And then there’s this guy
Portable blacksmith. From the same country show as the billhooks guy. He’s got his forge and his anvil and his bench and he’s making stuff on the spot. Says he got the idea for a portable smitherie 17 years ago, and it’s been a success from the beginning. He doesn’t exactly roam from town to town doing ever’body’s smithin’; he mostly does shows like this.
Hard to see how he makes a living. He sold us a huge pair of oversized iron fireplace tongs with the bendy bit in the middle and the twisty bits on either end for, like, £18.
Andy Williams will not be down for breakfast, which means little, little takes the dick. You know what that means! Yeah, it means I really, really need to get some dick in the mail. But it also means — see you here Friday for the next round!
September 26, 2012 — 9:15 pm
Comments: 19
The geeks shall inherit the earth
Down in this blessed district of Jollye Olde, we’ve been grievously short of rain lately. (No, really…this is either the sunniest and second driest, or the driest and second sunniest, corner of Britain. I never remember which). But we’re making up for it now. Three days of wild, mad rain. Stuck inside for now, so here’s a picture from happier times — i.e. two weeks ago.
One of my favorite parts of the local country shows are the collectors who gather along the edges. I suspect they neither pay to be there nor are paid to be there, but they turn up in funky little tents and trailers to camp out for a few days, commune with their fellow geeks and show off their passion.
Like the guy with dozens of ancient wrenches (spanners to you Limeys) from all over the world, neatly tacked to pegboards. Or the one with the fifty or so antique gas cans (petrol cans to you Brits).
Or this guy with all the billhooks (billhooks to you persons of Anglo Saxon ancestry). Billhooks are a sort of general purpose woodworking tool, still very much in use by thatchers, farmers, coppicers, hurdle makers, charcoal burners, hedgelayers and, under some conditions, soldiers.
Though you can’t read the labels, the designs reflect various professions but also — more interesting to me — different regions. So a Yorkshire billhook is different from a Folkstone billhook. Yorkshire is a big district, but Folkstone is just a small town. That its billhook should be different from Tenderden’s — another small town not far away from it — is, I guess, what makes these things interesting to collect.
But the charm of this one? He was showing off a billhook collection, yes, but this ain’t it. This is a display case full of tiny, lovingly handmade models off various billhook designs.
You can draw a straight line from this brain to the brain that built the difference engine.
September 25, 2012 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 16
Uketacular
So, Saturday we went to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. They played the Albert Hall Friday night, so they could be forgiven for being less than enthusiastic in the auditorium of the community college in Rye.
But they weren’t. They put in an awesome performance. We were such a small audience, we did our best to hoot and stamp and sing when asked (something Brits do with more alacrity than you might think). I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a concert so much.
They did everything from Handel to Lady Gaga, and they did it with a straight face and an amazing degree of musicality. If you think about it, eight ukes probably equals three or four actual musical instruments, so it all works out.
Worth a trawl through YouTube, though I didn’t find any clips that I thought adequately captured the spirit of the thing. Much better if you catch them in person. They’ll be in the US again for a bit next month, but they tour more or less constantly (and have done for twenty seven years, apparently. Before uke was cool. Wait…it’s cool now, right?).
September 24, 2012 — 8:35 pm
Comments: 22
It’s a baseball movie, I think
Bruce over at and still i persist blog has suggested we make today Eastwood Appreciation Day, on account of that charming chair thing he did at the convention. He suggests celebrating by seeing his new movie, “Trouble With the Curve”, which is being released today — on account of lefties are deciding not to out of spite.
The critics are giving it mixed reviews — good acting, bad writing sums it up — but hey, it’s for Clint.
I have a confession. I’ve never seen a Clint Eastwood movie. Okay, I might have seen Play Misty late at night when I was in England on a visit, but that’s it.
Yeah, okay. We’ll go to the US Consulate Monday and I’ll turn in my passport.
Oh, hey, before I forget — I had Stoats for breakfast. It was nice! If you go to EatStoats.co.uk, you can have Stoats for breakfast, too!
No, you probably can’t. I doubt they ship to the States.
Good weekend, ever’body!
September 21, 2012 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 40
They’re heeeeere
You know that scene in Poltergeist, where it’s a quiet night and Whatshername experimentally cracks open the door to the haunted bedroom — and suddenly it’s all screaming and howling and shit flying around the room and records playing themselves? That scene?
Twitter is exactly like that lately.
Oh, I admit it’s kind of fun when things go my partisan way. It was awesome to watch the shitstorm today when President Change We Can Believe In said “you can’t change Washington from the inside” (he’s said it before, but that was back before he was on the inside. It’s a really bad message for an incumbent begging for re-election).
