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
It’s ten O’Clock. Do you know where your weasel is?
Whoa! Yesterday was Friday the 13th? I hope nothing bad happened to me!
June 14, 2008 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 44
Gaze into the face of pure evil
Not kidding; this is a thoroughly rotten little fucker, this one. One of three feral siblings brought in (and probably spared on account of exceptional — but superficial — cuteness).
The other two are extremely shy and mayhap will hiss when you pet them. Not Beelzebub here. Attempting to pet him is like sticking your hand in a meat grinder.
After several days and small treats (he punched his sister, killed the spoon and dragged it behind the litterbox), I finally coaxed him into playing. Or, more precisely, “playing.”
I drag a puffball/jinglebell thing back and forth across the bars until, siezed with rage, he leaps forward, sinks his teeth into it and, growling and screaming, pulls it into the back of the cage with a series of sharp jerks.
Hates the jinglebell. Fucking hates the fucking jinglebell, lady. Got it?
One of his siblings is already homed. The other will probably be okay, too. This guy? If he ever makes it out of here, he’ll be back in a week. Doing twenty to life for assault with intent to murder.
June 13, 2008 — 4:52 pm
Comments: 30
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