Important public service announcement
We’ve just started watching Season Four of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s cleverly titled sketch comedy program Harry and Paul, which is very good. And, ummm…you probably can’t get it. So by way of apology, please accept this YouTube of my all-time favorite Enfield short (from a previous series): Women, Know Your Limits!
I laughed until kittens came out of my nose.
You can watch other videos from that series (Harry Enfield and Chums from the Nineties) on its own YouTube channel (and if you click around from there, you can spend a whole evening sampling the Beeb). Oh, and check out Armstrong and Miller — another good sketch comedy program coming out of the UK.
Anybody doing sketch comedy in the States any more?
November 26, 2012 — 11:29 pm
Comments: 18
Toys have changed a lot since my day
Okay, boys ‘n’ girls…are you ready for something more than a little scary to head into the weekend? Click here to see this action figure in full.
Aiiiiii!
Welcome to the world of collectible high-detail Japanese bishoujo figure sculptures. Hand painted and not cheap. This one will set you back ¥9,333, or about $110. Have a look around; they have a lot on offer.
Ha! Ha! I’m pretty sure just clicking that link put you on Interpol’s special perv list. Bishoujo is Japanese for jail bait.
Though this girl has clearly hit puberty. Or been hit by it. Really hard. Oh, did I mention the costume comes off?
Have a good weekend, my special pervs!
November 23, 2012 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 42
The ghost of Thanksgiving past
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorites. Nobody ever believed me when I said it, because I seldom went home for the day and spent nearly all of my Turkey Days all by myself. It’s supposed to be a family holiday, after all.
But what’s not to love? You close your eyes and think to yourself actually, come to think of it, I have a pretty sweet deal — that mental exercise is good for the soul, or the id, or whatever meat gizmo drives the self, I do firmly believe — and then you gorge yourself into a coma. I have never missed observing Thanksgiving with all my heart. w00t!
It is also overlaid with a personal meaning — I arrived in Britain permanently on a Thanksgiving Day. I count the holiday as my Brittaversary, rather than the date. Four years, if you can believe it. Stranger in a strange land.
And now, yet another layer of meaning, as we attended the funeral of a neighbor this afternoon, a great and mighty sheep farmer in our little community. It was a sunny and very windy day, and we stood outside with a crowd (our local church is small and he was a popular man) getting blown around like flags. They carried in his coffin draped in a whole woolly fleece.
And then Uncle B had to go up to London and won’t be back until late. So here I am, like a Thanksgiving of yore, full up on my solitary feast and dozing in front of my Tudor fire while the wind howls away outside. A strange day, but on the whole, you know, I have a pretty sweet deal.
November 22, 2012 — 11:00 pm
Comments: 25
Mmmm-mmmm…! Pudendalicious!
I love Parkerhouse rolls. You know, the cheap brown ‘n’ serve ones you buy in the supermarket. My mother called them “gluey rolls” because duh…but me, I could never get enough of them. It isn’t a holiday without rolls.
So one day, I got the most awful craving for gluey rolls. Out of the blue. I was about fifteen. We lived in the ass-end of nowhere and the nearest store was miles away, so I got my mother to help me make a batch of standard white dinner rolls.
I did the work while she kept a supervisory eye on me. Then, right at the end, before the last rise, she took a pastry scraper and made an indentation in the middle of each one, so they wouldn’t be too thick and bready.
But after she shaped them, she looked at the rolls, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and I looked at the rolls, and we looked at each other looking at the rolls, and the rolls looked like…eh, well you can see what the rolls looked like.
And forever after, homemade gluey rolls were known as pussy rolls in my family.
So, I have just made the most hellacious batch of pussy rolls for tomorrow (make them up a day ahead, leave them on the counter overnight wrapped in aluminum foil, then heat them in the foil for about twenty minutes. Good as new, and one less job on the day). It is officially Thanksgiving eve!
I’m going to have a slightly odd Turkey Day this year. I’ll blog about it tomorrow, if I’m spared — between hot buttered pussy rolls.
November 21, 2012 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 19
It’s…complicated
Okay, Americans — please back me up here. There are three kinds of potato, no? New potatoes, red potatoes and Idaho bakers. (I mean, not counting those blue things that’re supposed to be Quetzalcoatl eggs or something). Amirite?
Well. No. Geez, you would not beLEEEVE the potato drama that goes on here.
It’s not just that they recognize dozens of breeds of potato, they actually sell them in the store that way. Potatoes with names like Lady Christl, Rocket, International Kidney, Pentland Javelin, Duke of York, Charlotte, Piccolo Star, Maris Piper and Maris Peer. Dozens more. Don’t make me go look it up.
Oh, but there’s also the time of year they’re up: first early, second early, maincrop and second cropping (this is special late potato, for Christmas). Which I guess is mostly for people who want to grow their own, but this data intersects variety.
Oh, plus the place they were grown. Kent. Prince Edward Island. People can tell the difference.
