sweasel.com

What is scroogle.org? It’s blocked from work. I got this search thread from it today: my cat is a shamless hussy republican.

You’re right. Some people believe the oil companies are retarding progress but in fact they are the ones on top of it. They want to control the New Thing when their own thing becomes obsolete. Same players, different game, as it were.

And I strongly condemn anything that involves agriculture. We just loosed ourselves from depending on fickle Mother Earth and capricious Mr. Weather. Any attempt to return to them is an invitation to disaster, in my honest opinion.

The fact no clear alternative has risen means none has been found yet. In my opinion at least.

Yes, I’m avoiding work.

What a coincidence. That’s what I do for a living, too!

Is it really obvious – as President Bush contends – that high demand is creating high prices? Or is it that the people who produce the oil are throttling supply to keep prices artificially high and play political games?
Any news on when all of this oil that the US (and presumably the other allies) is ‘stealing’ is going to hit the market? That should force pwices down…

Well, from what I have read, demand is rising, more than suppliers can, er, supply. China and Russia are partly to blame insofar as their demands are rising. They get plenty of oil from Iran, which we do not use. If Iran shut down their supplying, they’d have to go after resources we use, which would hinder our supply.

It took me a long time to work that out, Gibby. Not the supply and demand thing — in general, economic issues bore me senseless. That thing about stealing oil.

I couldn’t work out what the left was on about. I mean, keeping Iraq’s oil flowing is good for all of us, yes, but we pay the same market price as everyone else.

Then I realized they were being personal about this. The left is accusing Cheney and Bush of keeping oil in play for the benefit of their friends who work in the oil industry.

I think. It’s so hard to tell what they’re thinking.

Scroogle is some kind of search engine or listing of results. Someone searched on that link phrasing (cat..hussy) and the thing found that instance where you said, “McGoo, you shameless hussy…”

My reputation precedes me…

That’s a really outstanding post image, Weaz! I like it.

Thank you, McGoo. I was going for a sort of Apocalypse now thing. But with a weasel. And oil.

That’s the second draft. The first showed a bit more snout, but it looked funky. There probably ought to be a meniscus or at least a line of highlight where the weasel touches the oil…but sometimes you have to stop at good enough before you get to awful.

My mother used to say it takes two people to make an oil painting. One to paint, the other to hit him in the head and make him stop.

You know, on balance, I’d have said war (hot or cold) is an even greater driver of technological innovation. Nothing concentrates the mind better than the prospect of a jackboot in the face.

And yes, my impression too is that oil is expensive because we are being forced to pay through the nose for it by assorted scumbags – notably the Saudis, a people from whom so much good readily flows.

Oh, I’m sure OPEC could produce more oil if they wanted. It is hard to convince someone they should up production to cut profit. I’ve read that what really keeps a lid on price is that, once oil is expensive enough to make shale oil realistic, they can kiss our asses. We (and Canada) are LOUSY with the stuff.

Incidentally, I was partial to yesterday’s Brain Fart graphic. I was going for the classic whoopee cushion lady gambit. You remember her — she looked so delighted to have “poo!” and “poo!” coming out of her butt in cartoon balloons.

“Go on, laddy” the cartoon seemed to say, “she’ll be in on the joke, and she’ll love it!”

I think I needed more flappida, flappida action with the brain stem, though.

I’d have said war (hot or cold) is an even greater driver of technological innovation.

Yeah, I’ve often done the ‘don’t you think it’s a little hypocrtical to harp on about how evil war is whilst using a digital computer and the internet?’ thing when having fun and rewarding intertube (invented by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)) arguments with jerks.

Googles meniscus
Huh. So that’s what the word is for that. This is why I love this place so much – entertaining and educational!

BTW: Don’t read the news today. It’s all bad.

You certanily do – I’d been spelling it wrong for years!

Umm… not that it crops up in everyday conversation, I grant you.

Meanwhile, I have just given my word processor’s spelling checker violent dyspepsia with an overdose of plant names.

What were they thinking, not having Osmanthus heterophyllus Tricolour in there?!

Must be the day for strange words.

Ghalib, a prominent Urdu poet, talks about menisci. He’s a very depressing poet. I think he needed Prozac.

Much like Mexican music. It’s all heartbreak this and distant woman that. And it sounds so sad, which is the root of the problem. Heartache with a fast and catchy beat isn’t so terrible, now is it?

not that it crops up in everyday conversation

Maybe it doesn’t crop up in YOUR everyday conversation. Hmmph!

