Satan’s early warning chicken
Still feel like crap. The way my colds go, I feel awful at the beginning but don’t sound bad, and when I start to sound hacky and snotty, I’m actually feeling a lot better. So never with the sympathy when I need it.
Anyhow, I forgot to tell you…yesterday, mid-morning, Mapp started to alarm call. This is the sound they make when there’s a fox or a cat or a tractor or other threat they’re pretty sure they can take on. You know, the bok-bok-bok-be-GAAAAK bok-bok.
She doesn’t usually do that. She’s the quietest of the four. But she kept at it, and suddenly…there was a knock at the door.
Muffled voice: is this house really four hundred years old?
Uncle B: Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Muffled voice: muffled response.
-=SLAM=-
Yeah, British JW’s! Who knew? There are quite a lot out here, and they’ll come right into your back garden (that’s a really severe British no-no) and everything. I couldn’t think of a less British idea than sending religious missionaries out to challenge a Limey’s private space, but they do.
From what I’m told, the Church of England is a little snooty and high church for some, so out in the country there are flourishing colonies of JW’s and Strict and Particular Baptists and whatnot.
Anyhow, we got us an Early Warning Chicken!
September 15, 2011 — 8:14 pm
Comments: 36
Funny old internet
It’s a funny life. When I woke up, I was sure I’d spend the day making fun of the Climate Reality Project, but I wound up spending the day making fun of Attack Watch instead.
To recap: the Climate Reality Project is Al Gore’s latest attempt to this-time-for-real, SRSLY, I’m not kidding, don’t make me turn this car around, shut DOWN the deniers. Starting at midnight GMT (in Mexico City in Spanish, for some reason) they’re going to go around the globe every hour on the hour saying words.
About the only place I’ve heard of it is Watt’s Up With That (where they will be making fun of the CRP in synch, which should be gobs and oodles of harmless denialist fun). So maybe the guys pretending to be real scientists are finally too embarrassed by Fat Al to get on the bandwagon.
Attack Watch, in contrast, is a bad idea from a loser.
Ho ho ho.
Somebody on Obama’s team set up a website so his followers can report misinformation about the awesome job he’s doing. Actually, to make a report, you have to make a donation, so it’s really just a cheap fundraising gimmick. But hilarity ensued when they set up a Twitter hashtag for #attackwatch.
A hashtag, dear non-Twits, is sort of like the comment thread on a blog, except anybody can post there and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Yep. You can see where that would inevitably go. Why couldn’t they?
Shoo! Go play with the links! I’ve finally come down with Uncle Badger’s cold, so I’m feeling a bit — how you say? — really shitty.
September 14, 2011 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 23
Th-th-th-the-th-the-THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!
There it is — ain’t it a beaut? — the stamp in my passport that means I don’t have fuck around with the UK Border Agency any more. This thing cost more than my last car.
In theory, that’s it. That’s all. No more. Done being a immigrant.
In practice, I’m going for citizenship as soon as I’m eligible, which is late November. It doesn’t mess with my American citizenship and it makes life easier here. I mean, I can’t just let these limeys choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich without my input, can I?
I have to do it quick, though. I’m happy to pledge loyalty to Her Maj, but I’m damned if I swear fealty to that jug-eared Algore-wannabe useless son of hers.
September 13, 2011 — 8:09 pm
Comments: 45
The fat lady, singing
Saturday night was the last night of the Proms AKA Mr Robert Newman’s Promenade Concerts AKA The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC AKA The BBC Proms.
In 1895, Robert Newman, manager of the Queen’s Hall in London, decided he would sucker the general public into liking highbrow music by offering a series of cheap but excellent concerts, starting with popular music and getting snootier by the day. One of those worthy Victorian deals.
Together with a conductor named Henry Wood, he put together a whole season’s worth of music (a shilling – 5p – for a single concert or £1.05 for the lot). There were Wagner nights and Beethoven nights and new music and young performers. People were allowed to eat and drink and smoke and mill around. It was an altogether superb idea, and it stuck.
Today’s Proms are eight weeks long (70 concerts this year!) and are held in the Royal Albert Hall (and on television, of course). They still feature new works and young performers (Wagner, not so much) and it’s still pretty informal.
At least, the last night was. That’s the bit everyone watches. The lefties have been trying to stick a sock in the last night of the Proms since forever, but they haven’t kilt it yet. They end the whole thing by dressing stupid and waving flags and blowing horns and singing patriotic songs and letting off fireworks. I mean, the audience, too.
