sweasel.com

It’s a source of endless amusement. You will probably want to check if Spock has a beard in their Star Trek reruns, with the famous episode where he ends up in a dimension where SPOCK IS CLEANSHAVEN. I thought I was all prepared having read countless Dorothy Sayer/Agatha Christie/Georgette Heyer/Nesbit books, but no. I visited with a friend (born in England, but lived in America most of his life.) We were recouperating in his relative’s kitchen after the harrowing plane trip, when said relative asked if we “would like a few rounds.” Utter mutual confusion. No sane person would have offered us alcohol in the state we were in. Turns out “rounds” can also mean “slices of bread.” Who knew?

steve_in_hb once told a story about an American/British couple he knew. They were getting ready to go out with some of the British guy’s friends, and the American girl emerged from the bedroom wearing a short skirt. She said, “I didn’t feel like wearing pants. Is this ok?” The British guy said angrily, “You damn well WILL wear pants! Get back in there and put some pants on!” The American girl said, “Oh-kay…” and went back into the bedroom. When she came out a few minutes later wearing slacks, the British guy asked, confused, “Why did you change?”

Who was it who used to say that America and England are two nations divided by a common language?

I almost choked in a pub overhearing a bloke tell a lovely young Cambridge coed that he would, “knock her up” sometime. I’d only been in Suffolk for a week at that point. The geezer sitting next to me saw my reaction and translated. . . with a twinkle in his eye.

As the small steamship slowly thumps up the Thames; an intrepid weasel peers through the fog… What will she find in this Heart of Darkness?

She has heard horrific stories of strange currency, odd eating habits, and unsavory characters. Will she go native?

🙂

Joseph Conrad reference for the win.

I, for one, would love to have months and months of trying-to-adjust posts; I plan to be an expat for at least a little while some day, and this is a nice, vicarious preview. And I know exactly what you mean about it being alllllmost the same, but just different enough to give you the heaving heebies: I got that on a school trip to Toronto once, and we share a border with those guys. I think it was going to the “washroom” and having extra compartments in the cash register drawers that made the biggest impression. Also, there were geese *everywhere*. Canada geese in … Canada. Go figure.

“You can rub Oil of Ulay onto your face.”

Not any more, sadly. The name was standardised in 1999. It’s ALL ‘Oil of Olay’ over here now. 🙁

My experience entering Perth (in OZ) was equally weird — get of the plane. It’s like San Diego. First thing I see outside the airport is franchise row. You know, Pizza Hut. Kfc. McD. But my bro driving the car is going to kill us — he’s on the wrong side of the road and the cars keep coming at me. Eek.

“…he’s on the wrong side of the road and the cars keep coming at me.”

Heh. Luckily, trips to the Continent had conditioned me to driving on ‘the wrong side of the road’, so when I took a fly/drive holiday to Texas, it wasn’t so much of a shock.

Of course, due to the overwhelming US-centric TV/film culture, a lot of things aren’t so unfamiliar as they might be (except the three-ring binder info, which is not something you are likely to notice as a moviegoer OR as a tourist). However, a lot of things also aren’t as you expect them to be.

My first holiday to New York with my best friend was….an experience. After a lesson in how to hail a yellow cab from our tour guide (who rightly surmised these two young English girls had zero chance of getting anywhere by standing on the pavement, raising one hand rather timidly and saying ‘Umm, taxi? If you’d be so kind?’), we hailed our first US cab! Not, however, with an earsplitting whistle and a bellow of ‘YO!!’, as our tour guide had shown us, but certainly a little more forcefully than we were used to in London.

What would we get, we wondered, as the cab pulled in? A world-weary Woody Allen-esque chap, driving cabs to finance his Broadway playwriting career? Someone more like Max, the guy in ‘Hart to Hart’?

We got a Sikh. Who’d emigrated from Birmingham in the last few months. Not the one in Alabama, either…

Yeah, get with the times Weas, it’s Oil of Olay now. How do I know? Well, you don’t think my hands are this soft naturally do you?

It’s been a while since I was in the weird, headachy world of academia, but I wasn’t aware of the three-ring binder thing. If I had to guess, I’d say it was an EU Diktat, uh, I mean Directive, uh, I mean Helpful Suggestion. Most things are these days.

“trivial, pointless shite on which I thrive”

Thanks for all the shite. At least a few minutes of every day can be spent NOT thinking about my 101K or terrorists or any number of unpleasant things. And make sure to keep us informed on the food situation there, as well as the medical care.

A GIANT FUCKING SPIDER JUST LEAPT OUT OF MY SHOE!!!

