Christmas Eve Eve
Holy shit, it’s like the apocalypse out there. Yes, we’re on the southern coast, in the 85mph band. It’s rubbish night, but I don’t dare put anything out. I’m amazed we have power. It might not last.
By the way, our little corner of England always gets lumped in with London. As you can imagine, the doings of London always bigfoot all over our local news.
Yes, somebody had Kalashnikov. Sam Paris had him. So there will be a holiday Dead Pool on Friday, if y’all are over your festivities by then.
Expect posting to be light and lame for the holidays, until I sober up. I make that February or so.
December 23, 2013 — 8:25 pm
Comments: 21
Lookit the size of him!
Fuck politics, it’s Christmas.
I’d hoped to have an adorable picture of Jack climbing the Christmas tree, or eating tinsel, or whathaveyou, but he is *completely* unimpressed with said tree. Even though it’s a lovely smelly one. So here he is on the roof. Again.
He’s getting a little heavy and slide-y for this lark.
Right. Back here. Tomorrow. 6pm WBT. Dead Pool Round 56!
Because nothin’ says “happy holidays!” like betting on the death of celebrities.
December 19, 2013 — 11:43 pm
Comments: 20
Just flat-out busted it
This is for real. This really happened. This is not a parody. This thing was tweeted yesterday by Barack Obama’s official Twitter account, appearing under his own name.
See, this is what happens when your communications team is so politically correct, nobody’s willing to tell the designer, “dude, that is the gayest thing I have ever seen.”
Bonus! If you visit barackobama.com/talk, you can find handy instructions for making yourself an insufferable prick over the holidays!
December 18, 2013 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 34
I hereby declare de holidays be on
How much is a bottle of Jack where you are? I picked up one for £15 today — about $22.50 — which is pretty good for here. That’s 70cl. A fifth is about 75 cl. Do they still sell liquor by the fifth in the US or have they given in to international peer pressure?
I grew up about an hour from where they distill Jack and it’s always a taste of home. My favorite was green label, which was almost impossible to find outside Tennessee. When the distillery guys tasted a year’s batch, the stuff that wasn’t up to snuff got sold off in a bottle identical to Jack Black, but in dark green. It was harsh as shit, but cheap and plentiful and I loved it. The folks back home tell me they don’t sell it any more.
Boo. I wonder where it goes now.
Anyway, I think this is the first time I’ve bought a bottle of Jack in the UK. There are so many fantastic whiskies on offer, as you might imagine, it didn’t seem terribly pointful. But, here goes — let the Crimbo festivities begin!
December 17, 2013 — 12:18 am
Comments: 51
Weekend public domain book thread…?
So, here’s a British classic that was new to me: Jock of the Bushveld. Dog adventure story, like Call of the Wild or White Fang. But in Africa. And nonfiction.
Wow. Very entertain. Much enjoy.
The links above go to Project Gutenberg. I don’t know when they started this, but they now offer Kindle editions, cleanly formatted, often with illustrations. Man, that opens up a whole lotta excellent free content for the ol’ reading device. And the holidays coming up (or as I think of Christmas, the Time of Reading).
So, anything in the out-of-copyright bin you’d recommend?
Here, I’ll go. In the fine old tradition of ghost stories for Christmas, how about some M.R. James? Or Algernon Blackwood?
The neighbor who recommended Jock of the Bushveld also loaned me a couple of nice old illustrated hardbacks by Ernest Thompson Seton, another adventurer and naturalist and sometime illustrator of the era (and early patron of the Boy Scouts). He — my neighbor — eagerly told me, “I have two thousand books in my library.”
Ah. Good. Ummmm…good weekend, all!
December 14, 2013 — 12:44 am
Comments: 55
Goddlemitey, how dumb are these guys?
So, Barack Obama tweeted this today.
Aw, lookit him, holding his pushy little message standing all Richie Rich in front of a giant gilt-framed oil painting and gold candlesticks with that huge shit-eating grin on his face.
