for chris

Category: dribblings

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fake out

Category: dribblings

femalecardinal01 

I think cardinals are winter birds, right? I mean, you always see pictures of red cardinal on a white snowy branch. It’s a cliche almost. (am i the only one?)

So I look at the picture and think that it must’ve been cold out. The branches are bare, save for a few dead leaves, and it’s all kinda grey, dreary.
But the camera? SHE LIES. For it was a balmy 80 degrees out.

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more from Snake Bite Pond

Category: dribblings

frozen_dandelion 

the hawks have been avoiding the place lately. here’s a plant instead. it was frozen but the sun was out, which makes it look like magic.

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bird blog part shut up, liz.

Category: dribblings

so here i got this pic of a woodpecker making holes or something.

but if you get close enough you can see there’s a round thing in the hole, an egg? maybe?

woody17 

woody18 
no! he moved and you can see he’s stashed an acorn or something in the hole. and the hole towards the bottom, you can see they’ve pecked straight through it.
destructive bastards, yeah?

Also on the walk this morning I saw another Yellowhammer. I took many pictures of it and only got one with his yellow tail feathers showing. He was doing it on purpose, I think.

northernflicker04

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33. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary By David Sedaris

Category: 50 Books

If you’ve read and enjoyed Sedaris before, you’ll have no problem with this one. He’s one of the funniest and most clever writers going. This is a small, short book of, I don’t know what you’d call it, not fables really, but really short stories about animals. Snarky, very human woodland creatures.

As someone who regularly anthropomorphs animals, birds, bugs, and sometimes food, I totally loved the book.

Also, Ian Falconer illustrates the stories. If his name sounds familiar it’s probably because you have little kids and have read the Olivia the pig books.

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32. Prayers For Rain by Dennis Lehane

Category: 50 Books

I think this is part 5 of the Kenzie-Gennaro series. If you’ve not read any of Lehane’s stuff I suggest you give it a try. He’s great. You’ve probably heard of some of his other (non Kenzie-Gennaro) books like Mystic River and Shutter Island.

This series takes place in Boston and yes, it’s crime fiction. This one takes place after Gone, Baby, Gone. The best part about his books are the characters. It’s not so much that they’re authentic, because I don’t really know anything about the Boston underworld and/or private eyes, right? But what he does is make the characters credible, yeah? So I totally believe these characters and root for them and oh, look at me gushing.

The only problem I had with the book, and SPOILER ALERT, I GUESS, I mean the damn book has been out for like, I don’t know, 10 years or something so you should have read this by now. The problem was the bad guys? It’s kind of like there are two baddies? (Well, more than two, really.) And the two main bad guys are both sociopaths, I would think, and I don’t think that two sociopaths would work together.

Okay, maybe they could work together, but not for that long.

Another thing I was kinda meh about was that Kenzie mentions the Marx Brothers at least 4 times. We get it, you’re a movie buff, that’s awesome. But you mention the Marx Brothers 4 times, and the mystery has nothing to do with old movies OR the Marx Brothers. So, redundant.

I know, it’s fiction! Just enjoy the story! I did; I promise. I love these books. Eventually I’ll read one of his that isn’t a Kenzie-Gennaro mystery, but not yet! Because there’s a new one out! SWEET. You’ve no idea how much I’ve looked forward to this.

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31. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Category: 50 Books

Lately I’ve felt the need to read some American authors so I can beef up my literary chops. So I figured, hey, why not start with Papa, right? But I wanted a short book and something easy on the brain. What better than a dishy autobiography, yeah? I mean, those are right up my alley. Plus, that’s the thing about Hemingway anyway. You can’t read one of his novels without bringing his bio into it. Or is that just me? Plus, his books are usually about Guy Things. I don’t care about hunting. I’m not a fan of war stories. Bull fights? Gross. I hate to play the gender card, but I feel like Hemingway is Books For guys Who Like Books, or something.

So, A Moveable Feast. Dishy autobiography. This I can handle.

On one hand, it gets a pass because it was published posthumously and maybe he would’ve changed the whole thing, right? Or maybe he would have never published it. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don’t know. So it’s a book with short chapters of his life in Paris with his first wife and some of the famous writers he knew at that time. It was short and sweet.

