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Hm. Must be Autumn

Behold my posse. My crew. My flock. Yesterday was the first time all four of them hopped up on the kitchen chair. Evening roosting behavior. Hilarious — I threw a towel over their heads and they all promptly conked off asleep. Then I could dust them for mites and have a good look at their feet (Mapp needs a pedicure) and their vents.

Yes, dear readers, I inspect chicken bottoms.

They flock together well enough in the daytime now, but the new girls and the old girls still sleep in separate enclosures. That has to change by Winter; there’s plenty of room in the main henhouse for four.

Sadly, it feels distinctly Autumnal out there tonight. So I let them fall asleep in the dark kitchen, then I tiptoed them out one by one and put them on the perch together in the big house (except Violet, who prefers to sleep on the floor).

I’ve put this off for so long because they all pick on Vita (the big, beautiful bird on the left). Even her nestmate Violet has a go at her. It’s horrible to watch. Vita meekly accepts her place at the bottom of the pecking order and lies still, beak down in the grass, patiently letting the other girls give her a few good pecks whenever they like. First time I saw this, I thought the poor bird had dropped dead and the others were trying to wake her up.

Nature. What an asshole.

They don’t peck hard enough to hurt her, but I worry about her being stuck inside the small run, unable to get away. So! I have set the alarm for six in the morning. I haven’t seen six in the morning since I left the Motherland.

I better get drinking.

September 5, 2011 — 8:49 pm
Comments: 29

The weirdification of the perfectly fucking ordinary

Oh, man. This is a scientist. He wrote an article skeptical of global warning.

What does the BBC think you need to know about this today? Well, dude has the crazy eye. And he’s a “committed Christian” (check the caption). Yes, it’s as perfectly irrelevant as you think.

Byron York had a thing yesterday about Leftists trying to make the 2012 presidential election all about religion. Well, Christianity. Well, some creepy zombie Jesus conspiracy caricature of Christianity.

Me, I’ve got a head start on this one. The BBC has been working on this fucked up view of American religious life for as long as I’ve been coming over here.

I’ll never forget a BBC TV special I saw on one of my first trips, about religious life in America. Somehow, they managed to find video of a Texan female achondroplastic dwarf preacher standing on a chair blowing a shofar.

Google it. I’m too weary to explain.

Oh, and this one! Remember when Trijicon, the gunsight maker, ‘fessed up that they’d been inscribing their products with Bible verses (things like 2COR4:6) and had done for years? Not a good idea for an internationally traded company, but whatever. How did the media describe this?

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes.

Military weapons. Secret Jesus Bible codes. Since when did ordinary old Bible verses become secret Jesus Bible codes? What breathless bullshit is this?

Now, as you may (or may not) remember, I’m an atheist. Pretty much. An atheist with smartypants tendencies. There is a point with most religions — that point where “take it on evidence” becomes “take it on faith” — that the whole business becomes creepy and off-putting to me.

But to pretend there’s something uniquely creepy and off-putting about American Protestant Christians as compared to any other religious group…well, that totally plinks my sense of fair play.

Put it this way: how many times did the media try to pin down Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry on the magical power of Jesus’ foreskin or the little toebone of some saint?

Yeah. Not.

September 2, 2011 — 10:59 pm
Comments: 63

They watch us. Always.

I don’t know. Somehow the out of focus makes this one funnier to me.

Got jammed up tonight. Had to help Uncle B do some proofreading. So…I dunno…how’s about I fob you off with the ten jokes voted the best of the Edinburgh Fringe arts festival:

10) “My friend died doing what he loved … Heroin.”

9) “I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can’t even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails.”

8) “Someone asked me recently – what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I’m not falling for that one again, wife.”

7) “I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure.”

6) “My mother told me, you don’t have to put anything in your mouth you don’t want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.”

5) “I was playing chess with my friend and he said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’. So we stopped playing chess.”

4) “Drive-Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought… once you’ve hired the car…”

3) “People say ‘I’m taking it one day at a time’. You know what? So is everybody. That’s how time works.”

2) “Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.”

1) “I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

Ba-dum tssss.

September 1, 2011 — 10:16 pm
Comments: 24