What's your best 2007 birding memory?

Definitely the best bird photo I took all year

Boy, it's like I suddenly got the urge to just blitz out some posts, eh? Anyway, I was wondering--just what was my favorite birding-related experience of this past year?

What was yours?

For me, it's a tough choice--birding with Julie Zickefoose in March or birding with the Flock in Cape May. Both events were so pivotal in my development as a birder, in learning more about birds and fieldcraft and seeing lifers -- in addition to the outright WOW factor of meeting people like Zick and Birdchick, who were my first two birding heroes when I started this whole birding thing a few years ago. (For a long time, those were the only two birding blogs I visited!) Now, in Cape May I also met many of the people on my birdy blogroll, which really cranked that weekend up to amazing levels.

But I suppose I should choose.... or not! Screw it! I pick BOTH of those experiences! So there!

I really tried to choose, but I just can't! I loved Cape May and meeting the Flock in person, and I can't wait to go back there (in February for our anniversary!) and see the Flock again (and meet those honorary Flockers who didn't make it to Cape May!). Back in the spring, going to my first-ever birding festival and having what proved to be an all-out warblerama with Julie pretty much topped my year, even more than Cape May (but just a little!). There are so many reasons: everything about that weekend was just plain magical--from the beautiful drive to Titusville PA to the drive back home, from hanging out with Julie and seeing so many warblers in spring plumage to just seeing for the first time what it was really like to be out in the field with other people who were just as nuts as I am for birds. Maybe it's just that whole "never as good as the first time" thing, but that weekend was (again, just by a tiny bit!) my top birding experience of this year, following almost simultaneously by the Cape May Weekend.

Memories:

Yikes--cap head!

Kept the cap ON this time!

I wonder what the new year will bring.
So everybody -- let's hear it: your top birding experience of the year!

Will walk for birds

my backyard in the spring

Have you considered BIGBY for 2008? No, it's not a political slogan but an acronym for the Big Green Birding Year, a project started in Canada. It calls for reducing one's carbon footprint while birding by keeping a list of birds you see on trips that are taken exclusively under one's own power of locomotion. No cars, no planes, no big tours, etc. It's a neat way to get out there and bird your local environs while saving Mother Earth (and your wallet). I found out about it while visiting The Great Laura Erickson's great blog.

There's the Walking Bigby, in which you can only count birds you've seen while walking from your home or your work. There's a broader category, the Self-Propelled Bigby, where you can count birds seen while walking, biking, rollerblading, etc. That's the one I'm choosing, to encourage me to finally start using that bike I bought a couple of years ago and have only ridden twice.

Recently a third Bigby, the Public Transport Bigby, has been added as well -- for you city slickers lucky enough to have a decent public transportation system (train/bus).



So far, 75 people in Canada and the USA have signed up. Looking over the list of towns represented, I see Scappoose, Oregon (I'll bet that's Born Again Birdwatcher!) and my little village of Spring Mills, PA. Put your town on the map by signing up!

Good Will To All Men

The other day at work a guy called me by my first name. I was wrapping up his bottle of wine in tissue paper, humming a festive Christmas tune to myself, waiting for the credit card system to dial up and take his money, when suddenly he leant over the counter, looked me in the eye, and said “Thanks a lot, Tom.” He definitely said ‘Tom’, not ‘ta’ or ‘um’. Tom. My name. What. The Fuck.
The whistling stopped. Well, it had to; my breath was literally taken away for a second. My throat constricted. My pupils dilated. The tissue paper ripped in my hands. Then, slowly, I looked up and stared at him in what can only be described as abject and utter disgust. I was horrified. I felt sullied. How dare this man, with his weird grey-black mullet and his big jowly face, how dare he just walk into MY SHOP and call ME by the name that I use when I’m not at work? He might as well have pissed on my children. It was an offensive blasphemy. I threw his wine bottle into his bag, snatched and swiped his credit card, then thrust it in his face with a look that plainly said ‘Get the hell out, your kind is not welcome here’. I swear if he’d spent more than two point five seconds picking up his bags and shuffling off, I would probably have put my halberd through his head. As it was, he was fairly rapid on his feet.
I know, I know, I have a name badge that says ‘Tom’. Not important. I think that people who buy alcohol from me sometimes misread our relationship. They seem to think that they have some level of power over me. Authority. They think that I exist to serve THEM. They think that it gives me pleasure to do what they say. I think that sometimes they think that they’re in charge. And that somehow gives them a right to call me by my first name, to violate MY personal nominal space without any emotional obligation on their parts. I mean, if the guy had said, “Hey, my name’s Norman, mind if I call you by your first name?” that would probably have been cool. Of course I wouldn’t have let him. In fact probably I would have seized up a bottle of Cointreau ® and a Clipper Lighter ® and sprayed a ‘unique spirit combined with the subtle harmony of bitter and sweet oranges’ over his stupid plaid shirt and then set him alight, and then put out the fire by pummelling him with the broken end of the broom that we have in the backroom. But at least that would have shown the level of respect that I’m pretty sure I deserve.

What’s that, anonymous internet complainer?


“But Thomas, you’re doing a job of selling people things, surely you have to be polite and treat them with some respect! That’s what you are paid to do! HURRR.”

Ok. Hmm. Two points.
1: Shut the fuck up you virgin, you have stupid blonde hair and a dumb shirt. Nobody wears three fucking shades of blue. Every heard of layering? Jesus. Die in a fire.
2: I AM polite and I DO show the mouthbreathing neckbeard alcoholics who come to the shop plenty of respect. However I only show respect when it’s due. And most of the time, people get it. I’ve said before that I love the majority of people who come into the shop. They are usually Dear Old People who want some wine and are very polite about it, and when I say ‘Do you know if you buy another bottle of wine then you get a third one free? Go get another two. Now,” they are too nice and English to say ‘Nah, I’ll leave it’ but instead say ‘Oh really? Lovely’ even though they’ve been to the shop day in day out for the past three months. They understand that at the time of our conversation, there is nobody else on the entire planet in a position to give them the three bottles of Fiordaliso Pinot Grigio and the packet of Malborough Reds, and as such they need me more than I need them, and as such they should shut the hell up and do what they’re told. They play the game. And that’s all I ask. In a way, I’m like the whores in Sin City: play by my rules and I’ll make all of your dreams come true, but mess with me and you’re a corpse. I’m a sexy murder whore. And the customers are my customers.

Most people are good. But there always the people who mess with me. The utter unrelenting wankers who think that I’m there for their own personal amusement, the drivelling scumbags who assume that because my name is on a name-badge, they have a right to use it, and because it says ‘Sales Assistant’, I am there to assist them with their sales. NEWSFLASH, PEOPLE: I know nothing about wine. I have no idea where the merlot is. I don’t even know what merlot is. Just because I stand behind the counter doesn’t mean that I’m going to be able to help you in your equiries. ‘Sales Assistant’ is doublespeak for ‘They pay us because we understand how the till system works’ (no mean feat). Nothing else. So stop talking to me. And don’t a: expect me to be able to make decisions on wine, or b: know where anything is.

Perfect example. This woman came into the shop the other day with her boyfriend (I assume it was a boyfriend, either that or she was a skinhead lesbian with stubble and an Adams apple). The woman was fairly young, with a head shaped sort of like a pair, smart looking glasses on and a trouser suit. She had this gaping expression and a frown on and the moment I saw her I thought to myself ‘Shrew’. I think that Chaucer wrote one of his pilgrims tales on her, the Merchant’s Tale, the one that begins with the immortal lines “I have a wyf, the wurst that maye bee,” (there we are, a literary reference which goes to show that my education has NOT been wasted) and I immediately knew that she was going to be a bitch. As it was, she asked ‘Do you have any Cambo Maria?’ (I made up the name of the wine because I can’t remember what it was, frankly I forgot a second and a half after she said it). So I did what I usually do which is to leave the till and go and pretend to look for it, then say “I don’t know, let me check the system… how do you spell chardonnay?” The system said that there was none left, so I was like sorry, and she was like ‘well what am I supposed to do then? When are you getting more in?’

I stared at her. Seriously what am I meant to say to that. What a prick. As it was, I grimaced and then waved vaguely at the shelf and fell into a sullen silence, which she enthusiastically picked up. This lasted for ten seconds until a guy came up and cut in front of her and asked to buy ‘Nordsk Vodka’. I assumed that it was some kind of speciality vodka that we kept on the upper shelf and so I climbed up and then the guy was like “no… no… left a bit… LEFT…. Down one, there you go no you went too far… right… there you go well done!”… turned out he wanted Smirnoff Blue. Who the fuck calls Smirnoff Blue Nordsk? What especially rankled was the fact that I had to apologise for HIS mistake, right after having to apologise for the fact that someone else had bought all of the wine that the pear-faced woman wanted. The amount of completely insincere aplogising I have to do at that shop is mind numbing. I have lied to more people in two months at the Wine Shop than I had in the previous 18 years of my life. Frankly I was so annoyed I refused to serve either of them and closed the shop early (Not really, I just apologised lots while mentally imagining kebabbing the both of them).

Some people. Fuck’s sake. In fact while I’m at it, and I’m on a soapbox, here’s just a list of ways in which you people, as potential customers of my shop, have annoyed me:

If you don’t have ID, I won’t serve you. I know that I say that it’s because they are filming me on cctv and I get fined, but my main motivation is that I’m sick of putting up with your shit and if I have any opportunity to screw you over just a little bit more, I will take it. Why? Fuck you, that’s why.

