Angry ape face
No, no…it’s not Hillary again. Just working on my portfolio today.
This is my glamor shot.
March 24, 2014 — 11:52 pm
Comments: 17
Holy stinky barrels of Medieval Danish shit!
Doing a big urban archeological dig in Copenhagen, when they turned up these priceless artifacts. Yes, those are huge barrels of 14th Century human shit. And yes, apparently they do still stink.
Before they were used as latrines, they were used for storing other things, so archeologists hope to learn a lot from those barrels. Some very unlucky undergraduate is going to have a memorable job prepping them for inspection, I tell you what.
We went to a lecture the other night on the vanishing trades of Kent and Sussex (segue: barrel making). Most of them involve wood. This is the woodiest part of England and trees have been grown very much as a renewable resource here for millenia. Harvested, mostly, by pollarding and coppicing.
The problem with wooden wheel making, basket weaving, barrel making and the like — they’re hard to master, incredibly physical, and nobody in his right mind would pay a living wage to a smart guy for hand weaving a freaking basket. So a lot of that is inevitably going to be lost.
Which is a pity. Fun fact: a tree that is pollarded once and then left to go natural will live another hundred years, or two. A tree that is continually pollarded at regular intervals is effectively immortal. There are trees in this county that have been perpetually harvested that are reckoned to be several thousand old. Think on that.
Right! Tomorrow, 6pm WBT, Dead Pool Round 61. Fred Phelps didn’t make it to the next round. His last act on earth was to deprive poor StPatrick_TN of a dick. Asshole ’til the end.
March 20, 2014 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 16
In otter news tonight
These two adorable behbehs became orphlings when construction workers scared off their mom. They’re in care and doing fine a long way from here; I just wanted to run the picture.
Had coffee with the neighbors this morning. We’ve been told there’s an otter in the neighborhood.
We know there’s a mink in the ditch by the church. Mink are serious pests here. They’re not native and they’re madly aggressive. They’re all over the countryside because hippies released them from fur farms, and they’re endangering many local species. (Honestly, the ecological disasters we can trace to people who claim to care most about the environment…).
But, no. Mink apparently undulate up and down when they swim. This thing was about three times bigger and undulated side to side. So. Not the usual thing.
One of my neighbors lost two young chickens she had nursed through the Winter (they were born late in the season last year). A great big dog fox tore off the side of her shed and got at ’em. It was a new shed, too.
The people on the corner had to have their dog put down. It got out one night and was worrying sheep (a serious offense here) and when his master went to collect him, he went for his master. Dude had to fend it off with a flashlight. At this point in the story, somebody says shar pei, and everyone else nods sagely. I wouldn’t know a shar pei from a Sharpie.
And I asked a sheep farmer about Jack leading the ewe parade, and he said he wasn’t a bit surprised. Sheep are very curious, he said, and will check out anything unfamiliar in their enclosure.
And that’s it for the Farm Report this evening…
March 19, 2014 — 11:01 pm
Comments: 18
Leader of the band
They’ve put ewes in the little field in front of the house, for lambing time is upon us. Which is nice. Today, I looked up to see the whole flock walking toward me. That’s an odd thing — sheep are shy of people. Particularly strangers. Particularly in strange places. Particularly at lambing time.
And then I spotted Jack, leading the parade. It was the oddest sight. The sheep weren’t trotting; they weren’t running him off. The were slowly walking, converging on him, like they were curious. And he was sashaying in front, calmly, waving his wild tail, not looking back, like he couldn’t give a ripe fuck.
He’s going to be trouble, this one. He’s had his first night out, and his first day outside while we ran errands. Last week, a cab driver spotted him sunning himself in the middle of the road and carried him to the nearest house. That would be our neighbor next door, who said he not only waltzes into her house like he owns the place, he wanders in and out of the house next door to her.
I tried to make the appointment for the ol’ snip snip, but ran into scheduling problems. I don’t imagine it’ll slow him down much.
March 18, 2014 — 10:08 pm
Comments: 18
The news makes me feel like I been takin’ crazy pills
Hey, we recycle in this household, pal!
I’m calling the Dead Pool for Carl. Chicken Farmer picked Tony Benn first, but it was his second pick so it doesn’t count. So sorry, Chicken Farmer — I’d love to give a dick to another chookophile, but rules is rules.
This is Carl’s second win, but he has yet to claim his first dick. If you step forward, C, you get *2* dicks. And also maybe me turning up some day asking to sleep on your sofa.
Your call.
March 17, 2014 — 10:28 pm
Comments: 18
Hillary 2016, take two
Right. Here she is in color. For better or worse, I ditched the witch theme and went with a more straight-ahead glamor shot (stop sniggering in the back there). I wasn’t sure I could pull off all that lightning and shit in color. Color gives me hives.
Also, Hillary 2016. If I keep saying that, I might float a leeetle bit higher in the Google search results.
I haven’t put this on any merchandise or anything. I figured I’d get some feedback first. If you want this one (or the black and white witchy one) to print out yourself, drop me a line and I’ll email it to you nice and big. Hillary 2016.
