HIT BY LIGHTNING! Hit by lightning. As Uncle B revealed in my comments section, I got hit by lightning. I GOT HIT BY LIGHTNING.

Okay, not me precisely, but Weasel Street. One of those short, potent thunderboomers moved across town. I got soaked just dashing from the car to the house when came the Big One. The flash and the boom were absolutely simultaneous, and then things started to go thataway. Connect went down immediately. My desktop worked okay for a while, and then got wonky and refused to reboot, so…not sure what’s go-bust there. Please stand by.

I’m in with my laptop and I don’t seem to be stealing signal from any of the neighbors, so my cable must be okay.

On a not-particularly-related note, sweasel.com was successfully recategorized as “personal” via Websense, but I still can’t get in from work. Whether that means “personal” is also blocked or whether it means the new database hasn’t fully propagated, I do not know. Tell you tomorrow.

For those who doubt the Almighty has put a certain weasel on his Celestial Shit List, I present I Got Hit By Lightning, a play in one act.

The woman who sits next to me was working in another office today, so I visited the pussoes. None of the original bunch is left, except for the other little mama. She was pregnant longer than any cat the shelter guy had ever heard of. Me too. I thought maybe the kittens had died and she was resorbing them (this can happen, I think. Nature can be so…ew). But, no. Just as he was about to haul her to the vet, out popped four of the healthiest fat furballs you ever did see. No two alike, so she’s no better than she should be.

While I was chatting with the Kitteh Man, a nice young gay couple came in cat shopping. I thought to myself, “I wonder which cat they’ll choose…NOT!”

Yup. Fluffy McHomosexual here is no longer a stray. Well. He’s a good cat and I’m sure the nice gentlemen will make him a lovely home. Plus, they were eyeballing a certain kitten and a tuxedo tom and made inquiries about taking all three. So, hooray for soft-hearted cat-adopting persons of the same sex!

Sweasel.com is still blocked by Websense. I’ve sent another “I’m not that tasteless, pretty please” request. Frankly, the internet is in the summer doldrums anyhow (have you noticed?) and ain’t nothing to blog about. I’ll just…catblog or photoblog to show willing until I get this straightened out. And if I can’t work it out this week, I’ll see about setting up a mirror or something.

Good think I never monetized this sucker, or I’d be pissed.

Still blocked. I don’t know if the report Brian L. kindly filed on my behalf has had time to go through. He said 24 hours, and that was Friday. I presume that’s 24 business hours, so it’s touch and go. I’ve just signed up (with my real name and address…brrr) to make a polite request of my own.

Meanwhile, those of you subject to the Big Red Hand, don’t check from work until I give the all clear. BRH is one of the metrics that Websense measures. Wouldn’t want to get anybody in trouble.

It’s not like anything interesting will be going on here while I’m locked out…

You’d think on a weekend I’m trying to rehabilitate myself, I could give it a rest. But that would totally misapprehend the concept of “weasel.”

Oh. Ohhhhhh. I just discovered the spot where cool air from the fan shoots straight up my shirt sleeve. Excuse me, please.

DAMN it! If you noticed the marked absence of Weasel today, it’s because I made the Internet Naughty List.

I thought it was just my local IT department noticing the suspicious stream of traffic going to one small weblog, but Enas says sweasel.com is blocked for him, too. The reason given him was “tasteless” — which, you know, I’d happily cop to if it weren’t for all the egregiously tastlesser stuff out there that isn’t on the list. Like, the whole rest of the Internet, not counting porn, guns and neo-Nazi sites. And I’m not positive about neo-Nazi sites.

Anybody know who I appeal to? Obviously, I can’t make inquiries at work — this would be an especially bad time to get my silky sable ass fired — but somebody somewhere must know how to work out what list your company is using.

If they think I’m going to knuckle under and do my job or some shit, they don’t know the meaning of “weasel.”

Goddamn it! I am not fat!

