Um, ow
Soooo…I had a mammogram today. The way they do it under the NHS, they go ahead and schedule you an appointment and send you a notice and then hope enough people turn up to make it worthwhile. See, they drive up in a 40-foot tit wagon with a receptionist in one end, changing rooms in the middle, and an X-Ray tech in the back and then just gram mammoes all day.
That poor tech must handle a whole, WHOLE lot of knockers.
My nurse friends have all had similar gigs. One spent, like, eighteen months doing nothing but pap smears in a similar mobile clinic. Goodness me. She had nightmares about fighting her way out of Carlsbad Caverns armed with nothing but a Q-tip.
Oh, and then there was the one who processed stool samples. Worst part of that one, she said — if you’re going to mail people large manilla envelopes and ask for a sample, you really really need to define what you mean by “sample.”
September 10, 2012 — 10:19 pm
Comments: 21
Aw, now, ain’t that purty?
This week is predicted to be sunny and warm — and we haven’t gotten a lot of THAT this Summer — so we decided to go out and roll around in it.
This glittery bit of postcard-perfect Disney fru-fru is Bodiam Castle, one of the prettier ruins in the neighborhood. You may know it as the Swamp Castle from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where they deliberately cropped out the moat and made it look…less than fabulous, on account of it was the establishing shot for:
All the kings said it was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same! Just to show ’em! That sank into the swamp; so I built a second one, that sank into the swamp; so I built a third one, that burned down, fell over and then sank into the swamp; but the fourth one…stayed up!
It’s roofless and spent a lot of years as a ruin, but it’s about the prettiest ruin I know (possibly after Battle Abbey). You’re allowed full access (the bridge over the moat is ’round the back) including to the surviving upstairs rooms. It’s covered in graffiti which, being hundreds of years old, is worn illegible but laboriously carved in tidy Times New Roman.
We ate sammiches by the moat, much of which went to the ducks. I wish we’d thought to throw a bit in water, where there were carp the size of toddlers. On the other hand — considering how many ducks tried to follow us back to the car — maybe not feeding the big ugly fish was a smart idea.
Oh, hey, we passed about TEN trucks on the road, loaded to the overflowing with hops. This area (and particularly Kent) were once gigantic producers of hops, but after the war, most were bought in from other countries. So what does a big local crop of hops mean? ARTISAN BEER!
September 5, 2012 — 9:46 pm
Comments: 26
Oof. Okay.
Okay, this is a strange one. This is a classic Italian clown archtype.
White hat, white face with a black line running down it, bright red ears, sparkly rhinestone coat. I gather he’s like the Chief Nazgul of clowns.
Associated with the circus, the whiteface clown is the most intelligent of the clowns, and is typically at the top of the pecking order. The whiteface clown will typically be the ringleader, who will order around the other clowns, and who has his ‘clownishness’ revealed either by his own ineptness or by that of his underling.
This guy was a famous 20th Century example, but I guess the type goes way, way back.
What does that mean? The circus is in town. And what does that mean? Summer is officially over.
We’ve gone to this little one-tent circus every year we’ve lived in Sussex. And every year, it’s clear they struggle to keep it going.
Every performer does at least two different acts (one pair was introduced as from Paris for their first act and from South America for the second), and they all pitch in to usher the seats, sell the programs and hawk trinkets and popcorn.
This year was grimmer than most. We chatted with the ringmaster and his wife at the ticket booth and they seemed pretty worried. Let’s hope they’re back next Summer.
August 28, 2012 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 23
No, really. I saw this today.
Uncle B let out a yelp, and there was this in the window. It’s a little local mom-and-pop hardware store.
In case you’re even more paleolithic than I am (seems unlikely), I gather Fifty Shades of Grey is a romance and medium-core BDSM fantasy novel rolled into one. Not really my thing. Hard to say which of the two is less appealing.
