What’re YOU looking at?
And finally, rounding out No Politics Week, this photograph Uncle B took in the garden today. It’s the lizard that lives in his cold frame. Near as I can figure, it’s a viviparous lizard or common lizard, Zootoca vivipara. Uncle B calls him Sid.
If you really hate reptiles, this is a pretty good place to be. There are only six native reptiles: two lizards, a slow worm and three snakes. Unfortunately, one of the snakes is both poisonous and protected.
Right. That’s it. Going to another show over the weekend, but probably can’t milk a whole week out of it. Prepare for cat blogging!
Good weekend, folks!
May 31, 2013 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 37
b-r-r-r-r-r…BRRRRRR
Oh, yeah, there were a BUNCH of these tank models at the country fair. They’re big, like getting on for three feet long, and radio controlled. Even the little model people are animated (which freaked the hell out of me because I didn’t know until I bent over for a closer look and one turned to look back at me. Cheeky tank model owner guy).
Shame they don’t run on gas; they’re easily be big enough to ride.
Anyway, they all apparently come from Russia. It’s a thing. So the only models you can get are Russian or German tanks. You want American or British, you have to buy the chassis and make the outer bits yourself.
I didn’t intend to fob you off with country fair pictures all week. Fayre, actually. I’m embarrassed to admit they spelled it Fayre. But every time I’ve looked in on the news this week, I’ve thought, “Nah.”
May 30, 2013 — 10:24 pm
Comments: 19
Improbably Tiny Ferret
This is a fully grown female ferret, believe it or don’t. I didn’t know they were ever this small, but apparently this is within normal range. She’s about a third the size of some of the boys they had.
The ferret rescue lady said there’s a trend of trying to miniaturize them, which she doesn’t like because it means breeding runts to runts, with likely health problems. ‘Twas all I could do not to shove this one in my pocket and run off.
I wasn’t going to give you another night of the county fair, but I had a pad around the news tonight and…eh. Improbably tiny ferret it is.
May 29, 2013 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 23
I promised you agricultural equipment, and I will not let you down
One of my favorite things at these country shows are the collectors. They set up together at one end of the show (I suspect they neither pay nor are paid to be there) in little camping trailers stuffed full of…whatever it is they collect. Spanners (that’s wrenches to you and me). Animal traps. Doll heads. Oil cans. Radios. They don’t sell anything, they just display a collection. Of one thing. Usually retired folks, they go around the fairs doing this by day and presumably whoop it up over camp fires after closing time.
If you show the slightest interest, you will always hear something worth knowing. I love this. I love listening to someone wax lyrical about some silly, incredibly banal thing he or she has fallen in love with. I go down the row and talk to every single one of them. And take pictures. That makes us both happy.
So these are from Axe Man’s collection. The ball-end thing is a pig stunner. You conk pigs over the head with it. The next thing over is a pole-axe. That sticky-outty bit is a hollow cylinder, with a blood channel cut in the side. So…stun, then pole-axe.
So, there you go. When you talk of being pole-axed by a bit of news, that’s what you’re talking. Um, ew?
May 28, 2013 — 11:22 pm
Comments: 13
‘STAAAAAACHE!
Yes! That is my hand holding a magnificent Tiny Mustache Owl! (That’s not really what it’s called. They told me, I forgot). His name is Mister Cornelius.
His main diet in the wild is insects, which is what the ‘stache is for — he just stands there majestically and food flies into it.
While I was holding him, his ear tufts suddenly went up like devil horns, his eyes went all spooky and evil, his whole face changed shape and I’m thinking, yipes, I’m for it! But he’d only spotted a dog walking by. Mister Cornelius, he doesn’t like dogs.
You know what this means, right? IT’S SUMMER FÊTE SEASON! The weather was awesome this weekend, and we went to a country fair in the Western end of Sussex and a steam rally in Kent.
And you know what that means, right? You’re gonna be staring at a LOT of agricultural equipment this week. w00t!!!1!!
May 27, 2013 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 26
Nope, sorry
I grew up about two miles from a Footwashing Baptist church. It was where you turned left onto the dirt road that led to home, and by the time we got to that spot (if we were coming from Nashville) my mother and I had been on the road quite a while and were almost always shivering for a pee. I mention this because the church had an awesome brick shithouse to one side. It was nearly as big as the church. With what terrible longing we stared at that great cathedral of a pissoire when we passed.
It was locked, though. We tip-toed up and checked it out once. It had a glass window. And it was an eight-seater. Four holes on one side, four on the other. Visualize that at full capacity, folks.
Where I am now is largely Church of England. High church is basically Catholicism minus the pope. Bells and smells and ancient stone buildings. It is very old and beautiful. It is decorous and English. It seems a whole universe away from an eight-seater brick shithouse up a dirt track.
