Someday your face will freeze like that!

What if everyone jumped off a cliff…Would you do it, too?

You’re going to put your eye out with that thing!

Don’t put that in your mouth…you don’t know where it’s been.

Did you flush?

I hope someday you have children just like you.

If I have to get out of this chair!

Don’t eat that, you’ll get worms!

A little soap and water never killed anyone!

You could have been dead in a ditch for all I knew!

Don’t use that tone with me!

You won’t be happy until you break that, will you!

You’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders!

You’d better wipe that smile off your face before I come and do it for you!

What part of the word no don’t you understand?

Why? Because I said so, that’s why?

Now come back downstairs and go back up again without stamping your feet!

I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate!

Go tidy your room-and be ruthless with it!

Your eyes are bigger than your belly!

It’ll end in tears!

Allison Vale and Alison Rattle, Mothers’ Wit.

THIRTEEN AT TABLE.

In many cultures the presence of thirteen at a dinner table is considered unlucky. In part this is due to the general superstitions which surrounded the number, yet it is clear that dining with thirteen is a special concern. The French used to hire an additional dinner (or Quartorzienne) to make up the fourteenth place. At the Savoy Hotel, London, a wooden cat named Kaspar (carved by Basil Ionides, 1926) is set a place at table when a party of 13 sits down to eat. The most obvious source of these concerns must be the Last Supper when Jesus broke bread with his Apostles the night before his death. in ancient Norse mythology thirteen was considered unlucky after the events at a banquet in Valhalla where Baldur was slain after Loki had intruded, thus becoming the thirteenth diner.

Ben Schott, Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany.

Supuesta última fotografía de James Dean días antes de su muerte. La que se ríe tanto es Saritísima.

«Llevo fumando puros toda mi vida. Y de hombre no tengo nada, ni una uña. Maricona sí, pero hombre no. Lo que ocurre es que tengo carácter y una forma de ser… muy amplia».

«Después de mis estrenos, me iba a la Dirección General de Seguridad a sacar de allí a todos los gays que habían sido detenidos por ir vestidos y peinados como yo. Me daba pena que fueran a la cárcel por querer ser yo».

The British Beehive.

But the problem was obvious. In the middle of the nineteenth century, only married students at the Royal Academy were allowed to draw from the female nude. And it was alleged, not entirely plausibly, that the reason John Ruskin, the century’s greatest artistic authority, had been unable to consummate his marriage to Effie Gray was his weeding-night discovery that- unlike classical models- his new wife had pubic hair. (The present theory is that it may have been that Ruskin was ignorant of, and disgusted by, menstruation. Pubic hair is, of course, a much better story for making the point about the malign influence of classical art.)

Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians.

Por cierto, ¿qué le pasa al hombre del vídeo? Echa espumarajos por la boca. No conozco la polémica que desató tan vehemente comportamiento aunque sí la buena educación.

FAMILIA REAL DE TAVOLARA.

GIUSEPPE BARTOLEONI (1780?-1848?), King of Tavolara.

One day in 1833, Carlo Alberto (1798-1848), King of Sardinia, instructed the captain of his ship to leave him on the island of Tavolara-located off the coast of Sardinia- for a few hours of solitary hunting. After a short time, the king was approached by a huge man more than 7 ft tall. The man was the sole inhabitant of the island, and the king was so impressed with his harmonious lifestyle that he declared him King of Tavolara. The hermit identified himself as Giuseppe Bartoleoni, a shepherd from Maddalena- an island north of Sardinia. Carlo Alberto found this hard to believe. Most people of the time- especially peasants- were illiterate, but Giuseppe was fluent in several languages and extremely well-educated. He was also the head of two families; one wife and children lived on another island while a second wife and children lived on yet a third island. He sent for both to live with him in his new kingdom and, because he was sovereign, the Italian government failed in its attempt to prosecute him for bigamy. Paolo, his eldest son, was named his successor upon his father’s death in the late 1840s. When Paolo died 50 years later, the inhabitants of Tavolara proclaimed a republic.

The Book of Lists.