Squirrel’s Best Friend

Posted on October 21, 2020 by

a box full of junk

Let’s roll the bones and see if we can shake any skeletons out of Google’s closet.  It’s time for another all mysterious edition of Random Image Inspiration.  Watch, as the Randomator picks out the four necessary elements needed to inspire another crappy RII post…

21, 29, 26, 59

The 21st post in my Reader was this one by Melanie (which has a very RII worthy image in itself, but that’s not how this game works…)

The 29th word in that post is “the”

The 26th word in that post is “your”

Putting “the your” into Google Images brought this up as the 59th result…

Well, gee.  I don’t have a BFF.  As part of the antisocial behavior that has guided me since my high school years, I’ve not sought out friendship…. probably as much for that last line as any.  I have my own drama, I don’t need to put up with anyone else’s…

So how about a post on Man’s Best Friend instead?  That would be the dog, of course.  Let’s see what pooches have crossed paths with The Nest over the years…

Evil. Pure evil…

My Mom loves dachshunds.  Forget hellhounds, the dachshund is Satan’s dog.  Sure, they may look cute because they’re one bun short of being a hot dog… but I have yet to know a wiener dog that didn’t either get on my last nerve with its constant yapping, or that tried to eat everyone from the ankles up.  Pictured above is Dante, named for then-Colorado Rockies outfielder Dante Bichette.  He terrorized the house from 1997-2014, eleven and a half of those years in which I was also dwelling there.  I called the dog Beast, because that’s pretty much what he was… and it inadvertently gave me my original internet username you’ll still see in my email address.

Joan Rivers wasn’t this annoying…

That’s Jake, one of my Mom’s two current elongated mutts… and easily the biggest asshole of the two.  I apparently never uploaded a picture of his partner Columbo, and since Photobucket is utterly unusable anymore, I guess you’ll have to do without it.  Once you’ve seen one dachshund, you pretty much hate them all anyway….

Dog in motion

While I may not have warmed up to my Mom’s hounds, I dearly love Lizbit, who is one of the dogs of a message board friend from Oklahoma, who I got to meet during each of the five board meetups we had there in the first half of last decade.  And she loves me back with an infinite amount of dog slobber!

Grrrrr…

This is Lizbit and BeBe fighting over a dog toy.

Peekaboo!

And this is Annie, who I was fortunate enough to catch on the first trip just before she passed. Believe it or not, without Annie, there would have never been an Evil Squirrel, and by extension, no Evil Squirrel’s Nest.

Everyone throws away the good shit…

Here’s a random dog I caught digging through this bag of garbage a few years ago.  Gotta get the good stuff before the possums get it…

Woof! Woof!

This dog lives in one of the houses along the walking trail.  He’s barking at me in this photo, and still barks at me almost every time I go by there…

Dafuq?

Dog Police anyone?  I featured this bizarre music video in my Novelty Song countdown a couple years ago, and if you missed it, well, you’re missing out on an experience that will change your life.  In which way, I can’t say….

BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!

I can’t do a post about dogs without including the resident canine of the Shelf Critter Theatre troupe, Fleabag!  Fleabag is Fuzzywig’s “best friend,” which is why the nasty raccoon is always trying to sell him off to the Chinese buffet…

Six years, and still licking away tough, dried on stains!

And finally, there is this dog, who became a Nest favorite during the latter half of my Millionaire Journey in 2014.  Dishwasher Dog, who I found via Google while wanting an image to go with contestant Amy Turner’s desire to buy a dishwasher with her winnings, has appeared many, many times and should still be well known and beloved by my old school gang here.

I’ve seen enough!

Then I guess it’s time to end this doggone post…

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World Idol

Posted on October 19, 2020 by

it doesn’t look like it’s a nice day for you to start again, Mr. Squirrel.

It’s a beautiful day, there’s a chill in the air, and it’s a great day to go peeping at the earworms as they turn so many brilliant colors!  It’s Monday, and that means it’s time for The Nest to rake up another lost hit out of that giant pile of organic music waste we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive!  DJ Scratchy’s too hip to be drinking that pumpkin spice shit, while the Sponkies are having fun playing with the leaf blower.  Time to catch another falling song…

Billy Idol may be one of the few celebrities whose real name (William Broad) is much more entertaining than his stage name.  A member of the punk band Generation X in the late 70’s, Idol began dancing with himself in 1981 and soon found success with a handful of hits on the UK charts.  He hit at the right time to ride the popularity of MTV in the early 80’s to also become a household name in America…

Yes it is. Now how about some more pictures of chicks in leather slapping their ass?

