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HOLY CRAP STOATY! I just looked at the pics of your new abode, beautiful! You’ll be a weasely version of Beatrix Potter. And Peter thought Mr. Macgregor was dangerous. Yeh, I admit it, I like Beatrix Potter so wha?

End of prohibition eh? Now where’s that Maker’s Mark……

hahahaha. I have the same problem with my feetsies, Weas.

Heh. I never liked Beatrix Potter until I saw some of her originals, which were lovely. You know they were the same size as the book illustrations?

Badger Cottage is funky in spots…we’ve got the usual ‘new house’ problems, only multiplied by the fact it’s a VERY FUCKING OLD new house, and the law dictates what we can and cannot do to it. But it’s not a money pit — the owner before us took care of the worst of it.

I liked your Plague Doctor, Surly. I’ve forgotten the story on those long-snouted masks — was it aromatics in the beak? — but they really did wear them.

The Black Death is my favorite pandemic!

Her Ladyship is quite partial to Beatrix Potter’s work and a couple of years ago we went to an exhibition of it.

It was good – but nothing will supplant the impact of the Arthur Rackham exhibition we went to a couple of years before that. Badger House is surrounded by Rackhamesque scenery. It’s one of the reasons we are so spellbound.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rackham

Rackham is a god. I grab up everything I can find of his work. I’m especially partial to his “Wind in the Willows”. Shepard is fine but I think Rackham’s characters are tops.

Have you seen his Undine?

I have to agree about Rackham, surly ermine: absolutely magical (quite literally so!)

I think possibly my favourite of all his illustrations is the following – but I’m damned if I can find any better version of it online than this http://childrenart.nobody.jp/img/Rackham.jpg which does it no justice at all.

One of my most enjoyable Adventures With A Weasel, was when we went to an exhibition of the work of W. Heath Robinson.

HR is, to a Brit, immediately recognisable. Everyone has heard of him, though not for his fairy tale art (which is sublime) but the fact that he created the most amazing contraptions and machines (often with satirical intentions) and so successfully so that his name has entered the language. People here still say, ‘That’s a pretty Heath Robinson contraption – it’ll never work’.

I believe Rube Goldberg is his very close equivalent in the USA.

This renown was very good, I’m sure, for HR’s career, but it has buried his other work. Bringing that to my attention was one of the many debts I owe old stoaty.

This is the most Rackham-y landscape you can imagine, Surly. It looks JUST like Rackham…and, in nice weather, those illustrations Tolkien did for the Hobbit. Both men lived North of here (we’re along the South coast, Rackham was in London, Tolkien was in Oxford), but the resemblance is startling. Every day.

I’m interested to see what affect your new environment has on your art Weas. Badger, what is your creative outlet?

The wife is an avid Tolkien reader. Looking at the bookshelf, I’m beginning to believe we are misplaced Brits.

Since there’s drooling going on about the magick of amazing
art, you should check out the American one. Dale Turbush.

http://www.terbushgalleries.com/ImagesAOL.html

His paint brush is filled with magic and light.

My creative outlet, Surly Ermine?

Umm… I look after the woodburner? 😉

The 75th anniversary? Holy crap…I knew there was a good reason I went to the bar and got shit-faced tonight…

🙂

Forgive the slight threadjack, but I just figured out the REAL reason you moved to the UK.

Hmm. Thanks SJ. Nice to see that the loonie Nutroots Left is as low class as ever…….

Not yet, Scott. I did try to accelerate my move when I thought I had cancer. They give heroin in the hospices here. I had mine all picked out; it was right on the sea and everything.

As it turned out, that shadow on my lung was small and benign. Possible evidence I had been exposed to TB at some point in my life.

“Have you ever lived in a third world country?” my doctor asked.

“Just art school,” I said. Though “just Tennessee” would have worked equally well.

Hey now! There’s no call for that kind of remark Missy!

Hey, Scuba — how is Himself doing without his googlies?

. . . and so I quit the Police Department
And got myself a steady job
Though she tried her best to help me
She could steal
But she could not rob

Well, he’s still got good drugs for the moment, but whenever he lifts his tail, it’s like looking at the California Raisins. I keep expecting them to start singing “I heard in through the grapevine…”

btw, pics on route

Yargh, Scuba! Hahaha…I’m SO not posting pictures of Schroedinger nursing at your manly underarms. In fact, I wish I could give my visual cortex a little scrub…

Damien had the same habit, but he didn’t specialize in pits.

Boo! Hiss! I just had a bath, and my floating ladybug bath thermometer DOES NOT WORK. I mean, geez — it’s just one of those temperature strips. How could it be go bust? But it is.

Stupid Woof-woofs.

ROFLMAO…… Frankely Stoatie, I wouldn’t either. I have no idea why he zero’s in on that same spot every single time he feels picked on, but he does. I almost always push him away, but then I usually wake up in the middle of the night with sharp little claws kneading my armpit and a soft, DETERMINED slurp slurp sound coming out from under the blanket…..

I guess it’s like Jeff Foxworthy said. Theres something about that spt that makes him think “Num-Nums”

I finally decided that it might be amusing to get a pic of him doing it………

metric is for pussies!

ha! we totally fucked the world on that, pretending to give a shit about it when I was in school.

HA

It’s true, Dave (and may I say, you don’t seem all THAT howling drunk off your ass this evening). When I was in Middle School, they were so certain we were about to switch, metric is all they taught us. (Eh. I went to a very liberal K-12). As a result, neither metric nor imperial comes naturally to me.

I think in points and picas, like a good artard.

I got caught in that metric craze too, so that’s what I use. I wonder if I can get some sort of reparations?

“Just art school,” I said. Though “just Tennessee” would have worked equally well.”

Aww, why the down on Tennessee? I just learnt it can’t be equalled in the outstanding natural beauty of its prostitutes…

🙂