Yay us!
I don’t suppose anyone is keeping count, but today was Uncle B and my eleventh wedding anniversary. Yes, the blog was going several years before we got married.
We don’t really like going out at night, so we took us to an old smuggler’s pub we sometimes frequent for a nice lunch. The inglenook is one of the best bits; it’s big enough to sit in. They have upholstered benches on either side of the fire.
I don’t know if you can make it out (it’s hard even in person) but the design on the fireback is the lion and the unicorn, with the date 1626 between them.
Newfangled thing — the pub was built in thirteen-something.
Have a great weekend! We’re having storms all weekend, with kitten storms predicted inside. No fur lost so far.
February 14, 2020 — 9:39 pm
Comments: 17
I always hated the ‘be patient’ part
I wanted them to interact through the cage for a few days so they could get used to each other in safety, but little Noname escaped this morning.
When big cat isn’t around, I can coax the kitten out to play, but they’re at the point of the intercat relationship where they sit three feet apart and scream at each other. Funny, big cat has a little high pitched voice and little cat has a deep growl.
Anyway, home late tonight. That will have to do. We’re getting there!
February 13, 2020 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 6
Glimpsed through the bars
Our new puss.
It’s a sad story, as it turns out. Recently widowed, her sons talked her into getting a kitten for company. Now she’s developed a terrible allergy to him. Her doctor has given her inhalers and strong drugs and everything. She’s not well generally, so in the end she had to give up.
The cat is clearly very sad. The woman is, too. He’s six months old and they were obviously attached to each other. He’s hiding in his pet carrier and won’t be consoled. She was just on the phone seeing how he was getting on. She’d been crying.
He’s an absolute stunner. All ginger with no white on him, beautifully proportioned and healthy. He will make a fine cat.
But I’ve never taken an animal out of a loving home before. Turns out, it’s a real downer.
February 12, 2020 — 8:58 pm
Comments: 12
…allllll the kittens in the worrrrrrrld…
Every day when I get home from work, I go to my computer and refresh three tabs with classified ads: show me a) the newest ads b) for kittens and cats c) within 20 miles of my postal code (that’s a zip code for Limies).
Most days, there are no new cats at all. Occasionally, there will be a pedigree kitten for stupid money. Once in a blue moon, there will be an ordinary moggy for stupid money.
Yesterday, I refreshed one site, and there were DOZENS of new entries. Gobs of kittens. Adorable kittens. Alllll for meeeeee.
It had forgotten my post code and was showing me all the kittens in Britain 🙁
But do not despair: today I may have found one at last. An old lady who lives not far away has suddenly developed an allergy to cats. At least, that’s what her doctor thinks. She’s got a six-month-old tom. She’s asking a penny for him.
Only thing is, he’s a ginger. We weren’t going to do that so soon after losing Jack. I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I suppose we’ll know when we see him tomorrow afternoon (SQUEE!).
I suppose I should explain the illustration. I had it in the back of my mind that I’d done a bad ‘Shop of kittens raining from the sky, but I didn’t remember why. I looked it up and it all came back to me.
An anti-flying eco-advocacy group called Plane Stupid made a gross one-minute ad showing polar bears falling out of the sky and landing with a bloody splat.
The Guardian described it as manipulative and probably not effective. “It’s as if the ‘green police’ are climbing into bed with your children and telling them that, unless daddy turns the TV off standby, Mr Snuggles the dog sleeps with the fishes.”
This was in 2009. I posted it on the day I first commented on the Climategate leaks.
Memories!
February 11, 2020 — 6:50 pm
Comments: 9
Pff!
They billed Ciara as the ‘storm of the century’. Dude. I’m not even sure it was the storm of the last six months (we had some nasties in September).
We had high winds, sure. But — at least where we are — not far out of the ordinary, and not much rain. We didn’t even lose power.
The seas were high and I gather there was flooding in places that got more rain. Hence the picture. Not mine. Don’t know whose it is. It was the most stolen Tweet on Twitter yesterday.
Now, the Coronavirus? Doubled our cases overnight to eight, all due to one ‘super spreader’ who came from a conference in Singapore and infected a group of people in France, too. Brighton clinic on lockdown. Yes, that’s in our general area.
