"So far, the course charted by Mr. Cameron and his deputy prime minister, Mr. Clegg, remains largely visionary...The main hallmark of the coalition’s program is a plan to halve the annual budget deficit of $235 billion within five years, and to achieve that by across-the-board cuts in almost all government ministries. All the departments involved have been told to prepare a plan for cuts as high as 40 percent."

[new york times]

Solution:

"Jim Hacker is meeting with his department's expenditure committee. They cannot find any ways of cutting expenditures, except for overseas students that will start paying full tuition. After the meeting is over Bernard Woolley reminds the Minister that he still needs to approve the department's honours recommendations. Jim Hacker asks in despair how he can make civil servants want economies as much as they want honours. Then Bernard proposes only to award the honours to those civil servants that have cut their budgets by 5%."

[yes, minister episode guide]

Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010)

The Fugs - Nothing

As each of Pwyll's men entered, he struck the bag a blow and asked, 'What's in here?'

'A badger,' the others said.

This is how they played: each one would strike the bag a blow either with his foot or with a stick; and that is how they played with the bag. Each one as he entered would ask, 'So what game are you playing?' 'Badger in the Bag', the others would say. And that was the first time that Badger in the Bag was played.

The translator Sioned Davies's footnote doesn't elaborate too much on the rules, explaining it only as "a game which involves tying a man in a bag or sack, then beating and kicking him."

I think we've found the perfect winter sport to play when my summer buck buck league is in its offseason.

We performed an experiment to figure out the solution to this age-old question at my cookout this Fourth of July. The results are below.

Octodogged first and then cooked:

Cooked first and then octodogged:

So, in conclusion, it's simply a matter of personal preference.

--

"Upstairs, DJ's already at the simmer
Phoning the company. He gets one pair
Of words wrong—means to say "kalorifér"
(Furnace) but out comes "kalokéri" (summer):
Our summer doesn't work, he keeps complaining
While, outside, cats and dogs just keep on raining."

- James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover

(Yeah, the first one's not really a couplet. So sue me!)

[new york times]

The next morning we found a note taped to our door, obviously typed in Microsoft Notepad. I've been looking to find the original copy to scan with no luck, but fortunately I had the foresight to type it up exactly as it appeared on paper, which is below. We left him a message explaining that we were sorry but weren't responsible for whatever was keeping him up at night. He showed up at our door the next morning in his pajamas, with bloodshot eyes, accompanied by an interpreter who spoke only slightly more English. We offered our hypothesis that it was the big radiator things in the roof of the garage directly beneath his apartment, but he scowled and dismissed the idea. He also clearly wanted to enter our apartment to take a look around, for "machinary" I suppose, but we didn't give him the opportunity, and we didn't hear from him again.

The note:

Untitled
From: ### W 31ST st apt:2H owner
To: ### W 31ST st apt:3H

My friend:
We are the people that living under your condo, since you guys moved in, we
have start
hearing a lot of rambling noise that are very disturbing and annoying every night.
We can't stand
this noises because it's getting louder and way more often then it's used to be.
Since we need to
get up and work every day, we require a lot of sleep time. Beside, acording to the
floor plan of this
condorium, the room that coming the noise should be a big bedroom, the noises is
like a
machinary sound. I do not care what you guys are doing up there, but this noise MUST
BE STOP,
if this issue still occuring, then we have no choice but to call the police and let
them enforce the
rule. If you need to talk to us, please contact my cell phone number: 312-###-####.
My name
is Ben.

Thank you.