Cupcakes for Jesus
So endeth a week of short posts. The church fête is this weekend, so we’re baking Cupcakes for Jesus tonight.
We bring cupcakes by tradition (Uncle B does the actual baking, and I assist by washing things and fetching things and reading him the recipe wrong). By tradition, we finish them at two in the morning, rather the worse for strong drink. And, also by tradition, I chuck way too much red food coloring into the frosting, turning the end result a toxic pink that adults won’t touch.
This year, it looks like we’ll be finishing fairly sober and not long after midnight — so yay! I still spilled too much coloring in the frosting, though. Tradition!
Good weekend, all.
July 5, 2013 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 16
Happy Fourth!
We had a cookout! I drank wine! G’night!
July 4, 2013 — 8:45 pm
Comments: 21
I’m a pepper, you’re a pepper, she’s a pepper…
I’ve totally forgotten who suggested putting this on a shirt, so you, sir or madam, are off the hook. What the hell, it was a good idea.
Only, holy shit, I haven’t checked in with Zazzle for a while — they’ve done a redesign. Which effed up my customizations and makes my store look stupid. Also — damn, have their prices gone up. I have it set for the lowest allowed royalty and everything is still a freaking fortune.
Anyway, here it is on a shirt, a sticker and a coffee mug. As usual, if I put it on a shirt, you can move it to any other shirt they sell (any style or color. May I suggest a hoodie?). Same deal with the coffee mug.
If you order before the end of the day tomorrow, the code 4THOFJULYDAY will get you 17.76% off. Still too way fucking expensive, IMO. I’m going to have to think about this.
Ah, a point of grammar. I realize it’s probably improper Ebonics to put a hyphen in “creepy-ass” but I didn’t want anyone to think I was a creepy ass-cracker. That just wouldn’t do.
July 3, 2013 — 9:29 pm
Comments: 26
Miracles of modern technology
This is geeeeenius. I give you, as it is known in scientific circles, the 360 End™ beverage can technology. The whole top of the can pulls off, turning it into a glass.
*swoon* thump
First brewery to adopt it is Sly Fox (never hoid of ’em).
SCIENCE!
July 2, 2013 — 9:54 pm
Comments: 30
Sure, I’ll stick a fork in that socket
Awww, look at the adorable baby chickens! Now let’s talk about Paula Deen. I thought I’d share my specialist knowledge of the use of the n-word in the 1960s South. Because that would be a real dumb thing to do, and I’m kind of stupid.
When I was a kid, you would never, ever, EVER use That Word to a black person’s face. Just not something a respectable person would do. Talking to a white person, you might use The Word, but it would be regarded as pretty strong language. One never used The Word lightly in describing an actual person.
But as a general descriptor, The Word was ubiquitous. It was attached to black neighborhoods, soul food, loud colors and dogs of indeterminate breed. It still hung around in songs and rhymes. There was a hill in the town I grew up that had been called That Word Hill (by persons of all colors) for so long, it’s probably on the maps like that. I was in my teens before I heard a brazil nut called a brazil nut.
So Paula Deen, who is ten years and more older than I am, may have thought it was pointless to deny she had ever used The Word, without realizing how far the earth had shifted since she learned the rules. So, a pity post. I dread the day I look down at the earth under my feet and don’t recognize the terrain.
Now, I feel pretty silly having written this whole post without ever using the word in question. My mother taught me not to invest more power in the plain syllables of particular words than in the ideas they represent. But, hey, when the world has gone a little crazy on a topic, best don’t poke it with a stick.
The chickens? They play outside in the sunshine all day, and at night I bring them in to sleep in a cat carrier on my desk (and occasionally flutter around, strut about the desktop and perch on my shoulder). They’re so little, and it’s been so cold. Today, I thought it was warm enough and they were old enough to sleep in their box in an enclosure for the first time, so they could run around at first light.
Then, as it got darker, a sad, frightened peeping came from the run. So, ummm…one more night won’t hurt anything.
July 1, 2013 — 10:38 pm
Comments: 41
Lookit me! I’m a tree!
This is how I know it’s Chicken Bedtime: when they fly up and settle on my shoulder. It’s not because they love me, it’s because they are roosting birds and I’m the next best thing to a tree.
And no, thanks for asking, they don’t have little chickeny accidents very often. Let them hop down onto my keyboard and they let fly the chicken plop, but they haven’t decorated my shirt yet. They’re ladies.
I was going to go with Rachel Jeantel and her apologists tonight, but then I thought, “it’s the weekend. I don’t feel like having a conversation about race. Chikkens!!!”
And for the record, I’m pretty sure Nelson Mandela has snuffed it and they’re keeping his chest going up and down until Obama is ready to enter stage left, but I won’t call the Dead Pool until the official announcement. It is The Law. It’s okay; gulliblepratt’s dick is surely safe for a few more days.
Have a good weekend!
June 28, 2013 — 10:56 pm
Comments: 25
Chilly in here
I got that email from LinkedIn again today. You know, that monthly “people you may know” email.
I signed up for LinkedIn when it was pretty new and felt obligatory. And perfunctory. Honestly, to this day, I have no idea what you’re supposed to DO with it. The last time I signed in was maybe…seven, eight years ago? I was a whole ‘nother person then, profile-wise.
So. Thing is, that “people you may know” email is always people I *do* know. And people LinkedIn has no business knowing that I know. Okay, one is a former boss at my corporate gig in the States. But the rest? No idea.
They keep recommending Uncle B to me, for example. There is no business based reason they would connect his name to mine. I’m cautious about real names and the internet. Maybe they…bought some data off FaceBook? It’s the only place I can think of that his name and mine appear together.
