Hey, baby…about that special relationship…
President Sooper Genius muffed the queen’s toast yesterday. Among other things.
j/k — what he really said was, “next time, can I wear the sparkly hat?”
May 25, 2011 — 8:17 pm
Comments: 26
Important chicken update
Eleven weeks today, which is about halfway to point-of-lay (20-24 weeks). They’re starting to look like proper midget chickens, aren’t they?
We can let them roam more or less freely now, as long as one of us isn’t too far away. The cats ignore them, but Mad Mapp occasionally gets one cornered and gives her a right pecking.
This involves not much actual pecking, but an hellacious amount of squeaking and bugling.
I did nothing all day but sit in a lawnchair occasionally poking the TURN PAGE button on my Kindle and flicking bits of my lunch to the chickens. And a herring gull, two ring doves, several crows and an assortment of dickie birds.
Local birdlife has decided I’m an inanimate object.
Eh. Déjà vu. I was fifteen. On the farm. Sunbathing in the back yard, I opened one eye to see buzzards circling high overhead.
May 24, 2011 — 10:38 pm
Comments: 21
Oh, man, have I ever moved to the right country
Ladies and gentlemen — over the counter codeine! And it doesn’t even have that filthy Tylenol in it.
It’s behind the counter and they give you a little lecture when you ask for it, but it’s the same drill with baby aspirin (yes, really).
There’s a little opioid-shaped hole in my brain. If a medication has “euphoria” listed as a possible side effect, that’s the side effect I’m going to get good and hard.
Happiest day of my life: the day I had my wisdom teeth out. Intravenous Valium and Demerol mix. You could pour me from hand to hand like a blissed-out slinky. I wanted to go back every day for the next month and have another tooth extracted.
I don’t know where they get that “3 days use” thing, though. In my experience, it only works the first time. Then you have to wait, like, a week or ten days before it works the same again.
Dammit.
May 23, 2011 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 28
Round 15: the hits just keep on comin’
DeGuerre takes the dick with Harmon Killebrew (you know what to do if you want your dick, DeGuerre). That’s two in quick succession won by sports figures I never heard of (I briefly considered disallowing them for that, but Uncle B assured me I’d look like a complete maroon if I confessed ignorance. I don’t do sports).
Right! You could slow it down a notch now, Mister Reaper.
You know the drill:
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of.
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay?
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you don’t want the fabulous prize, you’re too smart to be a regular. It takes me forever to put them in the mail, packages go by slow boat, typically take minimum eight to ten weeks and lose the will to live along the way.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The fabulous prize? Sweasel dot com’s unofficial sponsor, Aunty’s Spotted Dick! Mmmmm…it’s dickalicious!
May 20, 2011 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 116
Things’re getting tight around here…
Two days ago, our cellphones were out for a day because thieves broke into O2 headquarters and stole some highly specialized, custom computer equipment. Stolen on commission, suspicion is. Financial picture really is getting very dire here.
By the time the power came back on, I had buggered off to bed with my Kindle and a giant whisky. Oh, well. It wasn’t a very good post, anyway.
Right! Dead Pool is auto-queued to post itself in about five and a half hours. Let’s hope the Grim Reaper takes a chill pill this time.
p.s. For all you kindly OCD-ridden souls writing to point out that the sidebar link still goes to an antique Dead Pool, here’s the deal: I HATE editing my sidebar. I only update that link after the current Dead Pool falls off the top page. Lately, they’ve been dying faster than the ten posts that make up the front page.
So now you know.
— 12:38 pm
Comments: 17
My little USB ‘scope
This is the USB microscope I got for Christmas.
It comes with a small, nicely weighted stand, rubberized body, built-in adjustable LED ringlight and focus knob. It captures .avi video or stills, but I think it’s most fun just letting it rip live. You know, get a little aphid in a specimen jar or something, watch it hop around and…do…bug stuff.
Yes. I would do that.
