sweasel.com

https://twitter.com/AndyNetherwood/status/1148948306602729477

OTD 1940 the Battle of Britain began. Never was so much owed by so many to so few….

I think I’m gonna need a judgement from the Most Honourable High Weasel.

Last night I noticed in a news headline that Denise Nickerson, the actress who portrayed Violet Beauregarde in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, had been taken off life support, but had not yet expired. Being the compassionate, humanitarian soul that I am, my immediate thought was Woot! I can swoop in and claim a Deadpool! So I checked the Deadpool thread to make sure some heartless bastard hadn’t beat me to it, and staked my claim. Early this morning I checked and saw that sometime during the night she had joined the choir eternal.

So, first thing is I don’t know if she’s celebrity “enough”. She mostly retired from acting at age 21 and became a nurse, but there was a fair amount of media coverage upon her demise. Second, I don’t know for certain if she was alive when I made my claim, since none of the media reports give an exact time of death, just sometime Wednesday night. I could have gone on some of the comment threads where people were commiserating about her too early exit and ask “Hey, does anybody know an official time of death? I need it to see if I won the Sweasel Deadpool”, but given my keen instincts on human social interaction, I had a vague feeling that might ruffle some feathers.

P.S.
She breathed her last in a hospital about 2 hours drive East of me. I swears there was no violation of rule 0, I had nothing to do with it, nobody saw me, you can’t prove anything.

I read this story about a person who climbed a clock tower (inside) and began peering out one of the clock face access ports. He gazed out, looked around for quite a while and when he tried to remove his head from the hole, one of the clock hands had his head trapped in the hole putting evermore pressure upon his neck.
~
I think this was a Poe story but not sure.

I used to listen to the BBC on my Zenith Trans-Oceanic shortwave receiver. It was actually my grandmother’s radio, but when she came to live with us, I claimed it and carried it off to my room. I was six and they just let me have that radio (and I kept it for 50 years). I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew if I punched a band button and turned the tuning knob, I’d find something to listen to. Like the BBC 🙂

P.S. Those Gothic “Roman” numerals on the clock face mess with my brain.

I love the chime tones – and I really love that the chime sequence shows up everywhere – doorbells, etc.
Even in Japanese Anime.

I’d wager it’s the single most popular, and known, set of chime tones in the known, and possibly unknown Universe.

Well done Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.

Shall I just say from the perspective of a former colonist and grandchild of a bunch of His Majesties Ed the VII subjects; considering knighthoods are given to bozo actors these days, one would think that the designer of the world renowned bell tower for Big Ben might have been granted that honor.

But no.

Uncle B reminds me that Big Ben is the bell, not the clock. I think I knew that.

I’m inclined to accept that, gebrauchshund. Too late to re-up the pool this week, though.

I am glad Uncle B got to this before I had to chime in, no pun intended. Did not want to rain on your parade on “Big Ben” as bell vs clock.

When I was younger living in Karachi, Pakistan, I got my hands on a shortwave radio. Listening to the BBC was such a joy. I am sure I could have found Voice of America or something, but the British voice was just so alluring. It could be a genetic predisposition for listening to the British voice – 500 years has to count for something.