Panic in Pleasantville

Apparently I am living in a war zone. This from today's Mercury News:


Squirrel Attacks Plague Mountain View Parks!!

The signs went up in Mountain View's Cuesta Park on Tuesday: Beware of Squirrels.

In the past three months, aggressive rodents have jumped into a child's stroller and bitten at least three people.

Jennifer Packard's 4-year-old son was their latest victim. As she unwrapped a muffin during a picnic last week, a brown tree squirrel pounced on her son, Andrew, biting and scratching as he ran screaming through the park, then hanging on as he rolled desperately in the grass.

Now, Mountain View parks officials are fighting back. They're seeking permission to set traps, ramping up ranger patrols and cracking down on visitors feeding the wildlife.

The city already has ramped up park ranger patrols in recent months to enforce the no-feeding edict and monitor the creatures. The city also has installed squirrel-proof garbage cans to prevent foraging in the trash.

All of that may have made the animals more desperate.

At the park Tuesday evening, Ping Ping Kuo of Los Altos said she's seen squirrels jump into strollers after parents leave food there while playing with their children. "They're very aggressive," she said.

As for Andrew, he's still trying to make sense of the assault. He declared he's never going into a park with trees ever again, his mother said, and he keeps telling everyone the squirrel was trying to eat him.

"My mommy said the squirrel sneaked down behind me and he was hugging me, but when he kissed me it was really a scratch, "he recalled Monday. "I fell down, and he fell on me, and...and he's still on, and yeah, he was crazy. I don't know what he was trying to do."

The squirrels are going nuts in Pleasantville. I hear this is an international problem.



When I lived in Arkansas we ate squirrels. If you killed them with a shotgun you had to pick out the shot lest you end up with a cracked tooth. One of the guys used a wrist rocket, no pesky pellets to remove, and he was in great demand at the squirrel hunts.

My favorite way to cook them was to fry the squirrel pieces in bacon and onions. When they were tender I made a cream gravy in the pan and served the stew over biscuits.

Here are some more squirrel recipes.

I say eat the little buggers before they eat us.

squirrels, squirrel attack, squirrel recipes,

Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year

In honor of Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sundown today, here are some great Yiddish words that are part of our all-American lexicon:

CHUTZPAH: the quality of audacity, for good or for bad, Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish describes it as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts,' presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to."

FARKLEMPT: bummed out, bad mood "She looks very ferklempt." (Thank you Saturday Night Live.)

FUTZ: to fuss with. "Don't futz with that digital editor unless you know what you're doing!"

KVETCH: to complain or gripe unduly. "Stop kvetching...they'll never hear that 60Hz hum!"

MAVEN: an expert. "Olliie Berliner is quite a phonograph maven."

MEGILLAH: a big ordeal, rigamarole. "That remote broadcast from the Academy Awards was a huge megillah!" or "The whole megillah." (Remember Magilla Gorilla?)

NOSH: a snack. "Don't nosh over the console...you'll spill crumbs into the faders!"

NUDNICK: [nood-nick] a pest or bore. "That intern turned out to be a real nudnick."

OY VAY: same as Oy, but more of it. (Lit: "Oh, woe!") "Oy vay, that mic's pointed backwards!"
A book titled The Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten, lists 29 ways the expression "Oy!" can be used.

SCHLEMIEL: [shleh-meel] a fool or clumsy person. "That schlemiel ran out of gas on his way to the gig!" (Remember Laverne and Shirley?)

SCHLEP: to drag, pull, lug. "You want me to schlep that Ampex 440 upstairs all by myself?!"

SHMALTZ: corny, mushy, sentimental. "Too much shmaltz ....pick up the tempo!"

SHMUCK: a jerk. "Hey schmuck, don't pull that patchcord out by yanking on the wire!"

SHPRITZ: to spray or squirt. "Shpritz some contact cleaner into that noisy pot." Now commonly spelled "spritz."

TCHOCHKES: [choch-kez] bells & whistles, doo-dads; similar to chozzerai, but better quality. Now commonly spelled "chotsky" and meaning swag or souvenirs.

TUCHIS: [tuk-is] rear end, butt. "Aligning that old multitrack was always big pain in the tuchis!"

Find more Yiddish words here.

Yiddish was originally spoken by European Jews. It is a mixture of Hebrew, German and various Slavic languages. Prior to WWII about eleven million people spoke Yiddish; newspapers and books were published in the language, and there was Yiddish theater in Europe, the United States and Latin America.

Rosh Hashanah is commonly referred to as the Jewish New Year. So MAZEL TOV!

yiddish

Bored Jerk Looking For Victims

Don't even ask me how I ran across this little gem on Craig's List today (the misspellings and bad grammar are his not mine, duh)...


Bored jerk looking for AIM/Yahoo victims... - m4mw - 30

I have two people that I consistant chat online with during my droll, monotonous work hours and their both currently on vacation. So, rather than spend yet another day watching youtube.com crap or seeing just how much porn I can browse without my co-workers or boss catching me, I thought I'd set a trap and hopefully acquire another messenger aquaintance. A few things that I would request of you:

1) Not be a pompous, egocentric douchebag. I will be assuming that role in this relationship and there just isn't enough room for two in this category.

2) Please don't be entirely ignorant. You can be just stupid enough so that I can occassionally chuckle on your lack of common sense, but I do expect you to be able to maintain conversation that consists of more than one or two message exchanges. Don't just message me and say "so whatcha doin i smoked so much week last night..."

3) Have a sense of humor. If I can't be sarcastic with you, you'll inevitably end up being offended and scarred for life and I'll just be pissed because I wasted time trying to get to know you, only to find out that you're about as smart as a box of hair.

I guess that's it. I change my mind a lot. And I have mood swings and I can be an occassional pervert. Other than that, I'm fucking awesome.

Please at least take the time to tell me a little about yourself before sending me a simple email with your AIM or Yahoo shit.

I swear to God I did not make this up. I wonder why he has such a hard time making friends?

Tech Tag: craig's list, personal ads, personals

Mary Read - she talked like a pirate

Mary (aka "Mark") Read was born in Plymouth, England, probably around 1690. When Mary was a young child, her stepfather, a sea- faring man, left her and her pregnant mother. Her brother Mark died as an infant and in order to get her family's inheritence Mary's mother dressed her as a boy and introduced her as her son. Mary posed as a boy for many years in order to receive aid from her stepfather's family.

Having lived most of her growing life disguised as a boy, Mary became quite adventurous herself, eventually working aboard a man-of-war. After a few years of gruelling hardship and abuse, Mary managed to jump ship and joined the British military. At first a lowly foot soldier, Mary showed true bravery at the battle of Flanders and was soon promoted to the Horse Regiment. Mary became friends with another soldier, who believed her to be a man, and soon she found herself in love. Mary confessed her true gender to the man and he accepted her gladly. The two were wed posthaste. They bought out their commission in the military and together opened an inn by the name of The Three Horseshoes.

Her husband sadly died young, causing their small fortune to soon run out. She reverted back to her old ways and began dressing as a man once again.

Mary found work on a Dutch ship, which was eventually taken over by none other than Captain Jack Rackham (by then known as "Calico Jack"). The life of a pirate appealed to her adventurous nature and she turned pirate at this time. Interestingly, she was still disguised as a man and no one was the wiser, until a certain Anne Bonney began making advances at Mary. Her cross-dressing was revealed and the two became great friends.

The duo of Anne and Mary were known for their fierce and violent tempers, often called "the fierce hell-cats". No one onboard ship was as bloodthirsty as these two women.

During her tour aboard Rackham's ship, Mary managed to fall in love once more, this time with a young sailor from a vessel captured by Rackham's crew. The sailor soon had trouble on his hands, however, in the shape of a large, burly pirate of longstanding. Mary feared for her lover's life when he was challenged to a duel by the strapping seaman, and so she took matters into her own hands.

She challenged the big pirate to a duel herself, demanding satisfaction immediately. Pirate law was clear on this matter, and the quartermaster promptly rowed the two combatants ashore. Mary and the other pirate, armed with both cutlass and pistol, discharged their pistols first thing, both missing the other, then proceeded with an ambitious clash of blades. The larger pirate was the stronger of the two, but Mary was a quick girl, and brilliantly cunning.

She studiously avoided the other pirate's attacks, all the while waiting for him to make a mistake. It came when the pirate stumbled while lunging at her, and Mary immediately seized the opportunity. She ripped her shirt open, exposing her breasts to the man's incredulous gaze. While he stood gaping, Mary swung her own cutlass and nearly decapitated him, killing him instantly.

Mary's sailor love proposed to her and the two were married. Their wedded bliss did not last long, however, as soon thereafter Rackham's vessel was attacked.

During this siege, when a British Navy ship tried to take over control of the Vanity, the drunken and lazy crew hid below decks while Anne and Mary fought violently, yelling to the crew, "Come up, you cowards, and fight like men!" The women proved no match for the British army and were overtaken. The members of Calico Jack's crew were sentenced to hang. Anne visited Captain Jack Rackham in his cell and said to him, "Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang'd like a dog."

After Calico Jack's hanging, Mary and Anne were found guilty but had one last trick hidden up their sleeves. Both women plead with the court saying, "Mi'Lord we plead our bellies." The women were both pregnant at the time and according to British law could not be hanged. Thus their sentences were stayed.

There are many rumors surrounding the fate of Anne and Mary. It is said that Mary was sentenced to hang after the birth of her child, but died of a fever before the hanging.

Anne was granted a reprieve but it is unknown what happened to her after. Possibly she returned to piracy or perhaps returned to her husband, although after living the life of a pirate one can hardly see her becoming a domestic. It seems we will never know what really happened to the mysterious Anne Bonney.


The fascinating lives of Mary Reade and Anne Bonny are offered up in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, today, September 19th. Check out the national TLAP website and learn the basics now! Once you master those you can learn pirate pick-up lines such as "Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you", and for the ladies: "That's quite a cutlass ye got thar, what ye need is a good scabbard!", and "Did ye know I've crushed seventeen men's skulls between me thighs?"

So avast ye lubbers and bilge rats, check it out smartly and start talking like the Salty Dogs ye always wanted to be. Arrrrrr!

women pirates,mary read, talk like a pirate

Anne Bonny - Pirate Queen

Some call her a feminist who chose piracy as a way of rebelling against a male-dominated world; others portray her as a tomboy who never grew up. Whatever her motives, in deed and daring Anne Bonny, one of history's most infamous women pirates, was a plunderer, cutthroat, sailor, ransomer, raider, and general menace to maritime commerce in the Caribbean. In short, most pirates probably would have considered her an asset to their trade.

Anne Bonny was born in Kinsale, Ireland in the late 1690's. She was the daughter of a penniless maid and her employer, a well-to-do lawyer who was then married. After their tryst was discovered, the two ran off to America and established themselves as respected plantation owners in South Carolina.

When Anne was sixteen, a ne'er-do-well sailor named James Bonny married Anne in an attempt to steal the plantation, but Anne's father instead disowned her. Bonny then took Anne to the pirate lair of New Providence in the Bahamas, where he turned stoolpigeon to Governor Woodes Rogers, accusing any sailor he didn't like of piracy for a handsome reward.

If Charleston had been a pirate's den, then New Providence was an outright capital of calamity. Anne grew to dislike her spineless husband and spent most of her time with the pirate elite. Her best friends consisted of the pirates' paramours and of Pierre, the most celebrated homosexual on the island, who ran a popular ladies' establishment--- and with whom Anne had a teasing rivalry for the favors of the male population. Pirates virtually ruled the city at that time.

Anne soon left James for the infamous Calico Jack Rackham, joining the latter on his ship. Because the pirate code explicitly forbade female crew members, she disguised herself as a man and fought adeptly alongside the rest of the crew. It was only a matter of time before she was discovered, however, and according to one legend, the first fellow shipmate to express anger at having a woman aboard paid for his opinion with his life. She stabbed him through the heart.

However incredible a woman's presence on board may have seemed to Rackham's crew, amazingly, Bonny was not the only female on board. Also disguised as a man was a woman named Mary Read, and the two became fast friends. They shared the secret with Rackham, and the trio happily wreaked havoc throughout the Caribbean for nearly a year until Bonny became pregnant. She gave birth in Cuba then returned the ship, apparently abandoning the child. Ironically, it would be another unwanted pregnancy that would later save her life. To be continued...

Now available for purchase! Anne Bonny Pirate Action Figure from Archie McPhee!

More about Anne Bonny - and Mary Reade - tomorrow...

Tech Tag: [women pirates, anne bonny]

Oriana Fallaci - No Shrinking Violet

Today I read about the death of one of my favorite outspoken, opinionated feminists. She was one of the most renowned journalists of the modern era, provocateur Oriana Fallaci. I have been a fan of hers since I was a high school student in the early 1970's. Although I haven't always agreed with what she says, and at times certainly disagree vehemently, I have always respected her bravery for speaking her mind regardless of the outcome.

From her obit in the NY Times:
ROME, Sept. 15 - Oriana Fallaci, a dissecting interviewer of the powerful and an iconoclastic journalist turned icon herself, who in recent years wrote angrily about the threat of Islam, died today in her home city of Florence, the hospital reported. She was 77.

She became famous in the 1960's and '70's for her war reporting and long, aggressive and revealing interviews with prominent people. Ms. Fallaci was once labeled "the journalist to whom virtually no world figure would say no." Among others, she interviewed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni,Yasir Arafat, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Nguyen Van Thieu and Henry Kissinger.

Mr. Kissinger, President Nixon's secretary of state, called the experience "the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press." She had coaxed him to admit, at the height of his power and celebrity in 1972, that at times he felt like "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town."

A glamorous figure with high cheekbones, a black curl of eyeliner and an ever-present cigarette, Ms. Fallaci believed she had the right to ask or say anything - and did just that in writings translated into more than 20 languages.

"How do you swim in a chador?" she asked Ayatollah Khomeni in 1979, not long after he came to power in Iran in 1979.

That trait earned her a new generation of admirers - and many other detractors - after she ended years of silence following the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. In three books beginning with "The Rage and the Pride" (Rizzoli: 2002) and many interviews after the world-changing events, she attacked not only Islamic extremists but Islam itself, as well as a West that she said had become too complaisant and tolerant to realistically understand the threat.

Saying that the "sons of Allah breed like rats," she strongly condemned the growing immigration of Muslims in Europe, including her native Italy.

"Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense," she told the Wall Street Journal in 2005. "Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty."

Ms. Fallaci's warnings endeared her to conservatives - and won her an audience in 2005 with Pope Benedict XVI, although she was a lifelong atheist - but she also faced accusations of racism.

She was charged in Switzerland and Italy for violating laws against vilifying religion, and in 2003, the left-wing Italian newspaper called her an "exhibitionist posing as the Joan of Arc of the West."

Born on June 29, 1929 in Florence, she was made a lookout for the Italian Resistance at only 10 years old by her anti-fascist father, Edoardo, a cabinet-maker. That early brush with adventure and war proved a pattern.

As a journalist she covered wars from Vietnam to Central Asia to South America. In Mexico City in 1968, she was shot three times, dragged down steps by the hair and left for dead in clashes between the police and student demonstrators in which several hundred protesters were killed days before the Summer Olympics held there.

"Alas, nothing reveals man the way war does," Ms. Fallaci told an interviewer in 2001. "Nothing so accentuates in him the beauty and ugliness, the intelligence and foolishness, the brutishness and humanity, the courage and cowardice, the enigma. To understand human beings, ultimately war serves a writer better than any other experience - or should one use the word adventure?"

But it was her interviews that made her famous, her books staples on college campuses around the world.

For a woman who mercilessly prodded her interview subjects into self revelation, Ms. Fallaci said she did not like to talk about herself.

"To speak of oneself means to lay bare one's own soul, expose it like a body to the sun," she told an interviewer in 1979. "To lay bare one’s own soul is not at all like taking off one's brassiere on a crowded beach!"

[oriana fallaci, journalist]

Columbian Culinary Crisis

BARICHARA, Colombia (AP))—The first loud crackle tastes and feels like popcorn, but by the time the juices spray wildly in your mouth and the filament-like legs slide down your throat, there's no mistaking this toasted ant queen.

The people of sun-soaked northern Colombia have been eating ants for centuries. They believe the accurately named "hormiga culona'' (big-butt queen ant) is everything from a natural form of Viagra to a protein-rich defense against cancer.

A businessman in Santander province exported more than 880 pounds of the inch-long queen ants last year, many of them to be hand-dipped in Belgian chocolate and sold in fancy packaging at $8 for a half dozen at upscale London department stores like Harrods and Fortnum & Mason.



But even as the delicacy begins to expand beyond Colombia, the ants appear to be dwindling in Santander, and that worries the region's ant-eating bipeds.

This year's harvest, which usually begins around Easter and lasts as late as June, was one of the worst on record, with peasants in the artist colony of Barichara reporting half their normal year's haul.

Entomologists say the winter was unusually harsh and spring rains were late, which may have disturbed the virgin queen ants' nuptial flights - the one time a year when they emerge from their dune-like ant hills to seek a mate and form a new colony. Almost as often, the queens are grabbed by lizards, birds or humans.

In Colombia, people generally toast the ants in salt at community gatherings and eat them as a snack.



But there is innovation. Restaurants in Barichara offer an ant-based spread for bread and an ant-flavored lamb sauce.

Stuffed tortilla "atta wraps'' led the menu at a recent tasting at the Montreal Insectarium, an insect museum in Canada.

"In France, they're so highly regarded people started calling them the caviar of Santander,'' said Stephane Le Tirant, curator at the Montreal Insectarium.

Reading the above excerpt from livescience.com really opened up a can of worms. While searching around for images to go with the article I ran into a veritable beehive of sites featuring edible insects and insect recipes including chocolate chirpie chip cookies (grasshoppers), dragon fly stew, insect crunch and pan roasted insect medley with salad.


Here is an easy recipe from the Liverpool Museum:

Red Ant Stir Fry
Ingredients
1 tablespoon oil
300g female giant red ants
1 onion, chopped
Preparation
Heat the oil in a pan, then stir-fry the ants and the onion together until
the onion is well browned. As the ants are cooked they become dry and crisp,due to their high fat content. They taste like bacon.





VIVA LAS HORMIGAS!!!!

[hormiga culona, edible insects], ants, columbian cuisine

Do You Have Balls?

Today I went to a customer's quaint abode up in the hills. Here are a few of my pictures:

We are making a "King's Tent" for the pool area in the back yard.

The house, Stonebrook Court, is a copy of Speke Hall in England. It used to be a private school then fell into disrepair from the 1980's on. It was purchased by a rich couple and they have spent the past nine years restoring it. I would say to it's original splendor but their restoration far exceeds any splendor originally associated with the house.

My favorite room was the library. I was admiring one of the wooden columns when the owner told me to give it a pull. It opened a door and inside was a fantastic wet bar hidden behind the library wall. My absolute favorite thing in this house filled with fabulous things were the sconces inside the hidden wet bar.

The coolest ever!!

The only room that is close to original is the grand ballroom. It features a gold leaf fireplace and a ceiling from some palace in Venice. The fireplace and ceiling are original to the house.

The owner said he was giving a tour to some stuck-up old biddies a couple of days ago and when they got to the ballroom one of them asked excitedly, "Do you have balls?"

Ahem...

The owner burst out laughing but was met with stony silence. Either they didn't get their faux pas or they chose to ignore it.

Anyway, we had a good laugh about it.

Warm Seats West and East

I was at a concert Saturday night and was able to spend much time people watching. I had my bincoculars which helped. At one point I observed a person get up from a bench, and another person did an amusing thing before sitting down in the same spot. It reminded me of something that a friend posted on his blog a week ago and he described it much better than I can:

Sunday, September 03, 2006
Warm Seats
Why is some people reluctant to take the seat right after someone gets up ? Especially in the public places, like the train, the bus. Is it because they were afraid of catching someone else's bad "Chi" or for the worse, the fart by sitting down too soon ? Some will even pat the seat cushion a few times to air it out. Won't that get it on your hand now ? Strange indeed.

My friend Ron lives in Taipei which is where he made the above observation. Sometimes people are more alike than they are different.

Check out his blog if you are interested in reading about life in Taiwan...or just another viewpoint on the human condition.

Worst Album Covers Ever

Another find while cleaning out files. This treasure sent to me about a year ago:

Museum of Bad Album Covers, here are just a few samples of my favorites...



Midnight Sun mophead monstrosity. They're probably all bald except the guy in the middle.


No Comment.



By request only? Let me guess, Ken, hundreds of these things are still in your closet, right?



Utterly confounding.


No, they're just pretending.



Hawaiian Livercheese? For those warm, tropical nightmares.


It's always good to end on a positive note.
Make love not polkacide.

worst album covers