Pigeons

If you live in a city, I guess there's only two ways to feel about pigeons: either you really dislike them ("feathered rats," anyone?) or you become tolerantly affectionate of them. After four years in New Haven and...yikes, six in Philadelphia, I've swung over towards "affectionate." As long as they don't actually crap on my head, anyway.



So here are some pigeon-related things I've thought over the years:



One of my favorite things about living in a city is watching the male pigeons try to impress the females during mating season. They puff out their chests, they drag their tails, they bob and bow and coo, they put on the biggest show they can; and the females just hurry away, or even fly away, without looking at them. I know the males must be succssful sometimes, or there wouldn't continue to be more pigeons; but mostly, it's very entertaining to watch all that "look at me!" puffery met by complete disinterest.



***

It's true that pigeons have pretty much taken over everyplace urban; but it's not the fault of the pigeons that the environments we create for ourselves exactly duplicate their natural habitat. The common, feathered-rat pigeon is officially a rock dove; a dove that lives on rocks, on cliffs, under overhangs, among crags...or, in a pinch, among sidewalks, overpasses, and skyscrapers. (On the bright side, for pigeon-haters, peregrine falcons have also taken to the cliff-like skyscraper environment. Nature is nothing if not adaptable.)



***

Not that I'm superstitious, or a big believer in karma; but every now and then, I wonder if the urban ubiquity of the rock dove is cosmic payback for the extermination of the passenger pigeon. (It would serve us right; or serve our ancestors right, anyway. Me, I'll just avoid standing under telephone lines where pigeons perch and enjoy watching the males fail to impress the females every spring.)

Talking towards the TV

J., on a "Queer Eye" guy's transformation: "He's gone from 'Dude, you got some coke?' to 'Dude, you got a rum and Coke?'"



(A bit later: "Actually, he's gone from crack to powder." Which I don't get, but I'm recording it for posterity in case other people do.)

When there's smoke, there's no fire truck

Is anybody surprised that, two days after announcing enormous cutbacks to the fire department, the fire commissioner announced his retirement? He's getting a half-million-dollar early-retirement bonus, too; which is perhaps not such a terrible thing, because he hasn't exactly been a terrific fire commissioner. (Ask all the firefighters who got Hepatitis C on the job about their healthcare benefits, and be prepared to stand back.)



He says that cutting eight engine and ladder companies is okay, because they'll be replaced by eight medic units. Comment from one of the firefighters: "Great, now they'll be able to rush the dead people to the hospital."



If I had my way (yeah, I know, I don't), I'd pay firefighters and police officers and schoolteachers and nurses lots of money, because they're the ones protecting/saving the asses of all the rich politicians and administrators and executives who are busy closing companies and sending jobs offshore and giving themselves benefits and pay raises. If my house is burning down, I'd rather have one firefighter than all the CEOs in the city.

See you on the seacoast of Bohemia

When Dick Cheney made the comment (which he now denies making, although the Daily Show, via their usual painstaking grueling exhaustive research practice of watching the news, found a clip of it) that a meeting between al Qaeda and Iraqi agents was "pretty well confirmed," he also said it took place in Czechoslovakia. Which, as you may recall from the past eleven years of European history, no longer exists. (Of course, if it's a nonexistent meeting, I guess it can not-have-taken-place in a nonexistent country.)



I've just about given up on expecting politicians and newspapers to know that it's "Ukraine," not "the Ukraine"; but seriously, Czech-o-fncking-slovakia? Give my regards to the shah of Persia and the archduke of Austria-Hungary while you're over there, okay?



Yeah, okay, if something happened in Istanbul and you say it happened in Constantinople, you're not necessarily wrong about the facts of the actual occurrence. (If it actually occurred.) You just sound like an antiquated fuddy-duddy who hasn't bothered to pay attention to anybody else's history since the end of World War II. (Or, at least, the history of anybody who hasn't a) pointed nuclear missiles at you or b) struck oil.)



Not that that actually sounds like certain government leaders, or anything...

Ugh.

I don't think it's so much "you've seen one beheading, you've seen them all" as "you've seen one beheading, you've seen enough."



(I haven't seen any, and I don't want to see any; I've had more of the hyperventilating news coverage than I ever wanted, though. At least there won't be six hours a day of intrusive local news coverage on this one. [Yes, that's selfish of me. But they've still got news vans parked in front of the Berg and Johnson houses, and I really wish they'd leave the poor people the hell alone.])

You want a coronary bypass with that?

Good old Ukraine, my steppe-motherland: always on the lookout for a new way to serve fat. Their newest taste treat is chocolate-covered pork fat, nicknamed "Ukrainian Snickers." (J. "I wonder just how much it differs, nutritionally, from Oreo cookies?" Heck, how much does it differ, in terms of ingredients, from Oreo cookies? They're basically just a chocolate-flavored cookie-like substance with a lard filling, aren't they?)

The faux megillah

The faux megillah

Okay, I've been away from a computer for a few days, so I've missed the "Madonna's new name" posting bandwagon; but, as I sit here with Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and the AMG Complete Word Study Dictionary: Old Testament on my hard drive (I've been converting them into and out of various files formats and transliteration systems till I can just about do Unicode Hebrew in my sleep), I've got a better-than-usual opportunity to look up the actual spelling and etymology of "Esther." Its Strong's number is 635, and Strong's transliterates it ’estêr; AMG has ’estēr. (If your browser's Unicode-friendly, the Hebrew is אֶסְתֵּר.) And, for one thing, it ain't Hebrew, okay? It is, to quote the pre-Iran Strong's, "of Persian derivation"; AMG begins the entry "The name of the Jewish queen Esther of Persia. Her name means 'star.'" The Hebrew word for "star"—the Biblical Hebrew one, anyway—is כּוֹכָב, transliterated something like kôkāb (AMG) or káwkâb (Strong's), and it's a masculine noun. Not, in other words, related in any way to the word for "star" from which Esther is derived. Okay? But if an ancient Hebrew name is what she's looking for, there are some really lovely ones: Abishag, Oholibamah, Haggith, Eglah, Hazzelelponi...



(I know, I'm being snide. It's not Abishag's fault that her name sounds really bad in modern English, and Eglah couldn't do anything about having a name that means "heifer." I just wanted to point out that even an honest-to-YHWH Hebrew name doesn't necessarily make you sound cool. Especially if you're a Kabbalah-quoting poser.)



Ah, yes, the poser aspect. Taking the name of a virtuous Jewish woman doesn't make you virtuous or Jewish. And if you're neither virtuous nor Jewish, it's just insulting. She's certainly not going to make friends among either Christians or Jews by changing her name from The Mother Of Our Lord to The Queen Who Saved The Jews. (I started to say "savior," but you have to be careful using "savior" and "Jews" in the same sentence.) Although, come to think of it, there are probably plenty of Christians who'll be very happy that she'll no longer be a discredit to the name of the B.V.M.



(If I had to pick an Old Testament Hebrew name—other than the one I've already got [אֲבִיגַיִל, Strong's 26], I'd pick Deborah, the totally kick-ass prophetess and judge who led the Israelites when they, well, totally kicked the ass of Sisera and the Canaanite army (Judges ch. 4–5). There aren't many truly kick-ass women in the Bible; there are very cool women who do interesting things—I especially like Miriam, Ruth, Rahab, and, yes, Esther—but not many of them get to actually kick ass. [And the ones who do are kinda scary: don't you get the feeling that Jael enjoyed hammering the tent peg into Sisera's temple a little too much?])