We blessed the crops, but we didn’t get to whip any damn children…
The ancient church is the heart of our little settlement, though services there are few. So far, Uncle B and I have neatly sidestepped most of them because the hours we keep. When an afternoon service cropped up this Sunday, we were kind of stuck for good excuses (“we’re aggressively obnoxious atheists” didn’t seem a very sociable excuse).
This was the annual Rogation Service. The Rogation Service is a church adoption of the pagan custom of blessing the crops and livestock in Spring. It originally lasted three days, which coincided with the Gange Days — a procession known as “beating the bounds.”
Yea, verily, in ye days before ye Google Earth, remembering and maintaining the boundaries of each individual parish wasn’t easy. So once a year, substantial men of the village — along with many boys — would walk the entire perimeter of the parish. “Entire perimeter” to include wading canals, walking through the middle of houses and trampling any new fences or outbuildings. Literally every inch of it was retraced on foot, along with much partying and whooping it up.
Along the way, the boys were thrown into the brambles, tossed into ponds and slammed into hard objects, all the better to cement in their tender heads the landmarks and outlines of the boundary. Works for me.
We had a feeling this Rogation wouldn’t be quite that sort of wild medieval par-tay. And so it wasn’t. When we reached the open field, our entire merry band consisted of six bluehaired old ladies, the vicar, Uncle B and self. We were handed programs and given speaking parts, and off we went.
We shuffled twenty feet into the field and said prayers for the livestock (astonishing several lambs). Fifty feet the other way and said prayers for the crops. Up the road a piece and prayers for the church. Then we had mugs of hot tea and little sticky cakes and walked home. Hymns and all, about an hour.
Huh.
The strawberries? First of the year. Uncle B growed them in his greenhouse, a little bowl for each of us. They were awesome and flavorful, and so sweet they didn’t need sugar.
I reckon it was the Jesus blessing that done it.
May 25, 2009 — 6:24 pm
Comments: 16
Labour cowards
Y’all have probably heard of the Gurkhas (probably best remembered for their wicked effective kukri knives). The Gorkha people of Nepal had been hiring themselves out for soldiers since the way back. The Brits discovered them when they fought them during the Nepalese War of 1814-16 and somehow managed to call them Gurkhas. They kick all kinds of butt.
Four original battalions of Gurkhas were formed into the East India Company, and they stayed loyal to the Crown through the Indian Mutiny…and every armed conflict Britain’s been part of ever since. Two hundred thousand of them joined up for Dubya-Dubya Eye-Eye and distinguished the hell out of themselves.
And now thousands of them are set to be deported from Britain. Gurkha veterans have been fighting for the right to live in Britain for a long time — and I don’t pretend to know the whole backstory — but the latest immigration rules released today are fucking evil: a soldier can stay if he’s served 20 years. The rank and file are only allowed to serve 15. Nice.
Oh, an enlisted man can stay if he got crippled in battle, or won a conspicuous decoration. You know, Audi Fucking Murphy is welcome, the rest of you can piss off.
I won’t get into a British immigration rant tonight (don’t-do-it-don’t-do-it-Weasel-don’t-do-it). But a country has to be completely retarded to turn away applicants who have put their lives on the line and, you know, spilled blood in defense of the realm and shit. One of these guys is worth a hundred wastrel immigrants like me.
And don’t get me started on the Pakistani splodey-dopes, Kenyan moochers and Albanian pimps…
April 24, 2009 — 8:02 pm
Comments: 28
Hopi farging carp on a popsicle!
Today we had a surveyor in to look at our deathwatch beetles. We got his name from a local real estate agent who deals in ancient buildings. It’s no good sending out a green surveyor; he would take one look at an old pile like Badger House and pee his pantses.
Our guy tapped and frowned and frowned and tapped and took a little dust sample in a 35mm film can (luckily we had one to spare). And then declared the house whole and sound and (almost certainly) in no danger at all, tappingdancing beetles or not. He offered us the use of a stethoscope for the Summer: if you can identify exactly where the little bastards are hanging out, he told us, it might be worth opening the wall to kill them. But otherwise, the damage you’d do tearing the place apart to find the infestation would be far more than the insects will do.