Oh.

Ohohoh.

My one naturally girlie phobia, and this house has to be STUFFED with spiders. Mostly thin, pitiful things that leave webs all over the dishes, but this bad boy was a weasel-devouring CARNIVORE. And he wasn’t happy.

Weasel, I *still* pound my shoes on the ground once or twice before putting them on, thanks to living in Flordida for not quite three years…Flordida, where the spiders are as big as a small kitten…and the scorpions swarm every May and September. I HATED IT.

“A GIANT FUCKING SPIDER JUST LEAPT OUT OF MY SHOE!!! “

I hope it was one of the native spiders, and not a hitchhiker from the States.

Because I’d hate to think about the reams of paperwork that would create for you at DEFRA… 🙂

See, this is why I like Indiana: No spiders bigger than, say, two inches diameter (including legs) tops. Didn’t know they had tarantulas in England, though … 🙂

We get quite big ‘house spiders’ – usually one of the Tegenaria species; if you live anywhere in the southeast of England – not just near Hampton Court – the startling ‘Cardinal Wolsey spider’ (Tegenaria parietina) can make an appearance. There’s a huge mounted specimen of one of these beasties in the Natural History museum.

*brrrrr*

This one wouldn’t have been in your shoe… It would been trying it on.

http://www.fazed.org/blog/view/1/clock-spider/

I love spiders. But I like them outside, catching insects and small birds. Not IN MY SHOES. Ack!

I get (small) spiders in my car sometimes. Thankfully, that’s never happened when my friend who is petrified of spiders was in the car. I usually just wait until I park somewhere with green spaces and then let the spider out.

One time, I had a lizard on my car. I tried to get the guy off my car, but he dove down under the hood, and I couldn’t chase him out. So I drove to Whataburger with my little green stowaway. Unfortunately, he made a run for it while at Whataburger, so I wasn’t able to bring him back. There isn’t much for a lizard over there. I hope he was able to find another car to get him a ride back to somewhere with insects and trees and stuff.

Oh, god. I know without clicking on it what that link shows!!!!

I’m never moving to Australia….

I always liked to play house with the girls at school, because it meant hanging out with all the girls. A couple of them would play married couple and kiss me good bye when I “went to work” in the morning and so on. The other guys were out playing dodgeball and stuff, I was getting little cold smoochies.

“I get (small) spiders in my car sometimes. Thankfully, that’s never happened when my friend who is petrified of spiders was in the car. I usually just wait until I park somewhere with green spaces and then let the spider out.”

Oh, I’m not keen on them. But I had to grin and bear it (literally!) a few months ago when driving along, when a large one plopped from the sun visor onto the dashboard of my Jeep and began incy-wincying along the console towards the steering wheel.

Even worse, as I swung into the field we were heading for (for a Sunday morning boot sale) the little beastie lost his grip – and fell off just by the ignition. Now, he was in the car….and I couldn’t see him!

The chap parking the cars was a bit surprised to see me screech to a halt, exit the car at top speed and begin dancing around the field shaking my skirt and yelping in a high-pitched voice.

I expect he just thought I was really, really keen on boot sales….

Wooooo. I had to Google Tegenaria parietina to see if you were bullshitting me, Julia. Sadly, you weren’t.

Yeah, they are pretty ghastly. An uncle used to live near Hampton Court – my aunt once found one in the washing basket. It bit her.

I have to say, she’d have a few words to say to the British Arachnological Society (http://www.britishspiders.org.uk/html/bas.php?page=faq&faq=47), who claim ‘Tegenaria species very rarely bite and if they do it is painless.’

I never visited that uncle much…

Me and a buddy used to run the bayous out to Lake Pontchartrain to work his crab traps, and there would be spider webs strung across the bayou, 30-40 feet across. You’d see birds caught in the webs pretty regularly.

I don’t want to even think about the spiders that built them. I’m pretty sure I saw one wearing a hardhat, though. The hardhat seemed a little snug.

Last house we lived in was infested with brown recluse. Surprised none of us were bitten. Had a guy come out and ‘bomb’ the house and we spent the weekend at a hotel.

Chas v’shalom aleinu! Those there be monsters!

I would absolutely love An American Weasel Adjusting in Jolly Olde series of posts. Such things truly fascinate me. I’m looking forward to them!

Did they tax the other ring? Is one extra ring bad for the environment? Can you promise to pay a carbon credit or something and get the missing one?

“One ring to bind them all…”

Well Stoatie, it could be worse. You and Badger could have moved to Southern Colorado, and come out ofthe den one evening to notice that the ground is moving.

