Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   phoebes depart
Thursday, June 9 2005
This morning as I was in the occasionally long and fitful process of waking up, I found myself having a dream about a variety of things, one of which involved building a large complicated gravity-powered stationary water cannon. As I worked, I had a radio tuned to a country music radio station and it was playing a song that went something like this:

She's wearing the same shoes as me
She's wearing the same shoes as me
They ain't too fancy but they sure ain't free
I seen her shopping at the feed supply
But damn if she done bought the shoes I buy!

After I woke up I realized that this would be a reasonable basis for your typical country music song, one where there's a point trying to be made about someone and evidence is systematically introduced in the same form and meter until either the protagonists have had kids and the lyrics are now about the next generation or there's been some big unexpected twist in the story. In my song, a guy at a honky tonk would be noticing an attractive woman who was dressed exactly like him sitting alone by herself and drinking his preferred brand of beer. At some point she'd get up and go to the jukebox and line up a perfect mix of our narrator's favorite songs. In the end he'd take her home and the big twist would come when he found out that the woman was actually a man, "just the same as me." In terms of message, it wouldn't be in keeping with the kind of country music you hear on the radio. But it would make for a good novelty tune on the jukebox at a gay bar.


The nest of three baby phoebes that had been atop the east deck light is suddenly empty. I'm sure its former occupants off in the world, doing what young phoebes do, but it's kind of sad and just a little disappointing that they didn't, you know, risk their lives to come into the house past the cats and say their goodbyes (or at least call us on their cellphones). I felt like I'd developed a relationship with them and their sudden disappearance seemed selfish and ungrateful.
I have subsequently seen what I took to be the phoebes' parents (or perhaps the parents of another batch of phoebes) catching insects in and around the yard to the west of the house. But the only birds remaining to the east of the house are a set of Baltimore Orioles, an occasional hummingbird, some jay-chasing robins, and a few Mourning Doves.


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http://asecular.com/blog.php?050609

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