The shape of a weasel
I give you “Eleven different specimen of the family of weasels.” Coloured etching by W. Warwick after Captain T. Brown. From the Wellcome Collection.
Brown, Thomas, active 1842-1855
For the record, the key says
Polecat
Polecat
Hardwick’s Polecat
Weasel
Ermine
Ermine
Pine Marten
White checked
White eared
Sable
Vison
Zoom in for some seriously goofy weasel faces. At the link. You can’t zoom my blog, obvsly.
Good weekend, all!
October 15, 2021 — 6:14 pm
Comments: 16
Another choice bit of British real estate goes on the market
For a mere £925,000 English pounds, you can own Willy House.
No, that’s not its official name, but I didn’t make it up, either. Schoolchildren did, it says here.
It looks like a perfectly nice 17th Century house of some size. Five bedrooms, stable block, separate one-bedroom cottage.
But it is all rather overshadowed by the topiary. The shrubs are at least a couple hundred years old, though nobody knows how long they’ve been carved into giant tallywhackers. It predates the current owner, who’s lived there for 20 years.
It isn’t on the estate agent’s site, for some reason. Looking around, somebody paid £279,000 for this (guide price £60,000 – £70,000). That will be a property developer. Say farewell to Potato Cottage.
Bastards.
October 14, 2021 — 4:45 pm
Comments: 8
Hey, guyz, I’m a meme. I think.
I did a Google images search of “ghost weasel” and it took me to this page of memes. For the record, I don’t really ‘get’ any of them.
Then I had squinted at the base image and I thought, “waaaait a second. Black and white image. Photoshop of a weasel. English channel. Using my caption font. That’s got to be my image!”
Only, I can’t find it. I’ve looked at all December posts back to the beginning of the blog in 2007. I’ve looked back through about 50 pages of my blog media gallery, which is 4,494 pics over 225 pages. Tineye couldn’t find it (which is weird, if it really has been used as a meme image).
Assuming the compression is in the original, I suspect it’s an image from the first year of the blog, when it was hosted on WordPress. I was very, very careful to keep file sizes down in the beginning. They didn’t keep any of my images when I stopped paying.
Whatevs. Just a bit of fun.
Oh, why was I searching for Ghost Weasel? Sussex has been ranked as one of the best places in the UK to experience paranormal activity. Not me, though. I live in a 500 year old house and I’m still as psychic as a potato.
October 13, 2021 — 8:54 pm
Comments: 9
They really aren’t very good at this scaremongering stuff
The headline reads “CNN says Americans won’t be able to go back to shopping like in the ‘Before Times’.” If the phrase the ‘Before Times’ makes your brain itch, it’s almost certainly lifted (or accidentally repurposed) from a Star Trek episode.
Remember the one where they land on a planet that’s a mirror of Earth, only all the grownups (‘Grups’) have died of the plague and everything has descended into a Lord-of-the-Flies society ruled by grubby children? Yeah, that one. It was called Miri.
So what hellish new world of want and lacking do we find ourselves in, ladies, gentlemen and enbies? Around 18% of beverages, 15% of frozen foods, 16% of snacks, 15% of candy and 18% of bakery items are out of stock. Before covid? Typically, 7 to 10 percent of items were out of stock.
You want specifics? Can you handle specifics?
Many grocery stores are facing limited allocations of popular products, like Rice Krispies Treats, Sour Patch Kids, McCormick grommet spices, and some Ben & Jerry’s flavors of ice cream.
Rice Krispies Treats! I don’t want to live in this world any more.
We went to Aldi this afternoon. They were out of freezer bags.
For the second time.
If you want me, I’ll be in the library with a flask of whisky and a revolver.
October 12, 2021 — 6:40 pm
Comments: 12
O tempora, o mores!
My art club met today for the first talk in two years. It was downright touching seeing the old dears again.
Mostly old ladies. The occasional old gent. A few didn’t make it through, but you expect that every year. The demographic of the art club is, if anything, older than the history society I work for.
The mask etiquette was hilarious. Some old bats wore them standing up but took them off when they sat down. Some old biddies wore them sitting down and took them off when they stood up. Several leaned over to me, waggled her mask in hand and hissed, “are we doing this?”
