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Weasel’s lucky coon bone

lucky coon bone

This here’s a baculum. An os penis. A penile bone. Specifically, this is the peckerbone of a raccoon. I’ve carried it in my wallet for thirty years. For luck.

Somewhere along the line, the business end got broken, so I can’t demonstrate. But it’s worth remembering: if someone hands you a bone with one joint only, and you’re pretty sure it’s not a finger or toe bone, you can rest assured you are holding in your hands a winkiebone.

Most male mammals have an os johnson, including our closest animal relatives, the chimps. We are in a small group of boneless dickwielders, along with horses, marsupials and rabbits. We are, indeed, hung like horses. And/or rabbits.

Biologist Richard Dawkins thinks humans lost the os dingdong via sexual selection by females, since you have to be healthy to build and maintain a decent stiffy purely with hydraulics. By that logic, humans should’ve lost their leg bones and eyeballs and tongues as well, since you’d have to very fucking healthy to writhe around on the ground like a blind slug making “awoo” noises and still survive to mate. Me, I think evolution took them away when we began to walk upright. Otherwise that thing’d be whipping around slamming into stuff all the time.

Or possibly the devolution of human penis bones coincides with the evolution of pants.

There isn’t a word in Biblical Hebrew for skinflute, so some speculate that Eve was actually created out of Adam’s os tallywhacker. This would neatly explain both our modern lack of dickbonage and <insert your own woman/penis joke here, because I couldn’t think of a good one>.

The female homologue to the schlongbone is called the baubellum or os clitoridis.

Occasionally, modern human babies are born with an os peepee. They are surgically removed. (It seems more likely that it’s some sort of stray ossification than a proper, jointed and fully formed prickulum, though, don’t you think?)

I didn’t know half of this ten minutes ago. I cribbed it all from Wikipedia. Some day, I may have to rename this blog Stuff I Stole from Wikipedia but Hopefully Funnier.

My mother had a pair of earings made from coon bones. She said it was a way of swiftly identifying country boys (to what end, I do not know). She said a man who grew up hunting would invariably turn red and splutter, “ma’am — do you know what those are?”

And she’d say, “no, but somebody told me I’d look good between two of them.”

So over the years, people sent her various exotic specimens of pudbone. I remember an impressive one from a kodiak bear. And a walking stick made out of a bull’s wiener, stretched and dried. I wonder where they all ended up?

Anyhow, I’m not giving this one away. I just wanted to share.

And see how many words for pizzle I could think of off the top of my head.

And guarantee myself ALL KINDS of unfortunate Google traffic.

In conclusion, weasel porn!

July 31, 2007 — 1:52 pm
Comments: 106

Art from the Weasel Collection

prisonerart

Happy garbage day! I tried and, once again, failed to put these items in a sack and leave them at the curb. These lovely objects are crafted from red, silver and blue glitter, Elmer’s white glue and burnt matchsticks. It’s a cross and a jewelry box. They were made by an inmate of the Tennessee Correctional System. My mother corresponded with him for a time. I do not wish to know why.

“What’s he in for?” I asked her, naturally.
“Murder, I think,” she said. “You hate to ask, you know?”

I didn’t know. My life had been free of this particular awkward social challenge.

I’m having an asshole of a week. Much to do at work, much to do at home. Trying to clear away some of the results of my twenty years of pack-rattery, among other unpleasant jobs. The fun will continue for some time, so you’ll probably get to meet lots of my stuff (in lieu of the usual thoughtful, high quality original sweasel content). Hope you don’t mind.

I need all the imaginary friends I can get.

July 30, 2007 — 6:17 pm
Comments: 21

friday twennysebbun

rest200707271.jpg

At five thirty a.m., a truck travelling on 128N/93S kicked up a sewer grate into the windshield of the car behind. The driver got a faceful of metal and was medevac’ed away. Because those grates had been worked on all week by a state contractor, a hefty liability issue can be assumed. The whole area was therefore treated as a crime scene. Hence, the main ringroad around Beantown was shutdown for twelve hours. I mean, twelve hours from Home to Home for an weasel, which is all I care about. I got it coming and going. I have been inhaling air condition and exhaling profanity all day long.

Do your worst. I fear nothing.

July 27, 2007 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 14

AFK today

I’m in an all-day, computerless ‘team building’ meeting in Boston today. I’m not really a team weasel, so this might take a while.

Please not to be trashing the place.

