sweasel.com

If a Bondo jockey gets to be an “auto body technician,” then I get to be a Hypertextual Communication Facilitator.

That’s good. It sounds like your house is like mine – has to have just the right buyer. (The House of Escher has some really bizarre angles and a wacky roof, so most people wouldn’t even give it a first look, much less a second. I fell in love almost on sight…)

Far better to get an ass-reamin’ from someone you like than your worst enemy.

Is that in Proverbs? It should be.

It’s not as eccentric as the first house I tried to buy. I really liked it, but I’m delighted I’m not trying to sell THAT one in this market. Whoo!

It was stucco (unusual in this area) with a Dutch roof and big wooden columns in the living room. The bathroom was done in lovely ceramic tile with a nice pedestal sink — all in vivid purple and green. It was a masterpiece of horror and delight.

It was sold from under me in a bid sufficiently underhanded that I filed a complaint.

“Sure I’m getting reamed — but at least I get a nice, respectful young man for the job.”

The things we learn about you…

😉

hey, that sounds like my house! It was, um, more *crafted* than designed shortly after the Depression so anyone working on it (including me) spends a lot of time scratching their head going “why did they do it that way?” And I really did have a plumber (senior) call over the plumber (journeyman) to “look at this, they stopped doing that thirty years ago and you’ll never see it again”. I should do tours for historically-minded plumbers. And electricians.

On the plus side, remodeling it is like archeology. You never know what you will uncover. So far I have found a 1950’s Seattle Times, two mugs (in the wall), several varieties of old wallpaper, the original leaded glass kitchen cabinet doors, petrified wood, and a jig for making an aircraft tail rudder.

On moving into our last house (one which had, in the realtor’s words, “charisma”) we found wheel rims, a couch cushion, and an old iron lamp post in one of the crawlspaces.

It was like redneck Narnia.

I guess you’re right, Stoaty; being butt-burgled is too personal to leave to someone you don’t like.

“…and a jig for making an aircraft tail rudder.”

Huh? bcr – I can grasp all the rest, but that is over the edge…

Oh, my…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jEOAh9RDIfI

Here’s hoping this isn’t why you are fleeing to the UK…? 😉

Weas, forgive me, but hot tea just shot out my nose while watching Weasel Stomping Day.

Thanks Julia!

I’ll tell you later, Julia — I can’t see YouTube from work 😉

I hate to think what we’d find under Badger House (though it has been remodeled many times). There is a VERY spooky tradition of folk magic in England that involves burying witch bottles and mummified cats and shit. I wrote about it here a long time ago.

Bad news: it looks like shit because it’s on the old WordPress site and I stopped paying my bills there and lost the formatting. Good news: that site I talk about in the firt paragraph being dead is now live.

Really, really interesting, spooky stuff.

Ohhhhh…Weasel Stomping Day! That vile calumny! As you might imagine, I’ve had that link sent to me by many a cruel minion 😉

JuliaM – now that tune is running through my head and won’t go away. Curse you – and your little dog too! Bwa Haaa haaa! 🙂

[…] that, you could use some humor.  Thanks to JuliaM (Ambush Predator), who posted this link over at Weasel’s (sorry Weas)… Weasel Stomping […]

Humor, he calls it!

<working out the lyrics to Lemur Stomping Day>

Weasel Stomping Day…hmmm…sounds vaguely familiar…

LK, if that isn’t in Proverbs it should at least be on a t-shirt.

“JuliaM – now that tune is running through my head and won’t go away. “

All ‘Wierd Al’s’ stuff is infuriatingly catchy… 🙂

McGoo–and it isn’t like the jigs for manufacturing the *rest* of the plane were found, either. The only reason I know what it was is I had a garage sale (it was labled “Mysterious Object, 75 cents”) and a roving aeronautical engineer stopped by. He didn’t buy it, but he did tell me what it was. I really, really want to know how it got in my house but the previous owners are no longer with us.