(meniscus also refers to a bit of tissue in the knee. when you tear it, you have to have surgery to fix it and – if my dad is any indication – spend nearly a month trapped on the couch attempting to recover and then have a second surgery to remove the enormous hematoma and then get diagnosed with smoldering multiple myeloma. [He’s fine now.])

Be honest, the weasel has a perfectly functional M-60 under there, ready to burst out of the oil in slow motion and gun down the cong.

My favorite humorous Brit-blog comments on the Iraq war. He’s a pot-stirrer so take his rhetoric with a grain of salt. But I love the comments.

Thank you, Musli! I was trying to remember his URL the other day. I need to blogroll dude.

Looks like the NY Recruiter bomber was a Lefty fucknut. What a surprise. Probably a Daily Kos life member.

In this post wherein Noreen laments certian linguistic fashions of Guardian writers, someone comments:
“Guru” puts the shits up me. “etiquette guru” “gardening guru” “fashion guru”

I hope they all guru big fuck off tumours.

To which someone responded:
If you put a guru in a tin and ship it to Australia, it turns into a marsupial. It’s called can guru.

You’re welcome, BTW, Your Grace. I love that site. The posts are good; the comments are better.

And like so many Kos Kidz, McGoo, he was no kid. Graying hair, per the photo.

“Lookit me! I made a loud but entirely pointless gesture!”

Huh. Now they’re reporting that the letters aren’t related, just “an incredible coincidence.”

I just now read that, Weaz.

Reported by CBS – a name we can trust. Riight. “Talked to the guy on the west coast?” “No charges filed.”

I hate to sound paranoid, but does this sound like they’re trying to bury it?

It seems awfully quick to give up on it. On the other hand, it looks like he put his genuine return address on the letters, which argues against his involvement.

Still, what does “we did it” mean, then? And a picture of that very recruiting station? “Incredible coincidence” doesn’t cover it!

Carl Sagan –

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”

Yahoo is reporting it now. They say that an anonymous cop said that “The ‘we did it’ refers to the democratic win of house and senate in ’06”.

So he’s celebrating in front if the Recruiting station and writing letters a year later?

I am not quite persuaded yet.

Capitalism is the mindblowingest driver of technological innovation that the world has ever known. There’s a gigantic money to be made. And people who already have gigantic money yearn for more.

Greed + resources + huge impatient market = we’re on it already!

Well said. Likewise, being in the car biz, I get so tired of hearing about how the Japanese chumped us on the small car market … “they’re smarter than us, they’re better on conservation, blah blah blah.” Surely we’ve made some errors. But the reason the Japanese came up with better, smaller cars sooner is *not* that they’re more brilliant or more ecologically sensitive — it’s because they’re little tiny people in a little tiny country who’ve had really high gas prices for a long time. They were forced to put their focus on small cars. The American companies (since the 70s) tried to focus on and sell small cars, and were only quasi-successful because most Americans want to drive the largest conveyance they can possible afford. We’re bigger people, who drive much further distances (many of us out in the boondocks — I don’t think Japan *has* boondocks) and we have a lot more offspring.

Where I think American companies are failing right now is not pushing diesels. I keep yammering about them (I’ve always liked them), but the response I get is “people don’t like them.” But if they’d sell the idea the way they’re letting Hollywood, farmers & various “greens” sell hybrid & ethanol, Joe & Jane Average would become aware that having a diesel car does not mean you’re going to have a (1960s version) big rig roaring away in your driveway, belching out black smoke. Sheesh, even the tractors of today aren’t like that.

Sorry so much yammering (hides face behind paws).

from muslihoon’s link.

Shoes? Shoes??? Who the fuck are you – Imelda Marcos? Why waste money on shoes for African kids when you can spend it on killing ragheads? Give an African child a shoe and he’ll just eat it. Turning an entire country into a shooting gallery, on the other hand, is a noble and visionary endeavour, and we salute W for it.

No child would want to go to bed with a shoe anyway. I used to sleep cuddling a boxing glove, ‘cos my dad was a nutjob who thought teddy bears would make me soft. Harry on the other hand used to sleep wearing boxing gloves, ‘cos he was a compulsive wanker. Plus ca change…
Ivan the Terrible | Homepage | 05.03.08 – 12:38 pm | #

Okay, now that just tickled my funny bone.

I’ll admit it, I have been sucking on my not watching TV for Lent and have watched American Idol for the past two weeks. (I have never watched it previously. I blame the primaries.) *Noreen, in the above link triggered the admittance*
I don’t know about you, but I am so glad that gay little shit, Daniel, got the boot yesterday night. He was such a turd. Now that he is gone, I am satisfied and have no need to watch it further.

