The thing most people don't know about possums is that they're hoarders. Worse than pack rats. Worse than magpies. Your magpie will go for shiny things—gum wrappers, engagement rings, what have you. Your pack rat likes soft, fuzzy things, along with seeds and objects with handles.
The world's record pack rat, found in a den in Texas, had a burrow full of suitcases. Valises. Gladstone bags. Steamer trunks. They had no idea how the rat got all that baggage into the burrow, because the opening was only rat sized. But the pack rat is well known to be the most determined of the rodents. Like the expression, you know: "He'll stick to that problem like a pack rat."
There's a paper that finally explained it. Measured the string-theory vibrations of pack rats in eleven dimensions. It's a lot of math and graphs, but you can really sum it up by saying pack rats can push things through walls. Shuffle the spaces between the atoms like riffling a pack of cards together, and the suitcase comes out the other side. Atomic interlacing, they call it.
Possums, now, possums like to collect round things. Baseballs, eggs, croquet balls, and ball bearings.
Al had a truck that he parked over by the laurel bushes. Took it out on the freeway one day, and all four wheels fell off at the same time. The truck skidded along on its belly, tossing up a rooster tail of sparks, until it finally stopped in the middle of the left lane.
It turned out a family of possums that lived in the bushes had stolen all his wheel bearings. He found them when he went to trim the bushes, piled up in one of those pyramids they pile up cannonballs in. Shiny, bright, with all the grease licked off them. Which also explained why he could never catch the possums. They were too fast with all that bearing grease inside them. You know the expression: "Faster than a greased possum."
Possums always look surprised, with those big, white circles around their eyes. "Yikes!" they say. "Look at all those ball bearings! So smooth and round. Gonna take those home and put them in the bearing pile." They pack their little possum pouches full of bearings and waddle home, dragging their lumpy bellies on the ground.
Possums like marbles, too. They don't really care what they look like, as long as they're round. Not like little boys, who have a marble hierarchy. Or at least I did.
Bottom of the list—and this is what's attractive to a second-grader, which is where my marble-appreciation sense is frozen—were the solid ones. Sure, they have interesting swirls and things. You might appreciate them now, but back then they just weren't cool.
Then the cat's eyes. More interesting. Colored patterns inside clear glass.
"You know where they get those?" said Rick.
"No," I said.
"From cats. All the cats at the pound, all those cats in the labs. They take one eye from each. Can't take both. They'd be blind."
"That's not true at all," I said. "That's gross."
"Okay, I was just pulling your leg. They make them for cats. Glass eyes. Cats lose eyes all the time in those fights you hear in the middle of the night. You take them to the vet, and they pop one of those marbles in. Sometimes they don't have a match. That's when you see one of those cats with two different-colored eyes."
Next in the hierarchy: clearies. Glass all the way through. Best were the clear clearies, just glass-colored.
Then the very most valuable marbles: steelies. Now I know they were just ball bearings, and they're not so interesting.
Eric had one of those Newton's Cradle toys. Five steel balls hanging from Vs of fishing line. It's a momentum transfer toy. You pull one ball back, let it go, and it knocks one off the other end. Makes the click-click marble pendulum noise I can hear right now, writing this. Pull two back, let them go, and two pop off the other side. And so on.
It's a toy that's interesting for maybe ten minutes, then you're done with it. Forever. Sort of like those magnetic Wheel-O toys. And the spinning, fly-apart metal Christmas trees with the Santa in the middle.
Anyway, one day Eric dropped the Newton's Cradle on the floor, and one of the metal balls popped out of its plastic retaining ring. It bounced and rolled across the floor. Eric chased it down.
"Hey!" he said. "That's a steelie!" He got a screwdriver and pried the other four steelies out of the Newton's Cradle. That was five more steelies than I ever had.
But then one day, crawling around in the laurel bushes, I found a whole pile of them. Stacked up in a little pyramid like the ones cannonballs get piled up in. Gleaming steelies, all licked clean by possum tongues. Almost better than the time I found the waterlogged Playboy. But at least I could take the steelies home.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The Museum of Curiosities
Today I'd like to welcome you to the Museum of Curiosities. It used to be a Cabinet of Curiosities, then a Closet of Curiosities, but the collection kept growing and growing.
Here we have the original closet. It smells a bit musty inside, I know. Of old wool suits worn too long and never washed. You can't, you know. Not without shrinking them. Which is okay if you have midgets or children around the house.
Here we have the costume collection. We specialize in fur coats.
This one's my grandmother's. It's made of weasels. Not pelts. That would be cruel. The weasels themselves, each carefully trained to hold onto the weasel next to it with its paws. Bite the tail of the weasel in front, below. As you can see, they all hang head down. It's a nice, warm coat, but it does smell a bit weasely. And it tends to writhe.
