sweasel.com

Contributing Minion’s Note prior to a long and unimportant post:
Why for Gods sake would you want an internet? You have a beautiful house in the country that has been the home of many happy families with beautiful children over the centuries. You have rose bushes there older than my country. Now you want to invite in the electronic demons that infest the ‘net’? Well, you’re going to be sorry if you do, and I’m about to show you why:

The manor house at the Coastal Property was well over 400 years old. No one was sure anymore exactly how old it was, but there was an unpaid tax bill dating back to 1610 according to the records of the royal Tax Collector. In the view of these gentlemen of the government, the Queen was owed her due and any decent Englishman would have paid up centuries ago. However the Costal Property belonged to the Badgerbugger family, and they had their principles. In their view, the Crown owed them a debt for services to the royal family by the royal ermine. The debt went back to the dark days when the Magna Carta was all the rage and the danger to the crown was high. It’s well documented in the press of the time that King John was never seen without the ermine designating his office round his neck. In fact, the expression “Be of stoat heart” is said to date to that time.

What is not so well known today is that that the royal ermine was serving as a body guard for the King. ‘Twas no dead and skinned ermine that warmed the King’s neck – it was a specially ninja-trained ermine who merely pretended to be dead, while actually waiting to leap on any man who might come too close to the royal person. King John definitely needed the protection of the Royal Ermine for the British people were quite angry with him. Recall that the King needed money for armies, but the loss of the French territories to the Frogs, especially Normandy, had greatly reduced the state income, and a huge tax would have to be raised in order to attempt to reclaim these territories. Yet it was difficult to raise taxes due to the tradition of keeping them at the same level. Novel efforts to raise income included a Forest Gump law, a set of regulations about shrimp fishing in the king’s forest. John also increased direct military service eleven times in his seventeen years as king, as compared to eleven times in twice that period covering three monarchs before him. You do the math. The last two of these increases were double the increase of their predecessors. King John also imposed the first income tax. By 1215, some of the most important barons in England had had enough, and they entered London by force on June 10th 1215 with the city showing its sympathies with their cause by opening its gates to them and lighting their cigarette lighters while shouting “Encore!” and “Freebird!”.

In return for the protection of the stoat-hearted ermine of the Badgerbugger family, King John promised that “Ye shall have the righte to live on ye Coastal Propertie free of taxual vexation as long as the Unicorns wander the land and Englishmen drink warme beere. “ The Badgerbuggers took him at his word, although everyone secretly hoped that the day of refrigerated beer would come soon, despite the great cost to the family.

The Badgerbuggers lived in ease and comfort at the Coastal Estates until the time of the Wars of the “Red roundy flowers with thorns” – a civil war fought about the proper Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and Sir Walter Scott. Shakespeare’s attempt to negotiate peace failed but his attempt at compromise remains famous today in the phrase “A rose by any other name is still a rose, damn your eyes”. Somewhere around the time of this conflict all records of the Badgerbugger’s agreement with the King vanished, supposed taken from the country in the luggage of a fleeing unicorn.

We shall leap forward to the present while you are distracted by that big ugly spider right THERE! Oh my mistake, sorry, where were we? Ah, yes.

Everyone at the regional tax office knew about the tax bill due for the Badgerbugger Coastal property, but no one ever spoke of it, except now and again on a dark and stormy day when no one was going out no matter how much was owed the crown. On those occasions when everyone told scary stories over a nice cuppa, the history of what had happened to various tax collectors who went to the Badgerbugger place to just try and collect.

The first to actually try and collect was a Tax Collector by the name of Guy Fawkes. You will recall the outcome of his efforts. In 1605, he was found in the basement of the Houses of Parliament tied to 36 barrels of gun powder and reeking of Badger piss. Press standards of the day suppressed that fact that found bound by plumbers putty in his (In the interests of delicacy and snobbery the editorial we shall use a French term to impress you peons) Derriere –hole was a tax bill for 3 pounds, seven shillings, and nine-seventeenth-pence was a tax bill for the Coastal Property. After that, with some exceptions the Tax Collector left the Badgerbuggers alone. I suppose that it should be pointed out to the reader that the Tax Collector was the Tax Collector in the same sense that the same Santa Claus has been bringing presents to
children all over the world for hundreds of years. The Tax Collector is one of many interchangeable men who have assumed the mantle annonymously as their predecessors fell, picking up the bowlers and ledger books of their bretheren, and like the Spanish Inquisition, carrying on.

Now Tax Collectors are not the brightest lot. In general, it can safely be said that Tax Collectors are those who were unable to obtain employment as Stable-muckers or Sewage Tasters. However any sentient beings with the intelligence of a slug can be taught by a patient and persistent teacher, and – according to certain tattooed intellectuals who study such things with hopes of stealing genes from slugs so that they can implant into genetically modified strawberries and thus make strawberries which crawl by themselves towards clotted cream – Tax Collectors are not much below slugs in intelligence.

