You know…
I’m going to be REAL embarrassed for her if it turns out Elena Kagan is straight as a die — just a homely woman who always had trouble in the dating department.
It’s one thing to have a secret past rich in forbidden romance. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to be a sexual FAIL.
On the upside, though, she’s about to get a sweet job for life. So there’s that.
By the way — that images search on Velma was an eye opener. Dang, there’s a lot of Velma porn out there, you perverted nerds, you!
May 17, 2010 — 9:06 pm
Comments: 22
It begins…
I don’t even HAVE any damn chickens yet, and already I’m drawing chickens.
No, no…I’m not trying to sell you guys chicken merchandise. I just didn’t have anything to say today and it’s friday and — look, I drew a chicken!
One thing I’ve learned trawling the chicken forums(!) over the last few days — man, the crazy cat ladies got NOTHIN’ on the chicken people! Holy geez! Once they start growing their own, the dial gets stuck in the MAKE MORE CHICKENS position.
Not me. I promised the neighbors positively no roosters.
Have a good weekend, everyone. May all your dreams be of weasels and chickens. But not together, because that would get ugly REAL quick.
May 14, 2010 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 34
Chicken shopping!
We went chicken shopping today at a farm up the road. My goodness, those people had a lot of chickens!
My initial thought was Rhode Island Reds or Sussex Reds, because I used to live in Rhode Island and now I live in Sussex and I like red chickens. That’s the kind of penetrating analytical mind I’ve got.
But I was very taken with the Buff Orpingtons, a fluffy tan chicken that grows to the approximate size of a junior high school gymnasium. Uncle B took one look and his lip trembled. I think he was imagining tumbleweeds lazily drifting across the ruined dust of his vegetable patch.
So Pekin Bantams it is! These are cute little fuckers — about a quarter the size of an actual chicken — that lay teeny, tiny eggs. They look like feathery tea cozies (a tea cozy, for my Yankee brethren and cistern, is a nice warm sweater for your teapot. And yes, it really does keep the tea hot considerably longer).
Their signal characteristic: they are terrifyingly friendly. Lap chickens. The ones in the pen came flying over to see us and nibbled hopefully at my fingers, making happy chicken noises.
We didn’t bring any home with us. We’re going to get our act together and go back next week, if we can’t think of any reason why we shouldn’t.
And in six months, I’m ‘onna make you the smallest omelette you ever did see.
May 13, 2010 — 11:00 pm
Comments: 24
Shiny
That there is a tiny sterling silver mustela frenata or American Longtailed Weasel, the most widely distributed mustelid in the New World. Honestly, I think B does all his gift shopping at ShitWithWeaselsOnIt.com.
And that’s it from me. I didn’t spend much time on news today, apart from five minutes yelling at the radio while I brushed my teeth. I’ll tune back into the UK government when the wheels start coming of the Cameron Express.
Deep down, I hate politics.
May 12, 2010 — 9:23 pm
Comments: 22
Oh, god — do I have to?
This is so unfair. I get to be depressed by politics in TWO countries!
Okay, here’s what happened: David Cameron’s party won more votes than the others — by a lot — but the next two main parties combined have more seats than he does. And they’re both leftist parties.
There was talk about the two leftist parties joining forces to shut Cameron out of government. Under their system, it might just be possible. Politically, it’s a natural. But, as so often happens with internecine fights, there’s mucho personal and historical animosity between the two. So that fell apart.
Cameron could have just said screw it and formed a government, which is what the righties in his party wanted him to do. Yes, there are still real, honest-to-god righties in the Tory party. The danger is that the other parties, because they outnumber him, could force another election any time they wanted.
Both Labour and the LibDems are likely to do even worse if another election were held soon. I doubt either wants another shot at it until they can do some housecleaning. A bold leader would take that gamble.
But Cameron didn’t.
He decided to form a true majority by making a pact with the further left of the two parties he beat. The one that did really badly. Much worse than expected. Won almost no seats at all.
And by “pact” — well, nobody really knows yet. He has to bring up some of their pet issues. Let some of them onto his cabinet. Maybe even make the leader his Deputy Prime Minister. This from a party whose agenda was just soundly rejected by the electorate.
And all this could’ve been avoided if he had been willing to talk to the party to the right of him. All he had to do was make some noises about immigration and Europe. Analysis of seat-by-seat results show if UKIP’s votes had gone Tory, he would have had 20 to 40 more seats. A comfortable ruling majority.
But no. Years ago, Cameron publicly labeled those nice old biddies a bunch of ‘fruit cakes and loonies and closet racists.’ Now the Tories are really flexed that they didn’t get the fruitcake-loony-racist vote and thinks it should be really, really ashamed of itself.
And if this whole rickety Rube Goldbergian contraption starts to burn oil, there could still be a new election called at any time.
Okay, I think I’m going to have to put this in terms of a really fucked-up alternate reality hypothetical.
Imagine it’s now in the United States, with everybody all wadded up about the collapsing economy and falling jobs and immigration. And by some sadistic twist of fate John McCain — no, Lindsey Graham has just been elected president. But it was a real squeaker because — well, Lindsey Graham. So he takes totally the wrong message from his narrow win and decides to move left and make Nancy Pelosi his Vice President. And give her a veto over anything he proposes. And if he pisses her off, she can throw the election out and make us do it again.
That’s kind of where we be at here.
I have seen the happy place, and this isn’t it.
May 11, 2010 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 35
And, no. Nobody had him in the Dead Pool.
