note bien
The Kaiju Movie Marathon returns with Gamera’s Revenge on Saturday, October 17th, starting at 8:00AM ET (5:00AM PT). Prepare yourselves for something monstrous! Tune in for the utmost destruction, and live tweet with #gamera.
Their free web-based stream is here. There’s also an app called PlutoTV, but I don’t see the Shout! Factory channel on it (probably an international licensing thing).
Gamera is a friend to all children!
October 17, 2015 — 10:56 am
Comments: 6
These pretty little things
I don’t know how I wasn’t aware of these when I was in the States (they’re originally South American, after all) but I love them. Physalis. AKA uchuva, Cape gooseberry, Inca berry, Aztec berry, golden berry, giant ground cherry, African ground cherry, Peruvian ground cherry, Peruvian cherry, amour en cage (love in a cage, which is rather wonderful). Little sweet and tart orange fruits in a sweet little paper lantern.
Seeing as I was so fond of them (and they are so expensive), Uncle B reckoned he could grow me some. And so he did. Aren’t these awesome? Do check them out in color.
See? There are advantages to being a gardener’s moll.
Good weekend, everyone!
October 16, 2015 — 10:22 pm
Comments: 13
Mmmm…chemicals!
This ugly hobgoblin floated up in my FaceBook feed today. Not horrified yet? He comes with an earworm. (I swear that video gets more pixelated every time I see it. By next time, it’ll be downright cubist).
I listened to this stupid jingle all my life, but my version doesn’t include Mr Odom’s formula. That one predates me and you can tell it’s Fifties because they’re bragging about putting mystery chemicals in your food.
“We add a dash of X, and a pinch of Z, and for flavor and taste we add Y-9D!”
I wonder if there ever really was a Y-9D?
Anyway, I miss country sausage. There’s nothing really special about it, it’s just very peppery sausage patties, but ubiquitous where I grew up. The nearest it got to nationwide was Jimmy Dean’s Pork Sausage, which was a pretty adequate country sausage. Not like the homemade stuff, but not bad.
Bangers and mash tonight. Okay, bangers and fried potatoes, but close enough.
October 15, 2015 — 10:07 pm
Comments: 14
plus ça change, huh?
I’ve been browsing editorial cartoons tonight (gosh, I’ve wasted an improbable chunk of my life staring at Google Images). Made me fink.
You have to go back a hundred years before the ideas and the artwork strike me as worthy. Like this one, from 1919 (who doesn’t revile “the mad notions of Europe”? Amirite?). Of course, these days you find these old gems mostly in course syllabi for How Our Ancestors Were, Like, Totally Retarded 101.
Editorial cartoons from about the mid-20th C onward are mostly lefty. And ugly. (One exception would be Michael Ramirez, who I think is a flipping editorial cartoon conservative mad genius).
And at some point they stopped trying to persuade the other side (me, IOW) and went straight for enrage. Ideas were replaced with ciphers. Like if they could hang a label on something (“red scare” or “McCarthyism”), they didn’t have to address the issue (whether the government ever was really and truly infested with commies and whether that’s done us any favors).
I don’t know. Maybe cartoons always made somebody mad. You’d have to ask a lefty whether Ramirez cartoons make him irrationally angry. But the modern stuff just seems awfully heavy on snark and ridicule. And they punch down (or at least sideways) more often than they punch up.
October 14, 2015 — 10:28 pm
Comments: 8
Hit by a Buick
The news today has been full of the untimely arrival of the Buicks, which confused me mightily until I saw it in print. Bewick. As in Bewick’s Swan.
Every year, a few hundred of the feathery bastards flee Siberia to balmy England in Fall. Their arrival is a herald of the start of Winter.
A herald. I haven’t checked the woolly caterpillar forecast yet.
Anyhoo, this year they arrived earlier than ever, which everyone agrees is a sign of Deep Shit. It’s one of several Bad Signs for the coming Winter, not least of which that it is effing cold already.
Meh. Not ready.
I sometimes wonder if this is why global warming was such an easy sell in the UK: wishful thinking.
October 13, 2015 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 18
Never let ’em know you Photoshop
I usually get my revenge: instead of letting them run off the flyer (brochure/ad/letterhead) on a home inkjet I take it to the local printer and run it off proper-like, which isn’t so cheap. It cuts down on casually-repeated business.
Anyhoo, tonight I’m stuck putting together a program (or programme, if you’re gay) for work, thereby drastically reducing my chances of playing a couple of hours of Witcher 3.
Um, I mean composing a really meaningful and interesting blog post.
Yeah, that’s what I meant.
October 12, 2015 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 7
Dead Pool Round 78: ZOMG, I forgot to set up the Dead Pool!!!
Holy shit, I forgot to set up the Dead Pool! I came home and had a big, fat, lovely Friday afternoon nap, and…well. Anyhoo. Hello!
Mrs Carl won round 77 with Denis Healey, an elderly British Labour politician. If you want to know more — and why should you? — hit the link. Congratz, Mrs Carl — you know what to do.
Feel free to keep posting limericks in the thread below. Lumme some limericks.
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. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
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? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
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’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
October 9, 2015 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 75
More holidays than a medieval monastery
Well, whaddya know? It’s National Poetry Day. Not as compelling as National Badger Day, but I’m home late tonight.
What do I know from poetry? Oh, it’s that impenetrable stuff I skip past when I’m reading a novel, is what. My personal taste runs to saucy limericks (I remind you I lived in Pawtucket for seven years).
I’ll get us started with my favorite:
There once was a woman from Exeter,
So beautiful, men craned their necks at her.
And then the more brave
Would smile and wave
…the distinguishing marks of their sex at her.
Beeyootiful! See you back here tomorrow, six sharp, for Dead Pool Round 78.
October 8, 2015 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 13
‘ang on, ‘ang on
She picked him fair and square, too — fully a week before the old bastard died. Perhaps she could tell us how she did that. Or perhaps we will all sleep better at night if we don’t know.
Any way, new Dead Pool this Friday.
Same Weasel time,
same Weasel channel.
October 7, 2015 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 5
Good heavens! Is it National Badger Day *already*?
Well, lookit that. Tuesday, October 6 is National Badger Day (which I’m pretty sure is a totally made up fundraising holiday invented by the National Badger Trust).
In honor of this most artificial of celebrations, here are ten badger facts I totally lifted verbatim from today’s Express:
1. The earliest recorded use of the word “badger” for the animal was in 1523. Before that, it was called a “brock” or “bauson”.
2. “Badger” was originally (around 1500) a word for an itinerant trader.
3. The animal was probably called a “badger” from the badge-like white mark on its forehead.
4. Another theory it that is comes from the French word “bêcheur” meaning a digger.
5. Badgers feed mainly on earthworms of which they may eat hundreds every night.
6. According to an old belief, when a badger bites, it will not loosen its grip until its teeth meet.
7. A male badger is a boar, a female is a sow, the young are cubs and their system of underground burrows is a sett.
8. Interfering with a badger sett is an offence under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. So is obstructing access to any entrance of a sett.
9. The honey badger, or ratel, is considered by many to be the world’s most ferocious and fearless animal.
10. The word “badger” does not appear in any Shakespeare play but Twelfth Night mentions “brock” once.
Must find out who does badger PR. Weasels could use a bit of that.
October 6, 2015 — 7:10 pm
Comments: 12