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Good old Anglo Saxon nursery rhymes

The only thing the American robin (Turdus migratorius) and the original robin redbreast (Erithacus rubecula) have in common is red feathers. They are otherwise completely different birds. The American robin is a sort of big thrush; the British robin is one of those tiny round puffball bastards, like a chickadee.

The robin was once voted Britain’s favorite bird. He’s a cheeky, aggressive little sod, often pictured perching on the handle of a garden spade. Because, apparently, he’ll fly down and do that if you’ve been turning earth, to check if you’ve dug up any worms.

He’s also one of the few songbirds that overwinters in the UK. Very confusing to an American, all the robins on Christmas cards.

Anyhoo, I just ran across this: the nursery rhyme “Little Robin Red breast” boasts an unusual number of variations. The reason? Trying to get around the original last line:

Little Robin Red breast,
Sitting on a pole,
Nidde, Noddle, Went his head.
And poop went his Hole.

So. There you go.

January 31, 2012 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 19

Mall cop Tarzan

Meet DeWet du Toit. His name means “de wet of the roof” but his friends call him Wet Twat. I’m just sure they do.

Psych! He doesn’t have any friends. He’s a South African bodybuilder and mall cop who love-love-LOVES him some Tarzan. And, um, Hollywood film contracts.

Three days a week, he lives in the jungle, just like Tarzan, plus a cameraman (the other four, he lives with his mom and dad). The plan is to win a Hollywood movie deal by filming himself, mostly splashing barefoot through puddles of muddy water, from what I saw.

I kept thinking, “dude, you are so going to get worms or cut yourself really badly.” If that’s the kind of excitement they’re looking for in a Tarzan movie, he’s got a shot.

Otherwise…hopeless.

He says his best friend is an elephant called Shaka, and he’s been photographed with lots of other African exotics, so somebody lets this young man hang out in a petting zoo.

That doesn’t strike me as a great idea.

January 30, 2012 — 9:05 pm
Comments: 26

Round 26: dearth of dicks edition


And the dick goes to — Mr and Mrs Weaselwannabe, who won it with Joe Paterno.

Or they will do. There’s been a run on dick around here. My local supplier put Aunty’s products on sale and has utterly sold out of spotted dicks! So there’s a dearth of dick for the nonce. Cross your fingers, weasels!

No. No, the dick jokes never get old. You don’t even want to know me when it’s time to buy more fat balls.

Okay, here we go…!

0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar.

1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).

2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.

3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.

4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay?

5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.

6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.

7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you don’t want the fabulous prize, you’re too smart to be a regular. It takes me forever to put them in the mail, packages go by slow boat, typically take minimum eight to ten weeks and lose the will to live along the way.

8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.

What do we want? Aunty’s dick! When do we want it? When somebody on the list dies!

January 27, 2012 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 163

That ain’t right

Okay, so this is Johnny Depp’s “Jack Sparrow” tattoo, in honor his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie and his own son Jack, born the year before.

Problem is? That’s not a sparrow. It’s a swallow.

“Jack Swallow” may not be the most prepossessing moniker, but at least the swallow has a long history starring in nautical tattoos. Supposedly, you were entitled to a swallow for every 5,000 nautical miles traveled.

No sniggering in the back there.

Only, Prof. Keith Simpson‘s Forensic Medicine says a swallow tattoo was once used as a discreet signal of homosexuality.

You don’t need to think about that one too hard. The lesson is, don’t let people doodle permanent pictures on your skin, ‘K?

Tomorrow – 6pm WBT – new Dead Pool. Be here.

January 26, 2012 — 11:24 pm
Comments: 28

Awww…

Dick “Danger, Will Robinson” Tufeld, dead at 85. Died watching the NFL playoffs (football is bad for you, m’kay). He was preceded in 2009 by Bob May, the little dude who actually wore the suit (it was hard to get out of the suit and he was a smoker, so smoke would be seen drifting out of the seams of the robot at breaktime).

And before them, Jonathan Harris, my hero. Born in the Bronx to Russian immigrant parents. When he got the theater bug, he watched British B movies for weeks straight until it thoroughly effed up his accent.

Sometimes, I poke Uncle B in the ribs until he says, “Oh, the pain!”

January 25, 2012 — 9:31 pm
Comments: 17

Can’t they both lose?

I’m really torn on this one. On the one hand, the US government is stomping around the internet playing freestyle HULK SMASH in the name of intellectual property owners. That’s going bad places, fast.

