web analytics

Weasel smoochies for Valentine’s

friday13th

Happy Friday the 13th! Alert readers may recall that sweasel.com went live on Valentine’s Day 2007, making tomorrow this blog’s eighth birthday.

Alas, Drew doesn’t get dick, but everybody gets a big, wet weasel smooch RIGHT! ON! THE! MOUTH! Thanks for being here. Have an awesome weekend!

p.s. Oh, yeah. Tomorrow’s our sixth wedding anniversary, too. Can you believe it?

February 13, 2015 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 28

Say, “I’m sorry, Uncle Neanderthal”

Hey, remember back when we were in school, when there was absolutely, positively only one species of human? I mean, not counting those hairy Neanderthals that we absolutely, positively didn’t have sex with?

Welp, thanks to modern genetic testing, we’re now up to twenty different species of hominin — that’s a monkeybeast genetically closer to modern humans than modern apes. Looks to me like they’re analyzing old specimens and finding one after the other is sufficiently different to warrant being called a new species.

Godnose where that’s going. Did the others die out? Did our direct ancestors kill them off? Did they interbreed until their genes were indistinguishable? Or do differences in modern humans persist somehow? Those questions are so potentially unacceptable to 2015 sensibilities that I don’t expect to hear clear answers any time soon.

Oh, and ummm…grandma definitely screwed a Neanderthal. Sorry.

Phun phact — do you have your ten foot pole ready to hand? — everybody on earth has some Neanderthal DNA, except sub-Saharan Africans. Even Australian aborigenes, who split off from (probably) Asia freakishly early. I’ve read from 2.5% to 4% of our DNA is caveman.

I had kind of fallen in love with the Neanderthals years ago, long before anyone admitted they were ancestors. I’m sure we’ve done them a great wrong. They wore clothes, used tools, expertly butchered large animals. Played music (flute music!). I mean, what are the chances of a manbeast that sophisticated developing in parallel and being unrelated to modern humans except through a distant ancestor?

But the fact that got to me — when they excavated some burials, they found a layer of pollen on top of Neanderthal skeletons. Meaning they buried their dead covered in flowers. That’s too awesome.

February 12, 2015 — 9:44 pm
Comments: 17

Here spot!

I suppose you’ve seen the video of Boston Dynamics’ latest robot dog. The internet assures me it’s gone viral. Worth a watch if you haven’t.

This is the first version of that thing I’ve seen that is untethered from an external battery pack. The ones I’ve seen before, it’s connected by wires to some guy with a power source walking along beside it.

I won’t go so far as to call this deceptive, but I’d be willing to bet it can’t store enough power to go more than a…well, what? A minute? The data at the video says it weighs 160 pounds; that’s a hell of a wind-up toy.

That’s going to be the limiting factor on this — the enormous amount of power it will chew up, and the pitifully small amounts we can store in a reasonably-sized battery.

Anyway, watch the video. If the way that thing moves doesn’t give you nightmares, you’re dead to me.

February 11, 2015 — 10:02 pm
Comments: 25

Joni Mitchell reminds me of someone. Can’t quite put my finger on it.

Ramses II!

Okay, that was mean. She’s always been a slightly strange looking person, age has just added a subtle layer of WTF.

There’s a long article on Joni Mitchell in NY Mag this month, if’n you’re interested. I was a huge fan in my teens. Back when she wrote great love songs, not incomprehensible jazz boolshit.

The other day, I was trying to tell Uncle B about the freaky disease she’s got, and I couldn’t remember the name. It was in the article: Morgellons disease.

Have you heard of this thing? The Wikipedia article states flatly that it’s a delusion. Which surprises me, since Wikipedia is usually willing to equivocate on controversial topics — so perhaps it’s not so controversial any more.

I read about it years ago, when it first appeared (2002, per the article). Sufferers believe itchy little colored wires or fibers come poking out of their skin. They claim the fibers, when analyzed, are not vegetable nor animal nor mineral.

Doctors say Morgellons patients are round-the-bend bugshit animalcrackers.

If you ever want to spend an afternoon down the rabbit hole, have a Google at Morgellons. You can start with the Morgellons Research Foundation.

How come the clever ones are always crazy?

February 10, 2015 — 10:08 pm
Comments: 16

Rockin’ that walker, granny

We went to see 10cc in Canterbury Saturday night. Canterbury is a long old haul for us, but it’s a great place and we don’t go often enough.

Remember 10cc? I’m Not in Love…Rubber Bullets…The Things We Do For Love. They were big in the Seventies.

They still had one member from the very first configuration, two who had been with them since the early Seventies, and two who have played with the band for a decade. It was a tight, impressive performance in a good sized auditorium that was very nearly sold out. Mucho recommendo, if you’re in the UK during the rest of their tour.

I don’t know why I was shocked — possibly because I’m stupid and innumerate — but I was pretty much the youngest person in the room. Blue hair and walking sticks as far as the eye could see.

Funny thing about that. By the end of the performance, every old crock in the auditorium was upstanding, clapping, stamping and rocking out. I think that had a leeetle something to do with the beer and wine they were selling in the lobby. I saw convoys of oldsters slipping off for reinforcements.

Still, it warmed my heart to see them newfangled mechanical hips working out so well.

February 9, 2015 — 11:45 pm
Comments: 11

Dead Pool Housekeeping

Welp, Drew458 is almost certainly going to be our next Dead Pool winner. They’ve switched off the ventilator on Bubbah Brown, or whatever Whitney Houston’s daughter’s name is. Though as far as I’m aware, she’s still breathing. Just not braining very much.

