Golly!
Behold, the Golliwog.
There’s this mixed Brits-and-Americans forum on which I out-hang (I don’t know why; it’s a terrible place full of leftards and hippies). On inauguration day, there was an outbreak of no-YOU-guys-are-big-fat-racists, and somebody brought up the Golliwog. An indignant Brit sputtered that it’s called a “Golly” now, and anyway you can’t buy them in Britain any more.
So I had to stop and take a picture when I passed this shop window today.
I’m not entirely sure why the Golly is considered offensive. He’s got the jaunty little suit and tie and everything. I mean, nobody gets the vapors over Raggedy Ann, and she’s a ginger. And raggedy.
January 21, 2009 — 8:41 pm
Comments: 21
Anything happen in the States today?
Huh. That’s funny. Here neither.
January 20, 2009 — 8:16 pm
Comments: 26
Some fresher crazy, perhaps…?
I’ve spent a delightful evening paddling around Britain’s National Archives looking for records of Badger House*. Brits do their censuseses on the year one, and I have managed to find Badger House in two of them. In 1901, it was listed as Badger Cottage and uninhabited. In 1911, it was listed as Old Badger (the name it has today). For more detail, I’ll have to give the Queen a few bob.
Earlier censuxices are online — back to 1841 — but it’s all still in beta. I haven’t gotten any hits before 1901, which either means the information hasn’t been fed into the database yet, or the house had a different name. Either. Both. Take your pick.
For the very besteses information — the proper parish records — this little weasel is going to have to hop a train for the county seat in Lewes. All in good time, my pretties. All in good time.
Anyhow, the stuff the British government has gotten online so far is impossibly cool. I posted about the proceedings of the Old Bailey database this Spring (couldn’t find any significant criminal records for the Weasel *or* Badger families, which probably just means we got away with it). As a devoted British true-crimophile, this stuff blows my mind. Britons make fabulous criminals.
And for all you UFOlogists: the UFO files. I’m not much into it myself, but I did check to see if anything weird is on record buzzing Badger House.
No. For once.
*name has been changed to protect the mustelids. I hate to be cute about it, but the real name of this house is enough of a true and legal address to track us down like dogs. Like dogs!
January 13, 2009 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 11
I suppose the green ones carry lime disease
Ho ho. Lime joke.
January 3, 2009 — 10:11 am
Comments: 35
Pencils!
The Sanford Corporation (a Newell Rubbermaid Company) is the world’s largest manufacturer of writing instruments, mostly by way of corporate om-nom-nomination of familiar brands: uni-ball, Sharpie, PaperMate, Waterman, Parker, Prismacolor, Eberhard faber, Turquoise, Col-erase, Empire-Berol and more…more than you ever dreamed.
Doug of the Pencil Pages toured the Sanford pencil factory in Lewisburg, Tennessee in 2004 — in June, when a young man’s fancy turn to thoughts of pencil — and brought back this excellent photo essay.
Because having nothing to say for myself doesn’t even slow me down.
January 1, 2009 — 7:17 pm
Comments: 12
Amusing, racially-offensive headline of some kind
We had our first sit-down meal at our favorite Chinese takeaway this evening. It was nice. It was large. It was sweet. I find Chinese sauces here sweeter than I’m used to.
Fortune cookies are unusual here, but we got them. This really was mine. Uncle B’s was something about an angry man closing his eyes and opening his mouth.
We had a walk in the woods (saw a badger sett! And a barn owl!) and came home for a nice, long nap.
A couple more days of enforced idleness like this, and even I might long for a job to do.
Or, you know.
Maybe not.
December 30, 2008 — 7:39 pm
Comments: 16
I’m dreamin’ of a…Weasel smoochy
Though I gather my former neighbors in Rhode Island are digging out from under a foot of the white stuff, it’s unseasonably warm and sunny here. It’s nice, but let us hope for something a little more Christmassy next week.
December 20, 2008 — 10:26 am
Comments: 43
At the sign of the restesing weasel
Eh. Lord knows when my stuff will show up — including my desktop computer and all the sweasel graphics thereupon — so I just drawed another restesting weasel.
Yes, this one is based on a roadkill weasel, too, but please don’t tell that slopbag Dave in Texas. Jesus, the way he carried on about the last one, you’d think I’d shot Bambi’s mum or something…
December 12, 2008 — 7:07 pm
Comments: 36
S. Weasel proudly presents…
Weasel’s playing hou-owse, Weasel’s playing hou-owse!) remindened me of something I hardly needed remindening of: it would be a HELL of a lot easier to approach Britain if it were just a little more frankly foreign. When you’re stuck up the Zambezi or the Po, you damn well know you’re not in Kansas any more (I assume) and you adjust accordingly. Britain is like…Kanzace. It’s so almost-but-not-quite right, it makes my nerves hum on a low, uneasy frequency.
Some of the differences are deliberate, for god knows what marketing reason. You can buy britches at TK Maxx. You can rub Oil of Ulay onto your face. Same companies, a tiny bit utterly fucking wrong.
Some of the differences are because we are not as same as we think we are. Brits and Yanks watch so much of each other’s television, share so much of each other’s history, that we forget the 200 years and 3,500 miles that separate us.
It’s inevitable — for some months, anyway — that this blog will be about an American houseweasel in darkest Britain. The trivial, pointless shite on which I thrive.
But what the hell. You don’t really want to read any more blogs about politics right about now…do you?
November 28, 2008 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 86
Recycling: not just for urine any more
Please enjoy this graphic from last Christmas. Today, I am closing on my house and leaving on a jet plane.
Um…I hope. I wrote this a week ago and set it up to auto-post.
November 25, 2008 — 4:00 am
Comments: 45