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What’re YOU looking at?

And finally, rounding out No Politics Week, this photograph Uncle B took in the garden today. It’s the lizard that lives in his cold frame. Near as I can figure, it’s a viviparous lizard or common lizard, Zootoca vivipara. Uncle B calls him Sid.

If you really hate reptiles, this is a pretty good place to be. There are only six native reptiles: two lizards, a slow worm and three snakes. Unfortunately, one of the snakes is both poisonous and protected.

Right. That’s it. Going to another show over the weekend, but probably can’t milk a whole week out of it. Prepare for cat blogging!
Good weekend, folks!

May 31, 2013 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 37

b-r-r-r-r-r…BRRRRRR

Oh, yeah, there were a BUNCH of these tank models at the country fair. They’re big, like getting on for three feet long, and radio controlled. Even the little model people are animated (which freaked the hell out of me because I didn’t know until I bent over for a closer look and one turned to look back at me. Cheeky tank model owner guy).

Shame they don’t run on gas; they’re easily be big enough to ride.

Anyway, they all apparently come from Russia. It’s a thing. So the only models you can get are Russian or German tanks. You want American or British, you have to buy the chassis and make the outer bits yourself.

I didn’t intend to fob you off with country fair pictures all week. Fayre, actually. I’m embarrassed to admit they spelled it Fayre. But every time I’ve looked in on the news this week, I’ve thought, “Nah.”

May 30, 2013 — 10:24 pm
Comments: 19

Improbably Tiny Ferret

This is a fully grown female ferret, believe it or don’t. I didn’t know they were ever this small, but apparently this is within normal range. She’s about a third the size of some of the boys they had.

The ferret rescue lady said there’s a trend of trying to miniaturize them, which she doesn’t like because it means breeding runts to runts, with likely health problems. ‘Twas all I could do not to shove this one in my pocket and run off.

I wasn’t going to give you another night of the county fair, but I had a pad around the news tonight and…eh. Improbably tiny ferret it is.

May 29, 2013 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 23

I promised you agricultural equipment, and I will not let you down

One of my favorite things at these country shows are the collectors. They set up together at one end of the show (I suspect they neither pay nor are paid to be there) in little camping trailers stuffed full of…whatever it is they collect. Spanners (that’s wrenches to you and me). Animal traps. Doll heads. Oil cans. Radios. They don’t sell anything, they just display a collection. Of one thing. Usually retired folks, they go around the fairs doing this by day and presumably whoop it up over camp fires after closing time.

If you show the slightest interest, you will always hear something worth knowing. I love this. I love listening to someone wax lyrical about some silly, incredibly banal thing he or she has fallen in love with. I go down the row and talk to every single one of them. And take pictures. That makes us both happy.

So these are from Axe Man’s collection. The ball-end thing is a pig stunner. You conk pigs over the head with it. The next thing over is a pole-axe. That sticky-outty bit is a hollow cylinder, with a blood channel cut in the side. So…stun, then pole-axe.

So, there you go. When you talk of being pole-axed by a bit of news, that’s what you’re talking. Um, ew?

May 28, 2013 — 11:22 pm
Comments: 13

‘STAAAAAACHE!

Yes! That is my hand holding a magnificent Tiny Mustache Owl! (That’s not really what it’s called. They told me, I forgot). His name is Mister Cornelius.

His main diet in the wild is insects, which is what the ‘stache is for — he just stands there majestically and food flies into it.

While I was holding him, his ear tufts suddenly went up like devil horns, his eyes went all spooky and evil, his whole face changed shape and I’m thinking, yipes, I’m for it! But he’d only spotted a dog walking by. Mister Cornelius, he doesn’t like dogs.

You know what this means, right? IT’S SUMMER FÊTE SEASON! The weather was awesome this weekend, and we went to a country fair in the Western end of Sussex and a steam rally in Kent.

And you know what that means, right? You’re gonna be staring at a LOT of agricultural equipment this week. w00t!!!1!!

