Dead Pool 186:
Lavendergirl does it again with Jimmy Swaggart. Who knew he was still alive?
This paragraph from the Wikipedia article cracked me up:
On October 11, 1991, Swaggart was found in the company of a prostitute for a second time. He was pulled over by a police officer in Indio, California, for driving on the wrong side of the road. With him in the vehicle was a woman named Rosemary Garcia. According to Garcia, Swaggart had stopped to propose sex to her on the side of the road. She later told reporters: “He asked me for sex. I mean, that’s why he stopped me. That’s what I do. I’m a prostitute.” This time, rather than confessing his sins to his congregation, Swaggart told those at Family Worship Center, “The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.”
“The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business” is going to be my new catchphrase. Either that, or “that’s what I do. I’m a prostitute.”
Ready? 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.
Note: I am woefully behind on dick deliveries. If I owe you one, you’ll know how long. I ain’t gived up, but I haven’t drawn much since lockdown. Some day, your heirs might hear from my heirs.
July 4, 2025 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 44
I had such a crush on Snake Licker
Not my idea – I wish I’d thought of it! – people asked AI to make replica yearbooks.
One of the funnier videos on a very funny channel: Matt Rose. An Englishmen reading silly texts in a sarcastic voice. Perfect. It’s my new favorite – until I’ve sucked the channel dry and have to go in search of new victims.
Y’all know what happens tomorrow. Be here for it!
July 3, 2025 — 4:39 pm
Comments: 6
Artsy-fartsy
This one is rather beautiful, in a snooty food magazine kind of way. Unfortunately, the brief it was given was also “step-by-step instructions on how to boil pasta, with labels, in black and white.”
You can get some really lovely results if you don’t care what they are.
Looks like lavendergirl took another dick with Jimmy Swaggart (who knew he was still alive?). We all know what THAT means.
July 2, 2025 — 6:24 pm
Comments: 2
Yes, right, I’m following
I asked MidJourney for step-by-step instructions on how to boil pasta, with labels, in black and white. Follow along!
You can see how it works. It has all the elements plucked from various other diagrams – aesthetically, it fits the bill – but functionally, it’s gibberish.
At first, Grok seemed to make more sense . But actually….nah. (“Fni pot with wator – Add pastin – Stir gontly – Sieyorttttttttttta”). Second try, so. Much. Pasta.
By the way, MidJourney’s new feature is video. I asked it to animate the title image and all’s I’ll say is, the file was big, ugly and boring.
July 1, 2025 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 8
Long way from home, fam
Summer fete season begins in earnest (seems late, doesn’t it?). This girl was a noob and a long way from home, but it wouldn’t be a fete without a raptor show.
She didn’t do a single thing they asked. You go, sis. Who’s the eagle here?
Brutally hot this week – for England, anyhoo. Up in the eighties, anyway, and nobody here has air conditioning (except the gym and the cinema).
You shall not get much from me!
June 30, 2025 — 5:57 pm
Comments: 5
Dead Pool 185: it’s Summertime!
Lavendergirl takes DP184 with Bobby Sherman. I told Uncle B he’d died, and he said, “yeah, I read that. I wasn’t sure it would mean anything to you.”
As it happens, I was ex-actly the little girl demographic he was aimed at. I’d’ve been eight at the beginning of Here Come the Brides and I hit puberty before it was over (but no, I was not a fan).
At this very moment, I hope I am enjoying a glass of wine at a party, but you gruesome lot can start sharing your death notes:
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.
Note: I am woefully behind on dick deliveries. If I owe you one, you’ll know how long. I ain’t gived up, but I haven’t drawn much since lockdown. Some day, your heirs might hear from my heirs.
June 27, 2025 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 42
This is a smew
From the Sussex Advertiser of 1861. Read the first sentence and see if you can guess what fate “generally befalls such adventurers”:
Rare Birds
The present very severe weather has brought some unusual visitors of the feathered tribe to our shores, and they have met the fate which generally befalls such adventurers. Mr Gasson of Tower Street has now in his possession having been shot in the neighbourhood first a very fine bittern the size of a heron a native of warmer climates; second a white fronted goose a native of Lapland Iceland etc; third a beautiful specimen of tufted duck also native to the north; fourth a smew, a native of Greenland; fifth an eider duck which is very rare bird in this country and we believe has not been shot in this neighbourhood before. Mr Gasson will be happy to show the birds to such as are curious in these matters.
