Can you spot me?
Okay, okay…these are just some random old biddies for the BBC News site, but we had our village street party today and it looked just the same. It went well. Something about drinking alcohol at noon makes me feel delightfully wicked and debauched.
Then we had us a little nap and totally forgot the lighting of the beacons tonight. Yeah, that whole Lord of the Rings ancient-signal-beacons-on-the-hills thing? REAL!
They’re all over this county, to warn us of pirates and Frenchmen (BIRM).
Did y’all watch any of the flotilla on Sunday? It doesn’t get much more British than that. Her Maj and Phil the Greek stood at attention in the prow of the lead boat for four hours in the lashing rain (poor bastard’s in the hospital tonight, but he made it through) with a thousand little historic boats floating behind. Then, at the end, the London Philharmonic (nice and dry inside a barge) played the standards while the poor choir stood on deck in a soaking, sheeting downpour singing Land Of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia, and God Save the Queen.
Awesome.
June 4, 2012 — 10:33 pm
Comments: 22
Happy Memorial Day
In honor of Memorial Day, I thought I should post something with absolutely gigantic balls.
Yep, they sheared the gentlemen sheep for Summer this week, making their professional qualifications plain to see.
Off early. Tomorrow morning, I’m going out with a local farmer and his wife to see ’round their flock. In a word, I am going lookering.
Local sheep trivia: a person who looks after sheep is a looker, and the thing he does for a living is lookering. No fooling.
May 28, 2012 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 19
Happy Walpurgisnacht, we-yotches!
Happy Walpurgis Night! It’s exactly six months from Hallowe’en, and you know what that means — Witches’ Sabbath!
It’s a Northern European thing. Bonfires. Witches. The usual.
It’s named after Saint Walpurga (or Walburga), who wasn’t a witch or on fire or anything (and she sure isn’t the lady in the middle of that picture — what is that woman doing to that poor goat?). Pure coincidence Walpurga was canonized on May 1.
So it’s another one of those, “witches? wait, what? Oh, nonono, Father, you misunderstand. We aren’t celebrating our ancient pagan customs. We’re piously observing…ummm…Saint Whatsername’s Day. Um, Walburga — yeah, that’s it!”
Unrelated things that happened today which amused me: Lefties ganging up on Righties, reporting them as spammers to get their feelthy ‘winger accounts auto-blocked on Twitter.
Pasty blond blue-eyed Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was listed as a minority faculty member at Harvard in the Nineties, based on undocumented family legends she had Native American ancestors (the Boston Herald helpfully describes them as her “maternal parents”). Dear Miz Warren: EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA TELLS THIS STORY ABOUT ITSELF.
And the Obama campaign released a new video today and announced its 2012 slogan. Are you ready? Forward.
No, that’s it: Forward. I don’t even think they sprang for the exclamation point.
Forward.
Mmmm mmmm — can you smell the t-shirts?
April 30, 2012 — 7:06 pm
Comments: 56
Did anyone get you this year?
Oh, man. I didn’t even realize this was an April Fools joke until I followed the link to post about it a few minutes ago. This is from a local printer; the kind that emails you a once-in-a-lifetime photo deal every damn day.
Well, good. This would have meant the death of the eBay miracle toast industry.
April 2, 2012 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 15
Seven naughty nurses and a waitress
Abe Books sent ’round a cute bit about romance book covers (and the sheer weight of nurses involved), in honor of Valentine’s Day.
Long-time readers may recall this is our anniversary.
The third for Uncle B and moi. Our favorite nice restaurant went out of business, so we’re going to get Chinese takeout and watch something on the box. We did chill down a nice bottle of Mumm we’ve been saving, though, so that’s okay.
But it’s also our anniversary — five years to the day since sweasel.com went live.
Happy anniversary! Smoochies! (But no champagne for you; my upload speeds aren’t up to it).
February 14, 2012 — 5:06 pm
Comments: 36
Balls, cried the queen!
Bull testicle pie. For Valentine’s. Not kidding. Would I kid? I would not.
Because nothing says romance like cow balls in pastry.
It’s a bit of a send-up, this. Oh, it’s from Charlie Bigham‘s, which is a mainstream food supplier. Offered exclusively through Ocado, which is our best grocery home delivery service. But they’re warning of “very limited availability.”
Read: cheap publicity before Valentine’s.
No, I’m sorry. You’re just going to have to make the Aunty’s Spotted Dick jokes for yourself.
February 8, 2012 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 25
Well, that worked. Pretty much.
