Never try to con people in a language you don’t speak
“Hello. Nice sites! I also looking for free porns?: <URL here>” — that spammer guy in my filter
“A leader that God has blessed us with at this time.” — Nancy Pelosi, testifyin’ for the messiah
Oof! It hurts to watch the left flail around trying to communicate with us mouth-breathing redneck ‘wingers, doesn’t it? You can hear the little hamster wheels in their craniums squeaking: “These morons voted for Dubya. Twice. How hard can it be to put one over on them?”
A little beer, a little jesus, some eagles and flags and shit and eh voilà, those poor red state boobs’ll never know what hit ’em. Some lefty site I was cruising this morning had a comment congratulating the team for the great job they were doing with branding.
No. No you’re not. The faux ‘presidential seal’, the upside down flag badge, the weird retro-dustbowl iconography of the Buy American logo: pure iconographic gibberish. You’re speaking political Engrish.
It’s like…remember when your hipster mom tried to jive talk you in your own groovy lingo? Even if she got all the words right, she never got the music, because it wasn’t hers to get. When you try to talk ‘winger to ‘wingers, you embarrass yourselves and you embarrass us and you never even know it. Just like mom.
Now, Bill Clinton could speak fluent redneck. He grew up in the tents of the enemy. He was an oily, flatulent huckster, but he had the language of right-wing flag-humping populism down flat. You Obama people? You don’t. Stop trying.
August 20, 2008 — 10:39 am
Comments: 77
Art Crime
Hey, y’all, I’m in an all-day meeting in the Boston office today. The good news is, my old Mazda dealership can fit me in. The bad news: the Weaselmobile is currently due for about $1,200 in routine maintenance. Yay!
I’ll leave you with this. Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart decided the best way to reach voters in his district was to mail them his own personal comic book. The article calls it “edgy”. I call it “a huge steaming pile of loose monkeyshit” — which is, come to think of it, what “edgy” usually means.
It would be a lot more fun if these vile, psychotic drawings were his own, but he actually hired somebody to draw them. Somebody who, presumably, got paid. (Somebody named Shane Suiters, who may or may not be a tattoo artist. Lots of stuff bounced up when I Googled his name, but nothing I felt confident enough to print. Try it! It’s fun!).
Sadly…yes. You guessed: Brent is a Republican. Though really mostly what he is is a nutter. He’s had conflicts with fellow Republicans on the board, at least one of whom has played the “I urge him to get help” card.
You can (and I encourage you to) download the whole masterpiece here (3 megs, .pdf). Now, don’t tear the place up while I’m gone. And somebody please remember to let the dog out at least once today. That wasn’t fun to come home to, last time.
August 7, 2008 — 6:10 am
Comments: 40
You say ‘domestic’ I say ‘opportunist’
So the story goes that cats self-domesticated at about the same time as we began to practice agriculture. Agriculture makes granaries, granaries make mice, mice make cats. Plausible enough, but for a language quibble: I don’t think cats self-domesticated; I don’t think they changed one stripe from the Wild Kingdom version. Self-selected, more like. The ones that, on the whole, rather liked the company of man came out of the wilderness and settled in his granaries.
The fact is, some animals naturally rub along pretty well with people (and some don’t). They say you can’t tame a Felis silvestris grampia, no matter how hard you try. But catch a Felis silvestris lybica as a kitten and he’s anybody’s. They look exactly alike, but they’re different under the hood.
I’ve been thinking a lot about aminals lately. Sorry to drag you along on my middle-age what-do-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up journey to the center of my navel, but I’ve been trying to figure out if “animal artist” is interesting enough to last a lifetime. In the course of which, it occured to me that my favorite animals are the ones that rub along pretty well with humanity. Pets and livestock, of course, but I have a real soft spot for the vermin and the opportunists of nature, too.
Partly because they’re the only animals I get to see and interact with, I guess. But opportunistic animals also have a cheerful, bluff, “hey lady, you going to eat that french fry?” kind of attitude. They can take care of themselves just fine, thanks. None of this weak, whiny, candy-ass “woo, don’t even look at me, I’m endangered” stuff.
I don’t know. You think there’s much call for S. Weasel, famous painter of rats?
July 30, 2008 — 2:42 pm
Comments: 40
With a name like Indignico, it has to be unseemly
Let’s see — where were we?
Indignico, Inc — the people behind velvetpaintings.com — bringing you output of the finest Velvet Elvis painters of Tijuana.
