web analytics

I found it!

knittedcoonskincap.jpg

 

 

Remember that coonskin cap I told y’all my oldest brother knitted me? I found it in the basement this weekend when I was throwing away my old college clothes. Here it is, charmingly modeled by Chastity.

Then I looked him up on the web. My brother, I mean. He uses a singular online username and he sometimes mentions his real name (he’s got a highly cornpone Southern moniker, too. Thanks, Mom), so I easily tracked him down first time I tried. Every once in a while, I look him up to see how things are going. We were eight years apart and not even a little bit close. Getting in touch directly might result in…more of a relationship than I’m looking for. Still…you know. Fambly.

Turns out he still knits. He has gout. And three grandchildren, one of whom likes astronomy. And his favorite band is Tool.

Isn’t the internet neat?

 

 

 

 

 

Comments


Comment from iamfelix
Time: August 30, 2007, 12:03 am

1. The innernets are way neat.

2. I loof the cap.

3. I loof Chastity even morether, and want one just like her.

4. I loof her smile (even tho’ your mother didn’t) – very Mona Lisaesque.

5. Even though my (4) sibs & I are occasionally prickly, I must contact them directly.

5a. Regularly.


Comment from Dawn
Time: August 30, 2007, 12:17 am

Everyone heard me call Chastity first, right?

I can’t believe a grandpa likes Tool.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 30, 2007, 6:07 am

Direct contact with my oldest brother generally results in the loss of some quantity of money. It’s not that he’s greedy. He’s like Bounty, the quicker picker upper…he somehow absorbs the stuff if he’s near it.

My whole adult life, I’ve dreaded the knock on the door and finding him on my doorstep.


Comment from Lokki
Time: August 30, 2007, 9:37 am

Lakki, my sister, has the annoying habit of promising to pay me back, which she never, ever does. It always reminds me of Mack in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row -one of my favorite books.

I wish I could find the exact quote, but – after Mack and his friends (who all lead the hobo life Monterey)essentially destroy Doc’s house in the process of throwing a party for Doc – Mack starts to promise to pay for the damage.

Doc stops him and says (roughly paraphrasing) ” Look – you’re never going to pay me back. You know it, and so do I. Oh, you’ll promise yourself that you will but eventually you’ll give up on the idea. But you’ll feel real bad about it for a long time.

So when you promise to pay me back it makes both of us uncomfortable and unhappy. Every time we see each other we’ll think about it and we’ll both feel bad and it will just make it hard to be friends. So let’s not kid ourselves. Just forget about it.

Lakki loves her new Dell Laptop, by the way; she told me – right after she got it – but I haven’t heard from her since. I haven’t given her the “Doc” speech yet, but I probably should and just get it over for both of us.


Comment from Lokki
Time: August 30, 2007, 9:41 am

By the way, it seems like you have to get up pretty early in the morning around here if you want to get a something from the Weasel estate.

The early bird gets the coonskin cap?

Very cool… Mine was made of genuine rabbit – bought for me by a dotting Grandpa, who had a thing for silly hats himself. We made a fine pair, Grandpa and me, out fishing on the lake early in the morning. We both drank John Paul Jones and Coffee, although the ratios of each in the cups were considerably different.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 30, 2007, 9:52 am

A long time ago I decided that all “loans” were in reality gifts, and that I would never see a penny of said funds again. If nothing else, it helped me set an upper limit on such gifts: I always ask myself “how much can I afford to throw away today?”

What has been gratifying to me is the number of friends who’ve actually paid me back. Unfortunately, ya can’t pick your relatives like ya can your friends. The relatives are batting zero to-date. Such is life. Ya can’t take it with you – and if you’re not careful, ya can’t even keep it while you’re here.


Comment from Dawn
Time: August 30, 2007, 9:56 am

My brother and I weren’t close either because I left home when I was 13. Never much cared for him.
I haven’t spoken to him in twelve years. He was four years older than me and retarded. We graduated from high school the same year. He went to a special horticultural high school (that was before we found a whole ‘nother country to do our yardwork – we used to just hire our own “special” people.)
My brother would narc on me for everything I did even though he knew it would earn me a horrendous beating. I can’t figure out if his tard brain just did not have a filter or if he really enjoyed getting me in trouble. The very last time he “told” on me was when I was 21 years old and he was visiting me. I asked him to leave and I haven’t talked to him since.
Familes can be toxic.


Comment from Lokki
Time: August 30, 2007, 10:04 am

The things you learn because your Grandpa poured a little whiskey in your coffee when you were six. (Nobody tell Grandma, OK? I wasn’t supposed to have whiskey OR coffee).

I wanted to confirm that the whiskey really was John Paul Jones. Instead I stumbled on a website about the return of John Paul Jone’s remains from Paris to America in 1905.

The alcohol poured into the lead coffin preserved the body quite well. Only the nose was distorted by being pressed against the coffin.


The recovery of the body of John Paul Jones

I always thought that whiskey tasted a little odd, but hey, I was only six, and so I didn’t have much to compare it to.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 30, 2007, 10:12 am

My brother isn’t a garden-variety mooch. He’s more like a black-hole of cheerful craziness, sucking down assets into a mysterious one-way vortex of bad judgement.

