RIP Kitty

...and in the middle of this craziness and tragedy there was a quiet island where I was sitting and just taking care of things, just keeping us afloat, or watching something, and Kitty was always on my cheek; perched precariously on my bra strap, leaning in to nip my lip, cuddling into my cheek, asking for a scratch....she was like a rock, that bird...stubborn, nippy, smart, chatty, loving...she loved me...heaven knows, I loved her.



The tragedy of this is that she was my very best friend for the last few years, and I could lose just about any of them sadly, but losing her is just devastating. She can't be replaced...she was just such an individual...and its so fucking quiet here now.
She called me Wooody...and Sweetheart, and she'd say Come Here, and Hello Sweetheart.
The night before she was hanging on to the top of her house and flapping wildly, like she was in the jungle. I was telling her that it was beautiful, beautiful flapping....she was so smart...She loved to play bird in a box, where she would roll around in her cardboard box with toys and bits of the box that she would chew off until there was nothing left....she loved the swing over the sink with the bell in the middle, and would swing wildly in the morning and attack the bell, screaming....I would go to the sink and she would hang upside down and put her face in mine and say Hi Wooody....


If I tried to put her in her house she would hold my finger and not let go, rolling onto her back on the flip down door and whipping her head up to bite me! I would tell her that I had to go and let the chickens out and she would then walk in and wait for me. And she loved to stay on her perch in the shower after I went downstairs...she liked to nap up there by the steamy tile! She would call me after a while and I would go and get her...If I tried to get her too soon she would bite me...not hard...just enough to let me know that she wasn't ready to step up. If I told her I had to get the chickens, she would know that I had to go, and step up really nicely. She seemed to understand that anything about the chickens happened outside, but she knew them from them hanging around in the window of the office.



What happened? I made the mistake that was my worst fear, and everything aligned wrong...and it was a fatal error for her. The details matter little; thats my own cross to carry and I will be raking over those coals for the rest of my life....I buried her out back under a new azalea that Ive been meaning to put in....what else is there to say?

At this point, it seems pretty hard to form these kinds of attachments, only to lose them. And the worst thing is that life is about this very thing; impermanence. Regardless of how careful you are or how hard you try to control it, death sneaks in more and more as time goes on...and we all just want to know the details. I am too sensitive about those who are close to me, animal or human...so, what can I say?



She lived a great, active, life....it was way too short...and I am really gonna miss her. We were just looking at falconry supplies because I was gonna let her fly outside. She was growing her wings in and practicing...
I don't know how I go on in this quiet cave except to put one foot in front of the other and move past this....

It seems silly that an animal can become so important like that...she was supposed to outlive me. I couldn't miss her more if she had been a person...Its not the same thing, but it is at the same time....
So long Kitty...if there is a heaven, I know you're there.

RIP Daisy....aka Lovebird....

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

She lived fast and she flamed out too young...Daisy was my favorite bird and my faithful companion who was always snuggled on my shoulder making a little clicking sound, riding inside my shirt, or hanging on by a fingernail from my jeans. She was sweet, playful, troublesome, loving, nippy when cranky, and she bit my nose last night so hard that it bled....but she was my girl, and everyone's favorite. Sunday isnt going to be the same without her to help us read the newspaper and cut the coupons, and reading the mail is going to be lacking without her beak shaped stamp of receipt on all the bills. Daisy loved paper...any kind of paper. She also loved a certain stuffed black spider who was magnetized to a light in my office.
I don't know why these things happen, just like I don't know what exactly happened to Daisy this morning. It was a normal morning and she was playing around as usual... and when she felt bad, she made it upstairs to Will, (who is down with what has become very bad pneumonia,) and then into his hands...and then she went to where little birds go when they die.... It sounded to me like a stroke, and that can happen from shock even if a car just backfires. It could have been any number of things, really...they can live a very long time and they are so very smart, but they are also fragile...and this one was a daredevil from the first moment we met and she stood up in the middle of a pile of baby birds in the middle of a nursery tank and ran towards the me she saw through the glass. Later, when I'd hold her perching on my finger, she would kamakazie towards my face over and over.
Daisy was probably the bird who was closest to me, and I liked her more than I like most humans. She was a no nonsense girl, with a mind of her own, and when she was put in a cage she would pace and fret until she was released. When she slept in a cage at night, she hung on the corner frantically waiting till daylight...and when I went out, she sat either on top of Kitty's cage in one spot, or on a curtain rod by the door waiting....
She was a really special little girl and I don't know if her space will ever be filled...its already really quiet around here.
Godspeed Daisy...you were loved and I'll miss you...horribly...