Here’s a big blank copy for you to play with, if you have a mind.
December 12, 2013 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 24
Oh, man, Michelle looks *pissed*
Look at these guys. Look at ’em!
Cameron, Helle Thorning-Schmidt (Prime Minister of Denmark) and Obama, grinning like frat boys at Mandela’s funeral and popping off a selfie. I suspect these guys are going to regret this snippet of bad optics going down in history.
Amateurs. Remember when a camera caught Clinton laughing as he came out of Ron Brown’s funeral, and he immediately made a boo-hoo face and wiped away a tear? That’s how you politick, gentlemen. (Bonus: that YouTube describes a paranoid theory of Ron Brown’s death I’d totally forgotten).
Embarrassing — my source for this image is Imgur — where it’s been posted, like, fifty times today. Imgur: the biggest little time suck on the internet (if you’re a lookin’-at-the-pictures kindofa weasel).
December 10, 2013 — 6:29 pm
Comments: 33
He came amongst us
So, could anybody stomach the MSNBC interview of Obama? Not me, but I got hung up on the HotAir headline (quoting Matthews): “He came to us. He came amongst us.”
Ick factor: off the scale.
We’re in one of those news cycles when my liver just can’t handle the news cycle. I scan portals, find articles about the news (articles with a soothing, congenial viewpoint), and learn what I know about what’s going on at one safe remove. Slashing at Medusa through a mirror.
Ace’s MacGuffin article nailed the general aura of unreality around the Obama Cult in general (and the Matthews interview in particular) best of all. I know most of you guys are regular Ace readers, but in case you ain’t.
December 9, 2013 — 11:23 pm
Comments: 19
So close…
I’ve been playing Mad Jack Keepaway all evening, so no good content from me tonight. That boy is a nutcase.
But have a gander at this. Charlotte is a jealous goddess, so this represents real progress.
We went from: aware he exists, refuses to come in the house. To: aware he is in the house, runs as fast as possible from food bowl to front door and screams to go out. To: aware he is in the house, can curl up and sleep quite happily in the same room unless he hoves in sight, then much hissing and yowling. To: sleeps in the room with him quite happily, hisses and bops him one if he gets too close.
Sooner or later, they WILL curl up together, because cats are heat-seeking missiles, and other cats are soft and warm.
December 4, 2013 — 11:58 pm
Comments: 9
England stuffs
This style of roof is known as a “cat slide”. Okay, I think technically a cat slide is lower on one side and ours is symmetrical, but boy howdy — that cat sure slides purty on it. Go on, you know you want him big and in color.
On Saturday morning, we woke up to the hunt. Well, I didn’t. I slept right through it. But the hunt swept through the neighborhood.
I’m a little disappointed that nobody told us in advance. It’s a trust issue. Fox hunting is still hugely controversial here.
The people agin’ it say it’s impossibly, unnecessarily cruel to the foxes. And destructive of property. And illegal.
The people for it say foxes are vermin, country people have been dealing with them this way for hundreds of years and — Jesus Christ, mind your own business.
I have neighbors on both sides of the argument (though mostly pro-hunt, I suspect). I’m deeply ambivalent about it, but I have decided I don’t have to have an opinion on every little issue. I think this is proper foreigner attitude.
They keep the hunt secret as best they can to avoid protesters (though apparently there were a few), but I would have appreciated a heads up. I’m told when their blood is up, a pack of dogs has been known to sheer off from the main group and kill cats. And chickens. (Yeah, ouch, there’s that ambivalent thing again).
They scared up seven foxes this time, so I heard. They didn’t get them all, though. I sat outside with Jack last night (I have to run him around every few hours to work the satan out of him), and there was one screaming loud ol’ fox in the field next door.
It sounded like somebody was skinning a live swan.
December 3, 2013 — 10:25 pm
Comments: 26