OH DEER, PART DEUX
When our local Rabbit Sheriff calls me out of the blue and invites me for coffee, I know something is up.
I had naturally been expecting a lecture about how that couldn't possibly have been a wolf my Inventing Uncle encountered near Lincoln Park Wednesday, but I didn't get one. On the contrary; the RS said it was entirely possible, maybe even likely. There are wolves all about. This one probably wasn't from Yellowstone, more likely a formerly domesticated one from Colorado (leave it to the Greenies to try to keep wolves as pets) that either escaped or was turned loose by its keeper when it got too vicious (in which case, thanks a lot, jerkstore. I declare your backyard as Ground Zero for the Komodo Reintroduction Project). Yeah, I feel better, too.
Anyway, that's not what he wanted to talk about at all.
It was even better.
Seems about two weeks ago, a local woman contacted him about a very sick deer that was hanging out in her backyard. The RS reported to the scene, already suspicious of what was making the deer so sick.
He found out Wednesday that indeed, this doe tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease.
CWD has been around for 50 years or so, but it's still rather poorly understood. It's a spongiform encephalitis like scrapie or Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or BSE (aka Mad Cow Disease), caused by weird little spiral-shaped infectious proteins (prions) that burrow into the brains and spinal cords of infected animals, and it's usually fatal. It is not known exactly how CWD is transmitted between deer (elk can get it, too), but a recent Associated Press Story (you can read it HERE) based on a study that appeared in Nature indicates that it spreads a lot faster than previously thought.
The Rabbit Sheriff told me that usually where there is one infected deer there is a cluster of them, which means that for the time being our little town is going to be regarded as a prime site for monitoring for the disease.
Which means that our local Rabbit Sheriff will shortly commence taking down about 20 deer from in and around Saratoga for study. Since no live test currently exists, this means he'll have to take road kill and shoot some animals.
At least Wyoming Game & Fish doesn't take the view that, say, Wisconsin's does – killing off hundreds and hundreds of animals to just try to eradicate the disease from the affected area. Not for the time being, anyway.
Now, this is of limited concern for us who live here. There is absolutely no evidence that CWD is transmissible to humans or livestock. I repeat: none.
But, you are likely to hear some gunfire in town while the RS completes his work. And you'll see him driving his pickup, likely with deer bits in the bed.
He had other news for me as well that I didn't much care for, though in retrospect it probably oughtn't to have been news to me at all. I've just not been thinking that much along these lines.
It is very, very probable that quite a lot of the grouse and sage chickens around these parts are infected with the West Nile Virus. And this is transmissible to humans, and not just by mosquitos. If you're dressing a bird you've shot and scratch or cut yourself while doing so, you're probably going to contract WNV yourself if any of the bird's blood gets into your cut.
So for Bog's sake, watch yourself when you're handling game birds this season, folks.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news today, but sometimes that's the only news there is.
Just be careful out there, and cooperate with the Rabbit Sheriff if he asks you for the head of your harvested deer or for the bodies of any birds you don't plan to eat.
Friday, September 05, 2003
Thursday, September 04, 2003
MORE LEXICAL MUSINGS, OR SOMETHING
I have often, in these pixels, observed that one of the most useless phrases in the English language is "supposed to," i.e., any time someone uses it in a sentence, that person is pretty much just whining about something that isn't going to change.
"Well, that check was supposed to have been mailed to you yesterday."
"There aren't supposed to be any maggots in this soup."
"You were supposed to bring the blue paint, not the red."
See?
Well, if two big selling books in the popular press are any indication of the way things are going these days, I'm predicting that pretty soon "grown up" or any other indication of "maturity" or "adulthood" will have to join that phrase on my list of adynata.
On the one hand we have Treason by Anne Coulter, in which she fusses and fumes over how everyone politically to her left hates America and is a traitor, and apparently (I haven't read this thing, nor am I likely to unless some paper somewhere offers me a truly princely sum to publish a book review of same) throws in a sad little paen to po' misunderstood Joe McCarthy in the process. Lots of foaming in the mouth on both the left and the right about this, as many of Coulter's colleagues are now pretty embarrassed to be associated with her. Still, it's selling very, very well.
And on the other, we have Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Another tome I shan't touch without serious renumeration, but just look at that title.
So we're all back in the sandbox, hurling insults at each other and pouting.
And people ask why I'm a member of neither party.
I have often, in these pixels, observed that one of the most useless phrases in the English language is "supposed to," i.e., any time someone uses it in a sentence, that person is pretty much just whining about something that isn't going to change.
"Well, that check was supposed to have been mailed to you yesterday."
"There aren't supposed to be any maggots in this soup."
"You were supposed to bring the blue paint, not the red."
See?
Well, if two big selling books in the popular press are any indication of the way things are going these days, I'm predicting that pretty soon "grown up" or any other indication of "maturity" or "adulthood" will have to join that phrase on my list of adynata.
On the one hand we have Treason by Anne Coulter, in which she fusses and fumes over how everyone politically to her left hates America and is a traitor, and apparently (I haven't read this thing, nor am I likely to unless some paper somewhere offers me a truly princely sum to publish a book review of same) throws in a sad little paen to po' misunderstood Joe McCarthy in the process. Lots of foaming in the mouth on both the left and the right about this, as many of Coulter's colleagues are now pretty embarrassed to be associated with her. Still, it's selling very, very well.
And on the other, we have Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Another tome I shan't touch without serious renumeration, but just look at that title.
So we're all back in the sandbox, hurling insults at each other and pouting.
And people ask why I'm a member of neither party.
UNACCEPTABLY CLOSE
So, raise your hands if you find it merely coincidental that yet another one of my blog chickens has come home to roost in an alarming way?
Actually, it is quite unpardonably silly to open this entry with a metaphor treating of a prey animal, but it's 3:35 a.m. and I've spent the better part of five days cranking out story after story for the two statewide publications that pay what passes for my salary these days. The assignments, gratifyingly, seem to have found a nice, seedy little motel room somewhere, thereat to be fruitful and multiply. I may yet be able to buy Christ-X presents for my nearest and dearest this year.
But I digress.
So, just days after I foamed at the mouth and went off on this very computer screen about the hideous inappropriateness and ultimate wickedness of the promulgation of a revisionist Peter and the Wolf, along comes a real life encounter with one of these nasty creatures and one of my nearest and dearest.
See, My Own Dear Personal Dad and my Inventing Uncle (holds a patent on a machine that allows one man to do two-man CPR!) are up in the hills hunting grouse and sage chickens and, I'm told having a fine time indeed, shooting at birdies (I've got a skillet ready, boys!), playing cards, sampling scary discount whiskey MODPD got on sale in Laramie, etc.
My IU just had surgery recently, poor duck, and is still kind of getting reacquainted with the way his body is supposed to work, so he has apparently been taking brisk, enjoyable early morning constitutionals before the Shocking Sherrod Shooting Show commences.
This very morning, as he strolled blithely along, appreciating the crepuscular beauty of his surroundings, he found in his vicinity a most suprising spectator eyeing him like so many pounds of USDA Prime.
He describes it as having looked rather like a large grey-brown dog, and dog he thought it was at first, until he got a load of its eyes. And heard it growling at him. Most un-doggielike, that growl. No mistaking it for, say, the Collie of Folly feeling unusually impetuous.
He sensibly rolled his jacket around the arm he would proffer if necessary, and ran to beat all hell back to camp. After a bit, the animal declined to pursue him.
Which suits me just fine. I'm fond of the guy. He lets me stay at his house when I'm on assignment in Green River, and he makes a pretty swell uncle, too.
Anyway, we're pretty sure it was a wolf. In our Snowy Range. Sightings have been reported recently on a ranch or two that borders our forest.
Gotta check in with the Rabbit Sheriff to see if we can verify this, but regardless, we all knew it was inevitable.
And so, to all you assholes out there who pushed for wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone, make a sentence out of these three words: Dung, Iguana, Eat.
Speaking of iguanas, I have a great follow-up reintroduction project for you.
As any half-educated half-wit who managed to stay awake through seventh grade earth science class knows, once upon a time, long before we terrible, horrible, ecosystem wrecking humans came on the scene, dry land on planet Earth was all one continent, called Pangea. It later broke up into two continents, Gondwanaland and Laurasia (pardon spelling errors, I'm dredging this up from memory), which in turn later drifted around and crashed into each other until eventually we had the good old familiar conglomeration of continents we see on both Mercator's and Fuller's projections of the good old globe.
It is still unclear to what extent our own dear personal species is culpable in all of this. I'll leave that to wiser minds than I, say, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance's, to settle that persnickety question. It's not really all that relevant to my point, after all.
So anyway, given that this all used to be one landmass until something interfered with the Natural Order of Things, we can therefore safely assume that Wyoming was once the natural habitat of many more wondrous, majestic and amazing big predators than just the wolf.
Some of them, indeed, make the wolf look like just the cuddly, pretty, noble creature certain demented types imagine it to be.
Like, for instance, the Komodo Dragon, whose natural habitat has shrunken down to just one measly island in Indonesia.
Fans of Schopenhauer (eXholes, take note! et al probably already know where I'm going with this.
Know how a Komodo Dragon gets his dinner?
He sneaks up on his prey - usually a hapless livestock animal like a goat or maybe a pig, but a human will do in a pinch. They taste like pork, I'm told. – and takes, with his huge, powerful jaws and sharp, nasty pointy teeth, a huge bite out of the prey animal's ass.
No, that's not his meal. That's just his death blow.
Cuz see, a Komodo Dragon's mouth is a festering maw of endless varieties of decay organisms. World class rotters of flesh. Disease. Teeming colonies of death, crawlin' around on his teeth.
