Thank goodness she has a woolly jumper
We keep missing the big falls that the villages all around have gotten. Weather can be squally and like that here.
Still, even a little bit is pretty. And it’s nice to see they’ve turned sheep back into the field behind (and in front). Things go better with sheep.
Good weekend, everyone!
Posted: January 8th, 2010 under animals, personal.
Comments: 47
Comments
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: January 8, 2010, 8:12 pm
Oh, that reminds me of the cow I met in Scotland. We were staying at a B&B outside Edinburgh and we were all outside drinking wine and having leftover wedding cake. This pretty white cow peeked over the fence and I of course ran off to see her. She would scamper away and then stare at me and I would scamper right off to her. We played like this for about an hour and I headed back to the wine.
I asked the owner what sort of cow she was… he told me eating. I literally had just played with food. Put me off meat for quite some time. I mean I know where it comes from and respect that and all, but she was so darn cute and so interested in me. All the other cows around her just kept eating grass and ignoring me. It was so sad.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 8, 2010, 8:19 pm
I read an article not long ago about scientists discovering that cows have friends and enemies among the herd. Watching the ewes outside, I can believe it. That gives you pause about supper.
But I console myself by remember that if we didn’t eat them, they wouldn’t exist.
Also, I don’t like mutton (or lamb) so I don’t eat the neighbors.
Comment from The Dread Pirate Neck Beard
Time: January 8, 2010, 8:24 pm
I used to raise bunnies (mostly California & New Zealand whites). Cutest little things when they weren’t try to murder or rape each other. I guess I’m a cold hearted bastard though, cos I never felt the least remorse about snapping their tasty necks and frying them.
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: January 8, 2010, 8:26 pm
That’s OK, Stoatie. I eat enough Lamb for the both of us.
A little Lemon Pepper and a hot grill, and you have some good eats…..
Oh, and i hope you didn’t mind the ‘Dita Von Weasel’ comment in the last thread, it was something that I thought would be a funny bit of artwork, maybe a desktop image….
Maybe in the vein of madaline Kahn…….
Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 8, 2010, 9:20 pm
As long as you don’t have to EAT those sheep, yeah.
Not a mutton fan.
Comment from jwpaine
Time: January 8, 2010, 9:38 pm
Back when we’d fatten a steer every year or so, we’d give each one a name like “Cheeseburger” or “Meatloaf” so he’d have a shot at figuring out that something was up.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 8, 2010, 9:47 pm
My mother gave our few cows really unfortunate names, and then called the meat by it.
Worse — they put the fodder outside the diningroom window, so the cows chewed hay and stared in the window as we ate Sister.
My worst chore was milking Mother. Thank goodness, that didn’t last long.
Comment from The Dread Pirate Neck Beard
Time: January 8, 2010, 10:46 pm
I’ve always thought that “Chuck” was a good name for a kine. Or one of these: http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/mstnames.html
Comment from Phineas Fogg
Time: January 9, 2010, 12:04 am
I gotta do it… just gotta! …ahem… Fleece is white as snow….
Comment from Allen
Time: January 9, 2010, 12:34 am
Great hog names:
Eaton Bacon
Phineas Bacon (think ph as an f)
Hamlet
Chori de la Zoe
Weasel, I hate to say it but I suspect your mother was spookier than I am. That’s saying something.
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: January 9, 2010, 12:57 am
Walt Disney World has a restaurant that has a whole wall that’s an aquarium. DD loves that restaurant so we are forced to eat fish while they swim and look at us.
Comment from jwpaine
Time: January 9, 2010, 1:23 am
Weez: I feel your pain. I milked three cows for five years to pay for a $150 horse. No, I was not in the fast reading group.
Comment from Anonymous
Time: January 9, 2010, 2:06 am
Yeah, squeamishness re food animals: fuck that noise. As a teenager I used to go lamping in the wilds of Surrey with a buddy to kill widdle fluffy bunnies. My friend could put an Ely subsonic .22LR round through a rabbit’s eye with a snap shot in the pitch dark at 80 yards (he was CIA/Olympics sniper grade; I was a useless twat, although I’m good with a pistol)*. We got fifty pence a carcase. Then we skinned and gutted the little sods in prep for pies/fricassees etc..
