Evil Squirrel's Nest

Share Your World – Week 177

Posted on May 26, 2022 by evilsquirrel13

Bite her neck? Surely you can’t be serious!

Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!!! It was on May 26, 1897 that Irish author Bram Stoker published the novel that is the main reason his name is still known over a century later…. Dracula. The way we view vampires has never been the same since, particularly once Hollywood got a hold of Stoker’s titular count and turned him into a horror legend. While it’s very much up in the air who exactly Stoker based the character of Count Dracula on, the runaway winner in the jury of popular opinion is a 15th Century figure known as Vlad the Impaler, whose legacy has long been incorporated into the Dracula mythology…

Not to be confused with George the Impaler.

And of course, May 26th is a very special day at The Nest, as WordPress has long declared this day to be our FAKE ANNIVERSARY!

Yay! I get two anniversaries!

And how funny that there’s a mention of Whitby in that image (from my 2015 FAKE ANNIVERSARY), which was the English town Dracula haunts in the book!

No, I did not sign up with WordPress on May 26, 2011…. that would several months later on December 24th.

Alright, it’s time to put on my garlic necklace and answer this week’s Share Your World questions! SYW hosted, as always, by Melanie…

Better save the biggest piece for Dracula…

If You Could Be Best Friends With A Celebrity, Who Would It Be?

Well, I tried to be BFF’s with Regis Philbin 21 years ago, but that didn’t work out….

There aren’t many people I can get along with, so I’ll opt to go with man’s best friend and choose the original party animal, Spuds McKenzie…

Poor Spuds, always getting blue balled due to bestiality laws.

What is, or should be, the main purpose of law?

To keep all those lawyers employed. You think I want to work with those assholes at Mecca?

Without law, there are no shady lawyers.

Do You Care About Reviews?

Reviews? Where? I’m actually always curious to know what people think about me…. good, bad or ugly!

How about some ~~recycled~~ classic material from The Nest? Four years ago, I did a series of special features on each of my Shelf critters, and for Rainy, I included her “reacting” to some of the customer reviews on Amazon for the replicas of her they were selling…

RAINY: He? HE!?!?!? Did you even bother to turn me over and check my bits!?!? And I am NOT a vase!!!! How dare you plug up my rain gauge with nasty weeds that your little brats pulled up out of the ground for you! I did NOT find this review helpful as all!

RAINY: Take me outside! TAKE ME OUTSIDE!!! It never rains INSIDE! I will do very well outside, just as long as your neighbors’ mutts don’t get any funny ideas…

RAINY: Fit!?!?!? Fit WHERE!?!? What did you do with me!?!?!? And why did you give me five stars afterwards!?!?!?!?

RAINY: I definitely am the only one of my kind in existence…. but why are you disappointed in my size? Why would I need to be bigger? Did I not FIT!?!?!? WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING WITH THESE RAIN GAUGES!?!?!?!?!?!?

RAINY: JUNK!?!?!? I’m just broken JUNK!?!?!? You obviously do not know how to treat a skunk lady right. Here, let me show you what I can do with this JUNK!

Recycled jokes never stink!

Is the ‘mind’ different to the ‘brain’? If so, in what ways?

The brain is a thing, the mind is a concept. You’ll never have to worry about being invited to a fancy party and being served monkey’s minds….

I dunno, maybe you should check Congress.

Overall how sunny is your nature?

