Rub weasel on your behbeh
Turns out Mustela is a kind of French skin cream for infants. Who knew? They have a whole range of products, but I’m having problems with my Flash plugins so my browsers throw up on the website.
Yep. I got nothing.
Rushed a PowerPoint out the door for somebody today and had a mover’s estimator show up and case the joint. If you’d told me a year ago that all my worldly possessions would fit into a container ten foot by ten foot by seven foot, I’d go, “pff! Yeah! If you leave it on the surface of a really high-gravity planet for like a year until all the atoms smoosh together into some super-dense Weaselium alloy. Yeah. Maybe then.”
But it turns out, 80% of my precious shit was shit. And now it sits on a landfill somewhere, its sightless eyes staring up forever into the wide, empty sky. China, maybe. Or Arizona. Or the Atlantic. Where does our shit go, anyhow?
People keep asking me if it’s a liberating feeling, tossing my shit. It is…but in a horrible, nihilistic way. It’s the liberation of watching your house burn down. It’s the liberation of knowing that everything you have amassed in a lifetime that is worth a damn would fit in a 10x10x7 container. And half of that is probably kind of crap.
But enough poopies! Now that my visa has arrived at the Embassy, I really — finally! — feel quite happy. A little anxious still, but it’s dawned on me…I will wake up to an alarm clock five more times in my life.
Not that I’ve slept until the alarm for years and years, but it’s the idea, man. The idea.
November 13, 2008 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 24
And then I made a little puddle on the floor
I was going to publish the tracking numbers so everyone could follow the twist of the screw with me, but something in the back of my head said that was a bad idea. I can’t put my finger on why, but I don’t need to make unnecessary withdrawals from my stupid account. I’m going to need those credits.
Yep, they’re away. One is cat papers going to the USDA, the other is weasel papers going to the embassy. Pray god I didn’t get them the wrong way around. I don’t want to be wormed before I get on the plane.
The fingerprint place is a general immigration office of some kind. The people who worked in it were teh suck. The surly cow who took my prints refused to join me in a laugh about my full and legal name, a sure sign she was working at being a bitch. She thought I was insanely stupid because she had to tell me what to do. It particularly exasperated her when she pointed to a chair and I sat in it (I was supposed to put my stuff on it). This seems doubly unfair since she ordered me to sit in the chair later by pointing to it.
And just before she took my prints, somebody leaned over and said something that really pissed her off. She’d start to roll one of my fingers and then fling up her hands and shout “He’s lucky I wasn’t there — I’d’ve said something!” and then she’d start to roll a finger again and shout, “I wouldn’t have let that pass!” and gesture in the air. With my finger.
I had to fill out a customer response card on the way out. I gave her good marks for everything. You don’t fuck with civil servants if you want your papers to get there.
That machine is cool, anyhow. It’s a little plate of glass and a big monitor, and you get to see your fingerprints up huge in realtime. Then it grades the quality of the print. I guess I got passing grades.
Hartford wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t find the FedEx place. My GPS got the stupids and kept sending me in circles or directing me down roads that didn’t exist or weren’t named that. It particularly enjoyed sending me up and down Asylum Street (and Asylum Place and Asylum Ave). Ha ha. Yes. I gets it. Wants to go home now?
I hit a FedEx Kinko’s in Providence and got everything packaged up. Then my Visa card bounced. “!” I said. This was a pain because I’d used that card number for the return FedEx slips and had to throw those away and make new ones using a different card number and repackage everything.
Got home, called the credit card company, gave the robot my number…and immediately got to a human being. “!” I thought.
“Your account was frozen because of suspicious activity from overseas.”
“Hm?”
“November 4. Great Britain.”
“Oh. I do have somebody in Britain. I might have bought him something locally. How much was it?”
“$942.”
“Oh, dear. That is rather a lot of…OH HOLY FLAMING BATSHIT!!! YOU BOUNCED MY VISA APPLICATION FEE?!?!”
“Well, I can’t really tell if it bounced or if we froze the account after that, but I’ll unfreeze you now! And thanks for calling Huge Stupid Credit Card Company! click”
Jesus. They didn’t call me or anything. They waited until I tried to use the card and called them. So either they let a big suspicious charge float for eight days without saying anything or they’ve crushed my little weaselly dreams. Crushed them, I say!
November 12, 2008 — 6:54 pm
Comments: 25
Think of my FedEx bill, and weep!
Here’s where my years as a cubiclemonkey finally pay off. Those document holders are holding sheaves of papers, of course, not individual ones…grouped topically and described in an inventory. The two stacks in the back are the photocopies. And that thing on top is my check to the expediter. I have never been so glad I chose the Scooby Doo personalized checks.
Okay, so, biometrics tomorrow, off to the nearest FedEx/Kinko’s, make copies of the biometrics, FedEx the lot to the expediter, drink until I hear something. Then I’ll pick myself up and dust myself off and start all over again.