They don’t do much harm. They don’t do any harm fast. Their life cycle is (up to) twenty years. And they won’t spread in the absence of damp.
“After all, they came in with the wood and they haven’t knocked the place down yet,” he said, klonking his fist against a great oak beam.
And I said (proudly), “haha…oh, yes. We have documentation on the house going back four hundred years.”
And he said, “oh, no! These beams are MUCH older than that. Some are probably a thousand years old.”
And Uncle Badger said, “!” And I said, “!!!!!!!eleventythousandholyshit!!!!”
He explained. Nearly all the wood in the house would have been reclaimed from some earlier use: another house, a barn, a horse-cart. Wood was scarce around here and hard to come by and EVER-so-hard to work with. We’re talking hand tools and OAK. When we were looking to buy, we seriously considered one house built in the 15th or 16th C from beach flotsam (very common) and they even knew the name of the French shipwreck it came from.
It’s clear that some beams (top picture) weathered outside for…oh, hundreds of years, maybe. And I spent months poring over mysterious pegs and slots and cut marks, trying to figure out the original shape and purpose, when these artifacts probably had nothing whatever to do with Badger House.
Whoa.
No, seriously. Whoa.
It’s probably just as well I’m psychic as a potato.
April 21, 2009 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 21
Mao Zedong was a poopy head
Looks like the Chinese are getting stroppy again about people mocking Mao. I think that’s our cue to mock Mao, don’t you?
We know tens of millions died in Mao’s famines. Have you ever wondered if it was the passive incompetence of Communism, or whether he was an actively genocidal nutball? To examine the question, I mucho recommendo the book Hungry Ghosts. My copy is in a box somewhere, so I’ll pull this together from memory as best I can. And I’ll try to be brief.
Mao adored science. He was sure science would lift China to world dominance. Unfortunately, he had NO fucking idea what science was. He’d imprisoned most of the real scientists, anyhow, so he just took his best guess:
Communism + enthusiasm = science!
Mao believed nature actually worked on communist principles; that rice plants should be grown as close together as possible, since plants would cooperate, not compete. The propaganda rags of the day claimed elementary schoolchildren were making dramatic genetic breakthroughs in their school gardens during recess; that crops grown with communist methods were so thick, kids were photographed walking across the tops of the wheat stalks (it later came out they were standing on a bench); that it was unnecessary to build new roads when everyone in China would soon have his own personal airplane. Students declared the decimal point bourgeois and demanded the right to place it anywhere they liked. Oh, it was going to be Emerald City, man.
In short, the whole country went bugfuck crazy under Mao’s direction.
But, you know, when your boss is a nutcase who gets annoying people killed, you do your best not to be an annoying person. Provincial governors began to vie with each other who could promise the most balls-out insane wheat production numbers. Using Mao’s methods, you can produce twice as much wheat? Well, we can produce ten times as much! Oh, Yeah? Well, we can produce thirty times what we did last year! And so on. Anyone who didn’t play the game was out.
Beating the West at wheat growing (not really China’s crop) and steel production were Mao’s two biggest obsessions. But “steel production” isn’t what you think: you know, digging up iron ore and smelting it and shit. Oh, no. Peasants were made to build these makeshift furnaces in each village in which they melted down their own tools and utensils and hinges into useless lumps of mongrel metal. I am so not shitting you. AND, when they ran out of firewood, they burned their own furniture and doors to keep the fires going. AND, their best and strongest workers were drafted to run the furnaces (the ones that weren’t already working on wild-ass crazy projects like building earthen dams that would crumble to bits in no time) so that the fields were neglected.
And then, quite coincidentally, China had a bad growing season. Periodic regional famine is historically common in China, but this one — few tools, few workers, desperately wrong-headed stupid farming methods — was set to be a hum-dinger.
But when harvest time came around, Mao gathered his deputies and said, “okay — pony up!” (I paraphrase). And they’re like, “what?” And he goes, “you guys promised me a hundred times the grain we produced last year, so let’s have it!” And they said, “oh! Um. Sure, boss.”