You’re asking this of a night person? I’ll burn up like Dracula in the sunlight…

Posted in Share Your World | Tagged answers, dracula, questions, Share Your World | 8 Comments

Rock That Stings

Posted on May 23, 2022 by evilsquirrel13

Someone wants to lose a hand…

Didn’t sleep tight because the bedbugs bite? Well, The Nest is gonna trade your bugs for a worm, as in an earworm. That’s because it’s Monday, the day we put on our beekeeper suits and try to extract some honey that got lost in the swarm from that giant hive of golden hits we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy doesn’t mind spiders and snakes, only the moths that try to eat up her precious record collection. While the Sponkies are getting out their magnifying glasses to fry some unsuspecting ants. Once you check in on this song, you won’t want to check out…

The term “heavy metal” as it relates to hard rock music that became popular in the 70’s and 80’s is thought to have originated from a lyric in Steppenwolf’s famous 1969 song “Born To Be Wild.” Yet one of the world’s most successful heavy metal bands is even older than that. The band that would become known as The Scorpions was first formed in (West) Germany in 1965! That comes as a real shock to most Americans who grew up in the 80’s who weren’t even aware of the band’s existence until their breakout 1984 album Love At First Sting was recorded when most of the band was already in their late 30’s!

You’re never too old to rock and roll, right Keith?

“Rock You Like a Hurricane” put the Scorpions on the map in the US, and is still their best known song all these years later. Despite lots of airplay on both radio and MTV back in the day, it still made it up to only #25 on the Hot 100.

Meanwhile, another single from Love At First Sting managed to not chart at all…. but is still my favorite Scorps song!

“Big City Nights” made #14 on the Mainstream Rock chart, but couldn’t crack the pop charts that were still a little skeptical that this growing hair metal trend was going to catch on. It had a music video, but I chose to link to the radio version since the video uses a live track and I’m just not a fan of live songs.

The YouTube video I embedded also features the album cover for Love At First Sting…

Oooh la la.

Forty years ago, this was apparently too hot for some (cough, hack) family friendly retailers in the US…. in particular, an outfit you know here as Mecca. Oh my god! He’s kissing her neck, her boob is almost out, and is that a……. tattoo!?!? On a girl!?!? Not in 1984!!! And so the Scorpions’ US label PolyGram had to go back to the drawing board and create an album cover that good, clean, Tipper Gore types would find wholesome enough…

OMG! Is that….. leather!??!? Who are these devil worshiping freaks!?!?

Despite the winds of change, The Nest will bring you yet another lost hit next Monday…

Posted in Dusty Vinyl Archive | Tagged 1984, archive, big city nights, dusty, forgotten, lost, music, scorpions, vinyl | 10 Comments

Weekend Threesome – 5/22/22

Posted on May 22, 2022 by evilsquirrel13

Three’s not a crowd on my cloud, baby. It’s time for another Weekend Threesome, with three random events from my week that nobody will give a rat’s ass about…

Last March my long time work schedule got changed from five 8 hour shifts a week to four 10’s. While I was pretty apprehensive about changing at the time, I quickly came to enjoy tacking Friday on to my usual Wednesday-Thursday weekend every week at the expense of having my time more cramped the other four days. Heck, I started this Weekend Threesome feature last May partly out of my needing something to do during that extra day of rest.

It’s a much more productive use of my time than, say, cleaning things.

Of course, I’m bringing this up because the rug’s getting pulled out from under me. While I’d always thought this was a corporate thing, apparently the change to overnight schedules came only from our store manager, and now he wants to go back to the way it was. The main culprit: attendance. That, and I’m sure the rampant use of PTO days from those of us on the shift who have more time off hours than we know what to do with. Missing ten hour days is a bigger bite to productivity than missing eights. So at some point in June, I’ll probably be going back to working on Fridays again… which after fourteen months free of them, I’m not particularly looking forward to again. But at least I should actually get some sleep again early in the week….

It’ll make it much easier to stay up until the ungodly hour of noon.

My lone view of last Sunday’s lunar eclipse was during my 15 minute break at 11:30, during the entire time of which it was in its fully obscured “blood” phase….

Yeah, that’s….. um….. it there.

It actually did look pretty neat as a dull glowing orange orb in the night sky. Had I been off work that night, I probably could’ve gotten a better shot of it with my real camera. While lunar eclipses aren’t quite as exciting as solar eclipses, it is the only way you’re ever going to see a “new moon” at night… so there is a novelty factor to it. By lunchtime, it was already back to full again… but bright enough to transform even normal people into werewolves.

