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Don’t worry. They’re not mad at *you*

No, it has not escaped notice here that our juvenile president seems to go way out of his way to insult Britain. Sending nobody from his administration to Maggie’s funeral is just the latest in a series. (The picture is from the rehearsal, by the way).

Here’s the thing, though — that “special relationship” stuff is real and it is an incredibly durable and powerful force. It’s not about our governments cooperating. In fact, politicians of all kinds seem a little embarrassed about it (for reasons I can’t quite wrap my puzzler around). It’s because we are the same people. We share a common history, a common law, a common view of the world. Not just Anglo-American, but wherever free markets and English common law have penetrated — in other words, former British colonies. (Oh, it’s not racial, either. It applies equally to former colonies like Hong Kong). It’s the Anglosphere, and it’s real and persistent.

I get a much wider view of it from here. Despite the locking down of legal immigration (and you better believe they’re clamping down on migration between these two countries — not the right sort of immigration, don’tcha know), people are still finding ways to move between Anglospheric countries. Nearly every one of our neighbors has family in the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. This is sheep country, so that’s not surprising, but it’s also true of my doctor and the road engineer who lives on the corner.

I expected to encounter some degree of anti-Americanism, but so far…nada. People’s faces light up when they hear my accent and they can’t wait to tell me about their last trip to Vegas or Disney World.

So, no worries. The petulant man-child in the Oval Office has tweaked a few tails, but nobody’s mad at you. We’re family, after all.

April 16, 2013 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 27

Shit.

Near as I can tell from my FaceBook feed, all my old Boston homies are home and safe. So. Fine.

Does everyone have the day off for Patriot’s Day? I always did, but I worked in suburban Boston and my employer could expect some percent of employees to play hooky for the marathon if a day wasn’t provided.

I never went in person, but watched on TV often enough. I’m not into sports — certainly not marathons — but I remember this one because the third Monday in April is a real grab bag, weather wise. I’ve watched them run in blazing sun and in snow. Runners prefer the cold runs, for the obvious reason.

As far as speculation goes…too soon, too soon. We’ll have real answers in the fullness of time. Now back to watching Twitter twitter.

April 15, 2013 — 10:43 pm
Comments: 29

Round 49: now with added absence of dick!

Mrs C takes it at last, and regretfully, with Margaret Thatcher. Farewell to the Iron Lady, from grocer’s daughter to state funeral. Seldom in history has just the right person arrived at just the right time to save everyone’s bacon.

Right! Who’s next?

0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody.

1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).

2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.

3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.

4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay?

5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.

6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.

7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.

8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.

The prize? An official Certificate of Dick Winning (if that doesn’t make sense to you, you’ll have to go back through the Dead Pool archives until it does) and a small original sketch par moi.

April 12, 2013 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 131

Oh, do it, do it, please!

As you surely know, Anthony Weiner is thinking of running for mayor of New York. Which would be awesome. Y’all know how I love me a dick joke!

My first thought was, no way. You don’t come back from a multiple-target creepy dick-tweeting scandal. I was flipping through old YouTubes of Weiner performing — he was a godawful camera whore, if you remember — and I had forgotten how desperately I longed to poke this guy in the snoot. He’s a hyperactive, sarcastic, loudmouthed, obnoxious, prancing smartass.

New Yorkers loved him. It dawned on me, those YouTubes were uploaded by people who adored him. They were delighted to watch him wave his arms around and scream. The majority of his constituents didn’t want him to resign when he did. So, dick jokes or not, it isn’t out of the question.

Hoo boy! You thought Bloomberg was a national hate object. If they elect this jackass, the rest of the country will have no choice but to saw Manhattan loose and tow it out to sea.

Oh, I found this. It’s from the Women’s National Republican Club’s awards dinner last year. I don’t know who Andrea Tantaros is, but I like the cut of her jib:

Andrea Tantaros held up a cocktail wiener and starting going off on the sexting-crazed ex-congressman who resigned in disgrace. “You’ll recognize this from the cocktail hour. It’s a little wiener. It’s in a symbolic silver tray, too, right Bob?” she said, referring to Turner, who succeeded Weiner following his scandal. “Thank you for restoring the dignity of the House and properly managing your Twitter account,” she told Turner.

Speaking of dick jokes – tomorrow. Here. Six sharp WBT. Dead Pool Round 49.

April 11, 2013 — 10:47 pm
Comments: 26

Me-ouch

This is the hot, wet pussy you’ve heard so much about on in the internet. Austrian dude drove twenty minutes to the car wash, noticed the car made an odd shrieking sound going through the water jets, discovered it continued to scream even with the engine switched off, found his cat wedged into the grill. Then he slowly drove himself to the automobile club to have the cat extracted.

Murli is fine. And she smells Springtime fresh!

Stupid cat stories: when you absolutely, positively have something else you have to do tonight.

April 10, 2013 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 25

Crazy chicken lays crazy eggs

A Mapp egg. They’re always like this. Usually, she lays half a dozen or so and then goes broody for the rest of the season, so <shrug>

Changing the subject. I’ve tried not to, but couldn’t miss some of the very public ugliness triggered by Maggie’s death. Out of all proportion to anything she actually did. Not too many of the intellectual elite who hate her most are coal miners, after all. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s because she laughed at the chattering classes. And because she was right. And because of a quality that’ll take me a minute to explain.

