Santa’s coming…
…and he looks hungry.
Ta da! After a couple of years of Zombie Santa Christmas cards, I decided to go with feral Santa this year. Obviously, it works better in color.
I’m not trying to sell you stuff. I’m just putting this link up here to get it into the search engines in plenty of time for Christmas.
I’d rather have you guys as readers and commenters than customers.
November 12, 2012 — 5:57 pm
Comments: 28
I promised you chickens
Here they are, the Four Chooks of the Apocalypse. Just tiptoed out and snapped this. As you can see, their feathers have all grown back in and they’re looking fit and ready for Winter.
Angry chicken has issues. Woe be unto anything that perches near her of an evening. I let her have a go at me, so the other chickens can settle in for the night unmolested. I don’t mean she gives me a good pecking; I mean she takes a big beakful of the tender webbing of my thumb and worries it like a terrier. Angry, angry chicken.
Shy chicken is shy among chickens but is the most aggressive with intruders. She’ll lunge at any cat that comes near — head down, butt in the air, wing feathers all spread out. She can make herself look as big as a turkey. The inside cat is terrified of her.
Crazy chicken just plain ain’t all there. She never walks anywhere. She zooms. She is scream-propelled. NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH flap-flap-flap-flap.
Bossy chicken is the Mary Poppins of chickens — practically perfect in every way. Everybody is terrified of bossy chicken. All Hail Bossy Chicken.
Now, me hearties, I have just learned that I must upgrade my Photoshop by December 31 or I fall off the upgrade ladder (I’m using CS3 and they’re up to CS6 now; that’s as far as they’ll stretch it). Two hundred pounds is a lot of money for me to scare up at Christmas time. That means I must make many lovely, cruel, jug-eared Obama ‘shops in the New Year (perhaps I’ll finally nail his likeness in his second term).
But for now, I need to go away until it scabs over a little. And by “go away” I mean post about chickens and recipes and the stupid things English people say. I shan’t be reading news and political blogs for a while (I don’t know who I hate reading more after a stinging defeat — our side or theirs). Feel free to talk about anything you like in the comments, though.
Have an awesome weekend!
November 9, 2012 — 2:29 pm
Comments: 60
One more thing…
Okay, I can’t stand it — one more politics post, then it’s chicken blogging for a month. I swears.
This is the first election in my life that has made absolutely no sense to me.
It’s not the losing. I’m used to losing. I lived in Rhode Island for thirty years — an experience that so warped my concept of democracy that voting, to me, is screwing up enthusiasm every two years to pull a lever for things that will inevitably be shot down 25/75. Losing I take in stride. Badge of honor. No big.
What’s throwing me about this election is that my judgment was so far out. I got all the signs and portents wrong.
We owned the enthusiasm gap. We had, for the first time going into a presidential election, more registered R than registered D. We were easily walking the bumpersticker and yard sign wars. Our guy was happy, their guy was cranky. Our crowds were growing, theirs were shrinking. The issues were all breaking our way (epically lousy economy…erupting Middle East). We had an attractive candidate with, for once, the perfect skill set for the problems at hand.
And you’re telling me every single one of the Republican issues went down in flames? Alan West? Mia Love? Gay marriage? Legalized marijuana? Everything?
The historical 2010 midterm Spanking of the Dems made perfect and absolute sense. And then the electorate swung hugely to the Democrat side in the two years since? Why?
So. One of two things happened.
Either vote fraud is so deep and wide that it’s bigger than any other election factor (sour grapes + tinfoil hat = I don’t like going there, but it’s a possibility, I guess). OR my own sense of my fellow Americans is now so fucked as to be utterly worthless.
I’m not sure which of those possibilities scares me more.
November 8, 2012 — 12:03 pm
Comments: 78
Admire my enormous cabbage, bitchez
Well. My goodness, that hurt. Didn’t it?
Now, if you’ll step inside, I’m just warming up the cocoon. Tea? Coffee? Artisan moonshine?
We’ve got tons of video games we haven’t finished. And have you looked the reading list lately? Oh, we’ll have a busy few weeks. Months. Very busy.
