sweasel.com

I would have asked for a little brass politician.

They won’t ship to the US anyway, so I guess I’ve just saved myself £600!

(Yes, I know I could technically ship it to my son-in-law in Scarborough and have him ship it to me. Hush.)

😎

Annoying picture; it’s cut off at the bottom, so all one can see is the head. Or if that’s the whole instrument, it would be something truly weird. But is that actually just the head? Why would anyone bid on an instrument when one can’t see most of it?

The whole thing is on eBay, I think.

Ouch. 600 pounds. That’s a hella banjo. The back is beautiful. (keep scrolling down, Rich.)

Why does it have six of the little twirly things but only four strings? Or do I need new glasses again?

Janna there are two strings on the back. Quite difficult to play.

Mr. Dave, I don’t see what you’re referring to about “two strings on the back.” I’d really like to understand this nice thing. There are six tuning machines, there are four strings at the nut, a fifth string arises at the fifth fret, and there’s no sign of a sixth string anywhere, including at the head: there’s an empty tuning machine. The (admittedly dark) photo of the back of the neck shows nothing odd back there.

So, my theory right now is that this banjo is actually a musical Klein bottle, and the sixth string extends into the fourth spacial dimension, meaning that the full musical qualities of this thing can be heard and appreciated only by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings whose intersection with our three-dimensional universe take on the appearance of mice. Alas, all the mice collaborated in the illusion of jumping off that cliff in the banjo joke and are unlikely ever to return to explain things to us, assuming that our hypo-intelligence could fathom pan-dimensional banjos.

It was a bad joke. Sorry.
Yours is much better.

Ah, the golden rat/golden lawyer joke in a different dress; cool!

Also works with “little brass mimes.”

Uncle Al – According to the Guide, there are six tuners because banjos are strung with catgut: in this case from Schrödinger’s cat. You see you need six strings because at any given moment some of the strings might not be there. So – don’t panic…

Just saw this linked to on Drudge…You are SO ahead of the curve Stoaty! (Not that you’re living in poverty though…)
http://tinyurl.com/gmcqxmy

That Bill Gates is one smart fella. I just have one question, if you are living in extreme poverty, what do you feed the chickens, and how much does it cost? Maybe you can herd chickens the way you might herd goats. Have your children walk the chickens through the neighborhood to forage and keep the dogs from killing the chickens.

Of course, if you are living in extreme poverty, then probably your neighbors are also, so how do you keep your neighbors from taking your chickens, or the governement for that matter. If you have more chickens than you neighbor, seems like the government would take the chickens you don’t need and redistribute them to people who need them more than you do.

As I commented on an earlier post, it’s amazing how affluent Westerners are so keen on poor people doing subsistence farming and animal husbandry. I suppose it makes for picturesque visuals on NatGeo channel, but it sucks to have to do it. If you are keeping chooks as a quasi-hobby, then more power to you. If you’re doing it to supplement your calories, then you need to do a rethink.

“Actually there were many chickens that McGoo had not helped raise, but he was proudest of the ones on Weasel’s Blog. They are a sturdy and complex monument to McGoo’s powers of determination. McGoo never visited Stoaty to help until they were raised and fed; then he visited there often, so pleased was he with the large , fine, rambling feathered flock. It was a truly splendid flock, and McGoo throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at them on her website and reflected that none of the work that had gone into their care was his.”

-with apologies to J Heller –

@Steamboat – the thumb thingie only lets me do one but that post deserves more. Nice work!

Thanks, Uncle Al. I always loved that wacky passage from “Catch 22” – mainly because of its weirdly “inverted logic” that – somehow – still seems correct and appropriate. There’s a lot of that in the novel.

Deborah: Thanks. I thought I had looked over the entire slae page, and didn’t see any other pictures. It is a gorgeous thing, even the side and back of the case.