Friendly neighborhood runnybabbit assassins
Last post I’ll milk out of Uncle B’s day at the village fête. He was most taken with these dudes from the itinerate ferret rescue.
Please not to be laughing, these are serious working weasels. They earn their keep a-rabbitin’. They’re going to come out to Badger House and give Uncle B a hand with his little bunny problem (yes, sadly, Uncle B has little bunnies. But on a happier note, he also has great tits).
The theory is, you put nets across the rabbit holes and send a ferret down one of them, then when bunnies pop out you sack ’em up and…do something unspeakable.
In practice, an inexperienced ferret will occasionally eat a bunny on the spot, curl up in a stinky ball underground and sleep it off. But, in this case, the purpose of the bunnies is to feed the ferrets, so no harm.
They sell bunny in supermarkets there, by the way. And pheasant and other game. There’s a sign on the case warning about the possibility of lead shot in their little bodies. This somewhat harshes my belief that meat is grown in vast tanks in clean modern laboratories.
I’ll end up a vegetarian some day. You watch.
June 12, 2008 — 2:52 pm
Comments: 78
Delights of the village fête, continued
Deadly serious.
June 11, 2008 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 21
A delightful morning of murder and buggery
Oh, man, I love the internet. They’ve put the proceedings of the Old Bailey online! And it’s searchable!
It’s an excellent website, too: in addition to the 200,000+ documents (both scans and transcriptions) covering trials from 1674 to 1913, there’s a ton of good London history (and not much more politically correct than it absolutely has to be).
The Old Bailey is London’s Central Criminal Court and has been since…forever, amen. The current building (built in 1902) is on the site of the old Newgate Prison, but the two were originally side by side for the sake of convenience.
There is no better primary source of information about the lives ordinary people than trial transcripts. Where else can you learn what a murder victim had in his pockets in 1810, what a Victorian innkeeper keeps in the till, what timeless drunken ladies of the evening shout as they whale away on each other with a rum bottle and a tin teapot? Treasure, I tell you!
Naturally, murder trials are the besteses (the advanced search helpfully allows you to sort by crime). But permit me to draw your attention to sodomy offenses prior to 1790, where you will encounter what the site describes as “a vibrant, even joyful, world of men who pursued both homosexual experiences and a distinct lifestyle” — i.e. lots and lots of cross-dressing and buggery. (After 1790 the courts got squeamish and censored the transcripts).
If you have any pasty English genes floating around in your gene pool, I highly recommend plugging your surname into the thingie and seeing what your ancestors got up to. Hey, it’s England! There’s probably a coat of arms for cross-dressers!
See also: the complete Newgate Calendar, London’s Past Online. You can still visit the Old Bailey and attend a trial. I’ve always wanted to. But I made Uncle B take me to the Houses of Detention, the Old Operating Theatre and a fancy rat show so I’m not pushing my luck. I’d just as soon not be the subject of a trial at the Old Bailey, thenkyewverymuch.
June 10, 2008 — 10:23 am
Comments: 79
Y’all seen this? Flying by the pound!
I hate to step on the punchline, but in the interest of avoiding an unfortunate moronosphere blogswarm — yes, it’s a joke.
June 9, 2008 — 1:33 pm
Comments: 20
If I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve made kittens. Oh, wait!
Damien look-alike pops out five perfect tiny micro-Damiens Friday evening.
— 12:30 pm
Comments: 13
Bollocks!
I’ve looked at cats from both sides now
From front and back and still somehow
It’s tomcat googlies I recall,
I’m really stuck on fuzzy balls.
Yep. That’s right. I’m going to leave a big ol’ fuzzy testicular cat’s ass hanging off my front page all weekend long. That ought to drive my numbers right into the wastebasket.
Go on. Shoo! Go outside. Tan something.
It’s going to top ninety degrees all weekend, for the first time this season. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Probably cower in the basement and whimper. (For all I grew up in the South, I do my best Aunt Pittypat imitation when it gets above eighty-five).
June 6, 2008 — 12:55 pm
Comments: 39
Peensch!
What little weasel is the numero uno Google images hit for “cat testicles”? Uh-huh.
I was looking for a picture for Gibby, who isn’t sure what cat baubles look like. I’ll try to take a picture of that big orange bastard next time I’m at Animal Control (dude has a pair, which is undoubtedly how he ended up in animal control).
I owned a big orange bastard just like him once. Wonderful cat. Name of Norbert. He deserved a better name than that, but he was three when I got him and I didn’t feel entitled. First time I took him to the vet, the receptionist asked his name and I said, “Norbert…well, roughly.”