This was a Christmas leftover, and Christmas is a time for buying stupid expensive stuff. How stupid expensive? Visit the website of this organic popcorn company and multiply the prices by 1.58.
Ow.
I love this stuff, though. Despite the price and all the bullshit about Incan goddesses, this is one of my favoriter self-indulgences. Their popcorn pops almost completely — big, fat and tender. And it comes in awesome colors (not that it really shows in the final product).
This is the first time I’ve tried the Pop-A-Cob, though — a whole ear of popcorn with the kernels on. Throw it in the microwave in a bag, and thar she blows.
Well, mostly. They specify an 800 watt microwave and ours is just 600, so I think this is a pretty good result. It made two good-sized bowls of the stuff out of one little tiny cob and just a bit unpopped on the ends.
Of course, it’s nothing to proper old-fashioned movie popcorn, popped in coconut oil. Don’t get me started.
You ever want to spend a delightful afternoon strolling one of the hotter fever swamps on the Internet, chase down some of the pro- and anti- coconut oil pages out there. Good stuff.
I’m very much in the pro coconut oil camp. Though I’m sure fans grossly over-promise the benefits, I’m equally sure all those three-letter agencies haven’t the faintest freaking idea what they’re talking about. Especially regarding oils and fats.
Honestly, there’s more bullshit talked about nutrition than orgone, UFOs and the Blessed Virgin Mary put together.
February 6, 2012 — 11:31 pm
Comments: 28
Kung Hei Fat Choi ever’body!
No, no…not another Skyrim post (although, yes — that’s me! Standing in front of the latest dragon I murdelated in Skyrim!) Today is Chinese New Year (though, I suppose, properly it’s the beginning of Chinese New Year, as they celebrate it for, like, two weeks).
It’s the Year of the Dragon, an especially auspicious year in the Chinese calendar. Let us hope so, as 2012 hasn’t exactly been a little slice of heaven so far.
We’re celebrating by picking up some Chinese takeout. Our favorite chinko is half an hour away and gas is around $8 a gallon here, so this is not a treat we get often. Kung Hei Fat Choi!
I had a peep into the political blogs earlier. Eh. All the candidates still running are unacceptable and my favorite blogs are standing around in a circle kicking each other in the balls about it.
Mmmmm…no thanks. Tap on the door when we’ve picked our final Impossibly Flawed Candidate, and I’ll swing into action trying to shoe-horn his sorry ass into the Oval Office. It’s all Dead Pools and chicken blogging until then!
Um, yay.
January 23, 2012 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 25
What to get the woman who has everything
A honkin’ big boat.
I think the Telegraph is conflating two issues here. The government is proposing buying Her Maj a nice new £60M yacht for her Diamond Jubilee, but the picture shows the Royal Barge, which I’m pretty sure either exists already or will definitely exist. They’re pulling together a seven mile flotilla of a thousand boats to float down the Thames as part of the celebrations in June.
Only Victoria managed 60 years on the sparkly chair (that’s British monarchs; I don’t how many swarthy potentates from far-flung principalities might have made the grade). She reigned a further four years after that, so Liz only has to go another five years to be THRONE WINNAH!
We’re getting a four-day weekend (as if my whole life isn’t a weekend) and I’ve learned today we’ll have a party in our parish. There are little grants being handed out to individual parishes for the celebrations. So for the first time in my life, I shall feast and make merry on the coin of some uppity rich bastard in London. Just like a fairy tale.
If I get a move on, I can have my citizenship by then and be a proper English peasant.
January 18, 2012 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 33
And this marvelous bird is called a what, now?
It’s official. We’re all turkeyed out for the season.
Here’s Asbo, our outside cat, enjoying a well-deserved leftover. Poor old boy; it was so delicious, it frightened him. He was sure we were giving him the good stuff by mistake and he was going to have an old shoe pitched at him any minute.
Oh, must tell you a chicken story. This time of year — if I let them out at all — the girls put themselves to bed about four in the afternoon. Evening comes, they trundle off, hop up on the perch and I come out a few minutes later and lock everything up.
Well, two days ago, I looked out around 4:15, the two younger girls weren’t anywhere to be seen and the two older girls were milling around outside the hutch. They caught sight of me at the window and came running up, all excited.
So I shoo’d everybody into the run, where I found the two little girls sitting on the floor of the henhouse, miserable. Someone had managed to knock the wooden slat down and there was nowhere to perch. And so the big girls came to get me to fix it.
No shit. It was a total, “what’s that? Little Timmy fell down the well?” moment.
I’m telling you, those damn chickens are smarter than Lassie.
December 28, 2011 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 37