Female Genital Mutilation Barbie is here!
Come to think of it, no Barbies has a hoo-ha, so there’s that. The lady in the stylish trash bag is apparently the US Olympic bronze medalist in fencing, which is why FGM Barbie is hefting a sword.
Poor dear has apparently dealt with her clinical depression by converting, I guess.
I can’t wait to see the Ken who goes with. There will be a Taliban Ken, right?
November 16, 2017 — 10:19 pm
Comments: 15
I have no Photoshop, and I must scream
Well, I have Photoshop now. I got it working in the end, but I had to reboot several times to do it. And one in three times I reboot, the computer does its best imitation of a brick. And has taken to freezing up randomly when it does run.
I wasn’t sure I’d be here tonight.
It sounds like a serious hardware problem, but the issues I’ve had with it track every new Windows update. New updates, new slew of misbehavior. Then it settles down for a while.
I’m well overdue for another one. This machine is about eight years old. But I always buy the highest spec machine I can possibly afford, so I’ve been putting it off until I hafta.
So, it sounds like the perfect day to change my cellphone provider, yes?
[gentle sobbing]
November 15, 2017 — 8:26 pm
Comments: 21
By way of apology
Sorry for downer post yesterday. Here’s something better. Baby lion roaring. (Link goes to some guy’s tweet, in case you’re incurably allergic to Twitter).
Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’ve decided to switch internet providers. I have, like, nine years worth of emails to download…
November 14, 2017 — 9:09 pm
Comments: 6
They shot muh gurl :(
The runaway lynx turned up chillin’ under a double-wide in an abandoned trailer park (yes, even here) and the bastards shot her. The answer to your next question is, yes, they probably do have tranq guns here, but she was shot by a hired marksman instead of zoo personnel, in the darkness with night vision equipment.
Maybe he wasn’t taking an opportunity to play with his fun toys.
Brits are animal mad — particularly cats — and this is not going down well at all. The head of the local council should probably have a flunky start his car for a while.
November 13, 2017 — 9:36 pm
Comments: 11
Drumroll please
We’ve got the electrician coming tomorrow for a couple of odd jobs, so I’m cleaning house. As you do. And I found this thing (look up).
There’s a baker who has a booth in a local market, from whom we occasionally buy sausage rolls. He was forever telling me he used to be sausage roll maker by appointment to Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
One day, he flagged me down on the street as I went past on my bicycle and gave me a laminated copy of his Royal Warrant. (I happen to know, from professional experience, that a lamination pouch of that size costs 50p, so I was flattered).
I don’t even particularly like sausage rolls. Have a good weekend, everyone!
November 10, 2017 — 10:31 pm
Comments: 22
Lady Weasel Poison-Fist
Oooo…lookee what I have to play with! We have been loaned a suit of armor at work. It’s of modern manufacture, but it’s made for actual re-enactment use, so it’s properly articulated and very heavy.
You can see the six individual plates that make up each finger, for example, and underneath each is a leather loop that holds it in place. It’s the whole thing, head to toe. I’ve had on the helmet and gloves.
I’m itching to try out the whole kit, but it weighs around a hundred pounds, and I don’t think anyone would appreciate me going face first into the parquet with the fancy metal togs on.
November 9, 2017 — 10:24 pm
Comments: 15
Plus, you get a dog
Longtime sweasel commenter Ermine bought me a game. This astonished me, as I didn’t know anyone else could see my wishlist, let alone buy something on it. Thank you, fellow weasel!
Disclaimer: nobody else follow, pls! Most of the stuff on my wishlist isn’t stuff I actually want, it’s just games I’m keeping an eye on for one reason or another.
But Fallout 4 I really did want. Ermine is an open-worlds kindofa a mustelid, as am I, so he knew I’d like it.
And I do. I got frustrated the first few hours (I died and died and died), but eventually got a handle on it and am enjoying it muchly. It’s a shoot ’em up in post-apocalyptic Boston, which is fun. I can’t say I recognize many of the places, but I do the names.
I recognized part of the Freedom Trail, though, which really is set with red bricks in the sidewalk. I’d forgotten that!
So that’s what I’ve been up to. Games, I realized, remind me of incredibly vivid dreams: they feel like real and amazing experiences at the time, but they fade away, leaving mere wisps of memory.
Oh, well. Everybody’s got to waste time.
November 8, 2017 — 9:39 pm
Comments: 4
This came today
I ordered this from Amazon and it came today. It’s from China. It’s very nice and rather large. It’s a brush rest, carved to this shape (presumably laser-carved, because they’re all alike) from a hunk of rosewood tree root. It cost me less than five pounds and the shipping was free.
There is so much wrong with the thing I just typed, from the cost of the item to the free shipping to the fact that rosewood is more protected on the international market than baby fucking harp seals and shouldn’t have sailed through Customs without a bureaucratic fight to the death.
Are you guys getting this? Super cheap, excellent stuff from China with free (you have to assume, hugely government subsidized) shipping? Because we are. It takes two to five weeks to get here, but I mean…really?
November 7, 2017 — 11:50 pm
Comments: 12
Fire!
‘Tis the bonfire season hereabouts. I’m sure I’ve told you in years past, East Sussex doesn’t simply observe the Fifth of November; there’s a bonfire celebration somewhere in the county from late September through early December. That’s because East Sussex was particularly hard done by during the Marian persecutions (proximity to the Continent and free flow of new ideas is my theory).
It also means all the costumed bonfire societies can march in each other’s processions for weeks and weeks.
Most of the villages defer to the town of Lewes on the actual Fifth. They have the biggest procession, on account of they had the most Protestants burned at the stake. Seventeen of them.
Yes, it’s mostly fun and games these days, but I sense a surprisingly hard knot of anti-Catholicism in Britain still and it peaks out during the bonfire season.
We had a local celebration over the weekend and we’ll have another next weekend. Small, informal, neighborly things.
Pictured is the fire bowl from Saturday. I think we’d like to get one. We have a chimenea (and an incinerator), but it’s not the same as open fire, is it? Anyone have experience of these? Are they hard to maintain? Do the legs get super hot?
November 6, 2017 — 9:35 pm
Comments: 14
toot!
Roberto Benavidez is a “half-breed, South Texan, queer, figurative sculptor specializing in the piñata form; playing on themes of race, sexuality, art, sin, humor and beauty.” Which explains the butt stuff, I guess.
Honestly, why are artists always such insufferable twats? Dude makes custom piñatas. This one is part of a series based on the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, which is awesome. I wonder if he actually fills them with candy or if he anticipates that no-one would want to buy a custom paper sculpture and then smack it to pieces with a stick.
I kinda like his bronzes, too.
Good weekend, everyone!
November 3, 2017 — 9:34 pm
Comments: 14