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
Get me! I’m Miss Marple!
This is my big birthday present, though of course I can’t play with it yet. It’s exactly what I wanted. Poor Uncle B was mightily confused when I sent him out to find me the funkiest old Raleigh three-speed touring bike in the county.
“But it’s all rusty, Weasel!” he wailed.
Perfect.
It’s probably one of the last Raleighs built in England (look! They’re pretending “Nottingham” is a real place. Hee hee! Those zany Brits; they never break character). I had a bike just like it years ago, until some toe-rag stole it. I loved that bike. I’ll get this one all cleaned up (did you know a ball of crumpled aluminiumnum foil makes a fabulous chrome de-ruster?) and ride into market every day.
The wicker basket is a nice touch, don’t you think? Now all I need is one of those little bells, so I can go, “chi-ching, chi-ching! Get the fuck out of the fucking road, you stupid fucking limey dick-hole!”
May 7, 2008 — 6:00 am
Comments: 108
Ow! I think I broke my ethnicity.
What is this? I’m glad you asked! It’s fried chicken with crumpets and gravy.
Dear sweet fancy Moses.
I didn’t have any biscuits ready made, okay? I hadn’t planned on making gravy but when I was done frying I couldn’t bear to throw out all the lovely chicken grease and crispy bits.
I only had this packet of crumpets because I wanted to show Uncle B. (Look Uncle B! Crumpets! And they were actually made in the bakery at my local Stop & Shop!)
Wasn’t bad, okay?
If you think a crumpet looks like an English muffin cut in half, you would be correct. That is what they taste like. Which is presumably why we call English muffins English muffins. The English don’t call them that, on account of they mostly know where they are.
A crumpet is cooked on a griddle and an English muffin in an oven, which accounts for why the former has a bottom and a top and the latter has an outside and an inside.
Heh. Y’all didn’t think I could talk about politics four days in a row, did you?
April 24, 2008 — 11:37 am
Comments: 53
Ta, le pew: some days this is just too easy
Le Stink: England engulfed by terrible smell as freak weather blows in French stench
Pong in the air is ‘Euro-whiff’
I don’t even have to write anything, do I?
April 18, 2008 — 9:23 am
Comments: 30
Heresy!
Okay, y’all know the temperature has been flat for a decade, right? And now it looks like, thanks at least in part to La Nina, it’s going to get substantially colder this year.
Well, BBC News did a fairly dismissive little story about it which included the line “A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked.”
That kicked off an email exchange between a Warmist true believer, Jo Abbess, and the reporter in question, Roger Harrabin. He argued with her a little, but eventually caved and weakened the article.
Okay, here’s the great part: Jo Wotsit was so proud of herself, she published the whole email exchange on the Web. Bee-yootiful.
The thread is worth reading, while it’s still up. It’s full of bluster and threat. If it gets taken down, the Junk Science blog has got it. I first ran across this at the Dick List. Our friends at BBC Biased are nattering about it. And here’s Mad Mel in the Spectator.
Have you ever wondered how much shit we would be in if the other side weren’t so damned stupid?
April 11, 2008 — 1:07 pm
Comments: 38
Wine makes old ladies scowl and forget to comb their hair
This is Anne. She drinks a couple of glasses of wine a day. If she continues recklessly for another twenty five years, experts say she will look like the lady on the right — and they have a super scientifical Photoshop hit-job to prove it. If she stops right now, she has a chance to look like the lady on the left.
Excuse me…WHAT THE FUCK? What’s the difference? What on earth is the matter with Boozy Betty that a smile and a hairbrush wouldn’t fix? If that Photoshoppist couldn’t take all the pseudoscience in the world and make two and a half decades of hooch look scarier than that, he’s fired.
Think I made this up? Nuh uh! Have a look at it in color — (yup, alcohol makes you wear ugly-colored sweaters, too). No offense to old ladies — one of which I desperately aspire to be some day — but how fresh is a dame expected to look at 77, anyway?
Brits drink more than we do. Or, at least, they drink more unashamedly (it’s probably us and religion and that whole Prohibition business and all). Lately, there are definite conspiracies afoot to change that. They’re taking aim at two targets: underage binge drinking (of which “cheap alcohol” is a sub-complaint) and the middle class drinker. Not flat-out lush, mind you. Prosperous, middle-aged professionals who come home at night and split a bottle of wine with the other half in front of the fire in their 16th Century farmhouse.
The Daily Mail is trying as hard as anyone — which is heartbreaking. They’re about the best low-rent down-market right-wing tabloid in Britain (think a slightly trashier New York Post). If they’re joining the League of Po-faced Killjoys, we’re doomed.
I know what you’re thinking: socialized medicine. This is what happens when the state owns your liver. Except newest clinical data suggests a few glasses of red wine a day is good for you — and the good-for-you amount seems to creep up with every study.
Nah, this is down to free-range assholes, wandering the landscape looking for innocent joys to crush. And you wonder why Brits say “cunt” so much.
March 3, 2008 — 1:07 pm
Comments: 21
What do *I* care?
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “what the hell do you care, Weasel? You ain’t hanging around for President McClintobama. You’re setting sail for the island of warm booze and offal pie.”
