He complimented me on my flaunching
We had a bricklayer on the roof all day, fixing our chimbley. It was a mess. No wonder we had bees!
But our flaunching is apparently in good condition. So there’s that.
A different guy will fix the leak in the kitchen roof, and I can’t tell you what a relief that will be. It has rained relentlessly for days, which means we can’t use the stove top.
I can’t fry anything, y’all! If it ain’t fried, it ain’t cooked!
Changing the subject, I liked one video of a stray dog finding a forever home and now YouTube thinks what I really want to see is videos of horribly injured and abused animals. My home page is a nightmare. I hate the YouTube algorithm.
Speaking of, MST3K is doing their Foreverathon for Halloween again this year. They’re up to Season 5.
October 22, 2024 — 4:53 pm
Comments: 2
I shared my tuna and cucumber sandwich with a magpie
A magpie was hanging around the office door this afternoon. Our entryway is covered and it was filthy rain today.
He wasn’t just taking shelter, though. As I walked past, he flew away into the rain, but not far. He kept coming back. He could fly, but not very high. I assume he’s injured somehow.
So I bought him a sandwich. It seemed stupid to leave a bird a whole sandwich, though, so I ate part of it while I threw bits to him. He did seem very hungry. I must tell you, the usual thing around here is tuna and sweetcorn, which tastes okay but looks all kind of wrong.
Farmers say magpies are evil fuckers, but they are handsome. If he’s still there tomorrow, I have a pouch of catfood for him. They’re omnivores, aren’t they?
I didn’t think to take a picture of the bird, so here’s a picture of the sandwich wrapper.
October 21, 2024 — 4:50 pm
Comments: 6
This is not about video games, really
One of the things that startled me about the wizard game is that so many of the enemies in the field were women. It was so odd, I thought that must be from something in the books. It eventually dawned on me: it was an equity thing! They went out of their way to ensure 50% of the violent thugs were women as a matter of fairness.
It didn’t occur to the writers that violent thugs are hardly ever women in the real world and that was a good thing about women.
It’s not that modern storytellers don’t know the difference, it’s that they seem to hate woman things. It’s a weird kind of feminism that only values women when they’re doing man things like riding motorcycles, ordering men around and punching men in the face. It’s one of the many, many ways modern writers create fake feeling worlds.
In the real world, women can’t go toe-to-toe with men and they have to use workarounds like guile, misdirection, persuasion, seduction, or enlisting the help of another man. Also guns, hatpins and poison. Those work, too.
It sucks that this is true, but it’s incredibly dangerous to teach girls otherwise. And incredibly unconvincing in fiction.
p.s. story problems are opportunities to find cool workarounds. The girl in the picture is the protagonist of the latest Star Wars game. Her stealth strategy is to go up behind men and punch them in the side of the head. Even if they’re wearing a helmet, they go down like a sack of potatoes. It the most not believable thing ever.
They could have given her some kind of cool high-tech brass knuckles that let out a burst of electrical activity that renders people unconscious. But no, she just pops ’em with her widdle fist.
p.p.s. her sidekick is creepy as hell, too. He was so obviously designed with merch in mind.
p.p.p.s. good weekend! We have the scaffolders in again.
October 18, 2024 — 5:16 pm
Comments: 8
Phone posting
Sorry y’all. New Internet provider. Teething problems.
I hate typing on my phone :(
October 17, 2024 — 6:34 pm
Comments: 8
I just listened to a 45-minute lecture about a stick
And I think you should, too. It was a Prehistoric Society lecture about advances in analyzing very ancient wood. Youtube won’t let me copy the URL at a particular timestamp, I guess because it was a live broadcast. You’ll probably find it on their channel with the housekeeping stuff at the beginning trimmed away.
It was about the archaeological dig in Schöningen, Germany, which was a site where humans butchered horses 300,000 years ago. I say humans; she says hominids throughout because they don’t know which of the many early two-legged species lived there.
The site is remarkable because they have found a number of completely intact spear and throwing sticks. Throwing sticks were smaller and pointed at both ends and they think they were thrown overhand like boomerangs. They are capable of killing an animal. I don’t wish to learn how she knows this.
