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Lose the accessories, maybe?

Christopher Buckley published a State of the Union parody for Barack Obama today.

Nah, don’t bother clicking. For one thing, it’s in the Daily Beast. And for another, it’s Christopher Buckley, who still writes in the painfully cute, brittle style that probably made him the star of his Advanced Placement English class in High School. You can be right and still be a twit.

I only bring it up because commenter Blast Hardcheese remembered the last time I made fun of Buckley and wondered if I could do it again. You know, now that he’s quietly sashayed into the anti-Obama camp without mentioned his earlier…infatuations.

I dunno, dude. It’s hard to mock a man who deliberately chooses for his profile shot that painfully twee photo everyone was snickering about last year. Jeezum crow! Best I can do is point out those accessories no longer go with these slacks.

Maybe Iowahawk will have some better ideas.


Don’t mind me. I’m grumpy today. I took my driving exam this afternoon and flunked.

Worse, I deserved to. I did a lousy hour’s driving. The thing that failed me, I made one of those judgement calls on a right-hand turn against traffic and called it too close. I knew instantly that I’d blown it.

Oddly, though, having gone through it once, I’m a lot less nervous about next time. I thought there were four or five things I should have failed upon, so learning that only my most boneheaded screwup mattered is some comfort. And failing isn’t at all uncommon; only 40% a day pass the test.

But every try is another month’s delay and £100 in moneys.

Fuck.

Comments


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 27, 2010, 6:55 pm

Ouch. Double ouch triple and quadruple ouch.

Sorry, Stoaty. 🙁


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 27, 2010, 6:57 pm

Is that a sad-face weasel? I hope so because I don’t want you to thing I’m happy you fflubbed your driver test.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 27, 2010, 7:09 pm

Yeah, it’s the sad-faced weasel. I realize it’s hard to tell.

I’m honestly not that upset, Nina. I would love to have gotten it over with today, I’m irritated that I came so close, and the money (and time) is getting me down. But I was amazed when he said I’d flunked over one thing…I made a lot of small errors that, for all I knew, were big errors.


Comment from Allen
Time: January 27, 2010, 7:48 pm

That was pretty bad. Why is it that all those Obama supporters who think they are so intelligent write so horribly?

Damn, you know what I wish for? Obama had picked Edwards as his VP. Think of the laughs. You know Obama’s team had to know what was going down early on, and he was never even considered.

Weasel, that’s just what he said to draw you into his trap. he would have busted you for the other stufff if not for the right turn. That’s how they keep you coming back and giving them money. What? I am not cynical. 🙂


Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: January 27, 2010, 8:54 pm

You drove here, right? Why are their driving tests so darn hard?

And I’m sorry you didn’t pass, DD flunked her test 8 times. Took her a year and a half to finally pass it. She has this fear of tests thing that just drove us all nuts.


Comment from EZnSF
Time: January 27, 2010, 10:01 pm

I would think that is 40% of NATIVES!
As a previous-yank, you rank, effectively, in the top 90 percentile.

I only wish driving tests were that hard in my state. They pass out licenses here like coupons. And it shows.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: January 28, 2010, 12:24 am

Yikes. Just saw some of the SOTU address, where Obama accused the court of putting foreign interests in charge of elections. He just made some REAL enemies in the Supreme Court…..

I think that Obama has just cut his own political throat……


Comment from weirdsister
Time: January 28, 2010, 1:03 am

I think that Obama has just cut his own political throat…..)
Scoob, we can only hope.

Love the presidential knee pads, Stoaty!


Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 28, 2010, 2:12 am

It’s a ton per? Srsly? And the ‘no tilt’ light flashes for a month? Sweet Satan’s ringpiece, that sucks like Clay Aiken at a boy scout jamboree. Thank Jeebus I don’t own a car in the UK, and never did. I am thoroughly taxi-borne here in the tropics, and all the purer for it.


Comment from Blast Hardcheese
Time: January 28, 2010, 7:06 am

EEEEE! My wish is granted! Now I am as happy as a little girl…but my joy is lessened upon hearing about Weas’s problems with the driver test. If it’s any consolation, I flunked my first driver test.

Hang in there, Stoaty!


Comment from Carl
Time: January 28, 2010, 8:55 am

You probably know this already but you are allowed to make up to 15 minor errors in the UK driving test. However, you fail if you make the same minor error more than 3 times and if you make a major error just once.

Presumably your driving instructor has told you what constitutes a major error.

Good luck next time.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 28, 2010, 9:01 am

David, it’s £64 for the test and £40 for two hours of my instructor’s time — I’ve got to drive his car to Hastings and warm up a bit first and then drive back. And I’ve scheduled a two-hour refresher the week before, so that’s another £40.

The month’s delay is just because that was the next available afternoon appointment.

You have to be 17 to take the test here, and only 18% of kids pass it on the first try. But, honestly, he was cutting me all kinds of slack and I had to do something exceedingly stupid to flunk. Test nerves.

I missed the SOTU — it was 2am here. It sure doesn’t sound like he pulled his balls out of the vice with this speech, though. And dissing the Supremes was dumb, dumb, dumb…and tacky.


Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 28, 2010, 10:21 am

Dissing the Supremes? Sacrilege. My parents saw Diana Ross and the Supremes in the London Hippodrome on their honeymoon 42 years ago. Fun fact: The Supremes are one of only nine Motown acts to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (it was a question on our pub quiz last night, which we won handily.)

And when you do pass, there needs to be a driving test edition of “Guards, release the Weasel”.