But of course, they couldn’t scrape together half what they’d produced the year before, let alone a hundred times. So they came back to Mao with the only possible explanation: those bastard peasants are hiding it from us!
And, of course, the poor bastards were hiding some. The soldiers had come around again and again rounding up what little food they had, so of course they hid what they could or starved outright. If the peasants were caught hoarding food, they were taken to camps, or beaten to death on the spot. If they didn’t hoard food, they starved or ate dirt and died of stomach cramps. Ttwenty or thirty or even fifty million of them. All the while Mao was giving away food to friendly communist countries and letting much of the rest rot in warehouses. Because they had a hundred times the grain they needed, don’tcha know.
So! Was Mao a drooling bumpkin retard or a homicidal nutcake psycho? Do you know, I still have no idea.
April 17, 2009 — 8:03 pm
Comments: 30
Let’s talk asphaltum!
Art — if you care to approach it that way — is a subject rich in many robust varieties of geekery. History, chemistry, exotic materials. I really am going to start an art blog some day, but in the meantime I’ll just bore you guys.
Take asphaltum. AKA bitumen or pitch. I was thinking about it today (as you do). In intaglio, it’s used to protect metal plates from acid — the design is scraped away with a needle before etching.
Mixed with linseed oil, asphaltum makes a beautiful velvety brown paint. Like dark caramel. It neatly mimics the appearance of Old Master paintings that have mellowed with age.
Joshua Reynolds experimented with it. That’s his painting of Margaret Morris at left (please not to be making eye contact; Margaret obviously has the crazy eye).
The highlighted area shows the reason asphaltum is naughty. It’s not really a pigment at all (technically, a pigment is tiny solid particles of a colored substance), it’s just a sort of hydrocarbon goo. It never dries. It doesn’t even try. So paint laid on top of it becomes more brittle with age than the asphaltum underneath and inevitably cracks. Oil paintings often crack, of course, but asphaltum cracks have a dramatic, distinctive appearance called alligatoring.
Asphaltum is so lovely to look at and the effect usually takes so long to develop, some painters wouldn’t give it up even so. Long about the 18th Century, some bright colorist wondered if asphaltum that had aged for a very long time until it was apparently dry and brittle might not be safe to use. Paint made from very old asphaltum was sold as mummy or caput mortuum.
They stopped selling mummy in the 19th Century because a) it didn’t work — it alligatored just as badly as fresh asphaltum. And b) word got around it was actually made out of ground up Egyptian mummies embalmed in asphaltum! And it was, too.
April 16, 2009 — 6:44 pm
Comments: 24
Happy half century, you anorexic slag!
Monday was Barbie’s 50th birthday (counting from her introduction at the American International Toy Fair). I had a burger today at our favorite greasy spoon, Salmonella-on-Sea, and I didn’t grab a newspaper quick enough so I got stuck with the women’s rag. That’s where I read this.
Barbie was based on the postwar German doll Bild Lilli, who was a doll of easy virtue marketed to adults. Today, one Barbie is sold every three seconds. Or maybe it’s three Barbies a second. Shoot, I don’t know. I didn’t steal the magazine.
You know who loves her some Barbie? Me, that’s who. Not the doll — they stopped giving me dolls when I wouldn’t stop dissecting them — the playscale.
Playscale is the universal 1:6 toy scale that means GI Joe can wear Barbie’s panties and Midge can drive the tank. Oh. My. God. All those fabulous tiny Coke bottles and naugahyde cowboy boots and plastic fried eggs. I just love ickle things.
My best friend had every damn playscale playset in the world, because her parents actually loved her. The whole West family (remember them?), with horses. The whole Barbie family. The camping set. The dream home. Man. Poor people sure buy their kids lots of great stuff, don’t they?
Speaking of Barbie/Joe mashups, I remember this story from when it was reported. I never learned if it’s true, but I sure hope it is. I’d give a lot for a Barbie who yells, “eat lead, Cobra Commander!” Or, alternatively, a GI Joe who coos, “Let’s plan our dream wedding!”
