Thought For The Day No. 19 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

Psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

"If one word is worth a coin, then silence is worth two. If silence sits well with those who are clever, then it should sit even better with those who are stupid."

The Talmud.


The clarion call to all of us, all over the world, who like the sound of our own voices just a wee bit too much (including most of the PMC contributors!)

Deadlines - Seth's Blog

Great post from my older brother concerning deadlines, why they work, what happens when they don't work, what effect they have on people...could be good reading for some of the little-seen contributors to the PMC, naming no names but thought at this point I'd mention the deadline-dodging Benedict Francis-Kentigern for good measure..

World Cup of All Ages

With the World Cup fast approaching, even the football mania exclusion zone that is the PMC is, if not jumping on the bandwagon (whatever a bandwagon is) then at least coughing up some of the dust thrown out behind it.

Yes, we've really sat down and thought about this for literally minutes, and the best we can come up with is this 'What if..?' scenario, using the group charts..

.so, 'what if' all the participating countries didn't have their modern names, but rather names that they went under in an earlier incarnation? For example, Estonia and Russia, neither of which qualified, would be known as 'Livonia' and 'Novgorod' respectively.

Naturally some countries are newer than others, we have done the best we can...

So:

Group A
-Cape Colony.
-Aztec Kingdom of Tenochtitlan.
-Montevideo.
-Gaul.

Group B
-Viceroyalty of the River Plate.
-Lagos.
-Southern Goryeo.
-City States of Sparta, Athens, Ephesus, Lydia, Corinth and all of Ellas.

Group C
-Albion.
-The Thirteen Colonies.
-Numidia.
-Illyria.

Group D
-The Holy Roman Empire.
-New Holland.
-Sclavinias.
-Gold Coast.

Group E
-Friesland.
-Jutland.
-The Kamakura Shogunate.
-The Bornu Empire.

Group F
-The Kingdom of Naples, Duchy of Milan, Republics of Venice,
Florence, Siena and Genoa, the Papal States and the Kingdom of Sicily.
-Asuncion.
-Aotearoa.
-Great Moravia.


Group G
-Cabralia.
- Northern Goryeo.
-French West Africa.
-Lusitania.


Group H
- Kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre.
- Helvetia.
-Copan and Cho'rti.
-Aconcagua.


..that was hard work; I think next time I'll confine it to the European Championships...

60 Years Of The PMC - Launch Of 'Consider This, This Morning'

First posted 26th March 1969, on a trial basis (the editor thought it wouldn't last and just got a part-time Rabbi in to compile the thoughts)...

"Those who criticize me behind my back are afraid of me; those who praise me to my face hate me"

Chinese proverb

60 Years Of The PMC - Definitely The End Of This Blog

First published 22 August 1968

Out of solidarity to all our brothers and sisters in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Mexico, Brazil, France, the USA and the Isle of Sheppey, we are ceremonially going to commit self-immolation in front of the PMC offices at 18.00 hours today! Vive Le (or is it 'La'?) Revolution!....


Postscript: due to the Thursday afternoon being particularly wet, and a general lack of intention to follow through the somewhat rash assertions that PMC staff had (drunkenly) made, in fact the only form of immolation happened when various staff members nicked out for one of their 20 minute-ly cigarette breaks..

Thought For The Day No. 18 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

..religious leader, psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste.. . 

"A person who loves himself has little competition".


George C. Lichtenberg

60 Years Of The PMC - The PMC Unilaterally Declares Independence

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible.

To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo,  to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s) 

First published on 11 November 1965

"The Puumaja Crew would like to announce that it has unilaterally declared independence from the blogspot organisation, as they do things that we don't like. We are reverting to our original name, Wooden Houseshire,  and, since we feel beset by enemy blogs on all sides, expect blogspot to come in and save us when the going gets tough anyway.

We simply can't bear the idea of our civilized and productive blog being brought down by the primitive peoples in our midst until such time as they have learnt to blog properly. We are particularly disappointed that, despite all the aid to our kith and kin at blogspot, they don't seem to understand this and whilst we have some kind of rose-tinted view of what their organisation stands for and, in the final analysis are always likely ultimately to fall in line, this is not going to happen before we've enjoyed our fair share of mischief-making".


Ian 'The Leopard' Smith

Understated Farewells

At this time of year with ESL groups ending, people leaving the country and so on, it would be easy to not make any effort at all with the valedictory turns.

The only problem with that is you may end up doing something really understated and level-headed, like this offering from Doris, Leroy, Dr Zhirovsky and the gang. They might as well not have bothered!

Hopefully this salutary reminder will help all of us not to duck out of our responsibilities and end up with something so very desultory, lazy and insulting!