God Bless America
Say ‘allo to my leetle fren’, Shockwave. He’s a Peterbilt mounted with three Pratt & Whitney J34-48 jet engines (angled slightly downward so it doesn’t launch itself directly into the stratosphere). Zero to 300 mph in 11 seconds and burns 400 gallons of fuel per mile on a speed run. And THIS, my friends, is why we simply must drill in ANWR.
Yep. I went to the RI Air Show this Saturday. The British Red Arrows (the RAF’s version of the Blue Angels) were there. They got here by hopping from England to Scotland to Iceland to Greenland to Northern Canada to the civilized world. Uncle B sent me a Red Arrows t-shirt last year, so I had to wear it. Turned out to be a collosal mistake, since they weren’t selling Red Arrow merchandice at the show (pff! Brits!). I nearly got mugged for it, when I wasn’t being mistaken for Red Arrow support staff.
There were some fantastic stunt pilots there, but Weasel’s into the milporn. And there was plenty and plenty of it. Quonset was once our main Navy pilot training base (it’s a peninsula, and the wind from the ocean apparently simulates a deck landing especially well). It’s an aviation museum now, so it’s all over the place with the decommissioned aircraft.
Sadly, the planes on the ground were covered in children, and the ones in the air were too fast or too far away for me to catch properly (a few pics on my Flickr page. Please to ignore all the typos and sorting errors I just noticed).
It was awesome.
At one point, a stunt pilot flew in low, raised the nose until the belly of the plane faced the crowd, and waggled it side to side in a maneuver I cannot begin to wrap my head around the aerowotsis of. The woman next to me said, “wow! But…I can’t help thinking about all that wasted fuel.”
Liberalism really is a mental disease, isn’t it?
June 30, 2008 — 2:57 pm
Comments: 40
Don’t talk to me; I’m sulking
Rats! Damn! Pooh! Argh! Zounds! Piffle! My Photoshop has learned a new trick: shutting itself down without warning, dumping my work in the process. Bad, BAD Photoshop.
My boss is taking Fridays off for the rest of the Summer, so I spent today drawing you a pitcher. And it was coming out real good. Srsly.
No, I hadn’t saved. Don’t rub it in.
THIRTY people in this building are retiring today. The company isn’t in trouble or anything; it’s a boring artifact to do with how our pensions are calculated. After breakfast, I spent the morning drifting from cake to cake. And then it was time for lunch. After which, some vendor sent us steak sandwiches as a thank-you for some damn thing somebody in our group did. I’m unclear on the details.
…it was a picture of a great bloated sack of a weasel…
Anyhoo, one of the retirees is an engineer with almost 45 years with the company. I was once in his chain of command. Nice enough man, but boy — what an engineer. He sat down with my boss and me one day years ago and tried to come up with guidelines for the design of publications. I’ll never forget it. One of the questions he asked was, “what is the optimum percentage of white space on a page?”
In case thou art not graphically inclined, this makes as much sense as asking an engineer to write guidelines for composing pop music, including the optimum number of oh, babys per love song.
I know you guys don’t like to hear it, but there are problems for which an engineering approach is ill-suited.
There: time to slide down the brontosaurus. It’s Friday! Let’s go home and drink!
June 27, 2008 — 4:18 pm
Comments: 35
It’s the Circle of Liiiiiiiiiife
Well! As of today, all (but one) of the original complement of pussoes at the shelter have either been adopted or…done that other thing. I think, with that, my grossly misplaced sense of personal responsibility is more or less satisfied. I think I’ll give Meowschwitz a rest for a while.
There’s a retired dude who tends to show up just as I’m leaving and I have the feeling I horned in on his gig. The front office calls him “the second shift” and the kittehs are, like, “no thanks, we’ve already eaten and had head skritchies.”
But fear not. It’s never long before I find more of somebody else’s bidness to stick my snout into.
June 26, 2008 — 12:34 pm
Comments: 76
Things that are not right
In a continuation of my apparent blog death wish, recent comments got me thinking about when I had my tomcat Roughly put down. He got kidney cancer, poor lad, when he was about twelve.
The vet left the timing entirely up to me. I would have appreciated some guidance, actually. Different vet. Didn’t like him either.
If you go through this, make sure they’re giving your animal the sleepy, tranquilizer stuff. Because there’s another stuff that’s more of a stimulant. It’s quick, but beloved pet has enough time to let out a last yelp. This is not nice at all.
I lived downtown and yardless, so when they asked if I wanted him cremated, I didn’t have much choice. And when they asked if I wanted the ashes back, I said I guess so. I thought he had a better chance of being handled individually that way. I’m not usually sentimental about remains, but it just didn’t seem right to send out the Best Cat Ever cheek by jowl with somebody’s schnauzer (though I suppose that’s what actually happened anyway).
