Weird.
This guy’s face screams functional psychotic to me. The long-term nutter has an emaciated, hollowed-out look because eating as a pleasurable activity humans engage in is not for him.
Also, he has a long, long history of minor scrapes with the law, another whackjob characteristic.
But he’s able to run a business and fly around the world (albeit for loony reasons). So reasonably functional.
Not one for conspiracies, but I bet he had a handler. Somebody noticed him, probably in Ukraine, and figured him for an easy mark. One cock-eyed story about saving the world would do it.
He had stolen plates and a gun with the serial number filed off and he was hunkered in the bushes of the golf course even though Trump had no advance plan to golf that day. Big hmmmmm.
Oh, and I know it was justified, but it flips me out that the agents fired into the bushes when they had no idea what was there. I wonder if they were expected to kill him. I wonder if interrogation will get anything out of him.
We will probably never know.
September 16, 2024 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 1
Fun fact
British newspapers report things that happened in British soap operas as news items. You might have noticed this if you frequent sites like the Mail. This confused the hell out of me at first.
What you might not realize is that British soaps are the only ones in the world that are about ordinary, working class people. (I read this; I don’t pretend to be an international authority on soap operas). Everybody else’s soaps are about rich people or actors or doctors and nurses, but local daytime drama is about ordinary mooks doing ordinary stuff.
The explanation I’ve heard is that Brits are intensely private, but still intensely curious about their neighbors, so they make up imaginary neighbors to snoop on.
I was never into the soaps, except by chance I had a period of unemployment after leaving school that exactly coincided with the Luke and Laura era of General Hospital. I mean, it has a Wikipedia article, for pity’s sake. It was just that big.
Have a good weekend!
p.s. speaking of snoops, I regard it as one of television’s greatest injustices that Gladys Kravitz was right!
September 13, 2024 — 6:19 pm
Comments: 4
they said she couldn’t play BLUES on the BAGPIPES…
No, really – that’s the title of the YouTube. She manages it, too.
The YouTube algorithm is a dark mystery to me. I mean, I know I don’t like it. There’s that.
But I have no idea why they recommended this video to me. I don’t really do music, let alone blues or bagpipes. Not necessarily a bad thing to throw something random in my lap. Maybe I’ll find something new to be stupidly fascinated by.
But recently it’s started showing me videos I’ve watched before. Like, in the past week. I know it knows I’ve seen them, because they have a red line across the bottom where the progress bar has gone all the way across.
NOW they’ve been offering me videos I watched (and liked) fifteen years ago. Yes, I realize that means I’ve been visiting this supreme timewaster for a decade and a half. I’m not proud.
I had something raunchy queued up to post until I realized how bad it looked next to yesterday’s non-post.
September 12, 2024 — 7:01 pm
Comments: 4
I don’t post on September 11
I don’t have anything more to say but I can’t just ignore it either, so I take the weasel’s way out.
I don’t care what you discuss in the comment thread, though.
September 11, 2024 — 5:38 pm
Comments: 4
Who’s staying up?
The debate is like 2am my time, but I wouldn’t watch anyway. The two George Bushes finished me for live debate. After the supremely smooth Reagan, I found the stumbly mushmouth Bush style terrifying.
I suffer from painful second hand stage fright.
Though I did enjoy watching Weird Al Gore zoom up to W and demand to know if he supported Dingell-Norwood. He couldn’t have more perfectly made Bush look like a normal guy and himself a DC weirdo. (I looked it up; the actual name was Norwood-Dingell and it was a health insurance bill that failed in the Senate; but Al was so gosh-darned proud of himself for knowing that).
Anyway, I look forward to watching clips over my coffee tomorrow. They better not let me down!
Image pinched from Politi_Rican (@TheRicanMemes).
September 10, 2024 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 13
I outted me :(
I hate clothes. I suppose there was a time when I were a lass that I felt differently, but most of my adult life I’d’ve been perfectly happy to wear a nun’s habit every day. Or Zuckerberg’s identical sweatshirts. I don’t care which.
The uniform I’ve landed on since moving here are these fisherman’s smock things. Heavy, come in a variety of colors, lots of useful big pockets. A pair of jeans and a comfy old t-shirt underneath and I just about solve the feeling comfy versus doesn’t look like a hobo equation.
So this morning, I spotted a glob of rain on the satellite headed my way and I thought to myself, “pff! I can outrun that!”
Gentle reader, I could not. I biked as hard as I could and arrived with the whole front half of me soaked to the skin. Fortunately, I get there ages before anyone else and I keep a spare pair of jeans under my desk. I stripped to my t-shirt, changed jeans and put everything on a radiator to sizzle.
The t-shirt I was wearing today? This one.