Each original custom velvet painting was painted entirely by hand in Tijuana, Mexico by a professional Mexican velvet Elvis artist for Indignico Inc. And each one was commissioned by average ordinary everyday people from the internet–just like you–who thought it would be worth between $250 and $1250 to have their idea envelvetized by a genuine, authentic, professional Mexican Velvet Elvis Artist with the kind and nurturing guidance of a trained Curator-Of-Sales from Indignico Inc.
Indignico Inc. is just the sort of All-American American company who will stop at absolutely nothing to smuggle–over the border and into your lives–just a little bit more All-American American Quality. . .
Yeah, they’re taking the mickey. But they’re also serious: they’ve got a permanent eBay store and they take commissions. For $250, you can have any ol’ thing you like immortalized in acrylic on velour.
For some reason, they have a particular obsession with envelvetizing Republicans. I mean Lincoln, Reagan…sure. I guess. But who’d fork over a couple of hundred bucks for a velvet Karl Rove or annoyed Jack Abramoff?
I get the snark. I just don’t get the point of the snark. Seems like a lot to pay for a big, ugly punchline.
Thanks to Muslihoon, who asked what was so darned funny about velvet paintings when the topic came up. Poor Musli…it probably makes less sense now than it did before.
July 9, 2008 — 6:00 am
Comments: 28
Somebody order a nightmare?
I owned this particular set of prints, which I ordered from the back of some magazine in, like, 1967. Four for a buck. The artist was called Gig and the genre was called Pity Kitties (and Pitty Puppies, Pitty Cubs and God knows what these are, but Gig painted them). Thanks to Gig, I wander the earth in fixed belief that millions of adorable kittens die every day for want of ham sammiches and weasel smoochies.
If I ever find Gig, I’m going to murder him. Murder him until he’s dead.
That’s not likely. There’s considerable mystery around the profusion of Big-Eye artists of the Fifties and Sixties: Gig, Eve, Mikki, Lee, Eden, Maio (something in addition to their tardonyms). No-one seems to know anything about them, and efforts to learn more have so far been fruitless (I’m guessing there’s shame and a great deal of soul-destroying guilt involved).
An exception is Walter Keane, who may have been the one to start it all. His schtick was big-eyed waifs, though it wasn’t really his schtick — the paintings were actually done by his wife, Margaret. But they were signed “Walter” and it was a hugely lucrative business, so when came the divorce, Walter claimed to be the actual painter.
To make her case, Margaret tore one off in front of the judge in Federal court (by which I mean painted a waif, not farted). Walter declined to paint one himself, on account of “his arm was sore.” She won.
Having a portrait painted by Margaret Keane was briefly in vogue among those refined citizens of Hollywood. Such noted aesthetes as Jerry Lewis, Liberace and Kim Novak sat for her. Natalie Wood and Joan Crawford were huge fans.
Keane is 81 and still painting. One of her bug-eyed originals will set you back tens of thousands nowadays. After she left Walter, she blissed out with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and currently describes her hypereyeballic waifs as weeping “tears of happiness.”
Get this: Kate Hudson is starring as Margaret Keane in a film called Big Eyes that will start production any day now. It’s a drama. About feminism. Kidding? Not.
This makes Weasel very sad.
July 7, 2008 — 11:10 am
Comments: 93
Things that really should not be rendered in soft, colorful yarn
That? It’s a knitted fetus change purse. If you knit, you can make your own. Yeah, I’m down here at the AntiCraft. I got here via the Yay or Nay section of Crafty Crafty (where you’ll also find cheerfuller things like knitted meat and felt blenders). How I got here, I cannot say.
Can somebody come get me, please? It’s dark and cold here and it’s Friday and I’d really like to go home now.
June 20, 2008 — 12:57 pm
Comments: 38
Be on the lookout!
Trying to help a fellow painter out here. Twelve of Greg Stones’ matted and framed watercolors were stolen from his home in Glocester, RI (yes, Uncle B…for your information, that one we pronounce correctly) last Wednesday. The one pictured at left is Penguins, Baseball, Revolver.
Other examples of his oeuvre can be seen here. I’d particularly like to draw your attention to my favorites: Nude Observing Monster, the poignant Cavemen and Reaper and the intriguing Victim #2 (who willingly bares her breasts to the machete-wielding psychopath).
Sadly, Seven Penguins, One Poop is not reproduced.