Oh, you guessed! Ever after, I got annual checkup notices addressed to Roughly Weasel.
Roughly was a wonderful people cat, but hell on other animals. Fought constantly. I inherited him because his last family went broke having him stitched up all the time. I made him an inside cat, and he still managed to get loose and get bust up fighting with a cat in the building.
So I take him to have this latest boo-boo sutured and it occurs to me…maybe — I wasn’t all that clear on the ordinary appearance of cat baubles myself — maybe he wasn’t thoroughly neutered. Maybe what they do is, like, little kitty vasectomies and they missed a snip. Or something.
So I say to the vet, “you know, he’s awfully aggressive. Are you sure he’s…ummm…completely neutered?”
And the vet snorts, crosses his arms and says, “pinch his scrotum!”
And I go, “WHAT?!”
And he says, “go on! Pinch it!”
And I go, “no, that’s okay, I trust your…”
“PINCH IT!”
Poor old Roughly is stretched out on the steel table with a big supperating owie on his back, and I reach out and honk his ballsack. He whips around and gives me a look like, “holy FUCK, lady! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!”
Honestly, though, if I didn’t know what cat testicles should look like, how the hell did the vet expect me to know what they should feel like?
Not long after, my mother’s vet invited her to be present at her own cat’s neutering (men flirted with my mother in the strangest ways). It’s a process the involves much pulling and twisting. Mother could describe the experience in a way that made grown men go white and shake like leaves on a palsy tree.
In conclusion: cat testicles!
June 5, 2008 — 2:30 pm
Comments: 50
Cheer up, minions! Kittens!
Kittens! Tender, delicious kittens! The Providence pound is full of ’em.
Eleven, at the moment. All too young to play with. They just bumble around and scream and shit.
More on the way. Two of the girls in the front room are with kitten, alas. (One of them looks so much like my photo of Damien that the Kitteh Wrangler called me in to have a look, on the off-chance that I don’t know a testicle when I see one).
So it looks like my PR campaign — Have Your Pets Spayed Or I Will Personally Come to Your Home and Break Your Nose with a Tire Iron — hasn’t been 100% successful yet.
Dang.
June 4, 2008 — 1:46 pm
Comments: 42
Senate Underpants Gnomes debate global warmening
“This is easily the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax.”
That’s from the excellent Wall Street Journal article on the Lieberman/Warner You Don’t Hate Unicorns, Do You? economic rape and pillage bill before the Senate today. Everyone acknowledges this one doesn’t have a prayer; they’re just softening us up for the real bill next year.
Because — back up and cover your buttholes, ladies and gentlemen — the next President of the United States believes in this shit.
Not global warmening — that’s just stupid. If people really believed that rubbish, they’d behave differently (I’m looking at you, Mister Gore). But there’s nothing a Senator believes in more passionately than sucking money out of the productive sector and blowing it into the hands of government, and this sucker would blow to the tune of THREE POINT THREE TWO TRILLION DOLLARS by 2050.
The floor fights aren’t about whether this economic ass-raping is a good idea, but about who gets how much for what. John Kerry, for example, is concerned about the effect of global warmening on “crustaceans” — shitting you I am not — so Boston lobstermen are in. There’s $802 billion for low income tax relief, which is odd since low income households pay little or no tax as it is. Walking around money, I guess.
There’s $190 billion to train people for ‘green-collar’ jobs (has any government training program other than the GI Bill ever done anything good for anybody?) and another $171 billion for mass transit project (yeah, those always work). There’s half a trillion dollars allocated for “wildlife adaptation” (which I guess means shuttling hippies and spotted owls around the country in brightly painted school buses) and $342 billion for international aid (wait, don’t we do that already?). There’s ice cream and bouncy castles and…oh, what fun we shall have!
I’m guessing the point of this trial balloon of a bill is to see how we, who are about to be reamed good and proper, react. I suggest we do so.
June 3, 2008 — 10:14 am
Comments: 40
Be on the lookout!
Trying to help a fellow painter out here. Twelve of Greg Stones’ matted and framed watercolors were stolen from his home in Glocester, RI (yes, Uncle B…for your information, that one we pronounce correctly) last Wednesday. The one pictured at left is Penguins, Baseball, Revolver.
Other examples of his oeuvre can be seen here. I’d particularly like to draw your attention to my favorites: Nude Observing Monster, the poignant Cavemen and Reaper and the intriguing Victim #2 (who willingly bares her breasts to the machete-wielding psychopath).
Sadly, Seven Penguins, One Poop is not reproduced.
— 8:03 am
Comments: 43