OMG!! TARANTULA MIGRATION!!!!!! 😉

You in Trinidad, scuba?

Colorado Springs, but my brother lives in Midway. They get migrations there too.

I’ve heard of the Trinidad migrations, though. You can drive along the road, and the tarantulas getting squished under your tires sound like a popcorn popper……

No 3 ring binders? HEATHENS!

I’m up near Hartsel, scuba. Hmmm, you must really like diving Prospect, huh. Good town for diving.

Anyway, No tarantulas up here. Saw a black widow down in Canon City once. And a black snake once about 8 years ago. Other than that, all we got are packrats and porcupines.

And every dog, horse, and cow we have has just had to see what the porcupine smelled like. Some more than once.

LOL… I usually drive down to the bluehole or out to Cali to blow bubbles….

Around here, it’s mostly Foxes, coyotes,Raccoons, skunks and black widows, with the occasional rattler for variety.

Oh, and the occasional black bear looking for a good deal on an IPod…..

http://llnw.image.cbslocal.com/19/2008/07/15/320×240/bearinstore.jpg

IIRC, you were Navy, scubafreak. Ever dive Guam?

…and yeah, we have our share of bears up here. And elk, and deer. And the most antelope I’ve seen outside of Wyoming.

Totally looking forward to the houseweasel in England posts!

I spent ’83-’84 in London and remember the candy is “mislabeled” — Smarties are big M&Ms, and Milky Ways are, IIRC, Three Musketeers. Something like that.

“Milky Ways are Three Musketeers”

That’s just wrong.

Strangely enough, I didn’t become a diver until after I had returned to Colorado. I did get the ultimate SUNBURN on Guam, however.

Had to have my back smeared with Silvadine cream for over a week before the pain started to fade……. 🙁

I do enjoy diving the Red Triangle out in Cali, though. And the wrecks of San Diego were alot of fun, even though we had to break a hard thermocline at 18 ft. That Trans-Pacific current is COLD!!!!!!

Yeah, the diving I did off La Jolla was boring and cold. Sand and seaweed. Always did the wetsuit thing there.

Wasn’t aware of the wrecks in San Diego. Woulda loved to dive them.

Oh, and I learned to dive in Guam. Plus, I got a nifty facial scar outside a bar there. Good times.

My daughter is an extreme arachnaphobic. She came to stay with me a couple years ago while I worked at a summer camp. (The cabin had lots of spiders)

The first night I slept on the couch and let her sleep in the bed. The next morning she said she saw a huge spider on the bed and wanted to sleep on the couch instead.

3 nights later I came out in the morning, and she had two dining room chairs pushed together with a blanket and she was all scrunched up trying to sleep on them. She said she had seen a spider on the couch. She insisted on sleeping on those chairs the rest of her stay rather than face the idea of sleeping on something that HAD BEEN TOUCHED BY A LIVING SPIDER. Sheesh.

In her defense, it may be my fault that she is afraid of spiders. I think I was trying to get one out of the shower stall when she was little and when it landed on me I screamed and did a little dance. Tramatized her for life.

Um… arachniphobia isn’t just “girlie”. I’m mos’ definitely male and I HATE the damn things with a passion. I just wish I could train my tribe of cats to hunt them down and exterminate them, the way they do the jumping crickets…

Not a big fan of spiders (except from afar, and only on an intellectual level), but snakes really give me the oogies.

Probably easier to teach the spiders to jump, DaveP.

…but then you’d have jumping spiders. Gak.

“…but then you’d have jumping spiders. Gak.”

Mother Nature’s already there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salticidae
🙂

gulp!

“One ring to bind them all…”

Sarah D.: That was awesome! LOL!

Heh…I can hear the screams now…being slapped by one
of these in the face, caught up in yer hair…

http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=texas+banana+spiders&btnG=Search+Images

Oh, THANK you, NB. I’m ever so fucking delighted to learn there’s a website called badspiderbites.com.

In case anyone’s wondering, I am restesing. However, I left my restesing graphic on the desktop machine which I thought I would FedEx over, but it turned out to be too expensive. So I’m graphicless for some weeks.

Make new graphicses? I mean, what else do you have to do now that you have Mr. Badger to wait upon you hand and foot?

And thanks Mushiloon 😛

Yep, that’s what I’ll have to do, Sarah D. While he’s real-working, I can pretend-work.