There will be a time for rage. There will be a time when we take all that anger and disappointment, wad it into a dense, burning, white-hot fist, and…
Well. Not today. Today, our anger only serves them. Today, I am rubber and 52% of the electorate is glue.
November 7, 2012 — 2:24 pm
Comments: 38
Deep breath; here we go…!
Ding-ding-ding! With that, the polls are open on the East Coast. The fat lady is clearing her throat and doing her warmup exercises.
I decided to spare you another recycled Obama image today, mostly because I don’t want to put you off. It’s going to be a very late night for me — the polls close in Ohio midnight-thirty my time, and who thinks it’ll be over when the polls close? — and I’m going to struggle to keep up. If you could drop by and give me a poke in the ribs from time to time, I’d be much obliged.
It’s dark and quiet in my little outpost of America on the shores of the English Channel.
Oh, and VOTE, my pretties! VOTE LIKE THE WIND!
November 6, 2012 — 12:00 pm
Comments: 88
tick-tick-tick-tick
Still recycling the old Obama ‘shops. Think of it as sympathetic magic. Sweep them all away, make room for…Romney ‘shops, I guess.
Oh, and happy Bonfire Night! Sussex does Guy Fawkes in a big way (it’s kinda personal; Bloody Mary torched seventeen citizens in Lewes during that whole Catholic/Protestant thing). There will be firework displays in various villages all month long (though we’ve had a lot of rain this Fall and sodden fields have canceled some of our favorites).
In honor of the Actual Night, we just went out and let off a few Roman candles (Roman candles, get it?).
Yay Parliament! Boo Popery!
Whaddya think – am I blending in?
November 5, 2012 — 8:45 pm
Comments: 23
Ya think?
Yesterday, @exjon did the quick and dirty Photoshop on the left and posted it to Twitter. His next tweet was: for the record, it’s a fake. I mean, duh.
So the file was picked up — somehow — by the blog Forensic Photoshop, which analyzed the digital image using…ummm…digital image analysis software. It works by transforming pixels into random, glowing magenta blobs and making the president look like Curious George. It’s science. Just not as we know it.
His conclusion? Yes, it’s a cut/paste forgery.
Uhhhhhh.
I can’t quite capture the gallumphing cluelessness of his tone, so do go read it in the original Knuckleheadese.
So, let’s all take a deep breath. Vote with intelligence, not emotion. And, please, let’s resist the urge to use Photoshop in such nasty ways. Let’s make art, and clarify images – let’s not use such a wonderful tool to confuse and anger and annoy. Help make Photoshop a noun again.
What-what-what? Dude, that would be the end of this blog, right there.
November 4, 2012 — 5:06 pm
Comments: 29
My fav
This is my favorite Obama Photoshop. Just before Obama delivered his State of the Union speech in January of 2010, perky Katie Couric tweeted this:
Just had lunch with the president who seems pensive, slightly deflated, realistic, aggravated and resolute. Didn’t eat his pie.
Somehow, that didn’t eat his pie thing just cracks me up.
Yeah, I know. I don’t usually post on weekend, but I thought I’d recycle some graphics. With any luck, I won’t need them again.
November 3, 2012 — 6:16 pm
Comments: 24
Ah, old friend
That’s it. Two more blogging days until the election, and I’m out of juice — have a recycled classic!
Yeah, I’ve just been browsing all my old Obama P’shops. Even though I never really nailed him, it occurs to me what a very easy target he was, after all. Remember the handwringing about how to caricature our first black president without Going There? Turns out, if it weren’t for his excellent tan, he really looks more like a nerdy white guy.
It’s dawning on me that I might have to draw Romney for a few years. I can’t draw Romney! I can’t! I’m not good with likenesses, and he doesn’t have much ‘hook’ to hang them on.
It’ll be four to eight years of Guy Smiley P’shops, I warn you now!
November 2, 2012 — 11:53 pm
Comments: 10
Brrrr…
Because he asked nicely (and because I couldn’t think of anything else to post today), I did the Barack Obama/Valerie Jarrett mashup for reader Caliban. And it’s giving me the willies. Please make it stop looking at me.
Spitting image of an old friend of mine from art school. Yeah, he looked like a drag artist, too.
November 1, 2012 — 10:52 pm
Comments: 37