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phox phacts

This adorable little babby fox cub wandered into a beauty salon in Tunbridge Wells this week and hid behind a filing cabinet. Mama couldn’t be found and the ickle one was far too little to make it on his own. But the RSPCA took him and will raise and release him.

D’awww, amirite?

But then there was this story. Did you see the one about the Russian scientist who likes to wander around Chernobyl?

Brave woman, interesting story. Worth a read.

At the very end, there’s a video that shows her hiding in her car in terror of what looks like a perfectly healthy, strangely friendly fox in the woods. That’s worth a watch, too.

She explains in the video that friendliness and fearlessness has been found, in foxes at least, to be an early symptom of rabies. Which makes a horrible sense, when you think about it.

Great. Now I’ll never dare to be St Francis.

 

 

 

 

April 30, 2015 — 10:05 pm
Comments: 8

I don’t know why this cracks me up

Hillary’s “oh, you!” face. No ‘shopping at all.

April 29, 2015 — 9:54 pm
Comments: 10

Toilet paper, bro? Really?

If I’m going to give the authorities a clear photo of me participating in a massive riot, I’m going to want to get an Xbox or a flat screen TV out of it. What say, Baltimore?

Pringles and sweet tea? Doritos? Diapers? Toilet paper? What is that, boxes of YooHoo? Six packs of cigarettes?

Okay, to be fair, cigarettes are pretty expensive.

They all look so happy, though, don’t they?

April 28, 2015 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 25

Chicken update

Nothing going on today, so I might as well give you a chicken update. Been a while.

I lost this girl for an hour today. Beautiful Vita. Beautiful, sweet, shy Vita. Beautiful, sweet, shy, stupid Vita. My heart goes out to this bird.

The other girls still pick on her. Not as bad as when Lucia ruled the garden with an iron beak, but after the untimely death of Maggie and Coco, Vita is back at the very bottom of the pecking order. She regularly gets her neck feathers yanked and a sharp peck about her person.

When she went missing, I wasn’t too unduly worried. She sometimes wanders off by herself and has a solitary dustbath on her ownsome. She looks so blissful all by herself in the sun. I eventually found her ’round the back of the house standing on a chair in a sort of chicken trance. I’d like to make it up to her with special favors and treats, but she’s scareder of me than she is the other chickens.

They’ve only just started laying again — yesterday was my first three-egg day of the season. They’re probably enough to keep me in eggs, bless ’em, but I can’t help thinking three isn’t much of a flock.

April 27, 2015 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 8

Is this happening in the States, too?

I ordered something from Amazon — a knapsack, to be specific. My shoulderbag gets heavier by the day and it’s making me list to port. As usual from Amazon, my order was dispatched within a day.

Then I waited and waited and waited and it didn’t show. So I check the order, got the tracking number and…if you haven’t figured it out, SFC stands for “Send From China.”

Increasingly, our goods from Amazon and eBay are being sent directly from China. Sometimes they tell you up front, sometimes they don’t (I think eBay always says where the goods are located). The economics of this are interesting.

Sometimes my only clue is the product seems unusually inexpensive for what it is. Even the postage is often cheap or free!

I’m conflicted about this. I don’t really like cutting out the middleman when the middleman is my neighbor. On the other hand, I don’t feel like handing him money for being my neighbor. The goods are coming from China anyway…what exactly is the benefit…?

So far, I’ve been happy with everything I’ve gotten directly in this way. Good quality stuff, cheap. No customer service issues. And it takes longer, but rarely more than a week longer than locally warehoused goods.

Does this happen where you are? How do you feel about it? Oh, and — good weekend!

April 24, 2015 — 8:31 pm
Comments: 24

Bad day at the office

AND he came in second.

So jockeys don’t wear underpants, huh? Must be a weight thing. That view could easily have turned a lot more interesting.

Happy St George’s Day. It seems England doesn’t celebrate it any more. But we got a Google doodle, which is nice.

April 23, 2015 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 12

Absolutely haram

Found this in a search of old novelty postcards. Abdul Hamid (1725–1789), Wikipedia tells me, was the 27th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He was very devout and something of an Islamic saint.

And this is an old postcard of him composed entirely of half-naked ladies.

It’s like, weren’t we better off when nobody gave a shit what blasphemy people got up to halfway around the world?

Sincerely,
Weasel

April 22, 2015 — 9:36 pm
Comments: 15

Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos

It’s great fun watching Hillary! try to pass, isn’t it? She’s uploaded HumanBeing 2.0, but she hasn’t worked all the bugs out yet.

Kang and Kodos, ladies and gents — my favorite cartoon political metaphor. Sure, bigger and in color.

April 21, 2015 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 5

So I got to be a Chinese guy, which was cool

I just finished Sleeping Dogs, an excellent open world shoot-’em up game set in Hong Kong. Sadly, it isn’t a meticulous building-by-building recreation of the town (like some of the Grand Theft Auto game settings are supposed to be), but it’s broadly faithful to the layout and lots more fun to drive in. On the sidewalk? Be our guest.

Yeah, I know most of my readers don’t do games, but I’m clearing the deck of a backlog. May, as you might remember, is my Birthday Month and I plan to play a lot of new stuff to celebrate.

Anyway, Wei Shen — your game dude — is forever stopping at a street vendor for duck or ice cream or noodles. Or the one that always gets to me in the movies: pork buns. Makes me crazy hungry for Chinese. Has anybody had one of these pork buns? (I’m looking at you, Bob). For some reason, they look so soft and squidgy and appealing, but I didn’t have the courage to cook something I’d never seen in the flesh before. Also, I don’t have a steamer.

So I made pot-stickers, AKA Pekin ravioli, AKA Pekin dumplings. They were delicious. I think I ruined my dinner.

April 20, 2015 — 9:25 pm
Comments: 16

Accidental shepherdess

On the walk home from work today, I stopped to watch a local farmer round up his flock of sheep to move to another field. No dog, no ATV — he just drove forward and back across the grass in his 4×4, honking. Got them all right where he wanted them to go, including stragglers. It was masterful.

When he got them all bunched up and headed out the drive, I gave him a round of applause. He leaned out of the car and yelled, “stop them — they’re headed for the crop!”

Yes, dear readers, today I was an accidental shepherdess. He had three or four guys in the road directing traffic, but the sheep (being sheep) tried to bust out in just the wrong place. Or just the right place, since I was standing there gawping and waving my arms.

They do this several times a season in our area, move a big flock from one field to another for better grazing. Just the unwed ewes — I don’t think they’d dare try it with excitable lambs — rushing right down one of the busiest roads in the county. Step out, stop the traffic, chase hundreds of sheep down the highway.

If we’re out when they do it, we know they’ve done it. They close the gates at the end of our drive. That’s how Uncle B heard the commotion and came running with a camera. That’s me in the circle back there, having done my bit.

Good weekend, y’all!

April 17, 2015 — 7:35 pm
Comments: 14