Comment from steve
Time: January 28, 2010, 10:48 am

Re: Driving Test
My son had to take two runs at the written test, here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. He complained bitterly that there were questions on the test that involved answers that were not in the booklet….and that I gavbe up as un-knowable,a s they appear to be nowhere, including state statutes and regulations (for example…”How far away are you required to park from a fire truck that is engaged in fighting a fire?” My amnwer is….pretty much as far away as they tell you….but he had to pick from among the a, b or c…)

Anyway, I am confivinced that it is a scam and that they simply feed the people the impossible to pass test the first go around, the moderately hard test the second time around, and the anyone can pass this thing test the third go around….collecting their $50/test each time….doubling or tripling their take for the effort….

Somehow it isn’t comforting to know that the Brits are fattening the government coffers, using similar tactics…

Re: Chris Buckley
I feel he has ever been more his momma Pat’s little precious than he has ever been a chip off of his father’s block….


Comment from Deborah
Time: January 28, 2010, 10:59 am

OH-OH-OH—I CAN see Stoatie with a long scarf around her neck, flying out in the wind, as she motors ’round the English countryside in Uncle Badger’s convertible _________. Uncle B? You DO have a convertible don’t you? A nice XKR for our Stoatie would be lovely.


Comment from dfbaskwill
Time: January 28, 2010, 11:08 am

I wish it was that hard here in America also. A 5% reduction in traffic makes a world of difference according to the experts in “traffic jam analysis”. How is the bribery problem there in the UK? I’d bet it’s harder to grease the skids there than here!


Comment from Mike James
Time: January 28, 2010, 12:12 pm

I agree with both Allen and Steve, above–that sounds like a sweet
little racket they’ve got going, there.


Comment from Sporadic Small Arms Fire
Time: January 28, 2010, 1:06 pm

Sweasel, purchase a burqa or procure one from some dark tarpaulin from Army-Navy Surplus Store.
Cannot lose, with Prophet (pigs be upon him) on your side.

And watch Mr. Bean driving on top of Mini Morris, steering with the mop, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ5A7Rbmp9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zavsd6etz_Q

The British… once great nation that gave the world the beans on the toast and wookey hole brand. You came in too late to enrich their atrociously limited gene pool, but just in time to give us some morbid entertainment.


Comment from Carl
Time: January 28, 2010, 1:44 pm

One trick that my sister claims almost always works is to take your test dressed as an off-duty nurse. The examiners are reckoned to be much more lenient towards health professionals.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 28, 2010, 2:24 pm

Oh, I screwed up good and proper, Carl — I made a dangerous error (cue scary music). I mean, technically…we weren’t in any actual danger or anything. He scored me for fewer minor errors than I thought, though. I drove really badly and deserved to flunk. After the first error I knew I’d made, I think I just came a little unglued.

Uncle B was kind enough to buy me an old Miata, Deborah. So I could recreate my beloved Weaselmobile. He thought it would make it easier for me to learn (which it did), but then he fell in love with it himself. You can say what you like about them, the old-style MX-5s are fantastic little cars.

We sing the theme from the Avengers when we sling it around these country lanes.


Comment from JuliaM
Time: January 28, 2010, 2:39 pm

Awww, bad luck… 🙁


Comment from JuliaM
Time: January 28, 2010, 3:13 pm

Driving instructors are a law unto themselves – I left the handbrake on during my test, but because I realised then ‘dealt with it in a safe manner’, it didn’t matter!

And yet every day, I see people on the road who have absolutely no clue of road signs, stopping distances, what the controls do…

How do they pass!? I can’t understand it…


Comment from Deborah
Time: January 28, 2010, 3:30 pm

That’s right. I forgot about the Miata. I know you’ll nail the driving test next round(about).

Avengers: Husband adored Emma Peel (he has this thing for leggy dames). Do you look like Emma Peel? Does Uncle Badger look like John Steed?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 28, 2010, 3:37 pm

No and no, Deborah. Not even in the bloom of youth would I be appealing in a leather catsuit. I’m not even sure I’m up to the standard of Diana Rigg now.

And Uncle B looks uncannily like…a badger.

J.D. Salinger won’t be down for breakfast! Not in the death pool, I don’t think.


Comment from Adrian
Time: January 28, 2010, 6:33 pm

Failed my first too, had to parallel park in downtown during rush hour. Oh and there was that close call with the old lady pushing a shopping cart…it was like she sprang out of thin air all Ninja like.

Next time I had to parallel park with only one other car on a deserted suburban street.


Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 28, 2010, 8:22 pm

Isn’t a Miata an MX2 where you are?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 28, 2010, 8:35 pm

MX-5. It’s sold as that in the States, too. But it’s mainly marketed as Miata.

Which — bizarrely — is Old German for “prize.”


Comment from David Gillies
Time: January 29, 2010, 2:28 am

According to legend, Mazda did one of those cross-cultural boo-boos when they tried to market the MR2 in France, or so the story goes. MR2 in French is pronounced very much like emmerdeux which means ‘covered in shit’ (read English ‘shitty’.) This may well be an urban legend, in the same vein as the story about the Chevy Nova’s failure in the Latin American market due to the fact that ‘no va’ in Spanish means, colloquially, ‘does not function’.

And ‘miata’ as a prize in German – where did you find that? It’s a very un-Germanic construction (the modern form is Preis.) Philology never fails to amaze me.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 29, 2010, 8:52 am

I assumed it was Japanese, so it stuck in my head as intensely odd (and, yes, un-Germanic-sounding). Explanation here.

They say “reward” — I had originally heard “prize.” I suppose they’re kind of synonyms.

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