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Oops! Almost forgot Friday’s Weasel

weasels and magnums

Do y’all ever have that terrible dream where you squeeze and squeeze the trigger but the hammer never falls? Maybe it’s a girl thing.

Sorry about the pervasive lameness of posting lately. It’s going to continue like this for some time. My home life currently consists of sorting all my worldly goods into either shipping boxes or garbage bags. And now things are heating up at work, too.

You know, I don’t think anyone properly appreciates how difficult it is for a lazy person to get along in this crazy, crazy world.

November 30, 2007 — 7:17 pm
Comments: 61

Look, I’m a little sensitive about my snubby, okay?

Weasel's S&W 686 revolver

Whoa! What’re the odds? That’s Enas Yorl and his brand new Smith & Wesson 686 onscreen in the background there, me and mine in the foreground…turns out Mr Minority has one and McGoo has one, too.

This is my bedside cannon. My “holy shit, lady, you aren’t kidding!” piece. It is very big and shiny. It makes an extremely loud bang. I suspect it would make exceedingly large holes in bad guys, but happily I’ve never had to test this theory.

When I moved to Rhode Island, I arrived unarmed and stayed that way for twenty years. I knew the rules were more restrictive up here in Yanquiland and I figured buying a gun wasn’t worth the trouble.

But then I bought a house on a corner lot. Sound travels funny here. Somebody slams a car door, it sounds like bad guys moving around in the basement. One night, I found myself creeping down the stairs clutching a tack hammer like Conan the Ovarian, and I thought, “this is too stupid.”

Turns out, while it’s nearly impossible to get a concealed carry permit in Rhode Island, all you need is a “blue card” to buy a gun and keep it in your home. To earn your blue card, you need to pass a background check and a written exam.

I am now going to tell you how to pass the written exam. Ready? Here’s the secret: there is no condition under which any gun can ever be considered unloaded. None whatever. Just fired six rounds out of a six shooter? Still loaded. Just completely disassembled your pistol into its umpty-ump constituent parts? Still loaded. Crushed it flat with a backhoe? Loaded. Aliens blew our lovely blue earth to smithereens and just as your lungs collapse in the cold nothingness of outer space a molten glob of metal that might possibly once have been your favorite revolver sails past your ear into the void? Count on it, it’s loaded.

Yup. See, they took the old common-sense recommendation that it’s safest to regard every gun as loaded and morphed it into a nonsensical declaration that every gun really is loaded all the time. Put your hand on your heart and say something stupid, and we’ll give you that blue card.

I wonder how many rosy-necked sons of the soil were too proud to say something that dumb to earn their papers?

November 29, 2007 — 5:45 pm
Comments: 69

Oh. Right. Thanksgiving.

weasel's thanksgivingMy assorted brothers had spousal families to eat with in the afternoon, so we had a Thanksgiving brunchy thing.

Have you ever had riced eggs? My stepmother is generally a very good cook, but I don’t know about this one. You boil eggs and then “rice” them with a cheese shredder, make a roux and pour it over the top. “The boys fight over this,” she said. And I saw them do it, too, but damned if I can work out why.

Anyhow, she makes the only edible grits in the world. She makes them the regular bland way, then mixes in raw egg and cheese and bakes it. Nice. Basically, you melt cheese on something, I’m going to eat it. I’m an au gratin kind of a gal.

I got three jackets, two pairs of slacks (slacks! That I should wear slacks!), several tops, a skirt and five pairs of shoes out of the deal. I like two of the jackets and one of the pairs of shoes, so I’m going to call this a success.

Now I’ve essentially got two weeks to de-junkify this place. And a headcold, which I presumably picked up in the airport in Cincinnati. Yeah, I knew that germy infant in the seat in front of me was going to give me a disease.

November 28, 2007 — 4:49 pm
Comments: 37

“I guess that just pissed them off worser…”

Not a week goes by I don’t find some new reason to be proud of my home state:

Police said they were working on a more detailed description of three men dressed in drag who came into a McDonald’s restaurant and started swinging.

Restaurant employee Martez Brisco was working the drive-through window when he reportedly got into an argument with the suspects. When Brisco ignored them tapping at the window, they came in.

“They come to the window, ‘Tap, tap, tap.’ I’m still ignoring them,” Brisco told WMC-TV. “I guess that just pissed them off worser.”

The transvestites allegedly struck the manager with a tire iron, and when he swung back, the drag queens took off their stiletto boots, removed their earrings and prepared to attack. The manager, Albert Bolton, was covered with scratch marks after suspects clawed him with their fingernails.

Bolton grabbed a pot of scalding french-fry grease and hurled it at his attackers. One of the cross-dressers then smacked Bolton with a wet floor sign, sending him to the hospital in an ambulance,
WMC-TV reported.

November 27, 2007 — 1:04 pm
Comments: 9

Monday, right?

monday post it drawings

My password expired over Thanksgiving holiday. “Please type new password to log in…” it says. So I do that and it answers, “you do not have permission to change your password.”

Huh. Call the Helpdesk.

“Okay, security question: what was your first car?”
“Karmen Ghia.”
“Uhhhh…spell that?”
“K-A-R-M-A — no, E — N G-H-I-A”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Volkswagen?”
“No.”
“Errrr…VW?”
“No. And now you’ve given three wrong answers and you’re locked out.” He huffs in an now look what you’ve done I hope you’re happy kind of way. Then follows a lecture about how it’s extremely important to give accurate answers to those security questions. Well, my answers were accurate, dammit. It’s a stupidly ambiguous security question.

“So what do you do if someone dies.”
-pause-
“Ma’am, I don’t even understand why you’d ask me that question.”
“Well, let’s say somebody gets hit by a bus and you really need to get access to his data. He’s not around to tell you the name of his first car. What do you do then?”
“The manager.” (I swear that’s all he said. The manager, just like that).
“The manager…?”

