sweasel.com

I received the DHL packet of documents from Uncle B this morning (including bonus document, “So You Want To Be Married in the Church of England? Ummm…Why?” that I have to fill out and send back). I’m guessing we have fifty documents all told. I inventoried the lot and planned to spend tomorrow laborious making my two Xerox copies of everything.

Feeling quite pleased with myself, I checked out this week’s cafeteria menu and remarked to TWWSNTM, “hahaha…they forgot Tuesday!” and she was like, “oh, no…Tuesday is a holiday in the Rhode Island office.” And I’m like, “…!”

Turns out I can talk Security into letting me in tomorrow, but I have to tell them what block number I’m in and whether I’m N, S, E or W. Which is FU’ed if you tell me. I dind’t even know I HAD a block number.

It’s eleven. East. Huh. The things you learn as you walk out the door.

“A passport-sized photo of me not smiling, looking like a sad, elderly, half-deflated balloon”

Well, too late now of course, but I would recommend using that photo you sent on a Super-bowl bet a while back, and watch the application FLY LIKE THE EFFIN WIND!!

I have always relied on the under dedication of stranger/bureaucrats.

And my birth certificate? I’m pretty sure I left it at Lizzie Borden’s house. See, I bought a bunch of t-shirts and stuff, and paid with my American Express card. Which is the oldest credit card I own, so it’s before I realized Initial Initial Initial Name causes problems on official documents.

The lady who makes a living renting rooms at a famous crime scene squinted at my credit card and said, “do you have any other ID?” So I whipped out my birth certificate.

I bet I dropped it. She doesn’t have a phone number for me. I’ll call tomorrow and see if it’s there. Lizze Borden’s House don’t observe Remembrance Day, I’m thinking.

Pups, the “no smiling” thing is a recent passport requirement. I guess they figure it’s a truer likeness that way. Whatever. Anyhow, Uncle B and I both had to renew our passports this Spring. I had a snicker at his passport when it arrived today; the frowny face makes him look like a London thug. Crusher McGee or Davey the Legbreaker or summat.

Yeah, well…I guess if you are all smiley at the airport someone is not doing their job correctly.

Whenever I need to renew my driver’s license I stay out all night drinking and don’t take a shower before I go to the DMV…just in case I ever get pulled over after too many cocktails.

I learnt that from Wicked Pinto.

It’s true. If your documents show that your eyes are clearly two different sizes, it saves the questions later.

Yeah, you can’t smile on any official government ID. I’m not sure if state driver’s licenses have also implemented that rule, but civil servants and military cannot smile on their IDs, and you definitely can’t smile on passports.

What I always wonder is: what if the person really does smile all the time?

Smile, though your heart is breaking…

I dunno, Sweasel. Would it be easier to just stay here and import Uncle B?

And how in hell did all the muslims and such that we’ve been reading about get in to Old Blighty?

Ummmmmm… I suppose the die is cast now, what with selling the house and all. Silly me.

I suppose getting a license to import badgers would be worse anyways.

Sounds like you could have your Weasel Import License in hand by about next Monday or thereabouts!

Then the worst will be over, neh?

Good Lord, Stoaty, with *that* collection of ID material, one would think you’re applying to be handmaiden to the Queen (you’re not, are you?)!! Not too intrusive, eh? And to think, US citizenhip continues to be the push, pull or drag sale of the planet … if you can fall across the border, yer in!

You know what, Gnus? I’m friendly with quite a lot of people who’ve done it both ways (stop sniggering, McGoo!) and every single one of them sucks their teeth and says ‘Just you be ever so f*****g grateful, Badger, that you’re not trying to move to the USA’.

WTF is it with our governments? I don’t know about the USA, but it seems we’re armpit deep in psychotic Somali jihadists, over here in the Olde Country.

I do not believe those bastards are made to jump through the hoops that her Ladyship and I are currently facing.

Bastards. I hate them all.

Oh, and did I mention that they are all bastards?!

Oh, and I should add, the C of E thing may not be so cut and dried.

I woggled down to St Mary’s yesterday and hammered a piece of vellum to the door with 95 theses on it, starting with “What is this shit!? What is it? ANSWER ME!”

The vicar looked quite bemused.

Not used to badgers, obviously.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to export a weasel pelt, and not have to worry about the brainses and guts ‘n stuff?

I mean, wouldn’t that fall under ‘agricultural products’ or shit like that there?

(Disclaimer: I have had one too many fruity vodka drinks this eve…>hic!<)
🙂

It’s not true, y’all. It’s famously, EXTRAORDINARILY difficult to immigrate to the USA legally. It’s not as expensive as getting into the UK, but there are very, VERY few slots available. There are people who have waited for years for their in.

