Ain’t it GREAT to have them Bush goobers out of the White House?
Ain’t it great to have college folks in the White House agin! People who talk purty and have all that book-larnin’ about the sophisticated big-city ways of international diplomacy and sech like.
Okay, there’s no big color version of this one. I lost interest before I worked out all the picture problems, as we call them in the drawin’ trade. Frankly, I think it was freaking me out spending time polishing Her Majesty’s T and A.
Happy Friday, ever’body!
April 3, 2009 — 7:18 pm
Comments: 45
Laa bams!
After the day’s shopping, I asked Uncle B to drop me off in a field with a tripod and a nice long lens. The main bike path out of town goes through this field STUFFED with sheep and lambs. You can sit in the path and the little wigglers trot right up to you and stare.
Sadly, I’m a crap photographer. But electrons are free, and I had a good time getting sunburned and windblown and sheep watching.
Jesus christ, they’re dumb. Adorable, but stupid.
April 2, 2009 — 7:29 pm
Comments: 17
Bicycles and lambs
When I asked for a bike for my birthday last Spring, I had no idea it would be THIS long before I got my first spin. Today it was beautiful biking weather, dammit, and we went in search of lambs (our local crop hasn’t ripened yet). We found a field full just up the road.
We didn’t take a good camera, so we didn’t get much in the way of pictures, but April 1 is just getting into the real lambing season. Plenty of time yet.
Goofy bastards.
Then we biked on into town, bought a loaf of fresh crusty bread and couple of newspapers and had tea and scones in a cafe.
Shit fucking fire.
Some days I think this place is going to quaint me to death.
April 1, 2009 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 26
Note to self: don’t piss off Farmer Brown
Okay, I’m no Marlin Perkins, but I’m pretty sure that there’s a fox. And I’m damn sure it’s dead. And I do not believe foxes habitually climb trees to die, ergo…the French must have perfected the foxapult at last.
Kidding!
We drove over to see Farmer Brown (not his real name) this afternoon. Mrs Farmer Brown, actually. Very important people ’round these parts (we invited them to our wedding on the general principle of suckuppery). As we turned into the lane, we saw this jaunty fellow smiling at us from the hedge. I didn’t ask, but I would guess the country folk regard corpse-festooning as a deterrent to others.
Between you and me, I doubt it has the slightest effect on fox behavior. Makes the farmer feel better, at most. If the gibbet didn’t work on people, with our honking huge fearful brains, what is this supposed to do for Mister Sneakyboots McCleverpants?
Our local town still has a cage gibbet, by the way. And a pillory. Neither has been used in a couple of centuries, but there’s a piece of the last guy still stuck in the gibbet. I think you have to make an appointment to see it. I don’t know. It’s busy, I guess.
March 31, 2009 — 7:46 pm
Comments: 24
Cheap at twice the price
Shhhh…I’m trying not to annoy Uncle B tonight. He’s working. (Hey, one of us has to!)
Today I mailed off my FLR(M) application. It’s the second visa I need. The first one let me enter for the purpose of marriage, and it’s good for six months (I’m legal on that one until the end of May). The second one lets me work and be a sort of semi-person, and it’s good for two years.
It’s taking an average of 14 weeks to process those ones at the moment, so (assuming all is well) I expect to remain blissfully employment-free until July, mayhap.
Mayhap longer. The visa fees go up (again!) on Wednesday, April 1, so I imagine the Home Office will be buried in applications tomorrow. Heh heh heh.
The picture? That there’s a Thermionics Vacuum Products FLRM Series Push-Pull Linear-Rotary Feedthrough. It’s a linear-rotary feedthrough based on the FLM series push-pull linear feedthrough mounted on a standard 2.75″ O.D. flange. Strokes of up to 36″ are feasible, dependent upon payload, orientation and acceptable deflection. All metal construction for bakeability. It costs about three grand. It turned up on a Google Images search of “FLR(M)”.
I have no fucking idea what that sonofabitch does.
March 30, 2009 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 23
Do you know why the Brits talk about the weather so much?
Because their weather is fucking psychotic, that’s why.
I was minding my own business, weeding the driveway (my driveway is BRICK! Hahaha! But it hasn’t been weeded in a thousand years). It was sunny, warm, if a bit windy.
And then this spooky bastard blew up, pelted me with hail for five minutes, and flew off again.
I was like, “WTF?! Did anybody get the number on that bus?”
Then it was sunny again. Stupid England.
Happy Friday, everyone! (Yeah, funny that. Even when you’re unemployed, it matters).
March 27, 2009 — 8:47 pm
Comments: 41
This is my job. It’s what I do.
Nothing. Nil. Nada. Bupkis. Sweet fuck-all. I have been a complete and utter waste of human skin since I was rousted out of my nice warm bed by a hammering at the door at the cruelly early hour of one. Pee-em.
