It does what now?
Late Saturday night, I’m sitting up in bed reading and Uncle B decides he has a hankering for toast. As you do. Five minutes later — BANG! — the whole house goes dark.
Fortunately for me, I was reading my Android, so I crept downstairs by its friendly glow (take that, stupid old paper books that are not actually on fire). While he fiddled with the fuse box, I shone a flashlight down into the toaster and…
slugs. Two slugs. Our emeffing toaster was full of emeffing slugs. Shorted the emeffer out with their emeffing wet bodies.
After struggling with ourselves all weekend, we’ve come to the conclusion the toaster has to go. No matter what we do to to it, we will never pop a couple slices of cheaploaf in there without thinking slugs. Toasty slugs. Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. Oh, dear god, it’s so disgusting.
So, toaster shopping. Meet the Tefal Tt552842 Toast N Bean. While it toasts your toasteses, it heats beans in that little cup on the side there.
Beans, like those runny orange Heinz baked beans you remember from church picnics. Brits think that shit is breakfast food. On toast. There’s also a knob around back that lets you listen to cricket and a linguistic setting that forces you to say “petrol” and “toMAHto.”
We aren’t getting this one.
June 9, 2014 — 8:50 pm
Comments: 41
The weakest of weak tea
So Obama delivered a few bland, wet remarks about Scottish independence at a press conference for the G7 summit. It was a classic Obama “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” nothingburger.
Douglas Alexander, the shadow Foreign Secretary (that means the party out of power) noted, “His clear statement of support for the UK staying together will resonate with many of us here in Scotland.” Which is a hilariously (an hilariously?) inapt description of his few weak, mumbled lines.
I don’t know how to break it to anybody here, but we have never had an American president who gave less of a small wet fart about Britain, Europe…the whole of Western Civ. Dude is an African/Indonesian/Hawaiian Muzzy simp with a side order of Pok-e-stohn.
p.s. by the way — go Scottish independence! If they break away, Britain will never have a Lefty government again.
June 5, 2014 — 10:44 pm
Comments: 17
Oh, that is some cherce stupid
Check this out; it’s a flyer someone poked through our next-door neighbor’s mail slot just before the Euro elections two weeks ago. For some reason, they didn’t put one in our box, so she shared.
It’s from the World Socialist Party, and it’s a truly rich and steamy vein of bullshit. Here are highlights from the above excerpt:
There is no money. There is no war. There are no rich people. There are no poor people. There are no leaders. All decisions are shared. All responsibilities are shared.
[…]
You now have no bills to pay, no rent, no mortgage, no debts. Everything is free, nothing is for sale, and neither are you. But you want to help, just like others do.
[…]
You might have chosen to drive a bus or a train, fix plumbing, coordinate a data network, plough a field, teach a child, organise an event, study engineering, cure a disease, brew beer, rehearse a play. You might choose to work four hours a week, or fouteen or forty.
So, lemme get this straight, four hours a week I brew beer (if I feel like it). For ten hours a day, my neighbor ploughs a freaking field he doesn’t own to grow crops he doesn’t control. Then we share equally in everything. Oh, no need for leaders or guys with guns to make this happen or anything.
Does anybody really believe this could work? C’mon. It has to be a put on, surely.
Click the picture for the whole flyer; there’s much more stupid where that came from. Or visit their website, if you think you can keep a straight face.
What do you bet their meetings always end in bitter acrimony and down-twinkles.
June 3, 2014 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 23
Summer’s here!
Summer’s here. The neighbors are shorn. We had a gorgeous weekend lazing about in the sun.
That is all.
June 2, 2014 — 10:52 pm
Comments: 7
The Beast
Behold, the Creature of Chislehurst Pond.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “silly Limies – that there’s a turtle. And not a very impressive specimen.” And you’d be right. But, believe it or not, there are no turtles in Britain.
No, really. They have tortoises — land shellbacks. We recently met a specimen who had been handed down as a family pet for over a generation. But they don’t have any water shellbacks. There are some on the Continent, in the more southerly climes (where they are usually called terrapins), but here they seem wild and exotic.
Huh.
May 29, 2014 — 11:22 pm
Comments: 12
Full moon over Westminster
Not a very good likeness, but this is my first attempted Farage.
Attempted Farage. Huh. Sounds like something you’d get arrested for after a stag party.
Anyway, there’s all sorts of reasons why Thursday’s election was not the beginning of the revolution in Britain. But it was a thing of beauty still, and I’m a great believer in savoring the moment. So here it is:
UKIP: 27.49%
Labour: 25.40%
Conservatives: 23.93%
Greens: 7.87%
LibDems: 6.87%
Savor, damn you!
May 26, 2014 — 10:11 pm
Comments: 13
Now with added unemployment
Hate to give this guy the attention which he so obviously craves. Kind of. Whatever. I doubt he can squeeze fifteen minutes of fame out of this one.
