web analytics

Dead Pool Round 165: Weasel’s birfday edition

Mrs Carl has taken the Dead Pool with Barry Humphries, better known as Dame Edna Everage.

“Originally conceived as a dowdy Moonee Ponds housewife who caricatured Australian suburban complacency and insularity, Dame Edna Everage evolved over four decades to become a satire of stardom – a gaudily dressed, acid-tongued, egomaniacal, internationally fêted “Housewife Gigastar”.” Wikipedia.

Huh. Well.

The Carls practice the Dead Pool strategy of keeping your powder dry while waiting for a celebrity to get sick. It isn’t a surefire gambit: you have to luck onto someone who is famous enough to count but not so old and famous as to have been picked in the ordinary way. AND they have to give you room between getting sick (or hit by a car) and dying.

Are we all assembled? Then leave us 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.

April 28, 2023 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 65

Welp, here we go…

That’s…$1,660.23. Ouch.

Next step, some time in late May I hop a train to Maidstone with my documentation and have my dabs taken (that’s English cop slang for fingerprints). All the alternatives were in London, so whatevs.

After that, a ceremony. Closer to home, I hope. I will have to swear an Oath of Allegiance, an Affirmation of Allegiance and a Pledge. The first two are to the Crown, which chaps my ass because I take my word seriously.

“At the end of the ceremony you’ll be presented with your certificate of British citizenship and a welcome pack.”

A welcome pack. I do hope there’s a little Union Jack in it.

p.s. New Dead Pool tomorrow. Harry Belafonte fans and Jerry Springer pickers hardest hit.

April 27, 2023 — 6:27 pm
Comments: 12

This tiny green strawberry

Found in a punnet of strawberries. Uncle B was excited to find them this early in the year, but they were…not very good.

I don’t know about you guys, but I think I’ve heard from every seated Republican politician in the last couple of weeks, including several from Ted Cruz and one from Lindsey Fucking Graham.

Why now? And why me? I think I maybe gave ten bucks to Sarah Palin a thousand years ago, and haven’t heard much since. How did they all bust out the same mailing list allofa sudden?

Who writes their begging letters? They’re just awful. I’m sure they must hire people who know how to get results, but at what cost.

Lindsey called me Friend (capital F) and patriot and asked me to pray for our country. Oh, and money. He definitely asked for money.

I feel soiled.

April 26, 2023 — 7:12 pm
Comments: 10

This is probably not good news, huh?

Any error with BIOS in it scares me shitless. I got this message on boot about six weeks ago. After I click the continue button, I get one of those awful ARE YOU REALLY TOTALLY POSITIVE YOU WANT TO HIT THIS RECKLESS BUTTON, FOOL? messages and then it pretends to give me a firmware update.

I say pretends, because I got the message again a week ago and then I got it five times in a row this morning before it finally booted into Windows. This is at work, mind.

I know a little weasel who’s getting a new desktop computer.

First, I’m having our tame IT guy come have a look, though. If I get a new machine, it’s positively going to be Windows 11 and I don’t know if a machine can be ghosted from a Windows 10 to a Windows 11.

If not, I’m going to spend weeks tracking down and re-installing apps. Imagine the world’s smallest “yay!”

The other computer at work, which is much newer, ‘upgraded’ itself to 11 without asking. I can’t see anything new about except, as usual, they’ve moved all the buttons around to different locations.

Why they do this?

April 25, 2023 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 20

Shithouse for sale

Today, I had coffee with a woman who has a Grade II listed outhouse in her back yard. It lost its seat years ago and has been a garden shed since forever, but it was once and for a very long time the privy that served the whole street. (!!!)

That’s not it in the picture, though. That’s a modern shed that you can buy fully assembled for $3,044 (the kit is a little cheaper).

Anyway, we fell to talking. All of us live or have lived in very old houses. So, naturally, we began to discuss ghosts.

Not me. I’m as psychic as a potato. I live in a 500 year old house and I haven’t experienced so much as a cold spot.

They weren’t exciting stories – footsteps in an empty house, being poked in the ribs by a Nothing There – but I felt cheated that I don’t seem to have that sense. It’s like being color blind. Or, I dunno – maybe they’re nuts.

Any psychics out there?

p.s. Why do outhouses have moons carved in them. Nobody knows for sure.

p.p.s. RIP Dame Edna. New Dead Pool Friday.

April 24, 2023 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 10

The week in review

I’m embarrassed to admit how long I stared at my blood pressure meds wondering why on earth the packet would say to take it NOW.

To recap:

There’s another headless bunny on the back doorstep. I’ve nearly stepped in it several times today.

Icecream is still not one word.

I’m pretty sure we have rooklets. I watched her for a long time this afternoon and she fidgeted. She once left the nest for a few minutes and then came back, probably feeding the little peckerheads (when she’s incubating, the father keeps her fed, Wikipedia tells me).

The chickens had another blissy day in the sun, though it all changes for the weekend, alas. Showers both days. (I hope it clears a little while at night; the Lyrid meteor showers peak this weekend).

And I have managed to skate through another week on the leanest of content. Story of my life, really. Good weekend, everyone!

April 21, 2023 — 7:03 pm
Comments: 11

Bucket o’ chicken

My Mo, he glows like burnished copper in the sun.

There are few sights as heartwarming as chickens blissed out in a dirtbath. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in pictures – they look deceased. Especially if their eyes are closed.

You’ll have to excuse me being so light on content this week. I’m sunlight starved. The moment there’s a patch of it, I go fling myself into it.

Which isn’t working out so great – there was a cold old North wind today.

April 20, 2023 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 4

Rooklets

This is a very rooky area. Rooks are intensely social birds and it’s not uncommon to see a big tree with eight or ten rooks nests, next to another, next to another.

We had a very lively rookery here when we first moved in. They were noisy (next door hated them) but we loved our rooks. And then they went away.

No idea why. Maybe because the tree is partly dead? Do they have an instinct not to nest in dead trees? No idea. (Behold a scholarly discussion of rook nests in stag-headed trees).

One by one the nests vanished. Stolen to make other nests in the neighborhood, I guess, or just blown away. Only this one remained.

Sorry for terrible picture. It’s a phone snap from a long way away.

I sat in the garden in the sunshine today – first of the season – and was astonished to see a rook in this nest. See that forked thing sticking up? That’s her tail. I had no idea until the male landed nearby to feed her and she shifted. She’d been sitting immobile for so long, I thought that was an old piece of wood or something.

I can’t tell you how odd it is to have a lone rook nest in a tree.

Rooks lay end of March, beginning of April. Incubation period is 18 days. Today is April 19. Ladies and germs, I reckon we have rooklets.

April 19, 2023 — 5:42 pm
Comments: 6

The bunny beheader hisself

A picture Uncle B took this week of Fatcat in his favorite spot in the greenhouse.

For all the demands he places on his servants and for all his bold bunny hunting, he becomes 100% feral when a stranger appears. He skedaddles when we get a grocery delivery.

Which, pardon me, we have just gotten. I better go put the icecream away.

p.s. Hm. The wavy red line tells me icecream is not all one word. This displeases me.

April 18, 2023 — 7:33 pm
Comments: 10

Crunch

Today was about the fourth time Uncle B has opened to the backdoor to find a headless baby bunny on the doorstep. He thinks it’s a charming gesture of love from our great fat tomcat. An offering of breakfast.

Me, I think that boy just like to crunch up bunny heads.

p.s. yes, I’m crunching up the Lindt bunny head as I type.

April 17, 2023 — 6:08 pm
Comments: 6