I…I feel a thousand eyes…watching me…
Weasel Towers. But I didn’t take these pictures, O imaginary friends who live in my computer. Google Street View has reached Weaseltopia! Seven months ago, the Google Street View Van drove down Weasel Street and hung a right on Stoat Boulevard.
How do I know when? Replacing the garage doors was the first thing I did to fix up the house, about six months ago. Just prior to that, one of the bottom panels popped out of the old door. It was too warped to pop back in, so whenever I went to work, I propped the panel up against the opening. This, because my cats came and went through the garage, but I wanted to discourage dogs doing the same. Yeah, I know it’s lame. I am fully aware of all my deeds of lameness. Anyhow, you can see the arrangement plainly in the top photo.
This thing is spooky. Gliding up and down the street, swiveling around, looking up and down. Check your town. If they’ve come to Providence, they’re really expanding.
I found out by accident. I plugged my street address into Google Maps (looking to check the probable size of Damien’s territory — meh. Still missing. Don’t want to talk about it. Acutely bummed), and up pops a thumbnail of my house. “Whuzzit?” I said blearily, “yarrr!”
This morning, the Real Estate Lady is in Weasel Manor taking pitchers. I am now officially On The Market. W00t!
She says I can’t live in the basement any more. That it would creep people out. I asked if she would mind following me around for a while and warning me about anything else I do that might creep people out. That could be very useful.
Secretly, I am plotting to defy her. Upstairs, there are no curtains or shades or carpets and very little furniture. It would be like sleeping in a junior high gymnasium. With the lights on. It’s dark and cool and quiet in the basement. I think what I’ll do is slap together a Potemkin village of a master bedroom upstairs, and continue sleeping in the basement. In a sleeping bag or something.
Creepy? I’ll show her!
May 15, 2008 — 10:54 am
Comments: 62
Good morning! Share my dog’s breakfast?
I like my real estate agent. I mean, she’s a real estate agent, so she’s a loathsome reptile, but she speaks in an amusing, roundabout code. Like, when she first hooked me up with a handyman, she said, “you’ll like Mortimer. He’s a wonderful, wonderful man. He’s got the chiseled features and almost gray skin tone of some African chieftan.”
Translation: okay, don’t panic. He’s an old black guy, but you can totally trust him.
So instead of telling me right out not to get my hopes up, she said, “it’ll be lovely and cool down here in the basement this Summer. The market dies out completely in August, so we have to make sure we’re ready to go for the Fall market.”
Got it. Making self comfortable.
Speaking of language, I am so going to start calling McGoo Goo Boy. I owe him. Thanks to him, Uncle B calls me Weas now. Weas! Before that, he called me “Weasel” or “Auntie” or, way back, “Spam.” Dignified. Stately.
Yeah, can you believe I had the nickname “Spam” before the internet was a gleam in Al Gore’s eye? I’ve forgotten why. I had to drop it. My first internet addresses were spam@whatever.com, which was okay for years. Then I started getting angry emails that went, “I’m writing to report a disgusting message that came from your server…”
I’d write back, “Look, I’m not really the spam reporting address for this ISP. I’m just some woman whose nickname is ‘Spam.'”
Until I got this one lady who decided to argue with me about it. Like, “don’t you try to wriggle out of this! I don’t want to see any more emails in my inbox with the word ‘penis’ in them. I mean it!”
I hope things worked out for that lady. I bet she knows a lot more words for “penis” these days.
Welp, gotta go. Friday is pancake day at the company cafeteria. I love pancake day, because they left a crucial comma off the menu: “blueberry pancakes with whipped butter bacon.”
Mmmmm…whipped butter bacon! Can I have mine with lard?
April 25, 2008 — 7:49 am
Comments: 47
Weasel tested, Wile E. Coyote approved
I’m totally indebted to Pupster for this suggestion. It’s a PaintStick. You suck paint up into it and then squoosh it out through the roller. It KICKS ASS. I covered more square feet in an hour after work today than I did all day Saturday (though I did do a bunch of edging on Saturday).
I went to five different stores trying to find it (including Ace Hardware and Target, which HomeRight’s website said would have them). Nope. One smartass tried to hand me a stick. You know, a the kind you stir paint with. I got the impression they all knew what I was talking about but they were just screwing with me. Rhode Island is like that.
I finally broke down and ordered it on Amazon. I got Black and Decker’s version, because I’ve always liked B&D’s stuff. Only $25 — as opposed to $40, so plenty left over to get two-day shipping.