Okay, maybe I’m not as svelte as I was in art school, when I lived on coffee and broken dreams, but I sure as hell don’t be needing no double-wide toilets or extra sturdy waterproof furniture so I can sit down in the shower.

I guess I have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit; this is surely a catalog whose time has come. The headline promises, “unique, innovative products for tall and plus-sized men and women” but I don’t see a whole lot of tall guys up in here.

I think it’s safe to say if you have to turn to a specialist catalog to find an apron of sufficient hugeness to encompass your personal bodymass, you don’t need to be in the kitchen.

Note that the sand chair pictured on the cover is rated to 650 pounds. Heh. That metal tubing might be up to it, but I’m guessing if you flump a third of a ton on an itty-bitty surface area on the sand, your fat ass is going to be sitting flat on the beach, pronto.

Okay, okay. I quit. Apologies to plus-sized minions. Shop online at LivingXL.com

I wonder how many of those high-capacity bicycles they sell?

I just gave blood, so I’m not supposed to do anything strenuous. Like think. Or post something interesting.

I always give blood when they phone me up. You give somebody money, you don’t know where the hell it goes. Give them blood? There’s pretty much one thing they can do with it. (Plus, I love giving Uncle B the coffee mugs with the big RIBC drop o’ blood logo on the side).

The difference between the ones that call and ask and the ones that screen you when you get there is shocking. The phone ladies are all, like, “pleaseohpleaseohpleeeeeease give us some blood. You’ll be a hero to adorable big-eyed puppies everywhere!”

And the screener ladies are like, “So, Miz Weasel, are you a dirty, filthy whore? Because you look like a dirty, filthy whore. Yeah, you give sex for money, right? You shoot up? You’ve snuck off to Cameroon again, haven’t you?” I understand the need to keep bad things out of the blood supply, but if I were having sex in exchange for drugs, I’d like to think I’d have the decency to lie about it.

My favorite question is the one about whether you have ever once had sex with a man who has ever once had sex with another man. How the hell would I know? I mean, technically.

A couple of times I’ve been turned away — high blood pressure, stuff like that. They always act like I tried to put one over on them. “So! Tried to sneak some of your filthy whore blood past us, eh?”

Just once, I’d like the phone ladies and the blood ladies to trade places. Sure, the phone ladies would probably poke me full of holes and leave me soaked in my own gore, but I’d feel so good about it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to lie around and eat things. Doctor’s orders.

The University of Utah has a pretty neat site called learn.genetics, which breaks complicated ideas down into moron-sized bites using podcasts and colorful Flash animations. I love the internet.

I particularly recommend the module on addiction. There you can explore drugs of abuse and examine a variety of stoned mice without having to cut them up or anything.

I don’t mean to ruin the suspense or nothing, but it seems to me from cursory examination that all high-inducing substances work by fiddling your dopamine somehow (except LSD, which works via leathery, batwinged, brain-squeezin’ imps). I guess they feel different because they do kind of the same thing in different areas of the brain.

And if you read it all the way through, you’ll find neat tips for making your highs higher and more long-lasting.

I feel sure.

I got up this morning and cleaned the fridge. Spontaneously. I think I might be ill.

I find the weirdest stuff doing Google Images searches (though why I was doing a search for ‘nightdress’ I’ll never tell). This one is indeed Eva Braun’s — and, yes, it is embroidered all over with tiny swastikas. No shit.

It’s from a year old article in the Daily Mail about one particularly eccentric British family and their collection of stuff. I recommend it (really. It’s pretty funny).

I hate myself for reading the Mail, but I read it anyway. The Telegraph was once my favorite newspaper, but they’ve slid inexorably toward “lifestyle” pieces and the British equivalent of political RINOism. It’s so boring.

The Mail is impossibly low-rent, but at least they still get pissed off about things. Not always the right amount of pissed off at the right things, maybe, but I’ll take what I can get. Even if I have to go past baby bumps, trout pouts and ‘what’s that up Amy Winehouse’s nose today?’ to get there.