Fruit head guy
Twitter tells me it’s Giuseppe Arcimboldo‘s birthday. You know, the fruit head guy. I always thought his stuff was super creepy. I literally recalled his name by going to Google and typing “fruit head painter”.
I got a notification from Twitter earlier that “Your Chickens have tweeted for the first time in a long time.” Turns out Your Chickens is a magazine.
Anyhoo! Anybody here use CBD oil? I have a friend back in the States strongly recommending it for my elderly cat. To improve her (probably) kitty arthritis and general quality of life. It hurts to watch her walk now.
I spent hours Googling around to find if CBD is legal to import to the UK. Turns out, legal to own, but not so much to import. Modern Britain is stuff full of ambiguous laws and I live in fear of tripping over one and getting my elderly ass deported.
Anyway, one of our major vitamin chains carries it, so that’s alright. But I know nothing of dosages or effectiveness or difference in brands.
I’m tempted to dismiss it as snake oil, I get so much hyperbolic spam about it. But too many people I know personally swear it’s done a world of good for their animals.
July 11, 2018 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 12
Spoiler: it’s empty
This is cool: the maritime museum in Greenwich owned Sir Francis Drake’s treasure chest. Problem was, it was locked and they didn’t have a key.
Here’s a neat short film of the conservator making a key for it, starting with a blank and observing where the mechanism rubbed against the metal.
I’m sure they knew there was nothing in it before they started, but internets got to clickbait.
July 10, 2018 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 7
Computer trouble – posting from my phone
I didn’t know I could post from my phone. I feel quite sure I never gave the phone my password. What infernal corner of Google is quietly storing my personal shit?
July 9, 2018 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 18
I could change it to Weaseltown
An entire Welsh village is up for sale. The white thing you can just make out in the upper left corner is a slate mine, active since the Sixteenth Century, and the village was for the workers.
Sixteen cottages with tenants and a bunch (they don’t say how much) farmland. At £1.25M it would take a while to pay for itself, but it would be a helluva lot more fun than blue chip stocks.
But the name Aberllefenni? That’s got to go.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
July 6, 2018 — 10:04 pm
Comments: 15
Effing gooseberries
Now the harvest. I hate picking fruit. I come from a long line of people who got other people to pick their fruit, by force if necessary. I guess this is karma.
Some things have done very well this year, despite drought (the raspberries). Some, just okay (respectable yield on the red gooseberries, but they’re awfully small). We’re just beginning, but it’s an early beginning.
They began harvesting the hay on the 30th of June this year – the earliest on record.
Gooseberries are a bit of a hate object. Sour as a bastard, nasty thorns, and you gotta ‘top and tail’ them before they go in the freezer.
Uncle B did that last bit. Troo luv.
July 5, 2018 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 11
Happy Fourth!
Uncle B’s put a bottle of champagne on ice to celebrate. Shhhhh…don’t tell him that’s not a Fourth of July thing. I really like champagne.
After a fourteen hour fast, it turns out my bloodletting appointment is actually next week. So I get to do it again next Tuesday night. Yay me!
I don’t care. I have champagne. Have an excellent Fourth, y’all!
July 4, 2018 — 8:28 pm
Comments: 11
Gaming the system
Mmmm…oatmeal! Behold, my dinner. (No, I’m lying. I stole that picture off the internet. I was too lazy even to take my own oatmeal picture).
I have a blood test tomorrow, and it’s the stupid 14-hour fasting one, so that’s my last food until noon. I’m going to turn in early and hope to sleep through.
See, I really, really don’t want to be put on statins. On the other hand, I HATE arguing with doctors. So far, the oatmeal trick has worked pretty well.
There’s no cholesterol in beer, right?
July 3, 2018 — 9:13 pm
Comments: 20
Mmmm…my favorite!
That there is Maya the jaguar, star of a recent BBC documentary. Don’t know if they played it over your way. She was a leetle orphling keeten in the show. Not so little now.
And the thing she’s licking? A blood popsicle! Mmmmm!
It rarely gets above mid 80s here. When it gets there, it rarely stays for long. We rarely go a week without rain. But we’ve had weeks and weeks of drought and a couple of weeks of hot. It even stayed hot at night the last few, an unheard of thing.
Everything is yellow and dry. The chickens are panting like dogs. There is no end in sight.
I mean, it ain’t Baton Rouge in August hot (why the hell did we always go visit Grandma in August?), but it’s hot. I’d forgotten how much I hate hot.
July 2, 2018 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 9
Watching water dry
This one is kind of genius. It’s a piece of slate and a paintbrush. You paint on the slate with water, and as it fades away, your worries magically fade away with it.
As a meditation aid, it’s brilliant. I think I want it.
No, I haven’t taken a turn for the woo, dear reader. I’m still the same weasel I ever was: as psychic as a potato.
I started the week doing an eBay search for pieces of quartz crystal with inclusions, because I think they’re pretty. And that took me to the crystal ball aisle. And from there, it was a hop, skip and a jump to ghost boxes, copper pyramids and Buddha boards. There’s a whole industry out there.
Anyhoo, enough of that! Come back here tomorrow for DEAD POOL ROUND 111. I’ll break out the Ouija board. (Seriously. There’s over 700 to choose from).
June 28, 2018 — 9:48 pm
Comments: 9
Yeah, I was s’posed to post this last night
Okay, then…how about a six foot tall copper meditation pyramid?
This is a custom made 100% copper pyramid with French doors. It measures 6 foot at the base and has an overall height of 58.26 inches matching the proportions of the great pyramid at Giza. Materials used are 16 gauge textured copper sheet,1/8 inch hand wrought copper piano type hinges with copper pins, 1/8 hand wrought copper riveting brackets (second to last photo), 1/8 inch x 1 1/2 inch hand wrought backing strips, 3/4 inch thick wall copper tube frame TIG welded with copper filler (last photo during construction), and copper rivets. This item is made to order.
Only $8,500!
I didn’t realize pyramids were still a thing, but eBay lists dozens of the boogers big enough to crawl into. Huh.
So — changing the subject — I just had my first ever yogurt #fail. After six hours on heat, it has totally neglected to set.
I thought my culture was starting to drift a little, so I went back to the storebought packaged starter. Third time I’ve used one of these, with great success every other time.
My only departure — I usually add the culture where I mean to carry on, about about 110°. This time, I let it cool to about 90°, added the culture and brought it up to 110°.
The hell? Being cold doesn’t hurt the bugs, otherwise you couldn’t make yogurt from last week’s fridge yogurt. Any ideas?
p.s. Next day. Still not set, it’s as loose as milk. Tastes a little sour, so I’m sure there’s a lactobacillus in there. I bought another liter of milk today, but you think I dare try re-cooking this one?
p.p.s. Lester III wins the Dead Pool with Joe Jackson. Quick, but not the quickest ever. You know what that means…back here, day after tomorrow, 6WBT, Dead Pool Round 111.
June 27, 2018 — 10:00 pm
Comments: 16