ZOMG BABY PANDAS

("and now for something completely different")



Moar! :D

Paging Tippi Hedren

Aggro bird dive bombs pedestrians, smacks 'em in the head.

I'm never complaining about the plumbing here again.

Taiwan man sits on can, toilet snake bites trouser snake

*not sure what possessed me to pre-empt NY Post headline. probably my vagina is haunted again.


h/t Man Egee

A conundrum.

How is it that it is invariably the most backward, least evolved people--mentally, spiritually, socially, emotionally--who are the most fervent advocates of some form of Social Darwinism?

They look at the world, they see a fallen creation that's nasty, brutish and short (not unlike themselves), and they decide that the best way forward--o, for the good of the -species-, mind you--is to get rid of all those -other- people who really aren't contributing anything to the greater good, or at least their capacity to reproduce. You know, THEM. The BAD people. The DEFECTIVE people. The OTHER people.

They will tell you this, with much passion and spittle, using "logic" and often syntax that can be most generously described as "twisted," but more accurately is in fact "sprained." Sometimes--most often, no doubt-- they're the equivalent (virtual or not) of the town drunk. Sometimes they clean up decently and actually sound sort of plausible. Even publish books, occasionally. Sometimes, God help us, find their way to actual power.

But you get right down to it, and -none- of these people manage to make a terrifically good case for why -they- should be exempt from the chop. Oh, sure, they might recognize that no one can actually stand their ass; but -that- is not about their own inherent moral or existential deficiency, no; -that- is about society's failure to -understand- them properly. See.

Which means, clearly, that society is -wrong-; and therefore it's -society-, more or less, that should be up against the wall.

Ah, solipsism. You gotta love it.

So, in human development class

the instructor read us some letters from a case study, a kid he'd actually treated, but was also a crime investigation.

Basically this was one high school student stalking another, for years. He read us some of the letters that he'd anonymously sent the other boy and had been given to the police.

The early ones went like:

well, no, I won't recreate them, because you know what, I haven't been stalked like that? and even for me, it was really hard to listen to them. Rather detailed and explicit threats and demands (to wear specific pieces of clothing, it was obvious that he really was monitoring the other student VERY closely), and elaborations on how exactly the one student planned to kill the other. Apparently at one point he'd actually followed through to the point of slitting a candy bar down the seam, filling it with rat poison, and leaving it in the other student's car. (He didn't eat it).

Needless to say, the family, and the school were rather frantic.

A year goes by, and then the student gets another letter:

(from recreation, roughly)

"Dear ___, I hope you don't think I've forgotten about you. I've been thinking about you more than ever. But this time, I'm not going to threaten you. I've been doing some thinking. I've come to a realization. I love you. You are the most beautiful, gorgeous, Adonis like..."

and so on. well, and then still with the "requests" that he meet the stalker at something like, either Tuesday, May the 8th or Friday the somethingth. at 2:14 or at 5 pm respectively; if on Tuesday, wearing the orange shirt with the __ team logo, if on the Friday... you get the idea.

and then, finishing off with, "with selfless and pure devotion" (as taken from the Webster definition of "love," which the kid made sure to include).

Well, I mean, this isn't exactly news, that stalkers have this uhm thin line between love and hate. The details were rather fascinating in a horrid way, though.

So, eventually, they caught him, and the instructor got to treat the offender--reluctantly, because, well, understandable: hi, what if he decides to change the object of his stalkerish affection to -him-? it's a real possibility...

we didn't get to many details after that, but one was: apparently, the kid had a pet.

We were asked to guess what the pet was. "A snake, a pit bull...a rock."

Nope.

A goose.

Have you ever seen a goose? he asks. They're MEAN. They hiss, and they spit...

so, the kid's been keeping this -goose- in his house, in his room, shitting all over everything, honking, you know.

And, he brings the goose to family therapy, along with the raging violent alcoholic dad (surprise) and whoever else.

So every time the father tries to speak, the goose starts honking at him and beating him up...

Yeah, I know why I changed from theatre: this is MUCH more unlikely than any shit I could've made up.

MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS!