It’s not a patch on a high-end optical microscope — duh — but it’s not a complete toy, either. I’ve played with my share of low-end Teletubby optics, and this is a gadget worth having.
Yes, I let the aphid go.
May 18, 2011 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 39
You say amoebae and I say amoebas
I’ve written about my microscopy habit before (actually, go read that post instead — it’s got lots of cool links and stuff), but I was going through some old photos and disk and found this montage of amoebas and it brought a tear to my eye.
It took me twenty years to get an amoeba, no lie. And I wanted one so badly.
See, my mother used to talk about her professor in nursing school who had a hay infusion that was decades old. One drop from that was so full of critters, she said, it was more protozoa stew than pond dip.
So I was, like, “right. Got that. The secret is old.” And I made aquariums full of stinky, crusty, nasty hay and bean infusions and nursed them along for months at a time.
These things went through a predictable cycle, even if I fed them fresh ingredients. At the start, I’d get all sorts of interesting, active, sparky protozoa. Then it would degrade to bacteria and boring wormy things. Then it would die and smell like it.
Sooo eventually I rigged up a jar on a string, went out to a local pond and did a proper pond dip. And got an amoeba, first try! I was so excited!
But the next day I was supposed to fly home and visit the folks for two weeks. Arrgh! I did the best I could to preserve it; I put the sample in a bowl in the basement (cool and damp), covered it and hoped for the best.
When I got back, first slide…dozens and dozens of amoebas. Bloody things had been dividing and subdividing for a fortnight. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
Really.
Oh, god.
May 17, 2011 — 10:58 pm
Comments: 27
It’s a fête worse than…oh, whatever
Hooray — the fête season is upon us! Uncle B and I are utter fête hags; we scour the local paper for them all Summer long (though some of the most memorable are those we ran across by accident driving down country lanes).
You might think the appeal of drifting around dark churches drinking weak tea and eating digestive biscuits looking at bad oil paintings flogged by rich old ladies might wear off after a while. You’d be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
It’s the churches. Beautiful, tiny jewels of ancient architecture, lovingly tended by generation after generation of old ladies flogging bad oil paintings and weak tea. Every little village has its church, and they present a real strain on their communities, keeping the buidings clean and tended, whole and sound, and open to passers-by.
The thing in the picture? Can you make it out? This was behind the church, and it gave me a chill.
It’s a yew tree (on the right) and an oak (on the left) so ancient their trunks are entertwined and the two have completely permeated each other, a confusing jumble of oak leaves and yew branches sticking out in all directions.
Both the yew and the oak were hallowed here long before the coming of Christianity. The early church embraced local beliefs, choosing to co-opt instead of conflict (with an occasionally strange result). Many old churches have an elderly yew growing in the grounds. All the sources I’ve read agree that the yew was there before the church, the church was deliberately built on sacred ground.
This church is almost a thousand years old.
May 16, 2011 — 11:24 pm
Comments: 27
Smile!
Got a Kindle for my birthday. w00t! I’ve been lusting after it since I sat next to one on a plane (there might have been a person attached).
The Kindle was invented for ME. I spent the first 35 years of my life, every spare minute, reading. I suppose that makes me sound all thinky ‘n’ stuff, but the kind of obsessive, indiscriminate reading I do is no more intellectual than, um, promiscuity is romance.
I’m a book slut. I’ll read anything. Fiction. Non-fiction. Instruction manuals. Corn flake boxes. Make me sit still for a second, and I’ll pick up the nearest object and read it.
The Kindle doesn’t disappoint. It feels wonderful in my hand. It downloads books in seconds. It holds a shitload of them. It’s easily readable, adjustable and intuitive.
And there’s gobs of books out there for free.
Which, when you’re a book slut, is Good. E. Nuff.
May 12, 2011 — 10:51 pm
Comments: 64
I wonder if he dotted his squiggles with hearts
They’ve got Osama’s diary. The jokes just write themselves.
At least, I hope so. I didn’t write any.
May 11, 2011 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 18