I’ll take ‘things that blow up in your face’ for 500, Alex
In my own defense, I didn’t think the gas would actually come on unless you held down the ignition button thingie, so I might have been a leeetle careless about, you know, hitting knobs and stuff. So when I lit the burner several minutes later and that giant orange fireball blew out the oven…boy, was my face red. And most of my right arm, also. But, hey — no scars, the stove still works, and I didn’t burn the house down. So win, win really.
Anyhow, it puts me in mind of our latest political scandal over here. Have you guys followed this thing? Righty Britblogger Guido Fawkes (whom I really should blogroll, since I read him) got hold of some emails traded between two Labour operatives. Basically, these guys were sick of blogs beating them up and stealing their lunch money, so they decided to launch an attack blog of their own.
Two problems: one, they were totally making shit up. And two, they actually worked for this government.
As it happens, the blog never got off the ground (for reasons that aren’t clear). But the scandal is sticking to Gordon Brown like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like the Dean Scream, or Clinton’s “meaning of is” — not important in itself, but somehow a perfect crystallization of everything that bothers you about the man.
If you like this kind of stuff (and I love this kind of stuff), you can start here.
April 13, 2009 — 6:11 pm
Comments: 34
Mommy, why are bureaucrats so fucking stupid?
I listened to Rhode Island radio streaming over the internet this evening (man, I love hearing about all those traffic jams I’m not sitting in any more). Midnight tonight, RI is hiking taxes, after which they will have the highest cigarette tax in the country.
Highest cigarette prices in the whole country.
Smallest state in the whole union.
Seriously, drive ten, twenty minutes (tops) in any direction and you’re in a whole ‘nother state. Can you guess what’s going to happen?
April 9, 2009 — 7:27 pm
Comments: 21
Ain’t it GREAT to have them Bush goobers out of the White House?
Ain’t it great to have college folks in the White House agin! People who talk purty and have all that book-larnin’ about the sophisticated big-city ways of international diplomacy and sech like.
Okay, there’s no big color version of this one. I lost interest before I worked out all the picture problems, as we call them in the drawin’ trade. Frankly, I think it was freaking me out spending time polishing Her Majesty’s T and A.
Happy Friday, ever’body!
April 3, 2009 — 7:18 pm
Comments: 45
Take it away, Glenster…
I had to go into the hospital this evening for a routine diagnostic — no, no. No big. I have a family history of bum kidneys and they like to give ’em a poke now and then. They’re fine, thanks. I saw them myself on ultrasound! They’re totally shaped like black-eyed peas. But now I’m off my shed-yule tonight.
So why not visit Glenster’s site? He makes nice clean MP3’s of vintage big band 78s and he’s put up ten brand spanking new tracks today — all of ’em from the UK!
My very first web site was dedicated to MP3’s of my 78 collection. There’s all kinds of deeply cool software you can get now to depop, dehiss, rebalance and otherwise restore funky old recordings. It’s like magic. It’s like magic that is a hell of a lot of hard work, so I gave up after the first dozen.
Also, if you can’t bear to listen to Teleprompter Jesus — Greatest Orator of Our Age — stumble through somebody else’s words in primetime one more time, why not listen to this guy talk off the top of his head? He’s a Tory MEP (a British conservative member of the European Parliament). Giving a squirming, smirking Gordon Brown a procto exam. With a rusty garden weasel.
That’s what the thing looks like.
March 24, 2009 — 9:01 pm
Comments: 18
The O-Man, always with the smooth talk
Obama replied, ‘No, no. I have been practising… I bowled a 129.’
The audience roared with laughter, and the late-night talk show host assured Obama ‘that’s very good, Mr. President.’ To which Obama interjected, ‘It’s like – it was like Special Olympics, or something.’
Mr Leno appeared noticeably flummoxed – and swiftly moved the conversation forward as the audience laughed.