I used to love that book as a kid.** And last week, it's happened for reals.

thanks for sharing, Lina. too sweet.

**the Wiki review is cracking my shit up. "Poor characterization?"

Critics note that the "loosely plotted" story gives no true explanation for why Mr. Mallard leaves the island in the Charles River or why the Mallards did not simply stay on the lagoon island in the first place and avoid the bicyclists on the shore.

Yes, personally, I prefer your more gritty, naturalistic, three-dimensional duck stories. However, in a more deconstructionist reading, we see that in fact Mr. Mallard is merely a symbol of the war-torn country's existentialist anxieties; in fact, in an era of mass displacement, there IS no "true explanation" for one's actions, no way of guaranteeing one can forever evade the bicyclists, and thus we may understand Mr. Mallard's decision to leave the island as an absurdist expression of protest in a meaningless...okay I really need to stop that now.

In honor of the vernal equinox

a couple of tender budding ballads, to make you feel all dewy and hopeful and put a spring in your step.

llude sing cucu!

Just a few brief notes

or, The fifteen second version of the posts I would be making if I had the time, energy, and/or inclination:

1) A stranger on the Internets objecting on their own blog to what they perceive as your assery regarding one of their posts, even saying something to you along the lines of "sit your ignorant ass down and shut the fuck up till you know what the hell you're talking about," does not, in fact, amount to your "being silenced."

2) Transpeople are not actually out to steal your precious wimminly fluids, rare and desirable as those undoubtably are.

2a) They're not out to steal your precious Andrew Sullivan fluids either.

3) Yes, racism still is socially acceptable. Yes, so is sexism. No, you don't win anything. Yes, you are still being an asshole. No, you don't win anything for that either.

3a) Phyllis Chesler, oh, and Judy whosis, I'm looking at you. Also, Phyl, the whole mutation into a rabid Islamophobic Pajamas Media-blogging possible McCain supporter, neocon thing? David Cronenberg called, he wants to film it. The rest of us really don't enjoy the spectacle, though.

4) Monday was International Sex Workers Rights Day.

5) I know this is a really difficult concept, but generally speaking, if you want other people to give a shit about you and your problems, it helps if you in turn give a shit about them, once in a while.

6) There is no point six.

7) Baby raccoons sound a lot like baby birds, and dogs get -really- excited about their presence in one's chimney.

8) Stephen King is a pretty good writer, except when he isn't.

9) sweet steaming baby Yog-Soggoth, you're more loathsome every day. p.s. shouldn't you be out campaigning, anyway?

10) This is not, in fact, an autonomous collective.

11) This is not your beautiful house.

12) This is not your beautiful blog.

13) And the London Underground is not a political movement.

14) And, oops, neither are you.

"P" is for Patriarchy, Pornstitution, and PENGUIN

(i KNEW it!! selfish hedonistic bastards, never once gave a thought to the penguins suffering in Antarctica, now see what you've done?)

via Jill Brenneman:

Penguins are turning to prostitution

ooh, more unexpected pretty colors!

Rare pink dolphin spotted in Louisiana lake.

"Well, it's got -some- rat in it."

oh how i love the New York metro, especially in the summer. almost as much as strawberry tart.

"I like New York in June...squeak!...how about youuuu... squeak squeak!..."

Best. Commentary. EVAR.

"there's providence in..."

from ABC:

As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, "I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job."

Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino promptly put the incident through the proper spin cycle, telling ABC News, "It was his lucky day...everyone knows that's a sign of good luck."

"It's the end of the world as we know it..."

Except for Veronica, who not only doesn't feel fine but cordially invites all the Chicken Littles of the world to unite and go fuck themselves:

There were a couple of “The End is NIGH!” type entries in my feeds this morning, which doesn’t really help with the lack of enthusiasm about writing during the ass end of winter.

I hate doomsday proclamations. Really. If the world is gonna come screeching to a halt, then it’s gonna come screeching to a halt, and my worrying about it all isn’t going to change a thing.

I’m thinking that maybe I should just chuck the naysayers.

So, I formally flip the bird to anyone that feels the need to inform me of the following, as if I’ve never come across the concept before:


Go over to Nine Pearls for the specifics, or rather for the fine rantage about each fiery, watery, and/or germy, all-too-familiar scenario.