Oh, wallpaper! I could make you a wallpaper, if you want to annoy co-workers. Give me your screen dimensions and preferred background color and I’ll make it happen. Hillary 2016.
And if any of youse just followed a link here and don’t know me, I’m a woman of fifty-something. The way the identity politics shuffle goes, that means I’m allowed to make fun of other wrinkly old broads. Though I’ll feel pretty shitty if she drops dead of an aneurysm or something. Hillary 2016.
Or I won’t. No, thinking about it, I won’t. This is a woman who has spent her whole life thinking the world would be a better place if she stuck her nose in every little aspect of my life. To hell with that. Hillary 2016.
Good weekend, everybody! Hillary 2016!
Update: okay, let’s see, so far I got buttons, stickers, greeting cards, coffee mugs, t-shirts and playing cards (oh, that last one was just too silly to pass up). What I really want are postcards and posters, but Zazzle is being a little bitch about page orientation, so I’ll figure that out over the weekend. Don’t buy anything for my sake (I only get a pittance in royalties) — buy something to make your sister-in-law weep bitter tears.
Update: okay, posters (cheap as I could, but they’re still kind of pricey) and postcards (yeah, they’re displayed sideways. Stupid Zazzle). The postcards are cheap, at least, and can be sent anonymously.
March 14, 2014 — 6:12 pm
Comments: 50
Weasels in the mist
I haven’t talked about the weather for a while, because I know a lot of you are still socked in with Winter and…well…no beating about the bush, we’ve had a sunny few days here. When it’s nice in England, it’s first-lovely-warm-day-in-Spring nice. It can be 72, sunny with a cool breeze for months on end, when we get lucky.
But we paid for it today. When the sea is cold and the sun is hot, we can get a weather phenomenon southerners call a sea fog or sea fret. Northerners call it a haar — or har, hare, harl, harr or hoar. It’s where we get the term hoar frost (the fog that freezes and sticks to things).
A sea fret is awesome to watch, because it’s dramatic and sudden. It’s a dense fog with a highly perceptible edge. It comes galloping in from the Channel, drops temps twenty degrees and reduces visibility to sweet fuck-all.
We drove into the one today. Clear one minute, whooff the next. Not the densest fog I’ve ever been in (that would be a cloud I drove into on Grandfather Mountain once), but it was pretty spooky.
I gather most of England got this one.
March 13, 2014 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 8
I am too a special snowflake
One of the art bloggers I read is having a bit of a hissy about negative criticism from commenters (not going to link — blog feuds are the lowest form of traffic whoring). Made me think for the umpty-umpth time about how big the internet is. And how, on the one hand, it allows any old Joe Schmoe to show his wares to the world. On the other, it allows any old Joe Schmoe to find your stuff and inform you that it sux dix.
Even harder to take, though — it puts you in direct competition with, like, the whole world. If you’re a one in a million talent, there are still thousands of others in your league. I don’t care how good you are — If you don’t find trawling the internet humbling, you don’t go to enough places.
Long ago on the header of Christopher Taylor’s blog, he said there were 90 million blogs on the ‘net. I don’t know where he got that number, but I suspect it got away from him pretty quick (like McDonald’s — remember when the signs bragged about the actual number of millions of burgers sold? Eventually, they gave up and put “metric asswad burgers sold”). That was a pretty daunting competition then, whatever it is now.
I got curious about the current number of connected world citizens, but I’m not good at math (I think “umpty-umpth” and “metric asswad” are actual mathematical concepts). So check me here. Wikipedia says the world population is 7.1 billion of which 61% are not using the internet. So, that means 39% are using the internet, and 39% of 7.1 billion is…2.77 billions, yes? Which looks like 2,770,000,000 writ out with all them zeroes, yes? And if you’re a picture blog, you’re pretty much accessible to all of them, regardless of language.
I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty easy to find people who don’t like your stuff.
March 12, 2014 — 11:45 pm
Comments: 20
It’s time
The time has come. It’s time we return to an America where politicians have facial hair (and that’s not another dig at Hillary, who I’m sure has plenty).
I don’t really know enough of about Ted Cruz yet, to be honest. I just know he’s the orneriest cuss in politics at the moment and — whether it’s a posture or not — that’s just what I want to see. Somebody to upset a few apple carts.
That girlie mouth bothers me, though.
March 11, 2014 — 11:18 pm
Comments: 14
And your little dog, too!
I made Hillary a 2016 campaign poster, but it’s too big for my blog so I’ma make you click to see it.
I showed Uncle B while I was working on it and he said, “she’ll sue.” And I said, “she ought to sue — that’s just wrong.”
To be honest, if Hillary was that badass, I’d probably vote for her. Have you seen pics of her lately? She looks old, old, old. Older than her 66 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t drop out after all.
UPDATE: ZOMG, Aceolanche! Bless your little cotton socks, Dave. If ya’ll kindly check back tomorrow, I’m working on a color version. It’s a little different from the black and white. I’ll probably put it on some stuff to sell, but I’ll also offer free versions of both the color and grayscale posters, if you’d like to print some out yourself.
March 10, 2014 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 39