I'm surprised that Elizabeth Clare Prophet's death didn't rate a mention in this column. Her cult compound in Montana supposedly contains America's largest private stockpile of assault rifles and her followers seem to have some crazy plan for the end of the world. If the Bond people are looking for inspiration for a…

As late as the early '80s my local newspaper published two comic strips called Cappy Dick and Boner's Ark. Between these and the old commercials with Captain Highliner and Billy, seamen still make me giggle.

The Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church actually took place in the eleventh century, so it would be very easy to imagine a fourteenth century without it. Perhaps Mr. Phipps is referring to the papacy's temporary move to Avignon.

Excellent spelling of the word oligarhy in his suicide video.

Sorry about the mis-spellings, including this one, and the Obama reference involves the fact that he worked at a Baskin-Robbins in Honolulu, whereas I worked at one in Vancouver.

Sorry gfor not reponding to anything specific, but my first paid job was the same as your (yes you, Americans) president's had in high school, which makes me triply lame, insomuch as I haven't really accomplished anything in my life.
The job reminds me of quite a few things, including my Indo-Fijian gum-smacking…

He was quoted in a newspaper well into his nineties that with the knighthood announcement and his effigy in Madame Tussaud's wax museum, there was nothing more in life he wished to accomplish.

That Monty Python "splunge" sketch was one of their best, and a fairly deft if over the top satire of Hollywood committee thinking (a biopic of Scott of the Antarctic has the hero wearing a fur coat and smoking a cigar boxing a guy in a lion costume on a beach that is supposed to represent the Sahara desert.) And yes,…

A common dig against Wodehouse is that his characters are cartoonish and lack parallels inthe contemporary world. Still, there are eerie similarities between the delightfully dweebish Gussie Fink-Nottle and Crown Prince Nobuhito of Japan, who wrote a memoir of his Oxford days called The Thames and I, wrote a thesis on…

Pratt (karloff) started out selling life insurance in Kamloops, B.C. The Chamber of Commerce there should consider bringing up that fact when poaching cutting edge biotech projects from the Swiss.

Zorgo decapititate Judo-Christian god with powerful beak.

B/M naming suggestions:

I don't know who wrote the book Morvern Callar, but it would have to be a pretty amazing book to compare to the movie.

Is your mom one of those middle-aged women who make the mistake of saying "I love ducks" and then spend the rest of their lives being bombarded with duck sweatshirts, aprons and figurines? Maybe she was trying to tell you something.

It's lucky for Van Sant that he exercised at least some judgement and edited out the climactic fight scene on a catwalk in a mysteriously empty factory that seems to manufacture nothing but sparks and steam. Ebert hates those.

Barnacle Parp's Chainsaw Guide is good for a hoot. It's just like Zen and the Art of… but with fewer motorcycles and more chainsaws.

After reading skinny Legs and All I took a vow never to bother with any novel with a "Can O'Beans" as a protagonist. Second worst book I ever read in college after this "white people bad, red and yellow people good" piece of Can-Lit drivel called Disappearing Moon Cafe.

There actually is a book called How to Appear Intelligent. One tidbit of advice is to challenge someone to a game of chess, spend half an hour intensely scrutinizing your opponent's first move, then leaping up to shake the opponents hand and saying "congratulations".

Maybe his parents should pretend to move the family to next year's fashionable war zone so the kid can write the next Vlata's Story, or "How to Plead for your Life to Child Mercenaries."

I thought that all Americans viewed the mixing of Clamato and alcohol as an abomination. Or is it just the Bloody Caesar?