Idol’s legacy nearly 40 years later is quite bizarre, in that his best known songs today happen to be the ones he had the least success with on the US charts.  “Dancing With Myself” never charted at all, “Rebel Yell” peaked just outside the Top 40, and maybe what’s considered Mr. Broad’s signature song, “White Wedding,” barely cracked the Top 40 at #36.  Almost every other hit Idol had afterwards, and he had quite a few, fared much better on the charts…. yet those songs (with the exception of “Mony Mony”) don’t get the airplay of those early non-hits.

One such Billy Idol song that’s faded into obscurity despite being a #6 hit in 1986 is his cover of the William Bell song ‘To Be A Lover”…

Idol’s singing and physical mannerisms earned him the nickname The Blonde Elvis, and boy does he Elvis it up in this video.

Ladies and gentlemen, Billy has left the boxing ring!

Mecca’s muzak supplier has taken a shine to Billy Idol’s songs this year, and “To Be A Lover” is one of a handful that I hear all the time at work now.  It’s really a great song… and while I’d be hesitant to say it’s better than the classics he’s known for, it’s definitely my favorite underground Idol song.

I’ll go through the record selection in the mirror’s reflection and dance with myself and another lost hit next Monday…

Posted in Dusty Vinyl Archive | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

A Little Surprise!

Posted on October 17, 2020 by

Not little, and not the surprise.

I can be oblivious to what’s going on outside when I’m in my computer room immersed in whatever it is I’m doing, so it was only when I wandered into the hall to head for the bathroom yesterday that I heard the sound of a lawnmower.  For whatever reason, I went into my bedroom and peeked out the window to survey the situation.  The house across the ditch from me had a crew mowing their lawn.  No big deal, right?

But in looking out the window, something caught my eye on the trunk of my oak tree…

Make the noise stop! Make it stop!!!

At first, I thought it might just be a trick of perspective…. but the more I looked at the squirrel that seemed upset by the lawnmowers, the more I realized its small size was no illusion.

I HAD A BABY SQUIRREL!!!!!!!!!!!!

You don’t look like my daddy!

I don’t mean literally me…. but you know, I’d never seen a squirrel that little before!  Sure, I’ve seen adolescent squirrels before that were noticeably not fully matured…. but this guy was so noticeably diminutive that he was probably still part of the semi-perpetual nest that’s in that tree!

He didn’t move around much at first…. mainly just roaming around the same area on the tree’s trunk.  But the more he moved, the more his youthful appearance was obvious!

Mommy! There’s someone down here harassing me!

Eventually, he slowly climbed his way back up towards the fork where the nest is…

Bet you couldn’t climb trees when you were still in diapers.

Cute little thing, isn’t he?

Maybe I’m a “her?”

You could be, I didn’t ask.

But I did get a whole lot of pictures of this guy in the 40 minutes or so I watched him from both of my back windows!  And I’m sure going to watch out for more of this little one now that I know he’s out there!  If you think he’s cute here, just wait and see the rest of the baby album as I slowly reveal it!

Be prepared to have the next handful of Saturday Squirrel features taken over by Baby Squirrel!!!!

Great, I get to be the next child star who grows up to be an alcoholic…

Have a great weekend everyone!

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Share Your World – Week 93

Posted on October 15, 2020 by

Hey! Get out of that bag…. wait! You’re a rock!

I had nothing for an intro to this week’s SYW post, so I typed a couple random letters in my media archives search and went back looking for a random image I had uploaded here.  I stopped on this one of Bashful the rock eating some of my barbecue potato chips.  It’s hard to believe it was at this time four years ago that Bashful was finishing up a six week stay at The Nest, on loan from Bacon’s family, who routinely sent him to fellow bloggers who would chronicle his adventures during his short stays.  Despite long being very active in the blogging community, the lady who ran that blog suddenly quit blogging a couple years ago, and I’m unsure if anyone knows why.  But Bashful’s legacy still lives on at The Nest, as the skits I made featuring him are what directly led to me creating Shelf Critter Theatre, which will celebrate its official four year anniversary near the end of the month.  How time flies when you’re having fucked up fun…

Now, let’s get our rocks off by Sharing Our World, with questions, as always, by Melanie…

Earth’s biggest rock.

Are we “here” or do we just think we are?  Can you prove your point of view?

Of course we’re “here.”  Here’s proof…

Can’t you read the sign?

From an identity stand-point, which would be the worst for you personally to lose?  Your face, your body or your voice?    Which do YOU identify with most strongly for your own sense of self?