I forgot about it until several weeks later, when they called me to pick him up. I thought the box was strangely heavy. Inside was a big white marble urn!
My mom? She came back to me in a plastic baggie sealed with a twist-tie.
June 25, 2008 — 2:45 pm
Comments: 56
Me-ouch
Charlotte had her annual checkup and vaccinations today (got to keep current if we’re going to get her into the UK. Damien? You got one more week, bud). They poked many holes in her. She cried all the way there and sulked all the way home.
She doesn’t know the half of it. She goes back in two weeks to have all her teeth pulled.
She’s got a bad case of the Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions, which is a dreadful disease to try to write a blues song about. It’s when the cells that are designed to resorb calcium into the bloodstream work faster than the ones that lay down new calcium. Basically, her teeth are eating themselves.
As many as a third of our domestic moggies have got some dental resorption going on — often below the gumline, so you have no idea until it’s too late. They’ve only been aware that this happens since, like, the ’70s.
I was kind of hoping to hold off until we got her over the pond (I don’t like my vet much), but I looked it up and discovered that the condition is impossibly painful. This guy says it’s so painful, a cat under general anesthesia will still react if you poke a lesion. So, ow.
I hope they leave her fangs. She’ll look stupid without. Other than that, cats don’t look funny without their teeth, on account of they don’t really have lips.
My old ginger tom Roughly had all his teeth pulled in old age. I took the day off work to look after him. As luck would have it, it was the day Hurricane Gloria landed in Rhode Island. It was wild. My apartment was in an old, drafty former boarding house and, when the wind really got going, it lifted up the carpets and made them ripple like the sea.
Old Roughly was bombed out of his tiny hairy skull and he weaved his way across a rolling, heaving floor like, “dude! I am so wasted! The floor is moving!”
June 24, 2008 — 2:24 pm
Comments: 67
Think what your windshield would look like if they really did have wings
So, Uncle B says to me, “you’ve been really dour on your blog lately.” (Which he pronounces like “poor.” Cracks me up. This is bad, on account of when he tell me he’s in a dour mood, is not to snicker). I told him I’d lighten up this week.
I lied.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the doggie suicide bridge. It’s near Dumbarton in Western Scotland. In the last fifty years, fifty dogs have leapt to their deaths off this thing.
It’s always long-nosed breeds, it’s always on a clear day, and they always jump off at the same spot — the last low parapet on the right-hand side of the bridge, facing the estate.
Naturally, they’re blaming my cousin. Not the one who lives in Alabama, they’re blaming stinky minks. Minks are not native to the UK; they were introduced for the fur trade and got away from it just about the time dogs began offing themselves here. There’s a thriving population of them locally, and my goodness they do smell.
Smell would explain the long-nose breeds and the clear weather, but why the same spot every time?
Boo! Happy Monday!
June 23, 2008 — 1:34 pm
Comments: 30
What stuff looks like in my head, part one
I tried to model what numbers look like in my head, as described in yesterday’s post. It turned out remarkably boring, so I quit after one.
On a lighter note, my electrical box passed inspection today!
That’s not a euphemism for lunchtime sex or anything.
June 19, 2008 — 2:53 pm
Comments: 51
Do as I say and nobody gets hurt
Because dead cat blogging wasn’t enough to destroy my traffic completely, I’m going to talk about myself. Bugs ‘n’ Gas Gal (who is blogging again, at least a bit) has tagged me with a meme. And it goes a little something like this…
- Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
- Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
- Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
- Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
- Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you’d like.
Hm. Rule #5 must be a milblog thing. How about the famous Roman Weasels, eh?
Numero Uno. I lived in a commune for a few years as a child. It was alternately a religious commune and a plain old hippie commune, depending on what flavor of nutcake was in charge at the time. This was right before I went to retarded school. As a result of my rich cultural experiences, I speak fluent fundie, hippie and retard.
Although, to be fair, learn one of those and the other two are pretty easy.
Nombre Dooce. I am deathly allergic to Brazil nuts. So why not move to the one country on the whole damn planet where people think Brazil nuts are even worth cracking? Also, I was in my twenties before I heard them called “Brazil nuts.”
Free. My great-grandfather was murdered in his bed in 1906. Somebody leaned in the screen door while he was napping and shot him dead. Everybody suspected one particular field hand — who afterwards married my great-grandmother. I didn’t know that last fact until recently. If I’d been a boy, they were going to name me Sam Houston Weasel after him.
Catarrh. Continuing our Texas theme, one of my forbears was a signer of the Declaration of Independence…of Texas. He had a long and bitter land dispute with Stephen Austin, which my ancestor won years after both were dead. If I’d been a boy, I’d want to be named Sterling Robertson Weasel, after him — only because “Sterling” is a dead cool name.