Mostly, though, I’m having a hard time matching pace with the Twitter cycle in election season. It’s all a little screamy and hand-wavy for me. I’m sure I must have mentioned my legendary cool, yes?
September 20, 2012 — 11:08 pm
Comments: 23
Wherein Weasel admits defeat
Nope. Sorry. Over my head. Out of my league. There is absolutely nothing I can do to this photo to make it creepier than the original. I’m sorry, people who are Photoshopping this image — you are living a lie.
That there’s Jim Messina, campaign manager for Obama 2012 and world creepiest ginger. The idea belonged to deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, though. I guess you were supposed to write something on your flesh that you like about the Obama administration, take a picture and post it to the Twitter hashtag #forall.
That’s the kind of quirky, madcap kampaign kut-up that might have appealed to The Youth in 2008. No doubt that’s why these dweebs keep trying to float stuff like that.
But the 2008 campaign was like the Blair Witch Project — interesting idea, only works once. You can’t run a “what the hell, let’s give the new guy a try” campaign second time around.
Four years down the line, and it’s just sad. There you are, standing in front of a mirror with junk scribbled on your flesh in magic marker, looking every inch the kiddie-diddler.
September 19, 2012 — 10:52 pm
Comments: 32
Important Chicken Update
I don’t know how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but I can tell you how many chickens fit on a wooden chair: four. Okay, probably six in a pinch, but I’ve only got the four.
I swear I didn’t put them up to it. I went out the kitchen door, and there they were, looking thoroughly cheesed off with everything and everybody.
At some molecular level, they know Fall is coming. They’ve shut down egg production and they’re molting. Molting: their feathers are falling out. Great clumps of them. When I open the henhouse in the morning, it looks like they’ve been having pillow fights all night. They have bald spots and spikey bits where the new feathers are growing in. They look dreadful and they’re crabby as hell.
You know when they show pictures of rescued battery chickens, and they’re all bald and fucked up? The big farms dump battery chickens when they reach a year old, during their first molt. Not that factory farms aren’t dreadful, but those chickens look like shit for (mostly) perfectly natural reasons.
Blogging chickens. Not blogging politics. Politics was stupid today. Chickens are less stupid than politics. Even molting chickens.
September 18, 2012 — 9:57 pm
Comments: 32
ZOMG!
In case you missed it somehow, I’m riffing on the Newsweek “Muslim Rage” cover, which annoyed some and amused some and disgusted others. Yes, that is speck of spittle in his beard. No, I did not P’shop it in (but, as per usual, if anyone wants the raw color Photoshop file to make your own high-larious captions, drop me an email).
And before you get too complacent, First Worldies, I’m totally not kidding — the McRib has been rolled back to December. It was scheduled to go out in October.
ULULULULU!!!!
September 17, 2012 — 10:18 pm
Comments: 31
Enjoy the Streisand Effect, boys!
ZOMG, have you seen The Innocence of Muslims? Oh My God, OHMIGOD, omigod! It is the dumbest thing ever.
The trailer, anyway. As far as anyone knows, that’s all that’s out there. The longest clip I could find is 13:51 and it is pure triple-A tincture of stupid. (The link is a generic YouTube search of “Innocence of Muslims” – I wouldn’t worry too much about the clip coming down. There are dozens of copies, including the one I saved locally).
It’s a dozen or so American community theater refugees hamming it up in front of a green screen, mostly against a backdrop of desert dunes. So nobody casts a shadow and the sand doesn’t move when they walk on it. Oh, it’s rich.
And, boy, were those poor bastards set up — they were acting a perfectly innocent generic sand epic. The inflammatory parts were dubbed in later, in different voices, with different mics, in a different room. The lips don’t synch at all.
“Is Mohammed gay?” “Of course!”
You can clearly see the original line was Gamera is a friend to all children.
Seriously, you’d have to be a platinum ‘tard to be the slightest provoked by this silly pile of fluff.
Which is, of course, entirely not what happened. I mean, look at those scruffy young men shouting in the streets. They obviously don’t have YouTube accounts. If they had access to funny cat videos, would they be that cross?
September 14, 2012 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 27
Jimmah? That you?
Ugh. I’m sorry. I keep pulling the cord, but the engine won’t start. I’ve been staring at my Twitter stream today, swinging between horror and smoldering resentment. And, at this stage of the game, I don’t know how much of the information I’m getting is true.
There is that eerie familiar Jimmy Carterish stench hovering over the whole business, though. Which made me think…for as long as I can remember, excitable young men periodically pour into the Arab street, go “rabble rabble rabble!” and burn an American flag. I’m still unclear what they hope to accomplish by this.
September 13, 2012 — 11:26 pm
Comments: 29