But it’s not. However much distance there would seem to be between snake handlers and Opus Dei, it is all Christian. They recognize the same sacred verses and celebrate the same holidays. They worship the same light, however much the light is bent through the prism of a hundred denominations. They are deeply related.
I understand how a prosperous middle class Muslim in some leafy London suburb would watch yesterday’s news and say that has nothing to do with me. But it does. Or, rather, it doesn’t, but it is a product of the same faith. A different interpretation of the same words.
Which isn’t to say: feel guilty. More like: choose.
May 23, 2013 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 39
Lookit the laaambs…!
We call these guys the Light Brigade. Our property is bounded on one end by a stream (it’s actually a drainage ditch, but that sounds uglier than it is. Swans breed in it, dammit). When the sun falls on the far bank in the afternoon, ten or twenty lambs go tear-assing down the bank bomb-be-de-bomb-be-de-bomb-be-de. Then, about ten seconds later, they come tear-assing back up again. Hours at a time.
Lambovision. I took this picture from the comfort of my lawn chair, no fooling. Only, not today. Today sucked.
I just couldn’t leave everyone staring at a political Photoshop all weekend. The dawning realization that the government is run — literally, as Biden would say — by a bunch of union thugs is just too much to bear.
Lambs instead. Good weekend, everyone.
May 17, 2013 — 10:02 pm
Comments: 37
It’s all about me, me, ME
Long time readers may recall that I celebrate my birthday for the entire month of May, because I’m awesome like that (my actual birthday is early in May, and May is the awesomest month in Sussex). So…this was my big gift this year: a Nexus 7.
I’ve been so absorbed with it, I totally forgot I had to post today. Hell, that’s not even my photograph. Those aren’t my hands. I just grabbed a picture and ran away laughing.
I’m not posting on here with that thing, though. I think it’s of the devil. I clicked the icon for “my location” and it popped up a nice sharp picture of my actual back yard, where I was sitting at the time. I almost screamed. (That’s the scary intersection of built-in GPS and Google Earth). Under some circumstances, like Twitter, it’ll helpfully post that location for you along with your words.
I’m not taking any chances…
May 6, 2013 — 11:20 pm
Comments: 31
Let’s talk narratives…
Big day for this guy: Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party. UKIP picked up 23% of the vote in local elections across England. Yes, that is a Very Big Deal.
UKIP is a lot like the Libertarian Party in the States: their policies make great good sense, but they’re seen as a party of nuts and no-hopers.
Some of that is fair enough — there does seem to be a higher than usual proportion of whackadoodles in both parties. On the other hand, an awful lot of that is our old arch enemy The Narrative.
Try this experiment: do a Google Images search of Nigel Farage. Notice how often he’s shown making a goofy face. In almost all of them.
Okay, so maybe he just looks goofy, right? Well, you know who else looks goofy? One-eyed rubbery-faced paranoid nutcase with anger management issues Gordon Brown. Note there are one or two candid and unflattering shots on that first page, but not many.
You look how they want you to look, and UKIP has been declared the clown party by our lords and masters.
But let’s look at The Narrative, International Governance Conspiracy Edition. The BBC did a vox pop this morning featuring several hacked off Tories who voted UKIP. More than one made the same comment: we’ve got a gravely sick economy, a war on, scary times in the Middle East, tense times in the Far East, a general feeling that everything is turning to shit, and what is David Cameron obsessed with? Legalizing gay marriage.
So, riddle me this: why? Why is gay marriage suddenly the big fucking deal in Britain…and the US, and France? Why now, when everything is in crisis, and why all of these countries at the same time? It almost makes one suspect the existence of an international political Journolist.
Anyway, the Clown Party just kicked David Cameron’s ass. Have a good weekend. I know I will!
May 3, 2013 — 9:27 pm
Comments: 28
Arrrrr, that’s embarrasin’!
So, a branch of the Women’s Institute invited a retired sea captain to give a talk about pirates. When the news got around, the ladies gamely decided to dress up as pirates for the occasion.
Turns out, the talk was about Colin Darch’s ordeal at sea — kidnapped by Somali pirates, savagely beaten and held hostage for forty-five days in the Indian Ocean. Goodness, were their faces red. Cap’n Darch was a good sport about it, though, and the talk went on as planned. (Say, that granny on the right with the boots and the do-rag looks a game ‘un, doesn’t she?).
Meanwhile over in Wales, a Welsh woman pled guilty to racially aggravated harassment and was given a 12-month conditional discharge and fined £50 for calling an English woman an “English cow.” The cow in question was sleeping with her father, busting up her parents’ 32-year marriage, so tempers were high.
She could have called the woman a pustulant cunt of a hag of a cow of an elderly whore-flavored douche bucket and it would have been perfectly legal, but “English” makes it a crime.
Y’arrr, we be livin’ in stoopid times, me hearties.
May 2, 2013 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 12