If you’re a fan of Audubon, you’ll know he was a crack shot who painted from dead birds. In fact, it was the general practice of early naturalists: see an animal, shoot an animal.
p.s. it’s official: Lavendergirl takes it with Bobby Sherman. Meet here tomorrow, 6 WBT, for Dead Pool Round 185. Me, I’ll be at a party.
June 26, 2025 — 4:23 pm
Comments: 4
Like being God
As a treat, I gave myself a year’s subscription to the British Newspaper Archive. I’ve been reading my local rag, starting around 1860.
It’s a little spooky. I know what’s going to happen. There’s angry correspondence between Lincoln and the South Carolina legislature in January of 1861 (the Civil War broke out in April). There’s a speech from Queen Victoria in praise of Albert (he croaked in December, knocking her forever off course).
It reminds me of the Daily Mail, actually. Some of it is genuinely local, but a lot of it is interesting or amusing stories from all around the world. Especially America. And anyplace Britain was being all colonial, which was lots.
A surprising number of people (especially children) caught fire and burned to death in home accidents. A surprising number of soldiers bumped off their commanding officers. People did astonishing things while drunk.
I’m finding it a refreshing break from 2025 news, if only because none of it matters in the slightest now.
p.s. Who died?
June 25, 2025 — 5:57 pm
Comments: 5
I don’t know what it has to do with bears
Okay, so I’ve turned to my fallback – reading. In my thirties, I used to blast through books at a terrifying rate. Not bragging. I read a lot of unedifying books, like reams of trashy true crime. (If you ever run across someone starting a true crime podcast, I’ve got an astonishing library I’d like to give away intact).
I have just finished a couple of books on the brain and neurology (yes, it’s kind of the same thing but it was two different books).
In one of them (Jandial, Rahul. Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon: The New Science and Stories of the Brain (p. 32). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. – did you know if you cut and paste text from a Kindle book, it somehow inserts those credits for you? Which is annoying if you do a lot of it).
Anyhoo! Dr Jandial was describing the ACTIVE study “the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study recruited 2,832 healthy older adults with an average age of 73.6 years at the beginning of the trial.”
Then they put them through a bunch of attention exercises. “The final group spent 10 hours playing a video game designed to improve their so-called ‘speed of processing.’ Five years later, the speed-of-processing group had had half as many car accidents as people in the other groups. Ten years later, those who had completed the most hours of training in the speed-of-processing group had their risk of developing dementia nearly cut in half — a finding that no drug or any other treatment has ever come close to achieving.”
Holy shit – ten YEARS later?
The National Library of Medicine has this to say about speed of processing training:
Latent growth curve models indicated that initial training effects were maintained over 5 years and amplified by booster sessions. A single booster session counteracted 4.92 months of age-related processing speed decline.
Article worth reading. I gather the initial training was ten one-hour sessions. The online version is (among others, I assume) at BrainHQ. You get one session a day free, or you can subscribe. Why is everything by subscription nowadays?
p.s. ladies, it’s worth doing a Google Images Search of Dr Jandial. He’s a fine figger of a neuroscientist.
June 24, 2025 — 5:21 pm
Comments: 3
That’s one…
Today we went to Sissinghurst. We haven’t been in ages. They charge stupid money for National Trust non-members and we quit our membership a few years ago, when everyone and everything on NT properties became gay. We’d done all the ones in our patch of the woods over and over and over anyway.
The gardens were a little past it, no doubt owing to the several hot spells we’ve had, but still beautiful. Sure you can have it in color.
Vita Sackville-West always felt hard done by, ending up in Sissinghurst. And who can blame her? If she’d been born with testicles, she’d have inherited Knole.
p.s. on the way home, we had a near miss with a baby fox. I do hope we scared him away from the road.
June 23, 2025 — 6:17 pm
Comments: 5