— 6:11 am
Comments: 19

This blog needs more death kitties

spreadytoes.jpg

I find the spready toes irresistable. My cats know this, I think. They never waste an opportunity to drop and spread ’em. Good morning! Yoink! My bowl is empty! Yoink! I hacked up a furball in your underwear drawer! Yoink!

I’ve been holding this picture for several days, waiting an opportunity. You can thank Uncle Badger for this.

July 26, 2007 — 5:16 pm
Comments: 11

It’s not one of mine, I swear!

oscarthecat.jpg

Oscar is a two-year-old cat adopted as a kitten by Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, RI, where I be at (Providence, not a nursing home. Not yet, bucko). Oscar isn’t an especially friendly cat. Doesn’t seem to like people that much, in fact.

Every morning, Oscar makes the rounds of the dementia ward, checking up on everybody, just like a real doctor. Say, Dr Kevorkian. Because, every once in a while, Oscar will hop up on the bed and curl up next to somebody. And when he does this, that old coot is going to die today.

So far, he’s gotten it right upwards of 25 times, which is a better track record than the doctors. When Oscar cuddles up to somebody, they call that person’s family and a priest. One ungrateful wretch asked that Oscar be put out of the room while he said goodbye to his mom. Oscar paced up and down the hall, mewing.

Sender-inner thinks they’re overlooking the obvious explanation: when no-one’s looking, Oscar bumps people off (presumably by the classic feline method of breath-stealing). Me, I think it’s adequately explained by the “special relationship” between cats and the Man in Black. The one with the sickle, not the one with the guitar. Eh. Either one, at this point.


The New England Journal of Medicine started the story, but they only have a one hundred word excerpt online. This blog seems to have transcribed the story from the print edition (it’s a much-typo’d telling that begins with the same hundred words). Also covered by the BBC, CNN and everybody else. Update: Awww shoot! Now Drudge has it. That always makes me feel so…common.

— 8:43 am
Comments: 23

A bleak day for journalism

hillaryufo.jpg

Weekly World News is calling it quits.

American Media Incorporated’s other titles include the Star, National Enquirer and Men’s Fitness — which, if you ask me, is putting way too many of our precious journalistic resources in one basket. If AMI went under, what would I read in the checkout line?

And I speak for all of us when I shriek uncontrollably, WHAT ABOUT BATBOY?!

According to Wikipedia the original Bat Boy edition of Weekly World News was the second-best selling issue of all time, and then infuriatingly doesn’t reveal which one was first best, so screw Wikipedia.

Bat Boy was rendered by editor-slash-cartoonist (or editor/cartoonist, if you prefer) Dick Kulpa. Dick’s other claims to fame include drawing Star Trek and Bruce Lee comics for the LA Times Syndicate and art direction for the Testor’s corporation (where he drew the instruction sheets for the Weird-Ohs line of models). Also, he was elected to the Loves Park Illinois City Council, where he regularly appeared wearing tights and a cape as Alder-man, crusader for justice. Weasel does not make this shit up.

batboy.jpg

But I digress. More Wiki.

Bat Boy has a chaotic sense of morality. He has been known to steal cars as well as come to the aid of the needy. According to the mythos, the only person who cares about the chiropteran child is Dr. Ron Dillon, who discovered him in a West Virginia cave. At the time of capture, he was two feet tall and weighed nineteen pounds. By February 2001, he was 2′ 6″. In 2004, he was five feet tall and his weight was unknown.

He sheds his wings every three years, and regenerates a new pair.

During the 1990s Bat Boy is rumored to have tried to escape society’s gaze by enrolling in a small liberal arts college in upstate New York under the assumed name of Guy Fledermaus (German for bat). He purportedly graduated with an art degree from the college’s “Music Program Zero”.

On 27 February 2001, he allegedly attacked a fifth-grader in an Orlando, Florida park. The girl was nearly ripped to shreds. The next day, he endorsed presidential candidate Al Gore.

Worth following the link just for the geneology of the Boy family. A sad day. A sad, sad day. Also, I goofed off too much yesterday and so I’ll have to make up for it today. A sad, sad, sad day.

July 25, 2007 — 8:26 am
Comments: 24

Good morning! Have some poetry…

Famous poems recast as limericks:

The Raven

There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says “Nevermore.”

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still.

Gnus sent me that link. The rest of the site is high-larious; mostly comics and Flash animations. It’s updated Mondays and Wednesdays. Go here if you want to start at the beginning and browse the lot. Lore Sjöberg. That’s his
name. Don’t wear it out. He also writes a humor column for
Wired
which is pretty…humorous.

