You Lazy Bastards

I was recently chatting with my chum Biopolymer Chris, the King of Seaweed Derived Products, and we got on to the subject of insanely lazy food. I offered up Stouffer's microwavable panini as the laziest food around. This is bread made to look like it had been toasted on a sandwich iron with cheese in the middle- nuke it and hey presto, you have cheese on toast (or grilled cheese, if you prefer). Too lazy to take two slices of bread, put some cheese behind them, and bung on the stove? Surely the most slothful of snack foods.

But then Chris trumped me with something which might require a tad more prep in its original form (getting a can opener out, for example) but gives the microwavable cheese sandwich a real run for its money in the laziness stakes. It certainly sounds more disgusting. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet the microwaveable baked beans on toast pocket:



Yum.

Sure Fire Money Maker

As many folk report, iPhone mania is poised to sweep the nation. Apple is all set to cash in, with their phones costing between $500 and $600. Their exclusive cell service provider AT&T is also looking at a hefty payday, as monthly payments on the mandatory two year contract will average in the hundred dollar range. But what about the consumer? Admittedly, they'll have a pretty cool phone, albeit with less memory than an iPod and annoyingly ingratiating mac software, and they'll be able to show their associates that they have wads of cash to waste on a plastic box with ringing pictograms but its a hell of a leap to make on faith.

Therefore, we here at Shrimp Garnish Industries are proud to announce the:

iPhoney

Why spend hundreds? Why get locked into a bogus contract? Why get all excited about features you will use exactly once? Let's drill down to why you want an iphone: because you are either a poseur or a susceptible git who fell for "Tickle Me Elmo" too. What you want is a cool looking lump of plastic to wear on your belt (next to your replica lightsabre, perhaps); a lump that makes noises and you can hold to your ear in public.

Don't spend hundreds- get an iPhoney!!!

Your iPhoney includes:
A phone from our broad selection of recycled units and:

A futuristic looking "skin", replete with shapes in primary colours, places to stick passport sized headshots of your friends, and cheap plasticy sounding noises that could be personalized ring tones.

Only a true spod will be able to tell the difference, so if anyone says that your iPhoney isn't a genuine iPhone all you have to do is point at them while yelling "Spod! Spod! Bet you're a virgin! Spod! Spod!" until they shrivel up from embarrassment.

Don't be fooled by slick marketing telling you that you need something to accomplish tasks that up until about 6 years ago you were perfectly content to do by dropping coins into a payphone, with pen and paper, by standard email, or face-to-face. Get an iPhoney instead.

Special offer- order your iphoney in the next ten minutes and get a free can of "Apple Mac(e)"; the personal protection spray incorporating smart targeting technology. Spray it in a crowded room and the pepper spray stream will only target those in ironic t-shirts with Jimmy Fallon hairdos, leaving the PC users unharmed.

A Few Choice Keywords

Interesting; there has been a marked decrease in perverts stopping by Wisdom Weasel on route to their search for filth, with perhaps the exception of the eternal optimist who seems to google "Tina C*rvasio N*ked" every day. Instead, I seem to be on the receiving end of some more esoteric search engine queries (in no particular order):

vegetable dye for eyebrows
babies disguised as pandas
accountancy was my life until I discovered smirnoff
scallop consumation (sic) in the eu

and my favorite of the moment:

a scene from a film with a man in a neck brace and blue trousers

Ooh! Ooh! I love that film- "Hombre en un apoyo del cuello y pantalones azules" by Pedro Almodovar. Its an early classic.

Chocklit! Chocklit!

From the first moment I dragged Country Mouse into an English newsagent's shop in search of a copy of The Sunday Sport and a 1/4 pound of aniseed balls my darling wife has been amazed the breadth of the candy selection on offer to residents of the British Isles. I'd never really considered the British national confectionery selection to be exceptional before she mentioned something- 60 million residents, 60 million varieties of chocolate bar or penny chew; it is a simple equation. But after she pointed this out, the scales fell from my eyes. Make no mistake, when compared to the abundance on hand in British sweetie shops most American convenience store candy aisles take on the aspect of a Soviet supermarket. How can this be? you ask. How can a country whose motto might as well be "like it or lump it, mate" far outstrip a land of abundance and make Americans reel with shock at the massive diversity of sugar and cocoa solids on offer?

