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Say, it’s been a while since I poked fun at the food

Oyster flavored potato chips. Hoo boy!

Not bad. Not all that oystery. But at £.79/40g (about $1.30 for a fun-sized bag), I probably won’t make a habit of them.

The chickens loved them.

Oh, and I tried my first barley water (the existence of which I only knew from that Mary Poppins song). It doesn’t really have a smell, so I don’t know what that was all about. The barley doesn’t contribute flavor either, that I can tell — just a slippery mouth feel. I got citrus flavored, so it was like thick, silky orange juice.

Do I like it? I’ll have a think about it.

Next up — Tizer and Vimto! Good weekend, everyone!

April 15, 2011 — 8:33 pm
Comments: 22

So I get to paint my whole body with myrrh, anyway

Yeah. No, really.

Remember that case of ringworm I picked up before Christmas? Yep. I’m still a crusty, boogery mess. Damn thing heals in one spot and breaks out in another.

I dropped by a walk-in clinic at Christmas, saw a doctor I didn’t know and got five tubes of ointment. I saw my own GP last month (for my annual blood pressure check), rolled down my sock and showed him my nastiest bit, got a shrug and one tube of ointment.

My medical intervention is deescalating.

I’d blame the NHS, but my doctor in Rhode Island noticed a patch of ringworm on my leg and gave me nothing. (Yes, I’ve had it before. Fungus seems to like me. I should try growing champignon mushrooms on my ass).

So, in desperation, I’ve seen a qualified herbalist. Earning qualifications here requires a pretty rigorous medical course, so it’s not like going to Sunshine McButterfly the spirit healer. I’ve got some chance of getting something that works.

Which turns out to be myrrh. And tea tree oil. She made up a bucket of “paint” and I literally take a paintbrush and slather it onto the affected areas.

What’s that like? Well, it’s kind of like AIIIIIIIIIIIIII, OHMIGOD, ITBURNS ITBURNS ITBURNSSSSSSSSSSS!

April 14, 2011 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 32

Millionaires’n’billionaires

I cut together all the times Obama mentioned the wealthy in his “budget” speech tonight (click for video).

Wow. I thought this would be funny. Actually, it makes me want to start slapping and then slap some more and then give him a big ol’ slap. Slappity-slappity-slappity, mister class warrior man.

Two observations — he frequently made references to “as long as I’m president” and things that will happen in 2014, as though his next term is in the bag. And he repeatedly used the brain-hurty expression “spending reductions in the tax code” which, apparently, means new taxes (update: Joe Collins tells me this means elimination of some deductions and shelters).

Did he think that would fly?

April 13, 2011 — 11:32 pm
Comments: 26

A big ask

You know, it is a huge thing we’re asking of the Middle East and Afghanistan. We’re asking them to catch up to, like, 400 years of Western cultural shift. Overnight.

We’re demanding they instantly accept attitudes toward self-government and religion that it took us hundreds of years and a few nasty wars to reach.

We’re asking them to adopt attitudes about women we’ve only reached in the last forty years and attitudes to homosexuality we’ve only realized in the last twenty.

And some of the stuff we’re pushing on them has to look pretty unattractive. They could be forgiven for thinking free speech and a secular society inevitably results in our current style of slutty, trashy popular culture. (I don’t think it is inevitable. I think it took a relentless campaign to eradicate shame to make that happen).

It’s not exactly sympathy. But I think we asking for a huge leap from…excitable people. I’ll be astonished if the Arab Spring ends well. Or soon.

April 12, 2011 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 23

Hello, I’m new!

Be grateful my blog is in black and white; this little dude is not five minutes old and is still a bit messy. It’s coming to something when you can’t walk to the store without stuff giving birth in front of you.

Yes, it’s lambing time! That magical time of year when all the fields around are full of mamas and babies and I fob you off with cute lamb pictures because I’ve been lolling around in a lawnchair all day soaking up rays instead of sitting at the computer drawing pictures of politicians who piss me off.

I took this video over the weekend, standing in the back yard looking over the field. For some reason (possibly having to do with sheepdogs) the flock only comes to our end of the field at dusk, so the video is a little dark and blurry. These two are maybe three days old; they’ve only just learned they can hop — though “hop” doesn’t really do it justice. We call it a sproing.

These little dudes aren’t entirely in control of the sproing yet, but they LIKE it.

