Sunday, May 31, 2020

Quote for the Day


Ugly Belgian Houses, Part 4


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Continuing extracts from the Facebook site Ugly Belgian Houses, photographed and posted by Belgian architect Hannes Coudenys, who has made it his mission to document architectural fails.  To read his reasons and story, click on:

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Gallery (with Hannes Coudenys’ titles and selected reader comments) from:

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Safehouse


Reader comments:

Looks like a built-in bus stop

Hopefully the mask will protect it against homesickness.
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Please restart Windows


Explanation- window tax? Divorce half way through build? Hoping for early legacy? Lost 7/9ths on a bet?

All in all it's just another brick in the wall

Waiting for a few ambitious contractors to start playing Tic Tac Toe here

Daylight is overrated anyway
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When the battle between the left wing and the right wing got ugly.


Stuck in the middle with you.
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My house is your Picasso


Tell the truth - someone's just hoping hoping to get a Banksy on it and make a fortune!

When the architect did the drawings in Word.

Fantastic Art Wall, get your spraycans
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The roof, the roof, the roof has expired




That crooked window is what is bothering me the most.

In the UK we have listed buildings....this looks like a listing building

Looks like an optical illusion indeed! Is it?

I never knew Picasso designed houses..😳

This makes me dizzy.
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Exsqueeze me


Clients asked architect to design a home that would match their mailbox. Well done!

They need to be careful with strong winds from the sides

For narrow minded people?
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Not everyone takes quarantine equally serious


It’s like 2 pictures added together

I see a red roof and I want to paint it black...

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Image may contain: house and outdoor, text that says 'Loading.. 50%'
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I should stay inside


I love the ‘eyelashes’ on the tower windows... 😄

3 garages on the first floor, nice!

They have it also in lego !

Cinderella's retirement home?
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The architect had a vision (problem)


I think the architect made a spectacle of himself there

Darth Vader

Windshield wipers were optional?

That entrance looks like a pressgang for cattle and a door on either side. Please explain.
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You have to stay inside but you don't have to throw away your door


When I said skip through the door...that's not what I meant

And use the garbage for social distancing the postman

Somewhat cubist, phallic mailbox.

There's a secret entrance through the container. 
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By Frank Lloyd Wrong


The statue... The mailbox... It's almost art !

It's like a nuclear bunker they forgot to bury. And just out of interest, is this the front or the back door? It seems more like a fire exit in any case...

Not everybody's great at origami.

That round window in the font door as contrast to the diagonal shapes finishes it..

He had the plans... but one page was missing 
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The statue of misery


Amazing. I admire his/her nerve though: Someone who unapologetically knows what he/she likes.

Pompeii is demolished by a vulcan. Atlantis by a flood. The Acropolis in Athens by the British. Why, oh, why is this still preserved.

Chrishhht on a bike! Think I've spotted the Venus of Misere!

Stop.... please stop.... and tell me it was all something you made in photoshop....

At.least this was an attempt to beautify the neighbourhood.

Horrible but someone's pride and joy. You have to admit it's well looked after

Crazy that there are sidewalks next to this archaeological heritage.

This house is clearly not finished yet....Must... Add... More...

It'll be nice when it's finished...sorry....I mean demolished. 
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Split personality


Interesting how the house on the left is just slightly off in everything.

with an arch-emperor as divider 
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Jesus Christ


Everything can be a grotto if you're brave enough.

Something to frighten small children with.

I love how ridiculous it is the owner still leaved a neo-classical part between the garage and the Virgin Mary.

Where is it? I feel an urge for a pilgrimage

Not Jesus Christ, but Saint Mary - of - the - Garage.

In the name of the garage 
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Four Stogi oh no


This gives a whole new meaning to "colour coordinated".

If this house would only be able to say 3 words... It would be: "please kill me"

The only saving grace is that the bottom left hand window appears to have teeth...

The house would look a lot better with the walls painted in the national tricolor.

My eyes hurt

Omg patchwork 
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Go home house, you’re drunk


Never judge a book by it's cover...

That will happen a lot more in the future if we don't act now! Global warming is real! Even houses start melting! 
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When your house is a penis but you’re not allowed to show it


Nope, this is the penis house . . .


When zombies will invade the world these guys will be the only survivors, and you will be sorry you laughed.

