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Happy Easter!

For those of you for whom this weekend has religious significance, happy Easter.

For the rest of you, here is a chicken eating pasketti.

Oh, it’s from last year, when there was a big, warm, yellow thing in the sky that made me want to eat my lunch in the garden (we had a heat wave this time last year, no lie).

And no, I didn’t just toss my ‘skettis in the grass for the chickens. I was sitting in my chair tucking in when Lucia, Leader of all Chickens, flapped up and landed wetly in the middle my plate, like a sack of feathery oatmeal. Chikkens really like paskettis.

Sure, it was kind of cute. But I remind you that chickens will stand around in their own shit burbling happily, given the opportunity. There really wasn’t any question of eating the rest.

Anyway, Brits take Easter seriously (I know, right?), so everything is shut until Tuesday here. Not including this blog, of course. Have a good weekend!

Comments


Comment from Oh Hell
Time: March 29, 2013, 10:48 pm

Happy Easter, SW. Hope the big yellow thing in the sky makes a re-apperance. And that the Queen Chicken stays out of your plate.


Comment from Argentium G. Tiger
Time: March 29, 2013, 11:51 pm

Happy Easter/Chicken Pasketti day! *chuckles* I’m going to have to tell the kids about the new name for the day. 🙂


Comment from Deborah
Time: March 30, 2013, 12:04 am

Evidence of your equanimity that said chicken did not end up on your plate a second time, without her pretty feathers. Re: that big orange thing—it’s has been hiding over here, too. Temps hit 70 degrees this afternoon, so Husband and I sat on the deck, drank our cold cerveza, and looked toward the light spot in the clouds where the sun was supposed to be.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 30, 2013, 12:04 am

When I was a kid, I used to have GREAT fun tossing pieces of Fried Chicken into the chicken coop down the road from me. The little psycho cannibals LOVED it!….


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 30, 2013, 12:06 am


Comment from Redd
Time: March 30, 2013, 12:13 am

They must think it is a worm.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 30, 2013, 12:28 am

Oh, chickens love meat. Mine love nothing more than yesterday’s nasty leftover catfood.

Against the law to feed meat (or kitchen scraps) to chickens here. Because hippies are crazy.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 30, 2013, 12:33 am

I do think there’s an atavistic corner of their little birdbrains that thinks spaghetti is worms. The very first time I gave a spaghetti to Lucia, she took it in her beak, raised her head high and ran ’round and ’round the garden triumphantly. Like, WHO’S THE CHICKEN? I’M THE CHICKEN!

I tried to catch it on video, but she never did it again.


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: March 30, 2013, 1:05 am

Chickens eat spaghetti?…pasta is made with chicken eggs!…cannonballs!11!11

Happy Easter everyone!…gotta work this weekend but I’m gonna watch 10 Commandments with Charlton Heston on Sunday…it’s tradition 🙂


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 30, 2013, 1:58 am

Hmm, I wonder what they would make of flavored meal-worms?


Comment from Argentium G. Tiger
Time: March 30, 2013, 2:30 am

“Against the law to feed meat (or kitchen scraps) to chickens here.”

They’ve made their stupid law… But as to enforcing it, I’m betting it’s just another empty regulation that makes them feel like they’re in control.


Comment from Deborah
Time: March 30, 2013, 3:45 am

I love their pom-pom tail feathers—they look like chrysanthemums. Hey! you could make tiny little cascarones if you had some tiny little eggs!

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Border-agents-cracking-down-on-cascarones-4394632.php#photo-2837212


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: March 30, 2013, 5:30 am

I was cleaning my glasses when the page was loading, and at first, I thought it was a chicken with a bad cold, and a runny nose.


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: March 30, 2013, 5:14 pm

I thought that was a tapeworm at first.

My Cayuga girl laid her first egg of the season today!

Happy Easter y’all!


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: March 30, 2013, 8:08 pm

So do they slurp down the spaghetti like in Lady and the Tramp or peck it apart?


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: March 30, 2013, 8:13 pm

We used to feed our chickens egg shells to get calcium back in their system, helps their eggs be less fragile. They seemed to like pecking it up.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 30, 2013, 9:01 pm

They snip paskettis into bits. Oh, and they LOVE egg. There’s a real danger, if one accidentally breaks open and they taste it, of getting an egg-eating hen. It’s the devil to break the habit. But feeding boiled egg to a sick chicken is a good idea. As is eggshell, if you can crush it up so they don’t know what it is.

As for the Defra regulation, it does actually have an effect — in that the online chicken forum I frequent can’t talk openly about feeding chickens. Government busybodies watch the forum and the moderators get in trouble if people talk about breaking the rules. So, out of deference, nobody does and everybody sulks.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 30, 2013, 9:04 pm

Never forget – chickens are miniature dinosaurs. In Mapp’s case, a T.Rex.


