Who knows what lardassery lurks in the heart of the bailout?
Click to belargen. No, there is no color, but you have to see the large version to appreciate all the tiny shoulder hairs illuminated by backlight that I painstakingly drew before I realized they wouldn’t show up at regular posting size. I almost published an earlier version, which included a glimpse of Congress’ little icecream-covered winkie. I figured it was too dark to see and it would be my little joke. Then I saw the graphic on an LCD panel, and there it was — winking at me! I’ve got to get rid of that old CRT I use at home.
So, how about that bailout, huh? The soundbite of Nancy Pelosi describing Barney Frank as the “maestro” of the new, improved (now with extra EXTRA pork!) bailout plan made my skull implode, and then fold in on itself and vanish in a flash of supernatural fire, like the house at the end of Poltergeist.
So I did the only thing I know to do when confronted by my own powerlessness in the face of a terrible injustice: I drew a picture of the people who made me mad as a big ugly naked fat guy with a tiny winky and hairy shoulders. Take that you stupid, stinky doody-heads!
Yeah. Everything I really need to know I learned in kindergarten, too.
October 6, 2008 — 10:10 am
Comments: 48
Photoshop Phun
Bonus weekend shameless partisan hackery! Click for rehue and uplargenment.
I’m not sure about the tagline. I mean, I think you should own your weaknesses whenever possible, but the double negative is a little brain-hurty.
Alternative: “Who’s bringing cool back to what, now?”
Moar.
I really hesitated over this one. It is, generally speaking, a really rotten idea to mention death within five miles of a presidential candidate. So please, dear respected members of the Secret Service, interpret the Valley Girl sentence structure as an amusing colloquialism and not a reference to actual mortality or even harm.
In conclusion, don’t lock up my ass. Thank you.
September 13, 2008 — 11:43 am
Comments: 76
Answering a question you probably never asked yourself
The idea popped into my head this morning, “wouldn’t it be really funny to have this brain and it, like, opens and it’s all fangs and snarly and stuff? Wouldn’t that be hilarious?”
Well, there it is. And I think you’ll agree, the answer is no. Oh, dear sweet Jesus no. There is nothing funny about it.
Eh. You should have seen the color version.
You’re welcome.
September 8, 2008 — 3:03 pm
Comments: 52
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
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
Don’t talk to me; I’m sulking
Rats! Damn! Pooh! Argh! Zounds! Piffle! My Photoshop has learned a new trick: shutting itself down without warning, dumping my work in the process. Bad, BAD Photoshop.
My boss is taking Fridays off for the rest of the Summer, so I spent today drawing you a pitcher. And it was coming out real good. Srsly.
No, I hadn’t saved. Don’t rub it in.
THIRTY people in this building are retiring today. The company isn’t in trouble or anything; it’s a boring artifact to do with how our pensions are calculated. After breakfast, I spent the morning drifting from cake to cake. And then it was time for lunch. After which, some vendor sent us steak sandwiches as a thank-you for some damn thing somebody in our group did. I’m unclear on the details.
…it was a picture of a great bloated sack of a weasel…
Anyhoo, one of the retirees is an engineer with almost 45 years with the company. I was once in his chain of command. Nice enough man, but boy — what an engineer. He sat down with my boss and me one day years ago and tried to come up with guidelines for the design of publications. I’ll never forget it. One of the questions he asked was, “what is the optimum percentage of white space on a page?”
In case thou art not graphically inclined, this makes as much sense as asking an engineer to write guidelines for composing pop music, including the optimum number of oh, babys per love song.
I know you guys don’t like to hear it, but there are problems for which an engineering approach is ill-suited.
There: time to slide down the brontosaurus. It’s Friday! Let’s go home and drink!
June 27, 2008 — 4:18 pm
Comments: 35
It’s the Circle of Liiiiiiiiiife
Well! As of today, all (but one) of the original complement of pussoes at the shelter have either been adopted or…done that other thing. I think, with that, my grossly misplaced sense of personal responsibility is more or less satisfied. I think I’ll give Meowschwitz a rest for a while.
There’s a retired dude who tends to show up just as I’m leaving and I have the feeling I horned in on his gig. The front office calls him “the second shift” and the kittehs are, like, “no thanks, we’ve already eaten and had head skritchies.”
But fear not. It’s never long before I find more of somebody else’s bidness to stick my snout into.
June 26, 2008 — 12:34 pm
Comments: 76
Me-ouch
Charlotte had her annual checkup and vaccinations today (got to keep current if we’re going to get her into the UK. Damien? You got one more week, bud). They poked many holes in her. She cried all the way there and sulked all the way home.
She doesn’t know the half of it. She goes back in two weeks to have all her teeth pulled.
She’s got a bad case of the Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions, which is a dreadful disease to try to write a blues song about. It’s when the cells that are designed to resorb calcium into the bloodstream work faster than the ones that lay down new calcium. Basically, her teeth are eating themselves.
As many as a third of our domestic moggies have got some dental resorption going on — often below the gumline, so you have no idea until it’s too late. They’ve only been aware that this happens since, like, the ’70s.
I was kind of hoping to hold off until we got her over the pond (I don’t like my vet much), but I looked it up and discovered that the condition is impossibly painful. This guy says it’s so painful, a cat under general anesthesia will still react if you poke a lesion. So, ow.
I hope they leave her fangs. She’ll look stupid without. Other than that, cats don’t look funny without their teeth, on account of they don’t really have lips.
My old ginger tom Roughly had all his teeth pulled in old age. I took the day off work to look after him. As luck would have it, it was the day Hurricane Gloria landed in Rhode Island. It was wild. My apartment was in an old, drafty former boarding house and, when the wind really got going, it lifted up the carpets and made them ripple like the sea.
Old Roughly was bombed out of his tiny hairy skull and he weaved his way across a rolling, heaving floor like, “dude! I am so wasted! The floor is moving!”
June 24, 2008 — 2:24 pm
Comments: 67
What stuff looks like in my head, part one
I tried to model what numbers look like in my head, as described in yesterday’s post. It turned out remarkably boring, so I quit after one.
On a lighter note, my electrical box passed inspection today!
That’s not a euphemism for lunchtime sex or anything.
June 19, 2008 — 2:53 pm
Comments: 51
Not even close, really
Heh. I see from my logs that See-Dubya has kindly thrown me a bone over at Michelle’s. She’s soliciting slogans for the deplorable state of the GOP in 2008. (Pretty amusing thread, akshully).
Commenter at #15 longs for a graphic of a rhino with its head up its butt, and See-Dubya at #24 asserts that your ‘umble weasel might have the skill.
No. I have not. A rhino with its head up its butt would look like an elephant donut with legs sticking out of it. I could not draw that thing.
I have this thing, though. I drew it a while back and was saving it for a post about politics. You know, politics — that thing I used to talk about occasionally, back before I was consumed by my cat and my house and my birthday.
It’s not just that the Republican establishment is now being run by a pack of RINOs. I’m increasingly convinced it’s run by a pack of RINOs who don’t even like conservatives. So in 2008, the Dems are going with the candidate beloved of their fringe and the Pubs are going with the candidate despised of their fringe.
What a very strange election.
I hope they all drown.
Update: Whoa! I was just funnin’, See-Dubya. RINO dude makes it inside a post at Michelle’s.
May 16, 2008 — 8:17 am
Comments: 46