On the subject of ID: If I do ask you for ID and you don’t have any, saying “Oh, but can’t I just buy it and go?” is NOT an acceptable excuse. Frankly it’s not an excuse at all. It’s the equivalent of a bouncer refusing you entry to a nightclub, so you stop, think about it for a few seconds, and then run head-first into his leg.

Once I’ve started to scan stuff into the cash register, that is it. You don’t get to change your mind. Saying ‘Can I be really annoying?’ doesn’t exclude me from being really annoyed when you decide to swap the 45p packet of peppermint chewing gum at the beginning of a £60 order for an identical 45p packet of spearmint chewing gum, thus obliging me to scan every fucking thing through again. You remorseless bastards.

It’s not my fault that you misread the pricing on the shelf. This guy came in, wanted to buy three bottles of champagne that he thought cost £30 each, and they ended up costing £36 because he was looking at an entirely different price, and then he said ‘HAY WAIT A SECOND THEY AREN’T WORTH ANYTHING NEAR THAT’ and then he frowned at me as though it was my fault. Wanker.

I WILL GIVE YOU A BAG IN MY OWN GOOD TIME YOU DON’T HAVE TO SPECIFICALLY ASK ME AND THEN LOOK WELL PLEASED AS YOU HAVE BEATEN THE SYSTEM WHEN I GIVE YOU ONE ANYWAY

A guy knocked a bottle of ale off of the shelf and it broke and then I had to clear it up.

If I’m reading a book, wait until I’ve finished my page until you ask me to actually do anything. As it is I have to keep stopping mid sentence, slamming the book angrily onto the desk and then selling some chav Malborough Lights. Can’t they see I’m trying to read Joyce? Morons.

When I’m in charge and there have been no customers for three and a half hours and I decide to close the shop at 9.50 instead of 10, that’s my own prerogative and it’s because I want to go home. Standing outside the window at 9.57 and insistently tapping your watch at me is not going to make me turn on all the lights, refloat the till, put my money into the computer and unlock. No apologies.

Man loads of people who buy alcohol from my shop are retards. I’m far too middle-class and well educated for this shit. I should work for a library or something. Except then I can’t listen to Interpol so loud that I can’t hear what anybody’s asking me. ‘What? You want a bottle of Fameusgrosse? Do we sell that? What? No I can’t turn down the music wait til the song finishes… there. Oh, Famous Grouse. The big one or the little one? I can’t hear you.”

Pfft. Humanity sucks. Anyway MERRY XMAS GUYS!!1! Here’s my cake for this year:

PoP's Little Snowman

A little late but better late than never, I present this little snow(ice)man to PoP, who just wanted someone to build her a snowman.

Enjoy!

He's about 2-1/2 feet tall, with crabapple eyes and maple-twig mouth. His nose is made of ice with a lot of cinder-dust on it. He ain't no Frosty, but I bet he doesn't come to life shouting that annoyingly sorta gay-sounding "Happy Birthday!" like the real Frosty, and he doesn't "thumpety-thump-thump over the hills of snow" either, which I always thought was a little weird and creepy.

Happy Happy Sad Times

The world is in a serious state of flux right now, and it's affecting me in all sorts of ways.

1. The weather can't decide whether it wants to be sunny and high 30s (yesterday) or snowy and low 30s (today) or just plain icy/freezing rainy (a lot of recent days). I miss the sun.

2. I ate or came into contact with something which caused a serious skin reaction, and I'm covered head to toe in hives. Itchy hives. Bad itchy. Last night, the bottoms of my feet were so itchy I almost began to cry; that's how itchy. I went to the doctor today, and now I'm as 'roided up as any baseball player. I have to wash all my clothes and towels and stuff with fragrance-/dye-free detergent, and hope that fixes it (along with the 'roids). I'm completely exhausted by the itching, the burning, the low-grade fever, and the constant Benadryl intake.

3. Somehow, by some magical alignment of the planets, I scored a 100 on my last calculus test; my average is now a 91, an A-. I actually emailed my professor and asked him if there had been some error! So I'm still working on my final exam (it was take-home) plus I have an oral exam (during which I have to work some problems for the professor, so he knows we know the material) on Friday. I really can't believe that I might actually make an A in this class. Remember when I would've been happy for a C? I guess it's true, the life motto I've had since my teaching days: "You're smarter than you think you are." That motto has carried me through a lot. When I told my dad (the civil engineer and math genius), I thought he was going to cry, he was so proud. *sniffle!*

my secret weapon!

4. My four-day holiday weekend is fast approaching, and I cannot wait! I'm going to bird my little heart out! We're baking cookies, making gingerbread houses, sleeping under the christmas tree, eating cookies, playing games--all the traditions we've established during our almost-six-year history as a family. (the sleeping under the tree thing is from my childhood) It's gonna be so much fun!

5. Next week, sadly, I only have Jan 1 off; however, we were just informed that we will be allowed to wear jeans and sneakers to work all week! Yay! Business casual sucks! Bring on the blue jeans! I'll be wearing my Disapproving Rabbits shirt, my "Finch better have my money!" shirt, my Cape May migration mainline shirt--I'll be throwin' down the mad birdin' lookz, yo!

Woo hoo! I love casual days. It's funny--in the summer, we're allowed to wear shorts (as long as they're not blue jeans shorts). So I wear shorts every. single. day. all. summer. long. That's my favorite time to come to work!

So our Christmas bird count was postponed until this weekend, and we're not going to Ohio after all until before New Year's, so I get to go. I'm so excited. I'm planning on taking lots of pics, so I'll mystify and amaze you for the new year.

The Ball (or: How To Alienate People And Fail In Civilised Society)

I’ve never really made any secret of the fact that I’m only going to Oxford to make contacts and set myself up for life, either by marrying into money or extracting blackmailable details out of future world leaders. To that end, my life is one constant networking trip. When I’m not lying motionless in my bed digesting fried cheese, I’m effortlessly schisming through the social crowd, expertly locating the future rich and powerful dons of the planet with a kind of Terminator style eye-mounted scanning device. I Am Essentially Facebook.

After two months of this, my constant attention whoring paid off and I was afforded a ticket to “THE SNOW BALL”. Whatever urbandictionary.com might say, the snowball is not a disgusting sexual act. In fact it is quite the opposite. As the official website puts it – it is “the final date of the year in the London Debutantes Season diary” the most glamorous and festive ball of the year, organised by the crème de la crème of the London social scene to raise money for charity, filled with celebrities like Des Lynam (I think he’s a footballer or something) and royalty like the Queen of Oman (?). Thinks about that. Picture it in your head. Now imagine someone like little old me there. Just imagine it. CRAZY EH. What an insane mismatch of social classes there would be! It’d be like something out of the OC. And in this case, I’d be Ryan and not Seth for once, a crazy kid from the wrong side of the tracks, ready to bloody some noses and upset the social order with my wild and rebellious ways! Just imagine that. AND NOW STOP IMAGINING BECAUSE IT WAS A REALITY.

I went up to London deciding that I would act like a gentleman and fit in with the Aristocracy that I was soon to be joining. The essential plan was to be effortlessly charming for the entire night, woo some kind of beautiful heiress and live as a Kept Man for the rest of my life, lounging voluptuously from a velveteen pouf and eating grapes peeled on the thighs of virgins or something. Therefore I got into character by acting as chivalrously as I could. I stopped to let a woman get on the train before me (and she wasn’t really even that hot so it was an entirely selfless act on my part). When I was listening to my iPod, a song by Eminem featuring extremely anti-female lyrics came on and I skipped song without even a thought. And when I was sitting on the train, this heavily pregnant Chinese woman hobbled on. Everybody else stared at her blankly and didn’t get off their seats, so I, after a few seconds of meditation, jumped up and gave her my seat. I settled back on my haunches with a very satisfied ‘Fuck the rest of you, I am going to motherfucking heaven’ expression on my face. I didn’t have to say anything but they knew that I was the moral victor. The Chinese woman’s husband then came on with a massive pram that crushed everyone else on the train and caused three other people to stand up. Then the Chinese woman proceeded to do scratch cards for the entire journey. Seriously she must have done seven or eight scratch cards. Frankly I didn’t know what to make of the whole thing and so I gave up being chivalric. I mean there was a big muddy puddle on the ground outside the station and there was a woman about to cross it I didn’t even take off my jacket and cover the puddle with it to stop her spoiling her shoes. In fact I pushed her into the puddle and then threw my sandwich at her before running away.

Anyway I met up with Matt and Max and changed into my tux. I’m not going to lie, I looked the sharpest of all three of us – Max had just come out of mouth surgery and so half of his face was yellow, and Matt had brought the wrong suit, which was just half a size too big, something that he complained about for the entire journey to the hotel. THE HOTEL oh yeah. We were worrying that we wouldn’t be able to find it, but such hopes were entirely unfounded when we got off the train. It was lit with so many lights that I’m fairly sure that I could have seen it from space (had I happened to be in space and looking for a hotel). It was also massive – the size of an entire city block, and when you looked at it from the bottom you couldn’t see the top. I would say that it was roughly the same size as my ego although in all fairness my ego is probably a bit bigger.

