Do as I say and nobody gets hurt
Because dead cat blogging wasn’t enough to destroy my traffic completely, I’m going to talk about myself. Bugs ‘n’ Gas Gal (who is blogging again, at least a bit) has tagged me with a meme. And it goes a little something like this…
- Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
- Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
- Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
- Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
- Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you’d like.
Hm. Rule #5 must be a milblog thing. How about the famous Roman Weasels, eh?
Numero Uno. I lived in a commune for a few years as a child. It was alternately a religious commune and a plain old hippie commune, depending on what flavor of nutcake was in charge at the time. This was right before I went to retarded school. As a result of my rich cultural experiences, I speak fluent fundie, hippie and retard.
Although, to be fair, learn one of those and the other two are pretty easy.
Nombre Dooce. I am deathly allergic to Brazil nuts. So why not move to the one country on the whole damn planet where people think Brazil nuts are even worth cracking? Also, I was in my twenties before I heard them called “Brazil nuts.”
Free. My great-grandfather was murdered in his bed in 1906. Somebody leaned in the screen door while he was napping and shot him dead. Everybody suspected one particular field hand — who afterwards married my great-grandmother. I didn’t know that last fact until recently. If I’d been a boy, they were going to name me Sam Houston Weasel after him.
Catarrh. Continuing our Texas theme, one of my forbears was a signer of the Declaration of Independence…of Texas. He had a long and bitter land dispute with Stephen Austin, which my ancestor won years after both were dead. If I’d been a boy, I’d want to be named Sterling Robertson Weasel, after him — only because “Sterling” is a dead cool name.
Cinco, cinco, cinco. I love fried Spam sammiches. With melted muenster. On a Portuguese bolo. With mayo and barbecue sauce. Please not to be asking me how I discovered this happy combination of gustatory delights.
Seece. By the time I came along, the novelty had worn off the whole “teach your child to tell time” thing for my parents, so I just had to imagine how a clock works. As a result, the clock in my head is a 24-hour clock with only one hand that runs counter-clockwise. And I still visualize time that way.
Also featured in my head: the numbers 1-20 look like piano keys (the white ones) running from left to right, but after 20 they turn and stack vertically in groups of 100. These “clump” into groups of a thousand, that clump into ten thousands and so on. Then from about 100,000 to a million, they run in vertical stacks of a million each, which clump into billions. Until you get to the huge numbers, which still look like piano keys, but drift ahead like stepping stones, with the terrifying and impossible black void of space falling away below them.
I am not good at math.
Sebben. Good lord! Who’d’ve thunk I could ever get tired of talking about myself? Number seven is…I secretly love these meme things for permission to indulge. But I secretly hate them because I’m too shy to tag forward, let alone seven people. I imagine the recipient thinking, “Dammit! Weasel! Meme!”
So if you’re in my blogroll and you’re struggling for blog fixin’s, consider yourself tagged. If I see a tagback, I’ll link you up for that awesome weaselanche.
Update: His Maj took the bait.
June 18, 2008 — 4:01 pm
Comments: 61
It’s ten O’Clock. Do you know where your weasel is?
Whoa! Yesterday was Friday the 13th? I hope nothing bad happened to me!
June 14, 2008 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 44
Delights of the village fête, continued
Deadly serious.
June 11, 2008 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 21
Please help me. I’m immigrating to the Island of Misfit Toys.
Uncle B went to a village fête this weekend (I was going to title this post ‘a fête worse than death’ but I have a feeling that’s probably the oldest joke in the really stupid immigrant joke book).
Given the slightest encouragement, Brits break out in morris dancers. These guys. With the bells and the flowered hats and the dancing and waving hankies. The morris dance combines several things that Britons love: dressing up, acting stupid and scaring the hell out of weasels. (Their real first love is dressing in drag, so it’s no surprise there is a bit of this in some local variants).
Some claim morris dancing goes way back to pre-Christian Britain, but Wikipedia says the earliest for sure citation is late 15th C. I’m guessing some of the dances themselves are ancient, but the term “morris” apparently is derived from “Moorish” and may relate to the celebrations in Spain after Ferdinand and Isabella finally drove the Moors out in 1492. So it’s got that going for it.
Oliver Cromwell put the Puritan kibosh on it for a while, but it came roaring back. Then it died down to a few very teams (or ‘sides’) after the industrial revolution. But it got revived in the early 20th and esploded. Because, hey — dressing up, acting stupid and scaring the hell out of weasels. w00t!
What’s the dance like? I don’t really know. I’m pretty sure it’s all about the dressing up.
June 9, 2008 — 10:06 am
Comments: 13
Hungry, hungry Akismet
Oops! I just fished some people out of the filter (and I think I missed a couple the first time through and probably biffed them). Apologies all around. In defense of Akismet, it got four or five wrong in a couple of hundred. My mistake was letting it go so long without checking (see, you have to click two links now that I’ve uploaded a new WordPress, and some days I just don’t have the energy). Anyhow, I just downloaded and installed the latest version, so let’s hope it’s a little less retarded.
Felix had one stuck in there about going to PetSmart today to see about adopting this little furhead. Good luck, Felix. He, she or it looks good enough to have with coffee after a big meal.
And Uncle B just called from the country fair. He’s been to Rent-A-Weasel. They’re going to bring ferrets out and Do Something about our little runnybabbit problem. Free of charge, in exchange for all the adorable fluffy baby bunnies they can catch.