May 27, 2013 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 26

and on and on and on…

I don’t usually leave you staring at a political P’shop over the weekend, but I just read the entirety of Obama’s nothingburger of a foreign policy speech and I had to get that ^^^^^ out of my system. (What is the matter with those bananas at MSNBC?!).

On a happier note, my new hit counter tells me my old one was seriously undercounting. How do I know which one is right? I was browsing the linked-from page and found this post from Doug Ross: per Alexa rankings, sweasel.com is the 180th most popular conservative news site.

That makes this the 876,001st most visited destination on the innertubes! Fewer than a million better places to hang out in cyberspace, baby. w00t!

Have a great Memorial Day weekend, Muricans!

May 24, 2013 — 9:08 pm
Comments: 44

Nope, sorry

I grew up about two miles from a Footwashing Baptist church. It was where you turned left onto the dirt road that led to home, and by the time we got to that spot (if we were coming from Nashville) my mother and I had been on the road quite a while and were almost always shivering for a pee. I mention this because the church had an awesome brick shithouse to one side. It was nearly as big as the church. With what terrible longing we stared at that great cathedral of a pissoire when we passed.

It was locked, though. We tip-toed up and checked it out once. It had a glass window. And it was an eight-seater. Four holes on one side, four on the other. Visualize that at full capacity, folks.

Where I am now is largely Church of England. High church is basically Catholicism minus the pope. Bells and smells and ancient stone buildings. It is very old and beautiful. It is decorous and English. It seems a whole universe away from an eight-seater brick shithouse up a dirt track.

But it’s not. However much distance there would seem to be between snake handlers and Opus Dei, it is all Christian. They recognize the same sacred verses and celebrate the same holidays. They worship the same light, however much the light is bent through the prism of a hundred denominations. They are deeply related.

I understand how a prosperous middle class Muslim in some leafy London suburb would watch yesterday’s news and say that has nothing to do with me. But it does. Or, rather, it doesn’t, but it is a product of the same faith. A different interpretation of the same words.

Which isn’t to say: feel guilty. More like: choose.

May 23, 2013 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 39

Can we have some backlash *now*, please?

This is a big story that, for some reason, isn’t getting much US attention yet.

So, this guy is walking down a London street today — some reports say he’s a soldier, at any rate he was wearing a Help for Heroes t-shirt, a military charity — and these two guys knock him over with a car. Then they get out with a knife, a machete and a handgun and hack the man to pieces while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” and “‘We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you!” and drag his corpse into the streets.

It takes twenty minutes for the police to get there, during which time the two yoots stood around trying to get the horrified bystanders to take their pictures waving their weapons in the air, like they’re going to be on Britain’s Got Talent tonight or something. Africans, from the look of it. Shot, but alive.

It’s already classed as a terror attack, so we don’t have to go through THAT linguistic dance, at least.

So. Doesn’t there come a point where that backlash they’re always wringing their hands about is actually appropriate?

May 22, 2013 — 6:11 pm
Comments: 54

incoming!

Before you ask…yes, Photoshopping shit onto my hate objects is incredibly cathartic.

If you think back, it’s like when you were six and you drew your worst enemy with, like, a gazillion knives sticking out of her. And they took you away to the home with the green walls and the metal bunk beds and showed you all those pictures of ink blobs and asked you to make up stories about them. And you didn’t get to go home again until, gosh, junior year of High School.

Like that.

May 21, 2013 — 11:04 pm
Comments: 25

But seriously folks

You know, I hate Obama as much as the next swivel-eyed wingnut, but he’s a nothing. For all the damage he can do, he is still going to be gone in three years. The IRS is with us always.

If the IRS (and all the rest of the government covered by the pubic employees’ unions) are truly run by a bunch of leftard activists now, this is the most serious threat to the American experiment I’ve seen in my lifetime.

I’m so not kidding.

If (at least) 47% of the country completely loses faith in the honesty and fairness of the civil service, the union will not hold.

And these guys, they’re coming for everyone’s medical records soon.

Hoo. Boy.

May 20, 2013 — 11:11 pm
Comments: 30