We went in and as soon as we were inside, I knew that I would never have to put any effort into anything I ever did again. I had Made It. The place was a palace. Plush velvet carpet for as far as the eye could see leading to beautiful walls covered with gilded mirrors, magnificent flower arrangements, gorgeous portraits and a fire extinguisher. Our eyes as wide as saucers, we wandered into the main hall area to see a bravura crush of men in suits and women in sparkly dresses who toasted and serenaded each other with the songs of sirens. Waiters darted about giving out glasses of pomegranate champagne (I had a glass) and miniature sausages and delicious little toasted cheese things that had ham in them (jewish Max had two of these before I pointed out the pork content). Minocher, who was wearing a pair of dashing tartan trousers, suddenly rolled up and leapt onto me. I peeled away and sauntered through this glen of beautiful people, feeling like a hobbit in the land of the elves, and I suddenly realised how many gorgeous girls there were. Seriously there was TALENT there. One of them caught my stare and I swear to god there was a quarter of a second when our eyes locked and the chemistry between us was enough to set fire to Belgium. Unfortunately I went off her almost immediately when I noticed that her nose was well ugly and bumpy and flat, like someone has hit her in the face with a shovel and then I was distracted by an old man who was WEARING A MONOCLE NON-IRONICALLY and that promising love affair was vanquished. As I walked through, I realised that I, with my firestarting political opinions and my working class ethic, had nothing in common with many of these people. What knew I of diamond mines and polo? Nothing! I knew of simple fare, like coal mining and digging trenches in the hot hot sun, all day long. I started to feel smaller and smaller and more out of place and when I reached the end of the hall I was all hunched up like a little Gollum type freak. I looked left and right. Where were my friends? They were gone, replaced by a girl with a giant shaggy head of hair, clad in diamonds and a figure wearing tartan trousers who was not Mino but a man with wrinkly ears. I had a headache.

I took another glass of champagne. Then a man started to play the bagpipes and the Head Matriarch (this TERRIFYING woman who looked a bit like The Wise Owl from Winnie The Pooh) told us all to go into the dining hall. Dazed and confused, I followed the crowd and bumped into some other Balliolites.

We went into the dining hall, through a passageway filled with fake snow (I won’t lie, I stole a handful later on the evening and was disappointed to find out that it wasn’t even snow, just cocaine). I say dining hall, I mean DINING PALACE. The tables were all set up fancy with these giant feathers and sparkly cutlery. The sense of isolation and confusion that had been engendered by the champagne reception was increased when I found that I had been assigned a seat far away from the rest of the gang. A tear ran down my cheek as Matt and Max floated off, balloonlike, to the other side of the hall as I was trapped in one corner, surrounded by people that I didn’t know.

We all know me, I’m a touchy and confrontational person and I dislike meeting new people in person. I find the effort actually maintaining a conversation in real life both painful and boring and I would much rather either talk in a series of internet-MEME style clichés such repeating ‘no your mum’ to whatever the previous person has said, or just making up shit about how I played Optimus Prime’s stunt double in Transformers, or sit in stony content silence [this is probably why I’m not very good at speed dating]. Therefore, the idea of having to actually talk to people I didn’t know for long periods of time was nerve racking and so I downed my champagne and kind of slumped in the chair.

My two neighbours were these girls. They were actually alright looking and for a few seconds I perked up, fiddled with my bow tie, played with my cufflinks and sat up straight. They proceeded to ignore me for three solid minutes, until one of them swung round violently. “Hi I’m Sizzy,” she said enthusiastically. She had one of those voices like Peaches Geldof probably has. I stared blankly at her and then blindly gesticulated at my name card. I was so impressed by my smoothness that I made a mental note to take up self-harming when I got home. And I had some wine. “… Thomas?” she asked.
“Um… yes.”
We got chatting. It was evident that about thirty seconds into the conversation, she had come to the conclusion that I was a: A complete social retard, and b: A little small-time Englander who was unused to the Big City Lights. To be fair, I did start coughing halfway through an anecdote about working in a wine shop and I nearly choked on my own tongue. Then she said that she had a boyfriend who was an elite rower and I was like ‘forget you, clown’, and turned to talk to the other girl. I forget what her name was, I think it was Catherine or something, but for the purposes of this blog I will call her ‘blonde girl’.
She really wasn’t that much better than Sizzy, although she did have slightly more comic potential as she said ‘Top Form’ a lot. The first time she said it I started laughing and then I realised that she was being serious so I put on a straight face. And had some wine. It was like:
Me: I’m going to Oxford
Her: Oh, Top Form Top Form, what are you studying.
Me: English.
Her: Top Form.
Me: *Has some wine*
It was amazing, especially as she seemed to think that I was some kind of Wild Boy, a bit of rough from the country who spent his days shooting policemen and sniffing glue with Elizabeth Barret Browning. She actually said ‘It’s not often that we see someone outside of our social sphere’ and then looked at me as though I was probably about to start a brawl. I shrunk beneath their gaze and drank some wine. I had a nagging feeling like both of them were mildly condescending me, entertaining me like some kind of exotic zoo pet. Then Blonde One said that she had a boyfriend so I was like ‘forget you, clown’ and turned back to Sizzy, before remembering that she had a boyfriend too, so I just had some wine instead in the brief interlude while both girls were being chatted up by boys from Eton. The waiter game round and topped up my glass, so I had some more wine.


The problem was that there were these little serving imps that kept going round the table in circles filling up the glasses of wine as soon as they were drunk. I was unaware that there wasn’t some kind of implicit challenge and frankly I don’t drink wine that often. This I would class as ‘the beginning of the end’.

I had some more wine when the first course arrived. It was a long square plate that had the following things on it:

A leaf of spinach

A red thing

Something that looked like a scotch egg but turned out not to be full of pulped fish

A kind of weird root that looked like a limp leek, placed damply on top of a red mushy star

A small bowl of what I can only guess was pea soup

I stared blankly at it, and then gingerly stabbed the spinach with my fork. I raised it to my mouth and it fell off the fork and left a greasy stain on the tablecloth. I raised my eyes to see both Sizzy and Blonde One staring at me with what can only be described as pity in their eyes. I thought about it, realised there was no way to recover, then slowly stabbed the spinach again, placed it back on the plate, put my fork down, crossed my hands in my lap, and stared into the middle distance. Then I had some wine. I got hungry again and ate the rest of the food which was ok. However the ‘eating of the rest of the food’ was tempered with ‘drinking almost constantly from the magical wine glass’. I felt a bit like Odin in that legend when he’s drinking from what he thinks is a beer horn but it’s actually the sea and he can never empty it, except instead of partially draining the ocean and thus inadvertantly causing the tides, and learning an important life lesson, I simply failed to get to the bottom of the wine glass and instead got utterly smashed.

I honestly can’t remember the last two and a half hours of the ball and when I came to, I wasn’t lounging voluptuously from a velveteen pouf and eating grapes peeled on the thighs of virgins. I was sprawled sideways across Max’s bedroom floor in, my tongue swollen up to four times its usual size, in an agony of remorse that took an entire week to fade away. I was also topless. Apparently during those two mysterious hours hours, amongst other things, I pushed a woman off of an auctioned motorcycle and nearly got Matt beaten up by a South African rugby player before falling down the stairs. Several of my friends refused to speak to me for several days after the event. ☹

That was my entry into civilised society. How do you think I did?

I don’t think that I’ll be invited back.

LOLZ update

It's been a while since I put up anything from ICanHazCheezburger; this one seemed appropriate:

You go, gull!

Tagged again

Tagged again by Susan Gets Native and her flu germs to do the following:

Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
Share 7 random or weird things about yourself.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So, thus warned, proceed at your own risk. We'll call this the Anal-Retentive Random DG List:

1. After having to memorize all the auxiliary verbs in Mrs. West's Language class in 4th grade, I can still recite them all. I think it was the way she had them grouped that was just very rhythmic and logical, and it just stuck with me. (oh, okay: Is Am Are Was Were Be Been Being Have Has Had Shall Will Can Should Would Could May Might Must Do Did Does)

2. The only two common words I ever have a problem spelling are broccoli (or is it brocolli?) and "exaggeration" (or is it exagerration?). I don't know what my deal is with those two. Otherwise, I'm an extremely good speller and never use Spellcheck.

3. I love to wash my hands; not obsessively so, but I do wash them a lot. I'm also *kinda* addicted to Purell. I have even been known to slap Purell on my face (a la Aqua Velva!) if my face feels oily and grubby. I know--gross. No one ever said addiction was pretty.

4. I can type about 90 words per minute when I'm really focused.

5. I always have to put my right sock on before the left, and then my right shoe before the left. I read in a little folklore book (called The Hodgepodge Book) when I was in about 3rd grade that if you put on the left shoe first, you have to step backward in your own tracks, sit back down, and take both shoes off again and do it right-shoe first. Otherwise, you'll be unlucky.

6. When I collect and take out the trash, I have to wash my hands before, during, and after about 20 times. Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially freaky, I use rubber gloves.

7. I'm very susceptible to medicines that make one drowsy--Nyquil, Benadryl, Theraflu, whatever--make me fall zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

*snort* huh? wuzhappening? Oh -- yes. Okay--tagging 7 people. Sheesh.

Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein at Casa de Monkey
Patrick at the Hawk Owl's Nest
Fellow Pennsylvanian Donna at KGMom Mumblings
Rabbits' Guy at A Houseful of Rabbits
PoP at Morning Martini

Okay, that was exhausting--I can only do five. And those of you who want to participate, great--if not, that's fine too. "It's yo' thing, do what you wanna do."

Raptorama!

I want everyone to know that I seriously disapprove of all this raptor talk!