The prey animal has just been given a huge flesh wound and a nice dose of all of these organisms, and usually limps off somewhere in pain and terror.
The Dragon doesn't even bother to follow it. It's not going to go far with half its ass missing, after all. And really, nothing much need be done.
The Dragon's nasty, smelly, stinky, foetid little micro-allies will have the critter dead within a day or two.
Once the animal has obligingly died of, well, basically, some form or another of gangrene, the Dragon tracks it down by the hideous, rotting smell, and chows down.
So, now that your work is done with bringing back the Noble Wolf, how about setting free the Konfined Komodo Dragon. Restore it to its ancient habitats. Let it roam free and proud. It, too, is a beautiful animal, an astonishing work of god, or something.
Then see who limps the fastest.
So, raise your hands if you find it merely coincidental that yet another one of my blog chickens has come home to roost in an alarming way?
Actually, it is quite unpardonably silly to open this entry with a metaphor treating of a prey animal, but it's 3:35 a.m. and I've spent the better part of five days cranking out story after story for the two statewide publications that pay what passes for my salary these days. The assignments, gratifyingly, seem to have found a nice, seedy little motel room somewhere, thereat to be fruitful and multiply. I may yet be able to buy Christ-X presents for my nearest and dearest this year.
But I digress.
So, just days after I foamed at the mouth and went off on this very computer screen about the hideous inappropriateness and ultimate wickedness of the promulgation of a revisionist Peter and the Wolf, along comes a real life encounter with one of these nasty creatures and one of my nearest and dearest.
See, My Own Dear Personal Dad and my Inventing Uncle (holds a patent on a machine that allows one man to do two-man CPR!) are up in the hills hunting grouse and sage chickens and, I'm told having a fine time indeed, shooting at birdies (I've got a skillet ready, boys!), playing cards, sampling scary discount whiskey MODPD got on sale in Laramie, etc.
My IU just had surgery recently, poor duck, and is still kind of getting reacquainted with the way his body is supposed to work, so he has apparently been taking brisk, enjoyable early morning constitutionals before the Shocking Sherrod Shooting Show commences.
This very morning, as he strolled blithely along, appreciating the crepuscular beauty of his surroundings, he found in his vicinity a most suprising spectator eyeing him like so many pounds of USDA Prime.
He describes it as having looked rather like a large grey-brown dog, and dog he thought it was at first, until he got a load of its eyes. And heard it growling at him. Most un-doggielike, that growl. No mistaking it for, say, the Collie of Folly feeling unusually impetuous.
He sensibly rolled his jacket around the arm he would proffer if necessary, and ran to beat all hell back to camp. After a bit, the animal declined to pursue him.
Which suits me just fine. I'm fond of the guy. He lets me stay at his house when I'm on assignment in Green River, and he makes a pretty swell uncle, too.
Anyway, we're pretty sure it was a wolf. In our Snowy Range. Sightings have been reported recently on a ranch or two that borders our forest.
Gotta check in with the Rabbit Sheriff to see if we can verify this, but regardless, we all knew it was inevitable.
And so, to all you assholes out there who pushed for wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone, make a sentence out of these three words: Dung, Iguana, Eat.
Speaking of iguanas, I have a great follow-up reintroduction project for you.
As any half-educated half-wit who managed to stay awake through seventh grade earth science class knows, once upon a time, long before we terrible, horrible, ecosystem wrecking humans came on the scene, dry land on planet Earth was all one continent, called Pangea. It later broke up into two continents, Gondwanaland and Laurasia (pardon spelling errors, I'm dredging this up from memory), which in turn later drifted around and crashed into each other until eventually we had the good old familiar conglomeration of continents we see on both Mercator's and Fuller's projections of the good old globe.
It is still unclear to what extent our own dear personal species is culpable in all of this. I'll leave that to wiser minds than I, say, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance's, to settle that persnickety question. It's not really all that relevant to my point, after all.
So anyway, given that this all used to be one landmass until something interfered with the Natural Order of Things, we can therefore safely assume that Wyoming was once the natural habitat of many more wondrous, majestic and amazing big predators than just the wolf.
Some of them, indeed, make the wolf look like just the cuddly, pretty, noble creature certain demented types imagine it to be.
Like, for instance, the Komodo Dragon, whose natural habitat has shrunken down to just one measly island in Indonesia.
Fans of Schopenhauer (eXholes, take note! et al probably already know where I'm going with this.
Know how a Komodo Dragon gets his dinner?
He sneaks up on his prey - usually a hapless livestock animal like a goat or maybe a pig, but a human will do in a pinch. They taste like pork, I'm told. – and takes, with his huge, powerful jaws and sharp, nasty pointy teeth, a huge bite out of the prey animal's ass.
No, that's not his meal. That's just his death blow.
Cuz see, a Komodo Dragon's mouth is a festering maw of endless varieties of decay organisms. World class rotters of flesh. Disease. Teeming colonies of death, crawlin' around on his teeth.
The prey animal has just been given a huge flesh wound and a nice dose of all of these organisms, and usually limps off somewhere in pain and terror.
The Dragon doesn't even bother to follow it. It's not going to go far with half its ass missing, after all. And really, nothing much need be done.
The Dragon's nasty, smelly, stinky, foetid little micro-allies will have the critter dead within a day or two.
Once the animal has obligingly died of, well, basically, some form or another of gangrene, the Dragon tracks it down by the hideous, rotting smell, and chows down.
So, now that your work is done with bringing back the Noble Wolf, how about setting free the Konfined Komodo Dragon. Restore it to its ancient habitats. Let it roam free and proud. It, too, is a beautiful animal, an astonishing work of god, or something.
Then see who limps the fastest.
MEA CULPA
Oops! In my recent slapdash account of the very exciting Saratoga Panthers football opener on Friday, I committed a gaffe unforgivable, and at least one of my faithful (and decidedly not imaginary) readers called me on it.
They're the Lyman Eagles. Eagles, not Wildcats.
Whatever. We plucked 'em like chickens and sent 'em home sobbing to their eyries.
Many thanks to My Own Dear Mortified Sister (hey, she was the jock and played against the "Lady Eagles". I was on the speech team, an entity Lyman really never fielded, as such. At least not in my day) and to My Own Dear Personal Mom, who softened the tone of MODMS' original screed somewhat before communicating to me my error.
Everybody send your psychic cheers the Panthers' way this Friday when they pile into a bus (driven by My Own Dear Personal Dad! We are so the ultimate online Panther family) and head for Shoshone to take on the Somethingorothers.
Kris?
Oops! In my recent slapdash account of the very exciting Saratoga Panthers football opener on Friday, I committed a gaffe unforgivable, and at least one of my faithful (and decidedly not imaginary) readers called me on it.
They're the Lyman Eagles. Eagles, not Wildcats.
Whatever. We plucked 'em like chickens and sent 'em home sobbing to their eyries.
Many thanks to My Own Dear Mortified Sister (hey, she was the jock and played against the "Lady Eagles". I was on the speech team, an entity Lyman really never fielded, as such. At least not in my day) and to My Own Dear Personal Mom, who softened the tone of MODMS' original screed somewhat before communicating to me my error.
Everybody send your psychic cheers the Panthers' way this Friday when they pile into a bus (driven by My Own Dear Personal Dad! We are so the ultimate online Panther family) and head for Shoshone to take on the Somethingorothers.
Kris?
Friday, August 29, 2003
SO THIS IS WHAT VICTORY FEELS LIKE
I had almost forgotten!
Just a scant hour ago at Fort Sherrod, My Own Dear Personal Dad and I were pinching ourselves, asking in wonder when was the last time we left Saratoga's Robert Hileman field after a Saratoga High School football game with actual by-god smiles on our actual by-god faces.
We concluded that at the very least it was back when Robert Hileman was coaching, which means, back when I could reckon my age on two hands, no recourse to toes or hairs on my head, etc.
Not only did our Panthers win, but they won gloriously, honorably, by playing four full quarters of tough, smart football. After years and years of watching our boys completely fall apart in the second half, no matter how commanding a lead they might occasionally have run up in the first, this is truly refreshing.
Starting QB Joe Pederson's arm has developed nicely since our days of slightly wincing as we watched him overestimate his throwing distance in middle school; he made at least one truly gorgeous pass to Dallas Fields that would have made any highlight reel.
Speaking of Joe and Dallas, both had fantastic interceptions today, with Joe's coming just at the tail end of the fourth quarter for a fabulous finish to the season opener against Lyman.
Even the tackling was good, MODPD, a former volunteer defensive line coach, agreed. And he hasn't complimented the tackling since, well, either Hileman's or the late Wally Walker's days.
I've been watching this particular band of kids playing football together for five years now, having started out as the reporter/photographer on the sidelines with them at what was for most of them their very first game (personal acquaintances of mine know that as the day one youngster who will remain nameless came running off the field after his first down ever bellowing to the coach, his teammates, his reporter, and, alas, his mortified mother, that "That guy was humping my leg!!!). They were undefeated for two straight seasons in middle school, largely because then coach Vance Peterson worked their tails off in practice and they simply outlasted even the giant bull moose fielded by Laramie and Rawlins.
And new head coach Lee Wisroth and his two assistants seem to have torn a page from Vance's book with them in high school. Bravo!
It's a long, long bus ride back to Lyman for the Wildcats tonight, shut out 13-0 for their first game.
Usually that's the story we've told about the Panthers.
Change is good.
I had almost forgotten!
Just a scant hour ago at Fort Sherrod, My Own Dear Personal Dad and I were pinching ourselves, asking in wonder when was the last time we left Saratoga's Robert Hileman field after a Saratoga High School football game with actual by-god smiles on our actual by-god faces.
