The parasitic jaeger has a great name. Who wouldn’t love to have their name prefixed with parasitic? (Though, being mammals, we all start off as parasitic alien spawn in our mothers’ wombs, we are deprived of being called parasitic.)
The article on the parasitic jaeger refers to the birds as the winged pirates of the high seas, aerial swashbucklers, and feathered pirates.
Then my new favourite word enters the fray: kleptoparasitism (stealing food from others).
The authors ask if the parasitic jaeger, in employing kleptoparasitism as a feeding strategy, is too lazy or too clever. Personally, I see it as clever. Why should some parasitic jaeger get its feathers wet when some tern moron is willing to go hunting on its behalf?
As my father always says, the world needs idiots so that some of us can be smart. Kleptoparasitism will be my new food gathering practice. Just like the parasitic jaeger, I will hide in the parking lots of supermarkets and swoop down on unsuspecting soccer moms tending to their sullen brood. With my own deft high-speed maneuvers, the stunned soccer moms will drop their shopping bags or allow their shopping carts to roll away - allowing me to run off supplied with bulk cookies and armloads of canned artichokes.
Today’s spam:
decoy erratic beard automata (from Audra Donnelly): I assume this has something to do with my ongoing protests against facial hair.
bicycle cast (from Amparo Bourgeois): not such an interesting subject line, but I like the name Amparo, plus the Bourgeois - that just made my day. Thank you, Amparo Bourgeois. Now is this a cast of bicycles appearing on stage? Or a cast of actors appearing on bicycles? Or an actor cast to play a bicycle? Or is it a blue cheese in a bicycle mould?
controlling assistant chunky bleeker (from Rick Stanley): I looked up bleeker and it seems to refer to many things. Mysteriously enough bleeker appears to have some Dutch connections. I assume this overweight assistant bleeker has taken its authority a tad too far, overstepping the boundary separating the merely domineering and the outright dictatorial.
Re: Re: bobolink bred (from Gloria): it seems like Gloria and I have been having an ongoing discussion of our bobolink ancestry. Perhaps we shared the same bobolink father but have different mothers (bobolink males are polygamous). Gloria may have been searching for her half-brothers and sisters. Did I disappoint her? Do I have another sister? Now that I have the bobolink song on loop, I really appreciate my potential avian talents - perhaps I too can give off “a tinkle of fairy music” “like sparkling champagne”?
bloodhound false arterial drill (from Boyd Kuhn): I would like to see a bloodhound arterial drill, as long as it isn’t false.
Re: cowl (from Maryann): so I obviously wrote to this Maryann about some monk’s robe and she replies. Was I drycleaning it?
More on Value Village. And a reason to visit Kelowna.
Haunted portraits. Morbid fun lite.
Exploding whale.
Funny about those whale penises.
I stayed at a hotel once that had not one, but two whale penises displayed in glass cases. I didn’t know what they were; JJ told me to read the placards. I figured it out by sounding out each syllable (the signs were in Japanese). They were taller than JJ.
If only I could figure out how to use this scanner thing beside me, I would put up a picture of that whale penis.
Oh, and a Taiwanese person said the whale smelled bad? I guess one’s nostrils do get inured to bad smells, though I was under the impression that chou doufu smelled like decaying corpses. Imagined the Taiwanese would be used to the stench of decomposition by now.
I am absolutely delighted to inform you, gentle reader, that my biweekly Value Village trip yielded many goodies. Two jean skirts, a weird velvet skirt with sparkly butterflies, about seven shirts, a pair of fisherman pants, and a $6.50 pair of gorgeous jeans. I also got a new Chinese tanktop that reminds me of a Hokusai. (Today’s “Level of Missing Japan” rating is a high seven.)
Sara showed me her fuzzy green Value Village sweater, $5 pricetag still attached. It would make a good costume, she claims.
Sara also told me about her vintage clothing buying trips at a store near Broadway and Main. The shoes she wanted weren’t there. The shop owner says all the drag queens buy those shoes. “Damn you, drag queens!”
Thank you to Lisa for introducing me to the new love of my life: the Surrealist Compliment Generator.
“You are as dazzling as a pregnant cow attired in electrical sockets.”
“Your arms lengthen daily like the edges of a festering table.”
“Your fingers staple pine nuts into everything you touch.”
“Your love is like 1000 caucasian carnivores playing mumblety peg with an eggplant.”
Ah, I foresee hours of fun.
“Never pet your dog when it is on fire.”
The new bellydancing teacher, Debbie, likes similes: “In this move, your arms are like weeping willows.” My response: “No, my arms are like gorillas.”
Then she wanted us to picture that we were nailed to the middle of barrels and we needed to scrape the dripping chocolate off the sides of the barrel. I said that I felt as if I had elephants glued to me.
The jelly melted to reveal chunks of intact pig fat, skin still attached. Carefully picking my way through it. Luckily there are some quail eggs from which I can derive my daily nutrients. Mysterious stringy things I am trying to ignore as I chew the edible portions. To think, this is only half of Sunday’s doggie bag. More left to consume tomorrow.
Everyone is shooing me off to lunch. But the truth is, I am dreading lunch today. It�s a pork dish from Sunday�s Vietnamese restaurant. Allison ordered something to go just for her lunch the following day. Following her example, I called the waiter back and told him I wanted to order something for the next day too. When I said the caramel pork, he looked at me with incredulity and gasped, �Not for the next day?� I reaffirmed that it was indeed meant to be eaten Monday. He didn�t say more, but wrote down my order.
Yesterday morning when I was scooping out the pork to put into my Tupperware, the pork jelly had coagulated overnight in the fridge. It resembled the head cheese of my youth; my father would not allow me to leave the table until I finished off the plateful of pork jelly. Invariably these meals would end with a spanking. As a result, meat jellies always leave me with a trembling heart. Plus, the frightened look of Sunday�s waiter rather alarmed me. Today I would almost rather go hungry than risk flashbacks of a tortured childhood. I can live on one doughnut and a vanilla latte.
But the caramel pork is in the microwave…hopefully the jelly will have melted away.
This is one of those moments I wish I was Muslim.