Dowd and Rich and Gore and Live Earth and Celebs and Music and Chickens!!

I just damned Maureen Dowd to Hell because anyone that obsessed with someone else's haircut at a time when there is so much juicy goodness going on should really get a life, or go directly to hell. Its really getting pathetic and boring already, and...who cares what kind of ice cream John Edwards eats or if he likes Andie McDowell or not? If she has access to Edwards, lets hear some of his plans...is this fuckin' Tiger Beat?
Once again the NY Times barely squeaks by with another excellent Frank Rich piece, but how long can he carry Dowd? It seemed to me like she had been moved to Sunday because she wanted a coveted top spot, but now Im thinking that it might have been more about her needing to be bolstered by Rich, Friedman, and all the other glossy offerings in there on Sundays because of a lack of readership or something....who knows?.
I feel sort of bad for her...words like grasping and pathetic come to mind.

To catch these wonderful columns online (because without having Times Select or a friend with it who is willing to email you the articles, you wont be able to read them unless you buy the paper,) check out Free Democracy, where they are not posted yet but they will likely be...not that its even worth it to look at Dowd...but the Frank Rich is an excellent read about the cowardice of the President, and Friedman has a semi-clever piece about applying the concept of carbon offsets to all sins....ha, ha...if he had known about the damned to hell site linked above, he might have had it, but as usual, poor old Tom is just sorta lacking; almost there, but not quite.

















So, I watched the Live Earth concerts yestersay... or I should say, what was shown of them on CNBC and MSN online, and various stations here and there. I kept turning it off because I was struck over and over at the vapid new music and the music of the 80's, in its repetitive lack of real message.
A few pieces of it got me, though, and maybe its all just subjective in that I still have a VHS tape of Live AID, which I watched nonstop on network TV over a weekend, as I recall.... and I was actually at many of the NYC No Nukes shows (including right up front with Springsteen kneeling at the edge of the stage.) I don't know how I feel about Al Gore quite yet because I think that while this is good work that he is doing (as in any work in this direction is good work,) but I still have welfare reform and NAFTA stuck in my craw...and I'm not exactly sure with how he really feels about the war. Anyone can say to pull out now, and anyone can criticize what has been done, but where was he all along? This has not been a popular subject from the get go, and I'm not recalling exactly what he said and how he said it....and I don't hear him saying now that he was wrong. Its a measured response when you are possibly in line to take over an ongoing war and occupation, I know, but I still am not so sure that he is really willing to pull us out and let the chips fall on his own legacy. Im interested in courage and candidates who break out and take chances. I dont see alot of that, and I dont consider it courageous to come out loudly when the coast is clear. I so much prefer a candidate like Edwards who was dead wrong but who comes out and admits it.
Anyone could do a better job than Bush, and with the right advisors, any democrat will probably do, as long as they understand that the immediate work is diplomacy, reversal, and clean-up.

Musings about Gore aside, I was pretty impressed at how well it went off. It was delayed all over the place, which I was just as happy for, because who wants to sit and watch set changes anymore?...Im just not that young and I've got work to do, so lets get to the meat of it.
I was very impressed with young cutie John Mayer, who I usually dismiss as pilates music, in that my instructor often plays him in class, and his records dont much show how talented he is in their slickness. I downloaded some live stuff of his and it never quite got into my ipod, but maybe I will bump it over there now. Why cant I get jessica Simpson out of my head? Too much time in line at the supermarket!