One of the favourite tropes of the carrot-munching brigade is that if you were ever to take a tour of a slaughterhouse, you’d join their pasty-faced ranks. Bollocks. I’ve seen livestock being processed, and Jesus H. Christ was I hungry afterwards. It’s only the slightly dodgy health criteria that stop me eating sirloin like it were sashimi. As it is, an inch-thick New York Strip gets 90 seconds a side these days (ooh, I lurves me the blood, and carpaccio, yum.)
* good Lord, this rifle was a doozy: bolt-action, 4×22 scope, 3.5 lbs all-up weight, great big can suppressor on the business end and less noise at 25 yards than an FAC-legal air rifle. You could whack a bunny from 200 feet away and Hazel just sees Fiver’s brains exiting his head without any alarm signal. Awesome.
Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 9, 2010, 2:53 am
What’s with the anonymous? The bunny-slaughterer was moi.
Comment from scubafreak
Time: January 9, 2010, 3:58 am
Hmm. Unfortunately, possession of a silencer is a felony in the U.S. without a BATF tax stamp and state liscence..
And, apparently my link to the movie trailer for “Black Sheep” wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be….. 🙁
Comment from BillT (aka “The .0004572% Of Traffic That’s From Iraq)
Time: January 9, 2010, 10:48 am
A harbinger of bubonic plague! The children tried to warn us 700 years ago, but we misunderstood the poem — “it’s fleas were white as snow!”
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: January 9, 2010, 11:31 am
Okay, question for the Christians or those that care. I just saw Scuba use Jesus H. Christ. As a Jew I’ve always used a similiar phrase when I like hit my thumb with a hammer or see some libtard doing something expected. Are the Christians offended by that? I’ve been careful not to ever post it, but there are just times it’s appropriate, at least for me. I don’t mean any disrespect with it, it’s just words to me. But I wouldn’t want to offend anyone.
Comment from Deborah
Time: January 9, 2010, 1:15 pm
Dear Mrs. Compton: This forum is not ours; it is Stoatie’s and she has plainly stated her views in this space. If I were thin-skinned, I would not come here to read or leave a comment.
I am a Christian. And yes—“Jesus H. Christ” is offensive, but not as offensive as some combinations that I’ve heard. Hillary Clinton uttered “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph” on national TV (during an interview, when some lights fell down—a scary moment), but I don’t think anyone called for her death. My own sister will fling “Christ on a crutch” in my face without blinking an eye (because I am the one in the forgiving business while she is not). Most Christians are inured to this sort of language.
My husband and pastor LOVE to play golf, and of course golfers will play a round with almost anyone, so you can imagine what they hear on the average afternoon, which is much worse than what I’ve mentioned.
I wouldn’t know how to swear using something Jewish. Or Buddhist. Not even Islamic. Shinto curses? Anybody?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 9, 2010, 1:39 pm
Wait! What? I’m an atheist with an intermittently foul mouth…I’m sure there’s language that offends me, but I’m fucked if I can think of any.
I’d watch the phrase down South or around a particularly observant Christian. My mother would tell me off for any exclamation with “God” in it, so I’m sure “Jesus” would have been right out.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 9, 2010, 1:40 pm
And yet, somehow, “Lord” was always okay.
Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 9, 2010, 3:13 pm
It all depends on whether you’re praying or cursing. 🙂
Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: January 9, 2010, 3:13 pm
Well, that’s what I kinda thought! My DH is Christian, his dad is a Methodist minister. He always chuckles when I say it, he thinks having it come from a Jewish mouth is just hilarious. I dunno why. But then until he married me he didn’t have a potty mouth, I keruppted him!
Not my first. 🙂
Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 9, 2010, 5:27 pm
The only bad language that really offends me these days is racial epithets. Swearing? Well, I wouldn’t want to hear my mother doing it but my Dad has an hilariously foul mouth and both my brothers swear like troopers. I practically have Tourette’s.
Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: January 9, 2010, 7:14 pm
I cuss like a sailor. Don’t do it at work, though, so my coworkers are always surprised to hear me swear. Whatever. (oh, and I also don’t use “God” or “Jesus” as a swear. I would find that offensive if I thought about it, but it’s so common that I tend to ignore it on the assumption that the person is just shouting whatever expletive came to mind and not actually intending any offense.)
