Hat tip to Ratak Monodosico.

Simon Winchester remembers, hilariously, his first major professional mistake.

The victim of the first big mistake I ever made was a gentleman to whom I had never been properly introduced (and whose name I still do not know) but who was possessed of three singular qualities: he was alone in a room with me, he was without his trousers, and he was very, very dead.

Some context might be useful. It was the winter of 1962. I was eighteen years old and had taken a year off before going up to Oxford University. I also had a girlfriend far away in Montreal, and in the superheated enthusiasm of my puppy love, I had promised to visit her. The fact that I then lived in London and she three thousand miles away meant that fare money had to be amassed: I had to get a job, and one that paid well enough to allow me to get away to Canada as quickly as possible.

Hat tip to Fred Lapides.

Via This Isn’t Happiness.

Julie Andrews demonstrated her celebrated sense of humor at an appearance at Radio City Music Hall by singing a very special age-appropriate version of “My Favorite Things.”

Three students —- Tobia Haase, Jan Mettler, and Lydia Lohse– at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg, Germany — shot a commercial, disavowed by Daimler Benz, exploring the idea of dramatically advancing Mercedes safety technology.

Parody version of Bernardino Luini, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, first half 16th century, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

From Vinerva.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.

As the New York Post reports:

“It was his time to go.”

The Onion:

KANSAS CITY, MO
Unbeknownst to one another, every single member of the office staff at Kelleher Advertising Associates is planning to carry out a workplace shooting spree next Monday, reporters learned this week.

According to their independently formulated yet nearly identical plans, the company’s 38 employees will arrive at the office early on Jan. 14, each carrying a duffel bag containing an assault rifle, handguns, and several hundred rounds of ammunition. At precisely 9 a.m., as indicated in each of their individual plots, every member of the advertising agency’s staff will simultaneously produce their weapons and open fire on one another.

“No one is going to walk out of the office alive on Monday,” 30-year-old copywriter Benjamin Cowan told reporters privately, completely unaware that every person he works with on a daily basis was equally prepared to carve a similar path of carnage through the office at the exact same date and time.

Read the whole thing.