ANIMAL » England

Sex Pistols “Graffiti” Is National Heritage Now

Marina Galperina — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:00:18 +0000

It’s not just Banksy that the British academia has a sudden hard-on for — archeologists are now arguing to preserve the primitive “graffiti” scrawlings of the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, allegedly depicting the band and manager Malcolm McLaren on their ex-flat’s walls.

Dr John Schofield, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York thinks these “artifacts” deserve to be heralded as “a direct and powerful representation of a radical and dramatic movement of rebellion” and on par in significance with Paleolithic cave art. Ha! That is not to say that even amateurish vandalism by music history relevant figures isn’t worthy of preservation, to a reasonable degree, even though the academic behind this particular campaign is trying so hard to make archeology hip again in associating it with words like punk and graffiti, but… They still look like a bunch of drunk asshole’s lazy doodles. A talking bullocks-’n'-taint, anyone?

Elizabethan “Graffiti” Unearthed in Olde Church

Bucky Turco — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:16:40 +0000

An etched glass panel possibly dating date back to the 1500s was found in a very old church in the English countryside. The eloquent scratchitti is believed to reference Shakespeare’s Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music reports the East Anglian Daily Times. The inscriptions are very much like lines from the sonnet: “Were kisses all the joys in bed, One woman would another wed.” The words were hidden under centuries of dirt and recently discovered when the group established to preserve the ancient structure started cleaning the windows.

Parting Shot: Freeze

Will Sherman — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:15:29 +0000

A model village in England gets hosed down with artificial snow in preparation for tourists, who will pay extra to visit this new “Winter Wonderland.” |WSJ|

Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Kite Surfers Jump Pier, Fall Short of Darwin Award

Will Sherman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:00:48 +0000

Kite surfers in Southeast England took advantage of some windy weather to jump a pier, soaring 100 feet on gusts reaching 40 mph. Apparently, Jake Scrace and Lewis Crathern had been waiting three years to pull off the stunt. And unlike those BMX riders bombing a Rotterdam building, this appears to be legit. Go watch humans fly. |Daily Mail|

England’s CCTV Madness In Overdrive

Bucky Turco — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:22:32 +0000

Adding to the already offensive onslaught of Orwellian surveillance, the BBC is reporting that a national network of license plate reading cameras will soon be in place across England. And like the United States, police forces have placed innocent old anti-war activists on a “hotlist,” one of whom was pulled over by an “anti-terror unit” while motoring through London and presumably munching on granola. |BBC|