Sainsbury’s employee tucks cynical haikus into packages of cookies. Gets fired. Apparently, being internet famous > being employed.
The only one that was approaching funny — “Been sneezing all day/ Good thing HIV cannot/ Be passed on like that” — nearly cost him the gig (the publicity gig; he’s already lost the bakery gig). Thou Shalt Not Make AIDS Jokes on the left, still.
Twitter feed. Hash tag. Somehow, I don’t think this is going to be the internet sensation he hopes. He may yet look back with longing on the Sainsbury’s gig.
Still, it beats the stuffings out of #LikeABoss. Good weekend, folks!
May 23, 2014 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 11
A hearty bowl of cultural goulash
This might be an “only in Britain” kind of thing. It’s a Channel 4 documentary television program called Gogglebox. They film families watching television. Watching people watch television. For reals.
You can get a flavor of the show here. Bear in mind this is a fan collection of favorite moments, which might give you a sense of what the boring bits are like.
Which puts me in mind of the very interesting book Watching the English. The author points out that while many, many countries have long-running soap operas, they are usually about rich and glamorous people. British soap operas are all about chavs. It’s extraordinary, when you think about it.
In theory, these two people aren’t chavs. On Gogglebox, they are known as “the posh ones.” They have good accents (a thing of which the British are acutely aware) and they’re usually half sloshed on wine. So. Posh.
In real life, they own a 16 bedroom Grade I listed mansion in Kent which they run as a B&B. It’s called Salutation. It’s on the market. Which might explain why they rented it out for a masked orgy.
The article is weirdly indiscreet about it. A private swinger’s club called Killing Kittens (ew) rented it for the modest sum of £1,700 for the night. Then they charged 60 people £500 apiece to turn up for oysters and champagne and sex in all the nooks and crannies. Of the house.
You know what? Yuk. I’m sorry I typed all that. Just forget I said anything.
May 21, 2014 — 10:36 pm
Comments: 20
Ladies and gentlemen, a lamb attacking a grey heron in a field of buttercups
You know, you guys, I would totally forgive you if you came to the conclusion I just sat around and made shit up. I labor myself under a constant feeling of, “wait, that thing that just happened. Did that just happen?”
I’ve posted about the Hungarian laughing frogs before. They’re not native; they were imported to the area in the Thirties, but they like it here just fine. They’re all over the south of England now, and in the early Summer, during mating season, they chuckle and cackle and make the place sound like a madhouse for a couple of months.
They also attract herons, like this bad boy. Our neighbor came over for tea (ugh, yes) and noticed him in the field next door. You have to stand and look through a gap in the hedge to see this field, so we all did that. And just as we did a lamb, for some unfathomable reason, decided he didn’t care for this snooty bird and went for him.
Uncle B was quick enough to get a few shots of it, this being the best. The outcome was disappointing; it just petered out listlessly. Worst steel cage match ever.
Happy to note, the heron was back today in the same spot, gigging frogs.
May 19, 2014 — 10:14 pm
Comments: 13
I don’t see scorch marks. Do you see scorch marks?
No doubt, y’all have seen the video of Tara the Hero Cat, internet sensation, rescuer of small boys and chaser-offer of wicked dogs.
Couple of things about the video that struck me. First, the family appears to have three different video cameras trained on the outside of the house (it looks like such a nice neighborhood!). And second, that dog seems to be hunting toddlers. He either hears or smells the boy before catching sight of him, and races around the corner to attack.
Black Shuck is another dog in the news this week. He’s one of Britain’s many legendary black dogs, but with a more specific history than most.
The story goes, an enormous black dog burst into a Suffolk church in 1577 during a howling gale (leaving, supposedly scorch marks on the door, pictured), ran up the aisle and killed a man and a boy, then ran off again. He became a local fixture (not to say legend) thereafter, though subsequent stories are short on specifics.
You know, I can believe it? Somebody’s dog getting loose, running a long distance from home, panicking in a thunderstorm and going violently mad in a crowd of people. Then, you know, thereafter being a menace to solitary walkers in lonely spots.
Last year, an archeological dig at nearby Leiston Abbey turn up the skeleton of an absolutely enormous dog. Estimated at seven feet, standing on its back legs, and a very old burial. The bones haven’t been dated yet, but the team will be back this Summer to dig again.
It was buried near the kitchen in the Abbey and is surely a beloved pet or guard dog. I’m sure if the monks slew the beast, the story would have come down to us somehow. But still there’s all kinds of excitement that they might’ve dug up ol’ Shuck.
This dig — like a lot of archeology in Britain — is funded by the lottery. This almost inclines me to pay the Stupid Tax and pick up a weekly ticket. Good weekend, all!
May 16, 2014 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 23