June 3, 2008 — 8:03 am
Comments: 43
Behold, my last pack of cigarettes
You know why I smoked Benson & Hedges Deluxe Ultra Lights? Because that plain gold box is actually a nine-color printing job. If you disassemble the top flap, the printer’s marks are there, including the color swatches. (It’s that little coat of arms dealie: it has many tiny flecks of unique color. That, my pretend internet friends, is design chutzpah).
Yup. Artard.
I quit smoking eleven years ago Saturday (yes, yes…I meant to post on the tenth anniversary last year and I forgot, okay? I couldn’t quit with no cigarettes in the house — it would’ve made me crazy. Know what I mean? So I got down to this one pack and then quit.
My friends would have voted me Weasel Least Likely To Give up Her Goddamn Smokes While Still Possessing a Pulse. I started young, I smoked heavily and I loved the hell out of it. Plus, I hate The Man telling me what to do.
In the end, I was forced to quit because I was too addicted. I went batshit crazy if I had to go more than an hour without a smoke. But they kept clamping down on smoking until I was more or less perpetually batshit crazy for a cigarette.
Also, Uncle B quit and I knew he couldn’t stick it if I smoked around him. So you could say I quit for love. But please don’t say that because…ugh.
Observations, in no particular order:
- I got it on the first try and no cheating, because I told myself I only got one try (if you give yourself permission to cheat, you’ll cheat, m’kay?)
- Gum, patches…NONE of that helped. I didn’t want nicotine. I wanted to put a paper-wrapped cylinder of tobacco in my mouth and set fire to it.
- It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I expected, but it hurt for far, far longer. I probably went five years before I spent an entire day free of grief.
- Yes, grief. It felt like my best friend died.
- I got my sense of smell back.
- I discovered most things that smell, smell really bad
- I dropped twenty IQ points — bang — just like that.
Seriously, I went stupid after I quit smoking. I don’t read like I used to. I can’t program. I can’t concentrate any more. I can’t sit still. My nurse friend says all that nicotine was probably me self-medicating for ADD, but my nurse friend has panic attacks when she can’t get her Palm Pilot to sync, so…whatever.
As for the incredible rush of good health, I didn’t get one. Only, I was out hiking one day a few years back and I had just hauled my carcass straight up a trail that used to be a ski slope and I realized those deep, racking breaths I was taking felt good. Not like I was breathing a chunky stream of broken glass and Lysol.
So, there’s that.
Seriously? I could smoke a cigarette the size of a telephone pole right this minute.
May 19, 2008 — 8:06 am
Comments: 15
My kung fu is strong
Long time readers may recall that I observe the Birthday Fortnight (working my way up year by year to the Month of Birthday). My actual birthday falls somewhere in the first two weeks of May. In the interests of amoniminty, that is all I shall say. As a first of the birthday tributes, Uncle B bought me a drawing program called Manga Studio 3.
Not to worry, I’m not about to start drawing weasels in teeny tiny sailor suits with eyes the size of dinner plates. It’s just a drawing program that is specially designed for black and white line work, à la comix. It does things like calculate vanishing points and make speed lines and comic panels.
It’s kick-ass fun to play with. If any of you still harbor that old, old desire to be a comic book artist, there’s a 30-day free trial. I can’t work out the difference between the $50 version (which I got) and the $300 version, BUT IF THE MANUFACTURER SENT ME A COPY I’D BE HAPPY TO TEST DRIVE IT AND THEN FLOG THE SHIT OUT OF IT RIGHT HERE ON THIS BLOG.
That’s going to work one of these days. I just know it.
May 5, 2008 — 11:05 am
Comments: 35
Shattering my worldview, one dead hippie peace activist at a time
Okay, so this Italian artist — Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, known as Pippa Bacca — decides to hitch right across the Middle East to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Wearing a wedding dress. For peace.
I know: makes perfect sense to me, too. “She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people.”
Okay, y’all aren’t going to believe this next part: it didn’t have a happy ending.
She was hitching with a friend. They separated in Istanbul and planned to meet up again in Beirut.
Then she vanished and turned up naked and stone dead under some bushes in the woods in Turkey.
A Turk named Murat Karatas was nicked when he tried to use her cellphone. He confessed he had picked her up at a gas station and raped and murdered her.
I know! Can you believe it? It’s like the ordinary laws of time and space don’t apply!
April 12, 2008 — 6:30 pm
Comments: 56