This morning while driving to work, I saw raptors everywhere! Northern harriers, sharpies, Coops, kestrels, red-tails -- and I think even an osprey. I was driving, and it was pretty low light. We had sleet and ice all day yesterday, but this morning was dry -- cotton-batting sky over white fields and hills.

My question is this, for all you raptor-ologists: Because it rained/sleeted all day yesterday, did the raptors not get to hunt in that? I'm wondering if maybe they didn't get to eat yesterday, so they were all out in force today to get a meal. Which raises another question: How much do raptors eat in a day? Is a bird or maybe two mice enough?

Flocker memories

Laura H in NJ did a post with a photo from our big Cape May Autumn Migration weekend, and it made me remember how much fun we all had there. Who knows where the flock will go next--but I'm hoping we do that "everyone turns at the same time" thing that birds do so well. Magee Marsh? Somewhere in PA? Somewhere down south in NC? Who knows?

Susan Gets Native mentioned my crazy attempt at taking a photo of myself --I think this is the photo she posted on her blog of this moment:

Laura was just trying to make sure I got the lighthouse back there in the frame!

So I want to post the results. Most true artists try to convey something deep and meaningful, or perhaps the sad meaninglessness of life, in their self-portraits:

Me? Well, other than conveying the fact that I'm really getting way too many chins, I think the only meaning one can glean from this photo is the fact that I'm a Cowboys fan:

Oh dear. At least I have both ears.

So--in the spirit of spreading the embarrassment around, I'll include a incriminating photo of our Susan, with Birdchick in the background:

I'll drink to that!

Alcoholism is Not Funny (yes it is)

I am well aware that the majority of the readers of this blog are members of the aristocracy. There’s something about my wry wit and verve that makes me a favourite of the royalty of the world: the kings, the noblemen, the earls and (at a push) the viceroys – my well informed and incisive commentary on the ills of society (mostly, the poor) makes me a court jester of sorts. And as it stands, I’m writing in the implicit knowledge that you are most likely reading this on a laptop made of rubies and ivory, draped across velvet bedclothes, swaddled in nappies of gold and pantaloons of platinum, suckling on the teat of untold luxury probably drained out of the udders of some kind of metaphorical diamond cow. Well, it might surprise you to know that NOT EVERYONE WAS BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON IN THEIR MOUTH. SOME OF US have been raised in the school of hard knocks. Some of us have earned their lumps. Some of us have actually had to (whisper it) work for an honest crust.

Yes, it may shock you, but I have A Job. I’m no longer a layabout callow youth like the rest of you, I am a young motivated go-getter. I’m a member of the working men, the proletariat, the simmering classes. I’m a non shit Étienne Lantier for the modern day. And I don’t even work in a coal mine. The job that I do have is in a wine shop (it’s the same job that I had before I went to Oxford, but after two months in Halls, I now have a much more subtle and intricate understanding of the social hierarchies of Albion).

When I got it, I recalled the famous Oscar Wilde quote ‘Work is the curse of the drinking classes’; then I suddenly realised that he’d actually gotten it wrong (probably all of the bumsex going to his head) and that it was meant to be ‘DRINK is the curse of the WORKING classes’. Other way round, dipshit. Silly Oscar Wilde, I bet he’d feel prettttttttty bloody silly if he’d been around to see me correct his mistake today. Prettttttttttty bloody silly. For a few seconds, this realisation knocked me off. Was my new mission of dispensing alcohol a subtle betrayal of my working-class brethren? Was I somehow abandoning the struggle of the waged people by dispensing the poisons that so destroy and damage the squalid ruts that they call their daily life? I resolved the question by asking my Marxist friend Julian (who went to the same private boy’s secondary school that I did) whether my job was Marxist or not. “Are you employed or employing?” he asked. “Employed.” “Fine then.”

Brilliant.

So I got to work. The fun thing about working in a wine shop is that Drunks really really bloody appreciate and respect you. And I like that. It doesn’t usually happen. As a hardcore 4 lyf member of the Middle Classes, usually the only real experience I have with Drunks is when they beg me for money, viewing them at the circus, or when I’m having my shoes shined in the street. Other than that, we tend to stay out of each others’ way. But the fact is, if you hold the keys to the liquor cabinet in a Wine Shop, you better be pretty bloody sure that those Drunks will come crawling out of their caves and their brothels and stagger up to the front counter. They’ll rear up suddenly, like irate ska-listening bears, and will open mouths that put all of British dentistry to shame, and will crash back down, bringing with them such a terrible overwhelming truckload of stench that I recoil in horror and disgust. I’ll suddenly pull back, half expecting them to vomit on my new shoes, half expecting them to pull out a knife and steal my kidney, when they’ll meekly get out a small purse and mutter “Can I have a half-bottle of Imperial, please? Thank you.”

I’m not going to lie; I like to revel in the power I have over these foolish oppressed people. Is this the correct Marxist viewpoint? I dunno; I was talking to Marxist Julian about this. We discussed my political leanings in details and he pointed out that, based on what I’d told him, I most fitted the profile of ‘a fascist, or at the very least a really cynically right-wing person’. Whatever. I feel that I don’t get enough respect from scary homeless people on the streets at home, so I guess it’s nice to have the scary homeless woman best known for screaming at traffic and spitting at random pedestrians politely and quietly asking me for a Frosty Jack’s, and then thanking me emphatically for it. I LIKE TO REVEL. So sometimes I hold the drink just out of reach, or I wave it around in little circles and I watch their beady little eyes follow the bubbles in the bottle without missing a beat. Sometimes I ask them to dance for me before I give them the sweet sweet Special Brew (nb: I do not ask them to dance for me).

Of course, now I’m a member of the working class, I don’t like to torture just them. Don’t think that. Don’t think that all of the Drunks are homeless scum. I mean, most of them, but in reality Drunks come in all shapes, sizes, and social classes. The amount of money you haven’t doesn’t ultimately have any influence in determining if you’re pathetic drunk. And not even the amount that you drink. Frankly it is more of a state of mind than anything else. And it’s not really funny. These people are sick individuals. They need help. They are depressing, pathetic, heart-rending and – most importantly – hilarious. So with no further ado I present

SOME VERY FUNNY DRUNKS WHO HAVE COME INTO MY SHOP IN RECENT DAYS

Frog Woman
This little short foreign-looking old woman hobbled in. She looked like a fucking frog. Her eyes bulged out of the side of her squad little head and she sort of hopped along. When she arrived at the counter, she turned sideways and fixed me with one shiny eyes. “HELLO” she said “CAN I HAVE THE BELL’S WHISKEY ON SALE NINE NINETY NINE”.
I stared at her. What, I said.
“BELL’S WHISKEY ON SALE NINE NINETY NINE.”
I was like ok, then I got down the Bell’s and I scanned it in, it was like twelve quid. Oh. Already, a nauseating sweat crept over me. What you don’t realise is that every sale is like an elaborate theatre, a dance routine that requires the use of a series of increasingly convoluted and difficult steps, a gym routine of scanning and card-swiping and maths and button-pressing. And when something doesn’t work properly, it is like I’m corpsing on stage, or I’m tripping over my feet, or I’m falling off the high-beam and cracking open my vagina. And the worst thing is, it isn’t even my fault. It’s the tills. I don’t like our till systems. They don’t work properly. Special offers don’t get scanned through properly. Occasionally the computer gets unplugged and an entire days’s takings can just be lost in the system (nobody notices). The customers don’t realise that this is the shit I have to put up with every day. For some reason, they just ASSUME that everything works properly. Idiots.
‘Uh, it seems to be, uh, twelve pounds here’ I said calmly.
“NO IT IS NINE NINETY NINE” she replied stolidly. “IT SAYS SO ON THE BOARD OUTSIDE”.
I fucking hate that board. Nobody ever changes or updates it, and I’m pretty sure it still has special offers up from like, last year. And even if the offers are relevant to nowadays, I can guarantee that the computer system doesn’t know that. I panicked. And so I did what I always do when I panic – I asked my supervisor, who was reading Plato in the back room.
“Just… tell her that the offer’s expired. That’s what I always do.”
I went back out, where the woman was still standing there. However, she’d turned round and was now gazing at me with her other eye. This was offputting.
“Uh, sorry madam, but the offer has expired.”
“IT SAYS ON THE BOARD THAT IT IS A CHRISTMAS OFFER. TODAY IS THE EIGHTH OF DECEMBER. WHY DO YOU SAY CHRISTMAS OFFER WHEN IT ENDS NOW.”
I really had no response to that. There was a small queue of customers building up behind Frog Woman. Directly behind her was an actually fairly hot (in comparison to the rest of the ugly shoe-faced scum we get in the shop) young girl. Suddenly, my supervisor magically appeared out of the back room and started serving – the rule is that he only serves when the customers are hot. In the meantime, Frog Woman was slowly muttering to herself about the fact that if they had an offer on a board, they had to honour it. I wasn’t really paying attention, to be honest I was selling some other guy a packet of Bensons. However my supervisor – after sorting out Fit Girl - noticed Frog Woman and engaged her in conversation. They then chatted literally the next twenty-five minutes. Topics of conversation included:

Why the shop shouldn’t put up a sign avertising Bell’s Whiskey for £9.99 when inside the shop it didn’t cost that much

Why the whiskey was a present and she didn’t want to break the ten pound price range

Why it would probably in fact be a MUCH better investment to in fact but a seventeen quid bottle of whiskey (my supervisor’s input)

How the woman liked Christmas but didn’t like buying presents

About where they were spending their holidays

About life in Bangladesh (turned out they were both Bangladeshi)

About the history of Bangladesh (no offence, I don’t want to sound racist, but how come every time two Asian-type people start talking to each other, they invariably refer to “The Troubles”, look grave, and then change the topic? I need to brush up on my Asian history I think)

A Bangladeshi folk-tale about a king who was really wise and had a mythic flying horse or something, I can’t remember, I was too busy serving all of the other customers, restocking the soft drinks fridge, lugging around crates of beer AND adding change to my till. All while my supervisor was having a chin wag. FUCK HIM. Lazy shit

Anyway, she finally left about an hour after she came in. I can’t remember if she bought anything, but she looked happy when she left.
And my passion is to serve people, and so to me, that was a job well done.