Let us review. The visas in order are:
Marriage visa: good for six months, during which time we must wed. That’s this one. I can see a doctor, but I’m otherwise pretty much a non-person on this visa. No work, not even volunteer work. Before the six months is up, I have to go for
Further Leave to Remain: this one allows me to get a National Insurance Number and work and stuff. Essentially the same paperwork as this visa, plus marriage certificate. This makes me a sort of probationary person. Currently, it’s taking two months to process these, so I shall be a Stoat of Leisure — or, at any rate, a houseweasel — for some time. Before two years is up, I have to go for
Indefinite Leave to Remain: this one is good forever, unless I do something bad and get caught. Then they can still deport me. Before I get this one, I have to take something called the Life in the UK test, which is kind of like Limey Trivial Pursuit. I’ve taken a couple of mock versions online. I passed one, but not the other. Dates. I cannot remember them. Finally, there’s
Citizenship and passport. I wouldn’t do this if it at all endangered my US citizenship. But it don’t. So I shall. Under current rules, I’m eligible for this three years after I set foot in the UK with that first visa, so I’ll probably go for it shortly after I get my ILR. I have to be sponsored by a couple of responsible professional people, like a vicar and a doctor. So ixnay on the ussingcay.
You’d think government would prefer people stay on an ILR, because it’s easier to control them, but they are currently talking about making citizenship semi-mandatory. That is, you become a citizen, you explain why you can’t (religious reasons, or losing citizenship in your native country, for example) or you leave. So. Um. Okay.
Each one of these is a thousand bucks a throw, not counting shipping costs and document gathering and so on. The Immigration Service is entirely self-supporting, and it’s not hard to see how they manage it.
So think of me at noon tomorrow, in Hartford, having unspeakable things done to me in the name of homeland security. They won’t even let you bring a cellphone in the building, so I’m pretty sure there’s at least an anal probe. Yay!
November 11, 2008 — 4:44 pm
Comments: 38
Licenfe for to Import ye Weazelle
Okay, here’s what I had to scrape up for visa number one.
- ■ A letter from Uncle B saying he’s cool with this
■ His passport
■ Six months of bank statements
■ Deed to Badger House
■ Two years of his tax returns
■ My old passport
■ My current passport
■ Six months of my bank statements
■ A list of all the times we’ve been together, where and for how long
■ Pictures of us together
■ A few postcards covering the widest spread of time
■ Screencaps of our email traffic for a few months
■ Screencaps of our Skype history for a few days
■ A passport-sized photo of me not smiling, looking like a sad, elderly, half-deflated balloon
■ A Xerox copy of all this shit (and another one to keep in case they lose all this shit)
■ $940
Bear in mind this is originals only — no photocopies. And you can’t start early, the bank documents have to be farm fresh.
Wednesday noon I take me and my passport and my appointment sheet to Hartford, CT, where I get fingerprinted, rephotographed — and possibly put into the DHS database. They don’t tell you when they do this or what triggers it. The biometrics step is all new. Lucky moi.
Then I go to the nearest FedEx/Kinko’s, have the biometrics thingie Xeroxed, put it together with the other stuff and a return FedEx envelope, and FedEx it all to the Visa Expediter. Three hundred bucks to them, they drop it off at the embassy, it goes to the top of the pile (which, incidentally, sounds like a very dubious racket to me) and if the papers are in perfect order, they pick up my Import License next day and FedEx it back to me.
But, of course, papers are never in perfect order. He’s missing June on his bank statements. I’ve carried my birth certificate in my wallet my whole life, but it wasn’t there when I looked today (it’s unclear if I’m from a country that requires this, or if my passport is enough). And on and on. I’m told that individual immigration officers have tremendous personal authority about what to accept and what to reject. So basically, I only have to hope I get dropped on the desk of a British civil servant living in New York City in November who doesn’t have a hair across his ass.
I am SO screwed.
November 10, 2008 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 59
There’s still good in the world, if you know where to look
I meant the cat.
November 7, 2008 — 8:00 am
Comments: 41
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOoooOOOoooOOOoooOOO!!!!111!!!
Right. Well, okay then. Um, fine. So. Um. Okay. Uh huh. Okay. Right.
November 5, 2008 — 6:14 am
Comments: 91
VOTE! Vote like the wind!
Okay, youse guys, we have ourselves a long shot today. But when has the likelihood of failure ever stopped us from making a futile gesture in the direction of our hopes and dreams? Frequently, that’s who! So let’s get out there and shake our fists at inevitability one more time!
So why do we vote on the first Tuesday in November? We don’t. We vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Srsly.
Per 1792 law, states have 34 days before the first Wednesday in December to choose their electors. But the actual date wasn’t fixed. States could vote anytime inside that thirty four days. Imagine! If you like our primary elections, if you love exit polls, you can see how great this plan worked out. In close elections, the last state to vote picked the president.
So they decided to nail the day down in 1844. The first Tuesday in November is just inside 34 days before the first Wednesday in December unless Tuesday falls on the first, in which case it doesn’t. So it’s the first Tuesday after the first Monday. Simple!
Why November? It’s after the harvest but before the snows. Why Tuesday? Well, Wikipedia says it took most people driving a horse and buggy a day to get into town, a day to vote and a day to get home again. Couldn’t interfere with Sunday, and Wednesday was market day. But that doesn’t make any sense, because if it took them a day to get back, that’s screwing up Wednesday, isn’t it? So why not Thursday-Friday-Saturday? So I’m going to say that part is a great mystery, like the Brown Mountain Lights and aerosol cheese.