On the other hand, my more expectant and judgemental hand, this book was terrible. I know, who the hell am I to call a Hemingway book terrible, I get it. I feel awful for saying it out loud even. But it’s true. I’m calling shenanigans.

1. The first 50 pages are unbearable. It gets a little better after that.

2. ALL OF THE DIALOGUE IS SHIT.
A. I don’t expect the man to remember everey word spoken in every conversation, okay? But I would expect better than this. He makes everyone sound like idiots. And I realize that this is the 1920s and that people may have talked differently back then, but I’m fairly certain that people weren’t ridiculous.
B. Every time his wife, whom you know he loved, speaks it sounds like the fakest, most simpering treacle.
C. I’m calling bullshit on all the dialogue with the other famous writers as well. He makes them look like idiots and makes himself seem like he was the only sensible person in Paris at that time.

3. While the stories of the other writers are dishy, they go beyond dish and straight to mean. He picks on Stein, Fitzgerald, Pound (though you can tell he generally liked Pound), I mean, in one chapter he actually talks about Fitzgerald’s penis. I get that that chapter was really him hating on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, you can tell he hated her, but dude, his penis? And it wasn’t that he makes fun of his penis (he doesn’t) but it’s that it shows that Fitzgerald doesn’t know what a normal-sized penis is? So that in itself (with Hem explaining to him) makes it seem like Fitzgerald is less than a man. Or something. It was just a mean story to add, is all.

4. I’m being redundant but in 2C? How he writes himself as sensible and everyone else as ridiculous? Hate.

5. He is constantly talking about being poor in Paris. Is this true? was Hemingway, a popular journalist who gave up his journalism job to write novels and such, ever actually poor? When I say he is constantly talking about being poor, I mean CONSTANTLY. But also, he is CONSTANTLY eating, drinking, meeting people, and writing in cafes. How damn poor are you when you’re eating and drinking wine and liquor in a cafe every damn day? I think he paints himself as poor, and it doesn’t work because it doesn’t ring true. It makes him look better somehow, next to the rich and famous he writes so loathingly about. They look like fools and he comes out smelling like a rose.

So if you want to read a fake autobiography of the “Lost Generation” might I suggest you read something by Lillian Hellman. She did a much better job with much better dialogue and even with her rapier-like wit and razor-sharp tongue, she was less mean-spirited.

If you think less of me because I called shenanigans on this book, I’m sorry. I really am. I wanted to be all, “Yay! Hemingway! Finally something refreshing after all of this crap crime fiction I’ve read, hooray for American authors!” I should’ve probably eased into it really, and started with something I know I like. But my favorite American authors are Poe and Shirley Jackson. And it feels like cheating to start out with favorites, right? Plus when you say you like Poe and Jackson it’s like saying, “I like ghost stories!” but see, that’s not exaclty right. I like very well-written ghost stories. thbpbpbpb!

We’ll see where my Great American Author Reading Fest goes from here.

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30. Killer Instinct by Zoe Sharp

Category: 50 Books

I was excited to read a whodunit with a female protag. I thought Charlie Fox was going to be a P.I., but no, turns out she teaches people (mainly women) self-defence. It sounded a bit familiar, The Blue Place, anyone? But in this one the tough, fighting, female (on a motorcycle!) isn’t a lesbian. I thought the story would have been more interesting if she had been gay, but really, her sexual preference isn’t what drove the story anyway, so there.

I like that Charlie has a smart mouth and that she mixed it up with girls and boys.

The whodunit part kept me guessing, and the characters were well-done, none of them seemed too meh. I mean sure, you had the standards: The Rich guy, The Meathead Muscles, The Main Character’s Friends, The Guy who Had to Die, and so on, but they’re all given good descriptions and didn’t feel trite.

I did kind of have that feeling, like when reading a Patricia Cornwell book, like, why are the baddies always trying to kill Scarpetta, the medical examiner? She’s not the detective, she just does the autopsies, you know? I kinda felt that with Charlie, I mean, she’s a bouncer at a bar? So now she’s who the baddies are after? The drugs, rapist, murder bad guys?
But whatever, it’s fiction and was entertaining.

