Disconcerting…
Not my hand. Not my toilet. I pinched it from this thoughtful article in Heating, Ventilating and Plumbing magazine titled TOILET MANUFACTURERS CALLED ON TO RETHINK DUAL FLUSH BUTTONS.
It is a quandary. The dual flush toilet was foist upon Britain to save water. Little button for little flush, big button for big flush. Problem is, they actually waste water, partly through people not remembering which button does which and partly through a leaky mechanism. To the tune of 88 million gallons a year.
Also, they break a lot. Usually in the wee hours when a weasel gets up for a wee, disconsolately mashing a button that doesn’t respond. Then repeating the exercise in the morning because I forgot. Bleh.
There are actually several different types of toilet in the UK and I have struggled with all of them. Here’s the Toilet Guru in his Toilets of the World series explaining British Toilets. There’s even a WikiHow.
Fortunately, we were able to get a plumber on short notice, so it’s working again. I understand the mechanism was full of bees.
July 20, 2023 — 6:09 pm
Comments: 10
Lived to weasel again
The combine harvester turned right, I continued straight ahead and the arrow marks the spot your beloved weasel nearly got harvested. Who knew he’d drop his reel right onto a bike path?
Yes, that thing on the front is called a reel. I looked it up.
But jiminy christmas, the harvest? On the 14th of July? That’s like six weeks early. What is going on?
Also, this year there are both square bales and cylindrical ones. Two different balers, I guess. It ain’t right.
Have a good weekend, y’all!
July 14, 2023 — 6:22 pm
Comments: 10
Nice one!
Up for auction, an especially fine Sussex pig. I’ve always wanted one.
This is a (traditionally brown glazed) pottery pig with a detachable head. It is believed (by whom? I don’t remember) that a rogue would bet a drinking companion that he (the rogue) could drink a hogshead (66 imperial gallons) of wine, and then he’d whip the head off a Sussex pig and pour himself a good swig.
Ha ha. Good way to get a poke in the snoot, if you ask me.
I won’t bid on this one, though – handsome though it be. For one thing, it’s had a repair to the head. I ordinarily wouldn’t care about such a thing, but if I’m going to pay £120 for a practical joke, I want it to be pristine.
And they usually have Wunt Be Druv incised along the neck. I can guess why it’s missing on this one: this pig is described as early 19th Century, and Wunt Be Druv didn’t appear in print until 1875 (though surely it was in use before then).
Big fan of Wunt Be Druv. I should make a t-shirt.
Today’s Tucker:
Episode 9 July 11 Topic: The Andrew Tate interview
Two and half hours long. I ain’t got time for that.
July 13, 2023 — 7:29 pm
Comments: 5
More moo
We went back to visit the moo cows today. You know, the farm shop with the milk vending machine.
Milk vending machines since have become something of a thing locally. Hippies!
Changing the subject – by a real lot – did you know they think they’ve found Sodom? An archeologist working on a site called Tall el-Hammam came upon a layer of weirdly burned roofs and melted stuff and said to himself say, this looks a whole lot like the wrath of God.
“The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a 50-m-wide bolide” — a meteor that explodes in midair — “detonated with 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.”
[…]
What was unlike destruction caused by earthquakes or warfare were pottery shards with their outer surfaces melted into glass, some bubbled as if boiled, “bubbled” and melted building brick and plaster, suggesting some unknown high-temperature event. Objects of daily life, carbonized pieces of wooden beams, charred grain, bones and limestone cobbles were burned to a chalklike consistency.
Other scientists have rubbished it, of course. They think he just dug up an ordinary smelter and flipped. The archeologist is from a Bible college, apparently.
When I went hiking in Exeter, Rhode Island, I often passed a residential road called Sodom Trail. I never dared go up it.
July 12, 2023 — 5:39 pm
Comments: 8
Dead Pool 157: Dog days edition
HottyTottyGirl takes it with Julian Sands. On balance, he probably died on the day he went missing (story at the link), but we’ll never know.
It was an extremely odd pick – she persisted with him for months, despite the fact his body would probably never be found or, if found, his date of death would never be established. I think I was overcome with awe.
