Barnyard of Grandeur

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read:

My SUV has a four legs, a mane, and a tail...and it doesn't guzzle gas!

This bumper sticker was tacked on a huge Dodge Ram pickup.

A jackass that rides a horse. What a sight.

Still Humming

I had an amazing connection with nature this past Friday. I was working on my Goldwing (imagine!), and I could hear something dropping through the maple tree to my left. It was too heavy to be a leaf, but way too light to be a stick.

I walked over to the wall that the tree hangs over, and there was a hummingbird laid flat out on its stomach, panting, wings spread, and its tiny tongue lapped at the air. It was a sad sight and I figured it would just be a matter of minutes before it expired. I couldn’t figure out how it came to fall and rest there, because it was a full-size adult and I doubt it fell out of a nest. I wondered if it had gotten stung by any one of the dozens of hornets that had been hanging around the hummingbird feeders.

I rubbed its belly a little and then scooped it into my hand. This bird is so light, I couldn’t even really feel it. Its lack of weight offered no resistance or pressure against my fingers as I rubbed its belly and wing, and I feared I would inadvertently crush its seemingly nonexistent skeleton. I’ve never held a living bird before, especially something as elusive as a hummingbird. I held it in the palm of my hand and just studied and studied. Did you know hummingbirds have eyelashes? One would expect such a diminutive creature to blink so quickly that there wouldn’t even be an indication of eyelids, but this one had some of the most languid blinks I’d ever seen on a bird.

Still convinced that it would ultimately expire in my hand, I took it inside to show my little brother. After a couple minutes, the bird straightened up a little as I continued rubbing its belly. I figured I had probably better head outside. My lady fair arrived and took some pictures with her cell phone (note my predictably greasy hands), and the little guy continued to hang out in my palm for about five minutes. Without warning, it just flew away. It was just beautiful and pretty much all I talked about for the rest of the weekend.

Rhymes With "Ice Palace"

I didn't watch the Super Bowl after all. It was beautiful. And incredibly, time still managed to soldier on.

The weather now feels wintry as it should. That means that I finally get to shoot some wintry scenes, as the photo, um, illustrates.

As I was walking over the Harvard Bridge, I looked down at the frozen Charles River, replendent in its frozen glory. Close to the banks of the river, there were large stones either lying on top of the ice or just about poking through it. Someone had obviously thrown these stones in an attempt to break through the ice. Relatively harmless, really, and we've all done it to either test the ice's thickness or just to satisfy the need to break through ice while safely on shore. As I get toward the middle of the bridge, the stones were replaced by garbage; garbage that hadn't broken through the ice but will eventually make its way to the bottom of the river with the first good thaw. There was a pylon, couch pillows, bottles, cans, and other assorted junk. It caused me to ask two questions:

1. If that's on top of the river, what must be at the bottom?

2. How soon before these people's karma comes back around and bites them on the tuckus? No matter what the answer, it will never be swift enough.

Beach Monitor

Some of my favorite things to photograph are items that are completely out of context. For example, a rowboat in the middle of the woods or apples floating in a river though there are no apple trees for miles; things that make you wonder just how they got there.

The photo you see here is an example of such context, but in the most unfortunate way. On Nauset Light Beach, someone actually dragged an entire computer system onto the beach and proceeded to smash it to bits. This example is more a commentary on human nature than anything else, and doesn’t help the case in my constant battle with misanthropy. I tried to be artsy, but at the end of the day, it’s still just a shattered monitor that the earth and ocean never asked for.

Cats, Cows, Church.

Happy New Year one and all, and welcome to my web log. I don't mind going through the pains of typing that cumbersome first syllable. We as a people have become entirely too reliant on abbreviation, and "blog" should actually have an apostrophe in front of it. I could dedicate an entire site to that annoyance alone, but not today. Moving on.

So. The tsunami. This business where aid-giving is becoming a competition is, well, unfortunate but not at all surprising. But rather than get into that mire of lunacy, I'd like to turn your attention the picture I have posted to the left. As the caption explains, that cat is a survivor of the tsunami, and it suggests that animals have a certain "sense" of nature that we humans don't. Whereas we have to construct instruments and all types of complicated devices to gather even an angstrom of of an idea what type of weather or seismic event is ahead of us, animals just simply say (in animal-speak, I imagine) , "Umm, DUH."

It's an interesting commentary on the human race. We're convinced we're ready for whatever will be thrown at us at any given moment. Nope, the animals have us beat there. For example, take hurricanes. Inevitably, in spite of a billion warnings by meteorologists, throngs of people will flock to the water's edge for the event known as "Hoooowee, Lookit The Size O' Them Waves! Hope We Don't Die Or Nothin'! Honey, Take Mah Pitcher! Honey?" The event title's a mouthful, but you can see it on the ESPN for the easily amused, The Weather Channel.

Sure, we're more intelligent. But in what sense? Because we know who'll get voted off the island next or get fired(!) by a super-rich horse's ass? You'll never get the winning lottery numbers or the answer to 43 down from your cat, dog, potbellied pig, chinchilla, etc. But see the cows lying down in the field? They're telling you to roll up your windows.


In other news, the Rogues will be recording at an undisclosed church this Saturday. That's right, we're going to conjure up the devil with the conduit we call rock and roll right in the middle of the House of God. Not really. At best, we'll probably conjure up a very cranky Boxcar Willy.

I'm VERY excited for three reasons:

1. I'm getting to record a band which is comprised of myself and two of my closest friends

2. I finally get to use the gear I've been hoarding over the years for an actual studio application other than my solo stuff

3. C'mon, we got a green light to do this in a CHURCH.

Ciao for niao.