It's a police safe house. On a disclosed location:

The ultimate minimalism:
No door, no windows, no roof.

You better not show this to Mr. Trump.

Far better than the ones on the left and the right.

Love it

I like it, whatever it is 
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Reminds me of 'The Scream' by Edvard Munch and that's exactly what I'm doing.

Come on! It's Halloween! Next week it will be back to normal.

Reminds more of Greta Thunberg

Houses that look like Hitler

It looks like one of the Transformers...

Is this house Hitler or Chaplin cartoon?

It's actually Elephant Man

Guernica.


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I was going to make the last instalment of Ugly Belgian Houses but there are still so many on the site that are such face-palmers that there will be some more in the future.

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Saturday, May 30, 2020

Thought for the Day


5 x 5: Silent Film Stars



Five facts about five silent film stars . . . 


Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977): 


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In 1919, Chaplin and fellow filmmakers Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists so that they could finance, and make, their own films whilst retaining creative control. The studio took off and eventually branched out to build a chain of movie theaters. Movie attendances were at an all time low in 1955, causing Chaplin to sell his shares. In 1963 UA released the first James Bond film. Today UA is owned by MGM. 

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Chaplin wrote much of the music for his won films, including one that has become a standard – “Smile” – covered by numerous singers. Hear Nat King Cole sing it (a 1954 hit for Cole) and watch Chaplin as The Little Tramp character by clicking on: 

"Smile" is based on an instrumental theme used in the soundtrack for the 1936 Chaplin movie "Modern Times". Chaplin composed the music, while John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons added the lyrics and title in 1954. 

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Chaplin won his only competitive Oscar in 1973 for composing the theme to his 1952 film Limelight (the film wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1972). 


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Chaplin was a perfectionist. When he worked on his short film The Immigrant, Chaplin shot 40,000 feet of film, which was a lot for a 20-minute short. Chaplin cast actress Virginia Cherrill in City Lights to say just two words, “Flower, sir,” but he forced her to repeat them for 342 takes. 

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The kid with Chaplin in the 1921 movie The Kid was Jackie Coogan. The film combined comedy with drama and was Chaplin's first film to exceed an hour. 


Coogan’s mother and stepfather squandered his millions from film earnings up to $70,000,000 in 2015 dollars. He sued them, establishing what is now known as the Coogan Act which protects the earnings of child performers. Older readers will remember Coogan as Uncle Fester in the 1964-1966 TV series The Addams Family. 



Clara Bow (1905 – 1965): 

Clara Bow, 1932 

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Clara Bow’s appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film “It” brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol. 


The invention of the concept It is generally attributed to Elinor Glyn, but already in 1904, Rudyard Kipling, in the short story "Mrs. Bathurst" introduced It: “It isn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just 'It'. Some women will stay in a man's memory if they once walk down the street.” 

In February 1927 Cosmopolitan published a two-part serial story in which Glyn defined It: “That quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With 'It' you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man. 'It' can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.” 

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With her huge eyes and expressive face, Bow was the inspiration behind the iconic cartoon character Betty Boop. 


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During her lifetime, Bow was the subject of wild rumours regarding her sex life; most of them were untrue. A tabloid called The Coast Reporter published lurid allegations about her in 1931, accusing her of exhibitionism, incest, lesbianism, bestiality, drug addiction, alcoholism, and having contracted a venereal disease. The publisher of the tabloid then tried to blackmail Bow, offering to cease printing the stories for $25,000, which led to his arrest by federal agents and, later, an eight-year prison sentence. 

The widely spread story that she held orgies during which she serviced the entire USC football team (including a young John Wayne) is untrue, see the snopes discussion at: 

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In 1927, Bow starred in Wings, a war picture rewritten to accommodate her, as she was Paramount's biggest star, but was not happy about her part: "[Wings is]...a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie." The film went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture. 

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Hollywood saw Bow as a scruffy, lower-class kid whose behaviour jarred with the smart set: 

"They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples for me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs ... I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!" 
– Clara Bow, 1929 
“My life in Hollywood contained plenty of uproar. I'm sorry for a lot of it but not awfully sorry. I never did anything to hurt anyone else. I made a place for myself on the screen and you can't do that by being Mrs. Alcott's idea of a Little Woman.” 
- Clara Bow, Kansas City Star, 1933 




Rudolph Valentino (1895 – 1926): 


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Born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella but known professionally as Rudolph Valentino. He was also known as the Latin Lover (a title invented for him by Hollywood moguls), The Great Lover, or simply Valentino. 