Over the course of the last 400 years, Tax Collectors had slowly learned that those who went to the Coastal Property with a tax bill in hand generally came back – if they came back at all – with their asses in their hands and their tax bills in their asses affixed with plumbers putty and dromedary spit.

However on this particular day, a new Tax Collector was in town. He wasn’t known to anyone in the office, and dressed all in black, and wearing a Zorro Mask ™, he didn’t seem like someone to whom they should introduce themselves. Even a Tax Collector knows trouble when he (or she, in today’s liberated tax office) sees an asshole just itchin’ to do something dumb. When he lit a cigar and asked Ms. Pennymoney who the biggest tax cheat in the whole damn’d area was, they knew it was time to resort to that most desperate of excuses that no Englishman had ever resorted to – even when the Zulus were kicking ass at the Battle or Isandlwana – even in the most desperate times at the Siege of Cawnpore. Now was the time to ahem, weasel out of the situation as it were. All seventeen voices cried out at once, “Hoy, my bloody tooth aches and I’m about goin’ to the bleedin’ dentist, I am! Right Now, Gov!”

And so they fled, not pausing to hear Ms. Pennymoney say, “WHAT?”, deaf as she was. However, they knew that she would answer honestly, for honesty was the motto of the tax office. They also knew that after she answered the stupid fool in the white socks from out of town would be off to the Coastal Property and the relative peace they had had for fifty years would be shattered. Yes, dromedary bits would be flying, and things would get ugly. It was fate, or kismet if fate was on vacation again.

*****
Lady Weasel awoke at the crack of dawn, or near enough to not matter, relaxed and completely refreshed after the trials and tribulations of the bus trip the day before. Sighing, and stretching contentedly beneath the ermine-lined quilts covering the master bed – quilts that had been the Badgerbugger family tradition for centuries – she absentmindedly reviewed the previous days highlights. She was pleased to note that she was suffering no ill effects from the rather excessive amount of drink she had imbibed – so happy was she the previous night to see her beloved Lord after so very long. “That bratwurst trick of Covington’s really works!” She mused, gently fingering the ‘brat wrapped around her elegant neck. “Wonder how it works for cramps?” she wondered, briefly.

“Let’s see…packed up the ol’ mansion – check. Bundled up all the booze, spare cash and jewels – check. Managed to
get all the staff onto the bus – check.” Frowning slightly, she recalled that Putz was still nowhere to be found, and her last few days laundry has also somehow gone amiss. “But all in all, a good effort!,” she remarked out loud, springing up out of bed and promptly bonking her head on the low ceiling timbers of the master bedroom. “Shit!”, she blurted out, unaware that her handmaid – Fourche – had just walked into the room burdened with a large covered breakfast tray.

“Oh, no m’lady, just breakfast! Cook made it spec… Yieeeeeee!!!!!!!”, screeched Fourche, hurling the tray skyward and screaming, “Snake! Yieeeeeee!!!!!!!”

“Wha..?”, Lady Weasel queried, rubbing her noggin, eyes wide in startled wariness.

Seemingly appearing from nowhere, Lord Groinmaste Dique De Bologna Grande Badgerbugger VIII, Last Duke of Stoatfinger (by marriage), Secret Bearer of the Ermine Seal of Royals, KRS, MP- House of Lords, FRS, MRS, PhD, member in good standing – Royal Puttiers & Glasiers Local 1408, and all-around Nice Guy stepped past the terrified maid, and ,with but one lightning-fast reach with his stout but lithe right arm, managed to catch the heavily burdened tray and entire contents without so much as spilling a drop of Lady Weasels steaming breakfast tea. Continuing his ballet-like fluid motion, he deftly spun and placed the tray on a nearby table – and then laughed wholeheartedly – shaking the room – , yet not unkindly, at the panic around him. “Good morning, my lady!!!! ” He boomed, reaching out to his beloved . He carefully unfastened the top buttons of her sheer and revealing nightgown and grasped the bratwurst about her neck. With but the slightest of tugs it came free into his powerful but gentle hands.

Holding it aloft and wiggling the links playfully, he thrust it menacingly towards Fourche – who screamed again and cowered in fear. Bellowing again with laughter, he said “Tis nothing, my dear Fourche! Tis but a poultice our man Covington recommended when one – ahem – overindulges in spirits! See?” Calming quickly, and smiling in spite of
herself at her own fear, she allowed her lord to drape the linked brats around her neck. “Take that to Cook and tell
him to do it up for the staff lunch. There’s a good lass!”

Turning and embracing Lady Weasel savagely (who was still rubbing her noggin), and then holding her at arms length, he bellowed cheerfully, “Ready for your bath, my dear? Jolly good!” Effortlessly lifting her from her feet and
high into his arms, he began walking towards the baths, continuing, ” We’ve plenty of bubblebath left – I’ve just been! Come! While I bathe you I’ll tell you of the most interesting news I’ve received! Its positively astounding!”