One recommendation is — I suspect, from the name — the granddaughter of a close friend of my parents. From, like, forty years ago. LinkedIn makes similar astonishing connections for Uncle B, too — and he keeps a WAY lower internet profile than me (deletes his cookies several times a day, he just told me. Imagine!).
So if a useless Web app like LinkedIn can scratch up enough data to make such obscure connections, what can a powerful data mining operation do? What would happen if somebody mashed together your supermarket loyalty card data and your medical history? What if somebody had all of it — credit cards, bank statements, social media, phone records, the lot — the hardware to store it and the software to sift through it?
I’m just a nobody. No reason anybody would be interested in anything I’m up to. Until and unless I tried to do something interesting, like run for office.
I read too much science fiction as a kid. This stuff is scaring me juiceless.
June 27, 2013 — 11:40 pm
Comments: 31
Ooo! Buy me it, please
This beautiful object is described as “Antique Taxidermy Weasel Stoat with Tiny Saint’s Crown Perched on a Golden Branch Cabinet of Curiosities Wunderkammer.” For sale on Etsy in Spain for a mere £117.59 (that’s $176.38 of your yankee dollars). Be sure to hit the link and check out the side view. Stoatily majestic!
Yeah, you know how I got there. I got there through a Google images search for “snarling weasel.” But, to be honest, my heart isn’t in it tonight. Oh, I’m cranky enough, I just don’t have anything original to add.
It’s not so much gay marriage per se, it’s this observation of Ace’s (and Allahpundit’s): by this ruling, the court has invalidated the whole idea of the state referendum. They can’t have meant to do that, can they?
The arrogance and detachment of our masters is on par with royalty of old. Then it was all, “clearly God wanted me to rule men, or I would not have been born a lord. Plus, look at all this gold and this big house and shit!”
Now it’s “I went to the right schools, I learned the creed, I smooched the proper asses, I crawled up the greasy pole and so have clearly proved my right to tell lesser men what to do.” If I said the Tree of Liberty was looking a little droopy these days, I’d probably call down the NSA on my ass, wouldn’t I?
Hmmm. You know, every time I look into that sweet weasel’s face I hear Peter Lorre laughing.
June 26, 2013 — 11:05 pm
Comments: 34
And this fabulous can of soup
We went to a church flower festival this weekend, one of England’s zanier natural disasters. How it works is, they pick a theme for the festival, and a dozen or so people make flower arrangements and little tableaux on the subject and scatter them around the church. There’s usually a helpful program.
That doesn’t sound weird? Well, this is how it usually ends up: say the theme is “summer activities”, you’re going to find a vase of zinnias and a grubby sneaker in the pulpit. And a bowl of badminton shuttlecocks with petunia in the baptismal font. (Hello? Salvador Dali called: he’s a lit-tle creeped out and he’d like a ride home now, please).
There’s usually refreshments and some stalls and other fundraising things outside, in aid of the church building. Bits of this church are 900 years old. It has clearly been extensively renovated many times over the centuries. There’s a sign on the tipjar by the door that says it costs £100 a day to keep the building together.
And that’s the thing. This is a little community to pony up a hundred smackers a day. And, without breaking a sweat, I can think of a dozen villages around me with small populations and beautiful ancient churches to keep afloat.
The big ‘C’ Church helps with the costs, of course, and there are various architectural grants and things. But these great old buildings are mostly kept alive by locals. I don’t know if it’s a Christian thing, this bedrock devotion to the church building. I suspect not. It’s very powerful, though.
Oh, I won that can of soup in the raffle. Only cost me a pound in tickets. I like to imagine some nice old English lady shrieking, “oh my lord — the flower festival is today! Quick, go into the kitchen and grab something. Anything!”
June 25, 2013 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 22
Yup, pretty much what I thought would happen…
Did you see the Drudge link to the Mail yesterday, the guy who tried to pay the property taxes on an old Oddfellows Hall by selling the coffin (and bonus enclosed skeleton) he found in the basement? And now the police are all after him because that shit’s illegal?
There but for the grace of God, ladies and gentlemen, go I. The seller, not the skeleton. Well either, I guess.
When I was in art school, my roommate and I were browsing our favorite junk shop when we overheard the owner talking to his brother about the skeletons they had just moved into the basement. And my roomie, who was a certifiable dangerous crazy person, hissed at me that we must have one. Because art school.
They were cagey as hell about it, but we were regular customers and we finally talked our way into the basement. It was stacked with coffins. I don’t know how many in total. I’d pulled an all-nighter finishing a project and it’s all a bit hazy. Anyway, three stacks of four I remember for sure, because the guys were shuffling them around to look inside.
One of the skeletons was papier-mâché, the rest were real. Several were children. The coffins were all different kinds. They were clearly very old (late 19th, early 20th maybe). We were told they had come out of an Oddfellows Hall, where they had played a part in some ritual (this is repeated in the Mail story).
Anyway, we picked the best skeleton (he had all his teeth) in a not very nice felt-covered coffin and paid $125 for it. I kept the receipt for years (“1 body in box”). We called him Uncle Wallace. I got stuck with him after school, of course, and dragged him around several apartments, still in his box. That was fun, said nobody.
At some point became aware that that shit’s illegal, but I didn’t know quite how to get out from under. I couldn’t imagine a scenario that didn’t ultimately lead to me and a big serious policeman in a little cement block interrogation room. I sweat bullets over that thing.
In the end, I…gave it to some guy. A long, long time ago. I don’t think I want to be any more specific than that. That article made my hands go clammy.
June 24, 2013 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 21