Eva Braun’s nightdress
I find the weirdest stuff doing Google Images searches (though why I was doing a search for ‘nightdress’ I’ll never tell). This one is indeed Eva Braun’s — and, yes, it is embroidered all over with tiny swastikas. No shit.
It’s from a year old article in the Daily Mail about one particularly eccentric British family and their collection of stuff. I recommend it (really. It’s pretty funny).
I hate myself for reading the Mail, but I read it anyway. The Telegraph was once my favorite newspaper, but they’ve slid inexorably toward “lifestyle” pieces and the British equivalent of political RINOism. It’s so boring.
The Mail is impossibly low-rent, but at least they still get pissed off about things. Not always the right amount of pissed off at the right things, maybe, but I’ll take what I can get. Even if I have to go past baby bumps, trout pouts and ‘what’s that up Amy Winehouse’s nose today?’ to get there.
July 11, 2008 — 1:46 pm
Comments: 18
Dude, my cat is SO HIGH
My cat is as high as a elephant’s eye. I read an article on animal pain management the other day that said opiates are still the best choice, so I’m guessing they filled her right up with smack. Her pupils were the size of dinnerplates; almost no green showing at all (I got a nice shot of this, but my SD card burped and mangled it). Yep. A Gig kitty of my very own, at last.
It’s always fun to see Charlotte act goofy. She was three months old, feral and starved nigh unto death when I trapped her with a squirrel trap baited with tuna. By the time she was strong enough to play, she was too old to learn how. I’d dangle a string in front of her, and she’d squint up at me solemnly, like, “yeah. It’s a string. Did you want something, lady?”
Now she got de rubberleg and a tongue that won’t stay in her mouth. Her pupils are back down to usual size this morning, but she’s still teh stoned. She gets a dose in her Friskies for three days, so I got liquid kitteh to play with for a while.
July 10, 2008 — 8:31 am
Comments: 47
With a name like Indignico, it has to be unseemly
Let’s see — where were we?
Indignico, Inc — the people behind velvetpaintings.com — bringing you output of the finest Velvet Elvis painters of Tijuana.
Each original custom velvet painting was painted entirely by hand in Tijuana, Mexico by a professional Mexican velvet Elvis artist for Indignico Inc. And each one was commissioned by average ordinary everyday people from the internet–just like you–who thought it would be worth between $250 and $1250 to have their idea envelvetized by a genuine, authentic, professional Mexican Velvet Elvis Artist with the kind and nurturing guidance of a trained Curator-Of-Sales from Indignico Inc.
Indignico Inc. is just the sort of All-American American company who will stop at absolutely nothing to smuggle–over the border and into your lives–just a little bit more All-American American Quality. . .
Yeah, they’re taking the mickey. But they’re also serious: they’ve got a permanent eBay store and they take commissions. For $250, you can have any ol’ thing you like immortalized in acrylic on velour.
For some reason, they have a particular obsession with envelvetizing Republicans. I mean Lincoln, Reagan…sure. I guess. But who’d fork over a couple of hundred bucks for a velvet Karl Rove or annoyed Jack Abramoff?
I get the snark. I just don’t get the point of the snark. Seems like a lot to pay for a big, ugly punchline.
Thanks to Muslihoon, who asked what was so darned funny about velvet paintings when the topic came up. Poor Musli…it probably makes less sense now than it did before.
July 9, 2008 — 6:00 am
Comments: 28
…a popular blogger who goes by the name Weasel…
Jonathan Kay (said blogger) has a long post praising Hitchens for his courage. I’m a footnote (a footnote! You hear that, Ma?). He says of my remarks:
The logic here is faulty: Hitchens agreed to waterboarding because he knew that he could end the experience at any time — and that he was not truly in the grasp of interrogators seeking to terrorize him into a confession. To cite his willingness to try the experience as evidence that waterboarding isn’t torture is spurious. It is also a study in circular reasoning: By this logic, no interrogation technique can be shown to be torture by a journalistic investigator — since the very act of investigation is taken as proof against torture.