Wot fun!
February 10, 2020 — 9:06 pm
Comments: 6
Dead Pool Round 129: Hanging on for Spring
Kirk Douglas, dead at last! Goodness, what an age! For some reason, I had it in my head that perennial Dead Pool favorite Fay Wray lived well past 100, too, but no – 96.
Congratulations to Neon Madman for bagging a landmark dead person.
Everyone seated comfortably? 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. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
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’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
February 7, 2020 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 102
Smells like science
Hey hey. I found a weak-ass paper to support my weak-ass rumor-mongering. This is the article going around Twitter.
There’s a receptor in the lung called Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, or ACE2. Do I understand this? I do not. But apparently, the new Coronavirus ‘hooks in’ to these receptors. So did SARS. The more of them you have, the more susceptible you are. There was a study that counted ACE2 receptors in donated lungs (I was going to say healthy, but if you’re donating a lung, you’re probably dead).
The study found men had more ACE2 receptors than women by something like 3 to 1, and the Asian lung had, like, five times as many as the white or African lungs. Which would explain the weird way this disease is moving through the world.
It appears to be a proper academic study, but the kicker is the sample size was shit. Eight donors, of which one was Asian.
A sample size of one. This is not good.
I have to assume there have been other such studies, though. If they know there’s a connection between SARS and ACE2, I’m betting there’s a body of literature out there. It would be great if this means the epidemic can be halted, but I can’t call it good news if it means ripping a path of destruction through the East.
Oh, speaking of death. Kirk Douglas snuffs it at last and Neon Madman takes the dick. Congratulations!
You know what that means. Here. Tomorrow. Six-on-the-dot Weasel Blog Time. Dead Pool 129. (Was the Inktober Dead Pool really the most recent one?).
February 6, 2020 — 9:14 pm
Comments: 6
Goose Xing
A village near us is famous for this: its flock of town geese. The picture is from Twitter. The occasion is the policeman erecting the ’20 MPH’ sign in the background, for protecting of the geese.
I don’t know if one has ever been hit by a car, but I do wonder about the fox. Hm. Must ask someone I know in the village where they go at night.
Every time we drive through, the flock is milling around the green happily. Always about the same number. I wonder if they ever import stock to strengthen the bloodline?
I’ve posted about them before. During the village fete, the goosemaster borrows one for Goose Shit Bingo.
Coronavirus update: cases jumped by almost 4,000 yesterday. Total 24,631 today, of which 24,405 in Mainland China. This is very peculiar. From rumor and leaks, the damn thing seems very contagious where it’s hot, but it has hardly spread at all elsewhere. This argues for a longer asymptomatic time (very not good) or an Asian racial vulnerability (less not good, for us non-Asians, anyway).
February 5, 2020 — 7:26 pm
Comments: 14
Are you still Drudging?
I’m running into a lot of people on the online complaining the Drudge has gone NeverTrump. I still go there for the quick headlines, and I’ve always assumed the negative stories were intended in a know-thine-enemy way, but I dunno. Is there something better?
One alternative I saw promoted was something called Spinquark News. It looks similar to Drudge – I mean, font and everything – and it does appear to be an adequate headline aggregator. But it has me blocked unless I set my VPN to a US server, which is a nuisance. I exchanged some messages with them about it, but as it’s a US-centric site, they weren’t inclined to drop the blocks as it stopped a lot of nuisance traffic.
I use Twitter for breaking news and the BBC for UK headlines, but with the understanding that everything they both say is a lie.
Who are you using for headline news?
p.s. Not really a news site. More like a few inspirational life hacks a day. May I recommend Fucking Homepage?
February 4, 2020 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 8
Positively Lovecraftian
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these in the wild, just in displays. Sinister looking thing. They call it a mermaid’s purse, but it is in fact a skate or ray eggcase.
You probably knew that. I grew up a thousand miles from the sea, which catches me out a lot here. There is no spot in Britain that is farther than 100 miles from the ocean. True phact.
Anyway, here’s a handy pdf chart for identifying various eggcases. In it, you will discover there are such creatures as catsharks and nursehounds in the briny deep.
The ocean is weird.
February 3, 2020 — 9:26 pm
Comments: 8