White and Nerdy is an especial favorite, for those of you NOT behind a firewall.

British postcodes go letter-letter-number number-letter-letter. Uncle B’s old postal code had the letters LH in it. And because he uses that military alphabet-speak thing when he reads his address aloud (what the hell is that called. Anyone?), he always said that part as “Lima Hotel.” But given his preposterous accent, I always thought he was saying “Lemur Hotel.”

A Badger in a Lemur Hotel cries out to be set to music. Can you imagine what a lemur hotel would look like? Lots of wavey tails.

Lemur Hotel? Oooh. Like it. Wavey tails, lots of thousand-yard-stares, and screeching.

No Foosa allowed.

Man, I just got a google hit “recipe lemur”. I hope they were actively searching for me and not how to prepare one.

Superstitions:

If you put horse skulls under the floor of a house they improve the tone of a piano that was above them.

A bent horseshoe nail is frequently used as a good luck talisman.

Hey! I now know a farrier fairly well – he owns a backhoe and did some excavating & crap-burial work for me. I bet he could get me a shitload of bent horseshoe nails! Hell, I bet he’d bend up brand new ones for me if I asked.

I could send Weaz a buttload of ’em – just to smooth the house sale and relocation effort, y’know.

(later) I just called him: there are about 32 nails per horse and he does 8-10 horses a day. That’s a pile of bent nails.

“Chimchimmery chim chim cheroot…good luck will rub off, when I give nails to you!”

“…because he uses that military alphabet-speak thing when he reads his address aloud (what the hell is that called. Anyone?)..”

The phonetic alphabet, you mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

I always got stuck on ‘U’ and resorted to ‘umbrella’, which had the guys in stitches… 🙁

Stoatie, I just introduced my coworkers to White and Nerdy last evening. :-). I was also going to play Amish Paradise, but the guy next to me is Minonite, and doesn’t like it. LOL……

The Stewie Griffin version of The Discovery Channel song is always entertaining….

Entirely OT: does anyone remember a website where you can listen to recordings of spy radio transmissions? They were coded transmissions that still bounce around, and they were pretty damn creepy sounding.

Edit: I found a link to a Salon article about the transmissions, so, thanks anyway.
🙂

http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/09/16/numbers/

Ya know – I finally read the post up there. I mean, I really read it.

Weaz – does that Delta faucet ever give you any problems? Reason I ask is that I’ve had several instances (three, I think) of owning a home with Price Phister (or however you spell it) faucets in it. You know – the phaucet with the phucked up name. Every friggin’ one of ’em misbehaved in one way or another. Typically though, they leak around the handle or knob when turned off. Phricey phieces of shit.

I bet that faucet has NEVER given you any issues.

Second: I guess I could look this up, but was the Dodge Dart the car with the push-button transmission in it? The buttons were high up on the dash on the left, I believe.

My neighbor when I was a kid had one (push-button etc) and even then I thought it was asinine.

Welcome to Saudi Britain.

de.youtube.com/watch?v=CB9xkbb83gM

I do take offense at the part where he compares the Saudis as abusive to women as the Catholic church is abusive to children. The abuse of kids was done by an exceedingly small number of perverts, is not part of the Catholic doctrine, and is being dealt with. The abuse of women and children under sharia law, muslim nations, clerics, etc…is systemic, part of their doctrine, and ongoing.

Those spy radio things are creepy as hell, Jill. I occasionally ran across numbers stations when I first bought a shortwave receiver. I had no idea what they were, but they freaked me out. Thanks for the link.

Oh, you know what else is freaky? Electronic voice phenomena. I just grabbed the first link I came to — I forget the name of the guy who got into EVP first. He was a recording engineer (recording bird calls in the woods, I think) and these spooky voices kept turning up on his recordings.

I got a little leakage, McGoo. Who doesn’t these days? It probably just needs a washer or a tighten or something, but I daren’t touch it. I did show the kid the one sweet spot where it hardly drips at all.

