Category: What the…?

From the Oregonian’s TV Click magazine, last night’s AMC vs. Animal Planet avian matchup at 8!

The oddest thing on the UK trip a couple of weeks back — for me, anyway — was as we were going through Heathrow passport control after an eleven-hour trip. The line was long, although it moved fairly rapidly, and we’d already filled out our entry forms hours before, but halfway through the maze there was a high table with blank forms on it.

On the table was a small box with flaps on either end that has been opened and you could see the contents matched with the exterior. The artwork on the cover was for a plastic airplane model of a Boeing 747. The box was labelled in both English and Arabic. The decals on the plane were for Iran Air.

Barbara and I just got back at midnight Wednesday from a week in England. We headed over there with Mom and Dad to see London for a couple of days and then went to Chester, where Dad and his sisters had all been before at various times (with the sisters having done some genealogical research in the Cheshire area). Mom made the accommodations, and after striking out at a couple of locations, she found a home stay with a couple in Sandbach (pronounced sand-BATCH), a former market town about twenty miles from Chester (that’s a whole other story).

Sandbach is like a lot of other towns with an outsized church on a site dating back a thousand years, but built and rebuilt over the years. Our host led us around the town the first day we were there but only skirted the outside of the church grounds.

The next morning we went exploring on our own and stopped in at the church to look at the graveyard’s old stones. We just happened on the sexton as he was returning from feeding his cows. He let us into the very mildewy old building which was quite pretty otherwise. We looked around at the windows, listened hard to the old gaffer — who had a brogue very unlike the middle-class folks we were staying with — and then Barbara spotted this on the wall:

It says:

Sacred to the Memory of ELIZABETH, Wife of

THOMAS PLANT of Ellsworth Hall, who died

May 26th. 1804, aged 57 years.

Also of ELIZABETH, Wife of EDWARD WESTHEAD of

Manchester, and Daughter of the above THOs. & ELIZth. PLANT,

who departed this Life the 19th. Octr. 1849, aged 56 years.

“Precious in the Sight of the Lord is the Death of his Saints”

Psalm 116th. V. 15th.

Also of the said THOMAS PLANT, who died

February 26th. 1828, aged 76 Years.

Also of SARAH, Wife of JOHN, Son of the above

THOMAS & ELIZABETH PLANT, who died May 29th. 1832, aged 34 Years.

Also of the said JOHN PLANT, who died

January 13th. 1849, aged 58 Years.

No idea if there’s any actual relation, but it’s a heck of a coincidence.

As if you didn’t know, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Stan Ridgway, the poet laureate of broken dreams and thwarted ambition, a guy whose voice you’d remember if you ever heard it in songs like “Mexican Radio”, “Don’t Box Me In”, “Camouflage”, “Drive, She Said”, or “I Wanna Be a Boss”, ends his 2007 summer tour tonight in Portland at Mississippi Studios on (natch) N. Mississippi. Doors open at 7pm.

I was heading back to the bridge after dropping Barbara off this morning and passed the downtown Meier & Frank construction site where they’ve got the right lane blocked off with concrete trucks waiting to pour. Standing next to the trucks waiting for their chance to cross traffic were a couple of construction workers in hard hats, already pretty dirty from whatever they’d been doing, and one of them was holding a cute little bag with the Moonstruck Chocolate Co. logo on it.

Yasushi Ukigaya/Kyodo News, via Associated Press

To Punish Thai Police, a Hello Kitty Armband

By SETH MYDANS
Published: August 7, 2007

BANGKOK, Aug. 7 — It is the pink armband of shame for wayward police officers, as cute as can be with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts.

No matter how many ribbons for valor a Thai officer may wear, if he parks in the wrong place, or shows up late for work, or is seen dropping a bit of litter on the sidewalk, he can be ordered to wear the insignia.

“Simple warnings no longer work,” said Pongpat Chayaphan, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok, who instituted the new humiliation this week.

“This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” he said. “Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.”

Your fondest dream will come true within this year.

I’m not sure which fondest dream that might be — I’m continually changing my mind — but I’ll take it.

Congratulations to my brother and his beautiful wife on the birth today of their baby.

Nike has indefinitely delayed the release of the Nike Vick V sneaker (bottom) for an image retooling. Could be they intend to add an extra washable layer to the upper and to restore the color scheme of the Vick II (top), both of which would come in handy of you were, say, walking through puddles of dog blood.