Day 2 — beer and tacos
Ask not how Weasel holds those maracas. Ask how she holds all that Dos Equis.
May 5, 2015 — 12:00 pm
Comments: 18
Weasel weasels for a week — now with more weasels!
Today is a public holiday in Britain. It isn’t actually my birthday, but that blessed day is early in May, so I reckon it’s a good time to TAKE THE WEEK OFF!
Oh, nothing special. I’ve got a stack of books, some really unhealthy food and lots of booze. Also, Far Cry 4 and Shadow of Morder and a bunch of other games I’ve never cracked open (stupid Steam sales!).
I’ll be around, though. If something interesting comes up, I’ll be ready wit de Photoshop. Meanwhile, enjoy five dumb pictures of weasels I’ve queued up just for you.
May 4, 2015 — 12:00 pm
Comments: 15
This is a post about phone boxes
You gotta feel for British Telecom: in this day of cellphones, there’s almost no need for public pay phones. The old boxes are expensive to maintain and operate at a grueling loss. They tried to replace the old red boxes with modern glass ones (emblazoned with a logo unaffectionately known as ‘the poof with the pipe‘) and there were riots.
And by riots, I don’t of course mean Baltimore-style toiletpaper-looting, CVS-burning riots. This is England. I mean dozens and dozens of people wrote very rude letters to the government written in green ink.
The upshot was that the phone boxes were slapped with protection orders. These days, they are quietly being decommissioned, when they can be prized away from the neighbors. Or recommissioned as something else — there’s one near here with a defibrillator in it. Fully renovated, they sell for thousands. There’s an interesting article about it here.
The article links out to — well, it would do, wouldn’t it? — the Trainspotters Gazette of kiosk sites. There’s a Kiosk of the Month, Profiles in Kiosks, the A-Z of Kiosks and kiosk articles rated by popularity.
The two favorites are K6 and K2, both designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) who also designed the Liverpool Cathedral, the Battersea power station (an iconic London landmark, now decommissioned and remade into fru-fru apartments) and Bankside power station (now the Tate Modern).
You’ll recognize the K6. It is THE red phone box. The domed roof is thought to have been modeled on the tomb of Sir John Soane in St Pancras Old Church.
Would I shit you? I would not.
Do have a browse. The site covers all of them — the tardis police box, AA sentry boxes (that’s Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous) and phone boxes from K1 (beige and cast cement) to the Poof with the Pipe (KX100).
That’ll give you something to think about for a while. Good weekend, y’all!
May 1, 2015 — 3:16 pm
Comments: 13
phox phacts
This adorable little babby fox cub wandered into a beauty salon in Tunbridge Wells this week and hid behind a filing cabinet. Mama couldn’t be found and the ickle one was far too little to make it on his own. But the RSPCA took him and will raise and release him.
D’awww, amirite?
But then there was this story. Did you see the one about the Russian scientist who likes to wander around Chernobyl?
Brave woman, interesting story. Worth a read.
At the very end, there’s a video that shows her hiding in her car in terror of what looks like a perfectly healthy, strangely friendly fox in the woods. That’s worth a watch, too.
She explains in the video that friendliness and fearlessness has been found, in foxes at least, to be an early symptom of rabies. Which makes a horrible sense, when you think about it.
Great. Now I’ll never dare to be St Francis.
April 30, 2015 — 10:05 pm
Comments: 8
Toilet paper, bro? Really?
If I’m going to give the authorities a clear photo of me participating in a massive riot, I’m going to want to get an Xbox or a flat screen TV out of it. What say, Baltimore?
Pringles and sweet tea? Doritos? Diapers? Toilet paper? What is that, boxes of YooHoo? Six packs of cigarettes?
Okay, to be fair, cigarettes are pretty expensive.
They all look so happy, though, don’t they?
April 28, 2015 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 25
Chicken update
Nothing going on today, so I might as well give you a chicken update. Been a while.
I lost this girl for an hour today. Beautiful Vita. Beautiful, sweet, shy Vita. Beautiful, sweet, shy, stupid Vita. My heart goes out to this bird.
The other girls still pick on her. Not as bad as when Lucia ruled the garden with an iron beak, but after the untimely death of Maggie and Coco, Vita is back at the very bottom of the pecking order. She regularly gets her neck feathers yanked and a sharp peck about her person.
When she went missing, I wasn’t too unduly worried. She sometimes wanders off by herself and has a solitary dustbath on her ownsome. She looks so blissful all by herself in the sun. I eventually found her ’round the back of the house standing on a chair in a sort of chicken trance. I’d like to make it up to her with special favors and treats, but she’s scareder of me than she is the other chickens.
They’ve only just started laying again — yesterday was my first three-egg day of the season. They’re probably enough to keep me in eggs, bless ’em, but I can’t help thinking three isn’t much of a flock.
April 27, 2015 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 8
Is this happening in the States, too?
I ordered something from Amazon — a knapsack, to be specific. My shoulderbag gets heavier by the day and it’s making me list to port. As usual from Amazon, my order was dispatched within a day.
Then I waited and waited and waited and it didn’t show. So I check the order, got the tracking number and…if you haven’t figured it out, SFC stands for “Send From China.”
Increasingly, our goods from Amazon and eBay are being sent directly from China. Sometimes they tell you up front, sometimes they don’t (I think eBay always says where the goods are located). The economics of this are interesting.
Sometimes my only clue is the product seems unusually inexpensive for what it is. Even the postage is often cheap or free!
I’m conflicted about this. I don’t really like cutting out the middleman when the middleman is my neighbor. On the other hand, I don’t feel like handing him money for being my neighbor. The goods are coming from China anyway…what exactly is the benefit…?
So far, I’ve been happy with everything I’ve gotten directly in this way. Good quality stuff, cheap. No customer service issues. And it takes longer, but rarely more than a week longer than locally warehoused goods.
Does this happen where you are? How do you feel about it? Oh, and — good weekend!
April 24, 2015 — 8:31 pm
Comments: 24
Bad day at the office
AND he came in second.
So jockeys don’t wear underpants, huh? Must be a weight thing. That view could easily have turned a lot more interesting.
Happy St George’s Day. It seems England doesn’t celebrate it any more. But we got a Google doodle, which is nice.
April 23, 2015 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 14
Absolutely haram
Found this in a search of old novelty postcards. Abdul Hamid (1725–1789), Wikipedia tells me, was the 27th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He was very devout and something of an Islamic saint.
And this is an old postcard of him composed entirely of half-naked ladies.
It’s like, weren’t we better off when nobody gave a shit what blasphemy people got up to halfway around the world?
Sincerely,
Weasel
April 22, 2015 — 9:36 pm
Comments: 15
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos
It’s great fun watching Hillary! try to pass, isn’t it? She’s uploaded HumanBeing 2.0, but she hasn’t worked all the bugs out yet.
Kang and Kodos, ladies and gents — my favorite cartoon political metaphor. Sure, bigger and in color.
April 21, 2015 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 5