Dead Pool 158: A Farewell to Liz
Lavendergirl wins it with Elizabeth II. And that’s all I have to say about that.
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.
September 16, 2022 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 64
Endings
That, in case you don’t recognize it, is the Three Man Globe of Death. There are three – 3! – motorcycles zooming around in there. It’s been the finale of our local circus for years.
And you know what that means – the circus is here and summer is officially over. The circus is the last event on our annual calendar of events, and it’s always a nail-biter. They don’t decide whether they’re coming to our area until a few days before they actually do.
They operate on a shoestring and each year we worry will be the last. The ringmaster gets older and fatter every time.
But we were spared one more year. Roll on autumn!
Shall we have the Dead Pool tomorrow?
September 15, 2022 — 7:09 pm
Comments: 9
Why ruin a perfect record?
I had today off. It rained heavily. I have done exactly jack and shit today. It was glorious. I’m not about to ruin it with an effort post.
So I give you a riddle. The picture is of a plaster caste of a plaice that I posted about ten years or so ago. Can you tell what makes it unique among front page photos on my blog?
Answer in the comments.
September 14, 2022 — 6:48 pm
Comments: 12
Abundance
Oof! I’ve been in a Zoom meeting this evening, so please enjoy this photograph of muddy carrots.
Yes, it’s that time of year again – the end of the cottage garden when the last of the ragtag bunches of vegetables that come out of the ground. My remaining spring onions are now the size of golfballs.
I say ‘my’ spring onions – the garden is entirely the province of Uncle B. My only contribution is keeping the chickens off it (I don’t always succeed). Oh, and eating the vegetables. It is glut time.
My specialty is a little number I like to call Cream of Shit-from-the-garden Soup. Throw whatever I’ve got in a pot, boil it with chicken broth, zizz it with a hand mixer and add cream. It’s different every time, but always delicious.
I have been forbidden from fermenting vegetables since the Brussel Sprout Incident. Damn near asphyxiated everyone.
September 13, 2022 — 7:35 pm
Comments: 5
AI? More like Aiiiiiii!
Behold, the face of Loab! She was accidentally created by an artist called @Supercomposite using an AI art application. He doesn’t say which one. Or why he named her Loab.
According to his story, she popped out when the AI was instructed to create two ‘negative prompt weight’ images – that’s when you ask the AI to create an image that’s the opposite of a prompt.
He asked it to come up with the opposite of “Brando” – which, for some reason, rendered the image of a logo. Then he wondered if the opposite of that image would actually be an image of Marlon Brando.
Nope. Loab.
According to the urban legend-y version of the story, the recognizable face of Loab started turning up in this guy’s negative prompt weight searches of all sorts of unrelated things, like some kind of creepy demon..
That’s not what he’s saying. If you read his thread (and this Forbes article), he says he ‘seeded’ her origin story into all the subsequent images, so it’s no surprise she keeps popping up.
What is creepy as hell, though, is the more he worked with her, the more horrible and disturbing the images became. There are many in the link above. Some, he said, were so gross he wouldn’t publish them – dismembered child snuff pictures, pretty much.
If you start with a disturbing image and ask an AI to elaborate, it will pull increasingly disturbing content out of the ether to go with, I guess. Makes sense. But how did the AI come up with her in the first place, and how is she recognizably herself again and again?
September 12, 2022 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 7
It’s complicated
I know you can’t really read that. Click here for the graphic and the article that goes with.
The death of the queen triggered Operation London Bridge, the super-secret plan everyone knew existed but we didn’t know what was in it. They couldn’t really tactfully give us any hints in advance, could they? It’s released a whole torrent of ceremonies, regulations and suggestions upon the country.
So today was a wild scramble to find out if, like, our flag should fly at half mast.
Yes, today. No, tomorrow – Accession Day – then half again tomorrow night and it stays up at half mast day and night until the funeral. There is some sort of Accession ceremony tomorrow at town hall, but I don’t have to be there, so I didn’t bother learning more.
I keep trying to call Accession Day “Ascension Day” which is wrong. Funny and wrong.
Yes, BulldawgGirl wins another one. True story: yesterday – possibly at the very moment the queen passed over – I was at the post office, mailing BulldawgGirl a very overdue package. She will now go to the back of the shamefully long queue. I thank everyone for their patience.
Have a good weekend, and Happy Accession Day!
September 9, 2022 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 4
It’s going to be a rough while
At 6:30 this evening, the BBC announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Rumor is she died some hours before.
No, the picture is not a disrespectful Photoshop, it’s an actual portrait I found online. It’s a little eerie because the site it is from is mostly dead picture links. I can’t tell you the backstory.
I don’t know how to describe what this will do to British morale. Even those who were strongly against the monarchy will feel the loss of someone whose very public presence spread over eight decades – seven as queen, but she was in the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a teenager in WWII. She trained as a driver and mechanic, for real.
There have been storms all across Britain today. It’s suddenly cold. It’s symbolic as holy hell. We’re headed into what everyone expects to be a brutal winter of shortages and deprivation.
This is going to be hard.
September 8, 2022 — 6:05 pm
Comments: 22
The nights are getting longer
It’s really and truly Fall now – I picked the blackberries today. Just a couple of pounds. We’re short of freezer space.
When I was a kid, I hated it when Mother announced she was making a blackberry cobbler. It meant I was going to have to go pick blackberries and that’s where the rattlesnakes were.
I’m sure you know this, but for the sake of them in the back, there are no vegetarian snakes. Snakes it the little creatures who eat the fruit and a blackberry bramble is their favorite place.
To be fair, the rattlesnakes we get in Middle Tennessee are mountain rattlers – short and fat and shy. In all my years on that farm I only ever saw one, and it was sunning itself in the front yard. My boyfriend shot it and my mother the proto-hippie made us cook it and eat it.
But I’m sure I’ve told that story.
I saw a cottonmouth in the pond once, too. It was swimming with about six inches of its body stuck up out of the water, like the cobra on King Tut’s hat. Creepy.
But hoo my dad had some stories about aggressive copperheads in the mountains!
September 7, 2022 — 6:58 pm
Comments: 16
That you, bro?
If you want a walking stick with a portrait of Dante Alighieri on it, I got you. May be useful for hiking out of the Inferno.
It’s the second time this summer I’ve seen this stick – I assume it’s the same one. Dude sells horse brasses and leather riding tack and such. First time I saw it, I yelped, “Dante!”
…and everyone moved away from me on the Group W bench.
Dante’s death mask, from which this portrait derives, is apparently not a death mask at all:
…recent studies suggest that the mask was probably carved in 1483 by Pietro and Tullio Lombardo 162 years after Dante’s death. A reason why people did not believe that the mask was the true mask was because of the nose of the mask. A hooked nose is a sign of intelligence and mischief, and throughout the year Dante’s nose has become more and more hooked in representations such as Botticelli’s portrait of Dante.
Another weekend, another country show. The season is almost past now.
September 6, 2022 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 7
Holy astroturf, Batman!
When we came out of the supermarket this afternoon, this was parked next to us. Every inch of it was covered in astroturf. I blurred the license plate but not the phone number – I mean, it’s an ad, right?
Available in glorious green from my Twitter.
September 5, 2022 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 9