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Diary #845

This is the time of year when the pigs, guided by their amazingly acute sense of smell, start spending a lot of time under the apple trees, feasting on drops.  Then in the late afternoon, when they know dinnertime is approaching, they head back to the east paddock, where they know I’ll be bringing their dinners.  Last week I heard them through the open window, and managed to catch them heading toward dinner; the fuzziness is due to the window screen because I knew if I took the time to go outside, they’d already have passed.  Bonus: y’all get to see and hear Louie being a drama queen when Cicero just looks at him too hard.

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You’re not the future anymore!  –  Mark Zuckerberg, sort of

Though Tim Curry died only the day after Dolly Parton, I wasn’t going to cheat him of a proper sendoff.  The links above the video were provided by Ryan Marino; Radley Balko; Scott Greenfield and Dan Savage; The Onion; Ryan Marino again; Amy Alkon; and Nun Ya, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Diary #844

I did realize that a full-grown turkey could not live comfortably in a henhouse with chickens, but what I did not realize was just how much trouble it would be.  First, he injured himself trying to get through the chicken door, so I had to let him in and out through the walk-through door for the past couple of months.  He also kept trying to flap his wings inside, which meant every day I had to deal with the feeder getting knocked loose (and the feed consumed 50% faster), most of the water being dumped on the ground, electrical cords being knocked loose, and nasty shit getting everywhere, producing a reek that was intolerable even by chicken standards. But then I realized that in addition to all that, the hens were pecking him so badly he had bloody sores under his tail and on his back between the wings.  So last week I shooed him out into the paddock, which was not easy; he whacked me with his wings (which are much stronger than one would expect) and kept running in every direction other than the one where I wanted him to go.  That was through the open gate, which meant several of the chickens took advantage of it even though he wouldn’t, which meant they needed to be shooed back in once I finally got him out.  He then spent several days just lurking outside the fence, staring in with an expression I interpreted as the avian equivalent of a child with no money pressing his runny nose against the window of a candy store.  But on Saturday he started wandering around a bit, and on Sunday he was up in the north paddock hunting for bugs in the grass.  He later joined the pigs and goat eating the corn I throw over the fence; I’d been giving him some separately from the pigs, but on Sunday he joined them so I just doubled the amount.  All in all, this looks like the way to do it, should I choose to raise more large fowl in the future, but next time I’ll do it before the injuries start accumulating.

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Get on the fucking ground…I will fucking tase you. – cop to “missing child”

Even with all of her songs to choose from, this felt to me like the most appropriate tribute to one of the world’s most beloved human beings.  The links above it were provided by Radley Balko; Mistress Matisse; T. Greg Doucette; Ryan Cooper and Scott Long; Nun Ya (x2); and IncarcerNation, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Every so often, I need to remind my readers that because, like PBS stations and the old MAD Magazine, I don’t accept paid advertising, every so often I need to ask my readers for their voluntary support.  And by “voluntary”, I mean truly voluntary, not extracted from y’all by paywalls, nag screens, annoying popups, or other methods of coercion.  Other than a reasonably-inobtrusive little paragraph three times a week which most readers probably don’t even notice any more, I limit myself to asking for your support in a full column like this about three times a year (the last time was in early May) unless there’s some sort of emergency need.  And now that I’m only supporting myself and have throttled my driving back to one weekly trip to Aberdeen and 4x a year to Seattle, even the emergencies come less often (and I certainly hope that remains the case from now on).  But fewer and smaller bills is not the same as no bills, and while I’ve now got a modest buffer against minor calamities, the unexpected is always possible (and a certain fraction of supporters do fall by the wayside every year).  Furthermore, regular readers know that have never and will never delegate my work to employees or chatbots; every word was written by me, and nobody or nothing else.  So if the mad emperor’s attempts to demolish the world economy haven’t hurt you too badly, please consider subscribing at one of the regular levels in the right-hand column, or even one of the superstar levels listed here; if you can’t do a monthly expense, you could show your appreciation by a gift from my Amazon wishlist.  As always, thank y’all for reading, and for your generosity!

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I just love a captive audience.  –  Whitney Lynn

I always enjoy sharing my earworms, especially when they explain things about my daily life such as why I often call my pig Louie by singing, “Louie Louie Louie Loo-eeeee”.  The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel; Shiv Ramdas; Angela Keaton and Mike Masnick; Radley Balko; IncarcerNation (x2); and Mike Siegel again, in that order.

From the Archives

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Jail erodes every aspect of a person’s agency.  –  Lindsey Krinks

I recently watched all the Charlie Chan movies Chekhov had in his collection.  The low-budget Monogram Chan pictures of the 1940s weren’t as good as the 20th Century Fox ones of the 1930s, but though Mantan Moreland, who played Chan’s chauffeur in the ’40s pictures, was typically paired with Benson Fong as “Number Three son” for comic relief, a couple of the films included guest appearances by Moreland’s former vaudeville partner Ben Carter, allowing the two to show off the very funny ‘indefinite talk” routine which made them famous.  The links above the video were provided by Jesse Walker, Anarres Ansible, Mistress Matisse, IncarcerNation, Nun Ya, T. Greg Doucette, and IncarcerNation again, in that order.

From the Archives

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A classicist recently pointed out on social media that the ancient Greek notion of heroism is so different from the modern idea that mythological heroes like Odysseus must either be adapted for modern audiences, or else they end up looking at least somewhat villainous.  It’s especially apparent when moderns try to adapt Hercules into what we would call a hero, and end up with a character who only barely resembles the one in the myths, because the ancient Greek word which is generally translated as “hero” has nothing to do with morality, self-sacrifice, etc.  As a kid who loved both mythology and comic books, it was always a little jarring to see how differently mythic characters like Hercules were portrayed in the one vs the other.  The most accurate depiction of Hercules on the big screen that I can recall was in Jason and the Argonauts, where he is clearly shown to be a bully, braggart, and delinquent who gets his friends killed and nearly wrecks the entire mission.  Of course, the same movie elides Jason’s awfulness, and ends abruptly to avoid having to deal with the whole ugly business of Jason and Medea, which only goes to demonstrate our initial premise once again.

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I’ve always believed that music, like space, is about exploration.  –  William Shatner

Though this Irving Berlin song (provided by Rick Horowitz) is about Hitler, it has taken on a new meaning in our day.  The links above it were provided by Anarres Ansible, Jesse Walker, Ryan Marino, Kevin Wilson, Mike Stabile, Nun Ya, and Savannah Sly, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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