Ohhhhh, yesssss
Yeah, baby. You want it in color. You know you do.
Sour, dessicated old hag Andrea Mitchell declared, “this is not a pick for women.”
In other news, we secretly replaced Andrea Mitchell’s estrogen pills with bath salts. Let’s see if anyone notices!
Do I like Paul Ryan for VP? Oh, yes. Ohhhhhh, yessssssss.
August 13, 2012 — 1:44 pm
Comments: 42
Warming to my theme
These are onion flowers. Not something you want to see.
Oh, they’re attractive enough, but it’s a bad sign. Veg that goes to flower stops doing what you want it to do — in this case, make a big, fat onion — and concentrates on making seeds.
Onions are usually biennial — it takes two years to go from seed to seed. Year one, they make a stalk and an onion, then they hibernate for the Winter. Year two, they wake up and make flowers.
But sometimes, when conditions are right, they think one season is two. This year, we had a hot spell, then a cold spell, then a hot spell. Some of our onions were all, like, “woohoo! It’s 2013!” and started to flower (or “bolt” as Mister Fancypants Horticulture-talking Dude would say).
I know, right? Onions are so stupid.
Once they’ve flowered, they’re still edible, but they’re puny. And weirdly firm. And they won’t keep like the others. I’m thinking of throwing them whole into vegetable soup, for a sort of Onion Surprise effect.
Good weekend, alliumophiles!
August 10, 2012 — 10:32 pm
Comments: 50
Onions
Okay, no more spiders. Onions!
Yet another sign Fall is upon us — the onions were ready for harvest. Uncle B planted me a whole bed of them this year, and there they are.
Have I ever told y’all I have a kind of a special family relationship with onions? I was weaned on one. For reals. Instead of a binky, I got to suck on a green onion.
My grandmother was so fond of onions, she carried on eating them even after she developed some nasty stomach problems. She’d eat onions, then she’d double over in pain. But she persisted.
My mother had a bowl of onions as the centerpiece on the dining room table. At Christmas, we got onions in our stockings (among other things — the onions were filler. She collected them from us to make Christmas lunch).
There is no finer fragrance than onions frying in bacon grease. Ah, but the ladies of the Stoat fambly are serious alliumophiles.
August 9, 2012 — 10:40 pm
Comments: 28
aiiiiii
Soooo…this thing just ran across the floor. Okay, yes, I’m a little phobic (I gave myself the jim-jamms Googling for this image).
You know what that means? The Summer that we never had is now over. The (giant weasel-sucking) spiders are coming in to get warm.
When you read the headlines about “Hottest Summer EVARRR!” — think to yourself, “yeah, where?” Because we had one week in the Seventies, and the whole rest of the Summer has been days in the Sixties and nights in the Fifties. Not fun. Do please send over the globular warmening.
(Yes, it’s a terrible Photoshop, isn’t it? It’s Chinese night and I’m late making flied lice).
August 8, 2012 — 10:37 pm
Comments: 22
Science!
Good news! Scientists at Cambridge University have succeeded in making artificial nacre. That’s mother o’ pearl to you and me.
It’s fairly easy to make something structurally similar — it’s just layers of calcium carbonate — but this is the first time they’ve gotten a result that iridesces like pearl. They did it by closely mimicking the processes a real mollusc uses to lay down shell.
This is good. MoP is strong and useful and, naturally, beautiful. And they say their process is cheap.
If you don’t see the value in that, I’ve got four words for you: mother of pearl cellphones.
Or, you know, five words if you think “cell phone” should be two words.
August 7, 2012 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 41
Coo-coo, coo-coo
Hello! It’s me again! Back with another trenchant graphical analysis of today’s top story.
Mmm-hmm. I drew Harry Reid as a drooling moron.
That’s an upgrade for Harry. I think he’s something uglier and nastier.
The Washington Post thinks so to:
“For Reid, this is yet another brazen and tasteless partisan attack. As majority leader, he has managed to sink the public image of the Senate even lower than it would otherwise be. He contributes to bad feelings, gridlock and the sense — nay, the reality — that everything is done for political advantage. Reid is a crass man, the very personification of the gaudy and kitschy Las Vegas Strip.”
Bolding mine, because those words made me shiver with delight.
Also, I drew a bird on his head!
August 6, 2012 — 10:44 pm
Comments: 18
A little something saucy from the seaside
For years and years, the tradition here was to send home a saucy postcard from your seaside holiday. Which is where everybody went for their holidays, always. And the undisputed king of the saucy postcard was a man named Donald McGill (link goes to a Google Images search; click for an amusing hour of postcard browsing).
He was born in 1875 and was a draughtsman in the Navy when he drew a little get well card for a sick nephew in 1904 and kinfolk said, “Jed, move away from there.”
Fat ladies, drunks, vicars, honeymooning couples, wartime propaganda…he poured out tons of the damn things. The ruder they were the better they sold, though he only got pennies for each design.
He is author of the famous joke “Do you like Kipling?” / “I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled!” which sold a record-holding six million copies.
He went on merrily until the Fifties, when the authorities decided to clean up all this disgusting smut and conducted a series of raids on seaside postcard shops. Some of the naughty designs had been on sale for decades without apparently causing riots. They confiscated thousands, mostly McGill’s, and took him to court.
He admitted breaking the Obscene Publications Act, but his defense was, “holy shit! REALLY? NAUGHTY DOUBLE MEANINGS? ZOMG, I had no idea until you pointed it out. Boy, is my face red!” Also, he was pushing eighty. So he pretty much got off, except for the lost revenue.
You still see McGill’s designs on cards and packaging (I saw a box of candy with a McGill wrapper the other day, which resulted in this post). Some say the vacation postcard is making a comeback, but I think the Royal Mail should be so lucky.
So. There. Something fun for the weekend. Have a good one!
August 3, 2012 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 19
Back on the stuff
Yup, Barack is back on the prompter.
Alternate title, “I can’t quit you” (but I didn’t see Brokeback Mountain and I always hesitate to use a movie line in the dark).
Alternate picture idea: does this flag make my president look small?
August 2, 2012 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 25
…over the weekend…
A Punch and Judy show. Still common here at the seaside.
In the local version, Punch beats Judy to death and then the policeman hauls him away and he beats the policeman to death and then the devil appears and Punch beats the devil to death, and then he spreads out through the crowd beating the children to death.
No, wait. I think that last part was just in my fantasy version.
Anyhoo, the sound is like if you jammed a ventriloquist’s whistle up a cat’s ass and beat it to death with an axe handle. Like that.
So! Good wholesome entertainment for kids of all ages.
August 1, 2012 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 30
Everything is coming up Workforce Update 28
Oh. OH! Can I have a meme? I swear I’ll take care of it. I’ll feed it and take it for walks. Just this once, pleeeease?
It seems someone used the microwave to warm up people shit in Brighton (it’s hard to beat the headline Poo Found in Brighton Council Microwave).
The council being the council, they wrapped the appliance in crime scene tape and stuck a note to it. And left it there for a week.
An update sent round to all members of staff, titled Workforce Update 28, said: “The microwave in the canteen has unfortunately been used to heat excrement and cannot be made hygienic or safe to use.
“Please do not use. We will have it disconnected and removed.
“This kind of behaviour is totally unacceptable and we will not be replacing the microwave.”
Staff has taken to referring to the whole incident as Workforce Update 28. Which is the meme I want. It’s my meme, and I want it.
Unfortunately, I haven’t pinned down the situation where this phrase would be appropriate. Which of life’s many vicissitudes corresponds to “someone has heated a bowl of shit in the communal microwave”?
July 31, 2012 — 9:53 pm
Comments: 46