The lecture was about one particular throwing stick (ID 1779) and all the interesting things they’ve learned about it and the interesting methods they used. It’s about 45 minutes.
You can see the Sketchfab 3D model of it here. The model isn’t all that interesting, but I’m determined to post it because had to copy the URL manually from my phone to my computer. It was https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/schoningen-13-ii-double-pointed-stick-b3f2f1267d4a4dd7bd7fd3608f65fec4.
October 16, 2024 — 5:31 pm
Comments: 4
George Floyd: The Game
The games industry is going the way of Hollywood, using exactly the same formula: spending hundreds of millions on projects that swap out men for women, white people for brown people and forget to include any element of entertainment.
I know most of you don’t know from games, but I wanted this image posted on my blog somewhere. For posterity. The latest Assassin’s Creed game is set in feudal Japan, and this is the protagonist.
The story goes it was in development for several years and featured a pair of (duh) Japanese protagonists. Then George Floyd and the BLM riots happened, and they did this. Look at those two faces and tell me this is not George Floyd, straight up.
It’s so much worse than it looks. In released footage, this giant black man towers over waves of little Japanese soldiers, smashing them right and left with a big spiked club (the blood spew animations are impressive), while hip hop music plays.
Reports are they thought gamers would love, love, LOVE this thing. Like everyone was just itching to watch George Floyd get his revenge.
No surprise, everyone hate, hate, HATES it (it was even angrily discussed in the Japanese parliament) and the game company doesn’t know what to do. It’s too late to change it much and too much money has been spent to scrap it, but it’s set to become a hellacious, company-destroying flop. From a company that has had several painfully expensive tone-deaf flops in a row.
And all they had to do is ask some actual gamers to look before they got this far.
October 15, 2024 — 6:39 pm
Comments: 9
Yes, they are mad
Behold, the Teasmade. Yes, it is a combination alarm clock and teakettle. There were many, many models. They used to be very common here, I gather.
Onkle B’s parents had one by the bed for years and years. They also had an electric frying pan in the bedroom “so they could have breakfast in bed.” (No, I don’t really understand how that works, either).
There’s a coffee equivalent.
I love my coffee, but I’m not one of those “don’t talk to me until I’m on my second cup” people. I’ve been awake for a couple of hours before I get my first. The coffee shop on the corner makes mine, a black Americano.
Why I can’t call it an American in England just because espresso is Italian, I do not know.
October 14, 2024 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 3
Dead Pool 180: weathered the storm edition
The dick goes to mossomo with Hassan Nasrallah. According to his Wikipedia article, he was killed while meeting other leaders in a bunker 60 feet below a residential building, though it may have been smoke inhalation rather than the blast that done him.
We will not shed a tear.
Are we all ready?
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.
Note: I am woefully behind on dick deliveries. If I owe you one, you’ll know how long. I ain’t gived up, but I haven’t drawn much since lockdown. Some day, your heirs might hear from my heirs.
October 11, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 42
You think Florida had it rough? Pff!
That’s a photograph of my computer screen showing the BBC hour-by-hour forecast this morning. That 2,269 is wind speed in miles per hour. It’s like that for a few days and then returns to normal.
BBC put out a sheepish note saying ‘yes we know we have a problem’ but it’s been 24 hours and it’s not fixed yet. Nobody knows how to drive their software, I guess. The more suspicious among us speculate that there are algorithms in place to tweak the incoming data and one has gone rogue.
I have a lecture to go to later, so this will do for now. All the best for everyone in Florida.
October 10, 2024 — 4:32 pm
Comments: 4
Boo!
I threw a sheet over the two chairs we inherited to keep the cat (pictured) from scratching the upholstery. It didn’t work, naturally.
It’s not the first time I’ve had this thought, but I know – from reading Victorian novels – that rich English people who had more than one home would put sheets over the furniture in the off season. I’m as sure as sure can be that this is where the popular conception of a ghost looking like something under a sheet with two arms raised in the air comes from: armchairs under sheets. Or grandfather clocks or birdcages. Either drafts blowing the sheets around or dark rooms giving the illusion of movement.
It’s too perfect.
October 9, 2024 — 6:27 pm
Comments: 5