".

If a Texan tried to be condescending to you, would you even know?

One last punch at Haggis, courtesy of Welch:

And hey, I'd have some racial baggage too if I'd written for "Diff'rent Strokes."

The BBC does an abrupt U-turn on Global Warming. For someone like me who has closely been following this "debate" for years, this is absolutely hilarious!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
UK spends milions of euros and police hours to crack down of human traffickers - finds none

Technically 5 people were convicted durring the "operation" but they were discovered in investigations began long before this one started.

Didnt find any sex slaves either

It's a very old article...but one I enjoyed...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/143792

Crid, I've had a few Texans be condesending to me,

They all turned tail and ran when I asked them how proud they were to be member of the only group in the history of mankind to lose to the mexican army