Cinco, cinco, cinco. I love fried Spam sammiches. With melted muenster. On a Portuguese bolo. With mayo and barbecue sauce. Please not to be asking me how I discovered this happy combination of gustatory delights.
Seece. By the time I came along, the novelty had worn off the whole “teach your child to tell time” thing for my parents, so I just had to imagine how a clock works. As a result, the clock in my head is a 24-hour clock with only one hand that runs counter-clockwise. And I still visualize time that way.
Also featured in my head: the numbers 1-20 look like piano keys (the white ones) running from left to right, but after 20 they turn and stack vertically in groups of 100. These “clump” into groups of a thousand, that clump into ten thousands and so on. Then from about 100,000 to a million, they run in vertical stacks of a million each, which clump into billions. Until you get to the huge numbers, which still look like piano keys, but drift ahead like stepping stones, with the terrifying and impossible black void of space falling away below them.
I am not good at math.
Sebben. Good lord! Who’d’ve thunk I could ever get tired of talking about myself? Number seven is…I secretly love these meme things for permission to indulge. But I secretly hate them because I’m too shy to tag forward, let alone seven people. I imagine the recipient thinking, “Dammit! Weasel! Meme!”
So if you’re in my blogroll and you’re struggling for blog fixin’s, consider yourself tagged. If I see a tagback, I’ll link you up for that awesome weaselanche.
Update: His Maj took the bait.
June 18, 2008 — 4:01 pm
Comments: 61
Government kills kittens
I wasn’t going to say anything — who wants to be a harsher of mellows? — but Weasel finds herself with surplus spleen this afternoon. Stand back!
Remember these guys? There’s not much left of this happy family. Last Thursday, I found one of the kittens dead. As she seems to be a good and attentive mother, the Kitteh Man (whose name is Ed, I think) decided it was just one of those things.
Then another died on Friday. And another over the weekend. And another one this morning. They seemed strong and healthy…right up until they didn’t.
It must’ve crossed Ed’s mind that I might be the mad cat poisoner: I’ve been the one to discover all but one of the poor little blighters. (Oh, and let me tell you: if there’s any sight sadder than a dead kitteh, it’s a mama kitteh trying to lick one back to life). But it’s just that I show up first in the morning. I’m a first-shift Crazy Cat Lady.
Mama kitteh became more and more subdued and withdrawn, which I took for grief. But yesterday it was clear that she is ill herself. Kitteh Ed tells me she’s still alive, but very sick “in the back room.” He may be lying.
No clue what’s the matter. I’ve gone from cage to cage, handling every damn cat in the place, so if it’s something infectious…oh, that could be real ugly. But it hasn’t jumped cages yet. Ed, who has surely seen a zillion sick cats in his time, has no idea.
So! One left. The little dark dude on the top of the pile there. He was strong and loud this morning, but Ed said he wasn’t sure the fosterer would get there in time to save him.
So I’m, like, “okay…I’ll foster him.”
And he says, “you can’t. We can’t either. It has to be someone registered to foster.”
And I say, “well, what do I have to do to get registered?”
He shakes his head, “ohhh…you have to put in an application with the DEM and go in for an interview, and then they come out and inspect your place…” he trailed off and flapped his hands. It’s why they’re chronically short of people who can foster.
Oh, I know why the rules are there. Even with the best intentions, mishandling baby animals can be the functional equivalent of torturing them to death. But Ed could’ve worked out in five minutes if I’ve ever hand reared kittens (I have) and whether turning a kitteh over to me was better than the alternative (duh).
This is what happens when people believe that rules work better than judgement. If we trust people to behave professionally, sometimes they’re going to let us down. But pre-empting people with rules will let us down MUCH more often, because crisis is fluid but rules are blind and inflexible.
It’s nuts to think that more rigid rules mean fewer bad things happen. Hey, you know what? Government kills kittens.
June 17, 2008 — 2:58 pm
Comments: 23
Happy birthday, Brother Weasel
Yesterday was my big brother’s…ummmm…56th birthday. June the 15th. Or, as he used to run around the house singing it, “June the Sisteense.” My brother didn’t discover the letter “F” or the phoneme “th” until he was about ten (oh, the tragic day mother sent him to buy fish food!).
That’s his horse, Polly. I insisted she was our horse, but by the time I was old enough to ride her alone, it would have been kinder not to. When running, she blew rhythmic wind out both ends simultaneously in a maneuver I called the “wheezefarts” while she worked up a big ol’ mouthful of lather to fling back in my face, like a big wet equine meringue clown-pie.
But I digress.
My brother and I aren’t estranged; we were never close. He’s a very nice guy, really. But he’s just such a…huge…banana. He’s my only surviving full sibling, which makes him closer to me genetically than anybody in the whole wide world.
Shit. That makes me feel warm; like a generous slice of equine meringue pie.
June 16, 2008 — 5:20 pm
Comments: 38