Does everyone have a cool drink and a shady spot? Then we’ll begin.
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
July 7, 2023 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 75
Don’t wear shorts
Part of Alnwick Gardens, away up north. I didn’t find this one due to my local knowledge of the English countryside, I pinched it from Not the Bee.
They were very taken with the Australian Gympie Gympie plant. “Apparently the plant was first discovered when an Australian road surveyor’s horse was stung, went insane, and dropped dead in about two hours. This thing literally kills horses in less time than it would take you to watch Titanic.”
I was more taken by a post from the regular garden, a mutant foxglove. In addition to the bell flowers evenly space down the stem, there’s one monster carnation-looking spotty flower at the top.
I googled around to see how common it was and discovered it is an “anomaly peloric monstrous terminal flower mutation caused by a double recessive gene at a locus called ‘centroradialis'”. Double recessive sounds pretty rare.
I ask because someone in my circle recently came back from Hong Kong with pictures of a different sort of mutant foxglove. Instead of evenly placed individual bell flowers down the stem, it had multiple clusters of, like, eight or ten bellflowers. It was neat.
This is something like it – but a warning before you click the link, the blog post goes from talking about mutant foxgloves to talking about where to get Viagra and Cialis in the UK then back to foxgloves. Spam is afoot!
This one is close, too, and the link is to Mumsnet, so no funny business.
I have a bit of a thing about foxgloves. My grandmother had an old picture book of an enchanted garden with those creepy Victorian illustrations. I remember alllll the little fairy faces peering out of the bell flowers. No wonder foxgloves mutate.
July 5, 2023 — 7:17 pm
Comments: 3
urp…
I have eaten something that disagrees with me. That’s what it feels like, anyway. But what could it be? The hard boiled eggs weren’t the freshest, but I’m not sulfury. Corned beef hash seems pretty innocuous.
We may never know.
Here, please enjoy this picture of my silly cat. I understand the internet likes this sort of thing. I think he’s getting spoiled. He’s taken to meowing angrily if we don’t respond to his needs fast enough.
July 3, 2023 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 4
Hmmm…
HottyTottyGirl picked Julian Sands in the Dead Pool, the actor who went missing on a hike in January.
His remains have now been found. He vanished on the 13th of January. She picked him a week later, on the 20th. I’m inclined to call that a Rule 0 violation.
But wait.
She argues that she has picked him in every Dead Pool ever since. I checked and she has.
Considering there was an excellent chance his body would never be found – or, if found, it was likely to cause Rule 0 issues – I call that an admirable commitment to a pick. Bordering on foolhardy.
HottyTottyGirl is no stranger to anomalous Dead Pools, of course. You might remember Round 161, where she picked “the Pope” and then had to clarify because there were two of the bastards alive at that point and one of them croaked. Uncle Al probably feels robbed there, as he carefully enumerated his pope one pick later.
Then there was Round 160, where Jerry Lee Lewis was declared dead, then declared alive, and then declared dead again. Our girl nipped in at Stage Two.
Still, I have a warm spot for eccentricity. They can’t time a six month old death with any accuracy. I choose to believe Julian Sands had ten days frolicking in the January sunshine on the slopes of Mt Baldy and declare it a win.
It is much too late for a Dead Pool today – so listen up, all you slebs. You have a week to croak and take yourselves out of the Pool.
Have a good weekend!
p.s. I’m astonished to learn thefritz’s sister is a forensic pathologist. That was my dream job, once.
June 30, 2023 — 6:36 pm
Comments: 16
“Balls!” cried the queen
“If I had two I’d be king!”
I don’t really know what that means. I used to work with a man who shouted it from time to time.
Anyway, it’s not balls, it’s boules. There’s a match tonight between us and the next village over. Time was, villages would beat each other up for being foreigners. I guess this is an improvement.
Me, I’m not into team sports. I’m only going for the beer.
June 26, 2023 — 6:30 pm
Comments: 9
Yes, it was
Spotted on a Sussex road. It was the color of Pepto-Bismol.
June 20, 2023 — 6:59 pm
Comments: 11