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Bad day at the office

AND he came in second.

So jockeys don’t wear underpants, huh? Must be a weight thing. That view could easily have turned a lot more interesting.

Happy St George’s Day. It seems England doesn’t celebrate it any more. But we got a Google doodle, which is nice.

April 23, 2015 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 12

This guy

Ran across this looking for something else.

January 8, 2014 — 11:55 pm
Comments: 10

Things that are ugly…

nan's chest

Isn’t this lovely? Why no, it is not. This is the ugliest scrap of ancient Weasel family legacy kitsch I own (and that’s saying a Very Great Deal). My heart clenched when I opened this box tonight. It’s bumblebee yellow and black…did I mention?

This handsome item was hand painted by my cousin Nan, who — as far as I know — was neither epileptic nor had a metal plate in her head of any kind. She was actually my grandmother’s first cousin, which makes me related to her only below the Mason Dixon line. Grandmother was a great friend to Cousin Nan, despite the terrible dark blotch on her past. How disappointed I was to learn Nan’s dark secret was a youthful d-i-v-o-r-c-e.

Cousin Nan was hot shit.

For most of her life, she was a seamstress nine months of the year, sewing fine gowns for rich ladies and saving her pennies. Then in the Summers, she would hop a banana boat for points South. That was back when freight boats always carried a few passengers (do they still?). She loved South America.

By the time I remember her, she had retired to California, very old and very deaf and unprepared to accept either. When she came to visit, she was a total liability in public. She would lean over in a movie theater and shout in your ear, “oh my god, would you look at that big fat woman in the next row?” Eh. Bless her.

By an odd coincidence, my dad and stepmother were in her home town for some kind of function and dropped by to visit her one day in the mid 1980s. First time ever, I think. My stepmother swears she looked up as they left and saw the curtain twitch.

At any rate, Cousin Nan was raped and murdered by a stranger later that day. It would be flattery to call her attacker a serial killer. He was an animal who had himself a brief, nasty spree…savaged a few women and got caught within the week. My dad was called to testify about the timing. Murderous asshole’s probably out by now.

Anyhow, we all took turns sticking each other with examples of Cousin Nan’s art. Because it’s horrible, but what are you going to do?

March 6, 2009 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 18

Bring me more junk!

nutcracker

Britain would be a fabulous country to be rich in. I mean, rich is good everywhere, but here your coin will buy things that look like Harry Potter picked them up at Voldemort’s dad’s yard sale. For the same cost as pricey but ordinary new furniture, you can snag antiques that be a-blowin’ of the mind.

Well. Not that rich, me.

But even better, maybe, is the ancient household stuff you can get for not very much in junk shops and boot sales. There is SO MUCH old crap here, it’s simply not at a premium.

I particularly love ancient tools: turned wood screwdrivers, rosewood planes, ivory rulers scribed in ink, cut glass graduated cylinders. Geek pr0n.

I bought this old nutcracker in a junk shop over the weekend, partly to thank the nice old dear who let me use her telephone — and mostly because I thought it was fucking crackerjack. She had dozens of them. I paid a pound and a half for this one; about two bucks.

It’s iron with a dark, velvety, chocolate brown patina. Heavy. Smooth. There’s an ornamental floral motif hand-gouged in the top with a scribe, and the same tool has been used to cut dozens of cuneiform flecks in the inner surfaces. To improve the grip, one assumes.

Pure sex, this thing.

I can’t help thinking I’m not the only callow Yank who gets weak in the knees over these old hand tools. I bet Old Limey Gadgets would be an excellent idea for an eBay store.

And then I realize I’d have to let go whenever somebody bought one. So, that’s a deal breaker, right there.

March 4, 2009 — 9:32 pm
Comments: 12

Stuff…

stuff

Hey, lookit! My favorite limbless, decapitated torso made it from Rhode Island!

Yep, the last of my stuff was delivered today. That means no storage unit to pay for. It also means half the rooms in Badger House are stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes.

It isn’t as bad as it looks (please god). An awful lot of it is packaging and padding. And stuff that can go. And stuff that can go on e-Bay. But right now, the whole house is like one of those little slidey puzzles with the tiles that you shift around to get the numbers in the right order.

Slidey puzzle. Yeah. You know what I’m talking.

Anyhow, it’s taken me the whole day to make a clear path to the stairs, the front door and the pissoir. I am, how you say, pooped. Pardon the lameness of today’s offering.

Much more of this heavy lifting and I’ll develop the scary man-arms of Michelle Obama.

March 3, 2009 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 17

Homey!

stuff

Welp, that’s two-thirds of my swag crammed into Badger House. The only casualty so far, a small bottle of patchouili oil that leaked out over a bunch of stuff in transit. My hands smell like the illicit lovechild of the Glastonbury Festival and Woodstock.

How bad is it? I poured Uncle B a drink and he turned it down because the glass stank of hippie.