Plus, one you may not have given much thought to before (although you should have):
Colossal Squid.


WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.

The squid, weighing an estimated 990 lbs and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said...

Apparently "colossal squid" is an actual term, not just the headline, you know, the next step up from giant squid, or maybe several steps up, i'm not really sure of the taxonomy, you know. It seems a shame that they decided not to call it "super mega-mecha-mecha squid." maybe they're saving that for the one that comes down with the rest of the Elder Gods, blots out the sun, and y'know eats us.

Meanwhile, I just want to see this line one more time, said by the "squid expert:"

If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires.

--gasp!

Red headed bird outside my window--*is* it a woodpecker? it has the long bill--o, fluttered away now.

i don't know how common that's supposed to be around here, or particularly this time of year, but: it sure was purty.

That was grim, wasn't it? Let's try something a bit less Apocalypt-y to end the evening with

"Parrots Have Colonized the Wilds of Brooklyn"

"...New York has many wild critters, and a few are not human. A coyote wandered into Central Park before running afoul of sunbathers, and the hawks Pale Male and Lola established aeries on a gilded stretch of Fifth Avenue. Raccoons know their way around Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and muskrats poke at the mud flats of the Harlem River.

But the parrots -- which are about a foot long and are known as monk parakeets because their gray chests and tufts resemble a monk's skullcap and frock -- are among the city's more cacophonous and unexpected residents. Their cry sounds like metal scraping metal. (San Francisco has parrots-in-residence on Telegraph Hill. And Chicago has a broad-shouldered, loud-squawking crew that has been called "Hells Angels with wings.")

Most Brooklyn parrots live in colonies of 50 or 60 birds, although a few less sociable types live on Coney Island or in Canarsie or Gravesend. They favor homes atop light and transmission poles; at Green-Wood Cemetery they inhabit the soaring gothic spires near the gate. Their nests are vast 400-pound constructs, with foyers and anterooms and a space where the females lay eggs and enjoy a respite from the males.

Con Edison knows these nests well, as periodically the power company's workers clamber around them. "These aren't nests; they're condominiums," a spokesman said.

Half a dozen nests can be seen atop the light poles at the Brooklyn College athletic field. On a recent Saturday, 20 or 30 of the resident parrots swooped down and, amid much screeching, alighted on the branches of an oak tree beside a pre-World War II apartment building. Children inside the apartments gestured and called at the birds; sometimes the parrots talk back. (In captivity, monk parakeets can develop a vocabulary of about 200 words.)

Steve Baldwin, 50, lives in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and acts as the parrots' pro bono publicist and bard. He has composed a Lou Reed-style song, "The Ballad of the Brooklyn Parrots" (available at BrooklynParrots.com), which mixes human and parrot voices and which one "critic" called "Jim Morrison meets Rick Moranis at the Audubon Society."

"They eat berries, ornamental plants and sometimes pizza," Baldwin said as he gave a tour of the Brooklyn College nests to a dozen birders. "They are very intelligent, and of course they don't like the suburbs."

How the parrots came to Brooklyn is a mystery. Apparently a large crate filled with the parrots broke open at Kennedy International Airport in the late 1960s. Baldwin's voluminous research tends to implicate mafia goodfellas in the deed, although that "fact" might be too delicious to check out. The parrots hung around the Jamaica Bay marshes that girdle JFK's southern edges before moving into Brooklyn. The cold was no problem, as the parrots hailed from temperate-to-chilly Argentina.

At first, state and federal wildlife-control officers tried to wipe out this "invasive species." Hundreds of parrots perished, and in the 1970s, the last large colony relocated to light towers at the Rikers Island jail. An eradication team showed up to finish the job -- but the parrots had disappeared.

"Someone tipped the parrots off," Baldwin says with a shrug. "They circled back to Brooklyn, and everyone left them alone."

Now there is a new threat. Poachers with nets are snatching the parrots and selling them to pet stores. The poachers have all but denuded several neighborhoods. It has parrot-loving denizens of Brooklyn talking about vigilante patrols.