Red-Face Man
Red-Face Man came in and my Inbuilt Crazy Drunks Radar went WOOGA WOOGA and then exploded. Last time I buy an Inbuilt Crazy Drunks Radar from Wilkinson’s, I tell you. There was just something about the way he walked that was Off. So I knew something was up, but I wasn’t going to let it phase me - I’m a professional, remember? By the way, I refuse to call the customers “sir” or “madam”. I mean, I’m a humble working man and all but I frankly draw the line at actually BEING humble to anyone. I think I’m better than that. So my standard greeting is a subdued ‘Alright?’ which I think does the job while simultaneously saying “I don’t really need this job so don’t mess me around or I WILL kick you in the head” which is what I’m going for.
Anyway, he came up to the counter and I said ‘alright?’ and he fixed me with a devastating glare and said ‘No, not really to be honest’. Seriously, what are you meant to say to that? I settled for ‘Staring blankly at him and then slowly stepping away from the counter’. And then I looked at him and saw that his eyes were all shiny. Had he been CRYING?. Oh, shit. I rolled my internal eyes and expected him to order a bottle of vodka, or whiskey, or Frosty Jacks, or that turpentine stuff that we keep under the sink in the bank room to disinfect the floor every time someone drops a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the white wine section. Anything to numb the pain.
“I’ll have twelve bottles of champagne, please.”
I was like what. I mean he didn’t look like a hobo, so the fact that he had money was no surprise, but seriously, who just walks into a shop and buys twelve champagnes, especially when they look like they’ve been crying? Fucking weirdo. Except, you know me, I am a humble servant, so I hopped to it.
He turned out to be a knob. He didn’t request any particular brand, so when I aksed him, he gave me a withering glare and spat ‘Whatever’, and when we were trying to load the champagne into boxes for him, he was like ‘I want a bigger box’ which wasn’t useful. Frankly I’m only in this job for money (sorry, but fuck you, proletariat brothers) and being talked down to by some dickhead man wearing stained chinos and a huge pink linen shirt is not my idea of acceptable. I don’t do turning the other cheek, so I was well resentful. However eventually we manged to sort him out, and my friend Dave carried the boxes to the guy’s car, which was RIGHT OUTSIDE (on a disabled space).
I was glad to be rid of him. To be brutally honest, when Dave came back in and said that Red-Faced Man had revealed that his daughter had narrowly survived a serious car accident that morning, I cheered and high-fived one my supervisors. Then I started wondering why, if his daughter was seriously injured, he was buying champagne? It Was A Mystery.
“That’s Karma”, said the supervisor solemnly. “The other week he came in and bought ten bottles of champagne and was a cunt to me. Karma. His daughter deserved it.”
That is the kind of crazy logic that we in the wine trade like to live our lives to.

Old Men
These two old men. Both of them looked about 60ish. Both were dirty, leathery, smelly, missing teeth. Both wearing cheapo trainers. I managed to catch a glimpse of their conversation.

OLD MAN 1: Hey, you on Facebook yet?
OLD MAN 2: Yes, until I committed suicide on it. I don’t like it much.
OLD MAN 1: Yeah?
OLD MAN 2: Yeah, the other day I was woken up by it chirping, and it said that I’d been bitten by a vampire zombie application and it had sucked away my blood on Facebook.
OLD MAN 1: Yeah that’s the thing I don’t like about Facebook, you keep getting emails for every tiny little thing.
OLD MAN 2: That’s what I like about MySpace, you can turn off the emails which I think is handy.
OLD MAN 1: Do you still use your MySpace? Nobody goes on MySpace any more.

THESE GUYS WERE LIKE EIGHTY. It’s bad enough that my dad is on FaceBook and he keeps making comments about my various statae and blogs (“Who do you think that Anonymous commenter was?”).

But now random tramps? Life is fucking mental.

* * *

So that is a brief whirlwind tour through the life of a working class stiff for my audience of intelligentia, royalty and jews. I bet it was fun, eh? Like an exciting little safari into the lives of the scum? You people make me sick. I’m gonna go protest against the capitalist conspiracy against me and my brothers. We’re onto you. ALL OF YOU. Somebody give me a sign to wave.

Man, I am SO a bit of rough. I might buy a flatcap and grow some stubble.

A beautiful gardening post

My bloggy pal D-Cup wrote the most touching and wonderful post I've ever read about gardening's cycle of life and death. Check it out if you have a moment, and don't be put off by her banner--that's just how she rolls.

Birdy-spirit cleansing post

Sorry to burden you with sad birding stories of my childhood; boy, don't I have any GOOD birding memories when I was a kid? Perhaps my adult birding obsession is an attempt to deal with my unfortunate childhood scary experiences! Never fear, however; here's a little cleansing post for you and me.

You must check out Birdorable, brought to my attention by Patrick at The Hawk Owl's Nest. As soon as I saw this little guy, I emailed Lynne at Hasty Brook with the link:

This one's for you, Lynne!

Digging up a memory, then wanting to cover it over with lime

Don't I look like an only child here? No siblings!

I don't where my big brother and my sisters are, probably off to

the side somewhere, goofing around. This photo was given

to me in a little photo album by my godmother and aunt

on my dad's side, Elva. A few years ago, she gave me and my siblings

each a little photo album she'd made; my album has photos she took

or collected that kind-of feature just me or show me with

my family. I'm guessing she took this photo herself,

as I had never seen it in my mom's collection of family photos.

I was just at Julie Zickefoose's amazing blog, reading a great post with lovely pics about sandhill cranes in New Mexico. Juxtaposed with pictures of her adorable kids and these beautiful birds, she mentions a sobering truth (my emphasis):

The cranes walk along the roads atop the dikes at Bosque, and they often seem to stand vehicles down, in no hurry to clear the way. It's so good to see them rule the place, when they're hunted for sport all along their flyway. Yes. Sandhill cranes are shot for sport (and occasionally for food) in every state they migrate through. There are seasons and bag limits on sandhill cranes all along their migratory route. If you don't believe me, just Google "Sandhill crane hunt." If you're sensitive, don't. Most birders, who will travel hundreds of miles to watch their migration gatherings, don't know that these "ancient birds" that they admire so much are targets for hunters, and are as shocked as I was to learn it. I think they need to know it, and I often bring it up when I'm among crane fans, even though it doesn't do much for my popularity. Talking about crane hunting in such circles has roughly the same effect as cutting a giant fart at a cocktail party.... The thought of bringing these long-lived, monogamous, family-oriented and highly intelligent birds down for sport or roasting makes me physically ill.

So I click on the comments link and proceed to write about how much I hate the idea of a hunter bringing down any animal, yadda yadda--you know my my views on that--and I'm typing the word verification . . . and then it hits me: the flash of a very old memory. What is it? It was so long ago. . . .

I'm probably four or five years old, and I'm petting a crane. I think to myself in the present, "how could I have petted a crane?" But the memory is persistent; it flashes over and over until it is no longer a single frame but an entire movie: several frames running over and over on a loop. My little hand, petting the blue-gray feathers of a crane.

Suddenly the silent movie becomes a talkie: my father's voice is telling me it's a "heron crane." My sister Mary and I are petting the bird.

I'm sitting here now, knowing now that this is a Great Blue Heron I'm petting--and this heron was stuffed and mounted by my amateur taxidermist father. He kept it in his workroom, along with his bobcat skin and his mounted rattlesnake skin. Maybe my mother wouldn't let him bring this stuff in the house? I don't know. But the heron has been sitting in his workroom for a while, so it's dusty and a little worn.

I remember that I pet the bird every time I'm in his workroom, as I watch him cut wood to make cabinets, or sharpen his garden hoe on his bench grinder, or find a screwdriver to fix some loosened fastening in the house. I pet its soft slick blue-gray feathers, marvel at its long skinny legs, and stare into its yellow-with-brown-pupils glass-marble eyes.

Even now, I can smell the oils, the wood, the metal shavings, the paint and stain, the dust in that room.

And I can remember petting the heron.

Update on the Clouds post!

Check it out -- seems my cloud post, specifically the sunbeams/God's robe kind, has affected a broad audience -- everybody's feelin' it, even news photographers, as seen on Princess Sparkle Pony's blog.

FeederWatch report, and a long-sought photo

The birds were all over the feeder this morning, and I got some decent shots, considering the dim morning light of a sun hidden by a cotton-batting sky. We got about an inch of snow last night and it's friggin' freezing out there, but that didn't deter my little bubbies from their seed.