Ow. I’m off. Bath. Booze. Laterz.

January 16, 2009 — 7:54 pm
Comments: 53

What was I thinking?!

nicemug

We went down to visit my stuff today. The local mover guys COULDN’T have been nicer. They had shifted my container’s worth into three large crates, and they were incensed on my behalf that Arpin hadn’t packed it properly on the front end. They offered to help me file a complaint.

“Look here!” the man said, “this chair is broken.”
“Oh. Heh. Yeah. Broke that years ago. Shouldn’t have leaned it back on two legs all the time like that.”
“And this! It’s just wrapped in plain paper!”
“Oh, that. Hm. Yeah. It’s kind of crap, that thing.”

Folks, I have just spent umpty-ump thousand dollars moving an entire container of complete shit to England. Sentimental value, my silky sable ass.

Anyway, we’ll have to arrange for a dropoff next week. We’re expecting torrential rain and gale force winds, but a good soaking isn’t going to make things any worse. Just to show willing, I grabbed a box marked “kitchen” — and brought it home to discover the Museum of Godawful Tacky Ceramics.

Did I think a heaping helping of buttugly was going to cheer me up?

January 9, 2009 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 17

oh. how nice.

witchOh shit. My stuff’s here.

Uncle B and I were standing on the shingle watching an indigo snowsquall tear through a red sunset over the English Channel when the movers called.

(NO I didn’t have my goddamn camera. He popped off a couple of shots with a pocket camera; I’ll fish it out of the back of the car tomorrow and see what he got).

The movers want to know what part of it I’d like them to deliver to the house and what part to put into storage right away. Honest to crap, that’s like buying a 30-ton load of horse manure and deciding which shit you’d like now and which shit to save for later.

Oh, and Jill will obviously have to be burned. 

 

 

 

January 5, 2009 — 8:54 pm
Comments: 24

Who’s been writing on my damn furniture?

my grandaddy

This great walnut rhinoceros is from my grandparents’ bedroom. My grandfather died when I was a baby, so it’s kind of nice to have something personal of his: it’s striped with cigarette burns on his side.

“Morning, Grampa…you slob.”

I don’t know where it came from before that. I don’t know any stories about it or which side of the family it came from or anything. Grampy Weasel’s family was from Virginia; Granny Weasel’s were from Maryland. I think it’s Regency. I’m not good with furniture, but I think those thumping huge feet mean Regency.

The floor guys — a pair of wiry little scrawny dudes — took one look at it and shoved it in the bathroom door rather than carry it downstairs, completely blocking same. I didn’t get a real shower for a week (ha! ha! sun-ripened weasel!).

Anyhow, that’s the first time I got a look at the back of it. It’s been signed! In large letters with black paint and a soft brush. Writing with a brush like that means most characters take at least two strokes, all down-strokes. I can’t quite make out what it says.

The Col on the left is distinct, then possibly a second l, though there’s a raggedy glue stain down the middle there obscuring it. The next few strokes are hard: m or w most likely, but could be…something else. Then i or ii (which makes no sense) and rr, with the second r all long and weird like they used to do with double-f (just a guess, maybe it IS a double-f). Then…ord? Or maybe or and some symbol that’s not a letter?

Collmirrord. Collwiirord. Collmirford. Collwifford. Coll mirror’d. Coll wirrar D. The only hit I got was Colliford, which is a town in Cornwall on the edge of Bodmin Moor (as in the Beast of Bodmin), but that is so not Colliford.

Any ideas?

collmirrord.jpg

April 15, 2008 — 1:20 pm
Comments: 38

Saying g’bye to the Boobs

boob chair

This here is my favorite object in the whole wide world. We call it the Boob Chair. Or simply The Boobs. My prissy grampa never admitted his favorite armchair had tits, so we’re compensating.

He found it rotting away in a barn somewhere in East Tennessee, bought it and had it re-upholstered in a deep green velvet. It’s a huge great throne of a thing and I love it dearly. I have always loved it.

But it was not to be mine. I was a younger cousin and all the best stuff had been divvied up before I was even born. The Boobs, I have known all my life, were supposed pass directly from my grandmother to my cousin in Alabama.

So great was my lust for this object, when the truck from home arrived with my furniture and The Boobs was on it, I asked no questions. Even though my cousin in Alabama is pretty much my favorite relative and she loves it at least as much as I do. Even though I was quite sure it came to me by way of some ugly Machiavellian blood feud of the aunties.

Still, I guess I should’ve known I wasn’t wicked enough to ship The Boobs three thousand miles across the ocean, further away from the aforementioned Cousin in Alabama. No matter how assiduously I pursue pure evildoing, I do occasionally let me down. Anyway, how can I invite her over to rub her nose in my 16th Century farmhouse with The Boob Matter unresolved between us?

So UPS is coming to take The Boobs away. My preciousssssss. My precious Booobiessssss. gollum

March 27, 2008 — 5:09 pm
Comments: 41