Fun Barbie facts:
Barbie’s real name is Barbie Millicent Roberts
Barbie is from Willows, Wisconsin and went to Willows High School
Barbie has four sisters: Skipper (1964), Stacie (1992), Kelly (1995) and Krissy (1995)
Barbie’s first pet was a horse named Dancer
The first Barbie sold for $3.00 in 1959
Barbie’s signature color is PMS219 (that’s Pantone [color] Matching System, smartass)
Ken debuted two years after Barbie in 1961
Ken and Barbie broke up on Valentine’s Day, 2004
Okay, those facts weren’t really all that fun.
March 12, 2009 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 17
Okay, this is getting ridiculous…
We went wassailing this weekend.
Yup.
Wassailing.
Apple wassailing, to be specific. Or, as it is traditionally known in Sussex, howling. It doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas (or wassail); wassailing is an ancient pagan ritual performed in apple growing parts of the South of England. The locals dress up like elvish hobos, offer bread and cider to the trees and fire off shotguns to scare evil spirits away from the orchard.
You people think I make this shit up, don’t you? Well, I don’t. Every day in Angle-land is like King Richard’s Faire, but with older costumes and fewer chubby virgins.
I was going to tell you all about the ritual and shit, but for once in their miserable lives the locals started a ceremony early. We got there right on time, which was just in time to see the boogie-scaring fireworks and the traditional wassail bowl paraded back into the pub. Then everybody got pissed as newts on cider.
We did get to see the mummers in the pub, though. Yeah, you know what? I’m going to go lie down for a while.
But, hey, I get to keep my debit card.
January 12, 2009 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 25
Swan upping new year
I usually post a picture of the last light of the year on New Year’s Eve, but there wasn’t much of it today. Instead, I offer you these swans, which I photographed as I walked into town to buy a loaf of bread. (Get me! I’m olde worlde!).
The field across the road is sown in rape (it’s a cinch nobody consulted a PR before naming it “rape”, isn’t it?) and for several weeks, the new crop has been home to a flock of swans. Mute swans. Cygnus olor. Dozens and dozens of them. I don’t know why the farmer doesn’t shoo them off; perhaps foraging swans are protected.
Wild, unmarked mute swans have been the property of the crown since the 12th Century, but Her Maj only claims the ones on the Thames these days. She graciously shares ownership with the Companies of Vintners and Dyers. Once a year, the Queen’s Swan Marker and the Swan Uppers of the Vintners and Dyers dress up in little red suits, climb into six little red skiffs and spend five days rowing the Thames upping swans.
How dost up a swan? Carefully, I prithee! Ho ho ho!
Swan upping: the Worshipful Company of etcetera paddle about on the river, shout “all up!” when they spot a brood of baby swans, circle the boats, lift the cygnets out of the water, weigh them, check them, tag them, count them and let them go again. When this gay party passes Windsor Castle, they stand up in the boats, raise oars, and salute Her Majesty, Queen of the Swans.
Weasel doesn’t make this shit up, you know.
As luck would have it, the bottle of shampoo next up in the booze rotation was my favorite. And it’s kosher! Soon, my beauty. Happy New Year, y’all!
December 31, 2008 — 6:21 pm
Comments: 19
You can take the Weasel out of the MoonPie, but…
The phrase “RC Cola and a MoonPie” came up two threads down and, because I totally have nothing else to do, I hit Google. Turns out, it’s another fine culinary innovation you can thank Tennessee for. You’re welcome.
The MoonPie was invented in Chattanooga in 1917. It’s two big round soft graham cracker cookie things with marshmallow filling, dipped in a sweet coating. I only remember chocolate and banana, but Wikipedia says there was also vanilla and strawberry. And, in modern times, lemon and orange. MoonPies are unspeakably vile.
Royal Crown Cola was invented in 1905 and is apparently also still around. The company renamed itself Nehi in 1925 — you may know them from the truly awful grape and orange drinks — and were later responsible for Diet Rite, the first diet soda. In the mid ’90s, RC came out with a “draft” cola — a 12-ounce premium cola made with cane sugar like the old days. Sales were disappointing due to distribution problems, and the line was dropped.