Kay Martin lives somewhere near Coney Island, in a house filled with at least nine varieties of parrots. She acknowledges that their racket awakens her at night. So what? They are friends, and they talk to her. Martin, diminutive and pugnacious, spends most of her spare time safeguarding the wild parrots.

Are there nests near your home? She frowns.

"I'm not saying," she says. "The last thing our parrots need is another reporter poking around."

How fitting, somehow.

"The rise of slime:" "A Primeval Tide of Toxins"

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading.

Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked.

Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas...

Many of the same forces have wiped out 80% of the corals in the Caribbean, despoiled two-thirds of the estuaries in the United States and destroyed 75% of California's kelp forests, once prime habitat for fish.

Jackson uses a homespun analogy to illustrate what is happening. The world's 6 billion inhabitants, he says, have failed to follow a homeowner's rule of thumb: Be careful what you dump in the swimming pool, and make sure the filter is working.

"We're pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution," Jackson said, "a half-billion years ago when the oceans were ruled by jellyfish and bacteria."

[more]

Cockroach consensus and singing spiders

Just a coupla links suggesting that, once again, we're not as unique as we thought. In fact, some of my personal least favorite critters, roaches, apparently "govern themselves in a simple democracy." (From Discovery Channel online via The Huge Entity). I guess if nothing else it makes me feel ever so slightly better about the prospect of the little fuckers inheriting the earth after we've nuked/global warmed/whatever'd ourselves into extinction. Maybe they'll do a better job, after a few hundred millenia to evolve...

Meanwhile, "Female Spiders Love Performers"

Jan. 6, 2005 — Certain female jumping spiders demand that their mates tap dance and sing before they will mate with them, according to new research.

While it is well known that birds sing and bees dance, the addition of Fred Astaire spiders to the story of "the birds and the bees" is relatively new, and suggests that spiders engage in much more sophisticated communication and behavior than previously thought.

All I have to say here is that the little beady eyes still freak me out, although I expect I'd see it differently were I a, you know, spidder.

maybe one of the most-requested tunes is,

"Golly, jee-pers,
where'd you get those peepers,
Jeepers, creepers,
where did you get those eyes?..."

Grisly, man.

So I just saw the DVD of "Grizzly Man," the Werner Herzog documentary about a man, Timothy Treadwell, who had lived amongst the b'ars every summer for thirteen years. Then, one fine day, one of them up and et him. The movie contains a goodly amount of Treadwell's own film footage as well as post-mortem interviews with those who knew him.

The story is, I think, viewed as a tragedy of sorts, at least by some of the reviewers and probably by the director: one man's obsessive hubris leading to the inevitable fall. The crossing of boundaries man was not meant to cross: nature, red in tooth and claw, gets you in the end. Or at any rate, it got Treadwell. Or, at any rate, the bear part of it, got him.

And all of that was there, certainly. I gotta say, though, that by the end of it I was left with two thoughts that overshadowed all other impressions:

1) Go, bears!

2) GodDAM but the closet leads to some weird-ass places. And that ain't Narnia, neither.


No, okay, one shouldn't make these cynical, stereotyping assumptions. Just because the guy came off like Richard Simmons to the tenth power doing "Wild Kingdom" doesn't mean anything about his sexuality, of course. (or Simmons' either, for that matter; I seem to recall he's a straight fella himself, on the record). In fact, Treadwell goes out of his way to talk about how hard it is for him, with the ladies; and how it's so much easier for gay folks:

"You know, it's just Bing! Bing! Bing! - gay guys, no problem. They go to restrooms and truck stops and perform sex, it's like so easy for them and stuff."

He goes on to say that he always wished he were gay, Treadwell did, but, sigh, it just wasn't meant to be: he's straight straight straight, dammit. He loves the ladies. But they don't love him. That same sad song so familiar to all the other straight dudes out there. Good thing he has his animal friends, for consolation. Specifically, big, muscular, hairy, do-what-comes-nat'rally...bears. Who don't even need a restroom or a truck stop, let alone anyone's permission, to do their thing, be it sex or rasslin' or just plain takin' a dump. It's, like, so easy for them, and stuff. Bears, that is.