Frank Frazetta died today. Stroke. 82.
Me, I was a huge fan of his art — a thing I am completely unembarrassed to admit, despite the pulp-y, porn-y nature of so much of his work.
He had the best grasp of how all the pieces of the human body interlock and slide around each other since Bridgeman — which is not surprising. Apparently, early in his career, he was given a copy of one of Bridgeman’s books — probably Constructive Anatomy — took it home, copied every drawing in it, brought it back and said, “okay. Now I know anatomy.”
I have reproductions of some of his early work — notably Shining Knight comics — and they were…oh, what is the word?… really not very good. There were only a couple of hints that he was an artist of extraordinary promise.
How he went from that to the painter and draughtsman he became is, I guess, tribute to the gigantic amount of art a comic artist has to crank out to make a living. Practice making perfect, and all.
At the height of his skill, he not only made a living, he was one of the few to get rich at it. I remember reading in the Seventies that he just painted whatever he wanted and they found books to suit them. Frazetta covers moved merchandise.
His wife died last year and he’s been ill with one thing and another for a very long time, so. Well. Rest in peace. I wouldn’t sell my immortal soul to be able to draw like that, but I might hock it for a few months.
May 10, 2010 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 34
The March of Science
I realize most people don’t come to sweasel.com for the latest breakthroughs in science and technology, but sometimes a generalist blogger is lucky enough to find herself perfectly positioned to break a story the specialists blogs have missed.
Such a lucky find is the self-inflating miniature whoopee cushion.
How is this possible? In my lifetime? you ask. The secret is a light polyester sponge inside the cushion.
To operate, place your thumb over the grommet and squeeze, making the expected poo, poo sound. When the cushion is subsequently released, the sponge expands, pulling air in through the vent hole and refilling the item for immediate use.
Whatever little yellow genius at the Ho Lee Fuk Toy and Novelty Company of Shanghai came up with that one, I owe him a beer.
Have a good weekend, everyone. And remember — adult supervision is required. I don’t know what kind of dimwitted rug monkeys y’all are breeding out there, but I bet one of them could put out an eye with a whoopee cushion.
May 7, 2010 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 36
What, this again?
You know, it just figures that my childhood was haunted by scenes from this distasteful lump of schlock. I don’t have any memory of seeing it, but somebody must’ve propped infant me in front of the tube one day for the afternoon creature feature. A couple of images got stuck way down in the deep tissues, right next to the amydgala. Or whatever that brainal thing is we inherited from reptiles.
I had no idea where those visions came from until I was in my twenties and tuned in this camp Vincent Price thing for a laugh.
Yeah, if “laugh” is the sound you make when somebody sticks your frontal lobes in a light socket.
So it was a sure thing Uncle B would buy it for me, wasn’t it? He had no idea I’d even heard of this flick. I just asked him to pick out any Rifftrax film at random, and this is what he came up with.
Rifftrax is what the MST3K guys decided to do when they grew up. Which is basically the same thing they were doing before, but with recent blockbuster movies.
They get away with it because you buy a legit copy of the movie, then you download their MP3 riffing on it and play them both at once. Unfortunately, there are synch issues outside the US, so Uncle B had to buy one of their DVD’s with the riffing and the movie together. Hence it had to be an old movie.
This one.
Of course.
I’ll get my revenge. I’m ‘onna make him watch it, if I can get it to play on the Limeybox.
May 6, 2010 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 23
Cousin Stinky? You bastards!
Today — as part of ongoing festivities — we did something we’ve been meaning to do for a while: visit Rudyard Kipling’s house. Bateman’s, it’s called. It’s not far away. I don’t know why we never got around to it, since we’re both huge Kipling fans.
His daughter left the whole thing, contents and all, to the National Trust, and they’ve kept it exactly as it was. His study, his bedroom, all the original furniture and books and carpets.
It’s Jacobean — 1630-something — so, you know, lots newer than Badger House. But still it has its charms. Actually, it was a lovely house, and yet there was something very sad about it. Impressive from the outside, but somehow quite small and intimate on the inside.
More pictures when I manage to offload them from the camera (oh, who am I kidding? I’m going to pinch some of Uncle B’s. He’s a much better photographer than I am, damn his eyes).
Meanwhile, this here is a wolverine carpet from Kipling’s study. Wolverines are, of course, members of the weasel fambly. What’s weird is, this one was quite a light blonde color. I thought (and a quick look at Google images confirms) that wolverines are mostly black, or dark red.
Somewhere in there is a “what’s dumber than it is mean?” joke.
May 5, 2010 — 11:30 pm
Comments: 56
You’ll just be walking along, and WHOOF!
Remember all that shit you learned in High School about the fire triangle? You know — fuel, heat, oxygen…take one away and the fire goes out?
Pff! Don’t you believe it. Carelessness causes fires, son. Carelessness. You’ll be walking along, not a care in the world and whoof! Up you go like a Buddhist monk.
I discovered this important scientific fact during nap time (which is right after cookies and juice time but before story time), while I was scrutinizing my bed linen trying to work out of Dunlopillo rhymes with armadillo.
Attentive readers of sweasel.com — at least one of which, I feel sure, there will be some day — may recall that my birthday lands in early May. And that I therefore dawdle around for the first two weeks of the month, making half-hearted posts of more than ordinary lameness, while seldom a sober breath is drawn in Badger House.
It begins…
May 4, 2010 — 10:40 pm
Comments: 57