I was actually thinking about swearing the other day, because I read a story about this lunatic lefty claiming that when Sarah heard that Obama got the nomination, she said, “So, Sambo beat the bitch.” ?!? Please. Sarah would NEVER say anything like that. Even if she were going to express that sentiment, which I find highly implausible, that’s NOT how she would do it. She just doesn’t talk like that.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 9, 2010, 7:42 pm
Yeah, that totally sounds like a lefty imagining how righties talk when they’re alone. Even if you accept the sentiment is accurately described (and I certainly don’t) it’s the wrong tone. Moreover, whatever goes on in her head (and I doubt it’s that), I think Palin is wise enough never to say something that quotably vile out loud.
I cuss, but I don’t like to hear myself cuss. It was one of the things I liked about online, especially where nobody knows I’m a lady.
Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: January 9, 2010, 7:50 pm
Supposedly, she said it in front of a waitress named Lucille, who is the lefty’s source. Riiiight.
Did you see the scoop at Ace’s about Bill Clinton supposedly telling Ted Kennedy that a few years ago, Obama would have been fetching them coffee?!? I’ll give Clinton the benefit of the doubt and assume that if he said that, he was referring to Obama’s youth and inexperience, but still, holy crap!!
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 9, 2010, 8:32 pm
I was just reading the excerpt from the same book (I think it is, anyhow) in New York Magazine about the Edwards campaign. It’s very long, but if you love stories where assholes behave like assholes (and I do!) you’ll love this one.
Assholes.
Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: January 9, 2010, 9:21 pm
Deborah said:
but I don’t think anyone called for her death.
Mi mi mi mimi MEEEE! I did! I did!
But then again, I call for her death all the time and so far, neither the Big Bloke whut art Omnisomething nor his bastard son have obliged. Oh well.
And swearing? I swear like a sailor all the time. Becuz…nevermind.
Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 9, 2010, 10:19 pm
Yeah, yeah, we know, you ARE a sailor. 🙂
You might get the very occasional “crap” out of me, but other than that I’m not a huge cusser. I don’t like the way it sounds either. My students think I’m hopelessly old-fashioned for not letting them cuss in class.
I plead the fifth.
Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 9, 2010, 10:22 pm
Oh, and Rayra over at GCP posted this http://www.grouchyconservativepundits.com/index.php?topic=9425.msg76851#new which made me think of you poor frozen residents of the British Isles. It’d be spectacular if it wasn’t so darned COLD.
Comment from MCPO Airdale
Time: January 10, 2010, 12:54 am
My old man (career Artillery Officer) could out swear any Sailor I ever met and I served for 30 years!
Comment from scubafreak
Time: January 10, 2010, 1:34 am
Meh? I’m trying to figure out where I dropped the JHC bomb….
I mean, I SCREAM it frequently during sex (mostly because I live like a monk), but typing it is quite the pain.
Much less convenient than my more common bombs that I use on the Cornfield….
Oh, and I left the Navy in 1992 as an HT2 (E-5)
Comment from Oldcat
Time: January 10, 2010, 1:37 am
It’s hard for Christians to get really tweaked about oaths like that, since we are the ones who made them up. It’s a bit wierd that a non-Christian would use them, like it would be odd for me to swear on the Earth-Mother, or the great Frog God.
Well, by Jove! does still exist, so I guess there’s precident.
Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 10, 2010, 2:44 am
Even John Kerry confided that Edwards gave him the douche-chills. Imagine what a scumbag you have to be to creep out John F’n Kerry. That’s like telling Hannibal Lecter something and having him say, “dude, that’s gross.”
I’m an atheist, so for me “Jesus Christ is the answer” means it must have been a fucking stupid question. Yeah, I’m sure that’s offensive to Xtians. Like I could give a shit. Scientology, Islam and Buddhism are even more retarded.
Comment from BillT (aka "The .0004572% Of Traffic That’s From Iraq)
Time: January 10, 2010, 3:42 am
I wouldn’t know how to swear using something Jewish. Or Buddhist. Not even Islamic. Shinto curses? Anybody?
Arabic has a lot of vulgar expressions, but not many cuss words. Of course, the time-tested insult, “Your father was a camel, your mother was a donkey, and you’re their ugliest child” always gets a rise out of people…
Comment from The Dread Pirate Neck Beard
Time: January 10, 2010, 12:38 pm
Well, by Jove! does still exist, so I guess there’s precident.