Mr Cardinal was looking sharp:


As was Mr House Finch, with some American goldfinch pals:


Mr. WB Nuthatch made a rare stop at the seed feeder in between his suet-pecking, along with some more dusky-suited American goldfinches:


Then it happened: the Carolina wren whose "teakettle-teakettle" calls I hear every morning finally made an appearance!


I've been trying to get a picture (or even a sighting) of this guy all season! Finally he saw fit to pose for me. He even gave me a shot of his 'tocks:


To go with this shot of RT Hawk 'tocks I got last week while birding with Em:


'Tocks all around!

Late Friday Night Nibble

Apologies for the Sunday posting of the Friday Night Nibble.

Niblet really loves his "crack"--a special mix I get at the pet food store with dried fruit, nuts, and seeds in it. I've read that it's bad to give your bunny nuts and seeds, but the little guy really loves them! And he's been eating this mix (he gets a 1/4 cup each night as a little treat) every night for over a year now and he's healthy as a little horsey. Am I being a bad mother? He gets so excited when I go near the cabinet where I keep the crack; he binkies around me in circles, jumping and shaking his whole body with excitement. How am I gonna take that away from him?

I've looked at clouds that way...

Note: I've been working on this post for a while, or at least working on acquiring the images for the post. The text--it'll be grasshopper product, produced on the fly; the pics are pure ant product. (In case you don't read Julie Zickefoose's blog, check out this beautiful entry, which ends with her classifying bloggers as grasshoppers and ants. I'm always a grasshopper, just writing on the fly.)

I love clouds and have names for the different kinds of clouds I see but not like "cumulus" or whatever. I have my own little cloud names, coined over a lifetime of watching the sky. Here are a few of the clouds I've seen lately that exemplify the clouds in my lexicon.

1. First up is the "Ferris Bueller" cloud--those tiny puffs that insist on making themselves seen in an otherwise cloudless and spectacularly blue sky:

I call them Ferris Bueller clouds because of that part of FB's Day Off in which he says he couldn't possibly go to school on a day like today, and then they cut to several quick shots of tiny little clouds like these, as though they made the weather too severe to go to school.

2. Next up is the general post-storm cloud cover, featuring little splotches of blue:

I've always thought that it's almost cruel the way the sky always seems to clear up and turn beautiful right after a really fierce storm. This was especially true in Texas when, after a tornado would rip through, the sun would come out as if to spotlight the devastation. Has anyone else ever noticed this? The above picture wasn't taken after quite so fierce a storm--just the steady cold rain and windy storms that gripped Cape May for the first day and a half of this autumn's Migration Weekend. I was standing outside the convention center on Saturday, just as the skies were finally clearing and the Flock--Susan Gets Native, Laura H in NJ, Susan at Lake Life, and I--were about to go walk on the beach for the first time.

3. Next up is the kind of cloud that produces sunbeams:

This isn't the best picture, but you get the idea. When I was a kid, my little sister Mary and I would look for these clouds and the sunbeams, especially near evening; we would say that the sunbeams were God's robe coming down as he stood on the earth.

4. These are wispy, melting butter clouds:

This type looks the way butter does when you melt it, with the oils and stuff separating out. It's one of my favorite cloud types. I like the different textures and the way the winds slice the clouds into different bits at different altitudes.

5. The sunlight-diffusing morning clouds are another favorite of mine:

I like the pinks and oranges produced by these clouds and their effects on the morning sun, almost Monet-like in its translucence.

6. This is an example of a rather thin cotton-batting sky:

I have a slightly better though smaller example of a more dense cotton-batting sky here:
I remark on the "cotton-batting sky" more than any other kind of cloud cover, because it's my favorite. You'll see it before it rains or snows, when the cloud cover looks like cotton batting stretched out across the sky like a blanket, with thinner and thicker parts, but shielding out the blue behind it (except in the case of the thin batting in the first example). I wish I had a better photo, but lately every time I've seen it, I haven't had the camera.

7. I love clouds at sunset, especially the clouds high enough to look over the edge of the world:

See how there's dark gray evening clouds, shaded from the sunlight by the edge of the earth's disk, and then there are the higher clouds that are lit by the setting sun's last rays? I love these. It would be like getting an extra peek at the sunset, being up that high.

Here's another example, which also includes some really beautiful evening gray clouds, another favorite:


Clouds in the evening and at night, dimly lit by setting sun or moonlight, are beautiful to me.

8. Finally, there's the wispy clouds, smaller bits of what are usually called mare's tails:
These aren't the whole tails, mind you--just little splashes of tails.

I'll leave you with a photo of evening gray clouds I took on my way to calculus class one night. It was bitterly cold, and the moon was hanging in the sky, following the sun:

Winter blahs

Winter's not even officially started yet, and already I have the winter blahs. I find it difficult to post anything, difficult to go birding, difficult to do much more than sit on the couch and read Harry Potter books over and over, wishing I had a cool wand and could do magic.

Oh dear, I think I might have revealed a little more about the real me than I should've. . . .

At any rate, please excuse my sporadic posting.

I will say that I saw a great horned owl this morning on the way to work; I only wish we hadn't been running late (as usual), or I would've stopped and tried to get a picture. That's only the second time I've seen a GHOW that wasn't chasing me.

I went birding this past weekend with Roana and Nan from the State College Birding Club, and The Kid even came along. Em's developing an interest in birding, FINALLY! She always seemed a little resistant to get into birds when I would try to take her with me places, but she apparently saw a bald eagle flying near her dad's not too long ago, and it seems to have been her spark bird. I'm so excited that she's interested--I'll have a family birding buddy! We had a good time but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I'm hoping for horned larks, snow buntings, and maybe Lapland longspurs sometime during the winter, when they are supposed to feed in newly-manured fields. Maybe we'll get a good snow soon and I'll spot some. All three would be lifers.

Speaking of which, I just checked my list and I'm up (drumroll please) 163 species! The Cape May trip really boosted my total. I wonder how long it'll take to break 200--probably a while, as I'm not really a chaser. With the surprising number of irruptive species being seen in my area this fall, though, I'm hoping to add at least a few more soon.

So--a rather lackluster post, but hey--it's a lackluster day.

Panic on the streets of London (although in this case I am referring to Oxford so the reference doesn’t really work)

Nick Griffin and David Irving came to speak at the Oxford Union on Monday. For those of you reading this blog who are unaware of the facts of the matter, David Irving is a Bad Historian who chats a lot of shit about the Holocaust not happening. Nick Griffin is the head of the political party the BNP, which is some bunch of jokers that spend their time smoking fat blunts and capping bitches. I was curious about them so I went on their website and the slogan was “People just like you making a difference” and then their first news story was “BNP call to ban Muslims from our skies” which I think pretty much tells the whole story. To be honest the entire BNP website is filled with such jokers – including high quality comedy like this:


(HAHAHAHAHHA brilliant)


… and frankly maybe it is a topic for a later blog post; I don’t want this post to get bogged down in complicated political discourse (and we all know that when I start talking about politics, the finely balanced and incisive analysis can go on for hours). But just to set the scene a bit more, here’s a picture of the two men in question:



You might not be able to tell, but that picture isn’t actually a photograph. In fact it was originally a WW2 propaganda poster (which explains why David Griffin and Nick Irving are destroying the Statue of Liberty which for some reason is bleeding); and I have cleverly photoshopped it to suit my purposes, for example, by adding the names of the two men in the place of ‘Hitler’ and ‘Mongolian Looking Bloke’. If you look carefully, you’ll also see that I replaced the word ‘PRODUCTION’ on the big spanner with the word ‘DEBATE’. This is because Luke Tryl, the greasy little Head of the Oxford Union who invited Griffo and Irvs in the first place, said that he was confident that Oxford Students would be able to “crush these men in debate” and so I have tried to reflect that viewpoint with the Nazi Beast being scared off by the spanner of Good Debate. I’m not sure exactly what Trylby was expecting, like, some philosophy student to make a really good speech and then both of these guys who have spent their entire life talking this shit to look at each other and then be like “You know what, mate, that is THE BEST ANALOGY that I’ve ever heard in my ENTIRE LIFE, and, wow, I’ve never heard that particular argument put before me so eloquently and I don’t believe it, my mind is totally changed, I’m gonna quit this job, marry a black man and open a kebab shop. In fact, come over here. High five, soul brother, high five.” I don’t know, call me a cynic, but in my imagination, the entire debate was always going to boil down to a bunch of spluttering undergraduates going “buh-buh-but RACISM IS WRONG!” and then the Griffmeister-Jay just reciting a list of facts and figures that don’t make any sense but sound impressive, and then everyone would go away feeling pleased with themselves. Pfft whatever.

Anyway so the situation was that these men were coming to speak about free speech, and like half the university had a massive hissy fit about it and essentially decided to have a protest outside of the Union; then when The Racists showed up they would be Shown The Error Of Their Ways by some students waving placards. I quite like the irony of having a forum about free speech with some people who want to crush the free speech of other people and so the only retaliation of the people who are pro free speech is to attempt to stop the free speech of the people who are anti free speech. Free speech was absolutely the phrase of the moment and I’m not gonna lie, I got fucking bored of hearing it being brought up every ten seconds. Personally, I think that the issue is that Luke Tryl can’t see the difference between ‘oppressing someone’s right to free speech’ and ‘not inviting random lunatics from off the street to speak in front of hundreds of people’… I pretty much think that THAT’S where the issue lies. Right, so I’ve put that one to bed.