It looks like they still sell my model! At an MSRP of $143.90, I bet the plating is not a patch what it once was. I asked the kid if he was going to have it re-chromed (being as he’s in the autobody biz and all) and he said for a thing that size it would run $300.

Why are people and governments putting up with this horse shit?

{God, I love the firefox spellchecker. It corrected horseshit to two words! My Word for Windows ignores profanities with naive dignity}

Is it because “they” (the Muslims) have the oil?
Is it because “they” threaten, attack, injure, and often kill anyone who speaks out against this crap?
Is it all part of a nefarious plan by the (*pick your favorite group to hate*) to weaken Democracy/the US/the West as a precursor to conquest by radical Islam?

Well, we’re gonna have to kick their asses eventually. Why not now? C’mon, it’ll be fun. Let’s make some more Trinitite. Made from real radical Muslims! None has been made in decades.

Whoa, Stoaty. They still sell that model? Neat. As you say, the plating won’t be worth the tiniest pinch of racoon shit now.

Wise of you to not touch it. I wouldn’t. If it ain’t (too badly) broke, don’t fix it.

Every effing Pr-Ph item in this house leaks. I hate messing with plumbing, too, so they’re gonna have to wait to be replaced.

This is funny:

http://www.theospark.net/2008/10/sweet-georgia-brown-with-tractor-on.html#links

Heheh. Speaking of horseshit, I’ve been banging around the web listening to EVP samples. Most of them are clearly just random noise and signal farts being up-mic’ed, reveresed and WAY over-interpreted. Lots of them have a very distinctly SoundBlaster-y quality without being actual SoundBlaster recordings.

I wish I could find some of the genuinely spooky ones I’ve heard in the past.

McGoo, what kind of condition is this house in? I know the one you turned down was falling to bits, but this is a different one, isn’t it?

Nice, McGoo. My dad played vacuum cleaner with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra once. Some damn modern symphony thing that featured household appliances.

Oh, this house is quite nice. it’s just the faucets all leak.

That last one was being considered only because it had 40 acres. Or was it 20? I don’t remember. I was going to tear the house down to the bare 2×4 framing and rebuild and add on. Then I found out it didn’t even have a foundation.

Thank god i found this one. Less acreage, but a very nice house.

I liked that tractor drummer. Good steady beat. You must be home now.

PnB – I just read that youtube deleted the saudi britain thing. Naturally.

…and it’s obviously wrong, since I just played the thing again.

I heard that it was taken down, but someone reposted it.

I love art deco and I love the boys that love art deco.

The low spark of art deco boys…

Yeah, EVP is pretty creepy, when you can find ones that aren’t over-interpreted, or make some of your own. I tend to drift towards creepy things like EVP or numbers stations. Not sure why…just always have.

Almost but not quite totally off-topic. Or is it?

Who is this Art Deco fella, why does PJM love him, and why does she love (apparently bi) fellas that love him?

Just a-kiddin’ PJ Momma… Seriously, what’s not to love about Art Deco? Victorian and Deco – love ’em both. Even better if you can fuse ’em. Still trying to work through an idea that shoves a victorian train into an art deco setting.

Actually, I’m waiting for someone to fuse H.R. Giger with Hasbro’s Weebles. There’s fusion for you.

In art school, my best friend and I spray-painted “Who is art that he should have a sake?” on the wall outside our dormitory in screaming yellow foot-high letters.

I hate vandalism. Wouldn’t you know the only act of vandalism in my life would be propagating an Oscar Wilde quotation?

LemurKing, you mean like the Gare’ Montparnasse “incident”?

(O please Akismet, let this URL pass unmolested …)
http://people.csail.mit.edu/sparis/siggraph06_gallery/model/train.png

OMG! The French even do elegant, classy looking train wrecks!

You can almost see that engine, nonchalantly whispering ” ‘allo, cherie…” as it leans up the wall of the station.