That’s why you’ll find that legal immigrants are the demographic most adamantly opposed to amnesty. We’ll totally bust the balls of a single Indian engineer or a Chinese physicist for five years before we give him a green card, then let twenty million Aztec lettuce pickers stroll across the Southern border and buy a house. It’s fucked up.

If we truly need immigrants to thrive as a society (a dubious proposition, but work with me), I’d like to see us look for a little more…oh, what is the word?…diversity. How about we throw open H1B visas and let every PhD in the world in? When we do that (we have done it in the past), it’s only something like 100K people a year. But what people!

McGoo, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that I’ll get waved through on the first try. I’m hoping because we’re older and Uncle B is flush with cash that they won’t give us a hard time, but it’s only a hope.

Young American women have a particularly bad reputation with UK immigration. And apparently it’s (mostly) deserved. They come in on a visitor’s visa (when they stamp your passport at Heathrow, that is technically a six-month visa), get married or just overstay the 6 months and then drop trou and moon the government. They’ll get tossed for it, but eventually they can usually get back in legally.

Ultimately, my visa will prevail. But how many ringers they put my tits through between now and then is truly an open question. And as of the 25th, I’ll be homeless and unemployed, so that will get interesting real fast.

Not being involved, and knowing absolutely nothing about the subject, I am naively upbeat and confident you’ll fly through without a hitch, Weaz! Sorry if my confidence upsets you.

We’ll totally bust the balls of a single Indian engineer or a Chinese physicist for five years before we give him a green card, then let twenty million Aztec lettuce pickers stroll across the Southern border and buy a house. It’s fucked up.

Exactly. I have knew a German PhD chemist and a Russian PhD physicist who went through Hell getting in (and staying) here. it sucked a huge amount because at the same time Rice-weevil shit-pickers from Vietnam were getting expedited. I was furious.

Flush with cash?!

If only!

We’ll totally bust the balls of a single Indian engineer or a Chinese physicist for five years before we give him a green card, then let twenty million Aztec lettuce pickers stroll across the Southern border and buy a house.

That’s exactly why this issue makes me so mad. I know one family from South Africa who went through hell to get here. (In fact, my friend is the first person in her family to be born in the States – the process took so long that her older brother was born and 3-4 years old before the family finally got admitted.) Of course, they’re now raging liberals. You have to wonder sometimes.

I’m actually in favor of a guest worker program, because, yeah, there aren’t enough teenagers to do all the harvesting and robots aren’t good enough yet (they’re getting there, though; I predict robot harvesting even of the most delicate crops in about 10 years, maybe sooner if human harvesters get more expensive for whatever reason). Plus, a guest worker program would protect the workers, who do sometimes get exploited by the businesses. And it should help shut down those coyotes. Those of us who watch Walker, Texas Ranger know what a problem coyotes are.

But there’s a big difference between issuing temporary guest worker visas and issuing citizenship, and I DON’T support the latter, for many, many reasons.

Anyway – you’ll make it, Weas. I’m sure of it.

…the frowny face makes him look like a London thug.

You mean he isn’t? Like this?

Hey, Weas, I was watching Cool Hand Luke the other night and am now entertaining the idea of learning to play the banjo. I seem to recall you being a dab hand. How did you learn, i.e. lessons or self-teaching with books? If the latter, can you recommend any good ones?

This legal immigration/emmigration malarky looks like a real headache. No wonder so many people do it illegally. I wonder how things’ll change now that Obama is the new Leader of the Citizens of the World?

Actually, I suck. I’m the third generation of bad banjo players in the Weasel family.

Banjo is a difficult instrument to get started with. Unlike guitar, which is easy to play and hard to play well, banjo is even hard to play badly. The hard part is the right hand: there are four or five different patterns that you have to practice until they’re smooth and you can switch between them easily. Once you’ve got that, though, the left hand is, for the most part, easier than guitar.

Unless you’re talking about strumming or drop-thumb. I don’t remember my Cool Hand Luke well enough to know.

Anyhow, try the Banjo Hangout Forum. Nice people, good advice.

This legal immigration/emmigration malarky looks like a real headache. No wonder so many people do it illegally. I wonder how things’ll change now that Obama is the new Leader of the Citizens of the World?

Legal immigration from Muslim/African countries will become easier. Illegal immigration will become less risky (if that’s possible). Otherwise, nothing will change.

In Cool Hand Luke, Newman is just strumming chords, not picking. But it was the coolness that I was overcome with more than technique.

Thanks for the link.

