Queen's Day Car Crash Raises Many Questions, Offers Few Answers

Today's Koninginnedag (or Queen's Day) celebrations in Holland were marred by an apparent assassination attempt aimed at Queen Beatrix and other members of the Dutch Royal Family; as their open-topped bus drove slowly past adoring crowds near the Het Loo palace in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn a black late-model Suzuki Swift plowed through several barriers and a crowd of revellers, narrowly missing the royal party and crashing into a monument instead. The video above clearly shows Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Máxima standing and expressing shock following the collision; the Crown Prince's brother Prince Johan-Friso is also seen looking crestfallen.

Police acted swiftly and apprehended the assailant, a 38 year-old Dutch national named Karst Tates who was said to be a security guard distraught over losing his job and facing eviction; precisely how he hoped to remedy his situation by committing such a heinous act remains between him and his conscience. All told five people died and twelve were injured in the attack; in addition to murder and attempted murder charges, Tates is being charged under Article 108, a little-used statute meant to punish those targeting the Dutch royals. Tates is not known to Dutch police, and there's no indication his action was connected to any terrorist group.

Remaining Koninginnedag celebrations were cancelled, depriving the Dutch of their annual display of togetherness; Her Majesty addressed the nation via videotape later in the day, expressing shock at the attack and condolence for the victims and their families.

On this formerly joyous occasion turned sombre by a crime which nevertheless could have been much worse, the Pop Culture Institute can only offer the heartfelt wish: Leef lang de Koningin...
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The Barington Encounter: Part Twenty-Two

After an inexcusable lapse of two whole weeks, it seems The Barington Encounter is back on track... Of course, as with Virgin trains or the career of Jonathan Ross, there's no telling what Fate might befall the author of the story as he attempts to attempt telling the story of the story even further. See? I barely survived this caption! Oh, the suspense... ~ MSM

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CHAPTER 1.5

Any chance Barington might once have had at remaining a very normal town in Sussex was now about to be well and truly shot to shit...

Oriononians had been colonising the dankest gardens from Wales to Wellington for centuries and their colonists had managed in all that time to make no discernable difference to the hearty character of the people found therein; Centauris had been flocking to Glasgow for even longer - and eaten many a deep-fried orphan as well along the way - without so much as raising an eyebrow. Yet after just one day in England five Andromedans who'd never left their home world even once until recently had managed to screw the place up so completely that many of her former enemies had been rendered tragically supine by the effort of their laughter...

In Dublin, especially, the morning’s news was delivered with a decided slur which by midday was a very sloppy sing-along and by tea-time an abortive brawl between the news presenter and the meteorologist brought to you live from the RTE car park... All of which was positively idyllic compared to the reaction in France, which you wouldn’t have thought would have so damn many highly flammable suburbs left.

Of course, the British media was too busy that day chasing Princesses of one class or another into early graves, then chasing their coffins even more zealously, to notice that some strange happenings had begun beginning in Sussex...

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Here again is where we get ahead of ourselves.

Tempting as it might be to jump ahead to all the pageantry and that of Gary Carlisle’s funeral it would all take time to plan, during which period many hilarious events best described with a truly baroque arrangement of adverbs will occur; it seems such a waste to let them go undescribed.

Anyway, such logistics as required of an authentic Andromedan royal burial normally would have come most easily to just one person on the Bishop’s staff, which anyway was a staff of one, other than himself; alas, it was the same person who was just then being loaded into the back of an ambulance before making its slow, gravelly way down the drive followed closely by the Bishop’s Jaguar on its way to hospital in Brighton. Fortunately for Miss Reed her constitution was one of the most durable in all of Europe - even more so than Switzerland - and so it would take more than a close call with the Andromedan national anthem to keep her down, even if witnessing it up close meant she'd been temporarily unable to keep the contents of her lunch down.

In the opposite direction went Felicia Fripp and Victor Vickers, off to plan some scheme or scheme some plan or other from the relative comfort of her kitchen table while the aliens went more or less in the same direction - albeit on foot - having first assisted the driver of the hearse with the by now truly fragrant corpse of Gary Carlisle. A third direction, north, saw the diminishing figures of Trudy Carlisle and Frederick Toady, heads bent together to some unknown (or indeed heretofore un-thought of) aim.

So while following them all seems like the likely thing to do, which of them to follow first...

[CONTINUE]

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Friday Watchlist - April 3rd

Tom Waits - Putnam County
Tom Jones - Situation
Marilyn Manson - The Beautiful People
UTFO - The Roof Is On Fire
Eva Cassidy - Fly Me To The Moon
Kool and the Gang - Get Down On It
Nine Inch Nails - Closer (Fuck You Like An Animal)
Bettye Lavette - Let Me Down Easy
Madonna - Nothing Really Matters
Eminem - Without Me
Ron Hynes - St. John's Waltz
L7 - Suzy Is A Headbanger
Michelle Shocked - Anchorage
The Magnetic Fields - The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side
Cyndi Lauper - She Bop
Gary Numan - Cars
Deee-Lite - Runaway
Keb' Mo' - Momma, Where's My Daddy
Indigo Girls - Power Of Two
Donovan - Catch The Wind
The Guess Who - Laughing
Holly Cole Trio - Downtown
Pat Benatar - We Live For Love
The Rolling Stones - Waiting For A Friend
Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
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Obama Meets The Queen

Never mind that the greed of bankers has reduced the world's economy to a colossal Take-a-Penny tray, or that the entire world is gradually being sucked down the drain (at least according to cable news outlets); the most pressing issue in the world today is how American First Lady Michelle Obama touched - I mean, actually put her hands on! - the Queen.

Fortunately the leaders of the world's twenty biggest economies had already converged on London for the G-20 Summit, so they were able to put aside discussion of a global depression, various genocides both ongoing and impending, and how 6 billion of us should all go about committing suicide since it's pretty much over to tackle this vital issue. With any luck my eyes should stop rolling in about a week or so...
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