I’ve told you before, working with engineers was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Engineers are practical men. They do what I used to think scientists do: they do stuff, they observe the result and they are confident they have just learned something worth knowing. How much pressure did the fastener take before it snapped? At what temperature did the adhesives fail? How much schmutz accumulates in a pipe carrying hard water over an 18 month period? (“Schmutz” is a useful engineering term I learned).

Some of the scientists were like that too, surely — or science wouldn’t advance. But some were more interested in the hypothesis and not so keen on the result.

And moving away from the hard sciences into the soft sciences and the humanities, I observe there is a whole class of clever thinkers who fall in love with ideas. Big, complicated ideas. Elegant ideas. Beautiful ideas that are difficult to grasp. And really, honestly, deep down but without saying so they don’t give a shit if the ideas are true or not. They’d rather not know. It spoils the effect.

In fact, I’m convinced some of them especially love with ideas that are false, because it takes so much effort, so many hours of study, so much scholarship to clasp a falsehood to your bosom. You have to be one of the highly-educated elite to believe really obviously dumbass stuff. Squares don’t get it. Your grandma don’t get it. Toothless hillbillies laugh at you, so you KNOW you’re on the right track.

So you get Joe Biden — nobody’s idea of an ideas man, but he hangs around them and absorbs their chatter like a parrot — wisely opining that we have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt. Because you have to be extra fucking smart to understand how that works.

And then along comes Maggie and says, “any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.” Cash in, cash out, new shoes will have to wait until next month to make it balance. A housewifely skillset. And she governed with it. And it worked.

And all the overcredentialled Oxbridge (or Ivy League) technocratic smarty pantses who believe themselves our natural ruling class (including quite a few on “our” side of the aisle) foam and gnash their teeth. It’s all so ugly and ordinary and dreary.

It demeans them and their powerful brains.

April 9, 2013 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 27

Bye…

Farewell to Baroness Thatcher (1925-2013).

You know what was really fun? After Reagan (PBUH) died, all the journalists pretending they’d had the utmost respect for him, always (subtext: “not like this current crop of pickled wingnuts”). That’s why we need to keep old people around; they know when the bastards are lying to us about the past.

I don’t think journalists here can QUITE manage pretend they for Maggie, but it’s instructive to watch them struggle not to smile and fist-pump the air today. Most of the obits have headlines that include “divisive” and “controversial” — words that generally mean “hated by the left.”

Oh, well. G’bye, MagOn, and thanks.

April 8, 2013 — 4:14 pm
Comments: 46

Round 48: you don’t get dick any more


AltBBrown wins again! With former NFL, NCAA coach Jack Pardee. I trust you guys that this is significant.

I totally didn’t inherit the sports gene. I told my dad that once and he said, “yeah, me neither. You watch football, though, right?”

Right! Here we go:

0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody.

1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).

2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.

3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.

4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay?

5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.

6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.

7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.

8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.

The prize? We call it “winning the dick” for historical reasons. It used to be an actual dick you got in the mail — but, man, dick is heavy! So instead, you will get a small, simple, original sketch by me. And it won’t even be a sketch of dick. I tried, but it turns out I can’t draw dick!

April 5, 2013 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 99

Kimjongunzilla

Dangerous baby is dangerous.

Yes. Yes, I went to art school so I could paint people who scare me as ugly fat babies. A friend of mine pissed me off once, so I painted her as Joan of Arc and burned her at the stake. Beware the wrath of the art nerd.


So, okay. AltBBrown takes the dick with…I dunno. Some sports guy again. Round 48 of the Dead Pool starts tomorrow. Here. Six p.m. Weasel Blog Time. Remember, our clocks have changed since the last time, so WBT is now…fucked if I know. Same as GMT, whatever that is. You do the math; I lied on my transcripts to get out of High School algebra.

April 4, 2013 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 22

Not quite as awesome as that last one

This, on the other hand, is Luo Dan, a Chinese painter who has worn this deer’s head mask at work and play for four years (the headline says five, the article says “since 2009” — oh, you won’t fool me with your tricksy ways, Mister Smarty Headline Writer). He does this because…oh, let’s face it — painters the world over are balls-out crazy.

Check him out playing the bongos in his deer head.

Lame. I know. I was playing Skyrim tonight for the first time in months, and my quest encountered a glitch, so I’ve spent the evening chasing console codes. For you non-gaming folks, this occasionally happens in big, complicated games — the computer farts and a thing that is supposed to be there, isn’t. Or a person who’s vital to helping you do something dies unexpectedly. And then you have to reach into the switchbox, yank a few wires and raise somebody from the dead.

I was thinking. Playing Skyrim is like being Kim Jong Un. You sign up to a few magic classes at community college, next thing you know you’re Arch Mage of Everywhere. You slay dragons with your voice. You can kill anybody you like, steal anything you want, and everywhere you go, people gasp, “you! You are the one the prophecies foretold!”

No wonder the little porker is utterly mad. His real life is a video game. He prolly thinks he has a reset.

April 3, 2013 — 10:48 pm
Comments: 9