They’re taking them to a petting zoo up North so small children can squeeze them and stroke their lovely bunnysoft fur. Isn’t that right, Uncle B?
June 7, 2008 — 12:30 pm
Comments: 60
Bollocks!
I’ve looked at cats from both sides now
From front and back and still somehow
It’s tomcat googlies I recall,
I’m really stuck on fuzzy balls.
Yep. That’s right. I’m going to leave a big ol’ fuzzy testicular cat’s ass hanging off my front page all weekend long. That ought to drive my numbers right into the wastebasket.
Go on. Shoo! Go outside. Tan something.
It’s going to top ninety degrees all weekend, for the first time this season. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Probably cower in the basement and whimper. (For all I grew up in the South, I do my best Aunt Pittypat imitation when it gets above eighty-five).
June 6, 2008 — 12:55 pm
Comments: 39
Free Mark Steyn! (Relatively inexpensive Mark Steyn, anyhow)
Today begins the showtrial of Mark Steyn before a ‘human rights’ tribunal. He wrote an article critical of Islam in Maclean’s magazine, which was enough to generate a complaint under British Columbia’s Human Rights Code. Per the code, “A person must not publish, issue or display, or cause to be published, issued or displayed, any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that…is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt.”
Got that? Contempt is illegal in Canada. I cannot tell you how much contempt that makes me feel.
If he’s found guilty, he can be forbidden from writing about certain topics (in this case, Islam) under pain of imprisonment. I believe Steyn is a naturalized American citizen, so good luck with that one, Canuckitards.
This demo leaflet from Covenant Zone is a good refresher, if you need it.
I don’t know how interesting the blow-by-blow is likely to be, but Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s will be live-blogging it beginning at 12:30 today. I believe that’s Eastern time. Just keep refreshing.
Other interested blogs that will surely have something to say: Free Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, Five Feet of Fury and Small Dead Animals.
I believe it’s scheduled to go on all week, so we’ve got something to read about other than the freaking ’08 elections for a damn change.
June 2, 2008 — 10:32 am
Comments: 69
Electric weasels: never around when you need one
Dianne Odell, about whom I wrote a small post last year, was the longest-surviving resident of an iron lung. At least, she was until recently, when a tree fell across a power line and they couldn’t get the backup generator going.
Memphis. Uh-huh. That explains the Pimp My Iron Lung look.
Brrrrr. Fifty-eight years in an iron lung. Nightmare. Please to be counting of blessings, kthxbai.
May 31, 2008 — 6:40 am
Comments: 19
Electric weasel
As a special Friday thank-you to my dear readers I’M GOING TO FRY YOUR RETINAS.
The woman who sits next to me was on vacation this week. She expected a delivery of CD’s for a trade show to arrive Thursday. I was supposed to open it, test one, keep five for our records, and overnight the box to the London office.
Gotcha. I’m supposed to blah blah blah blah. Good thing she sent me an email.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep last night, I had a HOLY SHIT THE CD’S DIDN’T COME moment. And then I had a HOLY SHIT I’M A BEAUTIFUL FAIRY PRINCESS moment, pulled the covers over my head and drifted away.
Between you and me, the woman who sits next to me scares me shitless. She was once legendary for her sweaty, screaming tirades (“it was the hormones they had me on,” she told me later). The conflicts between me and the woman who sits next to me were so frequent and so bitter that our mutual boss referred to us as sisters. Just to piss us off. We’ve mellowed a lot over the years, but I’d still rather eat sharp, rusty things than screw with TWWSNTM.
So I’ve spent all morning tracking down that package. It was delivered Wednesday, badly addressed, and found itself with no label at all in the cubicle of the office bing-bong (“how long do you think she’d’ve sat on it if we hadn’t come looking?” my boss wondered aloud). It looked like it had been drop-kicked by an earth elemental. Everything tested out okay, though, and I got it back in the mail.
I don’t care where you work, I guarantee the guy who works in your mailroom thinks his job is fascinating. That’s a good thing, or we’d be training a new one every six months after the old one dragged himself home and smoked a Buick. But damn I could’ve lived without True Wild West Tales of the Customs Declaration Forms this morning. Just mail the thing, Sunshine…don’t chant me a Norse Edda.
It won’t make deadline, but it won’t miss by much and they have some slack.
So, happy Friday! Join me in hoisting a tall frosty…glass of…vodka and tonic in honor of TWWSNTM and Boring Mailroom Guy. Where would we be without them?
Where indeed?
May 30, 2008 — 3:27 pm
Comments: 40
2 br, 1.5 ba, 1 wzl
Somebody was scheduled to come by and look at the house tonight, but my real estate agent just called to say he canceled.
“I don’t know why,” she said, “he drove by the house yesterday morning and liked it, but he drove by again later and there was something he didn’t like.”
I’m guessing that thing was…me. In my new Wal*Mart lawn chair. With a book and a drink and a cat draped across me (no, the other one) like I’d just won the Miss Big Fat Housecat pageant and they gave me one for a sash.
Maybe it’s the change of seasons, or maybe I pushed so hard getting the house ready and looking for Damien that I have somehow exhausted my ordinarily inexhaustible reserves of gloom, anxiety and crank, but I’ve felt all float-y and peaceful this week. Like opiates, but without depleting my stash. All I want to do is sit in my chair and snooze in the sun.
Not to worry. I’ll have a shiny new hair across my ass before you can say, “fuck off and die in a fire!”
May 28, 2008 — 4:20 pm
Comments: 19