Frankly, I don't give a hoot as to why. Instead, I propose we revel in the plain miracle that is the British confectionery industry by pondering the fact that in the great voyage of candy evolution, there have probably been more varieties of British sweets that no longer exist than are in existence today. It simply blows the mind. In order to aid visualization of this fact, I humbly present a website I stumbled across, called:

Retro Sweets

In the words of the old Cadbury's advertising jingle, "A finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat". I however am a 34 year old man, so I'd like a case. Come on- it was my birthday last Thursday- you can all chip in if you'd like.

Red Menace Fails Significant Test

There is a lot of guff spoken these days about how the rise of China to global prominence threatens the United States' role as the world's sole superpower. As the following photo and caption from the BBC website shows, much of this concern is overstated:

Babies disguised as pandas take part in a crawling contest in a Hong Kong shopping mall.
Call those panda disguises? They are bloody awful. They look nothing like the photo example in the background, which in turn looks nothing like a panda. Utter crap; poor show, Chinese babies. These are quite obviously human infants, not baby pandas. Nothing to fear there, I'd venture.

Why?

From the BBC:

Flushed bra causes sewer collapse
"A bra and a pair of knickers have been blamed for a flood and road collapse in County Durham."

Indeed. We have all had those moments when the old underpants gave way under the strain of an over exuberant toot (to put it discreetly) and they had to disappear sharpish. But sending them to sleep with the fishes? And what kind of vile disaster befalls a lady to make her want- nay, need- to flush her brassiere? From what the missus tells me, good ones aren't cheap.

This might be my favourite bit:

"When we dug down to inspect the damage, we found a bra and knickers had snagged itself across the nine-inch diameter of the pipe. There was also a heavy build-up of grease and fat, which contributed to the situation. We were forced to repair a 2m section of sewer and a 10m section of road was affected. These pipes are not designed to carry bras and knickers."

"These pipes are not designed to carry bras and knickers". Words to live by.

Might Have Passed the Fail/Safe...

I gave up smoking when the daughter arrived. So far so good; any irritability is masked by general new baby fatigue. I was also at home for two weeks, so my normal patterns of behaviour were broken. Not counting any chickens yet, but fairly confident they will hatch. And by writing this I have added a public layer of potential shame should I fall of the wagon. Something to do with game theory, I'm told.

That is all.

I'd Almost Rather Stick With Oil

White gold; Tilney St Lawrence Tea, that is
I happened to catch a story recently that mentioned that should the technology become available to make production affordable, sugar beet farmers were well positioned to benefit from the coming ethanol boom (the always riveting Biofuel Review has more details). As a child of East Anglia (for my American chums, that's the grumpy bit of merry olde England) this first filled me with joy.

"Oh!" I thought. "All my below sea-level dwelling, unisex frosted hair modelling, speaking like a seagull crapped in one's mouth paisanos are finally going to be able to break the bondage of the soil and live like Texans or Saudis. Yippee."

Then I contemplated the above sentiment, and a cold chill ran up my spine. It takes a certain sort of soul to remain on the land, growing unglamorous crops like oil seed and sugar beet, staring out over the flat and featureless landscape, never able to escape the smell of poultry dressing (its not for salads, lets leave it at that), and getting all one's news from Look East. Throwing mad money from the sugar beet-to-oil-substitute industry into the mix is only going to have two results, neither good.

Result 1: The formation of a primitive Methodist Taleban who'll impose strict shia'horse law on the county and blow up all the fonts in the Church of England churches like so many Bamiyan Buddhas. Face it: "wahabbi" already sounds like a Norfolk exclamation.

Result 2: They'll all take the money and end up like this proud successor to Nelson.

Please- don't give them any money. They'll only cause trouble as detailed above then blow whats left in the arcades at Cromer.

Ull be avun that, wuntuh, when uhm quids in, unteye."

The Weird Weird World of Sport

Tina Cervasio before she began wearing the oddest outfits (more below)

I've been watching a ton of baseball on my own recently (those west coast game times were a boon to me last week) and thus I have paid more attention than usual to the ancillary bits of coverage during the games. Regardless of the sport you prefer to watch you know the sort of thing I mean: mini-interviews with the coach, or a sideline update from somewhere among the fans, etc. based on this coverage I have developed two hypotheses:

1) Manny has been lighting his farts in the locker room. How else can one explain Terry Francona's apparent adoption of a pair of eyebrow toupees? The originals must have been lost in an explosive Dominican flatulence episode.

2) Sox sideline reporter Tina Cervasio must be pregnant. What else would explain her wardrobe choices this season? She has to have been shopping at the Saugus Discount Maternity Warehouse: her clothes have been vile.

That is all.

