Bunk Stuff – Page 23 – Tacky Raccoons

Tacky Raccoons’ 7th Year: The Top 11 Posts

We’ve featured the Top Posts every year since this blog was whelped on 2 August 2007 and this year is no different. The numbers indicate ranking for the previous 12 months, followed by the previous year’s ranking, and the third numeral is for all-time popularity (August 2007 – August 2014). NR indicates Not Ranked.

Click on any image and it’ll take you to the original post.

No. 11/nr/74 – Cute Baby Giraffe

No. 10/2/10 – 10/10/10 10:10:10

No. 9/11/21 – Death Row Barbie and Other Science Fair Projects

No. 8/nr/28 – How To Really Piss Off A Golden Retriever

No. 7/3/5 – Giant Woolly Bear Caterpillar Discovered Near Las Cruces, NM, Predicts Global Warming for Decades to Come

No. 6/1/3 – Capybara Lapwarmer

No. 5/nr/48 – The .Gif Friday Post No. 297 – Page Turner, Giraffe Gymnastics & “Did You Catch That?”

No. 4/5/15 – Babe Cannon

No. 3/7/24 – “Wow, Giant Isopod, Did You See That?”

No. 2/nr/2 – LOL FERRET: Episode 1

And the Number One Post for the past 12 months is:

The .Gif Friday Post No.133 – Needlepoint Dog is Awesome!

“Needlepoint Dog” is a new entry in the Tacky Raccoons Blogoversary Hit Parade, with a score of 1/nr/19. We posted it on 25 June 2010 just days after it appeared at the source. Within 5 days of posting, it spiked, then went relatively dormant traffic-wise until February of this year and it’s been in the No. 1 slot for 6 months straight.

Not only is the concept great, the animation of the reverse side is even better. Congrats!

Although Tacky Raccoons doesn’t attract a lot of comments, we appreciate the “likes” and those who “follow” us. Now let’s talk Twitter. We’ve had an account for several years as an experiment to see how many followers we could get with the stated intent of providing absolutely no content and about 30 people played along. This is going to change.

Starting today, anyone who follows @BunkStrutts will get automatic notifications of new posts, perhaps some occasional inane snark from me, and all in fun. We’ll see where it goes, and if it clogs up my email inbox with too many Tweet notifications, I’ll deal with it. (There’s a button on the upper right sidebar to beam you over to Twitterville, too. You don’t need to sign up to Twitter to read it. We’ve done the same with FaceBook, even though I don’t use it much).

Wish you all the best,

Bunk

P.S. If you haven’t done so already, visit

The Official Cutting Edge Tacky Raccoons Store

for trendy and stylish acoutrements. If you don’t see what you like, or you want something a bit different, leave a comment or use the “Write Bunk” link in the sidebar.

The .Gif Friday Post No. 341 – Fun With Trigonometry Edition

Grampa Strutts made a similar machine out of wood with tapered wood dowels instead of prism-shaped dogs based upon the 2nd .gif. It’s the basis of a 4-stroke engine. The top one I messed with and added 4-colors only because someone elsewhere complained that B&W didn’t make it.

I love this stuff. I might have to add a category for Trig/Geometry/Math.

[Found here, here and here.]

1940s Rat Rod Go Cart

Go Cart (2)

Pop Strutts (my grampa) created this bit of vehicular awesome from a lawnmower engine, some stray bicycle parts and wood scraps. There was no steering wheel, only a tiller.

The engine was a Briggs & Stratton 1/2 hp rope-starter. It had three gears, but to change gears you had to stop, move the drive belt a pulley over, and hope it didn’t sever your fingers while you moved it. There was an accelerator pedal that attached to the throttle, and a brake that consisted of a lever that forced a piece of metal into the rubber of one of the rear wheels.

To shut down the engine, there was a piece of spring metal with a wooden switch to short out the spark plug. It’d give you a nice zap if your finger missed the wood.

What’s not shown here is The Peckerwood. On the rear of the vehicle, Pop mounted a wooden image of a boy who mechanically rocked back and forth as the Go Cart moved, poking his steel wire “pecker” back and forth through a steel eye screw. Papa Strutts probably removed it so as not to give a 10 year-old Bunk any nasty ideas, but I remember it. I had nasty ideas anyway, but not because of The Peckerwood.

[Rat Rods Archive here.]

[Update: November 2014 – this sold at a recent estate sale for $75.]

The .Gif Friday Post No.337 – Hover Screen, Kitteh Spaghetteh & 1930s Fauxtography

[Found here, here and here. Yeah, I messed with the 2nd one a tad – stabilized the image, reversed & looped it and tweaked the timing, just because.]

Herding Chili (& The Strutts Family Recipe)

[Image found here.]

That picture’s been sitting around in the What-To-Do-With-This-Baboso File for months. Out of the blue comes a reader comment on a post about Cincinnati Chili from 2008 in which I mentioned a family recipe that that I’ve been using for decades.

Amateur Cook Please, please, pretty please with sugar on top – can we (or I at least) have the Strutts Family Recipe? I’m on my knees here beggin’ ya!

Okay, AC, here ya go.

Bunk’s Family Chili
Prep: 1 hour. Cooking time: 1 hour min.