Here we have the Moebius Scarf, endless loop with only one side. You stick your head through it, and it comes out somewhere else. I think it's China. Hard to tell, because it's crowded, and all you see is people's feet. I'm not sure what they see. Maybe just your head sticking up out of the sidewalk. Best not to wear this one, lest you be mistaken for a soccer ball.
What's that, Ma'am? Yes, the costumes do get worn. Once a year at our Grand Fundraising Ball. There's information about it on our Web site. But there's a years-long waiting list for the weasel coat.
This is the most valuable item in the original Closet of Curiosities. A coat made entirely of hummingbird feathers. Originally belonged to the Aztec emperor Moctezuma. That's right, the one with the revenge.
The coat uses only the third primary feather from the left wing of a single species of hummingbird. The artisans caught thousands of the little buggers. Yanked out the single feather. Even a tiny modification like that messed up their ability to fly, so they could only fly around in counterclockwise circles. This single coat made the species extinct.
Notice how shimmery and blue it is. If you put your ear close—just there—you can hear it humming. They say the coat got its revenge on Moctezuma when Cortés and his Spaniards arrived. Things went badly for the Aztecs. Moctezuma—they don't tell you this in the history books—Moctezuma was trying to escape by hiding inside an empty planter. The Spaniards were just walking by, ready to move on in their search, when the hummingbird coat started humming. The note was just right, just matched the resonant frequency of the inside of the planter, so the whole thing sounded like a foghorn. Moctezuma was discovered and captured, and you know the rest.
We'll move on now to the first room. This is our rotating exhibit hall. It does rotate. The crank is over there. But we also bring in a new exhibit every month.
Please don't touch that, Sir. You're right, it is crooked. Nevertheless.
That's really the secret of this exhibit. It's not an exhibit of paintings, it's an exhibit of the people looking at the paintings. The audience observes them from the other side of the two-way mirror along the wall, there.
Each and every painting in the exhibit is hung just a little bit crookedly. And another secret—even if we let you straighten them, you wouldn't be able to. Not a single picture, not a single frame is made of right angles. They're all non-equilateral rhombuses.
So we sit in the observation room and watch all the people fidget and twitch. Like that guy there—he keeps half-reaching out, arms starting up from his sides, fingers twitching. He's had to stuff his hands in his pockets, and he's dancing around as if he needs to take a pee.
Next week we're going to change this one out for an exhibit of Dutch Maters. They'll all be hung three feet off the floor, so you have to crouch down to look at them.
Now, if you'll follow me, please…
This is the Hall of Bears. Bears of all sorts, as you can see. No, Ma'am, they're not stuffed. We hire these bears to stand around in poses. They're quite good at it.
Here, as you can see, is our grizzly bear, posing as a rug in front of the fireplace. He has practiced for years to perfect the ability of flattening himself out like that. Mind your feet, please. Sometimes he snaps.
At five o'clock the bears help us clear visitors out of the museum. You don't want to be slow when we give the closing announcement.
Now if you'll follow me…
Here we have the original closet. It smells a bit musty inside, I know. Of old wool suits worn too long and never washed. You can't, you know. Not without shrinking them. Which is okay if you have midgets or children around the house.
Here we have the costume collection. We specialize in fur coats.
This one's my grandmother's. It's made of weasels. Not pelts. That would be cruel. The weasels themselves, each carefully trained to hold onto the weasel next to it with its paws. Bite the tail of the weasel in front, below. As you can see, they all hang head down. It's a nice, warm coat, but it does smell a bit weasely. And it tends to writhe.
Here we have the Moebius Scarf, endless loop with only one side. You stick your head through it, and it comes out somewhere else. I think it's China. Hard to tell, because it's crowded, and all you see is people's feet. I'm not sure what they see. Maybe just your head sticking up out of the sidewalk. Best not to wear this one, lest you be mistaken for a soccer ball.
What's that, Ma'am? Yes, the costumes do get worn. Once a year at our Grand Fundraising Ball. There's information about it on our Web site. But there's a years-long waiting list for the weasel coat.
This is the most valuable item in the original Closet of Curiosities. A coat made entirely of hummingbird feathers. Originally belonged to the Aztec emperor Moctezuma. That's right, the one with the revenge.
The coat uses only the third primary feather from the left wing of a single species of hummingbird. The artisans caught thousands of the little buggers. Yanked out the single feather. Even a tiny modification like that messed up their ability to fly, so they could only fly around in counterclockwise circles. This single coat made the species extinct.
Notice how shimmery and blue it is. If you put your ear close—just there—you can hear it humming. They say the coat got its revenge on Moctezuma when Cortés and his Spaniards arrived. Things went badly for the Aztecs. Moctezuma—they don't tell you this in the history books—Moctezuma was trying to escape by hiding inside an empty planter. The Spaniards were just walking by, ready to move on in their search, when the hummingbird coat started humming. The note was just right, just matched the resonant frequency of the inside of the planter, so the whole thing sounded like a foghorn. Moctezuma was discovered and captured, and you know the rest.