Aw damn, I’m gonna have to go home early, boss.

And finally, from my handy dandy little current weather thingie that Microsoft thinks I need on the bottom of my computer screen….

Well, alrighty then!

OK, there was a tornado warning issued for my area Thursday evening… as a really nasty looking reddish echo on the radar passed through. It wound up being just a bunch of rain, though. And while it may never rain on the Shelf, it sure as hell has done a lot of raining outside The Nest in the last couple months…

I think I’d have just preferred the tornado…

Posted in Weekend Threesome | Tagged lunar eclipse, moon, threesome, tornado, weekend, work | 14 Comments

Happy Go Lucky

Posted on May 21, 2022 by evilsquirrel13

😀

This week’s Saturday Squirrel is quite happy.

In more ways than one…..

Make that VERY happy…..

And maybe hoping to make a special squirrel girl feel happy as well……….. knock on wood.

Have a happy and great weekend everyone!

Posted in Saturday Squirrel | Tagged adorable, cute, happy, photo, photography, squirrel, wood | 16 Comments

Share Your World – Week 176

Posted on May 19, 2022 by evilsquirrel13

Beware the king’s “hair cut.”

Divorced, beheaded, died.
Divorced, beheaded, survived.

That’s the macabre mnemonic that’s been taught for years to remember the fates of each of King Henry VIII’s six wives. It’s that second one in line that is probably the best remembered of Henry’s harem. It was on May 19, 1536 that Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, was beheaded just days after being convicted of the crimes of adultery, incest and high treason. More than likely, Anne wasn’t guilty of any of that nonsense… the king just needed a convenient excuse to get her non-son bearing womb out of the way so he could marry his newest flavor of the month, Jane Seymour.

James Bond might have something to day about taking his girl…

Before being legally murdered by her husband, Anne did give birth to a future outright queen of England, none other than Elizabeth I. Talk about having some strange parents…

And now it’s time for The Nest to lose its head, along with all of our marbles, in answering this week’s Share Your World questions… hosted, as always, by Melanie!

Looks like a few of these kids got the Anne Boleyn treatment too…

Do you become discouraged by the annual “Blogging Ennui” phenomenon that comes around every year? (it’s early this year IMO) (blogging ennui means (to me) a distinct slow down in writing and participation, which lasts an indefinite period of time).

Eh, I get more discouraged by the permanent loss of so many people who used to be prolific bloggers and participants here. Looking at the comments on some of my older posts makes me realize how many people who used to be a daily part of my online life are now doing….. well, not blogging anymore. I continue to chug away even if only four or five people on average are going to stop by to tell me how shitty my posts are…

C.K. Hope’s fire breathing and unbreathing dragon. Just one of the many people I miss…

If you were in a room filled with you and your doppelganger and 2 billion dollars, what would you do? What do you think your doppelganger would do?

Well, hopefully he’d help me carry all that money out of there and home. Can you imagine how much all those bills would weigh? Let alone if a bunch of it was in change! I’d gladly let my twin have half of the jack, and if he’s anything like me, he’d be more than satisfied with that cut…

And we’d both be spending the rest of our lives entering all that loot on Where’s George?

A building is burning. You have time to either save a child trapped inside or a valuable painting which you would then sell, using the money to save 20 children from starvation. What would you do and why?

I’d find myself another theoretical moral dilemma to get involved in. That kid’s on its own, and neither me nor my doppelganger are gonna be spending the money we get from that valuable Bob Ross masterpiece on anything as frivolous as child hunger. As ~~Anne Boleyn~~ Marie Antoinette once said, let them eat cake!

All organic recycled cake!

What’s your opinion of yams or sweet potatoes?

I’d like to think this question was inspired by my answer to the Australia part of last week’s world food query. Even if it wasn’t, that won’t stop me from taking a bow and patting myself on the back…