The night Himself came in from the wilderness
We continue our low-effort stroll down memory lane with the first picture of Kitteh. He strolled into the house one night in July of 2018, screamed and ran out again. I trapped him next day with a squirrel trap and a pouch of food.
About three months old and totally feral, our local kitty rescue (or, rather, the big scary lesbian who runs our local kitty rescue) recommended we keep him in a cage until he was tamer. She even loaned us the cage (pictured).
It was good advice and he tamed down and acclimated to our other two cats in no time.
Today, he’s a lovable, weird, great fat pudding. He does still get that terrified feral look in his eyes from time to time (not pictured).
Rejoice! It is the weekend!
December 29, 2023 — 6:31 pm
Comments: 4
Lying hounds
Google continues to say I’m over my storage quota, even though I’ve deleted dozens of photos. And yes, I emptied the trash. Let that be a warning: don’t go over!
Have one from July of 2018. The white one to the left is Sam, still very much with us. The dark blob in the middle with the white spot (it’s his bottom lol) is Mo. Also still alive.
Mum (not really their mum, but she sat on the eggs) is Millie, one of my best ever. Eaten in her sleep by a fox that broke into the henhouse through the nesting box. Bastard. I had him trapped in there, but I let him go. I had nothing to shoot him with and I’m not really up to beating a fox to death with a hoe.
Yes, I keep a chicken spreadsheet.
December 28, 2023 — 7:47 pm
Comments: 2
Ew.
Absolutely disgusting. We did an Aldi run this afternoon and I was looking for a lunch that was the culinary opposite of Christmas dinner. I figured pot noodles was it.
I haven’t had pot noodles in twenty years. I remember them being junk but tasty. Huh.
Back to work tomorrow and bummed about it. It looks like I will be biking into the teeth of a storm in the morning, too. Way to shake out the last of the Christmas spirit.
December 27, 2023 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 4
I’ll take his word for it
I gather Uncle B’s fruitcake was a resounding success. I’ll have to take his word for it.
Happy Boxing Day everyone. Go outside, look up – there’s the most amazing moon tonight.
December 26, 2023 — 7:18 pm
Comments: 7
We’re having a normal one
He found it! The absolute madman – found it!
We do Christmas as an evening meal, so if you’ll excuse me, I have rolls to proof. I hope everyone’s day was everything you wanted and you finally got that pony/motorbike/train set you’ve asked for every single year.
Merry Christmas!
December 25, 2023 — 6:57 pm
Comments: 5
Happy solstice!
I know what you’re thinking – the Winter Solstice is the 21st. Well, I got all sorts of results from a search, but most agreed it falls on the 22nd in our neck of the woods this year. Stonehenge was covered in the usual LARPing hippies.
Solstice is important to me because chickens. My life revolves around moving chickens – mostly roosters – into and out of chicken runs. On the shortest day (ahem, today) the last chicken voluntarily goes in at around 3:30 and on the longest day it’s more like 9:30. What happens in between is similarly compressed or expanded.
Tomorrow, we pick up the turkey (it was an eye watering £75 this year) and a few other bits and pieces, and then we’re done. See you on the other side!
December 22, 2023 — 7:27 pm
Comments: 11
Driven down memory lane
More than 24 hours later and Google is still saying I’m over my limit, even though I’ve deleted hundreds of megs of images.
Still going back through my old stuff trying to pluck out the fuzzies and duplicates. This is my old girl Mapp, one of my first two chickens. She lived to be eight (old for one of my bantams) and was bugfuck crazy to the end. This is a still from a video – it was great to see the old girl pecking and burbling again.
Today was the first day of my Christmas holiday and if you think my posts have been low effort before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
That’s it. That’s the post.
December 21, 2023 — 7:26 pm
Comments: 8
I know what I’m doing over the holidays
Backing up my Gmail account. Your storage allotment is across the whole platform, so when you fill it, it paralyzes your Drive, Gmail, Photos…everything. And they don’t tell you until it’s already full. And when you delete stuff, it doesn’t recognize it for up to 24 hours.
This is an account I don’t use for much but my phone camera, but that’s why it’s full. I have a few days of looking at chicken and cat pictures ahead.
December 20, 2023 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 1
Clever.
Zo! During its iPhone Whatever launch last week, Apple broadcast a cringey five minute video of a meeting between the Board of Directors (I guess) and Mother Nature (a sassy black woman, of course), wherein Apple explains how flipping green they are all over the place.
A comic named Lou Perez made a parody using much of the same footage, where the board brags that they’ve reduced their carbon footprint in the US by using child labor abroad.
None of which I care about. Well, I mean, child labor is awful, but I’m no activist. I’m interested in his production values. It says in the credits his part was shot on an iPhone, and it probably was. His footage blends seamlessly with Apple’s.
It’s probably worth ten minutes of your day to watch the Apple one and then watch the Perez one to see how perfect a guerilla takedown that is for, like, no money and a bit of clever editing. More of this, please.
December 19, 2023 — 7:05 pm
Comments: 1
I ain’t even mad
I think we’re getting too tetchy, white people. It’s a comedy. I doubt I’m the intended audience, so I doubt the jokes would land for me, but I can stand having the piss taken.
The director’s whole reason for making the film hinges on his definition of ‘magical negro’
I think of the Magical Negro as a kind of stock Black character; a Black best friend character who is only focused on helping the white hero. They don’t really have an inner life, and they don’t have their own things going on. They’re just relentlessly focused on helping this white character grow in most cases, and I always thought that was so funny.
So he made this movie because “the idea that there’s a white writer who pictures the thing we do in the morning is getting up and trying to help them.”
But that’s not my definition at all. To me, a magical negro is a movie character who pops up at a critical moment and can magically do absolutely anything. He’s usually something humble like the janitor, but turns out he can hack computers or complete fantastically complicated equations or do a field appendectomy – whatever the plot requires. And he does it while dispensing folksy, homespun wisdom. Or ghetto smarts.
And now that I squint and look at it, both definitions do describe the same character. He fixated on the idea that the black guy’s only purpose in the film is to help the white guy, I focused on the idea that to do it, the black guy is given fantastically improbable powers. And the movie makes fun of both.
I guess people are feeling rubbed raw at the moment, but I can stand it. I won’t go see it, but I can stand it. Feel the outrage here (and you can also watch the trailer at the link).
December 18, 2023 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 5