(bonk)

“Oh! I say, my dear! You simply must get used to stooping a bit here in the Coastal Property. Here! Let me kiss it…”

(bonk)

“Oops! Was that in the same place, my beloved? Oh my! Perhaps if I lowered you a bit……..”

(bonk)

…

*****

Eyes closed, Lady Weasel lay motionless in the hot sudsy water as Lord Badgerbugger fastidiously diddled her toes
with a dromedary-hair brush. Surrendering finally, the lady’s lips parted and she whispered, “……..Putty?”

“Where?” Lord Badgerbugger hissed, alert now, his eyes everywhere, senses tuned to a razor pitch, his diddling
forgotten.

“No. You said putty.”

“Oh? Oh! Yes. Harumph!” Relaxing again, m’lord said, ” Well it came as no shock to me, you know – being a direct lineal descendent of Badgerbugger the First back in the 1500’s. I learned the secrets – and swore the Royal Oath – at my grandfather’s knee. But Ol’ Blofeld – and his father! – was apparently clueless – all these years! I always said he
was a bit off, even if he was my distant cousin, if you know what I ….”

“Yes, my dear. Of course. Of course. But you’re saying that he’s been paying the taxes on the ancestral Coastal Property all these years? And that each time he’s paid the entire debt again – centuries of it! – without once questioning the amount?” Shaking her head perceptably, causing ripples to ripple out from her noggin, she queried,
“My god! That’s what finally broke him? A fortune of hundreds of spazillions of pounds – gone.”

“Quite so, Quite so, my dear. Two hundred thirty four spazillion, to be exact. No small change, that! Wot! Its my understanding the government has been paying for the health care system with the revenues. God only knows how they’ll pay for it now. Services could suffer, I predict.”

Lifting a small sea otter out of Lady Weasels bath, Lord badgerbugger carefully wiped the suds from its bright and trusting eyes before gently hurling it from the second-story window onto the lawn beneath. Resuming his diddling,
he continued:

“Anyway, I was quite torn, you know. The Ermine Seal secrets simply cannot be passed willy-nilly to one’s relatives – certainly not for a measly hundred spazillion quid. Harumph! There are Rules, you know! there are Traditions! Harumph! And, I knew if I waited long enough, I could have this property for the price of a few pounds of second-class whale barf!”

“And so it has come to pass, my love!” said m’lady, abruptly sitting up, sloshing quite a bit of water from the tub and causing a duck to quack soggily, somewhere beneath her. “The Coastal Property is once again in the hands of the true – the only – Lord badgerbugger!”

“Yes, my dearest, and the tax collectors are none the wiser either. Each year, Ol’ Blofeld would stuff his payment – imagine the size of it! – up a dromedaries – er, well, um…. – and then, using plumbers putty to seal the opening, would have it delivered to the local tax office. They – of course – would forward it to the appropriate home office. That office – not knowing where it had come from – would simply add the payment into the general receipts account and be done with it.”

Watching a small stream of bubbles that appeared suddenly in the water, Lord Badgerbugger was momentarily lost in
contemplation. He then lowered his voice and bent near Lady Weasel, whispering, “He never knew that all he had to do was seal up a note – in the aforementioned manner – saying “Fuck your taxes, Loser! -(regards) Badgerbugger-”
and the taxes would be waived.”

“And the collectors?”

“Oh! They’re no problem. My ancestors found that if they sent the tax collectors back sealed up in a similar manner,
they soon stopped popping by. They haven’t been by in decades, and probably still think the property is in arrears. Which it soon will be again! There are Traditions to consider! Harumph!”
*****

Who wants to see pictures of a pharmacy in Iraq?
http://www.funpic.hu/funblog/irak_pharmacy/irak_pharmacy.html

Caption for last photo:

While Aziz smugly examines his monthly sack of prescription dromedary condoms, his father Rajool asks about his new medication: “I’m supposed to shove these into who’s ass?”

Hate to break it to you, but that’s in India. The signs are in Hindi.

Right. And aren’t those gentlemen wearing turbans Sikhs? There are literally no Sikhs in Iraq.
Still, you could have a pretty good night out with all of that pharmacopeia.
McGoo and Lokki – brilliant as always.

Oh man I got it at digg – I wasn’t even looking at the people.

I should have known – they spelled Iraq with a K

With all the hot goodness of the Indian open air market, is there any remaining effectiveness in most of those medicines?

I can’t see the picture here, so I can’t see the turbans, but what’s so funny about Sikh people and medicine? Of course want medicine when you’re sikh!

PnB – I’m betting the opiates and emetics will be good for quite a while. The insulin – meh.

Lokki – they all had towels around their heads, so I figure they either have headcolds or hangovers – um, probably the former. Uh, yeah. A desert cold is a different animal, for sure.

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