Thanks, Dog. I owe you one.
April 10, 2008 — 5:44 pm
Comments: 17
Saying g’bye to the Boobs
This here is my favorite object in the whole wide world. We call it the Boob Chair. Or simply The Boobs. My prissy grampa never admitted his favorite armchair had tits, so we’re compensating.
He found it rotting away in a barn somewhere in East Tennessee, bought it and had it re-upholstered in a deep green velvet. It’s a huge great throne of a thing and I love it dearly. I have always loved it.
But it was not to be mine. I was a younger cousin and all the best stuff had been divvied up before I was even born. The Boobs, I have known all my life, were supposed pass directly from my grandmother to my cousin in Alabama.
So great was my lust for this object, when the truck from home arrived with my furniture and The Boobs was on it, I asked no questions. Even though my cousin in Alabama is pretty much my favorite relative and she loves it at least as much as I do. Even though I was quite sure it came to me by way of some ugly Machiavellian blood feud of the aunties.
Still, I guess I should’ve known I wasn’t wicked enough to ship The Boobs three thousand miles across the ocean, further away from the aforementioned Cousin in Alabama. No matter how assiduously I pursue pure evildoing, I do occasionally let me down. Anyway, how can I invite her over to rub her nose in my 16th Century farmhouse with The Boob Matter unresolved between us?
So UPS is coming to take The Boobs away. My preciousssssss. My precious Booobiessssss. gollum
March 27, 2008 — 5:09 pm
Comments: 41
What do *I* care?
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “what the hell do you care, Weasel? You ain’t hanging around for President McClintobama. You’re setting sail for the island of warm booze and offal pie.”
Well, shut up, that’s what. American politics will affect me nearly as much in Badgerland as it does in Weaseltopia. I still have to file a US income tax return every year — America is the only country that makes its expats do this, forever — though I’ll never make enough money to owe anything to Uncle Sam (I think the threshold is, like, eighty grand). I own land in the US, so there’s property taxes to deal with. I desperately need whatever pittance I can screw out of Social Security after thirty-some years of paying in (Uncle B and I both signed up for the “work until you die” retirement plan). I’ll be back every year to buy mayonnaise and cheap blue jeans. Heck, we’ll both come over and build that romantic bunker in the woods I’ve always wanted, if the Musselman overruns the South of England.
And you would not believe how US current events saturate British media.
I don’t mean entertainment. Hollywood dreck is a major American export. I expect to see a lot of it abroad, most especially in English-speaking countries (which includes parts of Britain). (Though, you know, geez…we’ve done other things since Sergeant Bilko. Splash out, Limeys. Try something new in that 10am time slot. Flipper. Or Bonanza, maybe).
No, I’m talking about how American news and general cultural stuff permeate British media, the BBC in particular. Sure, a lot of that is Bush Derangement Syndrome. Some of it is simply responsible international reporting, since we have our fingers in so many…ummm…dykes. But, whoo! Seriously, honest-to-geez, they can work America into the weather forecast. Spend a day listening to the BBC’s Radio 4 — America is with you from the Shipping Forecast right through to Book at Bedtime.
Whenever I hear some lefty tool mouthing off about “American cultural hegemony” I think, “oh, here’s an idea — you could maybe SHUT THE HELL UP about us for, like, two seconds. You think that might help lower our profile? Yeah. Go talk about Belgium for a day and let us rest our hegemoning muscle.”
So, rest assured, whatever you guys do, I’m going to spend all day hearing about it. Especially if it’s something stupid and embarrassing. Most especially if that stupid embarrassing thing involves beer, guns or Jesus.
And so, my fellow Americans, do a weasel a favor? Don’t make this immigrant thing any harder than it has to be. Refrain from getting drunk and shooting up a megachurch, please. And send me my goddamn absentee ballot.
February 18, 2008 — 3:59 pm
Comments: 51
I dub thee Flaming Asshole (in honor of Johnny Mc)
…click above to view this masterpiece of the toper’s art in glorious color…
Because Enas Yorl dared me to, that’s why.
It’s a jigger of Sour Puss, a jigger of creme de banana and a jigger of creme de noya (made from real fruit pits!) mixed up in a bud vase (looks all Star Trek, don’t it?) and stuck in the freezer for an hour. It’s…not as vomitously hideous as you might think. It’s…tart. And kicky. Yeah, I’m finishing it. Shut up.
So today, I saw the mover and the exterminator. Tommorow, the dentist, followed by an all day Division meeting.