A sex symbol of the 1920s, he was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle, and The Son of the Sheik. 


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During the press tour for his final film, The Son of the Sheik—which opened to critical acclaim in August 1926—he collapsed and was hospitalised due to a perforated ulcer. He died a week later, aged 31. 

In medicine, Valentino's syndrome, named after Rudolph Valentino, is pain presenting in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen caused by a duodenal ulcer with perforation. 

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Valentino was in serious debt at the time of his death, and his heirs could not afford a burial plot for him. Friend and screenwriter June Mathis agreed to loan him one of the spaces she owned at Hollywood Park Cemetery on a temporary basis, so that he could be interred without delay upon his body’s arrival in Los Angeles from New York. However, Mathis died the following year, all further memorial plans for him fell through during the Depression, and so his body remained in that temporary space. 

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There was considerable speculation during his life, and after his death, as to whether he was gay or bisexual. Many felt that his two marriages were screens for his homosexuality, especially since his first wife was in a lesbian triangle at the time and used her marriage as such a screen. This was known as a “lavender marriage”, a male-female marriage where both parties use the marriage to conceal their respective sexual orientations. The term stems from the colour lavender being associates with homosexuality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Current thinking is that Valentino was straight 

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A few months before his death a Chicago newspaper columnist attacked his masculinity in print, referring to him as a "pink powder puff". A lawsuit was pending when he was fatally stricken. One of his last questions to his doctor was, "Well, doctor, and do I now act like a 'pink powder puff'?" His doctor reportedly replied, "No, sir. You have been very brave. Braver than most.". 


Theda Bara (1885 – 1955): 


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Bara was one of the more popular actresses of the silent era and one of cinema's early sex symbols. Indeed Bara is often cited as the first sex symbol of the film era. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" (short for vampire), later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles that encapsulated exoticism and sexual domination. 

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Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but most were lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire. She retired in 1926 and never appeared in a sound film, Jolson’s The Jazz Singer being released in 1927. 

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Bara was known for wearing very revealing costumes in her films. Such outfits were banned from Hollywood films after the Production Code (a.k.a. the Hays Code) started in 1930, and then was more strongly enforced in 1934. 




Although Bara took her craft seriously, she was too successful as an exotic "wanton woman" to develop a more versatile career. 

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Born Theodosia Burr Goodman in 1885 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the studios promoted Bara with a massive publicity campaign, billing her as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. They claimed she had spent her early years in the Sahara desert under the shadow of the Sphinx, then moved to France to become a stage actress. They called her the "Serpent of the Nile" and encouraged her to discuss mysticism and the occult in interviews. Some film historians point to this as the birth of two Hollywood phenomena: the studio publicity department and the press agent (later evolving into the public relations person). 


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Promotional claims fed off the fact that her stage name was chosen because it is an anagram for "Arab Death". In reality, "Theda" was a childhood nickname for Theodosia, and "Bara" was a shortened form of her maternal grandfather's last name, Baranger. 


John Barrymore (1882 – 1942): 


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Barrymore was an American actor on stage, screen and radio, a member of the Barrymore theatrical family and the grandfather of Drew Barrymore. 

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He was known as the Great Profile and featured in silent films and in early sound films. 

Barrymore as Jekyll in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) . . .

. . . and as Hyde. 

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Barrymore struggled with alcohol abuse from the age of 14, was married and divorced four times, and declared bankruptcy later in life. The Great Profile died in 1942 from cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, complicated by pneumonia. 

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Errol Flynn's memoirs claim that the film director Raoul Walsh borrowed Barrymore's body before burial to leave his corpse propped in a chair for a drunken Flynn to discover when he returned home. Gene Fowler, a close friend of Barrymore, denies the claim. However, in the words of Mandy Rice Davies , he would say that, wouldn’t he. 

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One of my favourite anecdotes that I have posted previously:

After a long day of shooting a film in Hollywood, John Barrymore and some fellow actors stopped in at Lucy's, a popular watering hole near Paramount Studios. After one-too-many drinks, Barrymore excused himself to go to the bathroom. In his slightly inebriated condition, however, he inadvertently chose the ladies' room. 