On the other hand, this needledick had his name legally changed to Dotcom.

Don’t like this whole Megaupload business one bit. As far as I can tell, the site functioned purely as a free storage and retrieval service. Made its money on banner ads. Inevitably, it became storage and retrieval for a whole lot of bad and stolen content, but Megaupload itself was just a digital U-Stor-It. It had 180 million registered users chewing up 4% of global internet traffic…and then the US reached over and casually pulled the plug. Didn’t need SOPA at all.

What happened to everybody else’s data? The non-pirates, I mean. What does this mean for the future of cloud computing? Who the hell would trust stuff in the cloud if huge sites could be wiped out any time at the pleasure of the US government?

And this kind of thing will surely not win friends. (It’s Megaupload’s current front page — but don’t worry, the image is hosted locally on this blog. You’re not clicking a bad thing).

On the other hand, this Dotcom weenus is a piece of work (if you don’t like Dotcom, his other alias is Kim Tim Jim Vestor). He started as a teenager, hacking into sites and stealing credit card numbers, and he got cuddlier from there. He’s been convicted of embezzlement, insider trading. Personally? Don’t get me started. The guy needs to go down.

So here you have a man who richly deserves a bloody nose, and there you have a ham-fisted bully who won’t stop with the richly deserving.

Ugh.

January 24, 2012 — 11:16 pm
Comments: 43

Kung Hei Fat Choi ever’body!

No, no…not another Skyrim post (although, yes — that’s me! Standing in front of the latest dragon I murdelated in Skyrim!) Today is Chinese New Year (though, I suppose, properly it’s the beginning of Chinese New Year, as they celebrate it for, like, two weeks).

It’s the Year of the Dragon, an especially auspicious year in the Chinese calendar. Let us hope so, as 2012 hasn’t exactly been a little slice of heaven so far.

We’re celebrating by picking up some Chinese takeout. Our favorite chinko is half an hour away and gas is around $8 a gallon here, so this is not a treat we get often. Kung Hei Fat Choi!

I had a peep into the political blogs earlier. Eh. All the candidates still running are unacceptable and my favorite blogs are standing around in a circle kicking each other in the balls about it.

Mmmmm…no thanks. Tap on the door when we’ve picked our final Impossibly Flawed Candidate, and I’ll swing into action trying to shoe-horn his sorry ass into the Oval Office. It’s all Dead Pools and chicken blogging until then!

Um, yay.

January 23, 2012 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 25

Round 25: SUDDEN DEATH EDITION!


Xul takes it with Etta James (you know what to do if you want dick, Xul). With less than an hour to go before 6pm WBT, I pondered whether it was right to start another pool.

What the hell. I’ve sucked this week, anyhow (I finally loaded Skyrim, for cri-yi). Might as well end on a toot. Maybe I can catch some of you Be Prepared types off guard.

Ready?

0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar.

1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).

2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.

3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.

4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay?

5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.

6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.

7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you don’t want the fabulous prize, you’re too smart to be a regular. It takes me forever to put them in the mail, packages go by slow boat, typically take minimum eight to ten weeks and lose the will to live along the way.

8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.

What do we want? Aunty’s dick! When do we want it? When somebody on the list dies!

January 20, 2012 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 117

Hm. Must’ve had a fight with mom

Nope. No idea the backstory on this one. I was flipping through images on an old hard drive and ran across it.

That’s the great thing about being a nartist: your petty grudges are immortalized in mean-spirited images.

January 19, 2012 — 11:47 pm
Comments: 10

What to get the woman who has everything

A honkin’ big boat.

I think the Telegraph is conflating two issues here. The government is proposing buying Her Maj a nice new £60M yacht for her Diamond Jubilee, but the picture shows the Royal Barge, which I’m pretty sure either exists already or will definitely exist. They’re pulling together a seven mile flotilla of a thousand boats to float down the Thames as part of the celebrations in June.

Only Victoria managed 60 years on the sparkly chair (that’s British monarchs; I don’t how many swarthy potentates from far-flung principalities might have made the grade). She reigned a further four years after that, so Liz only has to go another five years to be THRONE WINNAH!

We’re getting a four-day weekend (as if my whole life isn’t a weekend) and I’ve learned today we’ll have a party in our parish. There are little grants being handed out to individual parishes for the celebrations. So for the first time in my life, I shall feast and make merry on the coin of some uppity rich bastard in London. Just like a fairy tale.

If I get a move on, I can have my citizenship by then and be a proper English peasant.

January 18, 2012 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 33