Hey, you know the seven words I’ve said a THOUSAND times and I totally wish I never had to say again for the rest of my miserable life? Yeah, you know them:
“Imagine if a Republican had said that…”
Happy Friday, everyone! Click to embiggen and becolor.
March 20, 2009 — 7:35 pm
Comments: 42
Okay, I’ll take the headshot. But only if you let me pay for the bullet…
Did you see this article today? “A well publicized report this week that an estimated 1.5 million American children experienced homelessness in 2005-06 did not use the federal definition of homelessness. Instead, it used a different definition that grossly inflated the actual number.”
The National Center on Family Homelessness put together the study in question using a definition of “homeless” that includes kids staying with relatives or temporarily relocated (e.g. after Katrina). By this definition, they spin the utter bullshit statistic that 1 in 50 children in the States is homeless in any given year.
Whatever. My question is, who the fuck is National Center on Family Homelessness? Not them specifically. I mean, half the news stories I read every day were generated by the American Council for Healthy Knees or the Coalition for a Gluten-Free Tomorrow or Americans United in Cotton Underpants…thousands of the bastards, staffed by high-level, full-time employees and supported by PR firms and websites. And maybe with offices and company cars and annual meetings in Aruba. That’s a hell of a lot of money going down the wishing well. WHO PAYS FOR THIS JUNK? And why?
The peppery proprietor of Devil’s Kitchen has started to poke around the British world of fake charities, with a site called…ummm…Fake Charities.
Turns out, many of these organizations get, like, 1% of their money from real people donations. The other 99% comes from government — either the British government or the European Union. These are groups lobbying for things like higher booze prices or lower speed limits or restrictions on the internet. Paid for with our money (because government has no money. It maketh not, neither doth it sell).
So. Government wants a law, government funds “charity”, charity recommends law. Plus, many useless lefties with junk degrees get sweet jobs. Bonus!
With their dying gasp, newspapers tell us we’ll miss them when they’re gone — them and their original reportage. Well. If they were doing any, we might. Instead, they lazily regurgitate the latest position paper from the Won’t Someone Think of the Children? Foundation without ever troubling to tell us who they are and why we should care.
Some days, it’s enough to make a conspiracy nutcake outta me.
March 13, 2009 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 29
Half past Dickens and a quarter to Hogarth
I’ve also kept away from politics lately because, situated as I am in dark heart of Olde England, I am obviously expected to provide an American viewpoint on British politics. And…I am…completely unable to wrap my head around that. My every attempt to understand (let alone explain) British politics devolves into a mushy, superficial on the one hand this, on the other hand that shopping list of unhelpful observations.
It’s even harder to nail down since Drudge and Fox began linking to Daily Mail stories so much. The Mail describes a Britain that is batshit, racing headlong toward bugfuck, crazy. Well. Kind of. The Mail is an incredibly low-rent populist rag that makes its coin promoting that particular loony vision of Britain. On the other hand, they don’t make this shit up.
I want to say Brits are more cynical about government, but certainly Yanks can be plenty cynical. I am plenty cynical. But Brits somehow seem to expect their government to let them down. They accept tyranny, perfidy or incompetence as what government does the moment you look away. Whereas the American attitude seems to be, “we bled real blood to put you bastards in office because you said you were different.”
And yet British politics is fundamentally miles less corrupt than the American kind.
I am tempted to say British resentment feels likelier to boil over into violence. And yet, the British public has already absorbed insult after terrible insult without demur. I am puzzled by that. I think a lot of Brits are puzzled by that, too.
The British. Famously unflappable, right up until they become howling savages.
Or maybe that spirit has been thoroughly kicked out of them.
I don’t know. I’m a foreigner and everything seems scary and strange. But that thing that gives me the jim-jams about politics right now? It’s worse here.
And that’s really all I know.
March 10, 2009 — 9:31 pm
Comments: 15
Couple of milestones…
Heh. Somehow in the excitement of getting married and shit, I failed to note that February 14 was also the second anniversary of sweasel.com (not counting the few practice months over at WordPress). About the same time, we quietly broke the 200K mark — a fortnight’s traffic for the big dudes, but a matter of quiet pride in this little geekwad backwater.