Comment from Oldcat
Time: March 30, 2013, 9:51 pm

I’d get around the Defra rule by talking about it all the time, but add a “…good thing that kind of stuff is illegal now, so don’t do that” in every post.


Comment from AliceH
Time: March 30, 2013, 9:58 pm

pasketti

Is that the British pronunciation? ’round these parts, it’s “besketti”.


Comment from Redd
Time: March 30, 2013, 11:01 pm

These paleontologists always claim that the chicken dinosaurs had brightly colored plumage. How the hell would they know??


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 30, 2013, 11:01 pm

No, the Brits pronounce it, “that filthy muck you eat” — at least in this household.

The problem is, Oldcat, there’s a contingency of people who think making something illegal makes it morally wrong. Or who buy into the government’s reasons for making the regulation. Never mind that people have been feeding chickens household waste — that that is the whole freaking point of chickens and pigs — for tens of thousands of years.

Sadly, Britain seems to have a pretty high proportion of those people.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: March 31, 2013, 6:20 pm

Speaking of taking Easter seriously, Google has Ceasar Chavez as their “doodle” for Easter. It seems that:
A. They haven’t done Easter, even the ‘candy & bunnies Easter’ since 2000.
B. The One has proclaimed 31 March (also known by some apparently as Easter Sunday) as Ceasar Chavez day.

I know that this is petty on my part (and arguably hypocritical as we didn’t ever consider going to Church today) but I’ve just finished removing Google bookmarks from all my computers. I have generally been using a different more private search engine (Start Page) anyhow, but one has to protest this kind of thing in some manner.


Comment from AliceH
Time: March 31, 2013, 7:10 pm

SomeVeg –

Maybe you can help me with this. About every 6 months or so, there’s a social-media-driven story about a google doodle. How is it there are so many people who still even see it? It’s only on the “home” page, right? I never go there. I haven’t gone there except for sometimes looking it up to see what the ruckus is about.

This is unrelated to what search engine I use because when I search on a PC I enter my terms in the ‘search’ box upper right on my browser toolbar.. and right in the URL/Address box when I search from my phone.

SO – I just don’t get how a page that really has no practical value keeps popping up as a page millions are looking at and have an opinion about.

What am I missing?


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: March 31, 2013, 7:51 pm

A ‘Google Doodle’ is an artistic representation of the Google Logo done within certain parameters. It must include:

A. The word “Google” spelled out with some fanciful representation of each letter independently – so there are usually six separate elements. One for “G”, one for each “O” and so forth. Sometimes, as today, a portrait fills one of the “O’s” and the rest of the letters are unadorned.
B. It must have some relevance to the particular day on which it appears.
C. Clicking on this will take the browser to the results of a google search for the subject of the day.

So, for example: ‘International Weasel Day’ would show six drawings of weasels each curling themselves into the shape of one of the letters spelling Google, and clicking on this representation would take you to a google list of pages about weasels.

Today has a hokey portrait of Senor Chavez’s face which displays a Jesus-inspired look of weary suffering filling one of the “O’s” in Google. The rest of the letters are shown in a sad gray, rather than the usual red and blues of the Google logo, inferring that this is a sad day.

Bing, on the other hand, (I’m assuming) follows the concept but only as far as showing some photograpic relevant to the day: today shows brightly colored foil-wrapped chocolate eggs.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 31, 2013, 8:02 pm

The irony of that bunch of adolescent, greedy, megalomaniacs championing the memory of El Podge is outrageous.

Who next? Mussolini? He would suit their ethos.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 31, 2013, 8:08 pm

Thanks for the tip about Start Page, some Veg. I’d tried Duck Duck Go but its results are hopeless, so I’d wandered back to Bing (however much I hate Microsoft, they seem angelic compared to Google).

It will be interesting to see how this one works.


Comment from AliceH
Time: March 31, 2013, 8:29 pm

Good info, SomeVeg. I know what the doodles are, but I don’t understand why anyone opens that page. It’s a page just for searching the internet, right? And you don’t need to go to that page to do that function – in fact, you’re unnecessarily opening an additional page to do a function you can do from any page you’re on.

Ditto for the bing home page, btw.

I enter search strings in my toolbar. So why do people go to the google doodle page ever? That’s extra key strokes, extra pages, extra wait time, for no reason at all that I am aware of. UNLESS looking up the doodle itself is some sort of daily ritual that I just never found at all appealing. Or back to I just am missing something about that page that is useful beyond another but different box to enter in search terms.


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: March 31, 2013, 8:45 pm

And of course, Caesar Chavez’ legacy has been totally rewritten to suit the idealogy of Teh Won and his deceitful minions. I’m old enough to remember that Chavez OPPOSED illegal immigration since it denied decent wages to citizens of hispanic heritage.

