Giant hovering thing over Warwick turns out to be something not very interesting after all
This thing baffled people for days, after some girl captured vid of it on her phone (I like the picture that goes with. “Hi, I’m Georgina Heap and this is a phone.”).
Turns out they were firing pyrotechnics with a trebuchet at nearby Warwick Castle and accidentally blew a giant smoke ring.
Wait, hang on, that’s kind of interesting after all.
April 16, 2014 — 10:27 pm
Comments: 8
Such a bright looking lad
London barber posts pic of Kim Jong Un under the headline “Bad Hair Day?” gets visit from Nork embassy goons. Both sides reported to to police. Nothing will come of it.
I love the Kims. I mean, I don’t, obviously — they’re vile and horrible tyrants. But I love the way they confirm my theory that no checks and too much praise invariably turns humans into monsters.
April 15, 2014 — 9:44 pm
Comments: 12
Welcome, fuzzball
I was out doing a bit of weeding in the garden this afternoon, when I heard a lamb kicking up a terrific fuss. I thought perhaps one had gotten stuck in the ditch so I sidled over to check it out. Found this: newly hatched lamb struggling to take his very first step.
So, awesome.
We don’t own the field behind, but it shares a name with this house, so they were obviously together once. It’s a long, narrow field — flat as a table — and the sun rises spectacularly at the far end of it.
A thought experiment: imagine you are a lamb in Badger House Field, born at midnight. A chill, windy midnight (last year, there was snow on the ground when the lambs were born). Yours is a world of darkness (which it has always been) and cold (this is new and not very welcome).
A few hours into your life, just when you’re getting the hang of tottering a few steps behind your mother in the dark, this THING — this great, bright sun — blazes down the field in a streak of glory.
What must that be like?
Thinking on it is darn near enough to make me religious.
April 14, 2014 — 10:17 pm
Comments: 9
Round 62: the new lambs are here!
Well, Mickey Rrrrrooney copped it at last, LesterIII takes the dick! Rooney’s body has yet to be claimed. Highest paid actor of the late 30s and early 40s, he leaves an estate of $18,000. Seems one of his stepsons made off with the rest. He left the eighteen grand to another stepson. His eight children he deliberately disinherited in a will signed a few weeks ago. So nobody feels like stepping up to bury the old coot.
Think of this next time family gets on your last nerve ending: at least you aren’t the kid of a Hollywood star.
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? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
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 winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I didn’t have any dinosaur shit particles.
April 11, 2014 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 100
I’m back. I think.
In case you missed it, yesterday’s routine Windows update totally boogered my computer. It booted, looked normal, but none of the icons worked. Eventually, it would throw up a series of error messages and fall right over.
“No problem,” thinks the intrepid weasel, “I’ll just do a system restore.” There were no previous states to restore to.
See, it’s supposed to do a little backup file before it installs updates, so you can step back if there’s a problem. I worked out later why it hasn’t been (all these years, apparently): backups were somehow allocated 0% disk space. Thanks for the error message, Bill.
So I had to sort it the old fashioned way, with a hammer and brute ignorance. I’m not absolutely convinced everything is totally back to normal, but I can run Photoshop and a video game at the same time, so it’s got to be good enough.
Meanwhile, tomorrow’s Dead Pool was never in any doubt. I got internets in all kinds of places these days. See y’all back here tomorrow, 6WBT.
April 10, 2014 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 15
A pun: I made you one
Though, honestly, if the Reverend Al really was ratting out mobsters in the Eighties, that’s the most praiseworthy thing on his resume. Why are we mad at him?
April 8, 2014 — 9:34 pm
Comments: 32
Weasel…my balls…where are they, Weasel?
We’ve had hectic day today; Mad Jack went in for the snip-snip this morning. He’s come back to us…a little loopy. Unsteady, pupils the size of saucers. He’s obsessed with getting out, going from door to window to back door and scratching at the woodwork and meeping. They told us to keep him in for 24 hours, so he’s out of luck, but it’s a trial.
Have you ever had an animal come back from general anesthesia a little wrong in the head? I sure hope he’s back to himself tomorrow.
Right! LesterIII takes the dick with Mickey Rooney! After all that drama, and all the times he was picked, the old coot was only 93? I expected a more impressive number.
That means Dead Pool Round 62 queues up on Friday. If anyone was thinking of picking Peaches Geldof, I’ve got some bad news for you.
I leave you with this moving tribute I made for Damien, my last kitty to have a snip ‘n’ chip back in 2006. Damian vanished two years later, probably looking for something he was missing.
April 7, 2014 — 8:15 pm
Comments: 29
The view out my kitchen window
Lambs 2014, here at last. We’ve seen them in other parts of the county, but these are the first in our village.
This field — the one visible from my kitchen window — always has rams in it, so it’s a treat to have ewes and lambs to look at.
Not so cool to have ewes and lambs to listen to. They mehhhh at each other all night long.
Good weekend and happy lambing, all!
April 4, 2014 — 10:55 pm
Comments: 19
A quickie
Because it’s been entirely too cultured around here lately.
April 3, 2014 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 13
Wait, what?
If I may continue my theme for another day, have a gander at this thing. It’s called the Mold Gold Cape (it was found in a place called Mold in Wales in 1833).
It’s an extraordinary thing. It’s sort of a shoulder cape hammered from a single piece of gold (the raw gold must have been about the size of a ping pong ball), then decorated all over with repoussé. They reckon it’s nearly 4,000 years old.
Four thousand years. That is a stunning level of craftsmanship for the time. Moreover, though there was mining in the area, there were no big cities nearby, no great dynasties that they know. Just this amazing thing buried on a hill in the middle of sweet fuck all.
It was dug up with a skeleton by workmen. This being 1833, they divvied up the gold (the cape was already broken in bits by time and earth) and scattered anything else they found. Fortunately, the British Museum got wind of it through a local and managed to buy back most of the pieces right away, though there are still a few fragments missing, and almost none of the other grave good survived.
I learned about this from a popular BBC Radio Series called a History of the World in 100 objects. It’s one hundred fifteen-minute podcasts about interesting and important objects in the British Museum, arranged in chronological order, chosen and narrated by the chief curator. I’m pretty sure if you hit the link, you guys are allowed to download and listen to this one. Great history in handy bite-sized chunks (if a little lefty in parts). Mucho recommendo.
The Mold Gold Cape is episode 19, and here’s how it starts:
For the local workmen, it must have seemed as if the old Welsh legends were true. They’d been sent to quarry stone in a field known as Bryn-yr-Ellyllon, which translates as the Fairies’ or the Goblins’ Hill. Sightings of a ghostly boy, clad in gold, a glittering apparition in the moonlight, had been reported frequently enough for travellers to avoid the hill after dark. As the workmen dug into a large mound, they uncovered a stone-lined grave. In it were hundreds of amber beads, several bronze fragments, and the remains of a skeleton. And wrapped around the skeleton was a mysterious crushed object – a large and finely decorated broken sheet of pure gold.
The fuck, BBC? We’re just going to walk on by that, really? See, this is where Brits can be entirely too blasé.
Three possibilities. One – it isn’t true; there weren’t any such sightings (but it’s hard to get a more rigorous source than the British Effing Museum). Two – hells yes, a ghost haunted this treasure for forty centuries (I’m not of a mystical bent, but what the hell – humility is the essence of science). Three – distant memories of a grand and famous burial persisted in local legend for four thousand years.
Holy cats.
April 2, 2014 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 7