Lambs, you say?
Artist: Ed Harrington.
If you’ve never read Silence of the Lambs, you should. It’s the only book my stepmother ever recommended to me, so I felt obliged to read it (I don’t read much fiction, and I really hate fictional murder stories).
I actually stood up out of my reading chair at one point, when the plotline took an unexpected turn. You know the place.
Hated the movie.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
March 22, 2019 — 9:16 pm
Comments: 6
Well, I LOL’ed
Watch this stupid video. With the sound on.
It popped up on my Twitter and I laughed. Turns out if you search YouTube for it, it’s been done multiple times by multiple people. Still, I laughed. That’s worth sharing, right?
True story: I played trombone in junior high band. We already had one (my big brother played). Also, it meant I got to sit with the boys and poke those snooty clarinet bitches in the butt with my slide when the teacher wasn’t looking. I reckon I could still belt out the scales if I had to.
But don’t put a trombone in a warm bath to clean the gunk out of it. Don’t do it. It’s gross. Spoiler: the gunk comes out of it.
*pic unrelated
March 21, 2019 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 4
First lambs!
We saw the first lambs of the season on the way to the supermarket today. Well, the first lambs we’ve seen — there’s a farm in the back of beyond that always has the very first lambs, but we have to go out of our way to see them. These were just RIGHT THERE, like nothin’.
Not the ones in the picture up there, though. That picture is stolen from Middle Farm, a local open farm. They sell tickets for lambing. I can’t decide if that’s a very city thing or a very country thing to do. Their lambing starts April 1, like ours.
I bought my second two chickens from Middle Farm, a long time ago. And very excellent chickens they were, too.
But never mind that — LAAAAAMBS!
March 19, 2019 — 8:42 pm
Comments: 6
Beware!
‘Tis the Ides of March.
The Romans did not number days of a month from the first to the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (5th or 7th, depending on the length of the month), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st of the following month). The Ides occurred near the midpoint, on the 13th for most months, but on the 15th for March, May, July, and October. The Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. On the earliest calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year.
Our upstairs toilet is working again, my bike has gone to the shop for a thorough tune-up, and the wind is supposed to blow over 40 miles and hour from early tomorrow morning until late tomorrow night.
Facts that bear no relation to each other, nor to the good weekend I am wishing you!
March 15, 2019 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 9
G’night!
Geez, the image quality of the stupid shit I steal off Facebook is getting worse and worse.
Sorry, y’all, I was out late tonight. See you mañana!
March 14, 2019 — 9:56 pm
Comments: 5
When pushbuttons go wrong
You know what’s really swell? When you’re a stranger in a strange land and you cannot figure out how to flush the toilet.
I never worked out Uncle B’s toilet in London at all. It was a lever action, but you had to kind of lift it and then put a little english on it (appropriately enough). I actually had to call him in once. (Can you picture it? “Hello, man I am courting — I HAVE MADE BOOM BOOM”).
Shown above is our toilet flusher off the master bedroom. It’s easy enough. You push the button.
Well, you push the little button for a ‘half flush’ and the big button for a ‘full flush’ — or the other half of a ‘half flush’ if it hasn’t refilled. Okay, it’s stupidly complicated – and you haven’t seen the insides yet.
It went wrong tonight. It won’t flush. The button, it is dead. We took the lid off and…honest to dog, I’ve had cars that were less complicated.
I never thought I’d be homesick for a float valve. (Yeah, you thought I was going to say “cock and ball mechanism” didn’t you?).
March 12, 2019 — 9:20 pm
Comments: 19
I’m having a weird week
Lost my wallet Tuesday. Woke up to a flat bike tire this morning.
Seemed the perfect time to raze my old XP machine to the ground and convert it to Linux. You may recall I pinched an ancient machine from work that was going in the bin. I use it in my little studio room to look at pictures of chickens and play YouTubes.
The pictures of chickens went fine, the YouTubes not so much. I upped it to 2 gig of ram, which helped, but not entirely. To be honest, I got sick of having a broken, ugly, insecure operating system that nobody supported.
I could have gone with one of those tiny Linuxes and I’m sure I would have gotten better performance, but I went with a 32-bit version of Mint and I don’t care. It looks nice, it’s tailored to work superficially much like Windows, so it’s easy. Chicken pictures look slick.
Still runs YouTubes like shite.
March 7, 2019 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 10
This is a Public Service Announcement
I lost my wallet! Spoiler: I got it back again. There it is, right there in the picture. I couldn’t bear to keep you guys in suspense.
Apparently, it fell out of my bag at the checkout line at Aldi yesterday. Which is in a wretched neighborhood. I was sweating this one. There are people in that supermarket for whom the bit of cash in my wallet would make all the difference this week.
But no. Staff had it and I got it back, with every penny.
But not until this morning, after I had cancelled all my credit cards. Count ’em: five.
I only use two of them, one credit and one debit. First lesson: maybe not carry all of them around, or even cancel a few. It’s a holdover from the days I tried to get as many lines of credit as possible to give myself a paper existence in a foreign country. At least I wasn’t carrying my passport around — I used to!
Second lesson: better records. I was fairly good about writing down the pertinent information and the process of contacting the banks is pretty easy (exception: boo Sainsbury’s Mastercard!), but it would have been even more painless if I had done something like photocopy the fronts and backs.
Third: I didn’t keep track of all the places online that I use them. The ones that I allow to keep the number, I mean. There’s Amazon, Ebay and PayPal and the rest…well, we’ll find out. And I’ll write it down this time.
Meanwhile, no tchotchkes for weasel 🙁
March 6, 2019 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 12
My cup, let me show you it
I bought a few of these for cheaps on Ebay. They are hand-thrown terra cotta cups, glazed on the inside and unglazed on the outside. They look like what Judah ben Hur would drink his Ovaltine out of.
I’ve been making chai. Not out of chai mix, but out of bits. I am enjoying myself very much, as only a weasel with a chemistry set can. It seemed right to drink it out of one of these. I keep waiting to transmogriphy into Mrs Hyde, but so far it’s just a delicious beverage that makes me piss like a dray horse.
Of all the supposed benefits of multiculturalism, the only ones I appreciate are interesting food, textiles and ceramics.
March 4, 2019 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 8
Rejoice! It is National Chili Day!
According to the Bean Institute Bulletin, February 28 is National Chili Day. Rejoice!
Betty Crocker is hosting a chili cookoff.
I have now posted two things Uncle B cannot stand: Betty Crocker and fake national holidays dreamed up by marketing types to sell products. w00t!
While we’re at it, here is a bunch of chili recipes on Pinterest. No idea how Uncle B feels about Pinterest, but I hate it. It’s like some horrible maze that you get trapped in and can’t get out of. Or steal pictures from.
February 28, 2019 — 8:25 pm
Comments: 13