We concluded that at the very least it was back when Robert Hileman was coaching, which means, back when I could reckon my age on two hands, no recourse to toes or hairs on my head, etc.
Not only did our Panthers win, but they won gloriously, honorably, by playing four full quarters of tough, smart football. After years and years of watching our boys completely fall apart in the second half, no matter how commanding a lead they might occasionally have run up in the first, this is truly refreshing.
Starting QB Joe Pederson's arm has developed nicely since our days of slightly wincing as we watched him overestimate his throwing distance in middle school; he made at least one truly gorgeous pass to Dallas Fields that would have made any highlight reel.
Speaking of Joe and Dallas, both had fantastic interceptions today, with Joe's coming just at the tail end of the fourth quarter for a fabulous finish to the season opener against Lyman.
Even the tackling was good, MODPD, a former volunteer defensive line coach, agreed. And he hasn't complimented the tackling since, well, either Hileman's or the late Wally Walker's days.
I've been watching this particular band of kids playing football together for five years now, having started out as the reporter/photographer on the sidelines with them at what was for most of them their very first game (personal acquaintances of mine know that as the day one youngster who will remain nameless came running off the field after his first down ever bellowing to the coach, his teammates, his reporter, and, alas, his mortified mother, that "That guy was humping my leg!!!). They were undefeated for two straight seasons in middle school, largely because then coach Vance Peterson worked their tails off in practice and they simply outlasted even the giant bull moose fielded by Laramie and Rawlins.
And new head coach Lee Wisroth and his two assistants seem to have torn a page from Vance's book with them in high school. Bravo!
It's a long, long bus ride back to Lyman for the Wildcats tonight, shut out 13-0 for their first game.
Usually that's the story we've told about the Panthers.
Change is good.
COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!
Bill Clinton is narrating a "wolf-friendly" version of PETER AND THE WOLF
From the article (for those of you too lazy to click on the link):
Prokofiev's version ends with Peter capturing the wolf and leading a triumphant procession to the zoo, paining music-loving environmentalists with romantic visions of wolves in the wild.
In the new version, narrated by former U.S. president Clinton and called Wolf Tracks, Peter again captures the wolf, but this time repents of his act and releases the animal, who howls a grateful goodbye.
"Forgetting his triumph, Peter thought instead of fallen trees, parched meadows, choked streams, and of each and every wolf struggling for survival," Clinton narrates.
"The time has come to leave wolves in peace," he adds.
Do you folks realize how damaging this is? Questions of faithfulness to the artist's original visions aside, this idiotic reworking of a classic (that is admittedly near and dear to my heart; my very first performing arts event, which I attended at the age of three and where I met my childhood sweetheart for the very first time, was a ballet of PATW) has profoundly annoying and disturbing implications.
First of all, it further distorts the already distorted image that modern man has of what wolves are really like. We're already choked with paintings and drawings of "beautiful, majestic wolves" done by Rousseauist romantic rubes who always seem to manage to make these vicious predators look like big grey versions of the family dog... which leads to lots of visitors to wild places believing that's what they are and running the risk of getting hurt... and also to a lot of idiots on the coasts and in big heartland cities siding with "those poor, pretty wolves" against humans defending themselves, their livestock and their pets.
Wolves are so often the bad guys in fairy tales and it's just not fair to them, these softheaded idiots already maintain. As though there are some wolves somewhere whose feelings are hurt every time a daddy scares a kid with "I'll huff and I'll puff..."? By the way, who gives a shit about being "fair" to them, even if their feelings are hurt? Do you think they care about our feelings? No, they act according to their natures. They are predatory pack animals, who prey on the weak and the sick and the small, and do it in nasty, bloody ways, not sporting at all. They'll wound an already ailing animal and then follow it for miles as it staggers until it collapses, then they gang up and chow down. It's what they do.
Look, wolves are not the bad guys in stories because some mean old storyteller of yore was picking on them. They were bad guys in real life first, and so inspired these stories.
But I am, I know, fighting a losing battle here. I might as well sit back, munch some popcorn, and wait around for the new "Devil-friendly" version of Gounod's Faust, in which Mephistopholes jovially presides over Faust's marriage to Marguerite.
(oh, and by the way – even changing the ending of PATW's text is never really going to work to "improve" the Wolf's image in the piece unless something is done about those powerful, menacing horns – which, if anyone ever does that, I guaran-damn-tee that I and the rest of my ex-trombone-playing posse also known as the Propeller Beanie Tenor Section will pack up and bring the perpetrator down in a way that would be the only way to actually make a wolf look merciful, noble and beautiful)
Bill Clinton is narrating a "wolf-friendly" version of PETER AND THE WOLF
From the article (for those of you too lazy to click on the link):
Prokofiev's version ends with Peter capturing the wolf and leading a triumphant procession to the zoo, paining music-loving environmentalists with romantic visions of wolves in the wild.
In the new version, narrated by former U.S. president Clinton and called Wolf Tracks, Peter again captures the wolf, but this time repents of his act and releases the animal, who howls a grateful goodbye.
"Forgetting his triumph, Peter thought instead of fallen trees, parched meadows, choked streams, and of each and every wolf struggling for survival," Clinton narrates.
"The time has come to leave wolves in peace," he adds.
Do you folks realize how damaging this is? Questions of faithfulness to the artist's original visions aside, this idiotic reworking of a classic (that is admittedly near and dear to my heart; my very first performing arts event, which I attended at the age of three and where I met my childhood sweetheart for the very first time, was a ballet of PATW) has profoundly annoying and disturbing implications.
First of all, it further distorts the already distorted image that modern man has of what wolves are really like. We're already choked with paintings and drawings of "beautiful, majestic wolves" done by Rousseauist romantic rubes who always seem to manage to make these vicious predators look like big grey versions of the family dog... which leads to lots of visitors to wild places believing that's what they are and running the risk of getting hurt... and also to a lot of idiots on the coasts and in big heartland cities siding with "those poor, pretty wolves" against humans defending themselves, their livestock and their pets.
Wolves are so often the bad guys in fairy tales and it's just not fair to them, these softheaded idiots already maintain. As though there are some wolves somewhere whose feelings are hurt every time a daddy scares a kid with "I'll huff and I'll puff..."? By the way, who gives a shit about being "fair" to them, even if their feelings are hurt? Do you think they care about our feelings? No, they act according to their natures. They are predatory pack animals, who prey on the weak and the sick and the small, and do it in nasty, bloody ways, not sporting at all. They'll wound an already ailing animal and then follow it for miles as it staggers until it collapses, then they gang up and chow down. It's what they do.
Look, wolves are not the bad guys in stories because some mean old storyteller of yore was picking on them. They were bad guys in real life first, and so inspired these stories.
But I am, I know, fighting a losing battle here. I might as well sit back, munch some popcorn, and wait around for the new "Devil-friendly" version of Gounod's Faust, in which Mephistopholes jovially presides over Faust's marriage to Marguerite.
(oh, and by the way – even changing the ending of PATW's text is never really going to work to "improve" the Wolf's image in the piece unless something is done about those powerful, menacing horns – which, if anyone ever does that, I guaran-damn-tee that I and the rest of my ex-trombone-playing posse also known as the Propeller Beanie Tenor Section will pack up and bring the perpetrator down in a way that would be the only way to actually make a wolf look merciful, noble and beautiful)
LIVE, WITHOUT A JET
Hey, I didn't think it was possible, either.
Well, that's not entirely true. I've never thought about it at all, really. And I bet none of you have, either.
Unless you're far stranger than I, I bet you've never, ever asked yourself, your dog, or your Indian Companion, hey, do you think it's possible to get jet lag without actually leaving home?
Uh huh, I thought not.
I am, however, here to tell you that in fact, it is.
To achieve it, you just need to become a freelance writer in the Mountain Time Zone, a few of whose sources are here, yes, but most of them are actually over in Central, with a scattering of those in Eastern and Pacific. No one in Newfie yet, but there's always next month.
So, for instance, right where I am sitting now, it is 11:50 a.m., MDT, and I am waiting for several sources, for several different articles (adding to the fun) for several different publications (adding more to the fun), to either call me back or just freakin' well be there when I call them back.
OK, I have to think for a minute now. The guys at Anadarko Petroleum's headquarters in Oklahoma are still away at lunch, right? But the guys at Williams Companies, also in Oklahoma, are in (but busy) right now because they lunch at 1 p.m. instead of noon. I'm also waiting to talk to a few people right here in the valley, but I can no longer remember or judge from the hurried notes I left myself when exactly I'm supposed to call.
I don't whether person A is lunching at noon or 1 p.m., whether I promised person B's secretary I'd call at 11 my time or his time.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if people behaved properly and anticipated exactly when I, more or less a complete stranger, am going to call them with impertinent questions and were at their desks at the (not) appointed hour. But no. Time and time again, I find myself entangled in about twelve games of phone tag a day.
Eventually, thank bog, it all sorts itself out, usually just in time for me to sit down and bash out the article(s) within a half hour of deadline. But still, a girl can dream.
On the other hand, as My Own Dear Personal Dad says of so many things, it beats working for a living.
Hey, I didn't think it was possible, either.
Well, that's not entirely true. I've never thought about it at all, really. And I bet none of you have, either.
Unless you're far stranger than I, I bet you've never, ever asked yourself, your dog, or your Indian Companion, hey, do you think it's possible to get jet lag without actually leaving home?
Uh huh, I thought not.
I am, however, here to tell you that in fact, it is.