In the ’50s, an RC cola and a MoonPie became the standard workman’s lunch across in the South. You could get the combo special RC Cola and a MoonPie for a dime, which is one giant asswad of sugar and food coloring for a mere tenth of a dollar. Jesus. Wikipedia reminds me that some would buy a packet of peanuts, empty it into the cola, drink the cola then eat the peanuts. Damn you, Wikipedia! I had successfully papered over that memory!
This filthy combination was so wildly popular that it was set to music repeatedly, beginning with Bill Liston’s 1950s ballad “Gimm’e an RC Cola and a Moonpie” (which is where I’m guessing my mother picked up the phrase) and ending with the recent children’s record — I so totally and completely am not even a little bit shitting you — “Weezie and the Moon Pies.”
The little town of Bell Buckle, Tennessee has an RC and Moon Pie Festival every year that features deep fried MoonPies and crowns the Queen of…no, it’s no use. I can’t bear to paraphrase. I quote:
The 2008 Queen is Dr. Phyllis Qualls-Brook, Assistant Commissioner of Tennessee Community and Industry Relations and the King is actor/director Lane Davies who will be directing the 1st Annual Tennessee Shakespeare Festival to be held in Bell Buckle the two weekends following the RC-Moon Pie Festival.
Taking center stage as always is the wildly popular Synchronized Wading extravaganza, lovingly referred to as “dry humor on a wet stage”. This year’s performance will be “A Midsummer’s Nightmare” starring who else but the lovely little Moon Pie and the charming RC with unfortunate guest appearances by GooGoo Cluster, Coke, as well as a host of fairies and soldiers. Director and choreographer Carla Webb who is also known as the First Lady of Bell Buckle says that this year’s Synchronized Wading performance is one of the best since she began performing in a kiddy pool over 13 years ago.
Some things are unforgivable even in jest. There is also a more recent association of MoonPies and Mardi Gras, with some krewes throwing miniature pies into the crowd. You have to show your tits to make them throw beads, I don’t EVEN want to know what you have to show to make them throw MoonPies.
And people wonder why I’m changing my name and moving thousands of miles away to a country that makes puddings out of sheep guts.
November 20, 2008 — 6:47 am
Comments: 45
Fishing for tarts
Lots and lots of things have been fished out of the Seine. This was one of them. Maybe. If you want the long version, ask Google and spend an afternoon at it. Or go with the short version:
No-one knows who she was, really. She is called l’Inconnue de la Seine. The usual story is that she was drawn from the river in the late 1880s and the morgue attendant was so taken with her beauty and poignant expression that he called for a mask to be made.
I’m going to call bullshit on that bit, anyhow. No way this is the face of a dead woman. In fact, it would be difficult to take a cast of a living woman and catch a smile. Plaster is heavy and the dead seriously lack muscle tone. If this thing started life as the mask of a woman, it was heavily recarved afterwards (which is not at all uncommon with casts).
Anyhow, the story continues, she was put on display (in the 1880s, unclaimed bodies — up to fourteen at a time — were put in a chilled room at the morgue, fronted by plate glass. It was the most popular shop window in Paris). No-one claimed her.
Then somehow the mask escaped into the population. It was a sensation. Factories were contracted to churn out copies (in fact, one story I find plausible is that l’Inconnue was actually an entrepreneurial mask-maker’s daughter, alive and well at the time). No salon or filthy bohemian garret was complete without one. She appeared in poems, novels, baudy limericks (I’m just guessing on that last one). She was an icon of feminine beauty for decades, well into the 20th Century.
And then she really got popular. In 1958, emergency docs Peter Safar and Asmund Laerdal chose l’Inconnue for the face of the original Resusci Annie (Snopes says oui to this story). Making her, officially, the most kissed woman of all time.
Thought a little creepy story might not go amiss today, this being Hallowe’en week and everybody being utterly sick to death of poltics and all.
October 29, 2008 — 2:11 pm
Comments: 37