Friday, April 20
Yes, that’s right. Another Contentless Friday! Hooray!
It was a mixed bag of a day. On the one hand — field trip! I got to go to the place that made the kiosk I’m building that multimedia dingus for. On the other hand, my dingus didn’t work. And they were supposed to crate the whole thing up and ship it to the venue today.
Not my fault. The hooj wide-screen monitor they bought for the occasion refuses to run at any resolution above 1024×768, though the manual says it’ll go to 1360×768 (which is what the dingus is designed for). So it does what a 16×9 monitor does when it gets 4×3 content: it stretches it horribly. And then slices off the bottom.
But it makes no difference whose fault it is, I gotta fix it. And the clock, she am ticking.
So I built a little test thing for the kiosk guy to use as a diagnostic and emailed it. Then I got worried — it was an .exe file and spam filters often block those. So I wrote a follow up message. Which bounced. So I wrote another from a different address. Which bounced. So now I’m pretty sure my IP is on the naughty list. Phoned him, he’s out. Rrrr.
On the other hand — Friday! And it’s going to be a gorgeous weekend! And I own a convertible! So, on sober reflection, work can smooch weasel butt.
April 20, 2007 — 3:26 pm
Comments: 13
Die, smiley!
God, I hate graphical smileys. Not ASCII emoticons; those are cool. In fact, that’s partly why I hate graphical smileys: they took a rich and interesting form of post-modern folk art and crassified it.
Mostly, though, I hate them because they’re so fucking ugly and stupid. This little bastard has got to be my #1 graphical smiley hate object: 
The BBCode LOL smiley. Look at the way its upper lip is nickering up and down. Who does that with their front lip when they laugh? Horses! Who else? Giraffes. Who else? NOBODY! Jesus, where did this person go do art school, a dude ranch? You can’t even do that with your upper lip if you try. Go on. Try. Seriously. I’m not writing another word until you do.
Here’s a good one: 
. It means “I woke up this morning Chinese. And grumpy.” Well, at least that one may come in handy some day.
Then there’s: 
I am so constipated. And: 
Look! My mouth is like a red, red rose. And: 
I’m wearing a tiny bra on my face, and that makes me strangely happy.
I was horrified when I realized I had graphical smilies. Yes. Right here at S. Weasel. I made a happy little winky-smiley in my own comment section, and up popped a horrible squinty moonfaced yellow hobgoblin. Huh. They came in a little folder with the rest of the WordPress software. I did not know.
My first thought was to biff the whole directory and go back to clean, pure ASCII emoticons. And then I had a second, more weasely, thought. In short, weasels. I would replace the lot with spritely, handsome weasels. Smiling weasels. Frowning weasels. Jaunty weasels thrusting their pink tongues in good natured ribaldry.
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I had to design the occasional icon back in the days when you got 16 colors and 16 pixels square. It was an asshole of a job. I am not a minimalist. But I figured I’d start with the basics — frowny, smiley, winky and the tongue (sounds like a Hannah Barbera cartoon starring three crime fighting teenage pop musicians and a rogue body part). It went something like…this:
Only frowny really looks like a weasel, because frowny is the only face weasels got. The others look like animatronic gophers or something. No matter. By the time it was squoze down to the standard 15×15 smiley size, I knew they wouldn’t look like anything at all. And they didn’t. At that size, I couldn’t tell one from another.
For a moment, this pleased me. I imagined replacing all the icons with Frowny Weasel, so no matter what you tried to emote, out popped that cranky little puss. But then I realized I would never know what you, my minions, were trying to tell me. Are you happy? Are you sad? Do you have a rogue body part you would like me to examine? I must know these things.
So I gave myself another ten pixels. A 25 pixel smiley is going to blow out the line spacing (I almost said “the leading”; god I’m old). But, hey, it’s not like I’m in some kind of design contest or anything, is it?
So here they are: 🙂 😉 🙁 😛 😆 I added a LOL, so that peals of merry laughter can ring throughout Castle Mustelid. You still can’t really tell what’s what, but I drawed them and I can. Invoke them with 
. Any other emoticon will get you a busted graphic icon BECAUSE I KILLED THEM.
Have fun and drive safely.
April 19, 2007 — 4:38 pm
Comments: 35
Pin a rose on my nose
When I designed publications for a living, every year there’d be a whole crop of flyers for contests like the Technical Publication Badge of Excellence Awards and the House Organ Annual Seal of Approval and Magazines That Aren’t Entirely Awful Dot Com. Deal was, you paid a small fee for each publication submitted and I don’t know how bad you had to suck not to get Honorable Mention at least, but I’m guessing it didn’t happen. It was a racket, pure and simple.
The result was a certificate or a little pyramidal slab of lucite or some shit to put in the lobby. Lookit! Valve and Stopper Report got an Excellence in Techdoc Sixth Place from the New England Review of Training Manuals! This company rocks!