Seriously, though: free speech is a big issue. I have thought it through, and on consideration I would probably describe myself as both a hero and a martyr of free speech; because of my adherence and commitment to it, I am forced to just sit back and watch as people post horrible horrible comments about me on my blog. And those hurt, y’know? The anonymous spittle-flecked rantings of someone I don’t know who posts how mean I am on my blog at three in the morning is something that will haunt me to my grave. These anonymous writers don’t know what it does to my ego to see the number of comments steadily ticking up to the highest numbers since February. But it’s bad, I tell you. So you can see that I’ve suffered dreadfully in my quest to uphold free speech, and so I felt personally invested in this debate and I knew that even if I couldn’t get tickets inside the chamber, I would BE THERE OUTSIDE to cheer on/boo (depending on what everyone else was doing). Plus, you know me, I’m a sheep, I’m an experience junky, I just want to be where the action is, so I was like ‘let’s go!’ and then I pushed over a chair to show how rebellious and anti-conformist I am. Matt, who was well up for it, got really annoyed with me and said “Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously then don’t even bother coming” so I had to put on a really stony poker face. In fact I let him go off to the debate first on his own so I wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his new protester friends.

But after a bit, I got bored of hanging around in the bar and so we rolled up. Being out on the streets were bizarre. We’d been warned for weeks in advance that all of Oxford would be in security lockdown, and now the day itself had come. It was very exciting, actually: there was definitely a thrill in the air, a sort of buzzing electricity that said “Something is happening tonight”; the atoms in the atmosphere were glowing faintly and the sky was screwed into a little ball of anticipation; even the trees were holding their breath and the birds had stopped singing. There was also a load of police horses wearing riot helmets and shinpads, which was neat. The real action of course was taking place on the street outside the Union building, which was crammed to the fore with angry people. There was barely space to breathe, and the police had formed a cordon around the outside of the door and had stopped letting people with tickets go in. There was also some guy with a drum who was playing the Macarena or something, which I felt gave the entire scene a quite festive atmosphere. I mean, the reporter on the BBC website summed it up best when he wrote “there was not a gown in sight”. This was true – nobody at all had chosen to dress up in their sub fusc which – as everyone who has never been to Oxford will know – is what we wear seven days a week. We also travel everywhere via punt. Because we are the height of civility. OR SO YOU WOULD THINK. One look at the crowd instantly quashed that idea. This was no time for sub fusc. This was time for angry white people holding these signs that said “UNITE TO STOP RACISM”. The funny thing was that the signs were designed with these stick figure characters on them clutched arm in arm and the only way that the designers had to distinguish the two was to give one of the stick men a square head:



What does that represent? Black people with square heads? Mongoloids? I thought it was weird. Briefly. But really I had no time to sit and ponder as I swiftly got caught up in the moment, what with all the shaking of fists and yelling of GO HOME BNP with the rest of the crowd. There was lots of jostling and whatnot and I’m not joking, at one point someone started a chant that was just ‘oggy oggy oggy oy oy oy’, except in this case it was ‘Nazi Nazi Nazi out out out’ which I honestly thought was one of the best things I had heard in my entire life. It’s a pity that nobody else agreed with me and so we went back with the failsafe OUT OUT BNP. Which was nice.

It didn’t stay nice, though. The thing with large groups of self-righteous people is that after a while, they start to believe their own legend, and then they decide that as they’re all yelling something that has moral superiority, that gives them the right to act like utter penises. So pretty soon people were climbing on the wall and abusing students who were trying to get in to watch the debate; and then they started to stop people going in – “we’re defending our right to free speech by not letting you go in and watch this man speak” and then some other people broke into the building itself and ran up and down playing the piano. The guy on the wall found out and was like ‘I HAVE CONFIRMATION THAT 50 PROTESTERS HAVE ENTERED THE BUILDING’ and then everyone WHOOPED and roared and high fived as though suddenly they were part of some huge anti-conformist letz take down de system rebellion. It was like in Star Wars when they blew up the Def Star and everyone was like chest bumping Admiral Akbar, but in this case the rebellion high command was just a bunch of randomers. Basically it got to the point where I was so sick of everyone acting like dickheads and going on about FUCKING FREE SPEECH that I set about making a small petrol bomb and then I just set fire to the entire street. Luckily my moment of madness was averted by the fact that I didn’t have any petrol or bombmaking equipment, so instead substitute ‘built a small petrol bomb with ‘said “fuck this”’ and ‘set fire to the entire street’ with ‘went to the bar and drank like eight Fosters and then tripped over the stairs’.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way pro the BNP (their banter is atrocious and Griffin has a tiny penis). On the other hand, I don’t think that being anti-BNP means you have to be pro-knobhead. I’m sure it’s possible to protest without turning into a utter twat. However, life hasn’t really taught me different. You might not know this, but I am an old salt when it comes to ripping apart authority in demonstration form. I once marched in protest against the jews or something, I can’t really remember , and honestly I wasn’t that impressed that time. Large groups of shouty self-righteous people always piss me off. Protesters, free-palestine guys, anti-animal testing, pro-free speech, hippies, treehuggers and vegetarians. They constantly turn me off the particular issue. If you want me to be pro anything, just show me some protesters and I will automatically support the other side, just because I want to annoy the demonstrators. This is why I’m a member of Seal Clubbers of Canada. Anybody who complains about anything is lame.

The irony of course is that it’s all two sides of the same coin: people who want free speech, people who want free speech as long as it doesn’t offend them, people who write anonymous shit on the internet, people who want free speech as long as it gives them the right to be utter cocks, the BNP and the OUSU, racists and anti-racists… they all believe they’re in the right. But being in the right doesn’t automatically give you the right to do whatever the hell you want. Everyone likes to just sit back and feel self-justified to act like enormous penises and it’s both annoying and headache-inducing. Rights and responsibilities, people.

I don’t even know what I’m talking about now, but I think that I can conclude by saying that I’m pretty much the only entirely blameless person in this entire situation.

Laid-back LOLcat Monday

Who can resist the LOLcat?

Ella

I have written about some pretty controversial things on this blog. I did a treatise on paedophilia during which I invented a reality tv show called “YO, MOLEST ME!”. During the Danish Cartoon beef a few years back, I made a series of comical pictoral oronyms of Mohammad (‘toehammad’ and ‘emohammad’ and ‘Ric Romerohammad’ etc) and inserted them at the end of every blog post for a month. I wrote a post that was basically a series of pictures of small animals getting flamethrowered/squished with a hammer/run over with a steamroller. Y'know what? None of that ever really got that vociferous a response. I think it was because I didn’t know where people’s hot buttons lie. Racism, paedeophilia and animal cruelty: not enough to get people het up any more. You people are too desensitised to violence and shock tactics and suchlike. Yet I write a post about being unable to open a tin of tuna and suddenly the switchboards light up.

…

After my last blog, the following comment was posted:

Anonymous said...
so you slept with this bitch Ella yet? You keep bringing her up, constant kind references. If it weren't for the fact that youra complete failure I'd assume your allready fucking her, But we all know your not, partly down to those deep down feelings of underconfidence and unwantedness that were made oh so much worse when you got cheated on. I bet they don't really help your confidence around girls. I guess thats why you praise them on blogs, because you havn't got the balls to say anything in real life.
Your a joke
2:17 AM

Right. Ouch. I’m a decent kind of guy and I appreciate healthy criticism as much as the next gee, so I didn’t delete it. I just left it up there. In fact, I’m barely going to discuss the actual content of the comment itself for fear of appearing pricklike and/or snipey – and we know that I’ve turned over a new leaf and am trying to curb my internet overreactions. Just rinsing every section of that and making a load of unjustified value-judgments on someone I barely know would be a really knobbish thing to do. It would seem like I was playing the role of some kind of internet tough-guy and posting horrible and unwarranted things about someone from behind the safety, anonymity and security of my keyboard. And frankly I would never do anything like that. In fact, I will just make a few general points about it and then we will be able to move on with our lives. I have some, just read them, note them, make of them what you will.

Point the First:The comment was posted at 2.17 in the morning
Point the Second: “allready”
Point the Third: The writer commented on the fact that I ‘haven’t got the balls to say anything in real life’
Point the Fourth: It was posted as ‘anonymous’
Point the Fifth: I am not ‘fucking Ella’ yet and if I was it would be no cause for sadness; in fact frankly it would be a cause for joy and dancing in the street. I also don’t constantly mention her for no reason (pfft, the idea)
Point the Sixth: "underconfidence and unwantedness". Neologistic.
Point the Seventh:You’re. You’re. You’re. YOU'RE.

THAT’S IT THAT’S IT. That is it. Those are the only real statements that I have to make about the actual content of the comment itself. Well, I have one more but I think that it can wait until I have finished the rest of this blog.

Of course, once that comment was posted, the message board/comment section/facebook/JCR/Oxford Journalism Scene/my parents became AWASH with speculation as to whom the writer could have been. After intense discussion and not a little bit of internet detective work, I tracked some IP addresses, and hacked some sub-servers and found out that I didn’t really know anything about computers. I then fell back to the wisdom of popular guesswork and thus, in no particular order, here are the most likely suspects as chosen by the mob. Ironically, I think that the beginning of this list could fit quite snugly in with the whole ‘people who hate me’ list which I have also been compiling:

Mike and/or Lucia
For some reason, Mike has been the suggestion offered by the greatest number of people. I don’t see where this has come from. This is not his style. Mike’s style is being overbearingly friendly and nice. I haven’t seen him being horrible to anyone ever (other than that one time when he got obsessed with my friend Joe’s girlfriend Kaitlin and then went out with her when they broke up, but that was strictly a one time thing). And frankly I don’t see why either of them would be that mad with me. Especially about Ella (even though Ella is more of a man/woman than Mike/Lucia will ever be). Plus they aren’t vindictive. Plus I haven’t done anything to hurt them at all. Plus why would they care enough to be blog-cussing me at 2.17 in the morning. That kind of behaviour is absolutely for social pariahs and people with skin complaints. So I want to officially cross them off of the list. But it was gratifying the number of people who independently decided that it was him and called him a knob. That was good.

