From me to you

To the person who just found this wretched hive of scum and villainy by doing a Google search for “Lurpak butter logo” — here you go: Y’all come back now, y’hear? To the rest of you, I highly recommend Lurpak. It’s nice butter. You have to pay through the nose for it at Whole Foods, […]

Reverse-engineering sushi

I’ve gotten really addicted to sushi this year. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “god damn, Weasel. That’s really homosexual.” Well, no it isn’t, so shut up. Actually, not so much sushi. California roll. It was invented for Americans who are too pussy to eat raw fish. California roll is made out of vegetables […]

And then marched down again

We’ve had the traditional Drunken Lighting of the Lame-o Indoor Fireworks that signals the end of festivities. We didn’t quite set the flat on fire. Oh, well. There’s always next year.       Tea break’s over, back on your heads Tonight, we drive up to London (no matter which direction you’re coming from, the it’s always “up […]

The last rays of 2006

The Southeasternmost spot in Britain. You can get more South, you can get more East, but you can’t get more Southeast.

Hammered New Year

The weather in Britain is cruelly and unfairly maligned. The striking thing about it is not the amount of rain (which isn’t all that excessive), but how amazingly temperate it is all the year round. I grew up in the American deep South and spent my adulthood in New England; I know from weather extremes. […]

The moving finger writes

Spotted through a very rainy windshield this afternoon. The best touch is the “Merry Christmas XXX” in the bottom right. Or maybe the jaunty sketch of poo in the upper right. Writing rude things in the dirt on (the ubiquitous) white delivery van is an artform here. The best one I’ve seen so far is […]

Weasel fails toilet training — AGAIN

Is it true that the water in Aussie toilets swirls counterclockwise upon flushing? I do not know. I can tell you that British toilets swirl in both directions around from the back and meet in the front in a glorious clap of waterspray. I know this because I have witnessed the phenomenon hundreds of times, […]

The True Meaning of Boxing Day

There isn’t one. There’s a consensus that the day after Christmas has something to do with boxes, and something to do with Christmas…beyond that, nada. These days, it’s a big shopping day in the UK. Two thousand people queued up outside Selfridges in London this morning. But not us. It’s a gray, gray day and […]

Boo!

Did you ever think it odd that the Christmas Carol, our most famous bit of Christmas fiction, is a ghost story? Did you? Really? You’re an ignorant sack of filth, then. The ghost story has been a feature of British Christmas celebration since…well, I’m not sure when. Early Victorian times, anyhow. You can see how […]

Vagina monolith

What is this fiberglas nun’s wimple, this crumpled parasail, this rectilinear iron pile topped unexpectedly with jaunty architectural labia? This, my friends, is the new headquarters of the US Institute of Peace, to be built on the Mall in Washington, DC in 2007. Perhaps you’ve heard of the USIP. Or perhaps you, like me, thought […]