lol england
Things spotted in back gardens that border footpaths.
This is no random assembly of cement chunks and garden sculpture. Oh, no. This here is art, friends. This is a thing here.
There used to be a house near us with a roof lined by concrete garden animals of one kind or another. They’re gone now. I have a sad feeling it was a house owned by some old coot who is no longer with us.
Hello, Monday. How was your weekend?
September 16, 2019 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 12
Dead Pool Round 126: slidin’ into fall…
Rich Rostrom is officially a Winner of Dick. He has won with T. Boone Pickens. Rich has been keeping statistics on the Dead Pool since forever; it’s about damn time he won one.
As for Pickens? He “lobbied for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (HR 503) which would prohibit the slaughter for human consumption and the trade and transport of horse flesh and live horses intended for human consumption.”
So, you know, not just another pretty billionaire.
Ready? Sure? Okay then!
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.
September 13, 2019 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 56
You have got to be kidding me!
This thing came across my Facebook today billed as a “cat muzzle bath protection”. I do not believe it. This must be somebody’s ugly fetish.
I can tell you any cat I’ve ever owned would flip his or her shit if I tried to slip a nylon gimp mask over its face. Slinging its head around and banging into stuff. It would be all claws and screaming.
I can also tell you 100% the mask in the picture was Photoshopped onto the cat in the picture. The original was twice this size, so it was easy to spot. You have to wonder, when they don’t have the courage to use their own product.
I can’t vouch for all the pictures, though. Do a Google images search of cat muzzle bath protection and YOU tell ME what those bastards on the internet are up to now.
Rich Rostrum wins the dick with T. Boone Pickens. Dude, no – don’t post your address in the thread, yeesh! – how much unwanted pizza delivery can you handle? My email is right in the header.
I’ll go queue up a NEW DEAD POOL right now.
September 12, 2019 — 7:28 pm
Comments: 4
I don’t post on 9/11
Tradition. I’ve said all I want to say about it, but I don’t want to post junk like it’s not a thing.
Feel free to discuss whatever you like in the comment thread, though.
September 11, 2019 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 5
A barn owl in a bucket. That is all.
The last country show, as always, had the inevitable display of owls. I don’t remember seeing this before, though — each owl’s perch stood in a shallow pan of water.
This little’un was happily paddling around in it, which I guess is what it was for. If it were only for drinking, I would expect a bowl.
Look at that face. LOOK AT IT. In fact, look at it up close and in color. Zoom in. You can actually see us standing around staring, and the amazing cloudy sky we had that day.
September 10, 2019 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 10
Word of the day: yaffle
Uncle B saw one of these in the garden today. It is a European Green Woodpecker. Not his picture, though — the little peckerhead moved too fast.
I had a poke around the web, which informed me that the green woodpecker’s call is a liquid laughing yaffle.
Liquid laughing yaffle. Well, I never.
Only one document added ‘liquid’ to the mix, but they pretty much all say laughing yaffle. You might be forgiven for thinking ‘yaffle’ is a general term for a kind of sound, but no. It’s specific to the green woodpecker, which is also called a ‘yaffle’.
Pity. It seemed such a promising word.
You can make up your mind whether this sounds like a laughing yaffle to you. I’m torn.
Which brings us to Woody, who was not modelled after a European green woodpecker, but a pileated woodpecker, which also has a laughing call. The deep lore of Wikipedia tells me that the inspiration was an acorn woodpecker that pecked holes in Walter Lantz’s honeymoon cabin. He wanted to shoot it, but his wife suggested he make a cartoon about it instead. It became his most famous character.
Why don’t my life ass-aches ever turn into award-winning triumphs?
Aforementioned wife, Carol Stafford, became the fifth and final voice of Woody Woodpecker, though she asked not to be credited for some years. She thought kids wouldn’t like it if Woody was voiced by a girl. (I thought she was also the voice of Talky Tina, but I was wrong. That was June Foray, who also played Rocky the Squirrel).
And that’s it. Man, I hated Woody Woodpecker.
September 9, 2019 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 13
Dead Pool Round 125: it’s cold in here
Thefritz wins again with Valerie Harper. Harper was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2013 and given perhaps as little as six weeks to live. She died last week, aged 80.
Which I guess is a story of triumph, but I can’t imagine living six years with that.
She was not, apparently, Jewish.
Right! Are you seated comfortably? Here we go:
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.
September 6, 2019 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 56
And your little dog, too!
A lady who makes things out of wheat sheaves sold us this. She said it was a ‘kitchen witch’ — a good luck symbol.
Turns out, she weren’t lying:
In England
Although largely unknown in modern England, the Kitchen Witch was known in England during Tudor times.
The will of John Crudgington, from Newton, Worfield, Shropshire in England, dated 1599, divides his belongings amongst his wife and three children, “except the cubbard in the halle the witche in the kytchyn which I gyve and bequeathe to Roger my sonne.”
So it’s period for the house. I’ll let you know if I stop dropping cans of soup on my toe or cutting myself.
Nota bene: yes! New Dead Pool today, 6WBT. Sorry about Mugabe, y’all. I mean, not sorry, obviously.
September 5, 2019 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 12
Steam tractor
Her name is Titaness, since you probably can’t read it spelled out in gold leaf on the side. I don’t know if she took her turn plowing. Seems like a machine like this would mash down more soil than it tore up.
And with that, I’m off for a book and a gin. I think I have a little bug; I’ve been dragging tail for a few days.
September 4, 2019 — 9:05 pm
Comments: 7
Spotted in the wild…
What’s an agricultural show without a spotted dick stand? I ask you?
I don’t think people were eating them on the spot. I mean, that would be weird.
September 3, 2019 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 12