Well, shut up, that’s what. American politics will affect me nearly as much in Badgerland as it does in Weaseltopia. I still have to file a US income tax return every year — America is the only country that makes its expats do this, forever — though I’ll never make enough money to owe anything to Uncle Sam (I think the threshold is, like, eighty grand). I own land in the US, so there’s property taxes to deal with. I desperately need whatever pittance I can screw out of Social Security after thirty-some years of paying in (Uncle B and I both signed up for the “work until you die” retirement plan). I’ll be back every year to buy mayonnaise and cheap blue jeans. Heck, we’ll both come over and build that romantic bunker in the woods I’ve always wanted, if the Musselman overruns the South of England.
And you would not believe how US current events saturate British media.
I don’t mean entertainment. Hollywood dreck is a major American export. I expect to see a lot of it abroad, most especially in English-speaking countries (which includes parts of Britain). (Though, you know, geez…we’ve done other things since Sergeant Bilko. Splash out, Limeys. Try something new in that 10am time slot. Flipper. Or Bonanza, maybe).
No, I’m talking about how American news and general cultural stuff permeate British media, the BBC in particular. Sure, a lot of that is Bush Derangement Syndrome. Some of it is simply responsible international reporting, since we have our fingers in so many…ummm…dykes. But, whoo! Seriously, honest-to-geez, they can work America into the weather forecast. Spend a day listening to the BBC’s Radio 4 — America is with you from the Shipping Forecast right through to Book at Bedtime.
Whenever I hear some lefty tool mouthing off about “American cultural hegemony” I think, “oh, here’s an idea — you could maybe SHUT THE HELL UP about us for, like, two seconds. You think that might help lower our profile? Yeah. Go talk about Belgium for a day and let us rest our hegemoning muscle.”
So, rest assured, whatever you guys do, I’m going to spend all day hearing about it. Especially if it’s something stupid and embarrassing. Most especially if that stupid embarrassing thing involves beer, guns or Jesus.
And so, my fellow Americans, do a weasel a favor? Don’t make this immigrant thing any harder than it has to be. Refrain from getting drunk and shooting up a megachurch, please. And send me my goddamn absentee ballot.
February 18, 2008 — 3:59 pm
Comments: 51
Go on, pull the other one…
The last of the Christmas crackers. It’s a sort of Christmas-themed party favor popular among the Brittanians. They come apart with a bang (the crackers, not the limies), and each one contains a toy, a paper crown and a very bad joke. The quality of them is highly variable, depending on price — except the joke, which is always and famously bad.
I think you’re supposed to get one beside your plate at Christmas dinner. But as it’s just us, we tend to pull crackers on all the evenings leading up to Christmas…and sometimes the week leading up to New Year’s Eve, too — depending on how over-zealously Uncle B has supplied us with crackers for the year. Many are the photographs of Our Majesties drunkenly sporting paper crowns at improbable angles. Very regal.
Pretty good crackers this year.
Anyhoo, the last cracker has been pulled, and Ol’ Stoaty is headed back Stateside. I mean, right now. My plane leaves noonish, Central Badger Time and arrives at the final destination nineish, Central Weasel Time. Which, taking into account transportation to and from airports and timezones and all that jazz, means Monday is a 24-hour day of travel. And Tuesday morning, I go in to work.
Still, after all those goopy posts about champagne and misteltoe and chestnuts roasting on an open fire, please enjoy the astringent, palate-cleansing tang of abject misery.
¡Mañana, minions!
January 7, 2008 — 9:04 am
Comments: 41
Please help me! I’m trapped in an episode of Masterpiece Theater
What are these, you say? I’m glad you asked. They’re CHESTNUTS. ROASTING ON AN OPEN bloody FIRE!
Yes. Yes, they were very nice. That’s not the point.
January 3, 2008 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 36
Three old coots and a big hole
About three months ago, the old coot on the left, whose family owned Badger House once upon a time, met up with the old coot on the right, who lived in it during the war. You know, The War. They fell to talking, as coots are wont, and Coot #2 asked who was living up at the old Badger place and whether anybody had “found the machine gun.”
!
Seems Coot the Second, who was a teenager during the war, watched an American Dakota bomber go down in the field behind the house, then crept out and nicked one of its machine guns. He balanced the barrel against our back fence and popped a few rounds across the field, to make sure it was in good working order, then wrapped the whole business in an oilcloth bag and buried it beside the hedge.
I shit you not.
Given the heartbreak of Tulsarama, I wasn’t hopeful there would be anything left, but I’m damned if I’ll wantonly crush the dreams of old coots. So we invited them both ’round for tea and hole digging.
No, we didn’t find it. Not yet, anyway. My nice new metal detector was no use at all; the whole yard lights up like a Christmas tree when I ask it to find iron. That’s what four centuries of tossing stuff out the back will do. An experienced bloke with a bigger metal detector and awesome hole-digging skills is coming out next.
Still, we had merry tales of the old days. At the turn of the (Nineteenth to the Twentieth) Century, Badger House was so derelict the shepherds refused to stay in it. It was nearly knocked down, but somebody driving by spotted it and offered Coot #1’s dad £200 for it. By WWII, the house still had no electricity or indoor plumbing (the tall roof is to maximize collection of rainwater). It sounds as though it has stood empty and overgrown much of the time. We’ll have a lot of tightening up to do.
Coot #3 is, of course, Uncle B…who stands just off camera, shamed by the hole-digging prowess of Coot #2. And you would be, too, if an 81 year old coot KICKED YOUR ASS.
EDIT: Uncle B says the Dakota was a transport plane. The bomber that went down in the lower forty was a Boston. Also, he adds that he is wounded in the arm, so there!
January 2, 2008 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 72