I’ll give the second and third books a go, but if it ends up like a Scarpetta thing I’ll probably give the series up. I mean, I realize that you need a plot to drive a story, but it would be so refreshing if the female doesn’t ALWAYS become a target.

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Morning Walk

Category: dribblings

Warning: This post will seem jumpy and tangential, because it is.

If you count your walks interesting in terms of how many hawk pictures you take, then this morning’s walk with Roxie was a zero. I don’t know how that happened as I’ve ALWAYS seen at least one hawk. That’s not to say that the walk was a total loss as it had some New Business for me to add to the minutes.

When I get to the park if there’s no other cars there I assume there’s no one else walking and I’ll let Roxie off her leash so she can run out some energy. This benefits the both of us. She gets to chase squirrels and feel like a she-beast, and when I get the leash back on her she’s a bit tired and won’t drag me along as much. Win-win. But today, STRAIGHT OFF she actually caught and killed a squirrel. My reaction went something like this:

“Yay Roxie! chase that- Oh God, she caught it. ROXIE! DROP IT. GET OVER HERE.”

Because she is a good dog, she dropped it and came right to me. The squirrel did not try to run away because it was already deader than hell.

“Roxie, how could you?”

“It was like that when I found it.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Yes, it-”

“I heard it scream, Roxie. It screamed.”

So that was how the walk started out. She was pretty smug about it.

Another odd thing about today’s walk happened at Squirrel Point. This is one of the more tame names I’ve come up with for parts of the trail. Other names include Snake Bite Pond (which is only one part of the park but that’s the name I call the whole park in general.) , Murder Fields, Skeleton Alley (which Jenara came with), and Lunchroom Corner.

Right, so I was at- what? Lunchroom Corner? Oh, well see, where the walking trail meets Swamp Road (oh yeah, there’s a Swamp Road too.), you can (on a clear day, and when the city workers aren’t burning rubbish) smell the lunchrooms of the elementary and middle schools which are very close by but you can’t see them as there are much woods and trees and stuff in the way. Sometimes in the afternoon you can hear the kids on the playground or track or wherever kids play at recess.

Lunchroom corner is on the opposite side of the trail from Squirrel Point. Clear as mud, yes?

So Roxie and I were standing at Squirrel Point waiting for some kind of bird to do something. We heard a moo. Several Moos in fact. What’s this? Cows? At Snake Bite Pond? Roxie was very interested to find what creature makes that noise, but the moos were coming from Skeleton Alley and my only rule about  the whole of Snake Bite Pond is that I don’t go down Skeleton Alley by myself. Anymore. Not only because it’s really isolated from the rest of the park, but also because it’s the only place where I’ve seen a real, live snake. Oh, and the deer skull. That’s where we saw the deer skull which in turn is why we call it Skeleton Alley.

Yes, I know that a skull is only part of a skeleton. Shut up.

So, moo cows! I did not investigate on my own the whereabouts of the cows, but worry not, as soon as I get a walking partner we’re heading for Farmville. And I hope to hell we end up calling it Dairy Air or something equally awful.

The only real things of note that the Rockstar and I saw this morning were a handful of woodpeckers. Two different types. The standard red-headed woodpecker, which is huge, and I’ve taken several pictures of those. And then there was this little guy:

woody16

Which is, if I’m not mistaken, a (and this is by far the greatest bird name I’ve ever heard) Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. I know, you think I’m making that up. I’m not.

Is that not the best name?  It’s the name I’m calling everything that annoys me.

So there’s a new bird to add to my “I’ve seen that!” List.

The worst part of my walk today, besides of course the squirrel carnage at the beginning, was that one of the workers at the ballfield (Not the Murder Fields, but the nice ball field at the front of the park) got into the pressbox and I don’t know, hooked up his XM radio to the loudspeakers and played some awful country station. You could hear it across the whole place. The thing is? The jerk was using a bulldozer the whole time. There’s no way he could hear that damn music while running a bulldozer. That good-for-nothing, yellow-bellied sapsucker scared off the wildlife.

That was my morning, how was yours?

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Happy Guy (F)hawks Day

Category: dribblings

hawk34 
where’s waldo?
how not to be seen.
can you spot the hawk?

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