Emerald Bile can be really hysterical. I’m in the process of going back and reading it from the beginning.

Hm. There ought to be a word for that.

Did you remember aechmea fasciculata*, Uncle B?

* Nothing like exhausting one’s entire arsenal of Latin plant names in a single sentence.

I nominate “blogiteration.”

…and a blog’s “blogiteratability” could be referred to as “bloghardiness.”

I had to look that one up, jwpaine. I have grown a tillandsia in the past. Weird bloody things – clinging to rocks or trees, not growing in soil, at all.

Not sure about bromeliads in general, but I did very nearly buy a pineapple plant the other day and they’re in that group! I’ve wanted to give them a try since I went to a show some years ago and saw a collection grown in a flat in Bristol. That’s Bristol. England. Cold. Wet.

I have got a mighty banana plant growing in the morning room, though, (along with some lemons I’m growing for The Weasel) – does that count?

Is there a gardener’s anonymous, does anyone know?

I think I may need help.

Bananas and pineapples? In England? There’s something unnatural about that, I tell you. Beware a thunderbolt or something.

Toevah (abomination)!

That ad, by the way, though in Yiddish (the very beginning) and English with Yiddish (brokh – curse, Grosse Tater – Great Father) and Hebrew words, was made for an Israeli company for broadcast in Israel. (At the very end, the speaker is speaking Hebrew, and throughout the ad is dubbed into Hebrew with subtitles.) It was banned in Israel. It was filmed in America (likely New York) because no one would have been able to film it in Israel. Once the Orthodox community would have found out, they would have had the ad company shut down.

I think the ad is hilarious.

Shiksa – non-Jewish girl, or a woman who doesn’t behave like a good Jewish one should.

Er, I realize posting that link may have been in bad taste considering what happened in Israel yesterday (chas v’shalom aleinu; barukh dayan emet). Please remove if you so desire, Your Grace.

That is absolutely and truly wonderful, Muslihoon!

And yes… I’m growing a banana plant.

The climate in England is extremely temperate and we are all, of course, quietly mad. In the 19th Century, serving pineapple at your dinner party and just casually dropping into the conversation that it was grown in your own glasshouse was quite the done thing.

You probably didn’t add that the heat was generated by the copious applications of fresh, steaming manure, though.

Thanks, Uncle B!

Er, yes, leaving the entire discussion of manure out is probably always a good thing.

No doubt, Uncle B. If you’ve started eating the lotus, definitely.
My wife’s parents have a commercial nursery where they specialize in plumerias (the plant’s flowers are used to make Hawaiian leis). I think they’ve even developed a couple of new breeds of plumeria. I was out of work a billion years ago, and they hired me to build an office inside one of their greenhouses. Ever done manual labor inside a greenhouse in July in Southern California? I finished it in three days, taking frequent breaks to go outside and hose down.

Did wonders for my girlish figure, tho.

You know, JWP, I’m struggling to imagine why you would even need a greenhouse in Southern California!

I’ve just ordered the new one for Badger House. The plans for foundations and construction arrived yesterday.

They look… challenging!

God, I envy you, Badger. Building construction is a blast. I helped build a house three summers ago, and the next year rebuilt a house my bro’ burned down. I loved every day of it.

I actually enjoyed the work, though the heat was suffocating. And you need greenhouses in Sudden California because it is, despite all the water it steals from Colorado, a desert.

It all seems so exotic, JWP… Then again, as I type, I’m watching Ry Cooder, Bonnie Rait and John Lee Hooker on the haunted goldfish bowl, so there’s some kind of symmetry at work.

The desert really sucks it out of you. I learned that in Arizona. The humidity and stunning heat in a greenhouse had to have been near-lethal.

I certainly felt near lethalesqueitude, Steam.

Is that like deadliosity?

And you need greenhouses in Sudden California because it is, despite all the water it steals from Colorado, a desert

*sniffs
It’s not a desert. It’s a semi-arid region.
At least that’s what the schools taught me growing up.
I did not like living in Arizona one single bit, I did however like the lightning storms. That was the coolest thing ever after having lived in a semi-arid region for so long. 🙂

Well, the greenhouse itself was deadliositous, which led to my near-fatalesqueitudiness.

Semi-arid? Hate to over-use a favorite expression (okay, I love to over-use favorite expressions; I’m imaginationally retarded), but geography textbook authors should be permitted to replace “semi-arid” with “drier than a popcorn fart.”

At their dexcretion, of course.

If I’d ever finished my degree in geography I would have taken you up on that idea.