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Something light and fluffy

Awesome confluence of man and t-shirt, from Anorak‘s picture of the day. If you don’t read Anorak, you should. Our good friend David Burge (AKA Iowahawk) is a contributor.

That’s it. Have a good weekend, folks. Forget about SCOTUS and POTUS and FLOTUS for a couple of days.

Me, I have to go make cupcakes for the church bake sale.

Yes, really.

Ehhhh…fuck off.

June 29, 2012 — 9:31 pm
Comments: 22

Breaking my heart, it’s what SCOTUS is *for*

Or you can regard that object as the warm, throbbing heart of the Republic. Justice Roberts joins the liberal justices to declare Obamacare legal, by renaming the mandate a tax. So even if we get this puppy repealed (a big if), the precedent is there — there’s nothing Congress can’t make you buy. Hope you like broccoli.

You won’t believe me, but I had a bad feeling about this one. And the more our side declared tentative victory, the more the hair on the back of my neck itched.

I wonder if lefty journalists are scrambling to pull all those articles about how 5-4 decisions prove the court has devolved into a stinking hotbed of political hackery.

June 28, 2012 — 2:30 pm
Comments: 49

Yeah, that guy

 

 

Y’all know Rick Locke. You know, the Temporary Duty guy.

Dude is writing a sequel, but he absolutely refuses to finish it without more oxygen. (I know, I know…these creative types and their needs.)

Go. Check it out. Say something nice to him. Give him a money. Give him several moneys.

Don’t make me go all Jerry Lewis up in here.
 

 

 

June 27, 2012 — 7:49 am
Comments: 18

Brrrrr…

Oh. Ick. This just gets worse.

First it was Michelle inviting us to sign a Father’s Day card to Barack. Then it was the whole tacky wedding registry thing.

You know, maybe he didn’t sign off on those personally. But the latest Win Dinner With Barack contest includes a creep-inducing YouTube video of Barack and Michelle reminiscing about their first date. Right on the page. Right there. On the page.

The tagline on the video is “Want to join them on their next date night?” Double-dating with the Preezy of the United Steezy.

Oh. Ach. She’s just retweeted the link.

Oh, this is so. Not. What I want from a political figure.

June 26, 2012 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 18

Look! Kitten!

Good lord! Is that the time? I haven’t done a blog post yet.

Hm. How about a kitten picture. Everyone loves kittens.

There. Now, if I can only not do that weird thing where I type out my stream of consciousness into the text box, I might just get away with this.

Hehheh. Friends are trying to get us to take this kitten. Well, a kitten; this one was suggested. He’s a handsome rascal, but no. If I’m going to make Charlotte hate my guts again, I’m not doing it for anything less than that ginger tom I’ve always wanted. Or a savannah. Or a snow leopard, that’s the ticket.

June 25, 2012 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 32

Oh, holy god.

Click to embig and becolor

It’s real. And somebody signed off on this. A lot of somebodies (though presumably not Obama hisself).

Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up?

Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It’s a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it’s a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a gravy bowl.

Setting up and sharing your registry page is easy—so get started today.

Because it’s not your big day. It’s his.

Via the delightful — but no relation — Weasel Zippers. Good weekend, folks!

June 22, 2012 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 37

Speaking of Druids

So there’s this guy, who is the reason why cremation is legal in the UK.

William Price (1800–1893). Welsh doctor, Chartist, neo-druid, nutcase.

The Chartists were the first mass labor movement, and when that gig hotted up for Price, he fled to France until things cooled off. There, he spotted a rock in the Louvre with a Greek inscription, which he believed to be an ancient Celtic bard’s address to the moon. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that’s what’s sewn onto his jaunty longjohns there. No word whether he borrowed Joseph Smith’s magic rock for the trip.

So he became a druid. Arch druid. And named his first born Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ in Welsh) just to piss people off.

It worked.

So when the poor baby Jesus Christ Price died as an infant and Price decided to cremate him on a hilltop, there was trouble. Angry pitchfork wielding mob type trouble. An autopsy showed Jesus died of natural causes, so he was just charged with the cremation.

Much to everyone’s embarrassment, it turns out cremation was not actually against any law. Also, Price did a darned good job pleading an anti-burial case.

He walked free. His trial, plus the nascent Cremation Society of Great Britain, led to the Cremation Act of 1902.