Aztec lettuce pickers. That just sings, doesn’t it? I LOL’ed ’til tears sprang to my eyes. (Honorable mention to Rice-weevil shit-pickers.) I know it’s not PC to laugh, but immigration as a subject sort of disables my PC-ness.

Say, Uncle B, mayhaps Jill is on to something. Freeze-dryed weasel. Then you’re talking about agricultural products, and there’s probably already importers that deal in beans and stuff. On your end, just add water and Bob’s your uncle.

Easy, peasy.

Happy Veteran’s Day.

I don’t feel entirely comfortable with that, but wishing someone a “Solemn, Reflective Veteran’s” day sounds weird, even if it’s far more appropriate.

Anyway, hug a vet.

I imagine the no smiling thing wasn’t hard! And thats the finest weasel picture I’ve seen yet on your site. good luck.

You could always go with “Happy Armistice Day,” apo. The Armistice was something to celebrate.

Ugh. Do you have ANY idea how hard it is for me to write these coverletter thingies without going all chatty and Weasel?

On an up note, it’s pretty cool in here all by myself. There are a couple dozen cars in the parking lot, but I haven’t run into anybody.

You know what I’m doing, right? I’m procrastinating because I don’t FEEL like making a bzillionty-jillion Xerox copies of all this shit.

I think I’ll go pee. That’ll take a few minutes.

Yep. It did.

Copiers are teh evil. The only time they even THINK about running out of toner, PC Load Lettering or paper-jamming is when you really, really need to make a butt-load of copies of important crap on a deadline.

And just try to follow those instructions on the inside of the door, “counter-clockwise rotate knob G while simultaneously jiggling lever 2 (ref. drawing 320) first horizontally then left, hold tongue at 45 degree angle 2/3rds extended while standing on one foot (see diagram C) with ‘go to market’ little piggy toe crossed over roast beef toe diagonally. Repeat as necessary.”

Don’t put it off Weasey.

Most of my customers are off today, but the freaking road crew is jackhammering and concrete sawing the road right in front of my building. They just re-paved the freaking road 6 months ago and put in new curbs, sidewalks, street lights and traffic signals. Now they are tearing it up again. Did I mention that it’s right outside my building?

I’m not exactly motivated today. Even more so.

For the most part you can’t even get a license to import a weasel into California. Most mustelidae are critter non grata here.

You also can’t import bears. Don’t ask me why anyone would want to import bears.

For the most part you can’t even get a license to import a weasel into California. Most mustelidae are critter non grata here.

Nice marmot.

We’re here, we’re queer and we don’t want any more bears.

Done! I make that…an hour and forty minutes at the copy machine.

Jaysus.

An hour and thirty five. I suck at math.

Mr./Ms./It Californians: I have it on good authority that los of gay men are quite fond of bears. Perhaps not of the ursine family, but nevertheless.

I suppose I shouldn’t regale y’all with my experience importing, er, bringing over my wife (now ex-wife) from Pakistan. It was so easy I’m still confounded.

There are some who say that if anyone, at any time ever figured out U.S. immigration policy it would be immediately replaced with something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There are others who say that this has already happened.

Yeah, weasel should have told them she was Pakistani-American from the get-go. I’m betting it would have expedited many things.

Well, I wasn’t exactly thinking of those kind of bears, Musli.

Here’s some info on our Sierra Bears I love seeing those guys, at a distance.

Hey, first snow of the season up at my mountain place, 6 inches.

Probably not, PnB. A lot of the questions are designed to weed out arranged marriages. A whole lot of this stuff is new, most of it in the last few years. Some of it in the last few weeks.

The British public suddenly realized how utterly uncontrolled immigration was under Blair and have howled for blood. Legislators and civil servants do what they always do and ramp up the bureaucracy without really making things better.

I shouldn’t actually say that. Apparently, the new fingerprinting requirement has already caught a number of people who were turned away and tried to come back with forged passports. So…okay. I certainly don’t object to countries doing what they can to control their borders. If my own government wanted to fingerprint me, I’d better be applying for a job in the Secret Service, noam sane?

As for the butt-loads of, for example, Somalis that have landed in both our countries, I have a bad feeling many of those have been helped claim refugee status by well-meaning church groups. I don’t know what kind of paperwork is involved in being an asylum seeker, but I’m guessing it’s not the two hours of office work I just did.

A lot of what you describe is why I think/hope/pray you’ll fly through the system, Weasel.

I would imagine (note utter fantasy alert) that once GB Immigration figgers out you’re WASP, non-criminal, non-burden on their welfare system, supported by and & betrothed to Lord Badger The Flush, and of good character, they’ll decide you’re no fun to mess with and pass you through.

Oh – and what dfbaskwill said – that is an excellent weasel.