This lady (here she is swinging an axe for some reason) led the crowd in Rule Brittania. And there was God Save the Queen and Land of Hope and Glory (we know that one as Pomp and Circumstance) and Jerusalem (Blake’s schitzy vision of Jesus walking around England).
Not just in the packed Albert Hall, but there was a crowd of something like 300,000 crammed into Hyde Park listening in, too. It did me a world of good to see all those happy, pasty faces waving flags and singing their little Limey hearts out.
September 12, 2011 — 9:30 pm
Comments: 34
Ain’t you boys built that dang road yet?
Obama’s stimulus plan involves an infusion of cash for middle-class tax cuts, rebuilding roads, bridges and schools, building broadband Internet access and investing in clean energy. November 23, 2008
Spending tens of billions of dollars on new infrastructure such as schools, bridges and water systems could also be effective, both as a short-term economic boost and as a means of raising the country’s long-term productive capacity. January 7, 2009
In what amounts to the second stimulus plan since he took office – this one estimated at $75 billion to $200 billion – Obama asked Congress to fund jobs to rebuild roads, bridges, railways and waterways. December 08, 2009
Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an AP analysis has found. Jan 11, 2010
…the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. Aug. 26, 2010
The $450 billion package would raise income, boost hiring, and improve roads and bridges. Sep 9, 2011
Shall I go on? I could, you know. On and on and on. Or you could do it yourself: go to Google and search +Obama +stimulus +roads. Those quotes cover three years and three separate demands for huge wads of money.
The whole rest of the package was more of the same, too. I mean, he ran his first campaign on this shit.
But I was struck by the roads and schools. Because construction projects can only go at a finite pace, and it sounds like he’s jammed so much money down that funnel already that some of it is bound to be sitting there now, stimulating nothing.
How many crappy roads have we got?
September 9, 2011 — 8:32 pm
Comments: 32
A little flat
So, no, I didn’t watch the Republican debate, but I think I’ll watch the famous Jobs Speech.
Have you ever seen something so purely, perfectly, blazingly stupid that it’s like a precious jewel of stupid?
I was listening to the radio once when the newsreader informed me, “our antibiotics don’t work any more because we’ve evolved too much.” Beautiful. A gem without price.
Well, I think the Big Jobs Speech is going to be stupid on that level. Fun stupid. To start with, He’s Giving Another Damn Speech. It’s like he cannot fucking beLIEVE he’s lost his mojo. (C’mon baby, one more speech. One more speech will do it! It has to!)
Plus…wait, he’s making a speech? So, like, his jobs plan is to make a speech? So the first Congress gets to hear what Obama’s thinking, it’s at the same time as we all do?
I’m sure his team thinks that’ll hold Republican toes to the fire (because we’re bound to love love LOVE his proposals), but I think it’s a major fuck-up. Because most people in the real world understand that’s not how you negotiate a compromise with a difficult opponent, by selling the deal to a third party.
It’s like trying to force your husband to do something he doesn’t want by going to his mom behind his back and getting HER to nag him.
And if that’s the plan, it assumes a) Obama is going to say something substantial enough to like or dislike and b) we will, in fact, like it. From the talking points, it sounds like the grand job plan is, “alright, y’all need to cut the crap now and do what I want.” Oh, and it’s post-partisan because he’s blaming everybody whose middle name isn’t Hussein.
I think I’m going to enjoy this. If anybody walks out in the middle, I might just swoon.
September 8, 2011 — 8:16 pm
Comments: 39
Ugh. There they go again.
Are you watching the Republican debate tonight?
I’m not. I hate the damn things. I’m not at all sure this is a great way to pick a leader.
Oh, I realize public debate has been a central part of politics since, like, Rome or Babylon or Og the Mammoth Slayer versus Gru Hamfist or whatever. If you’ve ever watched Prime Minister’s Question Time, you have to admire the sharp elbows and quick thinking of Limey politicians. They make our legislators look like the mongtards they truly are.
But, you know, those are debates. Go back to, say, Lincoln/Douglas…those guys were arguing about a defined set of topics (mostly slavery). They were having a conversation about topics.
What we do is make our candidates stand like lemons under bright lights while self-important lefty journos sling gotcha questions at them (Who’s the vice president of Durkadurkastan?) and meelions and meelions of people watch them on TV to see who flinches. This is doubly stupid in the Republican debates, where the dang moderators NEVER ask about things important to Republicans (why do we allow this? WHY?).