Wait, I thought of a better one. In High School, I won a city-wide poster design competition. “Stop pollution” was my theme, I think. I had lunch with the mayor and everything. The city was Nashville, so…you can imagine. He presented me with my…trophy. I shit you not, it was a bowling trophy, with a Winged Victory and everything. It’s in the basement somewhere. I kept it because it was the most tragically tacky blow that had yet struck my young life.
In that spirit, mesablue has very kindly nominated me for a Blogger’s Choice Award in the category of design. Combining my vote with his, I have now zoomed up to Page 18 in the listings. I thought about adding myself to other categories. Freakiest Blogger. Hottest Mommy Blogger. Best Weasel in a Supporting Role. But, I figured, the people have spoken. Person has spoken. Whatever.
He also nominated himself for Most Obnoxious Blogger [this is the title he apparently covets. No, really. He said so], Best Political Blog and Worst Blog of All Time.
Don’t let the heartbreak of self-nomination happen to you. Let me know if you’d like to be nominated for anything, and I’ll gladly take on that karmic burden for you. I actually read all you doofuses. Doofices. Doofi. Stupid people. The site has an irritating registration requirement, so I’m not encouraging anyone to sign up and vote, but we could probably form a pretty nifty voting cabal and push each other to the fifth or sixth page of listings.
Dammit. I just revealed my master plan on the front page of my blog.
See, this is probably why the Joos keep rejecting my membership application.
April 17, 2007 — 5:48 pm
Comments: 20
Rhymes with “penis”
Today is Enas Yorl‘s birthday. After being rude to Pupster for his birthday yesterday, I couldn’t let the occasion pass without mortally insulting Enas in some way.
Every time I see “Enas” I think “rhymes with ‘penis'” — I don’t know if it does, I just think that. I looked it up once. Enas Yorl is a character in the Thieves’ World Series, which is a fantasy anthology written by multiple authors. I missed it somehow. It must’ve happened during my Illiterate Phase.
So it is pretty remarkable that all but one link on the first page of Google hits for “Enas Yorl” — including the top one — are for the blogger, not the book. More popular than the original!
Happy birthday! God, I feel like Miss Nancy on Romper Room.
— 12:07 pm
Comments: 22
Hey, Pups. Let me buy you a drink!
Drink it fast or drink it slow,
But your lips have gotta touch the toe.
I can’t remember where I first read about the Sour Toe Cocktail, the liquorous specialty of Dawson’s Hotel in the Yukon. The original toe belonged to a rumrunner, Otto Liken, who got frostbite fleeing the Mounties with a load of merchandise. He and his brother holed up in a moonshine shack and Otto got blotto so Louie could amputate the frozen digit before it went gangrenous.
They put the toe in a jar of rum and let it mellow in the shack for, like, fifty years until the building was bought by “Captain” Dick Stevenson, a local fleecer of tourists. The cocktail was his idea. He loaned the toe to a local bar and dared tourists to drink from a glass filled with booze (of their choice) and The Toe as a way of proving themselves worthy of the Yukon. He was repaid in drinks.
About 30,000 suckers have “done the toe.”
The original toe — and several subsequent ones — was accidentally swallowed. But such is the generosity of the human spirit that surgically amputated toes are forever offered as replacements.
I consider it no accident that an article about doing the toe should surface in the Toronto Star just in time for Pupster’s 40th birthday.
Dude. Lemme buya drink. It was meant to be.
April 16, 2007 — 8:00 am
Comments: 14
Pupster: come out with your hands up. It’s all over.
Happy birthday to you.
I understand that you’re blue.
Well, you damn well oughta be,
Because it’s all over, Dog.
Today is Pupster’s 40th birthday. I hear he’s a little down about it — quite rightly. This is forty we’re talking here. The big Four Oh. Basically, all his hopes and dreams are dead and we’re just waiting for the undertaker to come cart them away.
So why not wander on over to his blog and wish him a happy birthday while we’re waiting. Or, you know, steal stuff or pee on the carpet or whatever. He’s old. He won’t notice.
He’s liveblogging the occasion. I’m going. I hear there’s booze. And bitter regrets.
— 4:12 am
Comments: 2
Friday, April 13
Because, ladies and gentlemen, I am done.
comments closed on account of spambots
April 13, 2007 — 5:21 pm
Comments: 24
Confluence
I know some of Drudge‘s juxtapositions are deliberate, like setting global warming stories alongside record cold snap stories. But even he doesn’t control the dials and levers of fate.
Anybody else amused to see the headline about Imus losing his MSNBC gig for using the expression “nappy headed ho’s” is dominated by a picture of this woman, an actual NHH? >>>>
No, me neither. Because some day, I dream of working for MSNBC.
Oh, like you don’t.
April 12, 2007 — 6:59 am
Comments: 4
Friday, April 6
April 6, 2007 — 5:58 pm
Comments: none
Friday, March 30
March 30, 2007 — 5:10 pm
Comments: none