AFIK, Jove or Jupiter was frequently used as a stand-in for God, since he’s an easily grasped pagan (haha, little joke there for the language nerds) diety and a Christian author wouldn’t have to technically profane or blaspheme to use him.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 10, 2010, 2:33 pm
Crom!
I wonder if it’s because Christianity has a specific injunction not to use the lord’s name carelessly. Nothing like telling people not to do something to get a whole buttload of it.
Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: January 10, 2010, 3:24 pm
By Grabthar’s hammer!
“Zounds” is short for “God’s wounds.” And now you know! If you didn’t already, that is!
David, I do think it’s worthwhile to not be deliberately offensive to people. Or, more accurately, it’s not worthwhile to deliberately offend people (generally; if we’re talking racists [actual racists] or something, offend away). I mean, take a dude who “identifies” [quotation marks are to indicate that this is the terminology they use] as a lady, or a chick who identifies as a fella. Kinda weird, right? But what are you going to accomplish by telling them you think they’re weird? You might confirm their stereotypes about closed-minded vanilla types, or you might actually genuinely hurt their feelings. You’re not going to change them.
Similarly, I don’t think being rude to people about their religious beliefs accomplishes anything. They’re not going to say, “My goodness, some random guy on the Internet thinks I’m stupid! Obviously the years of study and thought I’ve invested in this subject were in vain and I must abandon my faith now!!!!” All they’ll say is, “Wow, that guy is deliberately being a jerk.” (And some will say, “Atheists are jerks,” because humans like to generalize.)
(Grain of salt: I don’t understand why people are mean to begin with…I just don’t see what it accomplishes. Sure, you get to feel a little bit of satisfaction, but it doesn’t last, and then you have to live with your conscience reminding you what you did. Totally not worth it.)
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 10, 2010, 4:14 pm
Twenty-four years of arguing on the internet has taught me that I do have a capacity for cruelty, Mrs P. But not wanton cruelty. I have to believe that the target of my spleen richly deserves it.
Speaking of pain, I find the weirdest things doing Google image searches. I was looking for pictures of wet rings on a countertop, like when you put a beer glass down. What I got was this.
Brrrrr.
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: January 10, 2010, 5:30 pm
Only the Germans!
Oops, I generalised 😉
Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 10, 2010, 6:41 pm
That was pretty creepy. I wanna know who puts that thing on their teenage kid? My son stopped letting me see him nekkid when he was about 4, and for sure he wouldn’t have let me get within a parsec of him with that thing.
Not that I would have tried, ewwww.
Comment from BillT (aka “The .0004572% Of Traffic That’s From Iraq)
Time: January 11, 2010, 2:47 am
You must use interesting search terms.
What *I* want to know is why this blurb
Cute yet weird plush toys Great gifts for boys and men
appears above that metallic Langolier…
Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 11, 2010, 5:02 pm
Oh, fersure, Mrs. Peel. I wouldn’t go out of my way to be insulting or obnoxious. But by the same token, I’m not going to be especially deferential towards a point of view I think is retarded. No-one has the right not to be offended.
Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: January 11, 2010, 7:23 pm
I agree with you, and I don’t expect excessive deference. I was thinking more of when evangelical atheists act like assholes. If someone’s just disagreeing and not intending to insult me personally, I wouldn’t think anything about it. I think intent counts for a lot when you are talking offense.
I hate that I feel like I have to carefully choose my words even when I intend no offense at all. When the Texans were playing the Oilers (an American football team that used to be in Houston, where the Texans are now) recently, I posted on FB that I was born in the same hospital as Earl Campbell’s (a player for the Oilers way back when) daughter, on the same day. I then made a joke about bassinet switching, but then I realized that some people might get all uptight and decide I’m racist, because Earl Campbell is black. So I deleted it.
Anyway, Weas, apparently, you were on target with that post you did a while back on Obama’s and Wright’s skin colors…
Comment from SDN
Time: January 14, 2010, 1:20 pm
“Things go better with sheep.”
And I’m sure all your Scottish neighbors agree! 😎
No one else went there, and the ticket was too cheap to pass up.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 14, 2010, 1:26 pm
Mmmm…I think they blame the Welsh here.
And the Kiwis, of course.
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