Cozy
The little one likes fire. Yes, he does. Here he is big and in color.
He also likes laps and annoying the hell out of big cat. They’ve been running back and forth like a Tom and Jerry cartoon all week. A little hissing and biting, but well within the appropriate bounds of brotherly bant.
Speaking of fire, the conservative(!) government has today announced a ban on the burning of coal and wet wood in households. There are rural people this will very much affect.
Not us. We gave up actual coal for solid fuel — they’re like charcoal briquets — but that ain’t the point. As Uncle B likes to grumble, the Greens never get more than 3% of the vote here, but all their policies get enacted anyway.
I don’t know what they’re putting up their noses if they think we can get rid of non-electric cars in 15 years, but there you go.
Have a lovely weekend, everyone!
February 21, 2020 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 10
Woke-o Ono
Blatant ripoff. I saw someone post an image like this to Twitter yesterday and wished I’d thought of it. I was gonna post his image, but I looked and looked and couldn’t find it. Honest.
Anyway, neither one of us came up with Woke-o Ono. I don’t know who coined that.
As an American living in Sussex, you can imagine how delightful this episode has been for me. Common consensus: she’s a wrong’un and they should be stripped of their titles.
You and I, we don’t have to worry about such things. Good weekend, all!
January 10, 2020 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 10
Christmas came early
Please. Stop. I can only take so much schadenfreude. Twitter has been a delight today. (Above is antifa, flailing their little noodly arms at London police tonight).
Turns out, this was Labour’s worst showing in an election since 1935.
But my favorite story was the LibDems. They were the only party that ran specifically on the slogan “Stop Brexit” and were poised to pick up all the Remain voters who were disenchanted with Labour’s waffling on the issue. At one point, it looked like this election could really revive their brand.
Two things happened. First, even a lot of Remain voters had second thoughts about totally ignoring a democratic vote.
And second, their leader, Jo Swinson, did the talkshow circuit in the runup to the election. She stubbornly and repeatedly insisted that there was simply no reliable way to tell human males and females apart.
Turns out, her party took very large money from a company that makes puberty blockers. This enraged the feminists who might otherwise have voted LibDem. She ended up losing her own seat by 149 votes.
But the best moment in the election was Diane Abbott’s shoes.
December 13, 2019 — 9:56 pm
Comments: 18
I called it!
Nobody told me Ted Cruz grew a beard! I! Me! This weasel! advised him to do that way back when he was the first hat in the ring for 2016 (on account of he has a prissy little mouth).
Pic on the right is my Photoshop. I like his actual beard even better — a tidy thing with a hint of gray. Looks so much better.
I feel like freaking Grace Bedell.
A reminder: Hillary was much improved with whiskers, too.
December 11, 2019 — 9:11 pm
Comments: 7
Auntie!
I’m not generally a fan of women’s suffrage, but OMG — LOOK AT HER NAME! It’s Patsy the Mink!
Okay, it’s really Patsy Takemoto Mink, but still. How awesome is that? How come I never heard of her?
She served 12 terms! She made a grab for a presidential nom! She’s a mustelid!
Okay, it looks like she was a dreadful lefty (because of course she was), but I would totally vote for her just on account of that wonderful moniker. I am just that reasoned thoughtful. I know a woman who chose a candidate based on his shoes, so I’m not that far out of the mainstream.
See what I mean about women’s suffrage?
The Smithsonian was blathering on Twitter about the vote, which is where I found this. I’m safe re-posted political posters, right?
June 20, 2019 — 9:20 pm
Comments: 4
*shrug*
Folks, I can’t tell you what’s going on in this country at the moment.
No, really. I can’t. I’m a guest in a place that’s suddenly morphed into a single giant, throbbing raw nerve ending and I’m trying to keep my trap shut and not attract attention to myself.
Nobody likes a mouthy immigrant.
Image pinched from here.
