The news makes me feel like I been takin’ crazy pills
Hey, we recycle in this household, pal!
I’m calling the Dead Pool for Carl. Chicken Farmer picked Tony Benn first, but it was his second pick so it doesn’t count. So sorry, Chicken Farmer — I’d love to give a dick to another chookophile, but rules is rules.
This is Carl’s second win, but he has yet to claim his first dick. If you step forward, C, you get *2* dicks. And also maybe me turning up some day asking to sleep on your sofa.
Your call.
March 17, 2014 — 10:28 pm
Comments: 18
Hillary 2016, take two
Right. Here she is in color. For better or worse, I ditched the witch theme and went with a more straight-ahead glamor shot (stop sniggering in the back there). I wasn’t sure I could pull off all that lightning and shit in color. Color gives me hives.
Also, Hillary 2016. If I keep saying that, I might float a leeetle bit higher in the Google search results.
I haven’t put this on any merchandise or anything. I figured I’d get some feedback first. If you want this one (or the black and white witchy one) to print out yourself, drop me a line and I’ll email it to you nice and big. Hillary 2016.
Oh, wallpaper! I could make you a wallpaper, if you want to annoy co-workers. Give me your screen dimensions and preferred background color and I’ll make it happen. Hillary 2016.
And if any of youse just followed a link here and don’t know me, I’m a woman of fifty-something. The way the identity politics shuffle goes, that means I’m allowed to make fun of other wrinkly old broads. Though I’ll feel pretty shitty if she drops dead of an aneurysm or something. Hillary 2016.
Or I won’t. No, thinking about it, I won’t. This is a woman who has spent her whole life thinking the world would be a better place if she stuck her nose in every little aspect of my life. To hell with that. Hillary 2016.
Good weekend, everybody! Hillary 2016!
Update: okay, let’s see, so far I got buttons, stickers, greeting cards, coffee mugs, t-shirts and playing cards (oh, that last one was just too silly to pass up). What I really want are postcards and posters, but Zazzle is being a little bitch about page orientation, so I’ll figure that out over the weekend. Don’t buy anything for my sake (I only get a pittance in royalties) — buy something to make your sister-in-law weep bitter tears.
Update: okay, posters (cheap as I could, but they’re still kind of pricey) and postcards (yeah, they’re displayed sideways. Stupid Zazzle). The postcards are cheap, at least, and can be sent anonymously.
March 14, 2014 — 6:12 pm
Comments: 50
Weasels in the mist
I haven’t talked about the weather for a while, because I know a lot of you are still socked in with Winter and…well…no beating about the bush, we’ve had a sunny few days here. When it’s nice in England, it’s first-lovely-warm-day-in-Spring nice. It can be 72, sunny with a cool breeze for months on end, when we get lucky.
But we paid for it today. When the sea is cold and the sun is hot, we can get a weather phenomenon southerners call a sea fog or sea fret. Northerners call it a haar — or har, hare, harl, harr or hoar. It’s where we get the term hoar frost (the fog that freezes and sticks to things).
A sea fret is awesome to watch, because it’s dramatic and sudden. It’s a dense fog with a highly perceptible edge. It comes galloping in from the Channel, drops temps twenty degrees and reduces visibility to sweet fuck-all.
We drove into the one today. Clear one minute, whooff the next. Not the densest fog I’ve ever been in (that would be a cloud I drove into on Grandfather Mountain once), but it was pretty spooky.
I gather most of England got this one.
March 13, 2014 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 8
I am too a special snowflake
One of the art bloggers I read is having a bit of a hissy about negative criticism from commenters (not going to link — blog feuds are the lowest form of traffic whoring). Made me think for the umpty-umpth time about how big the internet is. And how, on the one hand, it allows any old Joe Schmoe to show his wares to the world. On the other, it allows any old Joe Schmoe to find your stuff and inform you that it sux dix.
Even harder to take, though — it puts you in direct competition with, like, the whole world. If you’re a one in a million talent, there are still thousands of others in your league. I don’t care how good you are — If you don’t find trawling the internet humbling, you don’t go to enough places.
Long ago on the header of Christopher Taylor’s blog, he said there were 90 million blogs on the ‘net. I don’t know where he got that number, but I suspect it got away from him pretty quick (like McDonald’s — remember when the signs bragged about the actual number of millions of burgers sold? Eventually, they gave up and put “metric asswad burgers sold”). That was a pretty daunting competition then, whatever it is now.
I got curious about the current number of connected world citizens, but I’m not good at math (I think “umpty-umpth” and “metric asswad” are actual mathematical concepts). So check me here. Wikipedia says the world population is 7.1 billion of which 61% are not using the internet. So, that means 39% are using the internet, and 39% of 7.1 billion is…2.77 billions, yes? Which looks like 2,770,000,000 writ out with all them zeroes, yes? And if you’re a picture blog, you’re pretty much accessible to all of them, regardless of language.