We'll move on now to the first room. This is our rotating exhibit hall. It does rotate. The crank is over there. But we also bring in a new exhibit every month.
Please don't touch that, Sir. You're right, it is crooked. Nevertheless.
That's really the secret of this exhibit. It's not an exhibit of paintings, it's an exhibit of the people looking at the paintings. The audience observes them from the other side of the two-way mirror along the wall, there.
Each and every painting in the exhibit is hung just a little bit crookedly. And another secret—even if we let you straighten them, you wouldn't be able to. Not a single picture, not a single frame is made of right angles. They're all non-equilateral rhombuses.
So we sit in the observation room and watch all the people fidget and twitch. Like that guy there—he keeps half-reaching out, arms starting up from his sides, fingers twitching. He's had to stuff his hands in his pockets, and he's dancing around as if he needs to take a pee.
Next week we're going to change this one out for an exhibit of Dutch Maters. They'll all be hung three feet off the floor, so you have to crouch down to look at them.
Now, if you'll follow me, please…
This is the Hall of Bears. Bears of all sorts, as you can see. No, Ma'am, they're not stuffed. We hire these bears to stand around in poses. They're quite good at it.
Here, as you can see, is our grizzly bear, posing as a rug in front of the fireplace. He has practiced for years to perfect the ability of flattening himself out like that. Mind your feet, please. Sometimes he snaps.
At five o'clock the bears help us clear visitors out of the museum. You don't want to be slow when we give the closing announcement.
Now if you'll follow me…
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Swine flue
The swine flue is the most important part of your pig furnace. You have to have the damper open just the right amount to vent off the lighter pigs while retaining the larger ones in the pork tank.
Let's take a look here at Diagram One. Note call-out A. The pig damper. It's hard to remember whether the damn thing is open or closed. Do you pull it forward to open it, or is that closed? You could stick your head in there and look, but by the time your remember to check, you've usually got a nice, crackling fire going, and looking would roast your head.
You'll know soon enough. If the damper's closed, pretty soon a bunch of hydrogen-filled piglets comes pouring out of the front of the furnace, collecting up near the ceiling, running around upside-down, squealing. One little spark from their hooves on a light fixture, and kablam! It's raining bacon. That's not a bad thing, but it needs to happen in a controlled space. And the little piglets are cute. Nobody likes to see them get blown up.
If you get the swine flue adjusted correctly, the stream of piglets flies up the chimney and out into the wind. The larger swine come out the vents at the bottom, the swine heatelator, and you have to let them out the door.
If you'd burn something other than those acorns, you wouldn't have to worry about all those pigs. It's the combustion product. You combine acorns and oxygen in the presence of heat, and you get pigs, water, hydrogen, and extra heat. That's just the chemistry of it.
Let's take a look here at Diagram One. Note call-out A. The pig damper. It's hard to remember whether the damn thing is open or closed. Do you pull it forward to open it, or is that closed? You could stick your head in there and look, but by the time your remember to check, you've usually got a nice, crackling fire going, and looking would roast your head.
You'll know soon enough. If the damper's closed, pretty soon a bunch of hydrogen-filled piglets comes pouring out of the front of the furnace, collecting up near the ceiling, running around upside-down, squealing. One little spark from their hooves on a light fixture, and kablam! It's raining bacon. That's not a bad thing, but it needs to happen in a controlled space. And the little piglets are cute. Nobody likes to see them get blown up.
If you get the swine flue adjusted correctly, the stream of piglets flies up the chimney and out into the wind. The larger swine come out the vents at the bottom, the swine heatelator, and you have to let them out the door.
If you'd burn something other than those acorns, you wouldn't have to worry about all those pigs. It's the combustion product. You combine acorns and oxygen in the presence of heat, and you get pigs, water, hydrogen, and extra heat. That's just the chemistry of it.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Reject-o-Rama
So I submitted the bit posted here earlier, the one about the kid and the escalator, to an on-line journal with literary pretensions.
Here's what they said:
We don't want it. Okay, I expected that. They sent editors' comments. I thought I'd want that. Now I'm not so sure.
"Too juvenile for this market," said one. That's the literary pretensions, I guess. Did they mean written for kids? I wouldn't read it to my kids, if I had kids that is. Or are they saying something about me? Damn this youth-obsessed culture, anyway. It's made me what I am.
"Some things are best left to the imagination," said another. I think they mean where the kid gets sliced into long pieces like linguini. That's all I said, you know. Didn't mention the gouts of blood and all the other things that would result if a person got sliced into linguini. Okay, never mind—we're talking about a kid who gets sucked into an escalator here. It couldn't really happen, could it?