That’s handy, as I hadn’t mailed Drew458’s last dick (if he pulls it off, this will be his third win). Two dicks in one!

I’m kind of caught up with dicks, at last, except for a few people I couldn’t find addresses on. If you’ve sent them to me, please send again (though if you don’t want to claim your prize, I quite understand. I hate floating my bona fides on the internet).

They are:

■Rounds 57 and 60 go to Carl. That’s his second and third win, but if I have an address on him, I can’t find it.
■Round 63 was won by Scott the Badger with Casey Kasem.
■Round 64 was Hutch with Eli Wallach.
■Round 65 was the tragic victim of a math error (I skipped a number).
■Round 66 was platypuss and James Garner.
■Round 69 was homer and Thomas Duncan (ebola dude).
■Round 70 was armybrat with one of Weasel’s favorites, Thomas “Mumbles” Menino.

My older records are a little spotty, so if you won one and didn’t get your just reward, feel free to get in touch. I honor all dicks. Even elderly ones.

Oh, the skellingtons? I was looking for an image of a skeleton pushing a broom, when I ran across it. They’re sprayed gold, by the way. It’s some kind of weird sculpture installation a Devian Tart found in the back yard of a church in Munich.

Good weekend, all! In all probability, we’ll be gathering back here next week for Round 73! (But you never know. Good ol’ Zsa Zsa has been picked more times than Kim Kardashian’s thong).

February 6, 2015 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 27

Peppercorns, bitchez!

500 grams of Rye Spice Co’s finest Piper nigrum. This is what chemical dependency looks like, folks.

It takes me a couple of years to blast through one of these babies. This will be the third I’ve bought since I moved here. (FYI, the first was around £5, the second was £6-something, and this one was £8-something). My favorite peppermill was actually sold in a Turkish shop as a coffee mill — one of those cylindrical brass things — and it makes the coarsest pepper I’ve ever seen.

Pepper all the things!

February 5, 2015 — 11:18 pm
Comments: 38

Political correctness run ahhhh…oh. Hm.

So there’s this pub in Staffordshire called the Labour in Vain, and this is their sign. They’ve recently changed ownership and the new management is being asked to reconsider the signage.

If you turn your head to one side and squint, you can kind of see what the problem is. Though gramps is actually manning the pump handle and not a rubber hose, as I had originally thought.

Though Britain has more than its share of PC police, a fair bit of this kind of iconography is still around (see: golliwogs). Their history is so different from ours. I guess that explains it. Though there have been sub-Saharan Africans in Britain since Roman times (or at least one, anyway), they were uncommon until amazingly recently.

Britain began encouraging immigration from Jamaica in the Fifties, to help fill a shortage of bus drivers and construction workers. One old lady confided in me that she had never seen a black person until she was a teenager. A black man moved into her London neighborhood, and they would drive around and around the block hoping to catch a glimpse of him. That’s pretty much within my lifetime.

Though it was still too much for Liz the First:

There were so many black people in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, that in 1596 she demanded that they be expelled from the country.

There was a fear that they might be taking jobs away from English citizens and also a concern that they were ‘infidels’. Yet another edict from the Queen, at first it brought no action. However it was then followed up by a Royal Proclamation, issued in 1601, and a Lubeck merchant, Caspar van Senden, was licensed to remove all ‘negroes and blackamoores’.

And that, my homies, is quite enough of that.

February 4, 2015 — 11:16 pm
Comments: 6

hoo boy

So, Isis put that Jordanian pilot in a cage, poured gas on him and burned him alive with a good quality camera rolling?

Link goes to Breitbart London. There’s one still image showing a man standing in a cage with fire to his knees; nothing too traumatizing if you don’t think about it too much. I would recommend not following their outlinks to the actual video. Not that I’ve done it, but there are some images I’ve put it my head that I would really rather I hadn’t. Stupid internet.

These are people who attract new recruits with beheading videos. They’re looking for people who think “say, that’s for me!” when they watch a film of someone’s head being sawn off slowly.

Yeah, it’s not one clean whack with a sword. That’s one of those pictures I wish I hadn’t put in my head.

So, let’s face it: we’re looking at a bunch of guys who would be freelance serial killers if this whole ISIS thing hadn’t come along for them. Not that I’m letting Islam off the hook — it’s clearly a religion that lends itself to militancy — but it’s pretty obvious they are working to gather an army of perverts and sick fucks.

It seems pretty unlikely we’re going to go in and kill them all. But can we at least keep them bottled up over there until they start killing each other?

February 3, 2015 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 13

Okay, who woke up the Vikings?

Iceland is going to build its first temple to the Norse gods in a thousand years. Their high priest admits he doesn’t think his congregation believes in a one-eyed god on an eight-legged horse, it’s more about celebrating life’s rituals in a way that acknowledges their history. Weddings, comings of age. That sort of thing.

I can see this idea catching on. It’s more or less how I approach the church myself.

Oh, and I found this: some Aussie did analysis a few years ago on Viking bones dug up in the North of England and found half of them were women. Sadly, they probably weren’t warrior princesses. Though one woman was buried with weapons, most were not and it stands to reason they came in as settlers.

The most badass illegal immigrants EVAH.

Completely unrelated: Google Earth Pro is now free. Used to be a few hundred bucks a year. Pro gives you things like four times the print resolution and tools for measuring area. I just tried to sign up for a license, though, and got ‘technical error’ so they’re probably being hammered. I’m’a stick with it until I get it — I *love* Google Earth.

Happy Monday, y’all!

February 2, 2015 — 10:31 pm
Comments: 8