— 6:22 am
Comments: none

Dismissalooza…!

wardo.jpg

It’s D-Day for Ward Churchill. The CU Board of Regents is holding a hearing right now to decide his fate. Ward is going to plead his case, but sadly that part is behind closed doors. Some preliminary remarks were supposed to be streamed online at 8:15, but it’s 8:55 and nary a peep yet. Some time after 4pm, they’re also supposed to be streaming video of the press conference announcing the result (same URL).

Pirate Ballerina‘s jwpaine promises live-blogging, whenever there is something to liveblog. He might even have thugs and/or goons in the area of the actual hearing.

Me, I just have some fashion advice for the professor. First, lose a few pounds or lose the turtleneck. Dude. Seriously.

Second, the hair. Yes, I realize long, straight hair parted in the middle is supposed to evoke the whole Native American thing, but your forehead is too low to support this ‘do. That’s something we have in common, Sir — hairlines so proximate to our eyebrows, the effect borders on simian.

Now, when you combine a low forehead with long, straight hair parted in the middle, you are presented with two options. You can hook all that hair behind your ears, flapping them outwards, cartoonishly. The Dopey of Tribe Disney look, as it were. Or you can let the hair fall where it may, which is going to be basically in front of your face.

When I went through my obligatory long-straight-hair-parted-in-the-middle phase in the early ’70s, I generally pursued the latter hairdressing strategy. Hence, for several years, there was nothing to see of me but two lank curtains of brown hair barely parted by the tip of my proud aquiline nose.

“You look,” my mother remarked, squinting at me, “like a weasel peeping out of a tent.”

Update: Lokki points out, they’re in a different timezone in Colorado. Ummm…duh, Weasel. Update, update: okay, NOW they’re really, really late.

UPDATE: gone, but not forgotten. Let the litigation commence! Somehow, I keep replaying in my head that ridiculous dogfighting speech by the ridiculous Senator Byrd, “the dawg dahd! …the dawg dahd! …the dawg daaaaaaahd!”

July 24, 2007 — 8:54 am
Comments: 36

Richard Johnson: Postings from Afghanistan

Richard Johnson sketchSmall Dead Animals — but do please check out the National Post of Canada blog Postings from Afghanistan.

Of course, you have to admire a guy doing it old school and flying his own ass out to Kandahar to sketch his country’s troops. That’s a given. But I have to tell you, this man is seriously good.

Yes, I know you’ve seen drawings in this general style, but they’re often not quite the quick, spontaneous sketches they seem. There’s a whole ‘nother art to laboring over a drawing and making it look like you didn’t. This guy, on the other hand, is the real deal; he’s doing these drawings on the spot, in one take, with very little underdrawing (preliminary sketching) or overdrawing (correction after the fact).

another Richard Johnson sketch

How do I know? I’m a professional artard, dammit. I can draw, but I’ve never been good at quick and fluid life drawing like this. I’m deeply envious of people who are, and I’ve made a study of them.

Like, check out the boots on the kneeling guy in the sketch above. Boots and shoes are tough (I had to draw a pair as part of my entrance exam to art school; it’s harder than drawing Binky, I can tell you). Not only does he do them well, he shows them at slight angles, natural to the pose. Novices need to draw things from clean angles: directly in front, directly from above, directly from the side. The ability to render objects slightly tilted is a sure sign the artist has grokked a shape so completely that he can rotate it in his head, three dimensionally. In other words: damn.

I traded email with him Saturday; I was lucky that his connect was good that day and he was sitting by a computer in Kandahar. He confirmed that he draws, as much as possible, quickly and from life. He takes photos as well, but refers to them sparingly. I believe it. As a technical illustrator, of necessity I’ve done a lot of drawing from photographs. It always gives itself away. Even experienced draftsmen can’t avoid a certain a stiff, flat, mechanical look when relying heavily on photos. You look at a photo and tend to think there is a dark shape next to the eye instead of there’s an indentation next to the eye. The difference shows.

His words are good, too, but I haven’t finished reading them. I hate reading a blog from the beginning; the format is so damned uncongenial. New entries are on top. You have to go to the bottom, look up until you find the top of the unread entry, read down to the end of it, then go up above that until you find the unread entry above the one you just read…well, you know what I’m talking about. It’s a pain. It’s fun to see his drawings get better over time, though. That’s natural — you gotta draw every day to get good at it, and the more the merrier.

Anyway, I think he’s over there for two months this time (he went in 2003, as well) and he looks to be about halfway through. There’s a link from the top of the Post, but I don’t think he’s getting the attention he deserves. Wander over and check it out.

July 23, 2007 — 6:24 am
Comments: 5