I want to thank you guys for sticking with me in this last boring year of girly self-absorption. It was a cinch that upping stakes, moving to a whole ‘nother country and getting hitched was going to Gidgetize and Barbify my outlook for a while. For a politics-and-geekery blog, that’s some bad mojo right there.
I thought about putting the site on hiatus until my life settles down a bit (and my natural nerdliness comes roaring back), but my mama told me blogs which hiatus never really come back. And I don’t think I’m done running my mouth yet.
I’ll tell you something, though: I don’t like politics right now. I’ve been arguing ideas — and not always playing nice — for as long as I can remember, but I don’t recall ever being so profoundly uneasy about the tone of the conversation. The center cannot hold. Bad moon on the rise. Whatevs. There’s a smell of crisis and ozone in the air and I don’t know where we’re headed. Or why I’m in this handcart.
Arguing politics isn’t fun at the moment.
So I believe I shall enjoy Spring at Badger House for a while longer. Thanks to everyone who comes here anyway. Some day — I swears — there will be bile again. And vitriol.
Meanwhile. My mosses. Let me show you them.
March 9, 2009 — 8:27 pm
Comments: 40
D’oh!
Welcome to the twenty-four-hour news cycle, President Lucky Magic Sparkly Pony.
Meanwhile, back in Snootyland, Uncle B spotted this headline in today’s online Daily Telegraph. No, it’s not deliberate. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a lifetime of arguing on the Internet, it is this: if you’re going to indulge in a spelling flame, proofread VERY carefully.
So today, I had my hair done. God, there’s a thing. I’ve had my hair cut before, but I do believe this is the first time I’ve ever had it done. At a spa, no less. It involved candles and plaster Buddhas and massaging things with smelly oils and pinning things with hairpins. Jesus, the hairpins. Oh, it was awful.
It rained and windeded like a bastard all day today. I got home from my do to find flood waters lapping around the front door and just starting to seep into the entryway. The house is considerably lower than the yard, presumably because it’s so old the soil around it has gradually built up, so serious flooding is a constant danger.
I had to slip into my Wellington boots and bail out the doorstep in a howling gale. Five minutes to undo everything the most complex and sophisticated hairpins can accomplish.
That’ll teach me.
February 9, 2009 — 7:35 pm
Comments: 33
It’s on!
Sarah Palin launched her PAC this week. Whether she’ll really run in 2012, I don’t know, but I think it would be swell if Sarah’s new PAC grievously outraised McCain’s new PAC. Don’t you?
Oh, and for those who think I support Sarah Palin because she’s an ordinary girl just like me, may I say a couple of words?
Fuck you.
If the word “ordinary” stings you like the lash, you’ve got issues. I knew kids like you in art school who made up these awful broken homes because their happy, stable middle class real families seemed too darned ordinary to produce sooper geniuses.
That’s right, Normo McBoringloser — I’m rubber and you’re glue.
Anyhow, business-runnin’, moose-huntin’, rootin’ tootin’ Mayor-Governor-Moms like Sarah are hardly ordinary. Sure, her accent says, “golly, this sure is some tasty Frito pie” but her resumé says, “get out of my way or I’ll kick your fat balls up around your eye sockets, Sonny.”
Here’s the deal: I think I recognize Sarah Palin. I think I’ve run across her kind before. If I’m right, she’s the sort of person who can take on a big, tangled mess and make it right, by way of a sort of native perceptiveness, grim determination and ginding, relentless, inexhaustible good cheer.
Am I right about that? I don’t know.
Are those qualities even good to have in high office? I don’t know that, either. I’m not positive I’ve ever seen it in government before. But it’s bound to be an improvement over the string of useless weirdos we have been running, isn’t it?
Click to enlargen and behue. Sizing help available on request.
January 28, 2009 — 8:26 pm
Comments: 56