James Blunt is obviously heavily influenced by Elton John, and I cant listen to him without hearing Tiny Dancer in my head...which isnt my favorite song, so its sorta annoying.
I wish that someone had told Blunt that the real Cat Stevens was gonna appear because he tore Wild World apart (which I found to be a totally condescending thought at the time, and now when the real Cat sings it as a Muslim, I just find it to be ...oh, I don't know....the perfect end spot for the "little girl" culture...and it and it's brethren only made me want to be a "bad girl."
In a world where Cat might stand by his death condemnation of Salman Rushdie for his metaphorical book about the Koran, its nice to hear him doing peace train, but I think that opening a dialog about extremism in its many forms might be nicer.
















I feel for Madonna. I think she gets a bad rap in general, when she means well. I'm not at all into her music, except for a few really well written songs that are great as done by other artists and acoustically, but I do like to watch her dance and I like how she metamorphosizes and shows the world some interesting and edgy influences. She is also a good example of the proper use of plastic surgery and all that, I guess, but at some point, it seems like maybe she should let herself slide just a little into over 39-hood. That said, I was not impressed with what she did yesterday and I find the gypsy music thing a little squeaky and agonizing. Its like the Vivaldi of country music...almost bluegrass...and I just cant take much of it at all. The dancing was good though and she looks great.






















The Police....well, what can I say about Sting? I don't exactly hate him, but I really dont understand him and what he seems to like. He is a hack, and thats about the only thing I can say. I am in awe of how scary he looks in his perfectly sculpted and yoga-ed physique, and his tantric sex honed country gentleman persona, superimposed on his Celine Dion-boring music. So, it was with recognition of that repetitive boringness that I reconfirmed what I always thought: The things that were/are great about the Police are centered around the brilliant Copeland drumming, which is so impressive as to be breathtaking, (and he is still the cute one, as far as I'm concerned,) and Summer's fantastic guitar hooks that became some of the most recognizable anthems of their time.
As far as Sting's ability to write "well-crafted pop songs," or whatever, I don't buy it. he wheezes and whines and repeats the same phrase over and over until you're numb. I cant imagine wanting to see them in concert, but it was a nice blast to have a look there...
And of course Sing has been very involved with the rain forest movement, so I have to at least appreciate his social work.

Kids these days....My 13 year old drummer of a son who is starting to look like a tall rock god on is good days, was temporarily caught up in AFI and whoever else was spouting that noise with those funny haircuts and...god, I don't know...I don't know. They just SUCK!! ...and not in the Elvs wiggling his hips sort of way...they just really suck....But after arguing serious music theory and the importance of drummers like Pete Thomas and Ringo Star, and lyricists like Lennon and McManus, well, I can't go there anymore. The thing is that the drummers are not as FAST as Joey Jorgeson of Slipknot; the lyrics of days gone by do not speak to a disaffection that us old folks couldnt ever appreciate...please! Even I could see the pathos of the Cookie Monster and the OCD of the Count all these years...Why can he not at least defer on a certain snippet of what may be the entire popular music canon, fer Christ's sake...
So, when he gets up maybe I will scan through the clips on MSN entertainment and show him old Copeland saving his band and the world in his own little way.

Give me short, sweet and non-repetitive anytime...Elvis Costello in his prime, The Beatles...hell, even the Stones...and if its gonna be long, make it insightful, like a young Springsteen or Dylan doing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, which took up a whole side of vinyl!

Sam Seder is on today at 4-ish, and I am so happy to not be in the city...and maybe have a chance to listen to him live and blog along or whatever...depending on how much I get done beforehand. This dearth of good liberal voices during the week is really dispiriting and wearing.
How did it come to this? Why is it that so few entities control the output of so much information?








Back to work for me...I am going to post the pictures from origami and gay pride very soon...It seems like its been a long time and sooner than I know it I'm gonna be at YearlyKos hanging around doing not much...wasting carbon apparently

















And yes, I finally ordered my specialty chicks!! I got around 9 of the most interesting types that will winter well, and that are especially friendly and cuddly. Im less interested in the laying, but I'm sure that we will get plenty of eggs. One chick will even lay light blue and light green eggs. Im just not sure how big they will be...but considering that I just made easy over Japanese quail eggs for the boys (an experiment from the Japanese grocery store,) I'm sure it wont matter....
I'm concerned with the security of these guys when they move outside, so when my friend brings the coop (that he built for someone else who has since sold the his house and moved,) I am goign to have it doubled up on the heavy wire and have a cement floor and sunken fence put in...Im hearing alot of horror stories abotu feet and beaks flung about and weasels who suck the blood and leave just the body...So I am getting a special security light and building a fucking wall if I have to! So much for the natural farm life of mini goats and chickens running round...I need a shotgun! (just kidding!)

Endings and Beginnings...

David Chase says that he doesn't think about a Sopranos movie...much....but he never says never...
hmmmm.....

While some viewers groused about the untidy ending, some of Chase's peers were cheering his decision not to tie his saga up neatly. Damon Lindelof, one of the creators of "Lost," told the Times that, like many people, he thought his cable had gone out when the screen clicked to black and he checked his Tivo to make sure it was still running. "I've seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect," he said.

"My heart started beating. It had been racing throughout the last scene. Afterward I went to bed and lay next to my wife, awake, thinking about it for the next two hours. And I just thought it was great. It did everything well that 'Godfather III' did not do well."

And only America's Got Talent got better ratings. Thats a record breaking feat for a pay cable show....hmmmmm

I spent alot of yesterday driving around and thinking about the Sopranos ending, or non-ending, depending on how you felt about it. And I suppose that I was less invested in the show than I had been in earlier years, so it didn't really bother me all that much...but I was thinking of what I consider to be THE best ending of any show ever, which was the Six Feet Under finale ending....
Well, of course, my much more organized and sane, mental twin Jill had already posted the clip
Since I've watched it a couple of more times and I'm still thinking about it I thought it was worthwhile to post it here again to make sure that everyone gets to see it...and also to be a copy-kitten because Jill beat me to the punch, as usual!...Meow!

"You cant take a picture of this, its already gone..."




Bird News:





Rosie the conure had a big egg problem with a big egg that she was having trouble laying. I put her in my new cooler brooder and kept her warm...put mineral oil in the proper place, and kept her quiet...and this morning, she had laid the egg!
Yay Rosie!! I didn't want to have to go to the vet today and have it extracted! What a trooper....

If You Believe in Peanut Butter Clap Your Hands....The Republican Debate and Evolution...RIP Bruce!

Its not as fun as I had hoped it would be to watch the republicans spiral downwards. Maybe its because the crash and burn is offering me too close of a view of the all too human egotistical and brutal foundation that these beliefs are based in. Sometime I can feel the hot putrid breath of dogma and it not only makes me sick to my stomach but makes me want to rebel in the usual ways. ...and thats just so boring anymore...
Not surprisingly, the only way that movements like the fundamentalist Christians, (or any other fundamentalist group for that matter,) gain speed, is through a lack of general education based in science and logic, and also through repetitive mind control, often practiced in groups, such as the repetitive prayer that is thought necessary to grow closer to God. I suppose that its a matter of degree when you consider any extremist Madrasa where young fundamentalist Muslims are rocking back and forth while studying the Koran for hours on end, or any Catholic school where you might find youngsters being indoctrinated with the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, or a cult somewhere looking towards the skies in anticipation waiting for the spaceship, or the schoolbus full of skinny, pale Hassidic boys going to school on Sundays back in the Brooklyn old days, looking out at us playing in the street with empty eyes. If the "truth" being taught in these community sessions is the actual truth, then is the problem that it wont stand up the scrutiny of logic and critical thought, or is it that man is so weak as to be in danger of being misled away from whatever truth it is being espoused by whatever movement that he/she needs to be brainwashed against what the human brain does naturally with raw information? It seems to me that any theory, backed up by papyrus scrolls, translated over and over by a series of men over thousands of years, should be able to stand on its own, beyond the answer that I hear too often that this truth is the real truth because X-scripture told me so!