I’m liking this 🙂

Usually the bigger the spiders are, the less dangerous they are. I’ll have to post a picture I’ve been hanging on to for a while, it’s a nest of daddy longlegs – harvesters to some people. About 200 of them in a big pile… on the ceiling. It’s all wiry legs and little bodies, one of the most creepy things I’ve ever seen.

Supposedly they’ll bite too but I’ve never had one bother me.

Where I come from, there’s some idea that daddy longlegs (which are arachnids but not spiders, yes?) breed, or at least congregate, in huge piles in stumps. I’ve heard someone say he ran across a daddy longlegs stump in the woods.

Also that cedar trees encourage ticks.

I come from a silly place.

Yer welcome Stoaty, Heh….
Consider that a house warming graphics gift from me
to thee.

/lol

Texas Banana Spiders? When we were kids, we called those things Wolf Spiders. Ya know, the ones that build a gi-normous 4-foot web across the trails in the woods where you rode your bike?

Anyone? No? You mean I’m the only one who rode face-first into them over and over and over?

They don’t just live in Texas. Got a whole colony of them out in the shed. At least we did before the weather got cold.

The things we called wolf spiders in Tennessee were smaller and hairy and built funnel webs. The had a sort of lozenge shape on their backs. My mother was arachnophobic, too, but she had a ‘pet’ wolf spider in the bathroom she fed flies to.

Once, while we were watching TV, a big fat wolf spider skittered across the planking floor in the blue light. Mother reached over and popped a beer can down on it…

…and five hundred tiny baby wolf spiders boiled out from underneath. Jesus, that memory gives me the willies. I remember she took a brown paper bag and scrubbed the floor trying to kill as many of the little bastards as possible.

There’s nothing like getting banana spider webbies
glued to your face and hair, riding through the woods.
No, I’ve never learned either….

Oh wow, Weas – that very thing happened to a friend of mine.

We had just finished a chemistry final, and were hanging around outside the lecture hall for our 3rd friend to finish. My buddy, who was a massive arachnophobe, saw a spider, and stomped on it with a triumphant yell…and a kazinty-jillion baby spiders swarmed out from beneath his flip-flops.

I swear to god, I thought we were going to have to call paramedics. Dude went from zero to gibberingly insane in about half a second. Rolling around on the ground, ripping his clothes off, screaming “GET EM OFF”. The look on his face is seared – seared in my memory, in a fashion reminiscent of Gengis Khan.

Almost 15 years later, he tells me he still dreams about it.

NB – Whereabouts? LA, or AL? Or is it…MS?

Yeeeeccch.

Speaking of spiders (mind the gap):
http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc

Any thoughts on this by the Brits:
http ://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12689686

“Any thoughts on this by the Brits”

Only bad ones…

Now, spiders I loathe, but at least they are a part of nature and serve a useful purpose. New Labour? Created in the deepest pit of hell…

Deepest pit of hell, eh? Same place the democrat party and their obamaturd slithered out of.
When will we come together to cap that sucker? (the pit..)

Only that you can’t tax your way out of a recession, Musli.

You can drive along the road, and the tarantulas getting squished under your tires sound like a popcorn popper……

Ah, so it’s not all bad then.

I must admit that I fell for the ‘Daddy Longlegs are the world’s most poisonous spider but they don’t possess the mechanism to inject the venom into human skin’ urban legend for a few years, and every time I saw one – which was a lot; they’re pretty common here – I used to say, ‘You don’t scare me. Come back when you’ve evolved a bigger mouth, dickhead.’

I admit that I was happy to see recently what many people believe is the death – after 13 long years of weird shenanigans – of the New Labour experiment. But, it turns out that during its death throes, the veneer peeled back, and what we’re now stuck with is (Old) Labour (a recked economy, a recession, a ‘tax them rich bastards’ mindset, broken society etc.), which let’s face it, is much, much worse.

Yup. I didn’t pay much attention in the 70s to the political scene (too busy being a teenager) but other aspects are starting to sound awfully familiar…

And the soundtrack won’t be any better this time around either!

Ah the joys of rustic country living in a foreign land where everything is just a bit different! I remember laughing at the cotton toilet-seat socks that people used in Japan(do they have those in England?)… and then howling hysterically at the electric toilet seats they were selling in a department store ( one cold January, some years ago).

That night, I discovered that one of the un-noted pleasures of American life is never having to plop one’s buns on a 40 degree toilet seat at 2 a.m.

Then next day I was back at that store, looking at that toilet seat display with awe, admiration, and a calculator, figuring out how much 15,000 yen was. Weasel , I don’t know what that is is Pounds Sterling, but you might consider it….