Oh, dear reader – I try so hard. I do my best to tone down the whole American thing. I never talk politics. I smile politely at the mention of Trump. I never chant U S A! U S A! (they really hate that, by the way). I strictly limit the number of dagnabbits and consarnits per conversation.
Guns! Freedom! Angry looking eagles! Oh, this wouldn’t do at all.
I got away with it. The first person in is terribly old and didn’t seem to notice. By the time I had to go to the corner shop for coffee, my smock was dry enough I could stand it. Not pleasant, but I could stand it.
Why couldn’t I have been wearing a t-shirt with a cat on it or something?
p.s. Deborah asked about Uncle B’s Cereus peruvianus which, when we visited it last, was about to come into flower. I believe the buds just…fell off. I’ll ask if he wants to add anything.
September 9, 2024 — 7:02 pm
Comments: 12
Mark your calendar
The next lecture at the Prehistoric Society will be streamed on YouTube, and it looks like anyone can join. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed these lectures during lockdown, but the professionals couldn’t wait to go back to meeting in person (it’s a small world, and they all know each other). Looks like membership complained, because this one is in person but broadcast, too.
Anyhoo, this one is called “Into the woods: new methods for studying Palaeolithic organic technologies” (button for the lecture is at the link, but I think it’s just their regular YouTube channel). It’s October 16 at 5:00 GMT (noon EST).
Not a lot of paleolithic wood survives, of course, but sometimes conditions are just right. They’re going to be talking about stuff like a 400,000-year-old yew spear from Clacton on Sea, and a whole 300,000-year-old settlement in Schöningen Germany.
You’d be amazed at the things they’re uncovering about really ancient artifacts. One lecture I remember vividly analyzed fingerprints in ceramics. By analyzing the size of the prints, they could work out that the rough clay troughs for drying seawater into salt were made by adult men. But the food vessels were made by women, who then encouraged a variety of children to press a thumb into the clay. You can make up whatever story you like about that!
It’s a really weird period in archeology. New technologies (and plain good observation, like the clay pot study above) are uncovering an astonishing wealth of new data about prehistory. Alongside this good clean science, actual archeologists are spinning highly fanciful interpretations.
I hate to point it out, but the majority of doctors of archeology are now women. They’re forever trying to paint our ancestors as a peaceful matriarchy (just ignore the tooth marks on that thighbone).
Have a good weekend, everyone!
September 6, 2024 — 7:03 pm
Comments: 3
I’m sulking
You see this wet, disconsolate bird? It’s well past his bedtime, but he didn’t get out at all today because of rain. When I went to lock up, he stood in his run looking so miserable I took pity and let him out for a bit. I snapped this through the kitchen window.
It was like the apocalypse earlier. Thunder, lightning, the whole bit. I took the bus in and caught a ride with Uncle B home. I’ve been sitting here sulking ever since.
When it rains this hard, the roof leaks in several places. We know what the problem is. We’ve sought a few bids and then it’s a race to get it done before the weather crashes.
Some years, summer’s over like somebody flipped a switch. I’m really, really hoping that’s not what this is.
September 5, 2024 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 3
I’m new!
Bluebell Railway has built a whole new steam train from scratch. It took volunteers 25 years to do it. The original train called the Beachy Head was broken up for scrap in the Sixties. They were able to find the original plans to work from and raised it from the dead. Or cloned it anyway.
Here’s some raw data about it. There’s an amazing story here that I can’t find online. Many of the things you need to build just don’t exist in modern Britain. Where did they go to cast the gigantic wheels? How many parts that were once mass produced had to be machined by hand?
Unfortunately, the kind of guys who build a steam locomotive from scratch are not the kind of guys who write blogs. I don’t think. I haven’t found one.
When we were in London, it was fairly easy to get to the Bluebell Railway. Of course it was. The country’s entire transportation system is historically built around getting things to and from London.
Incidentally – I’m sure I’ve mentioned this – it’s always “up” to London and “down” to wherever else. Very confusing to a furriner.
Moving between any two other points can be much harder. So when friends from London suggest meeting up in Brighton – because it’s just up the coast from you, innit? – they have no idea…
September 4, 2024 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 4
A man and his eagle
More from Sunday. We used to see this hawking group at most of the local shows, but they’ve been absent the last few years. Not sure why.
Used to be, for a pound you could have your picture taken with some big ol’ bird or other. I replaced my Facebook profile picture with one every year.
Dunno why he’s pointing to birdie’s head. Maybe because he’s a bald eagle that is too young to be bald yet. Anyway, he wasn’t putting on a show, he was wandering around carrying a bird.
As requested, here is the lace-making lady in color. I think that bright bobbly object at the bottom is her pincushion. She made the pattern by pinning threads to a board, but I don’t know what held them together.
September 3, 2024 — 6:05 pm
Comments: 4