At any rate it didn't seem like he had trouble attracting women to share his life with him, Treadwell; in fact he had one girlfriend, Annie Huguenard, who shared his death. Did she, in fact, die for him? Well, she certainly died with him, which is pretty damn intimate, I'd say. No one seemed to know much about her, in the film; the speculation was that she could have made a run for it at the last, but didn't, which implies a heroism of sorts, I suppose. Personally I have no idea how I'd react if I were stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere with an extra-manic Richard Simmons and a shitload of bears, let alone what I'd do when one of the bears finally cashed in that all-you-can-eat-buffet coupon on my companion. I imagine I'd be too busy crapping myself and screaming to figure out an escape, but who the hell knows?

The real question, of course, is why on God's green earth does a nominally straight woman take up with Richard Simmons Gone Wild in the first place? According to the people who knew Huguenard, she was frightened of the bears, so it wasn't like she was completely at one with him in his amateur naturalist enthusiasm (and/or his insanity, depending on one's point of view and/or one's degree of charitability toward Treadwell).

Personally, I blame the patriarchy, (cough) for all of it. Socialization of women to take care of everyone but themselves, to play nice and not say "You want me to camp out where?! Screw you guys, I'm goin' home." Socialization of men so that it seems more acceptable, easier, somehow, to be a platonic bear-lover and eccentric martyr than to just do one's thing--in truck stops, or restrooms, or anyfuckingwhere but a protected campground full of projections of idealized love in the form of wild animals (who, as the director notes, frankly don't seem to see Treadwell as anything but a potential snack, ever, despite Treadwell's cutesy nicknames and protestations of deep psychic bonding with the critters).

And finally, there's the whole romanticization of innocence business, which I think is at the heart of Treadwell's trip. You know: humans are corrupt or too complicated or sinful, or something, so clearly the solution is to reject one's ties with the greater body of humanity. Turn away altogether, put all of one's needs onto Nature (with a capital N). Or--now extrapolating to others I think have taken versions of this trip, and perhaps for similar reasons--Michael Jackson, say--children. Or perhaps even aliens: witness the Heaven's Gate people, or at least their leader, Marshall Applewhite. Applewhite the idealist, Applewhite the gentle eccentric, Applewhite the guru, who was charismatic enough to find a number of other pure, shining, selfless souls to merge and go all the way to the Light with him. Would Huguenard have eaten the Nembutal-laced pudding if Treadwell had asked her, I wonder? At least it would've been a less painful way to go than being mauled and eaten alive.

Cases like these guys are fascinating because they take certain threads in the cultural zeitgeist to their logical, if extreme, ending. At any rate it's not at all hard to draw from the ah "traditional values" template, current American version(s), and conclude that there's something fundamentally wrong with us mere mortals. Something that needs fixing, or running away from. Maybe even killing.

And yet, for all of Treadwell's attempts to merge with the "animals," it's not at all clear that it ever occurs to him that humans are animals, too. And, by extension, that he, too, is already an animal, no more or less than the rest of us--and that that might actually be O.K.

By the way, this Slate review of the film is really good, and I agree with Edelstein's take, on the whole. (Corky St. Clair, yes! even more than Simmons)

Blue jays outside my window this morning

A pair of them. They really are lovely little things.

I didn't expect to see jays in November here in NYC, any more than I expected this strangely springlike weather. I assumed both were probably due to global warming. But apparently while some blue jays migrate for the winter, others stay put. And yes, my guess upon seeing the two was right: they are monogamous. And the male feeds the female while she's incubating. It doesn't say on what. I imagine Haagen Daz.

Dull stuff to some, perhaps, but for me this is sort of exciting and new. I'd really like to learn more about nature. Partly in the spirit of awareness and respect for the greater universe, partly with the idea of "appreciate it while it's still here."

My family is definitely not of the earthy-crunchy persuasion. I still remember my grandmother (the one who grew up in Noo Yawk but no longer lives here) proclaiming one day, "I don't like nature. I'd rather have an ice cream soda." Which makes sense if you stop and think about it, really. Nature; ice cream soda. Nature; ice cream soda.