I obviously sent this to the wrong people. I should send it to that escalator magazine, Tread and Riser, I think it's called. At least I know what they'd say.
"You should be ashamed of yourself," they'd say. "People are scared enough of escalators as it is. Not only are we rejecting your story, but we're putting you down on our enemies list. You'd better watch your ass the next time you try to ride an escalator. Not that there's anything unsafe about escalators. We're just saying."
They might have a point. Maybe the linguini part doesn't need to spelled out.
Maybe he got squashed flat like a postage stamp. Some things are best left to the imagination.
Here's what they said:
We don't want it. Okay, I expected that. They sent editors' comments. I thought I'd want that. Now I'm not so sure.
"Too juvenile for this market," said one. That's the literary pretensions, I guess. Did they mean written for kids? I wouldn't read it to my kids, if I had kids that is. Or are they saying something about me? Damn this youth-obsessed culture, anyway. It's made me what I am.
"Some things are best left to the imagination," said another. I think they mean where the kid gets sliced into long pieces like linguini. That's all I said, you know. Didn't mention the gouts of blood and all the other things that would result if a person got sliced into linguini. Okay, never mind—we're talking about a kid who gets sucked into an escalator here. It couldn't really happen, could it?
I obviously sent this to the wrong people. I should send it to that escalator magazine, Tread and Riser, I think it's called. At least I know what they'd say.
"You should be ashamed of yourself," they'd say. "People are scared enough of escalators as it is. Not only are we rejecting your story, but we're putting you down on our enemies list. You'd better watch your ass the next time you try to ride an escalator. Not that there's anything unsafe about escalators. We're just saying."
They might have a point. Maybe the linguini part doesn't need to spelled out.
Maybe he got squashed flat like a postage stamp. Some things are best left to the imagination.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Slugs in the house
Slugs are coming into the house at night. I don't know where they get in—the slug-hole, maybe. It's the hole in the downhill side of the baseboard, where the water's supposed to run out if the apartment fills up with water.
I don't know why they come into the house. Maybe they've got a simple slug robot program.
Here's the simple slug robot program:
Step one: go forward.
Step two: if you can't go forward, back up two inches and turn to the right ten degrees. Go to step one.
So slugs bump into things a lot, if you can say something moving that slowly bumps at all. It's sort of a slow-motion thing.
A slug wreck is a terrible thing to watch. You can see it coming. Even the slug sees it coming. Says, very slug-slowly, "Oh, noooooooo!" The front end of the slug touches the wall. Back end keeps moving. Slow, slow, creeping. Front end of the slug stretches out like a puddle. Wider and wider over the course of five minutes. Ends up as a splatter on the wall. You watched it happen. It took five minutes, and you couldn't do anything about it. It's the same way God watches car wrecks.
You might think it's no big deal that slugs are coming into the house. Annoying, but not exactly dangerous. You'd be wrong.
Pat fell asleep one night with the window open. In the big orange wing chair. Beer half-finished in his hand, resting on the armrest. Woke up in the morning with his hair in his eyes. Reached up to brush it aside, and it felt as if his head had been covered in snot. Sticky, silvery on his fingers, flaking to powder.
The smell of beer had brought it—a six-inch banana slug from the patio. It muscled its way through the screen. Crawled up the chair, slowly, slowly. Over the top of Pat's head. Did a little circle with its back-and-fill slug robot program. Slorched its way down his arm, up and over the edge of the beer glass. Guzzled beer till it was too fat to fit in the glass, then died, head down in that last little bit of beer you're supposed to leave for the fairies so they don't snatch away your children and leave changelings in their place.
Pat tipped the glass over the sink, but the slug stuck. He tapped the rim down on the counter. Still nothing. Tried running a butter knife around the slug's body. It was working wonderfully, making a slurping sound, till he got to a place where the slug skin had dried against the side of the glass. He pushed too hard, broke the skin, and the slug popped. Splattered beer foam and slug guts straight up out of the glass. Straight up into Pat's face. It stung his eyes. And the analgesic property of the slug slime (try licking one if you don't believe me) froze his eyelids open for a week. He had to sleep open-eyed, and he dreamed about nothing but the second-hand on his bedside clock going around and around and around.
So slugs coming into the house are nothing to laugh at.
You can't seal it up. They tried. Ran a line of caulk all the way around the base of the building. Painted it with beer to attract the slugs, salt to dissolve them as they tried to cross over. The slugs used the dead bodies of their companions as bridges. Crawled over them as they hissed and bubbled with the salt. Drank all the beer on the way into the house, so it wasn't just slugs, but drunk slugs.
I got up in the morning. Staggered barefoot toward the coffee machine.