5 quart crock pot or dutch oven.

Stock:
2 lb. lean Ground Beef /Ground Chuck
2 med. Size yellow onions (or 1 bag frozen diced onions)
2 green bell peppers
2 – 12 oz. cans Campbell’s Tomato Soup
2 – 8 oz. cans Hunt’s Tomato Sauce
2- 12 oz. cans chili beans (or pinto beans)
2 – 4 oz. cans mushroom stems and pieces

Spices:
1 tbls garlic powder
1 tbls black pepper
1 tbls chili powder
1 tbls crushed red pepper
1 tsp cumin
1 cube chicken bullion

Spaghetti or Macaroni.

Fine-grated sharp cheddar cheese.

In an iron skillet, brown ground beef with garlic powder. When done, remove to crock pot, saving the “grease.” While ground beef is browning, dice onions and bell peppers.
Brown onions in grease until soft. Add to crock pot and mix. Clean skillet.
Add tomato soup, tomato sauce, rest of spices to crock pot and mix.
Add canned beans (drained).
Add diced bell peppers and (drained) mushroom stems and pieces and mix.
Set crockpot on high until bubbling, then turn down to medium. Stir occasionally, sample for desired heat level. Cook for 1-hour minimum before serving.
For hotter chili, add more chili powder and/or cumin.
Serve over spaghetti or macaroni, top with grated cheddar cheese.

Serves about 8, more if you serve it over pasta.

Note that this is NOT Cincinnati chili, nor is it Texas Style as it has *gasp* beans in it and it’s not intended to blow your head off. It’s also more like a stew than a soup, and can be eaten with a fork. The pasta is optional, but if you have a large crowd it’ll keep you from having to make multiple batches. Beware, it goes fast.

If you have a large number of people, make multiple batches ahead of time and freeze them. A pan of jalapeno cornbread is a nice addition, too.

Next day leftovers are even better. If you try this recipe, lemme know how you like it.

On Harassment

Looks like someone’s harassing a building to prove her femininity.

[Original image found here.]

May Day 2014 – It CAN Happen Here.

And it IS happening here.

Fight communism, socialism, fascism and other forms of liberalism wherever you find it – if not for yourselves, then do it for your children, grandchildren and future generations who don’t deserve to live a life of serfdom beholden to government wonks of any political party that aims to control every aspect of your life, including, but not limited to, rescinding the 1st and 2nd Amendments.

Always remember that the 2nd Amendment was written to protect the 1st.

Stand up for your principles and speak your mind before it’s too late. The clock is ticking…

Bunk Strutts

Cross-Stitched Hot Links

Cross stitch + .gif animations + transvestites = The RuPaul Cross Stitch Animation Workshop.

“We met over 4 Wednesday nights to learn cross stitch, view experimental animation, celebrate local drag, and discuss GIF culture.”

18 Owls [via].

“Cookin’ With Aunt Ethel” as sung by Linda Hopkins is great and bizarre at the same time. Apparently it’s from a 1985 satirical play entitled “The Colored Museum.”

Google this and read it.

Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963

Posted verbatim sans commentary here.

The Tee-Tones are awesome.

Q: What happens if a fire breaks out where firearms ammunition is stored?
A: Not much [via].

Émile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie (1908) is regarded as the first cartoon animation [via].

The .Gif Friday Post No. 318 – Friendly Cliffs, Chinese Tea House & Japanese Rain

[1st & 3rd .gifs found here and here. The second is my own from this image, because I liked the screaming color morphiness of it all.]

Football

Not sure how true this is, but it’s kinda true.
Roman Gladiators were the true ancestors of American Football. Brute force, team sport, with audience participation. Thumbs up or thumbs down from the fans could determine life or death of the defeated.

Top: Flag On The Play – Personal foul, 10 yards.
Bottom: Offensive foul – Death By Maggots.

Once the Romans left Britain, the locals needed something to kick around. Some wags found a Roman skull, decided to kick it all the way to the next village. The folks at that village didn’t like it much, and kicked it back to the first. Association Football was born.

Kicking a skull up and down a dirt path is hard on the feet, so the Roman skull was supplanted by the obvious replacement – an inflated pig’s bladder.

Association Football was too hard to pronounce in normal conversation, so it was renamed Assoc. Football, and those who played it were Assoc.’ers – hence the name “soccer,” and it caught on, even though all of the world still called it Football. But it wasn’t good enough for some. The game had lost its Gladiator roots (except for the drunks fighting on the sidelines).

Then one day in the early 1800s, someone got fed up and wondered, “What’s the point of kicking a stinking inflated chunk of porcine offal back and forth?” and decided to pick up the ball and run it directly into the opposition, knocking out teeth, drawing blood and breaking bones in the process. The game of Rugby was born.

Once Rugby was introduced into the States via Canada, America decided some changes had to be made. No more round scrum, the teams had to line up and hit head on in order to move the little leather covered ellipsoid mere yards at a time, and Woody Hayes was invented.

All of this requires physical protection, so the players wear helmets, shoulder pads and crotch protectors. They’re bred to be corn-fed behemoths of people capable of unprecedented brute force trained to bash each other’s heads into the ground. I love it.