To achieve it, you just need to become a freelance writer in the Mountain Time Zone, a few of whose sources are here, yes, but most of them are actually over in Central, with a scattering of those in Eastern and Pacific. No one in Newfie yet, but there's always next month.
So, for instance, right where I am sitting now, it is 11:50 a.m., MDT, and I am waiting for several sources, for several different articles (adding to the fun) for several different publications (adding more to the fun), to either call me back or just freakin' well be there when I call them back.
OK, I have to think for a minute now. The guys at Anadarko Petroleum's headquarters in Oklahoma are still away at lunch, right? But the guys at Williams Companies, also in Oklahoma, are in (but busy) right now because they lunch at 1 p.m. instead of noon. I'm also waiting to talk to a few people right here in the valley, but I can no longer remember or judge from the hurried notes I left myself when exactly I'm supposed to call.
I don't whether person A is lunching at noon or 1 p.m., whether I promised person B's secretary I'd call at 11 my time or his time.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if people behaved properly and anticipated exactly when I, more or less a complete stranger, am going to call them with impertinent questions and were at their desks at the (not) appointed hour. But no. Time and time again, I find myself entangled in about twelve games of phone tag a day.
Eventually, thank bog, it all sorts itself out, usually just in time for me to sit down and bash out the article(s) within a half hour of deadline. But still, a girl can dream.
On the other hand, as My Own Dear Personal Dad says of so many things, it beats working for a living.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
OTHER FUNNIES O' THE DAY
Oh, and it was great fun sitting next to Ambassador Tom Strook and quietly heckling the EOR panel as we waited for their standard issue crappy Dell laptop to finally get itself sorted, boot up (giggle, snort) Windows ME and interface with the overhead projector. Strook and I pointed out, for instance, that had the boys not been so very committed to being high tech and had just brought in a good old flip chart and pen, they could have done their presentation twice in the time it took for their Dell to boot up.
And Pete Illoway made lots of jokes about said laptop having the SoBig virus.
And Rep. Tom Walsh, who has exquisite taste in computer hardware, and knows that Sobig and other crap can't touch a Mac, kept pointing at the sticker on My Own Dear Personal Laptop* and giving it the thumbs up and pointing it out to his colleagues.
It's not every day I get to be a Luddite and a techsnob at the exact same moment in time.
*Which proclaims, emphatically and succinctly "My Macintosh Rules"
Oh, and it was great fun sitting next to Ambassador Tom Strook and quietly heckling the EOR panel as we waited for their standard issue crappy Dell laptop to finally get itself sorted, boot up (giggle, snort) Windows ME and interface with the overhead projector. Strook and I pointed out, for instance, that had the boys not been so very committed to being high tech and had just brought in a good old flip chart and pen, they could have done their presentation twice in the time it took for their Dell to boot up.
And Pete Illoway made lots of jokes about said laptop having the SoBig virus.
And Rep. Tom Walsh, who has exquisite taste in computer hardware, and knows that Sobig and other crap can't touch a Mac, kept pointing at the sticker on My Own Dear Personal Laptop* and giving it the thumbs up and pointing it out to his colleagues.
It's not every day I get to be a Luddite and a techsnob at the exact same moment in time.
*Which proclaims, emphatically and succinctly "My Macintosh Rules"
THERE REALLY IS ONLY ONE OF ME!
Saw this over on Reason magazine's website.
Q: How many bloggers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two -- one to change it while the other apologizes for the recent lack of illumination and explains that they've been really busy lately.
Not that I feel any real need to apologize, since I've known for years now that there's no one to whom to apologize. I know you're all just figments of my sick, egotistical, narcissistic imagination.
But even if you were real, O you imaginary readers, still I would feel no need to apologize. I really have been busy.
So busy I haven't even made it to coffee this week!
No, really!
Take today. No, take last night. Last night was when it got interesting. My editor at the Rocky Mountain Energy Reporter asked me pretty please, with sugar on top and a mileage check and a little something for my time plus my usual freelance fee(s), to go to the quarterly meeting of the Wyoming State Legislature's Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee today.
First segment relevant to my assignment would start at 8:05 a.m., sharp.
My own personal immediate economic outlook being what it was, I said, hell yeah. Might even be fun.
And it sort of was.
(Here's where my extra special imaginary friends, the Sewer King and the Rock Star, start yelling "Jesus, Kate, you really do need to get a life" at their imaginary computer screens)
First on the menu was a report from the committee making recommendations on streamlining/fixing the permitting process for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Lots of sob stories about how one heroic DEQ man has to monitor 10,000 coal bed natural gas wells and 4000 outfalls in the Powder River Basin, with an antequated and tiny lab in which to do is analytical work and gee, it's only going to get worse, because there are going to be ever so many more wells soon and maybe oughtn't we add a few staffers and buy some new testing equipment so the permit holders get the results from their compliance visit back sometime before the election returns for the first superevolved hyperintelligent pan-dimensional galaxy spanning slime mold President of the United States of America, Mars and Pluto come in?
Oh, I think I forgot to mention that, true to form, I completely failed to sleep last night because I had a road trip in the offing. Does that happen to anyone else, imaginary or real? You have to get up a few hours before your usual rise'n'shine time and you get obsessed with it, what if your alarm doesn't go off, what if you sleep through it, what if you accidentally bumped it in the night and switched the AM to PM oh hell, there goes another night's sleep worrying and oops, there's the sun, time to shower, warpaintify, gas up the car and get on the road.
Sleep deprivation. Cheaper even than wine.
But anyway, I'm digressing, because the real important thing is, the real important thing is...
Looks like the Committee members are pretty ticked at dear ol' GovDave. And I cannot, in all honesty, pretend that I don't see why that's so.
See, Dave made good this spring on some warnings he had issued regarding a little "administrative layer" created by his predecessor called the Wyoming Energy Commission. He'd been complaining about this organization ever since he announced his candidacy for governor last year. It was a waste of taxpayer money (especially the big salaries reportedly paid to commissioners). It duplicated the functions of the Wyoming Business Council's energy committee. Energy policy should actually be the governor's responsibility to set. Oh, and he wasn't sure how legal it was that it had six sitting legislators on it.
So, he basically got rid of it. It's not officially disbanded or discontinued, but since GovDave is the chair, all he has to do to more or less permanently idle it is not call any more meetings until its statutory sunset date of 2005.
That was April, or so.
Today, after a full day of plodding through the aforementioned NPDES stuff, a report on wage disparities that you heard about on Wyoming Public Radio, a report on how subsidizing ticket prices from ten Wyoming airports might induce more people to take commercial flights that originate here instead of driving to hubs like Denver or Salt Lake (but really, even if the ticket's cheap, I for one probably still would make the drive. Connections from Wyoming-originating puddle jumpers to the big carriers in real airports never, ever work, no matter how great a spinter you are. Trust me on this one. Oh wait, I forgot. You're not real)(coincidentally, that's usually what I say to the slappably patient desk ladies in Denver when I've missed a connection again because the flight outta Laramie was an hour late. I say it over and over again in the hopes that it might turn out to be true. So far, not much of a track record on this) that ran into the lunch hour, stopped momentarily, then reassembled just on the other side of lunch hour like a horror movie creature from the atomic age (Aeromoeba!), one of those nauseating reports by a state agency that shall remain nameless that consisted entirely of agency bureaucrats telling the Committee how great other agency bureaucrats are to work with and how lucky the whole damn state is that said bureaucrats have graced us with their greatness, and the Shortest Electrical Transmission Planning Briefing Maybe Ever (tm)... came...
Wait for it...
Enhanced Oil Recovery, which, like so much in energy development, is actually a lot more interesting than it sounds and, if Ambassador Strook and his crew don't lie, a potential financial bonanza for the state of Wyoming for the next ten years if we play it right.
I'm not going to load you down with details on what EOR is, exactly. Read my article next month in the Energy-Reporter. Playing it right is going to be tricky, let's just say.
Which brings us back, after a fashion, to the late, great, Wyoming Energy Commission.
After a fashion.
In my years as a redheaded stepchild of the fourth estate, I've seen legislators do a lot of things. Yawn. Roll their eyes. Fillibuster. Make origami voodoo dolls of members of the Woody family to burn later.
After GovDave's energy policy advisor, Steve Waddington, announced one of Dave's ideas for pouncing on this EOR thing, though, I braced myself for a new sight, the greatest of all, but alas one that only presented in my mind's eye.
Namely, all 13 of the Committee members present slapping their foreheads in unison.
Cuz the bit Waddington brought up that kept them all muttering, stuttering, and coming up with inventive new ways to get digs in at the mercifully absent governor sounded, well, a lot like the old Wyoming Energy Commission.
It even had two legislators, one from each house.
Difference was, it was only going to be about EOR.
Oh, no it wasn't.
Oh, yes it was.
Oh, no it wasn't.
Rep. Pete Illoway pointed out that Dave's the governor, and energy policy belongs with the governor, so he doesn't need Committee approval or participation to create his EOR glee club.
OK, Pete didn't call it a glee club. But he might have done, if he had thought of it instead of me.
Jayne Mockler and Hank Coe (Coe was on the Commission, at one point, as were Committee members Pat Childers and Dave Miller) snorted at the notion of this task force/sewing circle/cabal having legislators on it (Coe eventually made the motion to go ahead and start some kind of commission/board/cell group with the stipulation that it not include any legislators - and the motion passed unanimously).
Dave Miller said something along the lines of, hell, he's the chairman of the Energy Commission and it's mostly the same set of people we got right here, why doesn't he just reassemble that committee and get to work?
But the QOTD (Quote of the Day) award goes to Childers, the Republican House member from Cody, who said, as this came up: "If he [GovDave] is ready to bring a knife and a fork to the table, I'll feed him some crow."