I stepped on something. Cold, wet. A little bit of resistance, then something burst. Colder and wetter. I looked down. There was a spray of slime across the kitchen floor, fanning out the way ketchup does when you stamp on one of those little ketchup packages.
And on my foot, slug skin. Slug guts—whatever kind they've got. There was a short trip to the bathroom while I scraped off the bits, sat on the edge of the bathtub and washed the bottoms of both feet, just to make sure.
Out in the living room there was a zigzag trail. A shining, meandering path you could only see if you stood where the light hit it at the right angle. The drunken slugs had stumble-slimed their way all over the floor.
They were all heaped up in a corner, singing slug songs in high, peeping voices. Sentimental ballads. "I met my love on a lettuce leaf." "When the dew is on the slime." That kind of thing.
I scooped them all up in the dustpan. Eighty-sixed the drunken slugs into the toilet. A meaner person would have poured salt in there from the blue can with the little girl and the umbrella on the label. I just pulled the handle. The slugs went around and around, down the porcelain vortex. There was a sound like "glup." No more slugs.
Next time someone peed in there, the toilet wouldn't flush. Did that thing where the water in the bowl goes up and up, and you stand, looking helpless, thinking, Please don't rise over the rim! Please don't rise over the rim!
I called the Roto-Rooter guy.
"Is it slugs?" he asked.
"Well, um…"
"It's slugs, isn't it?"
I looked at my toes. "Yes."
"Don't suppose you salted 'em first," said the Roto-Rooter man.
"Well, no. I thought it would be cruel."
"Yeah," he said. "Not like flushing them down the crapper. Well, I've got to go out to the van for my slug bit."
The slugs are still getting into the house at night. I put a bowl of beer out for them. Chuck them out the door in the morning. They weave off toward the next-door neighbor's tulips, humming to themselves. If you look at just the right angle, you can see meandering trails of silver on the sidewalk.
I don't know why they come into the house. Maybe they've got a simple slug robot program.
Here's the simple slug robot program:
Step one: go forward.
Step two: if you can't go forward, back up two inches and turn to the right ten degrees. Go to step one.
So slugs bump into things a lot, if you can say something moving that slowly bumps at all. It's sort of a slow-motion thing.
A slug wreck is a terrible thing to watch. You can see it coming. Even the slug sees it coming. Says, very slug-slowly, "Oh, noooooooo!" The front end of the slug touches the wall. Back end keeps moving. Slow, slow, creeping. Front end of the slug stretches out like a puddle. Wider and wider over the course of five minutes. Ends up as a splatter on the wall. You watched it happen. It took five minutes, and you couldn't do anything about it. It's the same way God watches car wrecks.
You might think it's no big deal that slugs are coming into the house. Annoying, but not exactly dangerous. You'd be wrong.
Pat fell asleep one night with the window open. In the big orange wing chair. Beer half-finished in his hand, resting on the armrest. Woke up in the morning with his hair in his eyes. Reached up to brush it aside, and it felt as if his head had been covered in snot. Sticky, silvery on his fingers, flaking to powder.
The smell of beer had brought it—a six-inch banana slug from the patio. It muscled its way through the screen. Crawled up the chair, slowly, slowly. Over the top of Pat's head. Did a little circle with its back-and-fill slug robot program. Slorched its way down his arm, up and over the edge of the beer glass. Guzzled beer till it was too fat to fit in the glass, then died, head down in that last little bit of beer you're supposed to leave for the fairies so they don't snatch away your children and leave changelings in their place.
Pat tipped the glass over the sink, but the slug stuck. He tapped the rim down on the counter. Still nothing. Tried running a butter knife around the slug's body. It was working wonderfully, making a slurping sound, till he got to a place where the slug skin had dried against the side of the glass. He pushed too hard, broke the skin, and the slug popped. Splattered beer foam and slug guts straight up out of the glass. Straight up into Pat's face. It stung his eyes. And the analgesic property of the slug slime (try licking one if you don't believe me) froze his eyelids open for a week. He had to sleep open-eyed, and he dreamed about nothing but the second-hand on his bedside clock going around and around and around.
So slugs coming into the house are nothing to laugh at.
You can't seal it up. They tried. Ran a line of caulk all the way around the base of the building. Painted it with beer to attract the slugs, salt to dissolve them as they tried to cross over. The slugs used the dead bodies of their companions as bridges. Crawled over them as they hissed and bubbled with the salt. Drank all the beer on the way into the house, so it wasn't just slugs, but drunk slugs.
I got up in the morning. Staggered barefoot toward the coffee machine.
I stepped on something. Cold, wet. A little bit of resistance, then something burst. Colder and wetter. I looked down. There was a spray of slime across the kitchen floor, fanning out the way ketchup does when you stamp on one of those little ketchup packages.