Price’s last words were, “bring me a glass of champagne.” He drank it and died. At his request, they cremated him on the same hillside where he had cremated Jesus Christ. Twenty thousand people turned up for the event and they drank the pubs dry.

The end.

June 21, 2012 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 30

Whur’s my shootin’ iron?

These things go over so low, it’s tempting to pour out the front door in a loincloth, shake a spear skywards and go, “ulululu!” at them.

Awesome day in the sunny South today. When this climate is nice, it is the best — warm in the sun, cool in the shade. It’s turning to rain tomorrow for a few days, so we spent the evening sitting out in the garden drinking fizz and burning junk in the chimenea.

Happy Solstice! Okay, it’s tomorrow, but the Druids have started their sundown procession up to Stonehenge, so y’all can sleep safely in your beds tonight.

June 20, 2012 — 11:04 pm
Comments: 22

So…

Greece is going for the popular “tear the bandaid off slowly” gambit. And for “popular” read “psychotic” throughout.

I’m not sure how clearly this is coming across to you over there, but the troubled economies of Europe are insane. I can’t say it more succinctly than that. I am only just realizing how deeply, irredeemably insane.

Greece believes it can say no to cuts and it will stay in the Euro anyway, no matter how many times they’re told otherwise. The new Socialist government of France is limbering up its taxation muscles, ready to drive more prosperity out of France at the worst possible moment.

At the G20 summit, when a Canadian reporter asked European Commission President José Manuel Barroso why North American should bail out Europe, he answered

“We are not coming here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to manage our economy…”

“This crisis was not originated in Europe,” Mr. Barroso said. “This crisis was originated in North America. Many in our financial sector were contaminated by unorthodox practices from some sectors of the financial market.”

Which sounds an awful lot like the popular “fuck you, give me a bunch of money” gambit. And you already know what I mean by popular.

Honestly, you have no idea the deep and irrational belief the peoples of Europe have in the power of the EU — a union that is neither particularly old nor conspicuously successful.

Greece is thumbing its nose at Brussels and the demands of Germans not because they don’t care about the euro project. Quite the reverse. They don’t believe they can be kicked out for their shenanigans any more than California will be kicked out of the USA.

I wish they’d tear the damn thing off and get it over with.

June 19, 2012 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 35

In which Weasel scolds a naughty chicken in a most satisfying way

When our first two chickens, Mapp and Lucia, were little, they spent a lot of time trying to establish dominance. Mostly by belly-bumping each other like beerful rednecks at last call. It was hilarious. (Lucia eventually won…boy howdy, did she. She’s the capa di tutti capi of backyard chickens).

The second two didn’t do that. Violet is a half-pint but she’s a cheeky, aggressive little shit — well on her way to the #2 slot and just waiting for Lucia to stumble.

Vita, from the outset, was a shy, passive bird. Big, blowsy, slow. Very beautiful.

They pick on her something horrible.

It hurts to watch. The chasing and pecking was bad enough, but eventually Vita lost the will even to run. She’d lie beak-down in the grass and just let the others peck at her until they got tired. (First time I saw it, I thought she’d dropped dead of a heart attack and they were trying to wake her up).

I try to spoil her with little treats, but she’s as scared of me as she is of the other chickens.

Now, generally speaking, it’s best to let animals get on with it. Sometimes, when you try to interfere in the social hierarchy, you just make things worse for the underdog. And, sure enough, Lucia and Violet eventually satisfied themselves that they’d proven their point and are content these days with the occasional head-fake in Vita’s direction.

Not Mapp. She’s crazy evil by nature, and it’s +100 when she’s broody. I have to turn her physically off the nest in the mornings now. She emerges into daylight blinking, stumbling, feathers sticking up all over, making croaky rook noises and mad at everything. Especially Vita.

She takes a special delight in catching Vita off guard. The poor bird will make herself a nice little wallow in the flower border, off to the side, away from the others, not harming anybody, and just as she spreads her wings in the sun and drifts away into bliss, Mapp pounces.

Honestly, there’s only so much of that up with which I can put.

So I bought a Super Soaker. Well, not a Super Soaker, a cheap Chinese knockoff called a Special Gun. Worth every penny of my £4.99. With a little practice, I can splat Mapp several chicken lengths from Vita’s wallow. You know that “mad as a wet hen” thing? Totally true. Huh.

Screw behavior modification, I haven’t had this much fun since I sold my arsenal and moved to Gun Control Land.

June 18, 2012 — 11:24 pm
Comments: 35