More stuff I learned when I looked it up: it started out as Twilight fan fiction (which is confusing, because there’s nary a vampire in it), posted online by someone calling herself “Snowqueen’s Icedragon”. Then Miz Icedragon changed the characters Edward and Bella to Christian and Ana and self-published it. Then it went e-book and a print-on-demand, publicized entirely by blogpost and word of mouth. And then the whole thing went monkeyshit.
Forty million copies and 37 countries later, it knocked over Harry Potter to be the fastest-selling book in history. Amazon.co.uk announced earlier this month it had sold more copies than all the Harry Potter books put together. Can I get a holy shit, ladies and gentlemen?
I hate to think how many Mary Sue‘s are out there tonight, typing one-handed…
Okay. Tomorrow. Six on the dot, Weasel Blog Time. Round 36 of the Dead Pool!
August 23, 2012 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 20
Wherein Weasel channels Madame Blavatsky
I feel a little mean poking fun at this enormous, shabby floral crown. It was undoubtedly done up for the Jubilee in June and I’m sure it was lovely and not at all huge and tacky. Something of the Delta Dawn/Miss Havisham about it today, though.
We took a picnic to Bateman’s today — the house Rudyard Kipling lived in for the last thirty plus years of his life. It’s a 17th Century pile built for an ironmaster. Kipling loved the place at first site. It’s all paneled in rough-hewn old oak paneling and stuffed full of beautiful period antiques (pretty much as Kipling left it).
And yet…I really don’t like the place. This is the second time we’ve been, and we didn’t like it the first time, either. I’m about as psychic as a potato, but there is something very sinister about that house.
So I was surprised and not surprised to read this in his Wikipedia entry:
[Kingsley] Amis and a BBC television crew went to make a short film in a series of films about writers and their houses. According to Zachary Leader’s ‘The Life of Kingsley Amis’:
‘Bateman’s made a strong negative impression on the whole crew, and Amis decided that he would dislike spending even twenty-four hours there. The visit is recounted in Rudyard Kipling and his World (1975), a short study of Kipling’s Life and Writings. Amis’s view of Kipling’s career is like his view of Chesterton’s: the writing that mattered was early, in Kipling’s case from the period 1885–1902. After 1902, the year of the move to Bateman’s, not only did the work decline but Kipling found himself increasingly at odds with the world, changes Amis attributes in part to the depressing atmosphere of the house.
No, I wouldn’t like to spend 24 hours in Bateman’s, either.
August 22, 2012 — 10:36 pm
Comments: 30
The best thing you’ll watch today
Best thing you’ll see today, but first I get to explain the joke.
George Formby was a beloved British institution (much like Broadmoor). He was a very popular singer/actor/comedian of the ’30s and ’40s. He played a mean ukulele (banjolele, if you want to get technical) and sang cheerful songs laden with crude sexual innuendo. Sort of a singing saucy seaside postcard.
This guy — the guy in the picture — is starring in a one-man play about Formby. He plays Formby. As a promotional thingie, he made a YouTube of “Formby” performing Fifty Cents’ In Da Club.
In case you are not familiar with Mr Cents’ oeuvre, here is his original video of the song, here is a version of the song showing the lyrics for video, and here is just the lyrics. Well, you can skip all that if you want, but it’s pretty hard to catch the words without text. So here is the main repeated refrain:
You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub
Look mami, I got the X if you’re into taking drugs
I’m into having sex, I ain’t into making love
So come give me a hug, if you’re into getting rubbed
Okay, ready? Now go watch.
There is something profound about how easily the edgy rap song transformed itself into a jingly uke tune. I just can’t quite figure out what that something is.
August 21, 2012 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 16
Baaaa
The road we live on ultimately ends up at the beach. On any given Summer weekend, if the weather is fine (and it was as fine as it gets this weekend), it means the traffic is blocked solid for miles. Hundreds of cars full of hot, bored touristas inching along the road desperate to reach the water. And you know what that means…!
Yup. Hundreds of people screaming “BAAA!” at the sheep. We’re surrounded by sheep on all sides, which is apparently an irresistible BAAA-screaming temptation. That’s the sound of Summer to me now; people screaming “BAAA!”