And on my foot, slug skin. Slug guts—whatever kind they've got. There was a short trip to the bathroom while I scraped off the bits, sat on the edge of the bathtub and washed the bottoms of both feet, just to make sure.
Out in the living room there was a zigzag trail. A shining, meandering path you could only see if you stood where the light hit it at the right angle. The drunken slugs had stumble-slimed their way all over the floor.
They were all heaped up in a corner, singing slug songs in high, peeping voices. Sentimental ballads. "I met my love on a lettuce leaf." "When the dew is on the slime." That kind of thing.
I scooped them all up in the dustpan. Eighty-sixed the drunken slugs into the toilet. A meaner person would have poured salt in there from the blue can with the little girl and the umbrella on the label. I just pulled the handle. The slugs went around and around, down the porcelain vortex. There was a sound like "glup." No more slugs.
Next time someone peed in there, the toilet wouldn't flush. Did that thing where the water in the bowl goes up and up, and you stand, looking helpless, thinking, Please don't rise over the rim! Please don't rise over the rim!
I called the Roto-Rooter guy.
"Is it slugs?" he asked.
"Well, um…"
"It's slugs, isn't it?"
I looked at my toes. "Yes."
"Don't suppose you salted 'em first," said the Roto-Rooter man.
"Well, no. I thought it would be cruel."
"Yeah," he said. "Not like flushing them down the crapper. Well, I've got to go out to the van for my slug bit."
The slugs are still getting into the house at night. I put a bowl of beer out for them. Chuck them out the door in the morning. They weave off toward the next-door neighbor's tulips, humming to themselves. If you look at just the right angle, you can see meandering trails of silver on the sidewalk.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Cornucopria
Crap. Today I'm going to write about crap. 'Cause we're surrounded by it. Inundated. There's the Cornucopia of Crap, the Cornucopria, I guess it would be. Curved horn with a river of garbage pouring out of it, fish heads and eggshells, coffee grounds and banana strings, the ones you have to peel off the banana after the peel is gone.
People come by with buckets, scoop up the bounty, and take it home to watch on their DVRs. That's where most of the crap goes, right? TV. There's a collection system by the Cornucopria, collects it all in a pipeline, funnels it to Fox headquarters and other places like that. Then it's piped directly into your house through a fiber-optic cable. You turn on the switch, and you've got a hundred channels of crap to choose from.
You kids don't know how lucky you have it. When I was a kid we only had three channels of crap to choose from. There would have been more, but our house was up against the foothills, and the signals from Golden didn't get to us. Or some of them. That's where the towers are for the Denver stations. Tall things on Lookout Mountain above Golden, with red, winking eyes at the top. Golden's where the Coors brewery is, so there's all manner of different kinds of crap emanating from there.
It all went off around midnight, too. They'd play the Star-Spangled Banner, show some jets flying around and some flags waving in the breeze, then there'd be a test pattern and a long beep—maybe 440 hertz? I don't know—for the rest of the night.
The test pattern was all mysterious symbols. Stripes and radiating lines. Triangles with an all-seeing Masonic Eye of Providence in the middle. Just starting out. When you looked away it would blink, but could never catch it in the act. Thing is, it was really watching you.
Here's how it worked. It all goes back to Golden, home of Coors beer, the Colorado School of Mines, and NORAD—that's the North American Air Defense Command. Under the mountain there, a bomb-proof complex mounted on giant springs from hundreds of old Chevies. From the towers on top of the mountain, Cheyenne Mountain, where there's a zoo full of mutant giraffes and things, baboons with a strict patriarchy and a resource base of booze and chicks—we'll get to that later—from the top of the mountain NORAD sent out that test-pattern signal with the All-Seeing Eye of Providence, watching, even when you turned off the TV. Ever notice how the picture shrank down to a little dot when you turned it off? The eye was still there. Then the dot got so small you couldn't see it, but still it was there, watching your living room all night.
Ever notice how the test pattern looked like a combination of a radiation symbol and a target? That was NORAD, too. A big message saying, "Hey, Ivan! Aim 'er right here. See if you can land one in the living room. We're ready for you."
But we were talking about crap. It's years later here. They've mothballed NORAD due to a lack of Rooskies, along with satellites that beam the crap down your chimney from directly overhead. Keeps you occupied. You're watching ads with fashionable people buying, well, crap from crappy stores like Target. You're watching shows like America's Biggest Idiot, where a houseful of contestants vie for the title of, as it says, America's Biggest Idiot.
Here's the secret. I can't tell you where I found out. At the end of the show they reveal that America's Biggest Idiot is… you! Because you watched the thing for three whole months to find out.