D'oh!
I don't think our governor – who, let me be perfectly clear, I still totally support, and I agree with him completely on the WEC thing, incidentally – is going to live this down for a while.
Let's all hope they kiss and make up soon.
Saw this over on Reason magazine's website.
Q: How many bloggers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two -- one to change it while the other apologizes for the recent lack of illumination and explains that they've been really busy lately.
Not that I feel any real need to apologize, since I've known for years now that there's no one to whom to apologize. I know you're all just figments of my sick, egotistical, narcissistic imagination.
But even if you were real, O you imaginary readers, still I would feel no need to apologize. I really have been busy.
So busy I haven't even made it to coffee this week!
No, really!
Take today. No, take last night. Last night was when it got interesting. My editor at the Rocky Mountain Energy Reporter asked me pretty please, with sugar on top and a mileage check and a little something for my time plus my usual freelance fee(s), to go to the quarterly meeting of the Wyoming State Legislature's Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee today.
First segment relevant to my assignment would start at 8:05 a.m., sharp.
My own personal immediate economic outlook being what it was, I said, hell yeah. Might even be fun.
And it sort of was.
(Here's where my extra special imaginary friends, the Sewer King and the Rock Star, start yelling "Jesus, Kate, you really do need to get a life" at their imaginary computer screens)
First on the menu was a report from the committee making recommendations on streamlining/fixing the permitting process for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Lots of sob stories about how one heroic DEQ man has to monitor 10,000 coal bed natural gas wells and 4000 outfalls in the Powder River Basin, with an antequated and tiny lab in which to do is analytical work and gee, it's only going to get worse, because there are going to be ever so many more wells soon and maybe oughtn't we add a few staffers and buy some new testing equipment so the permit holders get the results from their compliance visit back sometime before the election returns for the first superevolved hyperintelligent pan-dimensional galaxy spanning slime mold President of the United States of America, Mars and Pluto come in?
Oh, I think I forgot to mention that, true to form, I completely failed to sleep last night because I had a road trip in the offing. Does that happen to anyone else, imaginary or real? You have to get up a few hours before your usual rise'n'shine time and you get obsessed with it, what if your alarm doesn't go off, what if you sleep through it, what if you accidentally bumped it in the night and switched the AM to PM oh hell, there goes another night's sleep worrying and oops, there's the sun, time to shower, warpaintify, gas up the car and get on the road.
Sleep deprivation. Cheaper even than wine.
But anyway, I'm digressing, because the real important thing is, the real important thing is...
Looks like the Committee members are pretty ticked at dear ol' GovDave. And I cannot, in all honesty, pretend that I don't see why that's so.
See, Dave made good this spring on some warnings he had issued regarding a little "administrative layer" created by his predecessor called the Wyoming Energy Commission. He'd been complaining about this organization ever since he announced his candidacy for governor last year. It was a waste of taxpayer money (especially the big salaries reportedly paid to commissioners). It duplicated the functions of the Wyoming Business Council's energy committee. Energy policy should actually be the governor's responsibility to set. Oh, and he wasn't sure how legal it was that it had six sitting legislators on it.
So, he basically got rid of it. It's not officially disbanded or discontinued, but since GovDave is the chair, all he has to do to more or less permanently idle it is not call any more meetings until its statutory sunset date of 2005.
That was April, or so.
Today, after a full day of plodding through the aforementioned NPDES stuff, a report on wage disparities that you heard about on Wyoming Public Radio, a report on how subsidizing ticket prices from ten Wyoming airports might induce more people to take commercial flights that originate here instead of driving to hubs like Denver or Salt Lake (but really, even if the ticket's cheap, I for one probably still would make the drive. Connections from Wyoming-originating puddle jumpers to the big carriers in real airports never, ever work, no matter how great a spinter you are. Trust me on this one. Oh wait, I forgot. You're not real)(coincidentally, that's usually what I say to the slappably patient desk ladies in Denver when I've missed a connection again because the flight outta Laramie was an hour late. I say it over and over again in the hopes that it might turn out to be true. So far, not much of a track record on this) that ran into the lunch hour, stopped momentarily, then reassembled just on the other side of lunch hour like a horror movie creature from the atomic age (Aeromoeba!), one of those nauseating reports by a state agency that shall remain nameless that consisted entirely of agency bureaucrats telling the Committee how great other agency bureaucrats are to work with and how lucky the whole damn state is that said bureaucrats have graced us with their greatness, and the Shortest Electrical Transmission Planning Briefing Maybe Ever (tm)... came...
Wait for it...
Enhanced Oil Recovery, which, like so much in energy development, is actually a lot more interesting than it sounds and, if Ambassador Strook and his crew don't lie, a potential financial bonanza for the state of Wyoming for the next ten years if we play it right.
I'm not going to load you down with details on what EOR is, exactly. Read my article next month in the Energy-Reporter. Playing it right is going to be tricky, let's just say.
Which brings us back, after a fashion, to the late, great, Wyoming Energy Commission.
After a fashion.
In my years as a redheaded stepchild of the fourth estate, I've seen legislators do a lot of things. Yawn. Roll their eyes. Fillibuster. Make origami voodoo dolls of members of the Woody family to burn later.
After GovDave's energy policy advisor, Steve Waddington, announced one of Dave's ideas for pouncing on this EOR thing, though, I braced myself for a new sight, the greatest of all, but alas one that only presented in my mind's eye.
Namely, all 13 of the Committee members present slapping their foreheads in unison.
Cuz the bit Waddington brought up that kept them all muttering, stuttering, and coming up with inventive new ways to get digs in at the mercifully absent governor sounded, well, a lot like the old Wyoming Energy Commission.
It even had two legislators, one from each house.
Difference was, it was only going to be about EOR.
Oh, no it wasn't.
Oh, yes it was.
Oh, no it wasn't.
Rep. Pete Illoway pointed out that Dave's the governor, and energy policy belongs with the governor, so he doesn't need Committee approval or participation to create his EOR glee club.
OK, Pete didn't call it a glee club. But he might have done, if he had thought of it instead of me.
Jayne Mockler and Hank Coe (Coe was on the Commission, at one point, as were Committee members Pat Childers and Dave Miller) snorted at the notion of this task force/sewing circle/cabal having legislators on it (Coe eventually made the motion to go ahead and start some kind of commission/board/cell group with the stipulation that it not include any legislators - and the motion passed unanimously).
Dave Miller said something along the lines of, hell, he's the chairman of the Energy Commission and it's mostly the same set of people we got right here, why doesn't he just reassemble that committee and get to work?
But the QOTD (Quote of the Day) award goes to Childers, the Republican House member from Cody, who said, as this came up: "If he [GovDave] is ready to bring a knife and a fork to the table, I'll feed him some crow."
D'oh!
I don't think our governor – who, let me be perfectly clear, I still totally support, and I agree with him completely on the WEC thing, incidentally – is going to live this down for a while.
Let's all hope they kiss and make up soon.
Monday, August 25, 2003
NOSE-TALGIA
Regardless of the ultimate fate of the newest/oldest business venture in Encampment, I have to publicly express my gratitude to the guys making it go.
I just toddled down to 44 Lumber & Timber, formerly the Hammer Sawmill, down there to take pictures and gather quotable quotes for an article I'm doing, and had to stop several times on my way down there to gawk and marvel at how...
...It's absolutely wonderful to come over the crest of that last hill on 230 and see a huge plume of smoke... and not worry that it's a forest fire...
...Loud and mechanical noises, while no longer a part of my own dear personal nighttime soundscape the way they were before this January, are actually deeply comforting...
...Sawdust and woodsmoke are two of the nices smells one can suck into her nose. Why don't any companies that make scented candles ever take a stab at synthesizing these somehow? Oh yeah, they're all Yankee/Boulder types. Wouldn't be very PC....
It was also a lot of fun to be around some people who have been told all over the place that they have pretty much zero chance of succeeding and are determined to pull it off anyway. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but I admire their will to try their best.
They've pulled it off so far.
And Encampment smells like home again.
Too bad home doesn't.
Regardless of the ultimate fate of the newest/oldest business venture in Encampment, I have to publicly express my gratitude to the guys making it go.
I just toddled down to 44 Lumber & Timber, formerly the Hammer Sawmill, down there to take pictures and gather quotable quotes for an article I'm doing, and had to stop several times on my way down there to gawk and marvel at how...
...It's absolutely wonderful to come over the crest of that last hill on 230 and see a huge plume of smoke... and not worry that it's a forest fire...
...Loud and mechanical noises, while no longer a part of my own dear personal nighttime soundscape the way they were before this January, are actually deeply comforting...
...Sawdust and woodsmoke are two of the nices smells one can suck into her nose. Why don't any companies that make scented candles ever take a stab at synthesizing these somehow? Oh yeah, they're all Yankee/Boulder types. Wouldn't be very PC....
It was also a lot of fun to be around some people who have been told all over the place that they have pretty much zero chance of succeeding and are determined to pull it off anyway. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but I admire their will to try their best.
They've pulled it off so far.
And Encampment smells like home again.
Too bad home doesn't.
Sunday, August 24, 2003
SICK!
I'm wondering if maybe a disproportionate number of my readers out there have not been keeping up with their antivirus software?
I just checked my yahoo email address to which this page links where it says "Email me, dammit!" and there were over 200 messages that were obviously versions of the SoBig virus, at least judging from the subject lines, which included all of the classics... Wicked Screensaver, That movie, Thank You... all with attachments, of course.
So to all of you out there in LIANTland who found themselves infected, my condolences.
Just another reason to make the switch to Macs.
No one writes viruses for Macintosh.
MY MACINTOSH RULES!
I'm wondering if maybe a disproportionate number of my readers out there have not been keeping up with their antivirus software?
I just checked my yahoo email address to which this page links where it says "Email me, dammit!" and there were over 200 messages that were obviously versions of the SoBig virus, at least judging from the subject lines, which included all of the classics... Wicked Screensaver, That movie, Thank You... all with attachments, of course.
So to all of you out there in LIANTland who found themselves infected, my condolences.
Just another reason to make the switch to Macs.
No one writes viruses for Macintosh.
MY MACINTOSH RULES!
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
THIS IS JUST WRONG
Coffee narratives the last few days have been kind of overwhelmingly icky, even for us.
I was fully expecting a small share of animal mishap/scatology/gross injury/whatever narratives from our Fat Cat Republican Banker, newly returned from several weeks' chasing his children's 4-H beasties around the county and then the state fairs...
But we've had hardly a word about those.
Instead, the FCRB has been regaling us with something truly nasty.
Saratoga has long been host to a particularly colorful husband and wife (?) team of "predator control" specialists, who have moonlighted as everything from motel managers to ministerial moochers, and have left truly bizarre and rather disgusting souvenirs of their tenures at each all over their wake. Thus when they ran a small local motel, one room was used, apparently, for butchering coyotes and left appropriately furry, bloody, smelly, etc. for enough time to where I believe their former employer won some sort of judgment against them after he finally dismissed them from his service.
To make a long story short, the FCRB is deeply, up to his elbows and eyeballs and poor, assaulted nostrils, involved in repossession proceedings against them, and is currently sorting through the contents of their rental storage shed, which happens to be owned by yet another of our coffee crew, the Lord Macklebrains (who is still at a loss as to how he's going to clean/disinfect/destroy the facility after FCRB has emptied it).
(Of course, slightly mollifying the LM: the shed is so completely crammed that the FCRB has found it necessary to rent an additional shed in which to sort through it all. Money helps, money helps...)
But that ain't the problem.
The FCRB is a tall and rather dapper man (when he can be talked out of wearing certain excreble, elementary school teacher-caliber ties, anyway), urbane in a redneck-y sort of way, takes a joke well, can laugh at himself... in other words, pretty much the last guy on whom I would ever wish the following:
The material with which the shed is crammed is, with the exception of a large and possibly valuable collection of like new animal traps, entirely of a highly perishable and/or flavorfully biological nature. A few furs, yes, but mostly claws, guts, buckets of bait, sealed containers of rancid coyote urine.
He and his young colleague (whom he hired to replace the individual who originally approved extending credit to the PCP [predator control pair]) have been sorting through this for at least the last few days, doggedly determined to fetch what prices they can for this in the hopes of recouping at least something for the bank – gagging and retching and googling (in the pre-internet sense) all the way.
And from the sound of it they're a long way from being finished.
And yes, they're pretty grossed out.
And yes, they feel better if they share.
I suspect I can file this, too, under things that don't happen in Chicago...
Coffee narratives the last few days have been kind of overwhelmingly icky, even for us.
I was fully expecting a small share of animal mishap/scatology/gross injury/whatever narratives from our Fat Cat Republican Banker, newly returned from several weeks' chasing his children's 4-H beasties around the county and then the state fairs...
But we've had hardly a word about those.
Instead, the FCRB has been regaling us with something truly nasty.
Saratoga has long been host to a particularly colorful husband and wife (?) team of "predator control" specialists, who have moonlighted as everything from motel managers to ministerial moochers, and have left truly bizarre and rather disgusting souvenirs of their tenures at each all over their wake. Thus when they ran a small local motel, one room was used, apparently, for butchering coyotes and left appropriately furry, bloody, smelly, etc. for enough time to where I believe their former employer won some sort of judgment against them after he finally dismissed them from his service.
To make a long story short, the FCRB is deeply, up to his elbows and eyeballs and poor, assaulted nostrils, involved in repossession proceedings against them, and is currently sorting through the contents of their rental storage shed, which happens to be owned by yet another of our coffee crew, the Lord Macklebrains (who is still at a loss as to how he's going to clean/disinfect/destroy the facility after FCRB has emptied it).
(Of course, slightly mollifying the LM: the shed is so completely crammed that the FCRB has found it necessary to rent an additional shed in which to sort through it all. Money helps, money helps...)
But that ain't the problem.
The FCRB is a tall and rather dapper man (when he can be talked out of wearing certain excreble, elementary school teacher-caliber ties, anyway), urbane in a redneck-y sort of way, takes a joke well, can laugh at himself... in other words, pretty much the last guy on whom I would ever wish the following:
The material with which the shed is crammed is, with the exception of a large and possibly valuable collection of like new animal traps, entirely of a highly perishable and/or flavorfully biological nature. A few furs, yes, but mostly claws, guts, buckets of bait, sealed containers of rancid coyote urine.
He and his young colleague (whom he hired to replace the individual who originally approved extending credit to the PCP [predator control pair]) have been sorting through this for at least the last few days, doggedly determined to fetch what prices they can for this in the hopes of recouping at least something for the bank – gagging and retching and googling (in the pre-internet sense) all the way.
And from the sound of it they're a long way from being finished.
And yes, they're pretty grossed out.
And yes, they feel better if they share.
I suspect I can file this, too, under things that don't happen in Chicago...
Friday, August 15, 2003
MOLLY DOLLY DOO
I've decided that whoever it was who created Scooby Doo must have really had a dog who acted like that.
It used to seem impossible to me, this proposition, but then I took Molly the Collie of Folly on her first extended camping trip.
We just returned from same this afternoon and she made a rapid, furniture disarranging, blurry black beeline from the front door to her little hidey hole in the closet, and hasn't even come out for a Milk Bone Marrow Snack, to give you an idea.
We've been together a little over a year now, this intrepid border collie and I, and so I was well aware of her fear of thunderstorms – many dogs are afraid of thunder, I'm always told – and I had noticed she's not too fond of gunfire, either, after one fall day last year during our morning constitutional around Saratoga Lake when a few folks sighting in their rifles at the nearby gun club reduced her to a mass of quivering, skulking jelly.
And while she manifests the usual dog's delight and eagerness at the sight of other dogs, one whiff, two at the most, of the other's tail, and she cowers and cries.
That's all stuff I've gotten used to.
This week, though, she also manifested as frightened of: four-wheelers, hummingbirds, dragonflies and, at one point, seed pods bouncing around at the ends of tall blades of grass.
During Tuesday night's moderately satisfying rainstorm, which had only a little thunder, the poor creature nearly tore down my tent trying to get inside to hide – while she had made under the motorhome her preferred haunt overall, I suppose same magnified the booming noises. She stayed in there all night, cowering in a corner, having managed to smoosh herself in under my cot (only about 7" off the ground, mind you) and into the smallest possible space – and forcing me to throw my bedding on the ground, as I wasn't about to smoosh me on top of her.
And even the next morning, when the sun beating down on the tent finally made its presence known (about 9 a.m. – no dummy, me, I put the tent up in the shade) by raising the interior temperature to that required to nicely burn a Tombstone pizza, as I unzipped the tent flap fully expecting her to bound out and head for the creek for her morning dip... she continued to cower.
Finally My Own Dear Personal Mom and I managed to coax her out, but she stuck very close by me for several hours in the morning sun, obviously dying to dip in the creek, but afraid to stray at all until finally I escorted her the forty paces or so to the water and went in with her.
Then all was well. Whooppie, mom, where in the great outdoors! Watch me run and bound and sniff and snuffle and roll in the burrs and drag long pieces of raspberry cane out of thickets for you to gingerly pluck out of my fur! I am Camping Dog, watch me go!
Oh crap, there's another hummingbird. Ah! Ah! Mommy, don't let it hurt me, whimper whimper whimper, and dive back under that motorhome that is the only shelter except oh, ah, it's moving why is it moving (MODPD performing the abbreviated camping version of morning ablutions, is all, but try explaining that to a terrified border collie)? Aaaaahhhh! Make for the tent, burrow under it if necessary, eeeeeeeeek! All that was left for her to do was, say, jump up into my arms like her cartoon avatar... but she'd been overindulging in camping leftovers for a few days and so was not doing too well in the jumping department...
Then MODPD emerged, said, simply "Hi, Molly" the way he always does and all was well. Tail wag, play position, romp around, shakin' her whole butt with joy...
(The irony here is that when I first adopted this silly black beast, she would not come out from under the couch at the chamber office to meet him when he stopped by. He went home and grumbled to my mom "That dog and me are never going to be friends." Within a month, of course, he was her favorite thing on two legs. Only one other person gets that special butt-shakin' greeting, and that's the Sewer King, who takes us cross country skiing).
So, while this is of course Steinley Cup Weekend, it's also going to be a weekend of intensive and emotional therapy for the C of F, as we're due to head back up the mountain on Monday.
Wish me luck.
I've decided that whoever it was who created Scooby Doo must have really had a dog who acted like that.
It used to seem impossible to me, this proposition, but then I took Molly the Collie of Folly on her first extended camping trip.
We just returned from same this afternoon and she made a rapid, furniture disarranging, blurry black beeline from the front door to her little hidey hole in the closet, and hasn't even come out for a Milk Bone Marrow Snack, to give you an idea.
We've been together a little over a year now, this intrepid border collie and I, and so I was well aware of her fear of thunderstorms – many dogs are afraid of thunder, I'm always told – and I had noticed she's not too fond of gunfire, either, after one fall day last year during our morning constitutional around Saratoga Lake when a few folks sighting in their rifles at the nearby gun club reduced her to a mass of quivering, skulking jelly.
And while she manifests the usual dog's delight and eagerness at the sight of other dogs, one whiff, two at the most, of the other's tail, and she cowers and cries.
That's all stuff I've gotten used to.
This week, though, she also manifested as frightened of: four-wheelers, hummingbirds, dragonflies and, at one point, seed pods bouncing around at the ends of tall blades of grass.
During Tuesday night's moderately satisfying rainstorm, which had only a little thunder, the poor creature nearly tore down my tent trying to get inside to hide – while she had made under the motorhome her preferred haunt overall, I suppose same magnified the booming noises. She stayed in there all night, cowering in a corner, having managed to smoosh herself in under my cot (only about 7" off the ground, mind you) and into the smallest possible space – and forcing me to throw my bedding on the ground, as I wasn't about to smoosh me on top of her.
And even the next morning, when the sun beating down on the tent finally made its presence known (about 9 a.m. – no dummy, me, I put the tent up in the shade) by raising the interior temperature to that required to nicely burn a Tombstone pizza, as I unzipped the tent flap fully expecting her to bound out and head for the creek for her morning dip... she continued to cower.
Finally My Own Dear Personal Mom and I managed to coax her out, but she stuck very close by me for several hours in the morning sun, obviously dying to dip in the creek, but afraid to stray at all until finally I escorted her the forty paces or so to the water and went in with her.
Then all was well. Whooppie, mom, where in the great outdoors! Watch me run and bound and sniff and snuffle and roll in the burrs and drag long pieces of raspberry cane out of thickets for you to gingerly pluck out of my fur! I am Camping Dog, watch me go!
Oh crap, there's another hummingbird. Ah! Ah! Mommy, don't let it hurt me, whimper whimper whimper, and dive back under that motorhome that is the only shelter except oh, ah, it's moving why is it moving (MODPD performing the abbreviated camping version of morning ablutions, is all, but try explaining that to a terrified border collie)? Aaaaahhhh! Make for the tent, burrow under it if necessary, eeeeeeeeek! All that was left for her to do was, say, jump up into my arms like her cartoon avatar... but she'd been overindulging in camping leftovers for a few days and so was not doing too well in the jumping department...
Then MODPD emerged, said, simply "Hi, Molly" the way he always does and all was well. Tail wag, play position, romp around, shakin' her whole butt with joy...
(The irony here is that when I first adopted this silly black beast, she would not come out from under the couch at the chamber office to meet him when he stopped by. He went home and grumbled to my mom "That dog and me are never going to be friends." Within a month, of course, he was her favorite thing on two legs. Only one other person gets that special butt-shakin' greeting, and that's the Sewer King, who takes us cross country skiing).
So, while this is of course Steinley Cup Weekend, it's also going to be a weekend of intensive and emotional therapy for the C of F, as we're due to head back up the mountain on Monday.
Wish me luck.
Sunday, August 10, 2003
AT LONG LAST, A THEME...
I had originally thought that this summer would be all about me and the Rock Star (she who takes the most unique rocks known to man and makes of them the most elegant jewelry known to woman) givin' the boys hell at coffee, but since she is wholly occupied in helping out Saratoga's own dear personal fashionista instead, what it's actually all about is pretty well summed up by a 2NU song called "The Submarine."
One night I found a bunch of empty beer cans in my backyard
And decided to build a submarine.
SNIP
I'd need a periscope
One change of party clothes
And my own mysterious little language.
"Every explorer needs a quest... mine was to find the coolest place in the world..." the song continues...
Well, the fact is, I have of course found the coolest place in the world and it is, in fact, the backyard at Kate's Landing, home of the Summer of Cheap Beer and Chess, so designated by Your Humble Blogger and the Punk Martha Stewart herself because, well, that's what we do whilst ducking the attentions of brown myotis bats and watching the kestrels fly and yes, drinking cheap beer and yes, playing chess.
Very, very badly.
Chess occupies rather a unique niche in my lack of nostalgia for my childhood. I learnt the game at the age of around seven, and was, for a seven year old, frighteningly good at it, to a degree to which I quickly ran out of opponents here in Saratoga. Not a lot of folks enjoy losing to a preternaturally obnoxious and arrogant second grader, and as such it was difficult to encourage same to try for a rematch, even against my obvious and craven tactics (largely dependent on sending a rook early into the enemy's back ranks to wreak wholly predictable havoc on said ranks until the king is in check and my rook goes where the woodbine twineth). Soon I was forced to give up the game altogether, and by age eight I was already referring somewhat nostalgically to my good old chess playing days.
My only association with the game since then has been an overwhelming fascination with the Broadway musical devoted to the game and composed and written by those wacky two boys from ABBA, Benny Anderssson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. I particularly like the part of the semi-dangerous Russian official in same, with the deep, deep voice and the hilariously overdone accent, which part I know by heart and can sing with (in PMS' opinion) uncanny accuracy... but of course I digress...
Cut to this summer of 2003, when PMS' and my good friend Juan Ponce-de-Leon shows up at Kate's Landing with a chessboard in one hand and a plea for cheap beer in the other.
By the light of citronella torches and a single dim citronella candle, I soon got my ass handed to me on a shitty tin plate.
I still play like an eight-year-old.
And not being able to see the black pieces in the blackness doesn't help, either.
But I am now resolved to make sure this and subsequent other humiliating experiences are not experienced in vain.
This is the summer of Cheap Beer and Chess. Keystone Light by the 30-pack, and chess until we drop.
So far, PMS and I are 2-0, largely because I posess a smidgeon greater talent at completely committing third-grade caliber carnage on her rooks and bishops from across the board, and then taking out her queen in a hideously craven move that would only work against someone whose body is exactly as aslosh in Keystone Light as I am.
Sad but true: our first game for tonight, for instance, ended with me having not one but TWO queens and her having... a king... and we finally just decided to knock it off because it was getting boring, my chasing her around the board and all.
A proper chess player could have wiped her up without ceremony or prejudice with two queens to her one king.
I am not a proper chess player.
Perhaps I should build a submarine instead.
I had originally thought that this summer would be all about me and the Rock Star (she who takes the most unique rocks known to man and makes of them the most elegant jewelry known to woman) givin' the boys hell at coffee, but since she is wholly occupied in helping out Saratoga's own dear personal fashionista instead, what it's actually all about is pretty well summed up by a 2NU song called "The Submarine."
One night I found a bunch of empty beer cans in my backyard
And decided to build a submarine.
SNIP
I'd need a periscope
One change of party clothes
And my own mysterious little language.
"Every explorer needs a quest... mine was to find the coolest place in the world..." the song continues...
Well, the fact is, I have of course found the coolest place in the world and it is, in fact, the backyard at Kate's Landing, home of the Summer of Cheap Beer and Chess, so designated by Your Humble Blogger and the Punk Martha Stewart herself because, well, that's what we do whilst ducking the attentions of brown myotis bats and watching the kestrels fly and yes, drinking cheap beer and yes, playing chess.
Very, very badly.
Chess occupies rather a unique niche in my lack of nostalgia for my childhood. I learnt the game at the age of around seven, and was, for a seven year old, frighteningly good at it, to a degree to which I quickly ran out of opponents here in Saratoga. Not a lot of folks enjoy losing to a preternaturally obnoxious and arrogant second grader, and as such it was difficult to encourage same to try for a rematch, even against my obvious and craven tactics (largely dependent on sending a rook early into the enemy's back ranks to wreak wholly predictable havoc on said ranks until the king is in check and my rook goes where the woodbine twineth). Soon I was forced to give up the game altogether, and by age eight I was already referring somewhat nostalgically to my good old chess playing days.
My only association with the game since then has been an overwhelming fascination with the Broadway musical devoted to the game and composed and written by those wacky two boys from ABBA, Benny Anderssson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. I particularly like the part of the semi-dangerous Russian official in same, with the deep, deep voice and the hilariously overdone accent, which part I know by heart and can sing with (in PMS' opinion) uncanny accuracy... but of course I digress...
Cut to this summer of 2003, when PMS' and my good friend Juan Ponce-de-Leon shows up at Kate's Landing with a chessboard in one hand and a plea for cheap beer in the other.
By the light of citronella torches and a single dim citronella candle, I soon got my ass handed to me on a shitty tin plate.
I still play like an eight-year-old.
And not being able to see the black pieces in the blackness doesn't help, either.
But I am now resolved to make sure this and subsequent other humiliating experiences are not experienced in vain.
This is the summer of Cheap Beer and Chess. Keystone Light by the 30-pack, and chess until we drop.
So far, PMS and I are 2-0, largely because I posess a smidgeon greater talent at completely committing third-grade caliber carnage on her rooks and bishops from across the board, and then taking out her queen in a hideously craven move that would only work against someone whose body is exactly as aslosh in Keystone Light as I am.
Sad but true: our first game for tonight, for instance, ended with me having not one but TWO queens and her having... a king... and we finally just decided to knock it off because it was getting boring, my chasing her around the board and all.
A proper chess player could have wiped her up without ceremony or prejudice with two queens to her one king.
I am not a proper chess player.
Perhaps I should build a submarine instead.
Saturday, August 09, 2003
I'M STILL MODERATELY OBSESSED...
...With the idea of completely messing with the ads that appear in the bar section of this here web page because YHB, complete hobo that she is, is too cheap to actually pay for hosting for this here page.
So, I'm open to suggestions for the best way to screw with the system that one day has COIN DEALERS sponsoring my page and the next day feeder systems based on vocabulary words that appear in the text of my posts.
I'm wondering what kind of ads would appear if I stopped writing about anything but Paracelsus.
Ideas? E-mail me using the handy dandy "Email me, dammit" link on this here page.
...With the idea of completely messing with the ads that appear in the bar section of this here web page because YHB, complete hobo that she is, is too cheap to actually pay for hosting for this here page.
So, I'm open to suggestions for the best way to screw with the system that one day has COIN DEALERS sponsoring my page and the next day feeder systems based on vocabulary words that appear in the text of my posts.
I'm wondering what kind of ads would appear if I stopped writing about anything but Paracelsus.
Ideas? E-mail me using the handy dandy "Email me, dammit" link on this here page.
Friday, August 08, 2003
GUESS I'LL BE HOUSE-HUNTING SOON...
The Unabomber wants his stuff back.
Actually, this particular archive, brought to us by The Smoking Gun, is damned interesting. And a little spooky, personally, for Your Humble Blogger. Among the documents you can access from that main link are an eight-page list of his books that were seized. Our libraries are similar, to the point where we have 32 volumes directly in common (meaning the same book in and of itself, outside of "collected works" or other kinds of overlap. If, for instance, we match up my Collected Works of Shakespeare with his individual copies of a few plays, the correlation gets much closer), including some pretty obscure books that I'd always wondered if anyone else in the world had ever heard of like Why Lenin? Why Stalin?.
What sets us apart is that, well, I don't have any bomb-making materials in my shack (unless you count the contents of my sink if I've let the dishwashing go for a few days) (I had to say that before MODPM did), and, well, I do have a computer. And electricity. And, new this summer, a phone line.
But really... we're both fans of Juvenal, of Thomas Hardy, of Joseph Conrad, of Tacitus and Plutarch and Livy, of foreign languages...
Too bad no one ever handed this guy some volumes of Philip K. Dick so that he could see the logical conclusion of his weird paranoias lived out in fiction instead of real life.
Or just let him watch the ducks and the caddisflies and the brown myotis flying free of a midsummer evening.
Or elected him to public office.
Heh.
The Unabomber wants his stuff back.
Actually, this particular archive, brought to us by The Smoking Gun, is damned interesting. And a little spooky, personally, for Your Humble Blogger. Among the documents you can access from that main link are an eight-page list of his books that were seized. Our libraries are similar, to the point where we have 32 volumes directly in common (meaning the same book in and of itself, outside of "collected works" or other kinds of overlap. If, for instance, we match up my Collected Works of Shakespeare with his individual copies of a few plays, the correlation gets much closer), including some pretty obscure books that I'd always wondered if anyone else in the world had ever heard of like Why Lenin? Why Stalin?.
What sets us apart is that, well, I don't have any bomb-making materials in my shack (unless you count the contents of my sink if I've let the dishwashing go for a few days) (I had to say that before MODPM did), and, well, I do have a computer. And electricity. And, new this summer, a phone line.
But really... we're both fans of Juvenal, of Thomas Hardy, of Joseph Conrad, of Tacitus and Plutarch and Livy, of foreign languages...
Too bad no one ever handed this guy some volumes of Philip K. Dick so that he could see the logical conclusion of his weird paranoias lived out in fiction instead of real life.
Or just let him watch the ducks and the caddisflies and the brown myotis flying free of a midsummer evening.
Or elected him to public office.
Heh.
Thursday, August 07, 2003
OH, THAT EXPLAINS IT
On the same day that I wound up pulling an all-nighter trying to rescue my beloved iBook from oblivion (it completely lost the operating system), and only finally succeeded at about 9:30 a.m. after having finally resigned myself to losing the text of all three of the novels I've been working on, all my digital music files, etc. (in other words, all my data as I restored from the restore disks) I finally tried the last ditch effort of just using the upgrade disk that upgrades the OS from 9.1 to 9.2 and it worked! Everything worked, no data lost, etc, but my day completely ruined by no sleep and periodic panic attacks...
I learned the following.
Al Gore is now on Apple's Board of Directors..
Follow the link if you don't believe me.
This explains everything.
On the same day that I wound up pulling an all-nighter trying to rescue my beloved iBook from oblivion (it completely lost the operating system), and only finally succeeded at about 9:30 a.m. after having finally resigned myself to losing the text of all three of the novels I've been working on, all my digital music files, etc. (in other words, all my data as I restored from the restore disks) I finally tried the last ditch effort of just using the upgrade disk that upgrades the OS from 9.1 to 9.2 and it worked! Everything worked, no data lost, etc, but my day completely ruined by no sleep and periodic panic attacks...
I learned the following.
Al Gore is now on Apple's Board of Directors..
Follow the link if you don't believe me.
This explains everything.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
JUST A GENTLE REMINDER
That dumb things happen all over the place, and not just here.
A clerk at a comic books store in Dallas has been fined $4000 and sentenced to a term on probation for selling an adult comic to an adult "undercover agent" (what exactly was he trying to uncover?) from the adult section of a big comic book store.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied the man's appeal (effort funded by the wholly laudable Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, so he's stuck.
Full story here.
Because everyone knows that all comic books are actually intended for kids.
Yeah, right. Maus, in which a Holocaust survivor tells his gruesome story to his grandson, was certainly meant for little kids, as was, say, Safe Area Gorazde which details Joe Sacco's real life adventures in the middle of all of the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.
WTF?
That dumb things happen all over the place, and not just here.
A clerk at a comic books store in Dallas has been fined $4000 and sentenced to a term on probation for selling an adult comic to an adult "undercover agent" (what exactly was he trying to uncover?) from the adult section of a big comic book store.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied the man's appeal (effort funded by the wholly laudable Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, so he's stuck.
Full story here.
Because everyone knows that all comic books are actually intended for kids.
Yeah, right. Maus, in which a Holocaust survivor tells his gruesome story to his grandson, was certainly meant for little kids, as was, say, Safe Area Gorazde which details Joe Sacco's real life adventures in the middle of all of the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.
WTF?
Monday, August 04, 2003
IN CASE ANYONE'S WONDERING...
Here are the results from last month's little poll on what to do about the deer problem.
A total of 56 unique Saratoga residents* signed at least one of the four forms; not all indicated an opinion on all four, however, so the numbers which follow reflect only those registering opinions on each issue.
HOUSE WATCH - 39 total signatures; 8 YES, 31 NO
TALLER FENCES - 49 total signatures; 39 YES, 10 NO
FEEDING BAN - 47 total signatures, 38 YES, 9 NO
TRAPPING/REMOVAL - 42 total signatures, 14 YES, 28 NO
Pretty much what I was expecting, except I am moderately surprised at how many people seem to want to have little misfired darts full of poisonous tranquilizer flying about the village.
And of course, not a single one of the town's known deer feeders bothered to come down to town hall and register an opinion, though I see the brother, nephew, niece-in-law, step-great-niece, and sister-in-law of one feeder all did come out against the feeding ban.
Tomorrow night we may discuss these results at the council meeting. It's on the agenda anyway. 6 p.m., Saratoga Town Hall. Be there or shuddapuhboutit.
Here are the results from last month's little poll on what to do about the deer problem.
A total of 56 unique Saratoga residents* signed at least one of the four forms; not all indicated an opinion on all four, however, so the numbers which follow reflect only those registering opinions on each issue.
HOUSE WATCH - 39 total signatures; 8 YES, 31 NO
TALLER FENCES - 49 total signatures; 39 YES, 10 NO
FEEDING BAN - 47 total signatures, 38 YES, 9 NO
TRAPPING/REMOVAL - 42 total signatures, 14 YES, 28 NO
Pretty much what I was expecting, except I am moderately surprised at how many people seem to want to have little misfired darts full of poisonous tranquilizer flying about the village.
And of course, not a single one of the town's known deer feeders bothered to come down to town hall and register an opinion, though I see the brother, nephew, niece-in-law, step-great-niece, and sister-in-law of one feeder all did come out against the feeding ban.
Tomorrow night we may discuss these results at the council meeting. It's on the agenda anyway. 6 p.m., Saratoga Town Hall. Be there or shuddapuhboutit.
Friday, August 01, 2003
HE'D HORN A KESTREL!!
SO I just discovered the Internet Anagram Server and confirmed that my name (my actual given name, Kathleen Sherrod, not the nickname of Kate) is an anagram of NOR A THRESHED ELK as well as LETS HONK A HERDER, HE'D HORN A KESTREL, A HELD THORN REEKS and much, much more.
Using my common, ordinary, YHB name, I get (among others): A HORDE TREKS, A HERD STROKER, ADHERE STORK, HEAD STROKER (!), HE'S ROT RAKED (Scooby Doospeak for "he's wearing clothes"), DARKEST HERO (hey, I really like that one!), OH DEAR TREKS, HE'S OK RETARD, TREAD KOSHER (!)... the list goes on and on and on, and I've just picked the ones I think are funny.
So, when a horde treks a herd stroker, tread kosher.
-- Your DARKEST HERO
SO I just discovered the Internet Anagram Server and confirmed that my name (my actual given name, Kathleen Sherrod, not the nickname of Kate) is an anagram of NOR A THRESHED ELK as well as LETS HONK A HERDER, HE'D HORN A KESTREL, A HELD THORN REEKS and much, much more.
Using my common, ordinary, YHB name, I get (among others): A HORDE TREKS, A HERD STROKER, ADHERE STORK, HEAD STROKER (!), HE'S ROT RAKED (Scooby Doospeak for "he's wearing clothes"), DARKEST HERO (hey, I really like that one!), OH DEAR TREKS, HE'S OK RETARD, TREAD KOSHER (!)... the list goes on and on and on, and I've just picked the ones I think are funny.
So, when a horde treks a herd stroker, tread kosher.
-- Your DARKEST HERO
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