SQUEEEEE!

April 11, 2011 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 21

President SooperGenius

Cleek the peecture for veedio. I slung this together in a real hurry trying to get it out last night, and then YouTube let me down. So it’s not brilliant (a soundtrack would’ve perked it up considerably), but the video clip needs to be out there in as many forms as possible.

The AP originally reported this, then thought better of it and tried to airbrush it away: Obama advising a man with ten kids who is worried about gas prices that what he really needs is a new car.

For those of you who aren’t politically inclined — and by way of explaining why I didn’t spend today turning that video into something awesome — here’s one minute and forty seconds of my chickens walking around pecking stuff. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. I spent my whole day sprawled over a lawn chair in the sunshine with a glass of iced tea watching them walk around and peck stuff.

Try it. It’s hypnotic.

April 8, 2011 — 8:52 pm
Comments: 43

Ugh.

Pooh. I made you a video and started uploading it to YouTube two hours ago, but it’s been stuck at 58% for twenty minutes.

Looks like we’re hung. And not in a good way.

It’s 1am here, so I’ll have to work it out tomorrow. Sorry.

I’m not having much luck with video lately, am I?

— 12:11 am
Comments: 17

Hey, nice wolverine

So this one day, one of my co-workers comes in wearing this huge, godawful ugly wig — forget matching her hair color, it didn’t seem to match her species. And my boss leaned over to me and said, “Ah. I see Christine has come to work with a wolverine on her head today.”

That’s how I always think of Trump — that guy with the wolverine on his head.

I share my vision with you. You’re welcome.

That’s all I know about him — rich, wolverine on head — so I don’t really have an opinion on a Trump presidential run. I’ll make a couple of predictions, though.

First, they’re going to call this “the most important election of our lives.” That’s an easy call; they always do. And it’s almost always true.

Second, the gosh-darned importance of this election will be cited as the reason Sarah Palin really shouldn’t run, there’s a dear (but somehow won’t be a factor with Donald Trump’s little vanity project).

April 6, 2011 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 26

Big dumb boy

Wow. Lindsey Graham is a hard man to caricature. Turns out, if you exaggerate any of his features, the result looks less like him. Fundamentally, everything about the guy is squish.

So I just made him shiiiiiiny.

Dear future visitors to this post: Lindsey Graham has said that free speech should have limitations.

Dear Republicans of South Carolina: DO BETTER NEXT TIME. KTHXBAI.

Though, if I’m reading it right, “next time” is 2014? Oof!

While we’re on the topic of speech, you do realize if the crowded theater really is on fire, you have every right to shout “FIRE!” in a crowded theater — and, in some places, a legal obligation to do so? Which makes shouting “FIRE!” in a theater you do not believe to be on fire less of a speech issue and more of a fraud issue, as far as I’m concerned. Like saying, “I’m a doctor; let me give you a breast exam” or “will you assassinate my wife for $10,000” aren’t really First Amendment issues.

Sorry for the digression, but that whole “FIRE!” thing gets on my nerves. It’s lazy and sloppy.

April 5, 2011 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 19

Terry Jones has a kind of “faces of meth” thing going, hasn’t he?

Seriously, why was this even reported? Burning a Koran is both stupid and legal in this country, if not as stupid as giving a cracker attention whore nobody preacherman just what he’s begging for. Way to reward bad behavior!

Next thing you know, you got the United Nations, the European Union, Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, General Petraeus and who knows who else wringing their hands about it. Oh, way to signal that we think this is a big fucking deal, too.

We don’t. And pretending we do was exactly the wrong thing.

Asking rednecks not to do stupid things is like expecting water to flow up. Does the United Nations think Ray-Ray should buy those sweet-ass alligator boots if he can’t make his truck payment this month? Does Angela Merkel think Darlene should leave her kids in the car while she drops in for a couple of beers at the Lucky Seven?

So why make this bonehead a superstar?

Burning a book had not the slightest interest to an American audience. Even our Muslims didn’t seem all that wadded up about it. The only interested constituency was the excitable, primitive boo-boos in the back of nowhere.

So why does our media choose to serve THAT audience? It’s bizarre.

I have a theory. The MSM can no longer keep things hidden from us, so they’ve gone into the business of revealing things that we all agree would be better hidden.

What do you think? Too paranoid?

April 4, 2011 — 5:14 pm
Comments: 42