By the end, everyone was maskless and having a high old time.
I don’t think a single one of them is afraid of covid. They behaved as people transported to a foreign country: unsure of the customs of this strange new land and desperate not to offend.
If they think they can use fear to lock us down again, they have another think coming.
October 11, 2021 — 6:58 pm
Comments: 9
Body Part Heist
This lady rents out mannequins for a living. When she first advertized mannequins for rent, she didn’t actually own any. But calls began to come in immediately, so she ran out and got some.
No, I don’t get it, either.
Eventually, she amassed so many mannequins, she threw the excess in a heap in the yard. ‘Yard’ here is an industrial space, FYI. Like a junkyard.
She still rents them, but she also sells them in bulk. For £50, a customer can drive up and fill the trunk of his car with as many mannequin bit as he likes. She calls it the “Body Part Heist.”
This is in Lincolnshire, which is over 100 miles away.
To be clear, I don’t mean, “over 100 miles away, which sadly is too far for me to drive for a trunkful of fiberglass body parts.” I mean, “over 100 miles away, which is not enough clear space between me and that creepy pile of anthropomorphic plastic.”
I’m not sure why they didn’t run that story closer to Halloween. Good weekend, everyone!
October 8, 2021 — 5:53 pm
Comments: 11
Do. Not. Want.
This is Lenovo trying to make me jump. Anyone have any experience with this abomination?
We have a laptop computer at work that’s, I think, five years old. It’s when Microsoft was desperately trying to make everyone use OneDrive. It’s on by default and so woven into the OS it can’t be removed. I’ve managed to disable it, but you’ll never get it off a computer built this season without wiping it.
My desktop machine at work is from the time when Microsoft was all hot about Teams. Every time I boot, I’m confronted with the ugly-ass Teams login. I haven’t bothered to see if I can remove it, just X it out and move on.
Look at the features list above. I do believe I see Microsoft making a move on Zoom and Steam. (To be fair, everyone’s trying to take the ball away from Zoom and Steam). Being Microsoft, theirs will be a shitty implementation that will fail, but it will be woven awkwardly into the fabric of the operating system.
Remember, nothing Microsoft does to Windows is about giving you features you want. It’s all a grab at someone else’s successful product.
October 7, 2021 — 6:14 pm
Comments: 14
Duuuude…
I didn’t make this picture. The Brighton Argus made this picture. Because you can’t have a story about Paul McCartney growing hemp without a photo of him looking stoned out of his monkey tree.
It’s hemp. It’s boring. And yes, his farm is not far away. We’ve never seen him in the wild, but we know people who have. Mixed reports on whether he’s a nice guy.
Speaking of weed, only California could legalize marijuana and still make regulation such a pain in the ass that it’s worth setting up a massive illegal growing operation. $1.19 billion worth.
That story is two months old, but it’s not the last one.
p.s. thanks everyone for the air fryer suggestions. Our chicken turned out brilliant. I think we’re going to like this.
October 6, 2021 — 6:10 pm
Comments: 9
Hit me with your recipes
I bought Uncle B an air fryer for his b’day. This one, in fact.
I’ve been skeptical of these. Somehow, the combination of the words “air” and “fry” made me think it was a nefarious conspiracy to make me eat less bacon grease. Then I saw a chef on Twitter praising them for making re-heated fries crispy and thought…that’s for me!
Um, Uncle B. That’s for Uncle B.
Anyway, we’re getting along pretty well with it. We’ve made all sorts of combinations of fries. We’re trying chicken breasts tonight.
Anyone have one of these? What’s good?
October 5, 2021 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 19
Nope.
Shhh…I’m having myself a funk today. We were scared awake at the crack of boom by an almighty rain storm and, one way and another, I’ve been getting wet and drying off all day since.
Miserable.
I have no idea why I drew a picture of worms playing gin rummy (it’s not ink, it’s a P’shop). There’s no clue in the 2008 post where it originally appeared. Just a picture of worms and me blathering away.
Sweasel.com: delivering hot gibberish since 2007.
October 4, 2021 — 6:28 pm
Comments: 9