It’s kind of hard to answer this since we don’t perceive any of these things the same way other people do.  We can look at our face in a mirror, but it’s reversed.  We can glance down at our body, but never see it in the proper perspective others do.  And our true voices get distorted by the inner vibrations between the larynx and inner ear.  So we can never experience our identity the same way the people around us do… which matters, because none of these three characteristics should mean a thing to anyone’s own sense of identity.  In the absence of interaction with others, our physical traits have no bearing on what our self identity is…

Do you understand what the hell he just said, Kelly? I think the boy’s nuts!

Do you have a ‘song’?  If you’re part of a couple, you could use “your couple’s song” OR a song that’s just always resonated with you.

I don’t have any one song.  It’s probably a combination of my random tin ear when it comes to music, and the fact that I rarely pay any attention whatsoever to the meanings of songs, even if I might be able to rattle off a few of the lyrics.

Since I can’t come up with anything for this…. here’s a song I used to start singing to myself anytime I entered a challenging situation… to calm my nervousness from something that I knew was going to be uncomfortable or that I hadn’t experienced before.

Because it will be alright, once you get past the pain….

Are ghosts real or has someone been smoking something and just imagines them?

FUZZYWIG: Attributing hallucinations to smoking MARIHUANA.  Gee, how original.  I’ll have you know that I’ve been smoking my good stuff for over….. um…… however many years it’s been since I was born, and not once have I ever seen anything out of the ordinary due to the chemicals it introduces into my brain.

BUSTER: Hello, good sir!

FUZZYWIG: Ummmmmmm….. didn’t you kinda die yesterday?

BUSTER: Sure did!  Got my snout caught in the box fan again.  It happens a few times a year…

FUZZYWIG: So I’m actually seeing a ghost?

BUSTER: I assure you, my body in entirely corporeal.

FUZZYWIG: That’s impossible.  I guess Nancy Reagan was right…. I shoulda just said no.

SNUGGLE: Does this prove that Buster isn’t a ghost?  Ghosts don’t bleed, dude!

FUZZYWIG: Yes, thanks Snuggle.  Now I can go back to enjoying my dope without worrying about the effects it might have on my sanity.

Please free free to share a moment of gratitude you experienced over the past week.

To show that no good deed goes unpunished, I decided to feed Ody some of the cat treats he loves after coming home from lunch yesterday.  About 20 minutes later, those treats were barfed up all over my bed.  That’s GRATITUDE for you….

cute kitty

That expression about how they can get away with it because they’re so cute……. boy is that true.

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Maxed Out

Posted on October 14, 2020 by

a box full of junk

I have one more set of park squirrel photos from June to feature, but there still may be some Saturday Squirrel worthy pics from that set…. so let’s go back to something that I quietly killed off when I began the Squirrels in the Park series…. Random Image Inspiration!  Yes, I’m going to dump an entire bottle of Heet in the gas tank and fire up the Randomator for the first time in five months.  Let’s see if it can spit out four numbers for us before the engine explodes…

2, 27, 36, 22

The 2nd post in my Reader was this one by Marilyn

The 27th word in that post is “credit”

The 36th word in that post is “good”

And even after all this time, the Randomator still spits out stuff that leaves little doubt what will emerge from the image box…

Putting “credit good” into Google Images brought this up as the 22nd result…

I missed the mini SCT episodes these posts often inspired me to create…

SNUGGLE: Fuck yeah!  Look what came in the mail today!  My very own pre-approved credit card with my name, SNUGGLE Z. BEAR, on the front!  This baby’s got no limit either!

CHIP: It also says in the fine print that the interest rate is 169.98%.

SNUGGLE: I can’t hear you… all I can hear is the “Ch-Ching!” of my own personal cash register sounding off!  It’s time to paint this town white…. er, red!  I meant red!

CHIP: This can’t possibly end well.  Better go offstage and grab the popcorn…

SNUGGLE: BURP!  Damn, the number nine combo was great!  I’m gonna have the shits all night!

TROLL: The check, sir.

SNUGGLE: Oh, yeah.  Put it on my new no limit card!

TROLL: Excellent, sir.  How much should I add as a tip?

SNUGGLE: I’ll run the chip reader up your ass if you charge me a tip!  You know how many troll hairs I had to pick out of my food?

TROLL: I’ll just enter $50,000 then.  I shall return shortly with your carbon copy receipt….

UNCLE SAM: This fine piece of machinery was previously owned by a little old lady who only drove it to bingo every Sunday night.

SNUGGLE: That’s a bad ass car!  What did you say the Kelly Blue Book value was on it again?

SAM: Errrrrr, the yappy dog that appears in our annoying ads ate our copy of the KBB.  How about I just sell this practically brand new 1992 model to you for….. oh….. twelve-nine?

