Please help me. I’m immigrating to the Island of Misfit Toys.
Uncle B went to a village fête this weekend (I was going to title this post ‘a fête worse than death’ but I have a feeling that’s probably the oldest joke in the really stupid immigrant joke book).
Given the slightest encouragement, Brits break out in morris dancers. These guys. With the bells and the flowered hats and the dancing and waving hankies. The morris dance combines several things that Britons love: dressing up, acting stupid and scaring the hell out of weasels. (Their real first love is dressing in drag, so it’s no surprise there is a bit of this in some local variants).
Some claim morris dancing goes way back to pre-Christian Britain, but Wikipedia says the earliest for sure citation is late 15th C. I’m guessing some of the dances themselves are ancient, but the term “morris” apparently is derived from “Moorish” and may relate to the celebrations in Spain after Ferdinand and Isabella finally drove the Moors out in 1492. So it’s got that going for it.
Oliver Cromwell put the Puritan kibosh on it for a while, but it came roaring back. Then it died down to a few very teams (or ‘sides’) after the industrial revolution. But it got revived in the early 20th and esploded. Because, hey — dressing up, acting stupid and scaring the hell out of weasels. w00t!
What’s the dance like? I don’t really know. I’m pretty sure it’s all about the dressing up.
June 9, 2008 — 10:06 am
Comments: 13
Hungry, hungry Akismet
Oops! I just fished some people out of the filter (and I think I missed a couple the first time through and probably biffed them). Apologies all around. In defense of Akismet, it got four or five wrong in a couple of hundred. My mistake was letting it go so long without checking (see, you have to click two links now that I’ve uploaded a new WordPress, and some days I just don’t have the energy). Anyhow, I just downloaded and installed the latest version, so let’s hope it’s a little less retarded.
Felix had one stuck in there about going to PetSmart today to see about adopting this little furhead. Good luck, Felix. He, she or it looks good enough to have with coffee after a big meal.
And Uncle B just called from the country fair. He’s been to Rent-A-Weasel. They’re going to bring ferrets out and Do Something about our little runnybabbit problem. Free of charge, in exchange for all the adorable fluffy baby bunnies they can catch.
They’re taking them to a petting zoo up North so small children can squeeze them and stroke their lovely bunnysoft fur. Isn’t that right, Uncle B?
June 7, 2008 — 12:30 pm
Comments: 60
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
Free Mark Steyn! (Relatively inexpensive Mark Steyn, anyhow)
Today begins the showtrial of Mark Steyn before a ‘human rights’ tribunal. He wrote an article critical of Islam in Maclean’s magazine, which was enough to generate a complaint under British Columbia’s Human Rights Code. Per the code, “A person must not publish, issue or display, or cause to be published, issued or displayed, any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that…is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt.”
Got that? Contempt is illegal in Canada. I cannot tell you how much contempt that makes me feel.
If he’s found guilty, he can be forbidden from writing about certain topics (in this case, Islam) under pain of imprisonment. I believe Steyn is a naturalized American citizen, so good luck with that one, Canuckitards.
This demo leaflet from Covenant Zone is a good refresher, if you need it.
I don’t know how interesting the blow-by-blow is likely to be, but Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s will be live-blogging it beginning at 12:30 today. I believe that’s Eastern time. Just keep refreshing.
Other interested blogs that will surely have something to say: Free Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, Five Feet of Fury and Small Dead Animals.
I believe it’s scheduled to go on all week, so we’ve got something to read about other than the freaking ’08 elections for a damn change.
June 2, 2008 — 10:32 am
Comments: 69