Lucia’s Sister
She had detested me since I accidentally called her ‘fat’ three years ago and then she screamed me out of the house and my only response was to sing at her. Could she be the one who wrote it? Thinking about it: No. Not her; firstly I don’t think she reads this blog as much as she used to do, and secondly because I don’t think her fingers are thin enough to type individual letters yet. “Ho ho, a return to vintage early 2006 humour! Wahey!” [clam]

Anyone From King’s
You know when you cause someone so much hurt, and they do enough bad shit to you, and you two hate each other so much, that eventually you think to yourself “Seriously, Tom, you have burnt literally all of your bridges with this girl” and you essentially cut off all communications and never speak to each other again? Well that’s pretty much the situation between me and this independent boys school in West London. At this point, I honestly think that King’s College School and I can have no more to do with each other. I can’t even remember all of the reasons, but, following certain incidents and happenings, I’m pretty sure that there’s an entire year group that hates me. What’s really good is that there are still untapped wells of resentment out there. People who I don’t even know occasionally send me hate-mail. It’s brilliant and I know that I should be upset, but really, it takes a certain level of anti-conformist skill to make an entire school full of public schoolboys hate your guts (with the exception of my friend Pete and some dude called Alex Watson who apparently thinks that I am ‘cool’; cheers dude). So yes. There is a decent chance that the writer of that comment is from King’s.
But hey, joke’s on you, buddy, you got screwed over by the IB system whereas I did A Levels which are progressively getting easier every year, got all As and now go to Oxford! Gutted.

A Girl
I hadn’t even considered that it might have been a girl until Aime pointed out to me that both sexes can indeed operate keyboards. I was like woahhhhh. Although I do guess that that kind of makes sense; I mean what with all the stuff about my relationship with girls, perhaps the anonymous really is writing from a female point of view. Especially as the main attack seems to be along the lines of ‘You are too shy to talk to girls’ which to be honest I think is kind of cute and endearing and Seth Cohen-esque. OOH I KNOW perhaps it’s a girl who like, secretly loves me and is getting increasingly frustrated that I’m not picking up on her really obvious signals! Yes! I’m in there again!
Mmmmmmaybe not.
I mean, I’m an optimistic guy at heart and to be honest given enough alcohol I can translate absolutely any female signal into a booty call, but even I see the weaknesses in translating “you’re a complete failure” (my grammar) as a come on. Maybe I’m wrong and frankly, babe, if you want a piece of the Phizzle, you have to do it take a ticket and stand in line, I’ll move on to you shortly. Maybe just send me some money?

Someone who hates Ella
They did call her a ‘Bitch’. But who could hate Ella? That’s like hating the Sun or something. And when I say the Sun I mean not The Sun the newspaper. I mean the star that gives us warmth and light. We all in our own special way orbit around Ella. She is the ground under our feet and the air in our lungs.

nb: when I say ‘we all orbit around her’ I am NOT saying that Ella is fat because she isn’t, in fact she is perfection carved into a human form.
nnb: thinking about it, I want to retract the statement ‘Ella is the air in our lungs’; seeing as she smokes so many cigarettes that the air she exhales turns the end of the filter black, I don't think any of us should be inhaling anything when in her general presence

To conclude, I’m not even going to consider this as a possibility. You might as well say that Bigfoot wrote it.

Nick Griffin and/or David Irving

(I love how that is the picture of Griffin that the BBC decided to use on their story; the one with him staring with his weird mismatched eyes like someone out of a Gabrielle lookalike competition)

Griffin and Irving are these two brers who have been invited to speak at the Oxford Union about Freedom of Speech. Griffin is the head of the political party the BNP, which as far as I can tell is like the Boy Scouts except they don’t like uppity black people and immigrants, and Irving is some historian who says that the holocaust didn’t happen. Frankly, as a blue eyed blonde haired white dude, they technically should have no beef with me and I don’t really understand them bonding together to write mean posts on the internet about me. However, when it was announced that they were speaking, the whole university collectively weed its pants, threw its toys out of the pram, had a tantrum, etc, and since then there have been innumerable vociferous arguments, marches, rallies and newspaper columns protesting the obscenity of having these two angry young men speaking at Oxford. Today we were all sent an email warning us that Griffin was quite likely to bring “group of extremist party members who are violent against people who look like they aren't straight white caucasians” who would run through the streets and set fire to black people and threaten Hassan’s Kebab Van and stuff; like I said, I’m aryan as hell so I’m not that bothered (in fact I might join in, just for jokes) but I guess with all the rivers of hate that are unleashed wherever Griffin and Irving go, there is a chance that they probably could have had the evil inside them. So, uh... let’s give them like, a 6% chance of having written it.

My Mum
For: She has been getting pretty annoyed that I’ve not called her from University for the past four or five weeks. Against: I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know how to use a computer.

This dude

I don’t know why. He just looks pretty angry. And also kind of like a virgin, which would explain why he’s posting stuff anonymously on the internet at 2 in the morning. Hmm. On second thoughts, seeing as I got this picture off google images by typing “angry pathetic virgin”, it’s probably not him.

Someone Else
Ah, the magical Someone Else. Guilty of pretty much everything that is wrong in the world. I’m tempted to pretty much ascribe the culprit to being a member of this group. But still doesn’t answer the question… WHO? WHO? WHO? Because, as much as I wrack my brains, I honestly can’t think of anybody who I have pissed off THAT much in the past four months. I’ve been remarkably good. An angel, to be honest. Perhaps it’s Satan who is getting annoyed that I’ve stopped on the downpayments for my minifridge. That could be it. Why do I have a secret enemy? That's a bit worrying.

* * *

So the situation was that there was a mean comment on my blog and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Respond, or not? Or turn the other cheek? Hmm. Well the fact was, I’d thought to myself previously “I should be less of a cock on the internet to people” after the whole debacle of, ooh, the last 9 months of my life. And so I was torn – respond, or give up the sweet and peaceful internet lifestyle I had adopted and grown to love?

In fact it was kind of like one of those Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, when Jean-Claude had quit the marines to be a fisherman or to whittle chairs or whatever, and then his old army captain comes along and is all like “Jean-Claude these guys have kidnapped the president” and JC is like “Sorry dude, you know I don’t do that any more” but then the army dude’s like “Yeah but they also kidnapped your sister” and then JC stands up in slow motion and throws down his fishing rod and ties a bandanna around his head and is like “This time it is personal” and then he roundhouse kicks a tree until it falls over (by the way I can do that now that I am a red belt at kickboxing).
Of course in this case it was more like “Tom, some guy wrote a mean comment on your blog comments, we need you to redress the balance and write a horrible blog about THEM", and I’m like “Sorry, I don’t do that any more” but then they were like “But the commenter called Ella a bitch” and I’m like “RAAAWR PLAYTIME IS OVER BITCHES” and I kick over a table of playing cards.
So I tied my metaphorical bandanna around my metaphorical head and settled down to write some kind of ribald and no doubt HILARIOUS rejoinder to that comment. But lo and behold, to my surprise I saw that other people had already been there and done it for me!

“At least put your name to it, you vicious bitch.”
“Only a moron would spell 'already' with two 'l's.”
“lets be honest we all know who that comment is.... hes a nob.”
“Hey anonymous cocksucker, put your fucking name on your piece of illiterate shit. You're the skidmark of a worm-ridden dog dragging its arse along the floor.”
“Anonymous,if you dislike this blog so much why did you go through it and count how many times he mentioned Ella? Get a life.”
Etc.

I have to say I was touched at the number of people coming out of the woodwork to leap to my defence. I’m not even joking it was absolutely worth having some anonymous dude insult the pants off of me, just to see all anonymous internetters leaping to my defence and saying how much they liked the blog! I love you guys.

xxx

ONE MORE THING. My final point to note about the content of that letter.
Point the Seventh: The whole thing about me being shit with girls. I’m sorry, anonymous friend, this is the only point that I’m gonna have to disagree with you on. Frankly, I am dynamite with the ladies. In fact, I might as well take this opportunity to wipe that smile off of your face with the news: I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND. That’s right. I really do. No joking. Somebody who was totally a girl (I know because the comment was highlighted in pink) wrote on my facebook Honesty Box wall that I was ‘fittttt’. Notice all the ‘t’s. There are five ‘t’s. That is how fit I am. Five times as fit. As a normal person. It’s getting pretty serious now, actually. I reckon she’ll tell me her name in a couple of weeks. So stick THAT in your Bacardi and sip it, Mr Anonymous.

I hope that it was Ella that Honesty Boxed me. Man it’d be so wicked if Ella and I fell in love and then we got married and lived in a little house with really good ventilation. Mmm. Ella Ella Ella. ELLA. She has now been mentioned 18 times in this post which, according to my official Ella-counter, is some kind of a record. 19 times now.