As he was relieving himself, a woman entered and was shocked to see a man urinating into one of the toilets. 

"How dare you!" she exclaimed, "This is for ladies!" 

The actor turned toward the woman, organ in hand, and resonantly said in full actor's voice: "And so, madam, is this."



Friday, May 29, 2020

Thought for the Day


Funny Friday


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No theme today readers, just some fun and laughs but be warned, there is risque content ahead.

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SOME HUMOUR . . .

What’s the difference between chopped beef, and pea soup?
Anyone can chop beef, but no one can pea soup!

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This one’s dated but I only just came across it. The subject is the last Super Bowl.

For Joe and Ron, avid Kansas City Chiefs fans  . . .

I accidentally bought $3,500 Super Bowl tickets on the same day I’m supposed to get married.

If anyone wants to go take my place for FREE it’s going to be at Casino Beach in Pensacola Florida. Her name is Savanna she’s 5’2, super nice girl, and an incredible cook!

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And speaking of Ron, here are some chortlers he sent me yesterday

Thanks Ron.

My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. 
Last night she used me to time an egg.

 A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' 
I went over. Nobody was home!

If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.

My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen 
the roaches hang themselves.

I'm so ugly I stuck my head out the window and 
got arrested for mooning.

The other day I came home and a guy was jogging, naked. 
I asked him, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you came home early.'
  
My wife is such a bad cook, in my house 
we pray after the meal.

My wife likes to talk to me during sex; 
last night she called me from a hotel.

 It's been a rough day. I got up this morning and put a shirt on and 
a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. 
I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.

I was such an ugly kid! When I played in the sandbox, 
the cat kept covering me up.

(I used to joke about my boys that they were so ugly as kids 
that we had to tie pork chops around their necks 
to get the dog to play with them.)
- Otto)

I was such an ugly baby that my mother never breast fed me. 
She told me that she only liked me as a friend.

I'm so ugly my father carried around a picture of the kid 
that came with his wallet.

I'm so ugly my mother had morning sickness 
AFTER I was born.

I went to see my doctor. "Doctor, every morning when I get up and 
I look in the mirror I feel like throwing up.  What's wrong with me?" 
He said: "Nothing, your eyesight is perfect."

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FROM THE VAULT . . .

Today a double dose, what one might call high vaultage . . .

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Henry Cohen's parents, were not happy that he was not married by the age of 30.  He wanted to please his parents but maintained that he simply hadn't met any nice girls. Finally, largely out of desperation, he married a goyish prostitute.

His new wife's friends worried because she had stopped showing up at her regular street corner. But then one evening she appeared, in lovely and stylish new clothing and fancy jewellery. Naturally, the friends were curious, and so she told them how she had married a nice Jewish boy.

"What about his parents?" they asked. She answered, "They love me. After Henry told them about us, they had a party every evening for a week. They call it Shiva."

(Shiva:  Shiva (Hebrew: literally "seven") is the week-long mourning period in Judaism for first-degree relatives. The ritual is referred to as "sitting shiva." Traditionally, there are five stages of mourning in Judaism. Shiva is considered the third stage, and lasts for seven days.)

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Researchers for the Australian Roads Department found over 200 dead crows on the Great Northern Highway recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu.

A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone's relief, confirmed the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu. The cause of death appeared to be from vehicular impacts.

However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colours of paints appeared on the bird's beaks and claws. By analysing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.

They hired an Ornithological Behaviourist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.

The Ornithological Behaviourist very quickly concluded the cause: When crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.

They discovered that while all the lookout crows could shout "Cah", not a single one could shout "Truck." !!

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LIMERICK OF THE WEEK . . .

I once had the wife of a Dean
Seven times while the Dean was out skiin'.
She remarked with some gaiety,
"Not bad for the laity,
But the bishop once managed thirteen."

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GALLERY . . .







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CORN CORNER:

I’m reading a horror novel in Braille.
Something bad is about to happen. I can feel it.

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A dog walks Into a bar and asks the bartender, “Do you have any jobs?” The bartender says, “Why don’t you try the circus?” The dog replies, “Why would the circus need a bartender?”

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The future, the present and the past walked into a bar. Things got a little tense.

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Moses had the first tablet that could connect to the cloud.

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She wanted a puppy. But I didn't want a puppy. So we compromised and got a puppy.

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I have never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they're home they like to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat.