Happy Birthday to meeee......

I'll emerge from vacation in the coming week, but for right now here's a little something that my tiny mind does not entirely understand but enjoys lookin' at!

This isn’t exactly blogging in the classic ‘humorous’ style that is rightly beloved, but there is an incident of chickadee hooliganism that just went down in my backyard that I’d like to record here anyhow. So… there is always a fair amount of chirping and cheeping emanating from the bird population out there but about 10 minutes ago I became aware of a louder and more insistent than usual CHEEP-CHEEPEDYCHEEPEDYCHEEPEDY-CHEEP and got up from the powerpointing to see what in holy hell the ruckus was all about. It was coming from the upper part of one of the trees in our yard, and though I couldn’t actually see any birds there was some violent rustling in the leaves around the area that the loud CHEEPs were coming from. Then another chickadee (I’m just guessing as to the species of these birds, but they were tiny and had some black & white on them) flew up into the tree from the yard and joined in the struggle, and then 3 more chickadees swooped in from the yard next door, and then 4 more came over our house and descended into the melee. Again, I couldn’t see what the now extremely loud commotion was all about, it was kinda like one of those dust cloud fights which occur with some frequency in the cartoons, with a stray chickadee occasionally popping out from behind the leaves and then flying back in… slowly the struggle seemed to move down through the tree until some of the birds became visible on a lower branch, looking highly agitated. And THEN from out of nowhere a big robin came and perched in the lower reaches of the tree too, like he was some sorta cop, though a pretty ineffectual cop as he just sat there and watched the hubbub along with me. His arrival did startle one of the chickadees down to the ground, however, and when he turned to fly back up into the tree two other birds descended upon him and with one standing guard the other one repeatedly flew straight into him over and over again until the first bird flew out of the yard to the south, at which point all of the chickadees came down out of the tree to mingle with the attackers. The banished chickadee then tried once more to come back and join the group, as though nothing had happened, but the group was having none of this and went for him en masse, driving him away for good. Then they just sat there for about a minute, quietly hopping about a little and checking out the grass, before they suddenly all took off at once and headed westward. At which point the robin took his leave as well, heading back toward the northeast where he had come from. And that is my boring backyard tale! Oh, if only there were some way to make my trees a little more interesting, in a whimsical, nightmare-inducing way… especially with Memorial Day right around the corner with Independence Day close at its heels… hmmm…

My life has gone through a whole lot of changes this year - got engaged, moved across the country, then moved into a new house - but one thing that has remained constant throughout all this upheaval is my belief that a lot of collectibles on the market today are pretty creepy. And the best way to keep oneself from becoming paralyzed with the terror that encountering them tends to engender is to try to pretend they are humorous. Which leads us to Count Your Beans, a purveyor of specialty gifts and collectibles which is pleased to offer… the White Babes in the Wild Collection. The crafter of these demonic talismans is Florence (Flossie) Maranuk. Attention to detail is the cornerstone of her success. The exquisite materials used, the expressive sculptings, and the harvested blood of innocents combine in an art form that makes her dolls speak for themselves. Flossie currently resides in Brigantine, New Jersey, where she escapes by sinking herself in the waters of the meadows, breathing through a thin reed until the white babes pass on to find other human ears into which to whisper their evil secrets.

I have a feeling that the hotlinks to individual doll photos that I’m about to employ may stop working at some point, so if you start to encounter broken links just scroll through the main page to find the each creature being discussed and click to view their enlarged visage on your own, which you’ll most likely wish to do anyway to familiarize yourself with the myriad forms which they can take. For there are many, so very many of them… it’s enough to drive you batty! As that first example will show, part of the White Babes in the Woods’ charm lies in the clever names that Flossie has given each of them, perhaps best exemplified by Doll Finn. See, he’s dressed up like a dolphin, and he’s a doll, and dolphins have fins! As do sharks, and there’s a shark babe too, but a shark is not a dolphin, so his handle is Finnie the Shark. Or hers... it’s a little difficult to sex these miscegenational moppets sometimes, though I’m fairly certain that Crackers the Parrot is male, Stinky the Skunk is female, and Rory the Lion writes jokes for the Acadamy Awards.

Now don’t get the idea that Flossie is some sort of racist just because these are all White Babes in the Wild… there are Black Babes too (while your China doll down in old Hong Kong waits for Show Stoppers to unveil their 2007 collection), which can be seen in the BLACK face styles section. For instance, there’s this white poodle, and this white rabbit, and of course the exquisitely named Fluffy the White Kitten. Plus Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats.

Okay, I’ve just got a couple more choice quips to make here and then you can get back to whatever you were reading before I decided to get all typetty today. You know how the unicorns were having so much fun laughing and playing that they didn’t hear Noah calling them to get on the ark and so they drowned and that’s why there’s no unicorns today? Well perhaps you remember the ending of the first Friday the 13th movie too. While we’re on the subject of film, although it’s pretty frightening for kids when Bambi’s mother gets shot, and the witch toward the end of Sleeping Beauty can also be highly scary, for me the most terrifying scene in Disney history came when Pinocchio visited Pleasure Island. Maybe this will refresh your memory. Also, I think that the Canadian government would have encountered a lot less controversy over their seal culling plan a few years ago if they’d just run some ads featuring Smooches the Seal as a mascot before they announced it. And finally, since my birthday is less than two weeks away I should offer a few gift guidelines in case you feel you absolutely must order one of these abominations for me, which I do not recommend: I would probably still be able to fall asleep if Oinks the Pig were in my house, but I’m not so sure about Nippy the Polar Bear. And for the love of God, don’t even think about bringing Hugs the Octopus within 1,000 miles of this city.

I’ll leave you to continue browsing through the collection now while I try to find a thin reed to breathe through. SS6HHH...............

Another week, another edition of What I Saw in the Backyard Last Night: a possum!

I have lots of pets, like a dog, two cats and a bunny, but the one pet I didn't mention was special. Her name is Snickerdoodle, and you might be surprised to hear that my best friend Snickerdoodle is not a cookie, she is my guinea pig. You might think that guinea pigs are too small and too stupid to bond with. Well, if you think that, you are wrong.

I've been a little busy wsith the new house and everything else to properly blog for the past week or so, but I would like to report a brief incident from our backyard. The other night I was sitting out on a bench that Frances thoughtfully picked up at a used furniture place up the street when I heard rustling in the yard that backs up to ours. I thought it was a neighbor out puttering about, and when I heard the bushes behind me start to rustle I turned to see what was up and say hello... but the neighbor turned out to be a big fat raccoon waddling into our yard! Right behind him was another coon, and they wandered across the yard, checking me out a short distance away from them but not seeming particularly worried or in a hurry due to my presence. I went inside to alert Frances and we spotlighted them out the bedroom window, but when I went back out the side door to check them out closer they had disappeared. This concludes my story of the backyard wildlife.

Meanwhile, back at my old friend the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse, things are heating up... Our Lady of the Squirrels tipped me to some Flickr contacts' photos of the blaze this morning, those and more can be viewed here. R.I.P., G.T.W.

Overheard in Portland!
Large muscular man in the 26th & Division Plaid Pantry: "Hey, this is the first time I've been inside a store in seven years."