Back in those days, Chavez would go to the border and use violence to keep the illegals from coming in. He knew the btards in the AG business were bringing the illegals in to depress wages and break the farmworker unions.

All that history has been rewritten. The AG industry owns the Democratic party in this state, thus illegals are allowed easy entry, wages are rock bottom, and nobody does that work except the illegals who can’t do anything else.

Google apparently loves this situation as it does nothing to correct the image of Caesar Chavez.


Comment from m
Time: March 31, 2013, 10:59 pm

Article on Cesar and the UFW:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-madness-of-cesar-chavez/308557/


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: April 1, 2013, 12:56 am

The Caesar Chavez thing instead of something with Easter doesn’t really bother me too much; they do something different every year. The problem is Chavez was basically a communist agitator, and this wasn’t even some significant anniversary. Its not like it was 75 years or 100 or something, they just dragged the bottom of the barrel for some image to use on this day and puked out Chavez.


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: April 1, 2013, 1:46 am

When I was little, our neighbor’s chickens would follow us to a dump they kept on their property. It was full of construction waste. They would wait like a pointer while we turned over rocks, and they would eat whatever was underneath.

One day, I turned over a peice of drywall, and there was a wolf spider as big as my hand. The chicken made an odd noise and all her sisters came to tear that poor spider to pieces.


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: April 1, 2013, 4:59 am

HAPPY EASTER FROM THE BADGER’S BURROW!


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: April 1, 2013, 4:09 pm

I’m puzzled by the comments about Google searching–when y’all run searches in Google, do you get results pages showing multiple results? Because the Doodle shows up on the upper-left hand of that, on days when there is a Doodle; there is no need to go to the Google home page. And, in addition to what Some Vegetable has described, sometimes the Doodle is interactive. The one for Little Nemo awhile back was actually pretty cool.


Comment from Subotai Bahadur
Time: April 1, 2013, 5:52 pm

Comment from AliceH
Time: March 31, 2013, 8:29 pm
and

Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: April 1, 2013, 4:09 pm

Granting that I do not use Google for anything for political reasons, however I think that you are assuming that the person searching uses a Google link on their browser so that there is no need to go near the Google doodle [there has to be something that can be made from “going near the Google doodle”]. I don’t, if only because using Google via any route gives them direct access to your machine and I don’t trust the buggers. The doodle on their home page is their equivalent of flying their hostile flag in the face of non-Leftist Americans.

Moving back to matters involving Gallus gallus domesticus; my son gave me a hint last night on critter raising that may be helpful. He works as a chef at a high end brew-pub. After the grain is boiled to make wort [which is drained off and used to make the beer] they are left with what is essentially really grainy porridge, which has to be disposed of somewhere, hopefully without causing the brewer money. A lot of them give the stuff away for free. Spread it out and dry it in the sun, and you have chicken feed, or feed for any grain eating critter. If you have access to a commercial, artisan, or home brewer; it could be a source of plentiful and cheap scratch feed.

Subotai Bahadur


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 1, 2013, 10:08 pm

There’s a reason “chicken feed” means “not much at all.” The stuff is incredibly cheap, if your chickens free range. I reckon we spend about £3 a month on it, and that’s four chickens and half the birds on the East coast.


Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: April 1, 2013, 10:15 pm

Anyone have Phil Ramone in the Pool? He appears to have left the building…


Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: April 1, 2013, 10:29 pm

BTW, back (sorta, kinda) on-topic – having, once upon a time before I got old enough to avoid such chores, served as a most-of-a-year-long Chief Attendant, Shoveler/Sweeper and Egg-Gatherer for my paternal Gramma’s most-of-a-hundred chicken flock, I can readily attest to the fact that chickens, if so allowed, will harass, mangle and generally chow-down on virtually anything that is a)even moderately smaller than themselves; b)does not manage to run away; c) appears (to the casual eye) even remotely edible (or at least peck-able), and will try to manage same with a lot of items that meet only two, one or even none of those parameters.

You’d better believe it – chooks will indeed, given half a chance, dice up and slurp down even stuff that would give a billygoat the shaky collywobbles.

It was quite a spell, after that year of durance vile, before I could even eat eggs without having at least a bit of the queasies, I tells ya…


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 1, 2013, 11:30 pm

Ours love love LOVE styrofoam. It can’t be good for them. I imagine it’ll gum up their crops something awful. I take it away from them every time I see them chowing down, but there’s a lot of it blowing around from packaging and stuff.


Comment from Doreen
Time: April 27, 2013, 3:48 am

It used to be that the Philippines’ biggest competitive advantage in the global job market is the proficiency of our skilled workers in the English language. These service providers are a kind of online coaching centres which offer easy-to-comprehend language learning programs which includes Multimedia Courses, Virtual Classroom, Online Examination, Digital Library and more. Podcasts that teach business English vocabulary should be listened.

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