People. Not me. Mash them up with butter, salt and pepper and, honestly — what’s the diff? Food is just too damn complicated here.
Don’t even get me started on the twenty varieties of sugar!
November 20, 2012 — 10:59 pm
Comments: 42
Monday, huh?
Feh. I got nothin’. Have a hug.
(Image nicked from the Anorak).
November 19, 2012 — 11:56 pm
Comments: 16
Life goes on getting worse
No Twinkies, no problem. Can’t abide a Sno-Ball. I can take or leave your Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. Donettes — nice, but expendable. Without Wonder Bread, you’ll just have to insult middle Americans via some other pale, bland, popular food product.
But, ohhhh. Oh, no. Please. By all that is wholesome and sweet and good, not Suzy Qs!!
So moist. So creamy. So delightfully artificial. I haven’t eaten a Suzy Q in thirty years, but how vividly I recall those slabs of devil’s food and creme melting to the shape of my tongue. It was the surpassing stoner gustatory experience.
Oh, Suzy Q! <sobs, wads fists>
November 16, 2012 — 10:36 pm
Comments: 58
Rats!
Ah. So that’s where the chicken feed is going.
Not one, not two, but three rats. Well, very big mice or very small rats.
There are paving slabs in the bottom of the chicken run, but these bastards are clever. They chew. They dig. And they can insinuate themselves through improbably tiny spaces. I think I know where they’re getting in this time, but I have to keep tiptoe-ing out to check. They’ve been known to attack and kill sleepy chickens, so this isn’t funny.
Also not funny: we’ve got one under the floorboards. This house is upwards of 400 years old; the walls and floors are like rodent superhighways and we’ve been listening to this little furheaded bastard run up and down the space between the livingroom and the bedroom for 24 hours now.
The Council rat man put lots of poison down a few years ago, but that’s just it. They never REALLY go outside to die, do they? No hope getting the floorboards up. They’re gigantic slabs of iron-hard ancient oak.
Last Christmas, Saint Nick brought us a world of stink. Directly under the bed, from what we could tell. We slept in a cloud of eau de Rat Zombie for weeks.
Oh, it’s all going to hell, I tell you.
November 15, 2012 — 11:54 pm
Comments: 45
Three mints in one!
Finally, a little wholesome red meat (with extra schadenfreude sauce!). You may be aware that the BBC (the EEEEEEVILLLLLL BBC) has had several (three, in fact) very nasty boo-boos lately. I will outline them briefly, and point you to further reading.
Jimmy Savile died a year ago. He had been a BBC presenter for decades. He was also, it turns out, a sexual monster, with a taste for children (and possibly worse things). It was not exactly secret. Six decades, 400 lines of inquiry, 300 potential victims, fourteen police forces. The BBC program Newsnight had an exposé set to run on the scandal last year, which was axed. Instead, they ran a Christmas tribute to Jimmy Savile!
And inside the BBC, who knew? Well, the words “paedophile ring” are being bandied about.
In the middle of this brouhaha, someone stepped forward claiming to have been abused by a very senior Tory; one of Maggie’s staunchest. The BBC was so delighted to push the narrative into this happy territory, they ran the story without any of the proper checks. Turns out, it was demonstrably false. Then the accuser said “my bad” and, libel laws being what they are in the UK, dropped the Beeb nose deep in the shit. This is the issue that’s caused all those resignations lately.
The third is my favorite, though, and you might not have seen it. About six years ago, the BBC assembled a blue ribbon panel of scientific experts — top. men. — who declared the science of Climate Change was so gosh-darned settled, it would be wrong to give equal time to skeptics any more. And so they didn’t (pff! like they ever had).
Skeptics, naturally, asked, “…and these experts are…?” Then the BBC spent several years and hundreds of thousands of pounds (successfully!) fighting a Freedom of Information action in court. To avoid revealing the names of their ultra-qualified, ever-so-impressive scientific team.
Then a blogger named Maurizio Morabito (blog: Omnologos) dug around and found the entire guest list online. Just sitting there. (Aside: I am convinced absolutely everything is online somewhere. Keep digging!).
Yup. It was exactly what you think. Greenpeace. Media people. Church of England types (!). Warmenist hacks, the lot. Oh, this one is fun. This is going to leave a mark.
Good blogs to follow on this: Omnologos, Bishop Hill, Autonomous Mind, Biased BBC, Tall Bloke. Good articles: Delingpole, Melanie Phillips, the Spectator.
Oh, and the kitten got better.
November 14, 2012 — 11:56 pm
Comments: 29
Mister Bubbles
Okay, okay…sorry about that post yesterday. Here’s an adorable kitten.
With a terminal heart condition.
Ha! Ha! Just kidding! His heart condition is totally treatable.
Only, his family doesn’t have the money to pay for the treatment, so they’ll have to choose between paying the vet and heating the house this Christmas.
Yeah, that’s right — if I’m going to feel like this, you are, too.
Wait, what? What do you mean you don’t have to come here??
November 13, 2012 — 10:04 pm
Comments: 47