Sheep, by the way, do not go “BAAA.” I don’t care what you’ve heard; there’s isn’t a consonant of any kind involved. They go “AHHHHHHH!!!!” And they do it all day and all night. Particularly night. It’s like they play Marco Polo all night and try to find each other in the dark.
“AHHHHHH!” “AHHHHHH!” “AHHHHHH!” Like the sound of an amusement park ride full of teenage boys. “AHHHHHH!” Like living in a Budweiser commercial. “AHHHHHH!” Yeah, you do actually really notice the silence of the lambs when it happens.
Now, I can never pass a herd of cows without cranking down the window and going “moo!” but that’s a comPLETEly different intellectual proposition, I think.
16920502 takes the dick with poor old Phyllis Diller. Geez, her whole schtick was aging and facelifts way back in the Sixties. I thought she was soooo old then. She must have been all of…errr…my age now. See y’all back here next Friday for Round Ohmygodthey’redying so fast of the new Dead Pool.
August 20, 2012 — 10:27 pm
Comments: 28
As rich as who, now?
One of my favorite radio programs at the moment is BBC4’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. It’s two years old, but the BBC is good about archiving their programs for download (only, probably not by you. I don’t know if they filter by regional IP like the TV side does…but, hey, you can look at the pitchers).
Anyhow, it’s a hundred fifteen minute programs featuring significant objects from the British Museum arranged in chronological order. Just the sort of tasty, bite-sized chunks o’ learnin’ I love most. The presenter (and director of the museum) is a lefty tool with an irritatingly patrician delivery, but you live in BBC-land, you develop strong ear filters for that sort of thing.
The last one I listened to featured the thing in the picture, a coin minted by Croesus. Yes, that Croesus. And was he really all that rich? Son, HE INVENTED MONEY.
Kind of. The Chinese had coins already (of course) and merchants all over had been trading in lumps of metal and other precious items for ages. But Croesus’ innovation was to purify the metal to a consistent standard, mint objects of a consistent size and pattern and put a government imprimatur on them. So instead of trading one-to-one in essentially raw materials, you could trade your goods and services for…MONIES!!!!!!
That was the largest coin, by the way. As they came down in size, they featured smaller and smaller pieces of the same scene, until the smallest one (about the size of a grain of rice, he said) was just the lion’s paw.
Did he get rich from his idea? Oh, yes he did!
Came to a sticky end, though. He’s the one who was menaced by the Persians and asked the Oracle of Delphi whether he should go on the offensive. The answer was “If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire.” He attacked, and the great empire destroyed was his own.
The Oracle was such a beyatch.
August 16, 2012 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 24
aiiiiii
Soooo…this thing just ran across the floor. Okay, yes, I’m a little phobic (I gave myself the jim-jamms Googling for this image).
You know what that means? The Summer that we never had is now over. The (giant weasel-sucking) spiders are coming in to get warm.
When you read the headlines about “Hottest Summer EVARRR!” — think to yourself, “yeah, where?” Because we had one week in the Seventies, and the whole rest of the Summer has been days in the Sixties and nights in the Fifties. Not fun. Do please send over the globular warmening.
(Yes, it’s a terrible Photoshop, isn’t it? It’s Chinese night and I’m late making flied lice).
August 8, 2012 — 10:37 pm
Comments: 22
Science!
Good news! Scientists at Cambridge University have succeeded in making artificial nacre. That’s mother o’ pearl to you and me.
It’s fairly easy to make something structurally similar — it’s just layers of calcium carbonate — but this is the first time they’ve gotten a result that iridesces like pearl. They did it by closely mimicking the processes a real mollusc uses to lay down shell.
This is good. MoP is strong and useful and, naturally, beautiful. And they say their process is cheap.
If you don’t see the value in that, I’ve got four words for you: mother of pearl cellphones.
Or, you know, five words if you think “cell phone” should be two words.
August 7, 2012 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 41