There are others. Who Wants to be a Baboon? for instance. Where twelve hapless contestants are thrown in the middle of a troop of mutant baboons at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. They vie for the post of Top Baboon, with all the booze and chicks that come with the position. Nice work if you can get it, but you have to wear a big, red, strap-on ass, or the other baboons don't give you any respect. It's not fair or unfair. It's just biology.
At any rate, all of this stuff coming out of your TV keeps you distracted while the other guys pick your pocket and drive off with your car.
You look at the TV and say, "You call those idiots? I could be a bigger idiot than that! How come I'm not on this show?"
Then you can't find your wallet or your car keys. Meanwhile, they stop a red-assed Chacma baboon trying to buy Coors beer at the 7-11 with your credit card.
People come by with buckets, scoop up the bounty, and take it home to watch on their DVRs. That's where most of the crap goes, right? TV. There's a collection system by the Cornucopria, collects it all in a pipeline, funnels it to Fox headquarters and other places like that. Then it's piped directly into your house through a fiber-optic cable. You turn on the switch, and you've got a hundred channels of crap to choose from.
You kids don't know how lucky you have it. When I was a kid we only had three channels of crap to choose from. There would have been more, but our house was up against the foothills, and the signals from Golden didn't get to us. Or some of them. That's where the towers are for the Denver stations. Tall things on Lookout Mountain above Golden, with red, winking eyes at the top. Golden's where the Coors brewery is, so there's all manner of different kinds of crap emanating from there.
It all went off around midnight, too. They'd play the Star-Spangled Banner, show some jets flying around and some flags waving in the breeze, then there'd be a test pattern and a long beep—maybe 440 hertz? I don't know—for the rest of the night.
The test pattern was all mysterious symbols. Stripes and radiating lines. Triangles with an all-seeing Masonic Eye of Providence in the middle. Just starting out. When you looked away it would blink, but could never catch it in the act. Thing is, it was really watching you.
Here's how it worked. It all goes back to Golden, home of Coors beer, the Colorado School of Mines, and NORAD—that's the North American Air Defense Command. Under the mountain there, a bomb-proof complex mounted on giant springs from hundreds of old Chevies. From the towers on top of the mountain, Cheyenne Mountain, where there's a zoo full of mutant giraffes and things, baboons with a strict patriarchy and a resource base of booze and chicks—we'll get to that later—from the top of the mountain NORAD sent out that test-pattern signal with the All-Seeing Eye of Providence, watching, even when you turned off the TV. Ever notice how the picture shrank down to a little dot when you turned it off? The eye was still there. Then the dot got so small you couldn't see it, but still it was there, watching your living room all night.
Ever notice how the test pattern looked like a combination of a radiation symbol and a target? That was NORAD, too. A big message saying, "Hey, Ivan! Aim 'er right here. See if you can land one in the living room. We're ready for you."
But we were talking about crap. It's years later here. They've mothballed NORAD due to a lack of Rooskies, along with satellites that beam the crap down your chimney from directly overhead. Keeps you occupied. You're watching ads with fashionable people buying, well, crap from crappy stores like Target. You're watching shows like America's Biggest Idiot, where a houseful of contestants vie for the title of, as it says, America's Biggest Idiot.
Here's the secret. I can't tell you where I found out. At the end of the show they reveal that America's Biggest Idiot is… you! Because you watched the thing for three whole months to find out.
There are others. Who Wants to be a Baboon? for instance. Where twelve hapless contestants are thrown in the middle of a troop of mutant baboons at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. They vie for the post of Top Baboon, with all the booze and chicks that come with the position. Nice work if you can get it, but you have to wear a big, red, strap-on ass, or the other baboons don't give you any respect. It's not fair or unfair. It's just biology.
At any rate, all of this stuff coming out of your TV keeps you distracted while the other guys pick your pocket and drive off with your car.
You look at the TV and say, "You call those idiots? I could be a bigger idiot than that! How come I'm not on this show?"
Then you can't find your wallet or your car keys. Meanwhile, they stop a red-assed Chacma baboon trying to buy Coors beer at the 7-11 with your credit card.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Hummingbirds
I was sure there were no hummingbirds here. Eric said, yes, there are hummingbirds.
I still thought no. We hung up a feeder, just to see. No hummingbirds. Never saw them. Kept looking at the feeder every once in a while. Still full. Still full.
I went out to empty it about a month ago. Thought, That sugar water's going to grow mold. Grow toxic bacteria, and if a hummingbird happens to take a sip, he's going to fall right out of the air, stone dead on the bricks. Stuck point first into a crack, quivering like an arrow.
They have tiny little livers, hummingbirds. That's why you're not supposed to use that red-dyed hummingbird food. It kills them, just like the bacteria in the feeder. So you think you're being nice to them, but instead they're piling up in a heap over there behind the bushes.
