Life goes on getting worse
No Twinkies, no problem. Can’t abide a Sno-Ball. I can take or leave your Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. Donettes — nice, but expendable. Without Wonder Bread, you’ll just have to insult middle Americans via some other pale, bland, popular food product.
But, ohhhh. Oh, no. Please. By all that is wholesome and sweet and good, not Suzy Qs!!
So moist. So creamy. So delightfully artificial. I haven’t eaten a Suzy Q in thirty years, but how vividly I recall those slabs of devil’s food and creme melting to the shape of my tongue. It was the surpassing stoner gustatory experience.
Oh, Suzy Q! <sobs, wads fists>
November 16, 2012 — 10:36 pm
Comments: 58
Rats!
Ah. So that’s where the chicken feed is going.
Not one, not two, but three rats. Well, very big mice or very small rats.
There are paving slabs in the bottom of the chicken run, but these bastards are clever. They chew. They dig. And they can insinuate themselves through improbably tiny spaces. I think I know where they’re getting in this time, but I have to keep tiptoe-ing out to check. They’ve been known to attack and kill sleepy chickens, so this isn’t funny.
Also not funny: we’ve got one under the floorboards. This house is upwards of 400 years old; the walls and floors are like rodent superhighways and we’ve been listening to this little furheaded bastard run up and down the space between the livingroom and the bedroom for 24 hours now.
The Council rat man put lots of poison down a few years ago, but that’s just it. They never REALLY go outside to die, do they? No hope getting the floorboards up. They’re gigantic slabs of iron-hard ancient oak.
Last Christmas, Saint Nick brought us a world of stink. Directly under the bed, from what we could tell. We slept in a cloud of eau de Rat Zombie for weeks.
Oh, it’s all going to hell, I tell you.
November 15, 2012 — 11:54 pm
Comments: 45
Three mints in one!
Finally, a little wholesome red meat (with extra schadenfreude sauce!). You may be aware that the BBC (the EEEEEEVILLLLLL BBC) has had several (three, in fact) very nasty boo-boos lately. I will outline them briefly, and point you to further reading.
Jimmy Savile died a year ago. He had been a BBC presenter for decades. He was also, it turns out, a sexual monster, with a taste for children (and possibly worse things). It was not exactly secret. Six decades, 400 lines of inquiry, 300 potential victims, fourteen police forces. The BBC program Newsnight had an exposé set to run on the scandal last year, which was axed. Instead, they ran a Christmas tribute to Jimmy Savile!
And inside the BBC, who knew? Well, the words “paedophile ring” are being bandied about.
In the middle of this brouhaha, someone stepped forward claiming to have been abused by a very senior Tory; one of Maggie’s staunchest. The BBC was so delighted to push the narrative into this happy territory, they ran the story without any of the proper checks. Turns out, it was demonstrably false. Then the accuser said “my bad” and, libel laws being what they are in the UK, dropped the Beeb nose deep in the shit. This is the issue that’s caused all those resignations lately.
The third is my favorite, though, and you might not have seen it. About six years ago, the BBC assembled a blue ribbon panel of scientific experts — top. men. — who declared the science of Climate Change was so gosh-darned settled, it would be wrong to give equal time to skeptics any more. And so they didn’t (pff! like they ever had).
Skeptics, naturally, asked, “…and these experts are…?” Then the BBC spent several years and hundreds of thousands of pounds (successfully!) fighting a Freedom of Information action in court. To avoid revealing the names of their ultra-qualified, ever-so-impressive scientific team.
Then a blogger named Maurizio Morabito (blog: Omnologos) dug around and found the entire guest list online. Just sitting there. (Aside: I am convinced absolutely everything is online somewhere. Keep digging!).
Yup. It was exactly what you think. Greenpeace. Media people. Church of England types (!). Warmenist hacks, the lot. Oh, this one is fun. This is going to leave a mark.
Good blogs to follow on this: Omnologos, Bishop Hill, Autonomous Mind, Biased BBC, Tall Bloke. Good articles: Delingpole, Melanie Phillips, the Spectator.
Oh, and the kitten got better.
November 14, 2012 — 11:56 pm
Comments: 29
Mister Bubbles
Okay, okay…sorry about that post yesterday. Here’s an adorable kitten.
With a terminal heart condition.
Ha! Ha! Just kidding! His heart condition is totally treatable.
Only, his family doesn’t have the money to pay for the treatment, so they’ll have to choose between paying the vet and heating the house this Christmas.
Yeah, that’s right — if I’m going to feel like this, you are, too.
Wait, what? What do you mean you don’t have to come here??
November 13, 2012 — 10:04 pm
Comments: 47
Santa’s coming…
…and he looks hungry.
Ta da! After a couple of years of Zombie Santa Christmas cards, I decided to go with feral Santa this year. Obviously, it works better in color.
I’m not trying to sell you stuff. I’m just putting this link up here to get it into the search engines in plenty of time for Christmas.
I’d rather have you guys as readers and commenters than customers.
November 12, 2012 — 5:57 pm
Comments: 28
I promised you chickens
Here they are, the Four Chooks of the Apocalypse. Just tiptoed out and snapped this. As you can see, their feathers have all grown back in and they’re looking fit and ready for Winter.
