I’m still very distracted but working on the second part of The Last Days of Earth, very pleased with how it’s going (83 pages, 38,000 words and counting). This means I haven’t had time to add anything to the Christmas Spectacular just yet, but Christmas is a long way off.
Our stupid renovations are almost finished, and Wump and Toop will soon be getting the bunnies we promised them. I’ll have to post a full story on that sometime.
And this morning we finally got a little bit of snow!
Almost winter!
It’s still not exactly cold, but it’s hovering close enough to 0°C for the snow to stay frozen for now. Let’s see if this winter’s going to be any better than last year’s!
How is it ’round your way?
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About Hatboy
I’m not often driven to introspection or reflection, but the question does come up sometimes. The big question. So big, there’s just no containing it within the puny boundaries of a single set of punctuationary bookends.
Who are these mysterious and unsung heroes of obscurity and shadow? What is their origin story? Do they have a prequel trilogy? What are their secret identities? What are their public identities, for that matter? What are their powers? Their abilities? Their haunted pasts and troubled futures? Their modus operandi? Where do they live anyway, and when? What do they do for a living? Do they really have these fantastical adventures, or is it a dazzlingly intellectual and overwrought metaphor? Or is it perhaps a smug and post-modern sort of metaphor? Is it a plain stupid metaphor, hedged around with thick wads of plausible deniability, a soap bubble of illusory plot dependent upon readers who don’t dare question it for fear of looking foolish? A flight of fancy, having dozed off in front of the television during an episode of something suitably spaceship-oriented? Do they have a quest, a handler, a mission statement, a department-level development objective in five stages?
I am Hatboy.
https://hatboy.blog/2013/12/17/metalude-who-are-creepy-and-hatboy/
Hatboy's Hatstand 
Yesterday was below freezing overnight, frost on every surface outside, but it’s been warming up ever since. My walk yesterday, where I saw that fox/coyote (upload pics if you want!) was around 55 Fahrenheit. Today it’s supposed to be warmer still. Clear skies and gentle breeze, really nice. Looking forward to sitting outside at work and after, today, with some vino.
Good to see you, too, man! Your beard is looking extra spiffy, I have to say!
Hah! As the week rolls to an end, my beard goes from its weekend sauna / washing state and gets steadily crazier and crazier. This is almost peak hillbilly right here.
I’ll add a couple of your critter pics!
Well I really meant it, I wasn’t ribbing you. I thought it looks good!
Now, not so much. Now I can imagine your natural scent.
See NOW I’m ribbing you.
Hey! No scent, I use most excellent beard-care oils.
I couldn’t have said it better myself 😂
Let’s hope you are a kind God with powers like that….
I like to think of Myself as a New Testament God with an Old Testament attitude. Or “Old Testitude”, if you will.
From henceforth I dub thee Old Testidude, forsooth.
Here, for the enjoyment of the naturalists of the Hatstand (that would be all of us, because none of us are wearing clothes, right?), I give you Aaron’s bigfoot-esque snaps of a critter what he saw while out walking yesterday.
I low-key think he broke into a museum and took a stuffed and badly taxidermied critter from one of the “woodlands” exhibits, then just posed it and giggled. But it does look rather like an Australian fox. If you can call them Australian since they were so recently introduced. I guess they’re a few thousand years behind dingoes, but still. There we are.
Or possibly a coyote, which is pronounced “KEYE-oat” if you’re giving it the real murrican slang.
I tried every image identifier online I could find, and no luck. This guy blends in too much, I think. I sent pictures to my wife when he was down next to that rock behind him and she couldn’t even see what I was trying to show her. Looked like another rock!
As in yippee-kay-ay, only yippee-kay-oat?
That’s the one. Assuming you’re pronouncing the “kay” in there correctly, which I can only assume you are since you know that phrase at all. Because surely you heard it, not read it.
Die Hard? Yeah, that checks out to my movie memory.
That’s the one!
Yay! Weather! That would probably be sarcastic coming from anyone but me but you know I’m for real.