America lags behind the rest of the world in critical thinking.
So, it was somewhere between a feeling of sublime happiness at being a small part of slipping a question or two into the republican debate, and the sinking aftermath of seeing the answer in the raised hands of who believes in evolution or not, that I hit a wall. Yes, the blogosphere was able to get some good questions into the debate via the online submission and voting system, but even with that fun fact, could we ever prepare ourselves for the truth of the answers?
As a whole. the republican field couldn't be more fun if Jeb were running...or his gal-pal Katherine Harris, for that matter. Rudy Guilliani was every bit as swaggering and macho Italian as I had hoped, and his attitude continually begs for some good revelations on his personal life that are bound to pile up beyond what he can push down with bluster. This doesn't even take digging; just scratch the surface when you're ready to be rid of him guys!
The rest of the field is splayed between the insaniac McCain who always seems about to blow, and the overly reasonable flip-flop Mormon Romney who cant, by any stretch of camera friendly pretense, make his record or religion go away...nor, can he take back the fact that is favorite book is by L. Ron Hubbard!...some of us are afraid of even opening those books, Mitt! Thats powerful stuff...speaking of mind control!




















In a worldwide poll asking about specific belief in evolution, people came down pretty hard on one side or another, as expected, with a certain amount being unsure, but America seems to fall right directly in the center...and how can this be? Are half of Americans so truly indoctrinated, afraid, overwhelmed, or uneducated as to not be able to critically evaluate the differences between what might be a fairy tale and what is actual evidence that cant really be denied?
When reasonable people sit down and talk, its usually clear that humans are able to reason, and that if they have the information beyond the group mentality and naked need for reasons for all of this, they will inevitably go with what seems logical and applies directly to their lives, explaining away the rest as some sort of misunderstanding. The social part of this stuff should not be underestimated, in that people are just used to the ritual passed down through generations, and it gives them a reason to get together. I's like to see the return of that philosopher intellectuals salon, where art and science are worshipped in the expectation of intelligence, literacy, and movement towards the future...what happened to that?
I was at a funeral last week and I watched hundreds of people recite by heart a lengthy Catholic call and reply, and then line up to eat a piece of the "flesh of Christ" and drink blood...Alot of these were people who I know don't live by the whole thing...some of them were never even communion-ized in the first place, so its questionable if the cracker to flesh thing even works for them or if its just so much appetizers before the reception at the Firehouse. I don't know why I always feel so outside of the rituals that seem to be so definitive in my community
, but I think that its because I THINK...too much...all the time...and maybe its a manifestation of OCD and a little more medication could temper that, or a way that my brain makes me be alone and not part of anything because of fear of the crowd and the hurt that that inevitably entails, or whatever...but to me, thinking is my form of prayer, and if I cant walk in the woods and look at the very real evolution happening in front of my eyes as everything changes so quickly, and reason it out and compare it to every level of society and the buildup and breakdown of whole societies, then I'm nowhere.










What if we really have NO purpose? What if we are hanging in a charm on a cat's collar, or just as likely, sitting on top of a flower held in some elephant's trunk; what then? I'd prefer to think hard about that and face the fear of nothingness than to explain it away in some fairytale. What if Dr Seuss was God and we missed the message? Hell, you're only king of all that you see insofar as you can pile your soldiers high enough before you come crashing down. Hows that for a real life cautionary tale?










I suppose that on the evolutionary ladder, somewhere down below most reasonable people, we can find the politicians who would be the "president," monarch, or power-brokers of this thing. And looking at that lineup the other night, I cringed...not because I think that any of them will ever be the US President, but because they think they can...and that is an example of a really embarrassing human failing: ego beyond what is reasonable and possible in the world. It reminds me of the Lotto...you gotta be in it to win it, but the chances of winning it are pretty much...none.

Look, if you're so sure of your point of view and belief, and if its all really true, then hold it up to scrutiny and let the chips fall where they may. I believe that's true with everything that is claimed off hand in service to what could be called "evidence" or groupthink. The minute you have to indoctrinate or strip away logical education...the minute you need to manipulate information so that it will be accepted by the masses, you've as good as shown the weakness in your belief. We should want to give everyone the tools that they need to face and understand reality. Belief is belief, and its really everyone's right to look up and decide that the Sun is God or whatever, but the minute that it starts to effect the society as a whole, its out.



RIP Bruce: A really nice guy with a beautiful song...he was a great friend of Will's and spent alot of time flying around in the play room as Will was playing video games. He died suddenly yesterday...suddenly...I don't know why...
RIP, boy...you will be missed!