Medicine for MEN

Like many folks I take great amusement in the pharmaceutical ads on the telly*. I love the way many every day normal bodily quirks are medicalized, the way the ads indicate the desired demographic of the program maker ("I am way to young to watch the news honey, I don't have a need for osteoperosis drugs"), and most of all I love the legally required list of side effects (based on the frequency they pop up in the lists I imagine that even medicine for dry mouth and constipation may cause dry mouth and constipation).

My current favorite drug ad is for a prostate/boomer-needs-to-piss-a-lot potion called "Flomax". Roll that name around in your mouth a little- flomax. You can only force a trickle at the urinal and fear that more than two shakes is a wank? Then guzzle some flomax, piss like a race horse, then go kayaking with your buddies. May cause dry mouth and constipation.

Now, when I go kayaking I find it just as easy to piss in the boat- I'm normally wearing swim shorts, it will drown any leeches who have crept in, and if things get too disgusting I can always capsize. But then again, I'm a thirtysomething healthy urinator, not some dribble-wee baby boomer desperately trying to cling to past glories that weren't actually too glorious in the first place.

Even as obvious as the name Flomax is, I don't think the big pharma has gone far enough. With that in mind, I offer up my re-branding suggestion. Its just a name and a tag line, but if it gets picked up, consider this my poor man's patent app:

"Pisplosion!
You'll pee so hard, you'll need a second hole in your knoblet."
May cause dry mouth and constipation.

*British chums: as you may know, the pharmaceutical lobby convinced American broadcasting regulators to allow them to directly advertise medicines to consumers, in the hope that idiots will go to their doctors and ask for pills by name as if they were Mars Bars.

Lost Another Bet to Billco

Incredible. After a start to the baseball season that looked like I'd be having to dig deep to find all the various humiliations I was to inflict on friend Bill as part of our ongoing Red Sox/Yankees battle, the Bronx bastards turned around and pulled out series victory number two on the year. Therefore:

"I owe Weasel some retribution because, in an unlikely turn of events, the Yankees took two of three from the Sox in Fenway last week. Seeing as Scout is only recently arrived on the scene (and had the good sense to be born during a Sox/Yankees series), and I’m sure Weasel and family are quite busy with the adjustment, my terms will be simple: Weasel, please change your profile picture to a shot of young Scout sporting the “Yankees Suck” gear I sent your way for a couple of weeks."

Fine. In fact most kind of Bill, and very restrained on his part, I have to say.

She is a scrawny midget the onsie is a little large on her, but you'll appreciate the general effect:

Fatherly Wisdom

This is not about to turn into a blog about our newly arrived daughter- as exciting as that is for my wife and me I can't think of anything more boring for the rest of you (and besides, she has her own place over here). That said, fatherhood does focus the mind somewhat and in these first few days I have begun to compile a list of advice for said kid. I'm going to share it with you as I feel the concepts are universal, not just for folks with no control over their bowel movements.

1. Learn how to throw the knuckleball in baseball and the leg spinner in cricket. Guile eventually beats speed every time.

2. If you are to do one mean thing "just because", never yield to people trying to merge into traffic from a MacDonalds. Let them stew in their own greasy juices a little.

3. And speaking of driving, remember that the rules of the road still apply in parking lots. By the time you can drive, you might be the only person left who still knows this.

4. Juggling, mime, and unicycling- while hard to properly master and impressive because of that- are the sole preserve of French Canadians and should never be attempted. I don't care how rich the Crique de Soleil guys are; you must maintain your standards.

5. Make friends with at least one commercial fisherman. That's how you get the good stuff.

6. When in America, by all means let people know you are 1/2 English. When in Britain however, claim to be 1/2 Canadian. The British are a grumpy and generalizing people who will blame you personally for whatever has pissed them off about the President, some religious nut, fat people, padding on football players, and/or the way the American dialect has evolved seperately from Estuary English over the past 300 or so years.

7. Never say something about someone in private you cannot later vigorously and convincingly deny in public.

8. If you ever visit the western United States, you'll want to buy a genuine cowboy hat. Don't.

9. Always save used stamps. I have found that a random assortment of 75 stamps will sell on Ebay, starting at .99 but occasionally reaching $5.00. You can get 1.99 for the shipping, too. One or two packets every couple of months will pay for your Maine fishing license and your dump sticker.

10. Other than All the President's Men, never buy a Bob Woodward book- get them out of the library. You'll only read them once and then nobody will want to buy them from you on Ebay or Amazon.

Hip Hip Hooray

She's here.