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Other brands that will never, ever make it in the States

retardex

retarDEX.

The one on the left is a mouthwash and the one on the right is a toothpaste. Clinically proven to eliminate bad breath and make weasels spray milk out their little pink noses.

I am so TOTALLY adopting this as my insult-de-jour. You know, like when I catch Uncle B jigging around the bedroom with his underpants on his head, I’ll be like “dude! DUUUUDE! Did you brush with RETARDEX this morning?!

As opposed to RETARDex, which is clinically proven to eliminate retards.

Sorry for the fuzziness of this. I have to employ great stealth. Lord Sainsbury doesn’t like weasels taking pictures of his retarDEX.

Happy Friday!

January 30, 2009 — 8:15 pm
Comments: 24

Good to go

shitfarm

Our shit farm had its first annual service this morning. Some of my more faithful, losery readers may remember from last year that putting in a new septic system was a condition of sale for Badger House.

Not just a regular old septic tank — oh, no. The hippies who run Britain decree’d we must have a state-of-the-art chrome-plated shit processing factory. It has a pump and a computer and it goes shusss-shusss-shusss- softly while I sit in the garden trying to contemplate the beauty of creation and not so much the poops running along tiny conveyor belts under my feet.

It’s a high-strung, finicky filly, this thing, and it needs regular looking after. Two of the nicest shit-techs you could ever meet turned up this morning and saw to ours. This they did without gloves, cheerfully rescuing newts from the pipes with their bare hands and tossing them onto the grass.

Uncle B, who is inclined a bit toward the Howard Hughsian, had to wash his hands every time he saw them touch the machinery. That was worth the price of admission right there.

What? You didn’t think I could post about something other than myself two days running, did you?

January 29, 2009 — 8:54 pm
Comments: 43

It’s on!

sarahpacbwSarah 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

Paper, plastic or pennypinching clothed in sanctimonious green twaddle?

weaselbags

Has this come to the States yet? Stores in Britain don’t automatically give you a bag any more. I don’t mean one or two items at a little store, I mean the supermarket and a whole cartload of groceries.

They sell these “permanent” bags at about a pound a throw. I wouldn’t mind that so much if they didn’t usually sport some vomitous greenie slogan in puke-colored ink.

Some stores will give you freebie plastic bags if you ask. One we frequent won’t even do that unless you spend X amount, although they will give you an empty box for free (boxes that, Uncle B says, would otherwise cost them plenty to get rid of, as they are technically considered “industrial waste” by the local council). When we go to that one, if I haven’t remembered to cram a bag in my pocket, we stack our purchases and walk out with them in our hands in big, tottery pyramids.

That particular store has a sign outside thanking us for helping them keep umpty-ump million plastic bags out of landfills this year. Huh. I would be happier if they had the honesty to thank us for saving them umpty-ump pounds on their bag costs. A couple of pence times umpty-ump million isn’t chump change.

Now, I’m all for re-using stuff, and carrier bags are especially obnoxious — what with their mysterious power to insinuate themselves up trees, stuck to fences, down the gullets of birds or floating majestically out to sea (is it my imagination, or did the greens stick us with plastic bags because paper ones were tree murder?). We re-use carrier bags all the time, mostly for packaging up smelly kitchen waste to sneak into public dumpsters, on account of our trash pickup is only every two weeks (another rant for another day).

But I cannot abide having my leg humped by a bunch of sanctimonious piffle about saving the planet when a) I am, at times, grossly inconvenienced while b) the stores are making a nice bit of scratch out of it, thank you and c) it does fuck-all, really, for The Planet.

On the upside, however, Uncle B and I had a stroll around town this morning. He bought a bag of fat balls for the birds at the first stop and wasn’t given a bag. So the rest of the day, I got to say things like, “I say, did you leave your fat balls on the counter in the bakery?” and “would you like me to carry your fat balls for a while?” and “let’s throw your fat balls in the back and go for a walk on the beach.”

So there’s that.

January 27, 2009 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 41

Mortified.

chipthief

So we decide to have tea (the meal, not the beverage) at a cafe Uncle B calls Salmonella on Sea, on account of it is down by the water and the authorities occasionally take a legal interest in their kitchen hygiene. But it’s tasty, relatively cheap and open until four (aside: there is a frustrating black hole in the afternoon during which you cannot buy cooked food in the UK. Lunch places are open until three-ish, supper places don’t open until six-ish, and between you can starve. Or hit Mickey D’s, one of which we have not got).

So I was tucking into my ptomaineburger and fries, and Uncle B was reaching over to nick some chips, when he made the shush face.

The man at the next table said, “no, it was definitely a stoat. Bigger than a weasel.”

“Yes,” a woman trilled, “and it was running around all night, stealing the chips right off people’s plates.”

I’ll never live it down.

January 26, 2009 — 7:44 pm
Comments: 24

“baaa” is ungulate for “duhhhh”

resteses080128

January 24, 2009 — 10:09 am
Comments: 21

My sheep are back!

window
 

 

Okay, not my sheep. My sheep are the gentlemen sheep, who are apparently still out doing guy sheep things. The gents are due back in March, no doubt with big, sheepish grins on their faces.

I’m no sheep expert, but I think these are last year’s baby ewes, too young to breed. They have a certain, wide-eyed, “a weasel, you say?” look about them.

Anyhow, it’s nice to have something woolly and stupid to watch out the window while I pickle hedgehogs, or whatever the hell I’m supposed to be doing in the kitchen. 

 

 

 

 

 

January 23, 2009 — 7:46 pm
Comments: 26

Suggestions?

hymnal

 

 

Last meeting with the vicar today; the order of service. This is where we pick out hymns and all. It was rather sweet, actually. She sat on the couch and hummed religious tunes to us for an hour.

I have ascertained that there is not a hymn called “O Holy Shit!” Nor one called “Dear Sweet Jesus, How the Hell Did I Get Here?” after which I was completely stumped.

I think the vicar thinks I’m a sweet, shy thing, on account of I don’t say much. But, really, I don’t recognize any part of this. I was raised a Presbyterian which, it turns out, shares almost none of the hymnbook with the CofE.

Like I remember the Presbyterian hymnal.

 

 

 

 

January 22, 2009 — 9:41 pm
Comments: 39

Golly!

golly

Behold, the Golliwog.

There’s this mixed Brits-and-Americans forum on which I out-hang (I don’t know why; it’s a terrible place full of leftards and hippies). On inauguration day, there was an outbreak of no-YOU-guys-are-big-fat-racists, and somebody brought up the Golliwog. An indignant Brit sputtered that it’s called a “Golly” now, and anyway you can’t buy them in Britain any more.

So I had to stop and take a picture when I passed this shop window today.

I’m not entirely sure why the Golly is considered offensive. He’s got the jaunty little suit and tie and everything. I mean, nobody gets the vapors over Raggedy Ann, and she’s a ginger. And raggedy.

January 21, 2009 — 8:41 pm
Comments: 21

Anything happen in the States today?

static

Huh. That’s funny. Here neither.

January 20, 2009 — 8:16 pm
Comments: 26