Because the trauma stayed with me. The Lokkis now own two of the finest high-tech Japanese toilets. I suppose you’ve seen the videos of how they work before, but I can’t resist posting one more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMJS2UwhJhE&feature=related

Ha! Odd you should mention it, Lokki. Uncle B and I were discussing high-tech Japanese toilet seats not an hour ago.

Yup. I didn’t pay much attention in the 70s to the political scene (too busy being a teenager) but other aspects are starting to sound awfully familiar…

Me neither. On account of the fact that I was only alive for just over a year of them and that time was spent soiling myself, crying and eating (I started as I meant to go on). In fact, I only really payed any attention in 1997 which coincided with me being able to vote for the first time. 1997 being the year this whole mess began of course.

I wonder what it is with the Nipponese and toilets with microprocessors in them, vending machines which dispense soiled teenage girls’ undercrackers, and over-use of adjectives?

Ah, many’s the evening The Boss and I have whiled away the hours, dreaming of high-tech Japanese electrified toilet seats. In fact, I don’t recall any other conversational topic of like importance.

Well, maybe where we can get the best price on the three pallets of soiled teenage girls’ undercrackers my great-aunt willed to us. The Boss says eBay, but I’m leaning toward craigslist.

Only slightly soiled
Teenage girls’ undercrackers
Fill our winter dreams.

Heh. Good job on the new artwork 🙂

Heh. Thanks. It seemed time for some new graphics. Can’t think what to replace Islamic Rage Boy with, though.

Say, Uncle B spotted a JuliaM at Iain Dale’s place today. That you?

We few, we happy few, we band of mouthy cows.

Yeah, that’s me. I get around 🙂

And Islamic Rage Boy is pretty irreplaceable, imo…

Though I suppose you could always replace the pancake with a crumpet…

*glances at sidebar* *squares shoulders*

Aww…

The “wanna rastle?” one was my favorite. Bummer.

Maybe you could give Islamic Rage Boy an O-stika?

Don’t wanna read, don’t wanna write . . .

Hail to Her Royal Majayjay!

I guess it’s just me… When the weasel girl graphic gets replaced with the QE II one, I transported “Wanna Rassle?”

Of course “rasslin'” the Queen is a spooky idea in and of itself. “And in tonight’s bout we have Andre the Giant versus Herself.”

Shudder…

How about Zombie Nixon for VP in ’12? The whole zombie ticket.

Hey…even he was a better VP than Biden.

And I’d love to get a copy of the Steam Powered Aeroweasel big enough for wallpaper…I loves me that one.

Speaking of high-tech Japanese toilet seats, my nephew’s new wife, who I refer to as Little Japanese Girl (imported from Japan via Canada) just had her a much-littler, not-as-Japanese girl this morning. Tiny (6lb 6oz) Emily squeaked in at 9:41 am EST. She is German, Ukrainian, Italian, and Japanese. There’s a brave combo for ya.

It goes without saying that I am a great aunt, and a great-aunt.

🙂

Poor mite. She’ll never know what box to tick.

I just re-read my post…the first line doesn’t read as I had intended.

🙁

The OG axis of evil. That Ukranian never stood a chance.
Congrats to the new auntie.

Thank you, Dawn. And you are quite correct about the Axis of Evil, although it’s difficult to instill fear when wearing a tiny pink fuzzy cap about the size of a tangerine.
🙂
I’ve been trying to do the calculations on my head, but I’m just too tired. The mother is Japanese, and the father is Italian on his Mom’s side, and German/Ukrainian on his father’s side. So…50% Japanese, 25% Italian, and 12.5% each German and Ukrainian…does that sound right?

So, I get home from school…big anatomy exam (on which I got an 88, thank you very much). I fire up the ‘puter and take a look at the news for the first time today. Judging by the headlines, I think I woke up in a bad movie.

We have a new Glorious Leader who, first, wants to use the military for law enforcement:

http ://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002217_pf.html

But, second, who would prefer to use robot soldiers, because they’re…I can’t say this with a straight face…more moral:

http ://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3536943/Pentagon-hires-British-scientist-to-help-build-robot-soldiers-that-wont-commit-war-crimes.html

I guess next, Our Glorious Leader is going to start cloning bounty hunters and exterminating the Jedi?

If I go back to bed now, maybe we could switch from Star Wars to Foundation? I mean, if the government’s going to have total control over my life, I’d at least like for there to be some sort of coherent plan involved…and the plotlines were better…

Gee = Nobody watched the video? Guess my sense of humor was too subtle.. That’s never happened before>/i>