Then the line went dead. I don’t think he hung up on me. Surely not. Surely. Not. But by then, I’d seen my boss go by. He’s The Manager that all the kids are talking about, so I dumped it in his lap, went back to my desk, and drew these small but hauntingly lovely cartoons on post-it notes until the Help Desk called me back.

I feel like I’ve gone to the Crazy Place.

November 26, 2007 — 5:16 pm
Comments: 49

Can Weasel come home now?

died and gone to Nashville

Back tomorrow. See you then.

November 23, 2007 — 7:29 am
Comments: 31

Happy Thanksgiving!

horse drawn hearse

I give you this slideshow of 39 people, mostly celebrities, and their odd deaths. Many are too recent or too well known to be interesting. But how did I miss Christine Chubbuck, the Florida newsreader who committed suicide on-air in 1974? The Wikipedia article about her contains the greatest sentence in the English language:

She placed a .38 revolver in her bag of puppets and put it beneath her desk.

I definitely didn’t know Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap. He used to hold the cap in his teeth while he administered eyedrops. I think I knew that author Sherwood Anderson died of peritonitis after swallowing a toothpick. And everybody knows Isadora Duncan strangled to death in a tragic wardrobe malfunction when her silk scarf wrapped around the wheel of her convertible.

Shucks, here are a few more ways to die.

There! Now you have something to be grateful for! Happy Thanksgiving!

November 22, 2007 — 7:05 am
Comments: 24

Nashville: blame it on the weasels

fort nashborough

Nashville! It’s not a bad city, really. If you stay away from the touristy bits and avoid Summers, it’s a nice enough town.

great grandma

My great great great great great grandparents led the first wave of white families to settle along the Cumberland River around the stockade fort pictured above (the original, not that replica) in 1779. Fort Nashborough was named after Francis Nash, a brigadier general killed in the Revolutionary War two years earlier. He and my grandfather were both North Carolinians and veterans of the War of the Regulators. Otherwise, the place would probably be called Weaselville, and that would have made it really hard to market as a vacation spot.

The next few decades, the story is all about clashes between the settlers and the Chickamauga band of Cherokees, so we’re hopelessly unable to talk sense about it. But, hey, Thanksgiving is the time for injun stories.

So here’s my great great great great grandmother. One day, a Cherokee band fired a single musket volley at the fort and fled, luring the men out into an ambush. Two hundred Indians got between twenty settlers and the fort. The settlers dismounted, and the Indians chased after their horses. Grandma saw an opportunity, opened the gates and set the dogs on them, buying enough time for the men to get back inside.

As someone remarked later, “thank God indians love horses and hate dogs” or no-one would have come home that day. My great great great great grandfather was born in that fort some time later. So, on the whole, hooray.


Remote-control pre-posted last Thursday, November 15. Poking around the online geneology sites trying to figure out if my Grandpa Willie was born before the Battle of the Bluffs, I’ve just discovered that I am actually related to my stepmother. Blood kin! (On my mother’s side — none of those jokes, please). Well. I think I need a moment to compose myself.

November 21, 2007 — 7:30 am
Comments: 11

If she offers me an apple, I’m outta there…

wicked stepmother

Today’s the day I’m a-sposed to be out…<koff>…clothes shopping with my stepmother.

What? You can’t see Stoaty as Snow White? Pff! You can smooch weasel butt!

November 20, 2007 — 8:31 am
Comments: 10

There I go again

corporate thanksgiving dinner

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s about two things I’m especially good at: gluttony and gratitude. And four days off!

I do it up big every year, with turkey and dressing and potatoes and peas and candied yams and those peculiar gluey white supermarket bake ‘n’ serve rolls I love so dearly but only buy for special occasions because they’re pharmaceutical-grade empty stodge. Then the cats and I sit down and eat ourselves spherical, pass out in an unseemly tryptophan coma, and wake up to three more days of vile, uncontrollable gas and glorious leftovers.

Friends and coworkers — and family especially — have always considered my attitude toward holidays unseemly and inappropriate. As an old maid, I guess I am expected to spend national holidays drinking weak tea, nibbling a dry biscuit and thinking how different things would be if only I had a family. At least two relatives phone each Thanksgiving (and, for that matter, Christmas) and ask wistfully if I am celebrating again. “What, with the turkey? And everything?” They sound exasperated.

My stepmother is especially resentful. She likes nothing better than getting us all together for T’day — but not for warm, happy, a very special episode of the Waltons reasons. See, she can use the big diningroom when there are people over. And the good silver. And we can all sit up straight in our Sunday best and pick at tiny servings of exotic food.

I did it, like, once. I was terrified the whole time I’d have a sudden, mysterious outbreak of adult-onset Tourette’s. I did say something especially stupid to my little brother. I forget what it was. (I’m lying. Of course I remember what it was). The experience was everything Thanksgiving isn’t.

Well, this year, she wins. This is likely to be my last Thanksgiving in the US, and she’s going to buy me a…a…oh, sweet Jesus…a dress. So, see, I have to go. I’m leaving this afternoon.

Back on Saturday. I don’t know how often I’ll have net access, so I’ll auto-post some shit while I’m gone.

What’s the opposite of thankful? Oh, yeah…dead drunk.


Ohmigosh! I almost forgot! It’s the anniversary of my favorite own post ever. Last year, I spent some time over the Thanksgiving holiday creating this moving tribute to Damien’s jaunty balls, snipped off in a tragic veterinary incident the week previous. The procedure did not, contrary to expectations, mellow him in the slightest.

I’m especially proud of the soundtrack. Do you know how hard it is to compose appropriate theme music for excised testicles?

November 19, 2007 — 6:25 am
Comments: 43