Like, he once set fire to a field to see how many rabbits would jump out, lost control of it and burned his own house down. It was pretty much a derelict house on a piece of property he just bought — he wasn’t living in it or anything — but it gets at the nub of the thing. I watched him shoot the headlights out of his own car from the porch, just to see if he could do it, then touch my dad for the money to replace them. He flunked out of college by sitting in his room watching Sesame Street. Like that.

There is something seriously wrong, but nobody has ever quite figured out what. Asperger’s maybe. He was a solid C student back when they didn’t routinely shepherd ‘tards through High School…so he’s neither a complete idiot nor the tragically flawed genius my parents described.

Anyhow, I always get much more exercised about vandalism than theft. If somebody steals your stuff, at least somebody, somewhere gets some happiness out of it. Vandalism is just stupid, pointless waste. My brother’s profligacy is more like vandalism than theft.

Picture of John Paul Jones here. I felt a bit like that this morning.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 30, 2007, 10:28 am

Weasel: “Picture of John Paul Jones here. I felt a bit like that this morning.”

Yeah, being in Led Zeppelin doesn’t do much for your complexion, that’s for sure.


Comment from porknbean
Time: August 30, 2007, 1:02 pm

Fambly can be the very devil.
I noticed something was up when I was a wee lass. An example repeated – we took our usual long drive to somewheres with the four of us in the back seat. My mother had given us each one of those small bags of M&Ms. My siblings inhaled theirs, I ate a few of mine and saved the rest for the ride back. On the way back, my siblings got really pissed and complained how I wouldn’t share, even though I gave them each one. Surprisingly, my parents stuck up for me.

Siblings haven’t changed. I save for a rainy day. They don’t. I live below my means. They don’t. I anticipate future speed bumps. They don’t. And they sneer at me.

If one or two (diagnosed with ‘assholery’) show up on my doorstep, I will not answer the door. Thousands of dollars down the toilet – called burned bridges. One actually did pay me back. As long as she keeps doing that, I will keep helping her out.


Comment from porknbean
Time: August 30, 2007, 1:04 pm

Hmmm..that picture of John Paul Jones? Looks like he could have had some lovely hair.


Comment from Anonymous
Time: August 30, 2007, 1:16 pm

I was thinking the same thing about Jones’ hair, but the lazy eye and overbite sure detracts doesn’t it?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 30, 2007, 1:17 pm

Plague pit in Venice.


Comment from Shuko
Time: August 30, 2007, 1:32 pm

Omg! Lokki! I love that book! The great frog roundup will forever be one of my favorite literary events. xD Just talking about it makes me want to go read that book again. 🙂 My mother read it and recommended it to me when I was in high school. At the time, I thought it would be lame since my mom liked it, and parents always have notoriously bad taste in anything, but I read it when I was older, and I didn’t regret it. xD

Chastity looks positively stunning in her lovingly rendered, knitted skull-warmer. I’ll bet your mom wouldn’t love her any less for it either, Weasel. xD

I get along famously with my parents, but my brother and I aren’t always on the best of terms. We’re about as unlike each other as two siblings can be, but still, now that we live in separate houses, we do get along better than we used to. 🙂 Family is unavoidable; it’s best to just accept it as a part of life and try to find some good in it, for your own sanity’s sake.


Comment from porknbean
Time: August 30, 2007, 2:45 pm

I don’t think I would want to plink around in a plague pit even if it is centuries old. That island looks awful small too.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 30, 2007, 3:05 pm

Stuffed dogs and flying cars.

I just accidentally swallowed a big bolus of mint chewing gum. I’d forgotten what a surprisingly nasty feeling that is.

I’m going home now…


Comment from Shuko
Time: August 30, 2007, 3:41 pm

xD

I love how they have the picture of the rabid-looking “come hither so I can rip out your spleen” stare that one stuffed dog is giving you, with the quote underneath it “The display shows the impact of select breeding on dogs.” You know someone had to be having fun with that one. xD


Comment from Lokki
Time: August 30, 2007, 3:52 pm

Well, I got a little confused about one part

The Natural History Museum at Tring, Herts, gets the £87,000 to refurbish its gallery featuring the dogs – which show the impact of selective breeding

What kind of selective breeding can you do with stuffed dogs that requires them to have £87,000 of refurbishment?

Somebody did a lot of damage with that selective breeding…. and I don’t want to know exactly how.


Comment from porknbean
Time: August 30, 2007, 4:41 pm

I was hoping the ‘stuffed dog’ thing was a fabulous, more interesting collection of Boyd’s, Steiff, and the like. Hmmph.


Pingback from S. Weasel
Time: November 12, 2007, 6:40 pm

[…] I’m not much into knitting, mind you (that would be my big brother), but Pupster sent me a link to the excellent Stitchy McYarnpants Museum of Kitschy Stitches a few days ago, so the topic just seemed… knitted in the stars or something. […]


Comment from http://www.url2go.site/ucat.us
Time: December 10, 2015, 8:47 am

I love reading these articles because they’re short but informative.

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny