There are certain people in the world who simply should not be left to their own devices out of doors or in the company of cows. I, as it happens, am one.
Recently, I entered into possession of an eight-foot aluminum johnboat. It’s hoary and dented and kind of crappy, but with its flat bottom and light weight, it’s the perfect vehicle for plying the winding, narrow, tree-limb-strewn waters of my favorite fishing hole. It’s major problem was that several hull rivets had become loose, allowing a completely unacceptable amount of water to gurgle in for a frolic. I asked around for advice on stemming the unwanted flow, and the consensus among people who are smarter about such things than I am was marine caulk; just put a dollop on top of each faulty rivet, let it cure, and see what happens. So, a few days ago, I performed the dolloping, and yesterday it was time for the maiden voyage of the newly refurbished good ship Lookslikeshit.
Now, I didn’t just shove the boat in the water and hop aboard, which, in light of what happened later, represents one of my few acts of good judgment. Instead, I dragged the boat to a level bit of shoreline, scooped water from the lake with an empty coffee can, and poured it in. A few short minutes monitoring, and…hey look at that! No leaks. Cool.
A quick word about the shoreline of this little lake. At the end where I was effecting repairs on the boat, the water is very shallow; the ground sloping gently downward from the bank for maybe fifteen feet before it drops off into deeper water. It’s also very muddy and peppered with hoof prints made by cattle coming down to the pond for a restorative slurp. A few hundred yards to the south the banks narrow into a sort of canyon, the remains of a very old creek. Here the bank has a steeper incline and the is water deeper, making it easier, I reasoned, to enter and exit the boat without getting overly cozy with the muddy bottom (it’s all thick and squelchy; that black muck that invades your skull with an entire battalion of hideous scents, and clings to your shoes like a frightened first-grader). So my plan was to schlep the boat down to the narrows, and set sail from there. Preparatory to the schlepping, I took my fishing pole and a small box of lures down to the presumptive embarkation point, and deposited them on the bank (the rest of my tackle I left in the repair area), so as not to be encumbered with too much stuff.
I lifted the Lookslikeshit and stared along the shore, not looking forward to the trip at all. And hindsight tells me that it was right about here that the day started going all sideways.
Hmmmm, I thought (or something to that effect). If I drag the boat down there across the uneven ground, I run the risk of ruining the work I did on the rivets, and if I flip the boat upside down it’s gonna bounce and rattle the whole way and I could damage the stern and who knows what else. With some rope, I could have floated the thing along, pulling it behind while I walked the along bank, but I didn’t have any rope. Better, I thought (or something to that effect) to just hop aboard right here and paddle down to where the banks narrow. And hey, if all went according to my mental blueprint, I would be able to grab my pole and get right to pestering the fish.
Now, in addition to rope, something else I didn’t have, I should mention at this point, was a paddle. (You can go ahead and wipe that smirk off your face right now.) But my six months of Boy Scout training kicked in, and I located a suitable substitute in the form of a thickish stick, about three feet long, with which I figured to row/pole my way through the shallows. So, feeling pleased with my ingenuity, and altogether the rugged man of action, I stepped carefully aboard the Lookslikeshit.
She wobbled freely from side to side, and my forward momentum pushed her away from the bank, the overall effect being that of a rubber duck in a Jacuzzi. Feeling almost completely at the mercy of the fickle laws of physics, I quickly sat down on the boat’s sternward bench and waited for things to stabilize.
There are all sorts of good reasons why you paddle a boat with a paddle and not with a thickish stick, the most basic of which is that thickish sticks, while thickish, are not so thick as paddles, rendering your progress rather slow. A particularly sluggish glacier would’ve moved at a friskier pace, but with some effort I managed to bob along in a positive direction.
Two calves wandered down to the water, presumably because they were thirsty, but all they did was look at me in that bovine way they have, until I got too close, startling them, and they ran back up the hill to the safety of their mothers. A small turtle poked its head up and gave me the ol’ reptilian once-over. (I can’t say for certain if it was the sociopathic beast that had plagued me in the past, but I wouldn’t be surprised.) Looking over the side of the boat I saw a happy sight; a small school of inch-long bass fingerlings. I’d been worried that the superabundance of turtles in the pond had been wrecking havoc with the yearly fish hatch, but at least this few had made it. A good omen for the future. If, of course, their cousins didn’t dine on them between times.
In any event, about ten minutes after setting sail I alit at my destination, pleased enough with the experience to take a crack at some actual fishing. But first I had to retrieve my gear. With a minimum of splashing and flailing, I maneuvered the Lookslikeshitaround and ran the stern (where I was sitting) toward the bank. It is in the nature of boats that they don’t really take to remaining stationary, and every time I went to stand up, this one skittled backward into deeper water. Three times this happened before I hit on the idea to jab my thickish stick into the bottom as a makeshift anchor. It worked well, until I had to let go of it to stand, at which point the boat and I once again went rocking and rolling off into deeper water in a funky sort of spin.
OK, I thought (or something to that effect), here’s what to do. Use the stick as a pole, build up some steam, and really plant the stern in the shallows. Then I can hop out before it can run off again.
You can’t really build up any decent momentum with a three-foot stick, thickish or otherwise, but I gave it a serious go. The stern oozed up into the mud and achieved a tentative brand of stasis. I lurched onto my knees, one hand on the port side of the boat and the other on the stick, and heaved myself upward and forward toward dry ground.
Two things happened at this point, and they got together and resulted in a third, larger thing.
The first thing was, the Lookslikeshit left the mud behind in a rush, aiming merrily for open seas, and the second thing was that the stick, with my weight pressing down on it, sank deeper into the mud and abruptly tilted sideways away from the boat. I tried to wrestle with the boat’s sudden violent motion, but I grossly overcompensated and—here’s the third, larger thing—flipped the boat upside down. And what’s really funny is that, as I spilled into the water, I yelled “Here we GO!”
I came up spluttering, with moss in my hair, but somehow with my sunglasses still firmly astride my face. Planting my feet on the bottom, I stood up in about four feet of water, which suddenly became five feet of water when I sank to the middle of my shins in goo. A few feet away, the Lookslikeshit was three-quarters of the way submerged, and striving with all its might to go all the way under. Hauling my feet from the muck, I grabbed the last remaining bit of metal still showing and dragged the boat ashore, where I heaved the traitorous vessel onto its starboard side and leaned it against a cottonwood stump to drain and dry.
Standing there dripping and spitting pond water, I was glad I had left my tackle behind. I don’t know if I could’ve faced, at that moment, having to go for a snorkel to retrieve my stuff. I wasn’t at all glad, however, to discover a few of the things I had brought along for the ride: my car remote, my wallet, my cigarettes, my Zippo, and my cell phone, all of which were now thoroughly water-logged. I began spreading these items out on a log in the sun, but stopped when I heard a noise from the high wall of the creek bed about twenty feet above.
Looking down at me, in perfectly symmetrical attitudes, were nine cows. About half of the group were calves. In so far as you can read a cow’s body language, I felt that these found my antics quite bemusing. “Hey down there,” they seemed to be saying. “Whatcha doin’? Looks all sortsa stoopid to us.”
A guy’s outlook is not improved in any way when he finds that he is viewed as an object of derision by cows.
“Go away,” I said. “Take a hike.” They steadfastly refused to hike, so I called them some rude names like Big Mac and Veal-on-the-Hoof. They still wouldn’t scram, but having zinged them with my wit and proven my intellectual superiority, I felt better.
The cows continued their observations as I continued laying out the contents of my pockets on the log; phone, bits of soggy paper from my wallet, etc. I blew the excess moisture from my Zippo, located the least sodden of my cigarettes, put fire to it, and inhaled several lungsful of pond-water-flavored tobacco. (Not all I had hoped from the experience, but in such circumstances we take what we are given.) Then I sat in the grass, kicked off my muddy tennies, and arranged myself in the sun to dry.
Eventually, the cows grew bored and went back to the business of being cows. It turned out, however, that they still had roles to play in the ongoing drama of my afternoon.
Perhaps an hour later I felt dry enough to sit in my car without befouling the upholstery, so I collected my fishing pole and small plastic tackle box, and headed back along the shoreline to tidy up the repair area, grab the rest of my things, and get the hell home. As soon as I rounded the bend, though, I saw immediately that things were amiss down there. The contents of my tackle box were strewn far and wide and the box itself, which is actually a Nylon bag, was smashed flat in the mud. Closer inspection revealed that all of my little plastic bins and boxes full of lures and hooks and things of that nature, were smeared with globs of frothy yellow-white foam. Calf snot. Thick as the meringue on a lemon pie. Some overly curious bovine wastrel had slobbered all over my stuff. And it had been there a while, too, a fact made plain by the general solidity of the slobber, and its obstinacy over being scraped off.
I wondered what had possessed the animal or animals to drool on my belongings, but ultimately lacked the energy for pondering the mental intricacies of cows, so I just shook the mud off the tackle box, crammed everything back inside, and tromped up the hill to my car. Arriving there, I found that my tackle box hadn’t been the only target of the foam-spewing beasts. Oklahoma is made up of red dirt, so cars are often coated with a layer of fine red dust. Mine was. But all up and down its sides, on the hatchback and the hood, there were damp streaks in the dust; swooshes and swirls of snot and gooey spittle.
The cows had been licking my car. Why? Who the hell knows. It’s white. Maybe they thought it was a giant salt-lick.
Muttering to myself, I stowed my tackle and got behind the wheel. I made a U-turn and started back toward the pasture gate, following a pair of well-worn tire ruts left there by years of farming activity. Up ahead, a single calf stood in the way. It was very small, and so obviously very new to the world. It stared at me as I approached. I slowed. It stared. I continued to slow. It continued to stare. I slowed to the point that I was moving at about a half-mile per hour, but still it seemed as though I was bearing down on the little idiot at speed. A moment later I could look into its eyes and it could look into mine. Then, finally, at the last possible second, the calf leaped out of the way. Well, I say “leaped” but that’s not entirely accurate. What it did was totally freak out. All four of its hooves came off the ground at once as it spun in mid-air and let out for friendlier environs, for someplace, perhaps, where giant salt-licks didn’t inexplicably attack innocent young cows.
He left me a parting gift too, the little bastard. Just as he spun out of the way and my car rolled by, he lifted his tail and jettisoned a great geyser of liquid brown shit all over the hood of my car. I mean like three gallons of it. It spattered the windshield and clogged the air vents, filling the car with the enticing aroma of digested cow-cake and wet hay. Coupled with the scents of pond water and black mud that already clung to me, the interior of my car now smelled like a redneck’s wedding reception.
I sighed—what else was I supposed to do?—unrolled the windows, and motored for home for a shower that lasted about ten months.
Is there a point to this story? Yes, I think so. Three of them, in fact.
The little boat is sea-worthy. I am a poor sailor. And cows do not like me.
Cheers.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Some Thoughts on "Intelligent" Design
Somehow, over the last fifty or so years, America has gone from being proud of its scientific knowledge and accomplishments, to being, at best, suspicious of science, and at worst, hostile toward it. Mostly, though, what Americans are is grossly ignorant of science. In 1997 we ranked 11th in the world. By 2007 we had dropped to 24th, well behind every other major country on the planet. (At the same time, when questioned about their self-esteem, 96 percent of American students now say that they are “special” and “important” people. In other words, they are really fond of themselves for no reason whatsoever.) Way too many people in this country today are better versed in those dimwitted Kardashian twats than they are in science, and that’s a sad, sad thing.
Anyway, it is no secret that among the major sciences none are treated with more fear and contempt by certain segments of American society than are the evolutionary sciences.
The attack on evolution is three-pronged. On the left, you’ve got the “postmodernists” (read: fatuous gasbags) relentlessly bloviating about the alleged subjectivity of facts. They desperately need evolution to be disproved, otherwise their entire philosophical project sinks into the sand on which it is built. Then on the right there are the creationists, blindly waving the bible and caterwauling in everybody’s face. (More on these guys below.) And in the middle, you’ve got a bunch of harried, three-job, parents who are too exhausted at the end of the day to adequately assist little Susie with her biology report. The most dangerous of these foes are, of course, the deceitful, frightened Christian hordes; the evangelical snake-talker types. Most parents, even the busiest, really do try to help their kids learn, and given how hard it is to earn a living today, we can cut them some slack. And as for the “postmodernists,” they are largely confined to college campuses where they can’t hurt anybody. The creationists, however, are well-funded, sneaky, and louder and more rank than Limbaugh’s OxyContin farts.
These days, the creationists’ favorite line of bullshit is to demand, shrilly and incessantly, like spoiled toddlers shrieking that they want a GODDAMN TRANSFORMER DOLL NOW!!! that schools “teach the controversy.” The “controversy” they refer to is the one they claim exists between evolution and Christianity. It is completely imaginary. Like angels, trickle-down economics and the Great Pumpkin, it exists only in the cobwebby recesses of their befuddled minds. “Teaching the controversy” is nothing more than an attempt, by a group of people who think the Dark Ages were a funky good time, to force Christianity into the classroom, in direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
But hey. Just to show how giving I can be (heh), I say this: teach creationism. Teach it in a religion studies class; teach it in a philosophy class; hell, teach it in a sociology class. Do not, however, teach it in a science class. Know why? Cuz it ain’t science, that’s why. Not even when you dress it up in its go-to-meetin clothes and call it “intelligent design (ID).”
ID exists only to disprove evolution. Its adherents perform no experiments. It’s doubtful they’ve ever even proposed one. They publish no peer-reviewed papers. To my knowledge, they have never penned a single document that wasn’t intended for dissemination strictly among members of their weird and narrow little club. They ignore the scientific method by coming to their conclusions first, then winnowing out a few bits of “data” to “support” their claims. They hate actual experts in the field, while at the same time nothing gives them a boner quite like quoting those same experts, albeit out of context, to bolster their “arguments.” Along those same lines, another of their favorite tactics is to cherry-pick information that is many decades out of date, such as the revolting role some evolutionists played in the eugenics movement, and present it as cutting-edge evolutionary thinking. For examples see Expelled, a propaganda piece funded and hosted by Ben Stein, wherein he informs us that “evolutionist” is code for “Nazi,” and every biologist in the world is lining up to open his own Death Camps R Us franchise. The out-of-context game in Expelled is so glaring that I made up a drinking game based on the movie’s innumerable goofy mistakes and inaccuracies. (Play it with shots and you’ll be shitfaced in about fifteen minutes.)
Another bit of chicanery ID-ers use to prop up their make-believe controversy is to play pocket-pool with the semantics of the word “theory.” Give an ID-er a dais and the first words out of his mouth will likely be “Evolution is only a theory!” Delete the word “only” and the doofus would be quite correct. Evolution is a theory. A damn good one, too, that is supported by millions of hours of experimental data and tens of thousands of items from the fossil record. (None of which can be said about the existence of god, by the way.) What our hypothetical ID-er means to howl is that “Evolution is only a hypothesis!” And no matter what you do with the word “only” he is utterly, completely, totally wrong. Of course, if he were to bawl “Intelligent design is only a hypothesis!” he would again be quite correct.
In any event, the ID crowd is up to their usual crap, with anti-science bills galumphing thick-wittedly through legislatures across the country—Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida and Kentucky. (One in New Mexico was, thankfully, killed in committee in March.) Proponents of these laws want science teachers to show “both sides” of complex scientific issues. In other words: teach the “controversy.” Oddly (or perhaps not so much) the only scientific issues they consider “complex” enough to warrant instructing students in “both sides” are evolution, the chemical basis for human life, cloning and climate change. Not quantum mechanics, or superstrings, or chemical neurology. Just those areas that they believe will interfere with their ass-smooching the Invisible Sky Man. Now, do you think they are interested in what students learn or are they just playing politics? Golly, I wonder…
To sum up: There is no controversy. Creationists, you need to stop misleading people about it, not even the ones who are foaming at the mouth to be mislead. In fact, stop meddling in areas where you have no expertise, or even a limited amount of education. Go back to doing what you do best—making money and hiding in your caves from the lightning.
Cheers.
Anyway, it is no secret that among the major sciences none are treated with more fear and contempt by certain segments of American society than are the evolutionary sciences.
The attack on evolution is three-pronged. On the left, you’ve got the “postmodernists” (read: fatuous gasbags) relentlessly bloviating about the alleged subjectivity of facts. They desperately need evolution to be disproved, otherwise their entire philosophical project sinks into the sand on which it is built. Then on the right there are the creationists, blindly waving the bible and caterwauling in everybody’s face. (More on these guys below.) And in the middle, you’ve got a bunch of harried, three-job, parents who are too exhausted at the end of the day to adequately assist little Susie with her biology report. The most dangerous of these foes are, of course, the deceitful, frightened Christian hordes; the evangelical snake-talker types. Most parents, even the busiest, really do try to help their kids learn, and given how hard it is to earn a living today, we can cut them some slack. And as for the “postmodernists,” they are largely confined to college campuses where they can’t hurt anybody. The creationists, however, are well-funded, sneaky, and louder and more rank than Limbaugh’s OxyContin farts.
These days, the creationists’ favorite line of bullshit is to demand, shrilly and incessantly, like spoiled toddlers shrieking that they want a GODDAMN TRANSFORMER DOLL NOW!!! that schools “teach the controversy.” The “controversy” they refer to is the one they claim exists between evolution and Christianity. It is completely imaginary. Like angels, trickle-down economics and the Great Pumpkin, it exists only in the cobwebby recesses of their befuddled minds. “Teaching the controversy” is nothing more than an attempt, by a group of people who think the Dark Ages were a funky good time, to force Christianity into the classroom, in direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
But hey. Just to show how giving I can be (heh), I say this: teach creationism. Teach it in a religion studies class; teach it in a philosophy class; hell, teach it in a sociology class. Do not, however, teach it in a science class. Know why? Cuz it ain’t science, that’s why. Not even when you dress it up in its go-to-meetin clothes and call it “intelligent design (ID).”
ID exists only to disprove evolution. Its adherents perform no experiments. It’s doubtful they’ve ever even proposed one. They publish no peer-reviewed papers. To my knowledge, they have never penned a single document that wasn’t intended for dissemination strictly among members of their weird and narrow little club. They ignore the scientific method by coming to their conclusions first, then winnowing out a few bits of “data” to “support” their claims. They hate actual experts in the field, while at the same time nothing gives them a boner quite like quoting those same experts, albeit out of context, to bolster their “arguments.” Along those same lines, another of their favorite tactics is to cherry-pick information that is many decades out of date, such as the revolting role some evolutionists played in the eugenics movement, and present it as cutting-edge evolutionary thinking. For examples see Expelled, a propaganda piece funded and hosted by Ben Stein, wherein he informs us that “evolutionist” is code for “Nazi,” and every biologist in the world is lining up to open his own Death Camps R Us franchise. The out-of-context game in Expelled is so glaring that I made up a drinking game based on the movie’s innumerable goofy mistakes and inaccuracies. (Play it with shots and you’ll be shitfaced in about fifteen minutes.)
Another bit of chicanery ID-ers use to prop up their make-believe controversy is to play pocket-pool with the semantics of the word “theory.” Give an ID-er a dais and the first words out of his mouth will likely be “Evolution is only a theory!” Delete the word “only” and the doofus would be quite correct. Evolution is a theory. A damn good one, too, that is supported by millions of hours of experimental data and tens of thousands of items from the fossil record. (None of which can be said about the existence of god, by the way.) What our hypothetical ID-er means to howl is that “Evolution is only a hypothesis!” And no matter what you do with the word “only” he is utterly, completely, totally wrong. Of course, if he were to bawl “Intelligent design is only a hypothesis!” he would again be quite correct.
In any event, the ID crowd is up to their usual crap, with anti-science bills galumphing thick-wittedly through legislatures across the country—Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida and Kentucky. (One in New Mexico was, thankfully, killed in committee in March.) Proponents of these laws want science teachers to show “both sides” of complex scientific issues. In other words: teach the “controversy.” Oddly (or perhaps not so much) the only scientific issues they consider “complex” enough to warrant instructing students in “both sides” are evolution, the chemical basis for human life, cloning and climate change. Not quantum mechanics, or superstrings, or chemical neurology. Just those areas that they believe will interfere with their ass-smooching the Invisible Sky Man. Now, do you think they are interested in what students learn or are they just playing politics? Golly, I wonder…
To sum up: There is no controversy. Creationists, you need to stop misleading people about it, not even the ones who are foaming at the mouth to be mislead. In fact, stop meddling in areas where you have no expertise, or even a limited amount of education. Go back to doing what you do best—making money and hiding in your caves from the lightning.
Cheers.
Friday, April 1, 2011
More Fun with Stupidity
It’s getting to the point that I don’t even want to look at the news on TV, read the online breakdowns, or turn on the radio, for fear of the unbelievable gibberish that comes shit-storming at my face in 3D and THX.
The Tea Baggers must be reaching some sort of Critical Mass of Stupidity. There simply can’t be that much more space in the public sphere to contain the river of molten idiocy they puke forth every day. Richard Nixon is probably thrashing in his grave like an electric weasel, screaming “I’m vindicated! I’m vindicated!,” thrilled by the knowledge that he is no longer the poster child for crooked, self-serving dementia.
President Michele Bachmann?
Oh my. For the most part the very idea gives me the creeping horrors, but that tiny sliver of anarchy deep in my heart really wants to bear witness to a train wreck of such epic proportions. But, here’s the main thing. I don’t want to be smarter than yet another president. Eight years under Shrub was more than plenty. My president doesn’t have to be a genius, but it’d be swell if he or she had, oh say, a 5th grader’s grasp of past and present events, so that he or she would have certain salient facts about American history immediately at hand. In the latest in a long, scary line of vapid comments, Bachmann, speaking to a ‘Bagger rally in Vermont, informed her audience that they were part of history since it was their state that hosted the “shot heard ‘round the world” at Lexington & Concord—which is, of course, in Massachusetts. Now, making such an idiotic gaff is forgivable—once—but Bachmann repeated her remarks, verbatim, the next day. Now, who was responsible, Bachmann herself or her staff? Knowing her inability to admit any wrong, I’m gonna go with Bachmann. She’s a salt-lick in a power suit.
Grand Delusions
As Palin’s presidential aspirations grow increasingly untenable (even traditional GOP-ers are coming to grips with the fact that she’s a dangerous basket case) ‘Bagger pundits are flailing around trying to re-spin her national profile. Their latest attempt is to claim that Sarah the Psycho shouldn’t become president, because it would be a step down for her. Anne Coulter, who herself is about one misfiring synapse shy of babbling in the streets and eating her own feces, said that in the role of kingmaker, Sarah is much more powerful than the President of the United States. See, it seems that President Obama was purely the creation of Oprah Winfrey, so with Oprah moving on to newer and better dog-and-pony shows, Palin is perfectly poised to take her spot, and do for ‘Baggers what Oprah has, allegedly, done for liberals. What kind of whack-job shit is that? The only kings Sarah Palin will ever make will be wearing crowns from Burger King. If she can keep her idiot flapping slug-tongue out of the deep-fat fryer. Bitch.
Virgil Peck: Peckerhead
Last week, this Kansas state representative suggested that the best way of dealing with his state’s illegal immigrant problem was to shoot them from helicopters like feral hogs. And he wasn’t, you know, just kiddin around. When asked to explain his madness he remained stiff in the face of outrage, saying he was simply “speaking like a person from south Kansas.” Really? I know at least ten people who live in south Kansas, and not one of them would say anything that COMPLETELY, SATANICALLY, FUCKING WRONG! Virgil, ol pal, ol buddy, you are a worthless slice of Klanicana. Normal society has more use for colorectal cancer than it has for you. Get fucked you sick bastard.
The Dish on Guns in Montana
A Radio Shack super store in Hamilton, Montana, really wants people to subscribe to Dish Network. To boost orders, the sign out front of their store offers prospective customers the following enticement: “Protect Yourself with Dish Network. Sign Up Now Get Free Gun.” We all know that guns give Montanans a big stiffy, but damn. And it’s also true than many of us who have been forced to slog through the hateful quagmire that is Dish Network customer service have wished we had a gun, but damn. I mean doesn’t it seem that the very sort of people who would cash in on this sort of offer—militia types and so on—are the very sorts of people we really don’t want bustling about the countryside fully armed? Just asking.
John Stossel is a Giant Pussy
It seems that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is looking to hire someone to manage their Facebook operations. The job will pay, depending upon experience, around $115,000. This led FOX News commentator (read: purveyor of bullshit) John Stossel to declare that Indians are the most coddled group in America. Uh, OK. For real? More coddled than Wall Street executives? More coddled than the auto industry? But whatever. I had been laboring under the false, if happy, assumption that Stossel had slithered back under his rock never to return, yet here he is again, Freddie Mercury moustache and all. Alas, however, his greatest televised moment is well behind him. Back in 1985, Stossel was “breaking” the “incredible story” that professional wrestling is fixed. (My God, what a staggering intellect…) He got in Dave “Dr. D” Shultz’s face about the industry’s fakery. Shultz slapped the living shit out of him, and he cried like a little girl. Predictably, Stossel sued. Even more predictably, he won. That still doesn’t make him any less than what he was and what he remains: a GIANT PUSSY. C’mon, John. Scrape the sand out of your vag and join the real world.
And a Note About Liberal Bullshit: The San Francisco Meat Cutter
Just to show I’m not completely biased, I’d like to close by attacking a douchebag named Lloyd Schofield. He’s running rampant in San Francisco, circulating a petition to get a law on the November ballot to ban male circumcision in the city, an act he refers to as “genital mutilation.” Let’s go ahead and pass over what this law might mean to the Jewish community (“pass over” get it?), and to those who are simply interested in good hygiene, as well as the fact that circumcision becomes way more painful and dangerous the older a fella gets. Frankly, my biggest problem with this bullshit runs along these lines: with everything that’s going on in the country—anti-union hysteria, FOX “News,” the ‘Baggers ongoing jihad against everybody not like them, an earning disparity that makes ancient Rome look like a Marxist’s wet dream—and this, THIS, is what Lloyd Schofield wants to squander his time on?? If liberals are going to effect any real change in America, we have got to get OUR SHIT STRAIGHT! Pick fights that are worth fighting, otherwise you’re just jerking off. JESUS CHRIST! Lloyd Schofield, you sir are a fuckwit.
And that’s it for now. I’m all out of breath and in desperate need of many, many cocktails.
Cheers.
The Tea Baggers must be reaching some sort of Critical Mass of Stupidity. There simply can’t be that much more space in the public sphere to contain the river of molten idiocy they puke forth every day. Richard Nixon is probably thrashing in his grave like an electric weasel, screaming “I’m vindicated! I’m vindicated!,” thrilled by the knowledge that he is no longer the poster child for crooked, self-serving dementia.
President Michele Bachmann?
Oh my. For the most part the very idea gives me the creeping horrors, but that tiny sliver of anarchy deep in my heart really wants to bear witness to a train wreck of such epic proportions. But, here’s the main thing. I don’t want to be smarter than yet another president. Eight years under Shrub was more than plenty. My president doesn’t have to be a genius, but it’d be swell if he or she had, oh say, a 5th grader’s grasp of past and present events, so that he or she would have certain salient facts about American history immediately at hand. In the latest in a long, scary line of vapid comments, Bachmann, speaking to a ‘Bagger rally in Vermont, informed her audience that they were part of history since it was their state that hosted the “shot heard ‘round the world” at Lexington & Concord—which is, of course, in Massachusetts. Now, making such an idiotic gaff is forgivable—once—but Bachmann repeated her remarks, verbatim, the next day. Now, who was responsible, Bachmann herself or her staff? Knowing her inability to admit any wrong, I’m gonna go with Bachmann. She’s a salt-lick in a power suit.
Grand Delusions
As Palin’s presidential aspirations grow increasingly untenable (even traditional GOP-ers are coming to grips with the fact that she’s a dangerous basket case) ‘Bagger pundits are flailing around trying to re-spin her national profile. Their latest attempt is to claim that Sarah the Psycho shouldn’t become president, because it would be a step down for her. Anne Coulter, who herself is about one misfiring synapse shy of babbling in the streets and eating her own feces, said that in the role of kingmaker, Sarah is much more powerful than the President of the United States. See, it seems that President Obama was purely the creation of Oprah Winfrey, so with Oprah moving on to newer and better dog-and-pony shows, Palin is perfectly poised to take her spot, and do for ‘Baggers what Oprah has, allegedly, done for liberals. What kind of whack-job shit is that? The only kings Sarah Palin will ever make will be wearing crowns from Burger King. If she can keep her idiot flapping slug-tongue out of the deep-fat fryer. Bitch.
Virgil Peck: Peckerhead
Last week, this Kansas state representative suggested that the best way of dealing with his state’s illegal immigrant problem was to shoot them from helicopters like feral hogs. And he wasn’t, you know, just kiddin around. When asked to explain his madness he remained stiff in the face of outrage, saying he was simply “speaking like a person from south Kansas.” Really? I know at least ten people who live in south Kansas, and not one of them would say anything that COMPLETELY, SATANICALLY, FUCKING WRONG! Virgil, ol pal, ol buddy, you are a worthless slice of Klanicana. Normal society has more use for colorectal cancer than it has for you. Get fucked you sick bastard.
The Dish on Guns in Montana
A Radio Shack super store in Hamilton, Montana, really wants people to subscribe to Dish Network. To boost orders, the sign out front of their store offers prospective customers the following enticement: “Protect Yourself with Dish Network. Sign Up Now Get Free Gun.” We all know that guns give Montanans a big stiffy, but damn. And it’s also true than many of us who have been forced to slog through the hateful quagmire that is Dish Network customer service have wished we had a gun, but damn. I mean doesn’t it seem that the very sort of people who would cash in on this sort of offer—militia types and so on—are the very sorts of people we really don’t want bustling about the countryside fully armed? Just asking.
John Stossel is a Giant Pussy
It seems that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is looking to hire someone to manage their Facebook operations. The job will pay, depending upon experience, around $115,000. This led FOX News commentator (read: purveyor of bullshit) John Stossel to declare that Indians are the most coddled group in America. Uh, OK. For real? More coddled than Wall Street executives? More coddled than the auto industry? But whatever. I had been laboring under the false, if happy, assumption that Stossel had slithered back under his rock never to return, yet here he is again, Freddie Mercury moustache and all. Alas, however, his greatest televised moment is well behind him. Back in 1985, Stossel was “breaking” the “incredible story” that professional wrestling is fixed. (My God, what a staggering intellect…) He got in Dave “Dr. D” Shultz’s face about the industry’s fakery. Shultz slapped the living shit out of him, and he cried like a little girl. Predictably, Stossel sued. Even more predictably, he won. That still doesn’t make him any less than what he was and what he remains: a GIANT PUSSY. C’mon, John. Scrape the sand out of your vag and join the real world.
And a Note About Liberal Bullshit: The San Francisco Meat Cutter
Just to show I’m not completely biased, I’d like to close by attacking a douchebag named Lloyd Schofield. He’s running rampant in San Francisco, circulating a petition to get a law on the November ballot to ban male circumcision in the city, an act he refers to as “genital mutilation.” Let’s go ahead and pass over what this law might mean to the Jewish community (“pass over” get it?), and to those who are simply interested in good hygiene, as well as the fact that circumcision becomes way more painful and dangerous the older a fella gets. Frankly, my biggest problem with this bullshit runs along these lines: with everything that’s going on in the country—anti-union hysteria, FOX “News,” the ‘Baggers ongoing jihad against everybody not like them, an earning disparity that makes ancient Rome look like a Marxist’s wet dream—and this, THIS, is what Lloyd Schofield wants to squander his time on?? If liberals are going to effect any real change in America, we have got to get OUR SHIT STRAIGHT! Pick fights that are worth fighting, otherwise you’re just jerking off. JESUS CHRIST! Lloyd Schofield, you sir are a fuckwit.
And that’s it for now. I’m all out of breath and in desperate need of many, many cocktails.
Cheers.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The 10 Best TV Shows EVER!
My last communication got me in some trouble. (Who knew there were so many Bristol Palin fans out there.) So, I decided to undertake a safer topic this time around. Television. Most of it sucks more ass than Sasha Gray, but occasionally—just occasionally—a show trickles out on the airwaves that deserves a place in history.
So, in no special order, here are the 10 best television programs of all time. Read em and weep.
The West Wing (1999-2006)
Featuring what is arguably the best writing ever on television, especially the dialogue, West Wing also demonstrated a laudable civic-mindedness that has never appeared on TV. Viewers were treated to a lesson in democratic governance in almost every episode. Add in the fact that it had a sublime sense of humor, and the entire combination made for TV nirvana. It was sometimes corny, sure, and more than a bit idealized, but given the current state of our political discourse, it’s nice to reflect from time to time on what might be.
I Love Lucy (1951-1957)
A groundbreaking TV comedy, Lucy solidified the three-camera production format, and was the most-watched show in America for four years running. It’s best comedic bits fare just fine today. Among the finest are: “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” where she gets loaded on Vitameatavegamin (“Are you unpoopular? Do you pop out at parties?”), “Job Switching” where Lucy and Ethel can’t keep up on the chocolate candy assembly line and start stuffing the excess candies in their mouths; Lucy’s classic “mirror” routine with Harpo Marx; and “Lucy Does the Tango” which was responsible for the longest recorded live laugh in TV history. Netflix the first four seasons ASAP.
South Park (1997-present)
Rude, crude and socially unacceptable, the show was once referred to as a “threat to American democracy.” It’s also sly, clever, irreverent, socially relevant and, entering its fifteenth season, still freakin hysterical. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, bless you boys. Red rocket! Red rocket!
The Sopranos (1999-2007)
Quality writing and some of the finest acting in the history of the medium (though I worry that Gandolfini will be able to escape Tony’s shadow). It managed the amazing feat of getting viewers to turn in week after week to watch the actions of a group of sociopathic morons—and to care about them. It also had a demented sense of humor (“Pine Barrens,” the episode where Paulie and Christopher get lost in the woods, is sublime). Mafia pop-culture on a par with The Godfather movies and Goodfellas.
Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)
For five seasons this was the smartest show on TV. It went places few shows have gone, asking important questions about religion and the nature of life, without becoming pedantic, losing its fast pace, or scrimping on the action. Gaius Baltar was, I believe, a dream role for an actor, and one of the most intricate characters on TV. Plus, Katee Sackhoff is a full-on scorch-cake. Smarts and hotties. What more could anyone want?
Hill Street Blues (1981-1987)
The first major offering from Steven Bochco, HSB completely revolutionized the cop drama by presenting cops and their jobs in a much more realistic light. It plays a tad dated today (“Drop the gun, you turkey!”) but its grittiness was considered downright offensive by some pundits when it debuted. The acting was superior, and several characters—DA Joyce Davenport, Captain Frank Furillo, Detective Mick Belker and Officer Andy Renko—are now icons of ‘80s TV. Sadly, due to legal wrangling, only seasons 1 & 2 are currently available on DVD. I wish FOX would get off its ass and get the remaining seasons ready to go. “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”
The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978)
I personally think Bob Newhart is one of the funniest humans ever. His dead-pan delivery can render even a silly line a thing of comedic beauty. Many of the show’s best moments came in the office scenes (Newhart, you’ll recall, played a psychologist) and his endless stream of goofy patients, notably the sarcastic Mr. Carlin, as well as Newhart’s office-mate, Jerry the dentist, and the secretary Carol Kestrel, played by the wonderful Marcia Wallace of later Simpsons fame. Watching Newhart do his classic bits on the telephone makes the world a little bit sunnier.
The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952-1956)
Only after his death did the world wake up to the genius that was Ernie Kovacs. His show broke all kinds of new ground and his surreal, visual style influenced, among others, Dan Rowan & Dick Martin, the members of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live (especially Chevy Chase), and, in a big way, Sesame Street. Lots of Kovacs’ work was ad-libbed, born of his creative philosophy: “I do my best work when it’s three o’clock and I have a production meeting at three-thirty.” Words to live by.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974)
What is there to say? When you mention “British Comedy,” it’s the Pythons who first spring to mind. They are responsible for more giggles than most other TV comedies combined. It’s hard to trace their influence, though you can hear their echoes in the work of Douglas Adams, Rowan Atkinson, The Kids in the Hall, and, albeit in a much more ham-fisted and less witty vein, Will Ferrell. But they were, and remain, pretty much beyond anything but direct imitation. The years of the Pythons formed a perfect storm of comedy perfection.
The Daily Show (1996-present)
Some might argue that the show’s success is a troubling development in our country, seeing as how it’s one of the only sources of edgy political commentary on the air. During the bleak Bush years, the Daily Show did the work that should have been done by our national news media. And that is sad. But the show is also damn smart and damn funny. Here’s to another fifteen years.
And the Most Overrated:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Ruined vampires for the whole world.
Friends
The six most annoying people in the whole world.
Twin Peaks
Good twitchy fun for over-caffeinated semiotics majors.
NCIS
It’s physically impossible for me to suspend my disbelief to the degree required to watch this.
American Idol
Scales aren’t singing. Anti-art trash. (Except for Jennifer Hudson.)
Jersey Shore
The next six most annoying people in the world. I just keep whispering shark attack to myself. And smiling.
Six Feet Under
Characters with lives even more morose than death. It’s enough to make Baal suck on a shotgun.
Desperate Housewives
Why are they desperate? Cuz that’s the only emotion their programmers loaded in them.
Sex and the City
They never find true love because they are self-centered, shallow, vapid idiots.
The X-Files
Treating logic and reason like Booth treated Lincoln.
Til next time, friends: treat yourself to some good TV.
Oh, and by the way, Bristol Palin is still a cum-belching gutter slut.
Cheers.
So, in no special order, here are the 10 best television programs of all time. Read em and weep.
The West Wing (1999-2006)
Featuring what is arguably the best writing ever on television, especially the dialogue, West Wing also demonstrated a laudable civic-mindedness that has never appeared on TV. Viewers were treated to a lesson in democratic governance in almost every episode. Add in the fact that it had a sublime sense of humor, and the entire combination made for TV nirvana. It was sometimes corny, sure, and more than a bit idealized, but given the current state of our political discourse, it’s nice to reflect from time to time on what might be.
I Love Lucy (1951-1957)
A groundbreaking TV comedy, Lucy solidified the three-camera production format, and was the most-watched show in America for four years running. It’s best comedic bits fare just fine today. Among the finest are: “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” where she gets loaded on Vitameatavegamin (“Are you unpoopular? Do you pop out at parties?”), “Job Switching” where Lucy and Ethel can’t keep up on the chocolate candy assembly line and start stuffing the excess candies in their mouths; Lucy’s classic “mirror” routine with Harpo Marx; and “Lucy Does the Tango” which was responsible for the longest recorded live laugh in TV history. Netflix the first four seasons ASAP.
South Park (1997-present)
Rude, crude and socially unacceptable, the show was once referred to as a “threat to American democracy.” It’s also sly, clever, irreverent, socially relevant and, entering its fifteenth season, still freakin hysterical. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, bless you boys. Red rocket! Red rocket!
The Sopranos (1999-2007)
Quality writing and some of the finest acting in the history of the medium (though I worry that Gandolfini will be able to escape Tony’s shadow). It managed the amazing feat of getting viewers to turn in week after week to watch the actions of a group of sociopathic morons—and to care about them. It also had a demented sense of humor (“Pine Barrens,” the episode where Paulie and Christopher get lost in the woods, is sublime). Mafia pop-culture on a par with The Godfather movies and Goodfellas.
Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)
For five seasons this was the smartest show on TV. It went places few shows have gone, asking important questions about religion and the nature of life, without becoming pedantic, losing its fast pace, or scrimping on the action. Gaius Baltar was, I believe, a dream role for an actor, and one of the most intricate characters on TV. Plus, Katee Sackhoff is a full-on scorch-cake. Smarts and hotties. What more could anyone want?
Hill Street Blues (1981-1987)
The first major offering from Steven Bochco, HSB completely revolutionized the cop drama by presenting cops and their jobs in a much more realistic light. It plays a tad dated today (“Drop the gun, you turkey!”) but its grittiness was considered downright offensive by some pundits when it debuted. The acting was superior, and several characters—DA Joyce Davenport, Captain Frank Furillo, Detective Mick Belker and Officer Andy Renko—are now icons of ‘80s TV. Sadly, due to legal wrangling, only seasons 1 & 2 are currently available on DVD. I wish FOX would get off its ass and get the remaining seasons ready to go. “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”
The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978)
I personally think Bob Newhart is one of the funniest humans ever. His dead-pan delivery can render even a silly line a thing of comedic beauty. Many of the show’s best moments came in the office scenes (Newhart, you’ll recall, played a psychologist) and his endless stream of goofy patients, notably the sarcastic Mr. Carlin, as well as Newhart’s office-mate, Jerry the dentist, and the secretary Carol Kestrel, played by the wonderful Marcia Wallace of later Simpsons fame. Watching Newhart do his classic bits on the telephone makes the world a little bit sunnier.
The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952-1956)
Only after his death did the world wake up to the genius that was Ernie Kovacs. His show broke all kinds of new ground and his surreal, visual style influenced, among others, Dan Rowan & Dick Martin, the members of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live (especially Chevy Chase), and, in a big way, Sesame Street. Lots of Kovacs’ work was ad-libbed, born of his creative philosophy: “I do my best work when it’s three o’clock and I have a production meeting at three-thirty.” Words to live by.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974)
What is there to say? When you mention “British Comedy,” it’s the Pythons who first spring to mind. They are responsible for more giggles than most other TV comedies combined. It’s hard to trace their influence, though you can hear their echoes in the work of Douglas Adams, Rowan Atkinson, The Kids in the Hall, and, albeit in a much more ham-fisted and less witty vein, Will Ferrell. But they were, and remain, pretty much beyond anything but direct imitation. The years of the Pythons formed a perfect storm of comedy perfection.
The Daily Show (1996-present)
Some might argue that the show’s success is a troubling development in our country, seeing as how it’s one of the only sources of edgy political commentary on the air. During the bleak Bush years, the Daily Show did the work that should have been done by our national news media. And that is sad. But the show is also damn smart and damn funny. Here’s to another fifteen years.
And the Most Overrated:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Ruined vampires for the whole world.
Friends
The six most annoying people in the whole world.
Twin Peaks
Good twitchy fun for over-caffeinated semiotics majors.
NCIS
It’s physically impossible for me to suspend my disbelief to the degree required to watch this.
American Idol
Scales aren’t singing. Anti-art trash. (Except for Jennifer Hudson.)
Jersey Shore
The next six most annoying people in the world. I just keep whispering shark attack to myself. And smiling.
Six Feet Under
Characters with lives even more morose than death. It’s enough to make Baal suck on a shotgun.
Desperate Housewives
Why are they desperate? Cuz that’s the only emotion their programmers loaded in them.
Sex and the City
They never find true love because they are self-centered, shallow, vapid idiots.
The X-Files
Treating logic and reason like Booth treated Lincoln.
Til next time, friends: treat yourself to some good TV.
Oh, and by the way, Bristol Palin is still a cum-belching gutter slut.
Cheers.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
When Did Stupidity Become a Virtue?
I try to be a reasonable guy. You know, think carefully, weigh my words, see varying sides to an issue, attempt to debate in rational way by skipping the hyperbole, etc.
Well, not anymore. I’ve had a few cocktails, and I feel like screaming about a few things.
There’s shit going on in this country that boggles my fucking mind. When did stupidity become a virtue? FUCK!
Mike Huckabee & Michael Medved
This pair of fuckwits spent March 4th bashing Natalie Portman for being pregnant out of wedlock, and for having to audacity to appear at the Oscars in her inflated state. Seems Ms. Portman (who is engaged, if that matters), is setting a bad example. “It's unfortunate” Huckabitch said, “that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-wedlock children,” before going on to call such women no only unwed, but uneducated and unemployable.
Where were these two elephant dicks when Bristol Palin was dragging her fat, pregnant, out-of-wedlock ass all over the country? Contrary to Natalie Portman, Bristol is uneducated and unemployable. Portman has something real and wonderful to offer the world. Bristol Palin is a waste of mass and density that could surely be put to better use at a hog farm. Fuck that skanky cunt.
And fuck the elephant dick twins, too.
Scott Walker
When he’s not busy getting a reach-around from the Koch brothers, he’s busy lying his fucking eyes out. Hey, Governor Douchebag: Public sector workers make far less money than those in the private sector. Look at the studies. Look at your own state’s payroll and do a comparison. Or, hell, ask a twelve-year-old. You could even ask the guy who punked you on the phone and let us see your true, despicable colors.
I mean, talk about abuse of power! This weasely little twat sicced the Wisconsin State Patrol on the 14 democratic patriots who are holding up his foul, anti-worker legislation, and when that didn’t work, he tried to issue arrest warrants for them! And now he has threatened to lay off 1,500 state employees if the senators do not return to Madison. What a colossal prick.
But here’s the thing: If you like a 40-hour work week and an eight-hour day, thank a union. If you are one of those rare Americans who make a living wage, thank a union. If you get overtime pay, thank a union. If your company picks up some or all of your health insurance, thank a union. If you enjoy the occasional paid holiday, thank a union. If you got decent job training, thank a union. If your company offers a pension plan, thank a union.
If you do not like these things, thank people like Scott Walker and his un-American, atavistic, Tea Bagger, leash-holders.
Scott Walker: You are a ridiculous buffoon. You are a joke. You are undeserving of what America has to offer. No matter how wide the Koch Brothers stretch your anus.
Rev. Grant Storms
Another of the “God hates fags” kind of Christian, the good reverend from Louisiana loves to arm his flock with bullhorns so they can disrupt gay-pride events and funerals. I wonder what his “God” has to say about fucking pedophiles? He’d better be wondering, too, seeing as he got busted this week for masturbating in his van while watching children playing on a merry-go-round. In true Christian fashion, his supporters were quick to come to Storms’ defense. It seems that he merely had to have a pee and chose to urinate in a bottle rather than walk to a restroom. Yeah, well, guess what? Two different people witnessed, up close and oh-so-horribly personal, Storms choking his wrinkly chicken. He's guilty. He's a scumbag.
Fuck him and fuck his scraggly-ass, cracker God.
John Boehner
What can you say? The man in an emotionally unstable train wreck. He cries all the time. I’m all for a good old-fashioned vent, but come on. There’s venting, and then there’s the fucking abyss. My 84-year-old Uncle, a combat helicopter pilot and rancher, refers to Boehner as that "Yellow Man.” Truer words have never been spoken. And just once, wouldn’t you like to see the Weeper of the House get all wet-eyed over something worth-while? For poor people he has nothing but loathing, but a picture of an apple pie superimposed over a waving American flag sends him into paroxysms of soggy emotion.
If he’s faking, he’s a loathsome toad. If it’s all on the up-and-up, he’s a fucking basket case.
And either way, America deserves better.
Congressman Paul Broun
Last week, this Georgia ‘Bagger held a town hall meeting, during which one of his inbred constituents asked “Who’s going to shoot Obama?” Instead of jumping down the guy’s throat for threatening to assassinate the President, he simply oozed on by and continued taking questions. Oh, he was upset, though. He claims. So upset, in fact, it took him three fucking days to come out and say so. Three days. What was he doing during that time? He was paralyzed with shock, I guess. Or, and this is mere speculation, of course, could it have been the three days of public outcry that finally got him off his worthless ass? Hmmmm. Guess we’ll never know.
Is Paul Broun the sort of man we want leading our nation? Of course not.
Paul Broun isn’t the sort of man I want washing my car.
The Tea Party vs. The Founding Fathers
The Tea Baggers have pick-pocketed the name of their “movement” from a seminal event in American History, and they giggle like little girls when comparing themselves to the Founding Fathers.
Here’s a news flash for ya, dickheads: the Founding Fathers would’ve hated you. Our Founders were the very definition of the “elites” that ‘Baggers hold in such black esteem. They were some of the best minds in the Western world—statesmen, orators, inventors, philosophers, scientists—and they would’ve seen you for exactly what you are: rubes—disinterested, sloppy-minded, uncurious, arrogant rubes. Hillbillies in BMWs; klanners gone Wall Street.
Some poll results came out over the weekend indicating that the ‘Baggers now see themselves as an oppressed minority. I’m sorry that was my bad ear. White middle-class men an oppressed minority? Guys: you aren’t oppressed, you are the oppressors.
If you “Baggers love America as much as you claim (and as much as Boehner snivels), stop dividing it. Stop applauding the stupid and reviling the intelligent. Grow some better expectations. Join the democracy.
Or, you know, you can always go fuck your mother.
Ciao.
(That’s Foreign-Talk for goodbye…)
Well, not anymore. I’ve had a few cocktails, and I feel like screaming about a few things.
There’s shit going on in this country that boggles my fucking mind. When did stupidity become a virtue? FUCK!
Mike Huckabee & Michael Medved
This pair of fuckwits spent March 4th bashing Natalie Portman for being pregnant out of wedlock, and for having to audacity to appear at the Oscars in her inflated state. Seems Ms. Portman (who is engaged, if that matters), is setting a bad example. “It's unfortunate” Huckabitch said, “that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-wedlock children,” before going on to call such women no only unwed, but uneducated and unemployable.
Where were these two elephant dicks when Bristol Palin was dragging her fat, pregnant, out-of-wedlock ass all over the country? Contrary to Natalie Portman, Bristol is uneducated and unemployable. Portman has something real and wonderful to offer the world. Bristol Palin is a waste of mass and density that could surely be put to better use at a hog farm. Fuck that skanky cunt.
And fuck the elephant dick twins, too.
Scott Walker
When he’s not busy getting a reach-around from the Koch brothers, he’s busy lying his fucking eyes out. Hey, Governor Douchebag: Public sector workers make far less money than those in the private sector. Look at the studies. Look at your own state’s payroll and do a comparison. Or, hell, ask a twelve-year-old. You could even ask the guy who punked you on the phone and let us see your true, despicable colors.
I mean, talk about abuse of power! This weasely little twat sicced the Wisconsin State Patrol on the 14 democratic patriots who are holding up his foul, anti-worker legislation, and when that didn’t work, he tried to issue arrest warrants for them! And now he has threatened to lay off 1,500 state employees if the senators do not return to Madison. What a colossal prick.
But here’s the thing: If you like a 40-hour work week and an eight-hour day, thank a union. If you are one of those rare Americans who make a living wage, thank a union. If you get overtime pay, thank a union. If your company picks up some or all of your health insurance, thank a union. If you enjoy the occasional paid holiday, thank a union. If you got decent job training, thank a union. If your company offers a pension plan, thank a union.
If you do not like these things, thank people like Scott Walker and his un-American, atavistic, Tea Bagger, leash-holders.
Scott Walker: You are a ridiculous buffoon. You are a joke. You are undeserving of what America has to offer. No matter how wide the Koch Brothers stretch your anus.
Rev. Grant Storms
Another of the “God hates fags” kind of Christian, the good reverend from Louisiana loves to arm his flock with bullhorns so they can disrupt gay-pride events and funerals. I wonder what his “God” has to say about fucking pedophiles? He’d better be wondering, too, seeing as he got busted this week for masturbating in his van while watching children playing on a merry-go-round. In true Christian fashion, his supporters were quick to come to Storms’ defense. It seems that he merely had to have a pee and chose to urinate in a bottle rather than walk to a restroom. Yeah, well, guess what? Two different people witnessed, up close and oh-so-horribly personal, Storms choking his wrinkly chicken. He's guilty. He's a scumbag.
Fuck him and fuck his scraggly-ass, cracker God.
John Boehner
What can you say? The man in an emotionally unstable train wreck. He cries all the time. I’m all for a good old-fashioned vent, but come on. There’s venting, and then there’s the fucking abyss. My 84-year-old Uncle, a combat helicopter pilot and rancher, refers to Boehner as that "Yellow Man.” Truer words have never been spoken. And just once, wouldn’t you like to see the Weeper of the House get all wet-eyed over something worth-while? For poor people he has nothing but loathing, but a picture of an apple pie superimposed over a waving American flag sends him into paroxysms of soggy emotion.
If he’s faking, he’s a loathsome toad. If it’s all on the up-and-up, he’s a fucking basket case.
And either way, America deserves better.
Congressman Paul Broun
Last week, this Georgia ‘Bagger held a town hall meeting, during which one of his inbred constituents asked “Who’s going to shoot Obama?” Instead of jumping down the guy’s throat for threatening to assassinate the President, he simply oozed on by and continued taking questions. Oh, he was upset, though. He claims. So upset, in fact, it took him three fucking days to come out and say so. Three days. What was he doing during that time? He was paralyzed with shock, I guess. Or, and this is mere speculation, of course, could it have been the three days of public outcry that finally got him off his worthless ass? Hmmmm. Guess we’ll never know.
Is Paul Broun the sort of man we want leading our nation? Of course not.
Paul Broun isn’t the sort of man I want washing my car.
The Tea Party vs. The Founding Fathers
The Tea Baggers have pick-pocketed the name of their “movement” from a seminal event in American History, and they giggle like little girls when comparing themselves to the Founding Fathers.
Here’s a news flash for ya, dickheads: the Founding Fathers would’ve hated you. Our Founders were the very definition of the “elites” that ‘Baggers hold in such black esteem. They were some of the best minds in the Western world—statesmen, orators, inventors, philosophers, scientists—and they would’ve seen you for exactly what you are: rubes—disinterested, sloppy-minded, uncurious, arrogant rubes. Hillbillies in BMWs; klanners gone Wall Street.
Some poll results came out over the weekend indicating that the ‘Baggers now see themselves as an oppressed minority. I’m sorry that was my bad ear. White middle-class men an oppressed minority? Guys: you aren’t oppressed, you are the oppressors.
If you “Baggers love America as much as you claim (and as much as Boehner snivels), stop dividing it. Stop applauding the stupid and reviling the intelligent. Grow some better expectations. Join the democracy.
Or, you know, you can always go fuck your mother.
Ciao.
(That’s Foreign-Talk for goodbye…)
Friday, March 4, 2011
Adventures with Nature, Part II
Once again, I find my thoughts turning to our furry chums in the animal world. This time, though, I’m not interested in how the redneck doofwads around here treat them, but more in the critters themselves. How they behave, to be exact. Puzzling out what motivates their often mysterious and weird behaviors is a constant source of happiness for me. Yeah, I’m a geek. So what.
The Great Polecat Massacree
I had reason to leave my little town this week for a drive down to the throbbing, visceral metropolis of Oklahoma City. Couple of hours there, couple of hours back. No biggie. It’s an easy drive along friendly roads. Easy for me, at least. I’d wager that the local skunk population, if polled, would offer a different and much darker view of the thing. See, over the course of my drive I counted no fewer than twenty-one dead skunks on the road.
Roadkill is far from unusual here in Oklahoma (it is, I believe, the State Animal), but the only dead beasts I saw were skunks. There wasn’t a single porcupine, raccoon, armadillo, or deer to be seen. I saw three in one 150-yard stretch of highway. What exactly is happening with les skunks de pew?
Driving along, I formed, and rejected, numerous hypotheses. Just for fun. An outbreak of suicidal stupidity in the polecat community? Nah. Daredevil teenaged skunks playing chicken with the iron horses? Nah. A mass migration—a sort of new Okie Land Rush—waddling forth to establish a new Skunk Frontier? Nah, and nah again.
The answer, I think, is fairly simple. We had a cold spell a few weeks ago where temperatures quite unreasonably refused to climb above single digits. When that pattern broke, the highs abruptly soared into the seventies. Trees started to bud and the wheat fields sprouted a carpet of green fuzz. Spring is awake and stretching the kinks from her muscles, even if, according to the calendar, she’s just a hair premature.
Ma Nature’s precipitate arrival has roused the local skunk population from its long winter doze, and the first thing on the minds of newly-awakened mammals is finding some nosh, followed immediately by getting busy making more mammals.
Skunk populations rise and fall naturally, due to all sorts of factors, and they occasionally spike, which is what seems to be happening now, leaving us with a surplus of the randy little stinkpots, all of them rampaging around looking for groceries and a bit of the ol’ slap-n-tickle. Their pursuits lead them far and wide, which means encountering the random motorway or two, and, well, the rest is street-pizza.
And there it is—the Great Polecat Massacree, explained.
I guess.
Leapin’ Largemouths
I’ve mentioned in past missives that my favorite Aunt and Uncle own a farm near my little town, and on that farm is a marvelous spring-fed pond, where, since I was six years old, I’ve spent as much time as humanly possibly, extracting largemouth bass.
Over the years I’ve noticed a growing predilection among the piscine masses. After you hook them, they jump. Just like they do on those goofy Saturday afternoon programs ESPN 27 shows in between the slam-dunk challenge for the infirm and extreme curling from Zimbabwe. They used to jump every so often, but rarely with much gusto. Nowadays, them come clean out of the water, shaking and thrashing like Fred Phelps at a drag club.
What we have here is an example of, not adaptation, but evolution in action. Non-jumping fish are more easily captured than their jumping brethren. When a fish jumps it lessens the tension on the line, making it easier to shake free of the hook. Getting off the hook means staying out of the fry-pan. So, the instinct to jump is a valuable one to have for a fish who wishes to hang around a while longer, engaging in his fishy business. One of the more vital items on a fish’s agenda is getting together with a fetching lady fish and cranking out a school of fingerlings. Jumping fish are more likely to stay waterbound long enough to accomplish the task, at which time they genetically pass the jumping behavior along to their young ‘uns. And so it goes, until you get a pond full of harder-to-land jumping bass, and thus a healthier local ecosystem all the way around.
I am willing to admit, however, that they might just be acting smart-alecky. You know how fish can be…
The Sociopathic Turtle
The ponds and rivers of Oklahoma are rife with turtles. We have ordinary (read: non-alligator) snapping turtles, unbelievably ugly smooth softshells (they look like slimy brown cake platters with clawed feet), and, the most common of the bunch, red-eared sliders.
Every healthy waterhole needs a few turtles (not to mention frogs, mosquitos, fish and predatory mammals and birds). But let me stress the word few. Too many turtles and they throw the whole balance of the place out of whack. They eat carrion, which is all to the good, but they also feast on fish eggs; can’t get enough of ‘em. Their dining habits can all but depopulate a fishing hole in no time. So I’m a bit ambivalent on the testudines. Though I remain openly hostile toward one particular member of the order.
One bright afternoon I was standing in my favorite spot on the shore of my Uncle’s pond, casting and reeling, casting and reeling. I was using a rubber lure, designed to look like an immature bass-trout-perch, and its action in the water imitated a wounded fish. Silly as they sound, they are pretty effective—and at $6 each, they’d better be. Some few minutes had elapsed between strikes, and I let the lure come to rest in a couple of inches of water at my feet while I lit a smoke. In the time it took me to tug a cigarette from the pack and put fire to it, a red-eared slider glided up from the muck, homed in on the lure, and, with one snap of its scaly beak, bit it in half.
“Hey!” I hollered. “You little bastard.” And I swatted him with the tip of my pole, which sent him flailing back into the deeps—like most living things, turtles look completely ridiculous when they hurry—the tail end of the rubber fish flapping in its jaws.
I examined my exenterated lure, chalked it in the loss column, and fitted another like it onto the swivel. Aiming for a new patch of shoreline, I maneuvered along the bank about fifty yards, and started casting again. No more than two minutes expired before I happened to glance down at the water beneath me, and there he was. That same damn turtle; looking up at me with his oil-bead eyes. How’d I know it was the same turtle? Don’t they all look alike? In their gross anatomy, yes, they do, but since they spend most of their time frolicking in the bottom-ooze, they often develop individualized patterns of moss on their shells. The Lure Biter had a distinct scalloped-shaped design in the back half of his carapace. Oh, it was him, alright.
And he seemed to be waiting for another snack.
“Piss off,” I said. He did not. “Go on. I got nothin’ for ya.”
I moved another few feet along. He followed, never lowering his head below the surface. I moved again. So did he. I threw a stick at him. He pinwheeled away. I relocated. He returned. I cursed at him. He remained unfazed. This went on for—I kid you not—nearly 45 minutes, as I fished my way around the pond. If my lure came near him, he attacked. If it slowed in the shallows, he went for it like a homing reptile. Once I got him to crawl all the way onto the bank by twitching the rubber fish along in front of him through the mud, at which point I pinged a rock off his shell and he left me alone…for nearly three minutes.
By this time he’d twisted my entire angling outlook sideways. I was being stalked by a turtle. I couldn’t concentrate on accuracy or control because I kept watching for his inevitable return. And though I am not proud of what happened next, it is what happened. Back at my tacklebox, I rummaged my .22 revolver from its leather holster and waited, turtlecide on my mind.
He appeared only moments later, totally unaware of his impending journey to Turtle Heaven. I raised the pistol…
…and my phone rang.
It was my good friend Cal. We chatted for a few minutes (the turtle maintained his ceaseless vigilance) before she asked why I sounded distracted. I explained about my harasser, and she burst out laughing (which is what I should’ve been doing), and said “Oh, that’s so cute! You have a friend!”
“I don’t want a friend,” I said. “I have all of those I require.”
We went on for some few minutes debating the pro and cons of turtle camaraderie, until I came to my senses. That turtle should thank Cal for saving his reptilian biscuits.
I’ve fished that pond two dozen times since first meeting the sociopathic young Yertle, and I’ve seen him almost every time. Seen him, yes, but not been stalked by him. These days he ignores me totally. Once, when the fish weren’t biting I tried to entice him with a rubber fish, but he was having none of it. Disdain, about sums it up.
If there’s an explanation for his behavior on that singularly bizarre afternoon, I’m damned if I know what it is. I’m guessing he was just really hungry. If that’s the case, I’m glad they don’t hunt in packs. It has ‘70s B-movie written all over it. And I'm not sure I'm in good enough shape to outrun a turtle...
Cheers.
The Great Polecat Massacree
I had reason to leave my little town this week for a drive down to the throbbing, visceral metropolis of Oklahoma City. Couple of hours there, couple of hours back. No biggie. It’s an easy drive along friendly roads. Easy for me, at least. I’d wager that the local skunk population, if polled, would offer a different and much darker view of the thing. See, over the course of my drive I counted no fewer than twenty-one dead skunks on the road.
Roadkill is far from unusual here in Oklahoma (it is, I believe, the State Animal), but the only dead beasts I saw were skunks. There wasn’t a single porcupine, raccoon, armadillo, or deer to be seen. I saw three in one 150-yard stretch of highway. What exactly is happening with les skunks de pew?
Driving along, I formed, and rejected, numerous hypotheses. Just for fun. An outbreak of suicidal stupidity in the polecat community? Nah. Daredevil teenaged skunks playing chicken with the iron horses? Nah. A mass migration—a sort of new Okie Land Rush—waddling forth to establish a new Skunk Frontier? Nah, and nah again.
The answer, I think, is fairly simple. We had a cold spell a few weeks ago where temperatures quite unreasonably refused to climb above single digits. When that pattern broke, the highs abruptly soared into the seventies. Trees started to bud and the wheat fields sprouted a carpet of green fuzz. Spring is awake and stretching the kinks from her muscles, even if, according to the calendar, she’s just a hair premature.
Ma Nature’s precipitate arrival has roused the local skunk population from its long winter doze, and the first thing on the minds of newly-awakened mammals is finding some nosh, followed immediately by getting busy making more mammals.
Skunk populations rise and fall naturally, due to all sorts of factors, and they occasionally spike, which is what seems to be happening now, leaving us with a surplus of the randy little stinkpots, all of them rampaging around looking for groceries and a bit of the ol’ slap-n-tickle. Their pursuits lead them far and wide, which means encountering the random motorway or two, and, well, the rest is street-pizza.
And there it is—the Great Polecat Massacree, explained.
I guess.
Leapin’ Largemouths
I’ve mentioned in past missives that my favorite Aunt and Uncle own a farm near my little town, and on that farm is a marvelous spring-fed pond, where, since I was six years old, I’ve spent as much time as humanly possibly, extracting largemouth bass.
Over the years I’ve noticed a growing predilection among the piscine masses. After you hook them, they jump. Just like they do on those goofy Saturday afternoon programs ESPN 27 shows in between the slam-dunk challenge for the infirm and extreme curling from Zimbabwe. They used to jump every so often, but rarely with much gusto. Nowadays, them come clean out of the water, shaking and thrashing like Fred Phelps at a drag club.
What we have here is an example of, not adaptation, but evolution in action. Non-jumping fish are more easily captured than their jumping brethren. When a fish jumps it lessens the tension on the line, making it easier to shake free of the hook. Getting off the hook means staying out of the fry-pan. So, the instinct to jump is a valuable one to have for a fish who wishes to hang around a while longer, engaging in his fishy business. One of the more vital items on a fish’s agenda is getting together with a fetching lady fish and cranking out a school of fingerlings. Jumping fish are more likely to stay waterbound long enough to accomplish the task, at which time they genetically pass the jumping behavior along to their young ‘uns. And so it goes, until you get a pond full of harder-to-land jumping bass, and thus a healthier local ecosystem all the way around.
I am willing to admit, however, that they might just be acting smart-alecky. You know how fish can be…
The Sociopathic Turtle
The ponds and rivers of Oklahoma are rife with turtles. We have ordinary (read: non-alligator) snapping turtles, unbelievably ugly smooth softshells (they look like slimy brown cake platters with clawed feet), and, the most common of the bunch, red-eared sliders.
Every healthy waterhole needs a few turtles (not to mention frogs, mosquitos, fish and predatory mammals and birds). But let me stress the word few. Too many turtles and they throw the whole balance of the place out of whack. They eat carrion, which is all to the good, but they also feast on fish eggs; can’t get enough of ‘em. Their dining habits can all but depopulate a fishing hole in no time. So I’m a bit ambivalent on the testudines. Though I remain openly hostile toward one particular member of the order.
One bright afternoon I was standing in my favorite spot on the shore of my Uncle’s pond, casting and reeling, casting and reeling. I was using a rubber lure, designed to look like an immature bass-trout-perch, and its action in the water imitated a wounded fish. Silly as they sound, they are pretty effective—and at $6 each, they’d better be. Some few minutes had elapsed between strikes, and I let the lure come to rest in a couple of inches of water at my feet while I lit a smoke. In the time it took me to tug a cigarette from the pack and put fire to it, a red-eared slider glided up from the muck, homed in on the lure, and, with one snap of its scaly beak, bit it in half.
“Hey!” I hollered. “You little bastard.” And I swatted him with the tip of my pole, which sent him flailing back into the deeps—like most living things, turtles look completely ridiculous when they hurry—the tail end of the rubber fish flapping in its jaws.
I examined my exenterated lure, chalked it in the loss column, and fitted another like it onto the swivel. Aiming for a new patch of shoreline, I maneuvered along the bank about fifty yards, and started casting again. No more than two minutes expired before I happened to glance down at the water beneath me, and there he was. That same damn turtle; looking up at me with his oil-bead eyes. How’d I know it was the same turtle? Don’t they all look alike? In their gross anatomy, yes, they do, but since they spend most of their time frolicking in the bottom-ooze, they often develop individualized patterns of moss on their shells. The Lure Biter had a distinct scalloped-shaped design in the back half of his carapace. Oh, it was him, alright.
And he seemed to be waiting for another snack.
“Piss off,” I said. He did not. “Go on. I got nothin’ for ya.”
I moved another few feet along. He followed, never lowering his head below the surface. I moved again. So did he. I threw a stick at him. He pinwheeled away. I relocated. He returned. I cursed at him. He remained unfazed. This went on for—I kid you not—nearly 45 minutes, as I fished my way around the pond. If my lure came near him, he attacked. If it slowed in the shallows, he went for it like a homing reptile. Once I got him to crawl all the way onto the bank by twitching the rubber fish along in front of him through the mud, at which point I pinged a rock off his shell and he left me alone…for nearly three minutes.
By this time he’d twisted my entire angling outlook sideways. I was being stalked by a turtle. I couldn’t concentrate on accuracy or control because I kept watching for his inevitable return. And though I am not proud of what happened next, it is what happened. Back at my tacklebox, I rummaged my .22 revolver from its leather holster and waited, turtlecide on my mind.
He appeared only moments later, totally unaware of his impending journey to Turtle Heaven. I raised the pistol…
…and my phone rang.
It was my good friend Cal. We chatted for a few minutes (the turtle maintained his ceaseless vigilance) before she asked why I sounded distracted. I explained about my harasser, and she burst out laughing (which is what I should’ve been doing), and said “Oh, that’s so cute! You have a friend!”
“I don’t want a friend,” I said. “I have all of those I require.”
We went on for some few minutes debating the pro and cons of turtle camaraderie, until I came to my senses. That turtle should thank Cal for saving his reptilian biscuits.
I’ve fished that pond two dozen times since first meeting the sociopathic young Yertle, and I’ve seen him almost every time. Seen him, yes, but not been stalked by him. These days he ignores me totally. Once, when the fish weren’t biting I tried to entice him with a rubber fish, but he was having none of it. Disdain, about sums it up.
If there’s an explanation for his behavior on that singularly bizarre afternoon, I’m damned if I know what it is. I’m guessing he was just really hungry. If that’s the case, I’m glad they don’t hunt in packs. It has ‘70s B-movie written all over it. And I'm not sure I'm in good enough shape to outrun a turtle...
Cheers.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Carnival of the Animals
Weird ideas abound here in my little stretch of the Oklahoma landscape. My fellow citizens think some really silly things. And in no other arena (apart from perhaps politics) will you find the Silly Things strutting about and flexing their muscles with more vigor than in the arena of animals—what they mean to us humans, how they ought to be treated, etc.
The following is a quartet of—as always—true tales, which I hope will shine a few rays on the Silly Things and, if we are lucky, send some of them scurrying back into the dark recesses from which they came.
Ditching the Dog
There is a perfectly splendid walking trail near my house. It winds its way through dense thickets of scotch pine, ponderosa, cottonwood, lacebarks, and blackberry bushes. I enjoy a stroll many afternoons, and almost always encounter someone walking his or her dog.
Maybe two weeks ago I came upon an elderly gent outfitted for his constitutional with a walking stick and pooper-scooper. In point of fact, I first met his dog, a chubby gray-and-white border collie whose name turned out to be Bud, and who, in dog years, was of a similar vintage as his owner.
Bud waddled up, his whole podgy hindquarters wagging happily, and gave me a thorough olfactory going-over. The elderly gent toddled along about this point, grumbling at “Bud” to leave “that big fella” alone. I told the guy that I didn’t mind, having once owned a border collie myself, and continued scratching Bud’s ears.
“You want ‘im? You kin have ‘im,” the ancient one said.
“Oh, well…” I mumbled. “No thanks. But he seems like a great dog.” Bud licked my hand in apparent acknowledgement of my compliment.
The old guy grunted noncommittally. “I had a black lab. Died two years ago. My son figured I needed another dog and got me this one.”
“Nice of him,” I responded, which earned me a second noncommittal grunt from Old Methuselah.
“Well, I didn’t want ‘im. Brought ‘im out here the first day and tried to ditch ‘im, but he found his way back to the house.”
“Oh?”
“Stupid dog.”
I didn’t bother mentioning that Bud finding his way home was actually a sign that he was a pretty smart dog. Didn’t really have the chance to, actually, because the aged dude grunted one more time, hollered at Bud to get a move on, and thus the happy couple plodded off along the path into the trees.
After asking around a bit, and recounting the story of the guy’s attempted ditching of his dog, I discovered that “ditching” is quite the common practice in these parts. Don’t want that dog? Heck, just drive it out to the country and leave it to its own canine devices.
If only the same practice were routine vis-à-vis some of our local children…
Raccoons
About a week ago I drove my Mom down to the local tag office so she could renew her license plates. We arrived a few minutes before they opened, and were loitering on the sidewalk when a flatbed pickup rolled in next to Mom’s little Chevy. A man climbed from the cab, the whole lower half of his face distended by enough chewing tobacco to stuff a Christmas turkey, and joined our small gang of lingerers.
Lighting a cigarette, I glanced at the contents of the flatbed. Then I glanced again, counting silently. Yep, nine dead raccoons in an untidy heap, oozing.
The man followed my eyes, then looked back at me.
Nodding at the spoils of what could only have been an epic and majestic hunt, I said “What’s that all about?”
“What’a’ya mean?”
“Were they getting in your garbage or something?”
The man chuckled and voided about a quart of tobacco spit into the gutter. “Naw,” he said. “I jus’ like killin’ ‘em.”
Then the tag office opened, and we all went inside, where, ironically, my Mom was assisted by a woman who bore a striking resemblance to a dead raccoon.
OK, yeah, I made that up. She was much less pleasant to look at than a dead raccoon.
Playing Chicken
Fifteen or twenty years ago my pan-shaped state enacted a moratorium on all sorts of hunting. At the same time, state and federal authorities started enforcing anti-poaching laws and laws protecting endangered species. And now, as a result, my little slice of the state is a much different place, fauna-wise, than it was when I visited it as a kid. We have armadillos again. We have gray herons and Rio Grande wild turkeys and roadrunners. We have alligator snapping turtles, and mountain lions. We have so many whitetail deer they are becoming a public nuisance. And, lastly, we have prairie chickens again, back from the very brink of extinction.
The reemergence of our native critters has been greeted with a variety of attitudes. Predictably, the farmer/rancher camp has its coveralls in a twist over the mountain lions (they occasionally eat cows), turkeys (they eat grain shoots and wreck havoc on hay bales), and deer (which eat what the turkeys miss and reproduce like Baptists). Truck driver’s and highway patrol personnel also take a dim view of the surging deer population, mostly due to their (the deer) unendearing habit of inexplicably leaping out in front of fast-moving vehicles. Fishermen and noodlers, those whack-a-dos who catch catfish by hand, hate the snapping turtles, because the turtles eat fish eggs as well as noodlers’ fingers. And almost everyone abuses the lowly armadillos since, like the deer, they apparently can’t resist engaging in suicide-by-Frogger, and also, I think, because they are just plain silly looking.
Ah, yes, but my hunk of Okie Nirvana also has a small, but growing and quite vocal, number of animal rights types. Which brings me back to the prairie chickens.
It seems that one of our resident PETA-files has made it her mission to stick up for the strange little birds. She is deeply worried, you see, that the prairie has changed too much since the last time the chickens called it home. Most notable among the changes are the increased number of barbed wire fences criss-crossing the terrain, fences she believes pose terrible dangers to the chickens. And her solution to the problem? She would like the State to pass a law forcing all farmers and other owners of barbed wire fences to hang colorful flags on them so that the prairie chickens will see the fences in time to avoid a prickly doom.
For the life of me I don’t know who has the more bizarre outlook, the guy who just likes killin’ raccoons or this fluffyheaded twit. I do know this: it’s people like her that make animal-rights activists look ridiculous.
Hammer Time
This last story is not for the faint of heart. I mean that. It makes me feel all woogie inside just thinking about it.
Some months ago, when I still managed a local movie-rental joint, a customer arrived in the middle of a slow weekday afternoon. He browsed a bit and carried his selections to the counter, which was when I noticed the small flecks of blood on his shirt and fingers. (Longtime readers of these tales are probably asking themselves something like: What is it with that town and people walking around with blood all over them? I have no answer to their question. It seems to just happen. Like Dancing with the Stars.)
Anyway, here’s this guy with blood on him, and I felt compelled to comment.
“You have blood on your fingers,” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered, wiping them on his pants.
I asked why he had blood on his fingers.
“Oh, one of our barn cats had a mess o’ kittens. My dad told me to put ‘em in a sack and throw ‘em in the river, but I thought that was cruel. So I put ‘em in a sack and beat ‘em with a hammer. Some got on me.”
I gave him his change and he left.
There’s a lesson to be learned here, about the inner workings of the contemporary Western psyche, but I’m damned if I know what it might be.
And that’s the news from the wilds of Oklahoma. If someone wanted to pop by and kill me, that’d be OK.
The following is a quartet of—as always—true tales, which I hope will shine a few rays on the Silly Things and, if we are lucky, send some of them scurrying back into the dark recesses from which they came.
Ditching the Dog
There is a perfectly splendid walking trail near my house. It winds its way through dense thickets of scotch pine, ponderosa, cottonwood, lacebarks, and blackberry bushes. I enjoy a stroll many afternoons, and almost always encounter someone walking his or her dog.
Maybe two weeks ago I came upon an elderly gent outfitted for his constitutional with a walking stick and pooper-scooper. In point of fact, I first met his dog, a chubby gray-and-white border collie whose name turned out to be Bud, and who, in dog years, was of a similar vintage as his owner.
Bud waddled up, his whole podgy hindquarters wagging happily, and gave me a thorough olfactory going-over. The elderly gent toddled along about this point, grumbling at “Bud” to leave “that big fella” alone. I told the guy that I didn’t mind, having once owned a border collie myself, and continued scratching Bud’s ears.
“You want ‘im? You kin have ‘im,” the ancient one said.
“Oh, well…” I mumbled. “No thanks. But he seems like a great dog.” Bud licked my hand in apparent acknowledgement of my compliment.
The old guy grunted noncommittally. “I had a black lab. Died two years ago. My son figured I needed another dog and got me this one.”
“Nice of him,” I responded, which earned me a second noncommittal grunt from Old Methuselah.
“Well, I didn’t want ‘im. Brought ‘im out here the first day and tried to ditch ‘im, but he found his way back to the house.”
“Oh?”
“Stupid dog.”
I didn’t bother mentioning that Bud finding his way home was actually a sign that he was a pretty smart dog. Didn’t really have the chance to, actually, because the aged dude grunted one more time, hollered at Bud to get a move on, and thus the happy couple plodded off along the path into the trees.
After asking around a bit, and recounting the story of the guy’s attempted ditching of his dog, I discovered that “ditching” is quite the common practice in these parts. Don’t want that dog? Heck, just drive it out to the country and leave it to its own canine devices.
If only the same practice were routine vis-à-vis some of our local children…
Raccoons
About a week ago I drove my Mom down to the local tag office so she could renew her license plates. We arrived a few minutes before they opened, and were loitering on the sidewalk when a flatbed pickup rolled in next to Mom’s little Chevy. A man climbed from the cab, the whole lower half of his face distended by enough chewing tobacco to stuff a Christmas turkey, and joined our small gang of lingerers.
Lighting a cigarette, I glanced at the contents of the flatbed. Then I glanced again, counting silently. Yep, nine dead raccoons in an untidy heap, oozing.
The man followed my eyes, then looked back at me.
Nodding at the spoils of what could only have been an epic and majestic hunt, I said “What’s that all about?”
“What’a’ya mean?”
“Were they getting in your garbage or something?”
The man chuckled and voided about a quart of tobacco spit into the gutter. “Naw,” he said. “I jus’ like killin’ ‘em.”
Then the tag office opened, and we all went inside, where, ironically, my Mom was assisted by a woman who bore a striking resemblance to a dead raccoon.
OK, yeah, I made that up. She was much less pleasant to look at than a dead raccoon.
Playing Chicken
Fifteen or twenty years ago my pan-shaped state enacted a moratorium on all sorts of hunting. At the same time, state and federal authorities started enforcing anti-poaching laws and laws protecting endangered species. And now, as a result, my little slice of the state is a much different place, fauna-wise, than it was when I visited it as a kid. We have armadillos again. We have gray herons and Rio Grande wild turkeys and roadrunners. We have alligator snapping turtles, and mountain lions. We have so many whitetail deer they are becoming a public nuisance. And, lastly, we have prairie chickens again, back from the very brink of extinction.
The reemergence of our native critters has been greeted with a variety of attitudes. Predictably, the farmer/rancher camp has its coveralls in a twist over the mountain lions (they occasionally eat cows), turkeys (they eat grain shoots and wreck havoc on hay bales), and deer (which eat what the turkeys miss and reproduce like Baptists). Truck driver’s and highway patrol personnel also take a dim view of the surging deer population, mostly due to their (the deer) unendearing habit of inexplicably leaping out in front of fast-moving vehicles. Fishermen and noodlers, those whack-a-dos who catch catfish by hand, hate the snapping turtles, because the turtles eat fish eggs as well as noodlers’ fingers. And almost everyone abuses the lowly armadillos since, like the deer, they apparently can’t resist engaging in suicide-by-Frogger, and also, I think, because they are just plain silly looking.
Ah, yes, but my hunk of Okie Nirvana also has a small, but growing and quite vocal, number of animal rights types. Which brings me back to the prairie chickens.
It seems that one of our resident PETA-files has made it her mission to stick up for the strange little birds. She is deeply worried, you see, that the prairie has changed too much since the last time the chickens called it home. Most notable among the changes are the increased number of barbed wire fences criss-crossing the terrain, fences she believes pose terrible dangers to the chickens. And her solution to the problem? She would like the State to pass a law forcing all farmers and other owners of barbed wire fences to hang colorful flags on them so that the prairie chickens will see the fences in time to avoid a prickly doom.
For the life of me I don’t know who has the more bizarre outlook, the guy who just likes killin’ raccoons or this fluffyheaded twit. I do know this: it’s people like her that make animal-rights activists look ridiculous.
Hammer Time
This last story is not for the faint of heart. I mean that. It makes me feel all woogie inside just thinking about it.
Some months ago, when I still managed a local movie-rental joint, a customer arrived in the middle of a slow weekday afternoon. He browsed a bit and carried his selections to the counter, which was when I noticed the small flecks of blood on his shirt and fingers. (Longtime readers of these tales are probably asking themselves something like: What is it with that town and people walking around with blood all over them? I have no answer to their question. It seems to just happen. Like Dancing with the Stars.)
Anyway, here’s this guy with blood on him, and I felt compelled to comment.
“You have blood on your fingers,” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered, wiping them on his pants.
I asked why he had blood on his fingers.
“Oh, one of our barn cats had a mess o’ kittens. My dad told me to put ‘em in a sack and throw ‘em in the river, but I thought that was cruel. So I put ‘em in a sack and beat ‘em with a hammer. Some got on me.”
I gave him his change and he left.
There’s a lesson to be learned here, about the inner workings of the contemporary Western psyche, but I’m damned if I know what it might be.
And that’s the news from the wilds of Oklahoma. If someone wanted to pop by and kill me, that’d be OK.
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