But my logic isn’t faulty, Jonathan. That’s exactly what I’m saying: no technique that a journalist endures right the way through for mere journalistic purposes can be classed as torture. Certainly not if he takes seconds.
Look, if we live long enough, all of us have experiences that are torturously painful: an accident; a terrible medical procedure; the death of someone we love. We all know what torture is because everybody gets a taste. Torture is that thing nobody would take if they didn’t have to.
If somebody’s life depended on it? Yes…if you’re strong enough. To write an article about “dear me, how horrible that was”? Nuh-uh. No way. The very fact that he didn’t puss out kills his argument.
Weasel’s new-and-improved, succinct definition: torture is that which
is so awful, you’ll make it stop if you think you can. Hitchens had
an easy out and he didn’t take it. Is that any clearer?
July 8, 2008 — 5:49 pm
Comments: 24
Here, kid — go play with a nut on a string
Behold, conkers. Horse chestnuts. Allen brought them up. British schoolchildren once played a game where they threaded chestnuts on a string and took turns swinging one against another until one or the other cracked.
Apparently, the main thrill was getting your knuckles rapped with a near miss. Which is why I say “played” — HealthNSafety Nazis have outlawed them in many school jurisdictions. Or mandated — yes — safety glasses.
Wikipedia (where I nicked these nifty photos) has a surprisingly interesting article on the game, including trivia. Which is how you know a Brit must have written the article: International Conker Championship trivia. More lily-gilding than most Americans can manage.
Go read it. It’s too hot in here to excerpt.
Incidentally, sending me home with a pocket full of conkers every Fall, as Uncle B does, is muy illegal. You’re not supposed to smuggle nuts across international borders. I told him he’d made me an accidental scofflaw. And he said, “what’s a scofflaw?” And I had to explain that scofflaw is a bogus, make-believe word for people who broke a bogus, make-believe law.
— 3:42 pm
Comments: 9
Somebody order a nightmare?
I owned this particular set of prints, which I ordered from the back of some magazine in, like, 1967. Four for a buck. The artist was called Gig and the genre was called Pity Kitties (and Pitty Puppies, Pitty Cubs and God knows what these are, but Gig painted them). Thanks to Gig, I wander the earth in fixed belief that millions of adorable kittens die every day for want of ham sammiches and weasel smoochies.
If I ever find Gig, I’m going to murder him. Murder him until he’s dead.
That’s not likely. There’s considerable mystery around the profusion of Big-Eye artists of the Fifties and Sixties: Gig, Eve, Mikki, Lee, Eden, Maio (something in addition to their tardonyms). No-one seems to know anything about them, and efforts to learn more have so far been fruitless (I’m guessing there’s shame and a great deal of soul-destroying guilt involved).
An exception is Walter Keane, who may have been the one to start it all. His schtick was big-eyed waifs, though it wasn’t really his schtick — the paintings were actually done by his wife, Margaret. But they were signed “Walter” and it was a hugely lucrative business, so when came the divorce, Walter claimed to be the actual painter.
To make her case, Margaret tore one off in front of the judge in Federal court (by which I mean painted a waif, not farted). Walter declined to paint one himself, on account of “his arm was sore.” She won.
Having a portrait painted by Margaret Keane was briefly in vogue among those refined citizens of Hollywood. Such noted aesthetes as Jerry Lewis, Liberace and Kim Novak sat for her. Natalie Wood and Joan Crawford were huge fans.
Keane is 81 and still painting. One of her bug-eyed originals will set you back tens of thousands nowadays. After she left Walter, she blissed out with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and currently describes her hypereyeballic waifs as weeping “tears of happiness.”
Get this: Kate Hudson is starring as Margaret Keane in a film called Big Eyes that will start production any day now. It’s a drama. About feminism. Kidding? Not.
This makes Weasel very sad.
July 7, 2008 — 11:10 am
Comments: 93
Have a great “Thank God We Aren’t British Any More” Day, ever’body!
It’s going to drizzle all weekend long in New England, but Intrepid Weasel is going out to play with her new GPS. Yay! I’m’onna get WET!!!