I’m just not sure the qualities that would make somebody good at this are the same qualities that make somebody good at presidenting. Also, I have grievous stage fright and thinking about standing up there before all those invisible eyeballs…I need a little lie-down.
By the way, if you’ve got it in your head (I did) that televised debates have been a part of our political landscape since Kennedy/Nixon, not so. It was sixteen years before Ford revived the format, trying to pushback against Ol’ Peanuts.
September 7, 2011 — 8:39 pm
Comments: 24
The president is really, really cheesed off at you
Also, his pants are around his ankles.
I have no idea why this image popped into my head as illustrative of Obama’s current dilemma. It just seems the more he tries to play hardball, the sillier he looks.
You know, lefties have a point. Obama has done so many things to disappoint them — from keeping Guantanamo open to backing off on EPA regs to, well, lots of things — in many ways, he’s governed like George Bush’s third term. So why are us wingnuts so hard on him?
Well, thing is, I *am* pleased when he does something out of character, like stepping up drone strikes or getting Osama. Of course I am. But it’s all so terribly random. We know his heart is with the left, but his actions are all over the board.
Clearly, much of what he’s doing at the moment is with an eye to the 2012 elections. But he’s not very good at pandering, so it comes off as merely erratic and incoherent.
Much power and completely unpredictable? Bad combo.
September 6, 2011 — 9:02 pm
Comments: 27
Hm. Must be Autumn
Behold my posse. My crew. My flock. Yesterday was the first time all four of them hopped up on the kitchen chair. Evening roosting behavior. Hilarious — I threw a towel over their heads and they all promptly conked off asleep. Then I could dust them for mites and have a good look at their feet (Mapp needs a pedicure) and their vents.
Yes, dear readers, I inspect chicken bottoms.
They flock together well enough in the daytime now, but the new girls and the old girls still sleep in separate enclosures. That has to change by Winter; there’s plenty of room in the main henhouse for four.
Sadly, it feels distinctly Autumnal out there tonight. So I let them fall asleep in the dark kitchen, then I tiptoed them out one by one and put them on the perch together in the big house (except Violet, who prefers to sleep on the floor).
I’ve put this off for so long because they all pick on Vita (the big, beautiful bird on the left). Even her nestmate Violet has a go at her. It’s horrible to watch. Vita meekly accepts her place at the bottom of the pecking order and lies still, beak down in the grass, patiently letting the other girls give her a few good pecks whenever they like. First time I saw this, I thought the poor bird had dropped dead and the others were trying to wake her up.
Nature. What an asshole.
They don’t peck hard enough to hurt her, but I worry about her being stuck inside the small run, unable to get away. So! I have set the alarm for six in the morning. I haven’t seen six in the morning since I left the Motherland.
I better get drinking.
September 5, 2011 — 8:49 pm
Comments: 29
The weirdification of the perfectly fucking ordinary
Oh, man. This is a scientist. He wrote an article skeptical of global warning.
What does the BBC think you need to know about this today? Well, dude has the crazy eye. And he’s a “committed Christian” (check the caption). Yes, it’s as perfectly irrelevant as you think.
Byron York had a thing yesterday about Leftists trying to make the 2012 presidential election all about religion. Well, Christianity. Well, some creepy zombie Jesus conspiracy caricature of Christianity.
Me, I’ve got a head start on this one. The BBC has been working on this fucked up view of American religious life for as long as I’ve been coming over here.
I’ll never forget a BBC TV special I saw on one of my first trips, about religious life in America. Somehow, they managed to find video of a Texan female achondroplastic dwarf preacher standing on a chair blowing a shofar.
Google it. I’m too weary to explain.
Oh, and this one! Remember when Trijicon, the gunsight maker, ‘fessed up that they’d been inscribing their products with Bible verses (things like 2COR4:6) and had done for years? Not a good idea for an internationally traded company, but whatever. How did the media describe this?
U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes.
Military weapons. Secret Jesus Bible codes. Since when did ordinary old Bible verses become secret Jesus Bible codes? What breathless bullshit is this?
Now, as you may (or may not) remember, I’m an atheist. Pretty much. An atheist with smartypants tendencies. There is a point with most religions — that point where “take it on evidence” becomes “take it on faith” — that the whole business becomes creepy and off-putting to me.
But to pretend there’s something uniquely creepy and off-putting about American Protestant Christians as compared to any other religious group…well, that totally plinks my sense of fair play.
Put it this way: how many times did the media try to pin down Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry on the magical power of Jesus’ foreskin or the little toebone of some saint?
Yeah. Not.
September 2, 2011 — 10:59 pm
Comments: 63