But tonight belongs to Flaming Asshole.
January 31, 2008 — 7:42 pm
Comments: 9
Some chores are more onerous than others
The contents of the liquor cabinet. Not the day-to-day booze, but the Sunday-go-to-meeting booze. The guest booze, as it were. See, you can’t really move liquor, and you can’t pour it down the sink, so what’s a weasel to do?
Some of it is going straight down the sink. That thing in the middle? Sour Puss? It’s a raspberry liqueur. To the right of it is creme de banana. And way over to the left? Creme de noya, “a naturally almond-flavored liqueur made from fruit pits.” These apparently date to a time of life when I was batshit insane. Or twelve years old.
I’m tempted to mix these unique specimens together and invent my own cocktail. I think I’ll call it a ‘BLAAAARRRRRGH’ or possibly a ‘WAAAAAAUUULLLLkoffkoffkoff.”
Don’t dare me.
The balance, I’m pleased to note, is heavy on the Jack Daniel’s and other fine American whiskies. And what’s that I see? A brand new unopened bottle of Glenmorangie?
Oh, it’s rough duty, I tell you what.
January 29, 2008 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 5
The monster in the basement
That would be me. That would be I. I am moving into the basement.
My real estate broad turned up on Saturday and said, “you’re right! The floors do look like shit with the carpets removed! Let’s get a quote on having them refinished.”
Oh, let’s. The quote wasn’t so bad, actually. God knows how good a job they’ll do (“well, I can pretty much guarantee they won’t sand any divets in it!” REB said brightly). But it means the cats and I have to slink off and live in the basement for a week. On a mattress. On the floor.
It’ll be just like college! Only, with less dope. And eye makeup.
January 28, 2008 — 7:57 pm
Comments: 18
Weasel Acres
Here we go. I promised McGoo I’d rustle up a pitcher. This is Weasel Acres, several years back. I don’t think publishing this picture reveals enough information to hunt me down like a dog. Ummm…does it? If I’m wrong, just…please don’t hunt me down like a dog. Kthxbai.
This is a classic Cape Cod house (usually abbreviated to ‘Cape house’ hereabouts). Not a style I grew up with, of course, but one I’ve grown fond of. A Cape house is a cottage, generally a story-and-a-half high, with a steeply pitched front roof, a sloping back roof and a dormer stuck out the back. They’re small — under 2,000 square feet. The gabled windows are a 20th C addition.
Mine was built in the Spring of 1942. How do I know? A surveyor told me what to look for: you lift the porcelain cover on the back of the toilet and fine the date stamped in the tank. They don’t stockpile toilets, so the house will have been built within a couple of months of that date.
It wasn’t my first choice. The house I yearned for was in Pawtucket (where all the horriblest limericks come from); a long, low one-story house with a Dutch roof. It had silly classical columns and swirly stucco walls in the livingroom, and the master bathroom had a basin sink and tiles in vivid porcelain purples and greens. It was the most startling and improbably ugly house I have ever seen. I fell in love with it instantly. Sad to say, my offer was rejected.
That still smarts.
January 10, 2008 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 17
Dead monkeys and self portraits
One of my mom’s best friends was a carney. We called her the Monkey Lady, on account of she had a monkey act. Duh. When Mother adopted her, she was old and retired and lived in a burnt-out bar down by the river, and her five big evil monkeys spent every waking minute working at the bars of their cages in an effort to free themselves and — she devoutly believed — chew through her jugular vein while she slept. Shitting you not. But they were still her precious furbabies.
Well. I didn’t like her, either.
Somehow, Mother got guilted into arranging to have these beloved psychotic homicidal monkeys gassed. I’ll tell you the whole horrible story some day, but you’ll have to get me drunk first.
The general plan was, the Monkey Lady would leave the house and come back some hours later to a peacefully monkey-free zone. Only, when she came back, she found one of the vet’s assistants had left a choke harness behind in the middle of the floor.
Dun-dun DUNNNNN!
I feel a bit like that. I went through all the stuff in my studio, picked through thirty some years of old letters and bad self portraits and selected only the juiciest morsels for posterity. I fully expected to come back and find all the rest had been whisked away while I rolled about the countryside, madly gay, roasting champagne and drinking chestnuts.
And so it did come to pass, I thought as I arrived home late last night.
Until I left for work this morning and found the lot, neatly packed and stowed in the garage. I guess my ragpicker couldn’t believe anyone would give up such awesomely fantastic junk.
Albatross? WHAT albatross?
January 8, 2008 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 49