Cloudy and mid 20s (Degrees Celsius) today, it’s dark now so I’ll go down the beach tomorrow and get a photo and send it through. Been the wettest November on record for Perth this month though apparently. There was a few days of heavy rain, I guess that would be enough to do it.
Mr Toon had a quick squint at the pics and he reckons coyote. He used to work at the zoo and knows more about this stuff than anyone else I know. He’s very useful on trivia nights.
Sweet! I’ll go with that, it was how I was leaning, but nice to hear from an expert.
And shit! Mr Toon? You didn’t tell him about the, uhh, well you know I was talking to Damon anyway but, we’re good right?
*sweat sweat sweat*
LOL.
No, you idiot. As if. Dobbers have no mates in Australia, remember. It’s taught from birth by all good parents.
All good.
I don’t understand most of that, but I’m telling MrsThePatriot you called me an idiot.
She doesn’t like people trying to take her job, so you are in for it, Sheila!
Bwaaahahahaha I also would have accepted “dobbers are nomates.”
But all true. What happens on the Hatstand … is on the internet for everyone to see, whenever.
I originally typed Dobbers got no mates but changed it because I thought it wouldn’t make any sense to a USian. I can’t seem to quite get it right knowing what is universal language and what is not.
Dobbers are tale tellers. The sort that do it just to get other kids in trouble, or to get themselves out of trouble, and therefore have no friends – not the sort that goes to get help because someone has just set their own hair on fire. “I don’t want to hear it unless someone’s hair is on fire” is one of the explicit exceptions to dobbing that is in every parents and teachers handbook. As an adult, you are not only allowed to tell your own kid “don’t dob”, “Dobbers’ got nomates” or “Dobbers are nomates” but also anyone else’s kid who comes running to you with tales (usually about your own kid or a kid guest doing something hilariously naughty and destructive at your house) because it’s totally cheating if you don’t catch them being a little bastard in the act yourself. It’s the rules.
Howzat Hatboy? Did I do a good job?
Excellent, you have mastered the author’s art of saying in 200 words what could be said in 3:
Dobber = tattle tale.
Now I’m just trying to think if there are others. There are so many. Australians say “bags” instead of “dibs on”, “catchy” instead of “tag”, and “hidey” instead of “hide and go seek.” And even if we use the long form of that last one, there’s no go in there, the go is implied! What, you’re otherwise just going to sit there where you covered your eyes and counted to twenty, and just expect to see the kids who are hiding? Good luck with that!
I really should be educating my readers more about Australian slang. I was delighted to learn that boondie, as in sandboondie, was actually an Aboriginal word that had entered our language. I use the term for desert planets in my books.
Not to be confused with Boonie, who I also reference heavily.
Next thing for you to learn is the art of saying in 4 comments what could be said in 1 if you were able to resist being smarmy.
Ahh yes. The art. Like Piss Christ is art.
This was post-being smashed by a Christian who couldn’t fucking take a joke.
Maybe we could get it restored by a nice respectful Spanish Christian, they’re so good at restoring art! Truly we live in a new renaissance. No, wait, not renaissance, what was that other thing we had? Dark ages, that’s the one.
Okay, but if I can tangent for a second, nothing about this is less funny than any other part:
…but I have to say my favourite bit is the “The rest of the results might not be what you’re looking for. See more anyway.”
LOL yeah, I think the art restoration community has been infested by trolls.
And according to usenet rules, if you have to explain what you meant, you lost.
But thanks for the new word in my vocab, anyway!
This is true, there is a Rule.
Care to explain that Rule?
*smri*
I also did not realise boondie was an indigenous term! Reminded me of Irish when he was 6 chucking boondies at my car in the driveway not noticing (or more likely not caring) that the window was open. Yellow sand fucking everywhere for fucking eternity.
PS 200 words = 3? That’s the bad influence of the Hatstand. I learned it all offa youse. I was concise ‘til I met you bunch of fuckknuckles.
Furthermore to my comment, here is a pictionarial expression of my regional locality, viz. Jackadder Lake, where it is currently or at time of photographisation 26°C, but is expected to veer hotwards as the week progresses.
The God of the blog is good. The God of the blog is right. Glory a-hat.