Angry chicken has issues. Woe be unto anything that perches near her of an evening. I let her have a go at me, so the other chickens can settle in for the night unmolested. I don’t mean she gives me a good pecking; I mean she takes a big beakful of the tender webbing of my thumb and worries it like a terrier. Angry, angry chicken.
Shy chicken is shy among chickens but is the most aggressive with intruders. She’ll lunge at any cat that comes near — head down, butt in the air, wing feathers all spread out. She can make herself look as big as a turkey. The inside cat is terrified of her.
Crazy chicken just plain ain’t all there. She never walks anywhere. She zooms. She is scream-propelled. NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH flap-flap-flap-flap.
Bossy chicken is the Mary Poppins of chickens — practically perfect in every way. Everybody is terrified of bossy chicken. All Hail Bossy Chicken.
Now, me hearties, I have just learned that I must upgrade my Photoshop by December 31 or I fall off the upgrade ladder (I’m using CS3 and they’re up to CS6 now; that’s as far as they’ll stretch it). Two hundred pounds is a lot of money for me to scare up at Christmas time. That means I must make many lovely, cruel, jug-eared Obama ‘shops in the New Year (perhaps I’ll finally nail his likeness in his second term).
But for now, I need to go away until it scabs over a little. And by “go away” I mean post about chickens and recipes and the stupid things English people say. I shan’t be reading news and political blogs for a while (I don’t know who I hate reading more after a stinging defeat — our side or theirs). Feel free to talk about anything you like in the comments, though.
Have an awesome weekend!
November 9, 2012 — 2:29 pm
Comments: 60
One more thing…
Okay, I can’t stand it — one more politics post, then it’s chicken blogging for a month. I swears.
This is the first election in my life that has made absolutely no sense to me.
It’s not the losing. I’m used to losing. I lived in Rhode Island for thirty years — an experience that so warped my concept of democracy that voting, to me, is screwing up enthusiasm every two years to pull a lever for things that will inevitably be shot down 25/75. Losing I take in stride. Badge of honor. No big.
What’s throwing me about this election is that my judgment was so far out. I got all the signs and portents wrong.
We owned the enthusiasm gap. We had, for the first time going into a presidential election, more registered R than registered D. We were easily walking the bumpersticker and yard sign wars. Our guy was happy, their guy was cranky. Our crowds were growing, theirs were shrinking. The issues were all breaking our way (epically lousy economy…erupting Middle East). We had an attractive candidate with, for once, the perfect skill set for the problems at hand.
And you’re telling me every single one of the Republican issues went down in flames? Alan West? Mia Love? Gay marriage? Legalized marijuana? Everything?
The historical 2010 midterm Spanking of the Dems made perfect and absolute sense. And then the electorate swung hugely to the Democrat side in the two years since? Why?
So. One of two things happened.
Either vote fraud is so deep and wide that it’s bigger than any other election factor (sour grapes + tinfoil hat = I don’t like going there, but it’s a possibility, I guess). OR my own sense of my fellow Americans is now so fucked as to be utterly worthless.
I’m not sure which of those possibilities scares me more.
November 8, 2012 — 12:03 pm
Comments: 78
Admire my enormous cabbage, bitchez
Well. My goodness, that hurt. Didn’t it?
Now, if you’ll step inside, I’m just warming up the cocoon. Tea? Coffee? Artisan moonshine?
We’ve got tons of video games we haven’t finished. And have you looked the reading list lately? Oh, we’ll have a busy few weeks. Months. Very busy.
There will be a time for rage. There will be a time when we take all that anger and disappointment, wad it into a dense, burning, white-hot fist, and…
Well. Not today. Today, our anger only serves them. Today, I am rubber and 52% of the electorate is glue.
November 7, 2012 — 2:24 pm
Comments: 38
Deep breath; here we go…!
Ding-ding-ding! With that, the polls are open on the East Coast. The fat lady is clearing her throat and doing her warmup exercises.
I decided to spare you another recycled Obama image today, mostly because I don’t want to put you off. It’s going to be a very late night for me — the polls close in Ohio midnight-thirty my time, and who thinks it’ll be over when the polls close? — and I’m going to struggle to keep up. If you could drop by and give me a poke in the ribs from time to time, I’d be much obliged.
It’s dark and quiet in my little outpost of America on the shores of the English Channel.
Oh, and VOTE, my pretties! VOTE LIKE THE WIND!
November 6, 2012 — 12:00 pm
Comments: 88
tick-tick-tick-tick
Still recycling the old Obama ‘shops. Think of it as sympathetic magic. Sweep them all away, make room for…Romney ‘shops, I guess.
Oh, and happy Bonfire Night! Sussex does Guy Fawkes in a big way (it’s kinda personal; Bloody Mary torched seventeen citizens in Lewes during that whole Catholic/Protestant thing). There will be firework displays in various villages all month long (though we’ve had a lot of rain this Fall and sodden fields have canceled some of our favorites).
In honor of the Actual Night, we just went out and let off a few Roman candles (Roman candles, get it?).
Yay Parliament! Boo Popery!
Whaddya think – am I blending in?
November 5, 2012 — 8:45 pm
Comments: 23