I should mention my efforts were in 2002/2003 (through a K-3). I’m sure a lot may have changed.

But there’s a reason why I went over to Pakistan, married her, and then began the paperwork. Evidently, from stories I’ve heard, US officials in Pakistan try to ensure the marriage was actually consummated (which wasn’t the case with me until she came over here), and how female relatives would advise female applicants on how to answer such questions when the marriage isn’t actually consummated.

Took all of six months between filing the paperwork and her permission to arrive to the US.

Unfortunately, the process was still complicated, and we were always unsure if we missed a step or something. Miss one thing, and the whole thing is undone.

I read that the Republicans made it easier, these visas being family visas and all. Let’s see what the Democrats do. Probably expand it to include same-sex partners, lovers, and favorite animals (the last being especially important for Pashtun people).

Not to worry you even more than you already are, but James Baldwin noted: “[W]hen dealing with the bureaucracy, the man you are talking to is never the man you have to see. The man you have to see has just gone off to Belgium or is busy with his family, or has just discovered he is a cuckold; he will be in next Tuesday at three o’clock, or sometime in the course of the afternoon, or possibly tomorrow, or, possibly in the next five minutes. But if he is coming in the next five minutes he will be far too busy to be able to see you today.”

My first wife was from Costa Rica, and we were living in Wyoming when we had to travel to Denver for her permanent residency interview (IIRC; it could have been a visa extension; thirty years is a long time ago). Eight hour drive the preceding day, stay at a motel, go in to the imigration & naturalization service the next.

The interviewer was a woman who spoke no Spanish, and my wife’s English was very limited at the time, pretty much “please”, thank-you”, “yur wecom” and that was about it (she could sometimes get the gist of what was being said, provided the speech was very slow and contained lots of Latin cognates). I translated for a while, until the interviewer requested she have a private conversation with my wife. I left the room, wondering what in hell they could possibly talk about (beyond thanking each other profusely and at length).

About 15 minutes later I was called back in, and the interviewer told me that she was going to have to deny my wife permanent residency because she had come to the States specifically to marry me. Horrified, I asked my wife what had happened, and of course, she’d misunderstood the question “Did you come here specifically to marry him?” (she heard it as “You marry him?”) I told my wife what was up, then translated my wife’s horrified response, along with her profuse apologies for misunderstanding the question (no apologies for being a total idiot, however, were forthcoming from the bureaucrat).

We drove back that night to central Wyoming with my wife’s permanent residency application (or whatever) provisionally approved (nothing, apparently, is definite in burroland, with the possible exception of a faith that government employment gives the employee super powers, or maybe Spiritual Blessings such as the the Gift of Interpretation). Since then I’ve come to expect nothing better from government employees, and so far, I’ve rarely been disappointed.

Civil unions are indeed grounds for a UK family settlement visa, Musli. In a sense, though, they’re harder than traditional marriage settlements in that I believe you have to prove you have lived together for two years and have some sort of civil ceremony. Not entirely sure, though. I didn’t research it exhaustively, for obvious reasons.

I should have mentioned that the DSB (Dear Sweet Boy) is a marmot. He was referred to once as a ‘gentle woodland creature’ by my cousin, and when I relayed the story to him at dinner, he stopped in mid-chew and said, “Wha’ am I, a mah-mut?”

Hereinafter (if that isn’t a word, it is now) he shall be referred to as the GWC.

He’s an import; all the way from Georgia.

The one by Alabama.

Well, no offense, Jill, but the Ruskies can have Georgia. I already have a supply of canned peaches laid by, and I’m pretty sure that’s Georgia’s one significant export. That, and GWCs.

Oh man, this one had me laughing like crazy, Bear versus Man

🙂

“Hereinafter” is too a word. And you get 11.5 million hits on it.

What does GWC mean?

Musli: See Jill’s comment above.

Duh. Sorry.

Anyway, who thought Simon Pegg could be so articulate? (Mind the gap, etc.)
http ://minx.cc/?post=277867

I shall retire and open a canned-peach plantation.
You have to be careful when the canned peaches start to ripen and fall to the ground.
Helps to wear a hard hat when out in the groves.

GSA statistics prove you right, Jill. In fact, that is the single most-cited injury on Georgian Worker’s Comp claim forms. Unfortunately, geneticists’ efforts to design a “canless” peach have met with unexpected opposition from Georgia’s large fundamentalist factions.

JW, it is absolutely the single most quoted injury: “boomp on’na hay-edd”.

[…] by Lissa on November 22, 2008 With our Dear Rachel and The Fabulous Weasel off to the UK, it looks like we’re going to have to brush up on our Brit-isms.  Fortunately […]