Anyway, I went to empty the feeder, and it turns out it wasn't full of clear sugar water, it was full of clear air. The hummingbirds had guzzled it all in secret, when we weren't looking. So it's full again, and I see them all the time. Little fat things. They hover back a few inches, looking around for cats or something, then zip in to swallow about quart of sugar water in ten seconts, then zip back out again to check for cats.
Any cats? Nope. Zip! Glug-glug-glug. Zip! How about now? Any cats?
Any other hummingbirds? That's what they're really after. They fight like demons, zipping around, fierce. But tiny. You laugh, and it's all funny till one of them pokes you right in the eye. Hummingbirds are sharp. Fast. Dangerous. Poison-tipped, especially after they've been drinking out of a feeder full of toxic bacteria.
You wonder what note they make with those wings. Is it like the fluorescent lights, 60 cycles of out-of-tune B-flat? Could you train them to hum in chords? The bass hummingbird would keep falling down because its wings weren't beating fast enough. Once again to be stuck beak-first into the ground, and you'd have to pull it out.
You also wonder, Do they ever drink so much that they can't fly? Like those puffins up in Alaska that eat so much fish they can't take off. I saw them, with their little round bellies bouncing off the water. You figure most of them would get eaten by seals and orcas. A bonus, because they're already stuffed.
So then I learned this—it's amazing the things you learn. Vampire bats get a jet-assisted takeoff by peeing. It's because they suck so much blood out of a cow that they can't take off. It's a lot for the bat, not so much for the cow. They only way they can lighten up enough to take off is to pee. You don't want to be standing in the takeoff path.
Look at that—I start off with hummingbirds and end up with peeing vampire bats. That's the way of all this writing, right into the gutter, with all the bat pee and discarded hummingbird beaks.
See, you can eat them roasted, the little hummingbirds, if you really want to. Hold them by their beaks like hors d'oeuvres on toothpicks. Not much meat on a hummingbird, though. Just a mouthful of little gleaming green feathers.
Not like a puffin, but I imagine those are mostly beaks and oil. Seals eat them, but seals eat all kinds of things you wouldn't touch.
I still thought no. We hung up a feeder, just to see. No hummingbirds. Never saw them. Kept looking at the feeder every once in a while. Still full. Still full.
I went out to empty it about a month ago. Thought, That sugar water's going to grow mold. Grow toxic bacteria, and if a hummingbird happens to take a sip, he's going to fall right out of the air, stone dead on the bricks. Stuck point first into a crack, quivering like an arrow.
They have tiny little livers, hummingbirds. That's why you're not supposed to use that red-dyed hummingbird food. It kills them, just like the bacteria in the feeder. So you think you're being nice to them, but instead they're piling up in a heap over there behind the bushes.
Anyway, I went to empty the feeder, and it turns out it wasn't full of clear sugar water, it was full of clear air. The hummingbirds had guzzled it all in secret, when we weren't looking. So it's full again, and I see them all the time. Little fat things. They hover back a few inches, looking around for cats or something, then zip in to swallow about quart of sugar water in ten seconts, then zip back out again to check for cats.
Any cats? Nope. Zip! Glug-glug-glug. Zip! How about now? Any cats?
Any other hummingbirds? That's what they're really after. They fight like demons, zipping around, fierce. But tiny. You laugh, and it's all funny till one of them pokes you right in the eye. Hummingbirds are sharp. Fast. Dangerous. Poison-tipped, especially after they've been drinking out of a feeder full of toxic bacteria.
You wonder what note they make with those wings. Is it like the fluorescent lights, 60 cycles of out-of-tune B-flat? Could you train them to hum in chords? The bass hummingbird would keep falling down because its wings weren't beating fast enough. Once again to be stuck beak-first into the ground, and you'd have to pull it out.
You also wonder, Do they ever drink so much that they can't fly? Like those puffins up in Alaska that eat so much fish they can't take off. I saw them, with their little round bellies bouncing off the water. You figure most of them would get eaten by seals and orcas. A bonus, because they're already stuffed.
So then I learned this—it's amazing the things you learn. Vampire bats get a jet-assisted takeoff by peeing. It's because they suck so much blood out of a cow that they can't take off. It's a lot for the bat, not so much for the cow. They only way they can lighten up enough to take off is to pee. You don't want to be standing in the takeoff path.
Look at that—I start off with hummingbirds and end up with peeing vampire bats. That's the way of all this writing, right into the gutter, with all the bat pee and discarded hummingbird beaks.
See, you can eat them roasted, the little hummingbirds, if you really want to. Hold them by their beaks like hors d'oeuvres on toothpicks. Not much meat on a hummingbird, though. Just a mouthful of little gleaming green feathers.
Not like a puffin, but I imagine those are mostly beaks and oil. Seals eat them, but seals eat all kinds of things you wouldn't touch.
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