April 8, 2019 — 9:18 pm
Comments: 13
Oh, look…another one
Remember that time that you and everybody you knew was upset about high taxes and illegal immigration and the people in charge decided that the most important issue in the whole wide world was…gay marriage? Remember that? Or that time you and everybody you knew was upset about high taxes and illegal immigration and the people in charge decided that the most important issue in the whole wide world was…transgender teens?
Yeah. Are you getting the vegan thing at the moment? You can spot a put-up job when suddenly, inexplicably, it’s all anyone is talking about in government and the MSM. Left, right and center. Or left, lefter and leftest.
We’re getting Veganuary in the neck. I tried searching “who is behind Veganuary?” “why Veganuary?” all the way to “fuck off Veganuary” and all the results were tasty vegan recipes and why you should give up meat for the animals.
I find it bizarre that the slideshow at the top of the Veganuary site is a series of adorable farm animals. Because, you know, the only reason those beasts exist is because we eat them. Most bear little resemblance to their natural counterparts.
Cows, chickens and pigs, after so many generations of breeding for characteristics people convenient, can no longer make it in the wild. Maybe if we cut them all loose all and let the predators at them for a hundred years or so, a few hardy specimens would survive to create brand new breeds of wild animal, but I don’t think that’s what the vegans have in mind.
Just how many petting zoos do they think the market will support?
January 10, 2019 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 12
Will one of y’all vote or me, please?
Before I moved to the UK, I took a side trip home. Among other things, I switched my voter registration from Rhode Island to Tennessee. Made sense. Tennessee is my native state and I still owned property there.
But I’ve never kept up on local Tennessee politics, so I usually don’t bother getting an absentee ballot for the midterms. I probably should, but I don’t.
Under these circumstances, I’m pretty sure it’s legal for one of y’all to vote in my stead. So have at it.
Or at least vote for yourself.
November 5, 2018 — 8:01 pm
Comments: 10
Ah, that felt good
This is a scene from the village fete of a very posh, very beautiful little settlement we visited this weekend. It’s the thing where you throw wet sponges at some poor bastard in the stocks, no doubt in aid of some charity or other. And, yes, he’s wearing a mask of Donald Trump.
People who inject politics where it doesn’t belong. Am I right?
It’s one of our favorite fetes. Rich people throw out the damnedest thing. Last time, we got an enormous (if not absolutely complete) Minton tea service for, like, £5. No great triumphs this year, but we got some good books and some jam from the Bible society and a sausage on a roll.
I debated saying something to Trump Mask Guy for harshing my mellow. I’d regret it forever if I didn’t, youknow? so as we were leaving, I walked up and whispered in his ear, “I voted for that man, and I have never regretted it.”
Couldn’t see his face 🙁
August 13, 2018 — 9:35 pm
Comments: 23
Things that surprise no-one
Well, hell. I said to Uncle B that the Austin bomber was probably going to be a young white guy. It just fit the crime, you know? And so it turned out to be. I would have thought he would have more of an obviously ‘troubled past’, but it’s early days yet.
It’s a young white guy kind of crime. It saddens me, but it’s true.
Also in the ‘Things That Should Surprise No-one’ file, does anybody expect anybody to reject Trump because he slept with a porn star and a Playboy bunny? The dudebros who love him will think the whole thing is alpha as fuck.
And conservatives have known all along he’s not one of them. He’s a crass and vulgar man, duh. But what was anyone supposed to do? At least he’s not a pervert (guys who bed legendarily attractive women may be hounds, but they aren’t bent) and he’s less weak and weird than 95% of the people scrabbling for high office in my lifetime.
If “grab them by the pussy” didn’t do it, this is the weakest gotcha ever.
The picture is what turned up on a Google Images search for “surprise stoat.” It leads to an article about surveillance footage of a weasel on a trampoline. Follow it. You won’t be sorry.
March 21, 2018 — 10:26 pm
Comments: 20