July 4, 2008 — 9:53 am
Comments: 28
I did not know that
This dude? Uncle Sam. No shit.
He was Samuel Wilson (1766 — 1854), a meat packer from Troy, New York. During the War of 1812, he won a contract to supply meat to the army. The barrels were market “U.S.” and the soldiers joked that it stood for “Uncle Sam.”
It stuck.
When he got the little beard and the kicky star-spangled weskit, I do not know. I found this by following McGoo’s link to an article about James Mongomery Flagg. You know: the guy who painted the I Want You poster with finger-waggin’ Sam on it.
It’s the day before a holiday and my boss is out, so I have no intention of doing anything that even vaguely resembles work today.
And tomorrow? I’ll celebrate the Fourth the way I always do: ringing up Uncle Badger and yelling “Hey Limey — you suck!” and hanging up.
Got to be careful. One of these days, he’s going to figure out it’s me.
July 3, 2008 — 10:41 am
Comments: 27
I am indebted to Christopher Hitchens
Torture is any experience so horrible that no-one would consider trying it out simply for the purpose of writing a Vanity Fair article about what it’s like.
There! I feel better.
Article via Ace who pinched it from The Drawn Cutlass.
July 2, 2008 — 1:26 pm
Comments: 83
The stealth fighter that almost torpedoed a weasel
The research and engineering company I work for really didn’t need Xtreme image processing technology to do boring old science. Computers that could do graphics cost gigantic bucks in the ’80s and, really, the ink-and-vellum we’d used for a hundred and twiddly-two years would do what needed doing just fine. The purpose of all that expensive computer graphics tech was marketing. It was worth a few hundred thousand corporate bucks for pie charts that made prospective clients go, “holy farging shift, what consummate geeks!”
So Weasel got excellent toys to play with.
We started with a turnkey business graphics system. Then, in 1987, when Photoshop was just a gleam in Thomas Knoll‘s eye, they bought me (me! Mine! Mine, I tell you!) a digital image processing system. Um, a thingie that did Photoshoppy stuff.
I had worked with photos for years before that, but even I have trouble remembering now what life was like before Photoshop. It was hard, slow and expensive to alter a photo in any way, and even the most skillful job usually looked like shit. People took for granted the accuracy of photos, because that was the correct thing to do.
All that changed with digital image processing, and I had a blast giving people their first taste of it. My workstation was a standard stop on the company tour. Typically, I would take a snapshot of the man standing in front of me and merrily erase his mustache, give him a third eye and make his ears the size of dinnerplates, in real time. Oh, to see the sweet innocence fade from a middle-aged businessman’s eye!
Another cool thing we could do, because we did all our film processing in-house, was create nifty graphics and produce slides (remember slides?) while a meeting was still in progress. My favorite was the time we captured a picture of the client’s corporate offices from the back page of his annual report, and I used my P’shoppical skills to set the building on fire. I’m told several old guys in rumpled suits leapt up and dashed for the phones when that slide came up. w00t!
So this one time, shortly after we bought the image processor, we were in talks with Lockheed and the salesdude wanted me to make him a nice title slide beforehand. I was given a photo of a plane that was just crap. TOTALLY blurry and out of focus. I couldn’t believe it; it was the shittiest photo I’d ever been given to work with.
Scandalized, I set about cleaning it up. I mean, it was pretty easy to make out what the thing looked like under the blur, if you were a highly trained professional artard like what I am. And so, using my mad illustration skillz, I basically did a light, semi-transparent drawing on top of the photo. It was coming along pretty good, too — downright photorealistic-looking — when my boss walked in and shrieked like he was a little girl and I just dropped a frog down her blouse.
Yeah, see, the F-117 Nighthawk was still highly classified in 1987, and that blurry, deliberately fucked-up photo was the only one that had been officially released — and then only to Lockheed’s technical partners. Who knew? Not this weasel, for sheasel.
So, back in the days when photos never lied, what were my chances of explaining to the nice men from the FBI or the CIA or the Secret Service or whoever how I came by a nice, clean photo of their sooper-secret stealth dingus?
July 1, 2008 — 11:28 am
Comments: 31