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Round 35: Dog Days Edition


Pablo takes Round 34 with…a…sports figure of some description. Really, I don’t follow these things.

Hey, a dick is a dick. Fair and square.

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. Also, please don’t kill anybody.

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 it gets here!

August 17, 2012 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 88

Ding Ding Ding!

Pablo takes the dick with Johnny Pesky! Honest to crap, there was somebody named Johnny Pesky? Huh.

Be here in four, maybe five hours (hey, I never did work out the
difference between Greenwich Mean Time and British Summer Time) for
ROUND 35!!!

— 1:11 pm
Comments: 4

As rich as who, now?

One of my favorite radio programs at the moment is BBC4’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. It’s two years old, but the BBC is good about archiving their programs for download (only, probably not by you. I don’t know if they filter by regional IP like the TV side does…but, hey, you can look at the pitchers).

Anyhow, it’s a hundred fifteen minute programs featuring significant objects from the British Museum arranged in chronological order. Just the sort of tasty, bite-sized chunks o’ learnin’ I love most. The presenter (and director of the museum) is a lefty tool with an irritatingly patrician delivery, but you live in BBC-land, you develop strong ear filters for that sort of thing.

The last one I listened to featured the thing in the picture, a coin minted by Croesus. Yes, that Croesus. And was he really all that rich? Son, HE INVENTED MONEY.

Kind of. The Chinese had coins already (of course) and merchants all over had been trading in lumps of metal and other precious items for ages. But Croesus’ innovation was to purify the metal to a consistent standard, mint objects of a consistent size and pattern and put a government imprimatur on them. So instead of trading one-to-one in essentially raw materials, you could trade your goods and services for…MONIES!!!!!!

That was the largest coin, by the way. As they came down in size, they featured smaller and smaller pieces of the same scene, until the smallest one (about the size of a grain of rice, he said) was just the lion’s paw.

Did he get rich from his idea? Oh, yes he did!

Came to a sticky end, though. He’s the one who was menaced by the Persians and asked the Oracle of Delphi whether he should go on the offensive. The answer was “If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire.” He attacked, and the great empire destroyed was his own.

The Oracle was such a beyatch.

August 16, 2012 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 24

ZOMG1111eleventy!!

Go! Look! Quick! My Ryan artwork made the front page of Salon!!!! (It’s number three or four in the slideshow, but for a limited time only — front page, baby). Yes, they did write and ask permission first.

Salon.

Salon.

Oh, fer chrissakes, it’s a website.

August 15, 2012 — 8:35 pm
Comments: 43

Fetid nuts

Ohhhh…this is perfecto. Lefties singing about the need to give O one more term.

No, seriously. It’s in the just so toe-curlingly awful it’s worth a watch class, no doubts. But be sure to read the lyrics (or watch the subtitled version) — otherwise some of it is pretty impenetrable.

I particularly love being called an incontinent fetid nut by people whining about the lack of civility in politics.

Oh, as for their disclaimer:

One Term More is a transformative political parody rendered under fair use. It is intended solely as social commentary, criticism and personal expression. Its character and purpose is informational, noncommercial and not-for-profit. IT IS NOT FOR SALE.

You might think that’s a glimmer self-awareness. Like, we realize this video makes us look like kiddie-diddling douche tools, but it’s all in good fun, wink-wink.

Um, no. What that means is, this is a parody of Les Mis, please don’t sue us.

True story. When Uncle B and I were first dating, he took me to see Les Mis. Neither of us had been to a big West End musical before, and this one was the most famous one running. That’s all we knew about it (not counting Victor Hugo).

We didn’t know each other very well at the time. So intermission rolls around, and I’m kind of cutting my eyes over to him, and he’s kind of giving me the hairy eyeball. And finally, one of us says, tentatively, “this thing really…kind of…sucks, doesn’t it?” God, it was awful. There wasn’t a recognizable, hummable tune in the whole fucking thing.

Musical theater has fallen a long, long way since Oklahoma.

Oh, I bet you guys thought I was going to do Joe Biden. Well, I’m sorry, but all the Photoshop in the world can’t make that man look any stupider than he looks au naturelle.

August 14, 2012 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 43

Ohhhhh, yesssss

Yeah, baby. You want it in color. You know you do.

Sour, dessicated old hag Andrea Mitchell declared, “this is not a pick for women.”

In other news, we secretly replaced Andrea Mitchell’s estrogen pills with bath salts. Let’s see if anyone notices!

Do I like Paul Ryan for VP? Oh, yes. Ohhhhhh, yessssssss.

August 13, 2012 — 1:44 pm
Comments: 42

Warming to my theme

These are onion flowers. Not something you want to see.

Oh, they’re attractive enough, but it’s a bad sign. Veg that goes to flower stops doing what you want it to do — in this case, make a big, fat onion — and concentrates on making seeds.

Onions are usually biennial — it takes two years to go from seed to seed. Year one, they make a stalk and an onion, then they hibernate for the Winter. Year two, they wake up and make flowers.

But sometimes, when conditions are right, they think one season is two. This year, we had a hot spell, then a cold spell, then a hot spell. Some of our onions were all, like, “woohoo! It’s 2013!” and started to flower (or “bolt” as Mister Fancypants Horticulture-talking Dude would say).

I know, right? Onions are so stupid.

Once they’ve flowered, they’re still edible, but they’re puny. And weirdly firm. And they won’t keep like the others. I’m thinking of throwing them whole into vegetable soup, for a sort of Onion Surprise effect.

Good weekend, alliumophiles!

August 10, 2012 — 10:32 pm
Comments: 50

Onions

Okay, no more spiders. Onions!

Yet another sign Fall is upon us — the onions were ready for harvest. Uncle B planted me a whole bed of them this year, and there they are.

Have I ever told y’all I have a kind of a special family relationship with onions? I was weaned on one. For reals. Instead of a binky, I got to suck on a green onion.

My grandmother was so fond of onions, she carried on eating them even after she developed some nasty stomach problems. She’d eat onions, then she’d double over in pain. But she persisted.

My mother had a bowl of onions as the centerpiece on the dining room table. At Christmas, we got onions in our stockings (among other things — the onions were filler. She collected them from us to make Christmas lunch).

There is no finer fragrance than onions frying in bacon grease. Ah, but the ladies of the Stoat fambly are serious alliumophiles.

August 9, 2012 — 10:40 pm
Comments: 28

aiiiiii

Soooo…this thing just ran across the floor. Okay, yes, I’m a little phobic (I gave myself the jim-jamms Googling for this image).

You know what that means? The Summer that we never had is now over. The (giant weasel-sucking) spiders are coming in to get warm.

When you read the headlines about “Hottest Summer EVARRR!” — think to yourself, “yeah, where?” Because we had one week in the Seventies, and the whole rest of the Summer has been days in the Sixties and nights in the Fifties. Not fun. Do please send over the globular warmening.

(Yes, it’s a terrible Photoshop, isn’t it? It’s Chinese night and I’m late making flied lice).

August 8, 2012 — 10:37 pm
Comments: 22

Science!

Good news! Scientists at Cambridge University have succeeded in making artificial nacre. That’s mother o’ pearl to you and me.

It’s fairly easy to make something structurally similar — it’s just layers of calcium carbonate — but this is the first time they’ve gotten a result that iridesces like pearl. They did it by closely mimicking the processes a real mollusc uses to lay down shell.

This is good. MoP is strong and useful and, naturally, beautiful. And they say their process is cheap.

If you don’t see the value in that, I’ve got four words for you: mother of pearl cellphones.

Or, you know, five words if you think “cell phone” should be two words.

August 7, 2012 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 41