I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty easy to find people who don’t like your stuff.
March 12, 2014 — 11:45 pm
Comments: 20
It’s time
The time has come. It’s time we return to an America where politicians have facial hair (and that’s not another dig at Hillary, who I’m sure has plenty).
I don’t really know enough of about Ted Cruz yet, to be honest. I just know he’s the orneriest cuss in politics at the moment and — whether it’s a posture or not — that’s just what I want to see. Somebody to upset a few apple carts.
That girlie mouth bothers me, though.
March 11, 2014 — 11:18 pm
Comments: 14
And your little dog, too!
I made Hillary a 2016 campaign poster, but it’s too big for my blog so I’ma make you click to see it.
I showed Uncle B while I was working on it and he said, “she’ll sue.” And I said, “she ought to sue — that’s just wrong.”
To be honest, if Hillary was that badass, I’d probably vote for her. Have you seen pics of her lately? She looks old, old, old. Older than her 66 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t drop out after all.
UPDATE: ZOMG, Aceolanche! Bless your little cotton socks, Dave. If ya’ll kindly check back tomorrow, I’m working on a color version. It’s a little different from the black and white. I’ll probably put it on some stuff to sell, but I’ll also offer free versions of both the color and grayscale posters, if you’d like to print some out yourself.
March 10, 2014 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 39
La-dee-da
Just messing around. (Sure, I got a bigger version). When was the last time Little Lord Fountleroy came up in conversation?
Good weekend, all!
March 7, 2014 — 9:25 pm
Comments: 14
If you can just hold out a *little* longer
We took a long drive up the coast today. It was a good day for it; sunny and mild. Daffodils everywhere. AND WE SAW THE FIRST LAMBS OF THE SEASON. SQUEEE!
Spring is definitely coming. Just don’t lose your grip.
— 12:11 am
Comments: 19
Oh my dog
“Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intervention in Ukraine is not a sign of Russian strength…” said U.S. President Barack Obama, standing in an elementary school classroom on this colorful alphabet rug. Seriously. This happened. (Thanks to MikeW for the link in the comments). Doesn’t he have people to scope out these locations in advance?
Not that the press conference went out this way — the shot was framed in the standard talking-head-plus-flags format. Still, this day and age, they didn’t think other photos would leak to the internets?
Anyway, that’s the image I should have been riffing on tonight. Instead, I did something I haven’t done in years — got a book in the mail this morning and read it all in one go. Blew most of my day and had to sprint at the end.
What? Oh. It was Thomasina. Which Disney made into The Three Lives of Thomasina in the Sixties. I never saw the movie but, knowing Disney, I can pretty much guarantee the book was darker and weirder.
Also by this author: Jennie, a book I read many years ago and loved. And, um, Poseidon Adventure.
March 6, 2014 — 12:13 am
Comments: 18
Things that are crazy
Mad Jack, as he looks tonight relaxing on the sofa. Since you haven’t seen him in a while. I don’t know why he looks grumpy (maybe because I’m pointing a camera at him). The weather is finally improving a little here (sorry, ‘Muricans) and he’s having a spectacularly good time dashing up and down the lawn. Oh, how we worry about the road.
In other insane news, did you catch this thing in the New Republic, about how Vladimir Putin actually might be a little cray-cray? I know, I know…TNR. But this is their hired Putin-watcher, and it’s worth a read. This is Vlad at today’s press conference:
So I don’t know what happened there. It’s unclear. But did you see the bullets piercing the shields of the Berkut [special police]. That was obvious. As for who gave the order to shoot, I don’t know. Yanukovich didn’t give that order. He told me. I only know what Yanukovich told me. And I told him, don’t do it. You’ll bring chaos to your city. And he did it, and they toppled him. Look at that bacchanalia. The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn’t the first time they’ve done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these people…these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing experiments, like on rats. You’re not listening to me. I’ve already said, that yesterday, I met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you’re not listening. It’s not that Yanukovich said he’s not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they’re not as bad as in Ukraine.
She (the reporter) claims that’s pretty close to verbatim, and he rambled on like that for an hour. Also, Angela Merkel (who’s pretty sympatico with Vlad) said he was in “another world” after talking to him on the phone. Also (I can’t source this, I forgot where I read it, but ever’body’s talking about it) he claims those aren’t Russian troops in the Crimea. They’re locals, loyal to Russia, who just bought themselves Russian military uniforms, which you can totally get at Wal*Mart. Or something.
Honestly, I think the only reason our top guys never go entirely nuts is that they have a maximum of eight years to go loopy in.
March 4, 2014 — 11:54 pm
Comments: 9