Near as I can piece it together, we set fire to the chimney last night. Again. A small fire this time, but apparently scary enough to make me grievously overdrink myself afterwards. Apparently.
Apparently, Uncle B was able to get the sweeps out on an emergency basis. Apparently. Again. That was them hammering on the door. He didn’t hear it because he was in the back of the house doing…I don’t know…his job or something. I’m unclear on this point.
So I answered the door like Mad Madam Mim, with one open eye and my jeans-front wadded up in my fist. I’m becoming heavily dependent on this crazy American woman gambit, you know.
Anyhow, the chimney really shouldn’t have sooted up this fast (our last chimney fire was on January 8). So, we probably need a bigger-diameter chimney lining (>£1K) and/or a new stove (>£1K). Probably both.
We think the old stove was Frankensteined together from pieces and is missing some bits. You might think a stove would be a simple thing with few important constituent elements, but you’d be SO WRONG. Jesus, what’s the matter with you?
It’s supposed to have some fire bricks and the air intake probably isn’t working right, which means our combustibles aren’t completely combusting but are laying down a coating of flammable soot on their way up the chimney.
Or some shit. I don’t know. We’re coming to the end of the heating season, so I refuse to think about it yet.
If you’ll excuse me, I’ve waited patiently for twelve hours for some hair o’ the dog…
March 26, 2009 — 9:02 pm
Comments: 31
Beer. Sale. Two great words that go great together.
w00t! Our local market had a beer sale today — three bottles for…shit, I don’t know. It’s not like I pay for anything. I’m a foreigner; when I want something, I point and grunt.
Poor Uncle B hates beer, but it was a sale on brew exclusively from the Badger Brewery, so he was cool with it. (You’ll notice there are seven. Spot the one that isn’t Badger).
Tonight, we’re putting together the paperwork for my next visa, the FLR(M). It’s my Married Lady License (though it will cover civil unions and homosexualists, also). I intended to do this the day after we were wed, but I didn’t on account of I’m a lazy sack of shit. Also, it’s taking 14 weeks on average to turn this one around, and I can’t work until it comes through. So you can see why I’m in such a hurry.
Asking Uncle B to interface with government in any way involves a good deal of throwing things and saying the f-word. So I’d better go.
And drink some fucking beer.
March 25, 2009 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 16
Take it away, Glenster…
I had to go into the hospital this evening for a routine diagnostic — no, no. No big. I have a family history of bum kidneys and they like to give ’em a poke now and then. They’re fine, thanks. I saw them myself on ultrasound! They’re totally shaped like black-eyed peas. But now I’m off my shed-yule tonight.
So why not visit Glenster’s site? He makes nice clean MP3’s of vintage big band 78s and he’s put up ten brand spanking new tracks today — all of ’em from the UK!
My very first web site was dedicated to MP3’s of my 78 collection. There’s all kinds of deeply cool software you can get now to depop, dehiss, rebalance and otherwise restore funky old recordings. It’s like magic. It’s like magic that is a hell of a lot of hard work, so I gave up after the first dozen.
Also, if you can’t bear to listen to Teleprompter Jesus — Greatest Orator of Our Age — stumble through somebody else’s words in primetime one more time, why not listen to this guy talk off the top of his head? He’s a Tory MEP (a British conservative member of the European Parliament). Giving a squirming, smirking Gordon Brown a procto exam. With a rusty garden weasel.
That’s what the thing looks like.
March 24, 2009 — 9:01 pm
Comments: 18
My mama always said…
…for a fresh start, a fresh banjo head.
Okay, I’m lying. My mama never said that. My mama was a music hater in a family full of loud, enthusiastic bad musicians; she flippin’ hated the banjo. (It didn’t help that my dad practiced in the bathroom “for the acoustics”).
You’ll note my banjo has an arched top; it gives the instrument a treblier, screechier sound. Great idea, no? That curious design feature is probably the reason I was able to afford this one. When I was in my twenties, I burned up Nashville looking for a decent banjo within my budget — a good one, even then, was upwards of a thousand bucks (which was, like, a thousand bucks to me in those days). And no more great deals to be had in pawn shops, nossir.
On my way out of town, I stopped at one more music shop…and found this Epiphone deluxe marked down to $300. Seventy-something percent off. Flamed maple, arched top, fake abalone inlay.
It’s gaudy as shit.
But it is a pretty decent banjo. And trebly. And LOUD. Needs a new head, though. The old one’s go-bust, so I’m not *really* getting the volume out of it.
While I was unscrewing the brackets tonight, I said to Uncle B that I’d like a good banjo mute for my birthday.
And he goes, “what’s a banjo mute?”
And I’m like, “if you value your happiness, I suggest you find out. Soon”
March 23, 2009 — 8:43 pm
Comments: 37