Okay, you’ve bought your chainsaw, but do you have a peavey?

Invented by Jos. Peavey around 1850, the peavey grips a log and gives you amazing leverage while trying to cut or move it. I used one – still have it, in fact – when I lived in Bangor with Pal Nancy and our then-one-baby-family in an old farmhouse we heated with six (!) cords of wood each winter. That much wood, you buy it in 20′ lengths and buck it, unless you’re being paid more than newly – minted lawyers are, so I had plenty of occasion to wield it. I think they’d be useful down here now for wrestling with fallen trees in driveways and living rooms, but I’ve never seen one for sale in this area. Still available in Maine, I’m sure, if there’s any lumbering business left alive up there.

Here’s a story on the loss and recovery of Paul Bunyan’s own peavey.

UPDATE: And thanks to Google, I learn that they are still made and are still available for purchase - price has gone up since 1981 but then, they last a long time.

What’s a typical 90-year-old Obama voter smell like?

Depends

Will he be dropped in by one of those UN black helicopters?

All your vote are belong to us

Self-anointed Black Panther head King Samir Shabazz hints that he’ll join other UN observers in poll watching tomorrow but unlike 2008, he and his gang will leave their batons at home. ”This is democracy in action,” crowed retired UN poll watcher Jimmy Carter. “King Shabaz is relieving us of the White Man’s burden and together with our new world government, will ensure that all persons of color enjoy their right to vote early and often. God bless the king.”

Hard toe believe but world’s grossest drink gains a toehold in Alaska

And they’re (freshly) off! Lawnmower nipsters rush supplies to Nome tipplers.

Severed, pickled toe in alcohol is growing in popularity. While actual numbers are hard to nail down, tourists and miners alike are stepping up to guzzle this vile concoction. Stash this story in your  clippings file as a reminder to change your socks before your next trip to Alaska: no one likes the smell of defeat.

Well witch is it, redskins or blackskins?

Chris Matthews, pondering

No sooner did we point than out that the Washington Redskin’s loss yesterday portends a whupping for Obama but word comes from his birthplace that he’s going to win! The pollsters in Kenya may be biased in favor of a native son, of course, but I personally have never been lied to by a witch doctor, so I’m confused.

[W] itch doctor John Dimo tossed some shells, bones and other items to determine who will win Tuesday’s election.

After throwing the objects like so many dice outside his hut in Kogelo village, Dimo, who says he is 105 years old, points to a white shell and declares: “Obama is very far ahead and is definitely going to win.”

How the press shapes our world

BS from NBC

The headline reads, “two arrested for gasoline hoarding”, which is a deliberate distortion of the facts  and one intended to scare viewers into what the editor feels is proper social behavior. What really happened, according to the article itself, is that a man collected money from his neighbors and drove to a gas station to fill 30 five-gallon buckets for them. The police arrested him and the owner for transporting gasoline in unapproved containers, which was proper – a plastic Home Depot bucket with a loose-fitting lid is a stupidly dangerous container and a van filled with thirty of them is a rolling bomb, but nowhere is “hoarding” mentioned except in the headline writer’s fervid imagination.

Pravda on the airwaves.

I blame Adam Smith

(7:00) no line at the gas station corner of Railroad Avenue.

It’s probably as good as any other prognostication

See ya, sucker

Romney’s got it in the bag. Redskins lose to Panthers and 17 times out of the past 18 elections, when the Redskins lost their last game before the country headed to the polls, the incumbent lost. I’m already planning my NFL-approved victory dance in front of Greenwich Communist headquarters Tuesday night.

Hit her over the head with an empty chair

I’m all yours, Barry – whip me, beat me, do with me as you will!

Linda McMahon, “Republican” candidate for senate, has done everything she possibly can to deny that she’s actually a Republican, including a refusal to appear with Paul Ryan and even going so far as to urge Connecticutcans to vote for Obama. So why, then, should we vote for her? It would be nice, of course, to take back the Senate, because such a coup would affect everything from EPA regulations to Supreme Court nominations, and McMahon’s opponent is such a limp, unaccomplished dishrag that there’s an excellent chance Connecticut could fall into the Republican column, but what’s the point if we’re just returning a slightly thinner, more masculine Lowell Weicker to Washington?

I’ll sit this one out.

Tod’s Point is okay (if still closed to citizens)

Received this from Chris Franco, head of GPC:

Hi Chris – I thought you might like a few post-Sandy photos of the Greenwich Point Conservancy’s projects at Greenwich Point for your blog.

These were taken for the GPC (I am President of the group).  The photos look bad, but actually we were quite lucky – the Innis Arden Cottage had very minimal interior impact (the recent renovation proved very “tight”), and the exterior was damaged but it is all repairable and straight-forward to execute.

Our next project – the “Old Barn” (the north concession) – took quite a beating, but ironically the sections that were lost were scheduled for demolition in our coming restoration of that 125 year old structure. And the area to the rear that experienced the serious erosion was going to be partially excavated for the new deck in that spot.  The original stone walls will be repaired as well.

All in all, it could have been much worse. We are very fortunate that both of these historic buildings at the Point (Cottage built in 1903 and Old Barn in 1887), which are sited on one of the most exposed locations on the Connecticut shoreline, continue to stand strong.