Sweaseldotcom — the Website for People Too Butt-Lazy to Type “http://wikipedia.org” For Themselves!
November 4, 2008 — 9:14 am
Comments: 121
Nature is so freaking relaxing
These things always look so easily do-able on the trail map. A short, sharp climb from the car and then a gentle meander along the ridge-top to Mount Tom.
Hahaha. Idiot.
It was an evil mile and a half of basalt towers, crumbly shale and thousand-foot plunges. This section of the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail runs right along the Western edge of this huge pile of rock to Mount Tom. I’m mildly acrophobic (my hiking buddy is slightly more so, lucky for me or I might have been dared into something stupid).
There were parts of the trail we both blinked at in stunned disbelief, while clinging each to a tree twenty feet away. One memorable section was a rock three feet long and eighteen inches wide on which half of the white paint blaze had crumbled away and fallen into the abyss. I did some bits on my hands and knees, and some bits on my butt and a lot of it nowhere near the official trail markers.
None of my pictures show the full horror, as I was generally yards inland, clinging to something and making low moaning noises, so I stole a more representative picture from somebody else (and I didn’t even have the grace to note who I stole it from). I mean, c’mon…this is a trail?
So we got all the way down to the toe and suddenly realized it had taken us three and a half hours to get where we were, there was an hour and a half before dusk and the closing of the gates, and there was no way on God’s crumbly basalt earth we had the stamina to turn around and go back the way we came. In the dark. With a pocket flashlight.
I voted we go West, to the foot of the hill. There was a paved forest road at the bottom that would make an easy walk back to the car in plenty of time. I mean, sure, it was 1,200 feet down, but I felt certain we could find a tree-line spot where we could safely butt-surf to the bottom.
But no. We went down the gentler slope East and landed on the main road several miles from the car, half an hour before gate-closing. We didn’t exactly hitch-hike, but we found a man walking in the woods with several children and made with the doe-eyes until he gave us a ride to the car.
And that was the stupidest day hike I have ever done. The end.
November 3, 2008 — 10:35 am
Comments: 22
Boo!
Good morning, Halloweenies! (Okay, that’s not original. They’re serving halloweenies in the company cafeteria today).
I am as psychic as a potato. I itch to see something I can’t explain, but I am utterly blind to auras, cold spots, vibes, premonitions and heebie jeebies.
I thought I saw a UFO once. I stood in the side yard at the farm one night watching these strange lights moving far off in the sky…until the sun came up and I saw it was actually a nearby badly insulated electrical wire arcing when it slapped against the pole. I had a touch of heebie-jeebies — call it a heebie — before I knew what I was looking at. I’m apparently capable of the creeps, but my life has been sadly bereft of them.
Something about this guy gives me a heebie, though. Usually, ‘ghost’ photos are meh. Obvious double exposures. Flash noise.
This spooky dude turned up on surveillance photos at Hampton Court Palace. That’s one of Henry VIII’s haunts (ho, ho) about ten miles West of Central London. It’s mostly a tourist attraction now.
In December of ’03, a pair of fire doors in a seldom-used area of the palace blipped the security panel three days running. The third time, the guard checked the nearest camera, and these images turned up.
It doesn’t match anyone authorized to be in the area, or any of the Tudor costumes sometimes used by staff. Security in palaces isn’t infallable, but it’s generally good. Nobody ‘fessed up, nor tried to make hay afterwards.
Britain has a tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas (that’s why A Christmas Carol is one), and this looks an awful lot like Zombie Father Christmas. So…probable hooey.
But we drove past Hampton Court not long after, and Uncle B pointed it out to me. And it was kind of brrrr.
October 31, 2008 — 10:11 am
Comments: 62
Today’s Fun British Fact
It is illegal to mail horror comics to the UK.
For reals. I tried to find an online citation for that, but I couldn’t. It’s true, though. The lady at the Post Office showed me the regulation sheet.
I wasn’t trying to do that. I was trying to mail Uncle B an air pistol. A BB gun. PO Lady wouldn’t let me, on account of it’s “a weapon.” And I say, “a reproduction weapon.” And she says, “well you could hurt somebody with it.” And I say, “I could hurt you with this Customs Declaration form if I tried hard enough.”
I lost. Of course I did. Nobody ever argues the regulations and wins.
My real guns are going in the shop (most of them, anyway). But I have a couple of CO2 pistols I’d like to keep. They’re perfectly legal in the UK, but one looks exactly like a Glock and the other looks like a Walther PPK. I figured I didn’t want to pack them in with my household stuff, on the off-chance they turn up on an x-ray or something and get everything confiscated. So I decided to mail them on ahead.
I’m sure the comic regulation is some fusty old thing left over from the pre-Code comics era. Like the comic I stole this header graphic from. Which is in my horror comic collection.
Which is packed with my stuff.
Oh, piffle.
October 30, 2008 — 2:41 pm
Comments: 39