SNUGGLE: $1290?

SAM: $12,900.

SNUGGLE: Damn, that’s highway robbery for this lemon!  Oh, fuck it!  I got free money here…. put it on this card!

SNUGGLE: (Opens the door) Damn!  The Jehova’s Witnesses are getting some sexy recruiters!

MITZI: Would you, like, like to totally buy some Grrl Scout cookies?

SNUGGLE: Aren’t you a little old to be in the Girl Scouts?  Though I like how that kid’s shirt accentuates your cleavage!

MITZI: Totally!  But now you can totally buy some of Mitzi’s “extra services” without, like, going to jail!

SNUGGLE: Fuck yeah!  I’ll take a box of Samoans with a BJ on the side!

MITZI: Mitzi’s hummies are, like, very expensive!

SNUGGLE: Bitch, please!  (Whips out card) I’m loaded!

MITZI: Yaysies!  Like, American Express will do nicely, thank you!

NURSE RAINY: The lab results say you have syphilis, gonorrhea, and herpes!

SNUGGLE: I hope that Girl Scout who gave me all this got her merit badge in VD.

RAINY: What did you just say!?!?

SNUGGLE: Ummmm, nevermind.  Look, can we fix this up so it doesn’t feel like I’m pissing lighter fluid anymore?

RAINY: You’re going to have to take these extra large suppositories as well as this injection into your testicles.

SNUGGLE: Fuck, that might hurt!

RAINY: The only thing that’s going to hurt is the bill you’re going to get for these latest advances in STD technology.

SNUGGLE: (Produces the card from his hospital gown) I can cover that.  Now can I at least get a feel up before you stab my fucking balls with that thing?

SNUGGLE: Dude!  I need a hit!

FUZZYWIG: Dude, I need some jack to pay the mortgage on my drug house.

SNUGGLE: I’m desperate!  My nuts are killing me, and I need to take the edge off this pain!

FUZZYWIG: Mary Jane is always at your service…. for the right price.

SNUGGLE: I don’t care what it costs!  I got a no limit credit card!

FUZZYWIG: Sorry, but the illegal drug trade is a cash only business.

SNUGGLE: If I had any fucking cash, I’d roll that up and smoke it!  Screw it, I’m sure I can just buy MARIHUANA off the counter at Mecca now.  Buzz off, loser!

SHADOW: Greetings, sir!

SNUGGLE: Oh, what are you selling?  Doesn’t matter, (waves card) I’ll take ten of them!

SHADOW: Mr. Snuggle Z, Bear, I’m here from the PlasterCard collection agency, and we are looking to collect on your monthly bill of two million six hundred and seventy-nine thousand four hundred and twenty dollars and fifteen cents.

SNUGGLE: Dafuq!?!?  I don’t have that kind of money!  Wait, can I put it on my card?

SHADOW: Hmmmmmm….. seems like I’ll be forced to seize all of your assets.

SNUGGLE: Dude, you touch me and I’ll stomp on your Pokeballs!

SHADOW: I was referring to this wealth you seem to have accumulated since you received our pre-approved spam offer.  But, if you won’t allow me to liquidate your assets, then I suppose I’ll have no choice but to summon my enforcer.

SNUGGLE: Yeah, whatever.  You ain’t touching my shit!

SHADOW: Very well….

Shadow does his usual magic….

ZEEBA: Yeah!!!  Do I get to fuck shit up now?

SHADOW: This critter refuses to pay off his credit card debt.  He needs to be taught a lesson in fiscal responsibility.

ZEEBA: That still means I can fuck shit up, right?  Who cares, I’m gonna go cut me a deadbeat bitch!!!!  BLOOD!  BLOOD!  BLOOD!  A pound of flesh and BLOOD!!!!

SNUGGLE: NO!!!! Please, take my assets!  Just keep that psycho bitch away from me!

SHADOW: I thought you’d see things my way.  And since even reselling all of this merchandise won’t cover your hefty interest payments, I shall also notify the authorities…

SNUGGLE: Damn, I just go out and spend beyond my means on credit like every other red blooded shelf critter would do, and look what it gets me…. making license plates in prison!

BIG SCRAT: Say there, teddy bear, you think you could use that credit card you have there to restock the soap in the shower?  I seem to have….. used it all up.

SNUGGLE: No, I’m not going to….

BIG SCRAT: You might also want to invest in a few bottles of lube as well.  I plan on swiping my magnetic strip in and out of your card reader all night long!

SNUGGLE: NOOOOOO!!!! I’m never opening my mail ever again!!!

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