mcgees.org

Want to see almost real-time video of an eagles’ nest off the coast of California as it is alternately fed by Mom & Dad?  Go here for the eaglecam.

Linux users in X have it great.  Type mplayer http://media1.vcoe.org/eaglecam1 in a shell window, set the window that pops up as “always on top”, and just hang it somewhere on your screen(s).

Thanks, Amal!

My e-friend (and erstwhile contract artist) Ashley has a new line of hand-sewn adoptable critters.  Throw out your Beanie Babies!  These are the real deal.  Hand-sewn, with one eye on a green planet (most are made from recycled materials), one eye on serious art (the designs are highly competent), and the third eye (don’t ask) on whimsy (one-eyed chocolate-brown plush bunnies, anyone?), these adoptable creatures need your home.  They’re stuffed with poly-fill so they’re soft and resilient.

I held off posting until I could secure adoption rights for the mammoth.  I may be commissioning a penguin.  Or five.

Seriously, check them out.  Here’s a link:

N: Were you spraying ants?

J:  Yes.

N:  Why were there ants in the house?

J:  Because it rained.

N:  Why are there ants in the house when it rains?

J:  Do you like our roof?

N:  Yes.

J:  So do the ants.

N:  Why?

J:  Because a raindrop is very big for an ant.

N:  Why?

J:  Are ants big?

N:  Yes.

J:  They’re big?

N:  Yes.

J:  Really?

N:  Well — some ants, like Mommy and Daddy ants, are big.

Defense Exhibit showing why instilling Abrahamic religion is tantamount to littering the streets with loaded handguns: consider the 8-year-old (search for “poppy” on that page) who says, “I really do wish that I could go to heaven with him [my hamster], but I couldn’t.”

Exactly how many steps is this away from a suicide bomber?  We have a little British girl wanting to off herself to be with a rodent in an imaginary hereafter.

David Wilcove of Princeton, world-renowned expert on endangered species, was on Fresh Air, 2007-12-05.  He discussed gray whales’ changing relationships with people.  In the 19th century, gray whales were known as “devil fish” and would attack boats.  Reasonable.  The whalers, for their part, would harpoon calves first, knowing that the mother would not abandon her calf, leaving her available to be harpooned afterwards.  Sounds like clear-cut self-defense to me.  Now, he says,

After several decades of protection when the whales were no longer being harvested … [the whales] would bring their young up to the boats to meet the people, and this has continued to the present day as more and more whales seem to seek out this sort of contact with people.  [N]o one is certain what’s going on, but my hunch is the whales recognize that humans are no longer a threat to them, and they are genuinely curious about people and boats, and I think they also like to get their heads patted.

These are my friends and cube mates:

They are good for cheering you up, keeping you company, or being sympathetically down while you’re down.

moar funny pictures

Add http://sgisland.gs/webcam/webcam.jpg to your desktop and watch it refresh throughout the day (every 3 minutes, approximately.)  It’s in the island of South Georgia.

moarfunny pictures

A friend sent me the following charming picture:

Seriously, it hasn’t ceased to amaze me, the outpouring.  More hamster stories, eight this month alone.

One of my new colleagues, an extremely talented and friendly one, saw my text of “Mika, we love you” on the top of mcgees.org.  She asked who Mika was.  Turned out, her dog, named Mika, died three years ago.

Niall is getting very close to declaring his personal vegetarianism.  I’ve been wondering if he would, and kind of expecting that he would, but trying not to push him.  He is a very sensitive soul, and the recent business with the cats has exposed him to death for really the first time, and he can generalize pain now, so the layout is pretty straightforward from here.

He has told me before that he eats fish, but not real fish.  Then he told me that he doesn’t eat fish with faces (this is, I swear, completely unprompted.)  Last night I ordered dinner for him.  He was asking me what I had eaten before.  He asked me if I had eaten a ‘gator.

N:  A real ‘gator?!?

J:  Yes.

N:  A whole ‘gator?!?

J:  No.

N:  And have you eaten fish?

J:  Yes.  So have you.

N:  (Big pause.)  Real fish?

J:  Yes.  When you eat fish, you’re eating real fish.  Usually.

N:  Have you eaten really big fish?

J:  Sometimes.  But I try not to eat many big fish.

N:  Why?

J:  Because there aren’t very many of them, and if we eat them all, they’ll be gone.

N:  Gone?

J:  Yes.  If we eat them up.  But Mommy doesn’t eat any fish.

N:  Why?

J:  I think because she doesn’t want to hurt the fish.

N:  It hurts the fish?

J:  Well, yes.  But I don’t think fish hurt too much.  (Alan Rickman intones in the background, “The benefits of a Nirvana education.”)

N:  (Hard drive grinding, grinding, grinding away.  He’s far away.  Then the light comes back on.)  I don’t want to hurt ammamulls.

J:  Not cows?

N:  No.

J:  Not pigs?

N:  No.

J:  Not birds?

N:  No.

J:  Not fish?

N:  No!

J:  OK, then that’s being called a vegetarian.  You can tell people that, or just tell them that you don’t eat animals.

N:  (Trying it out.)  I don’t eat ammamulls.

J:  OK.

N:  (With determination.)  But I do eat things made from ammamulls.

J:  The animal has to die for you to make food from it.

N:  You have to die the animals?

J:  Yes.

N:  You have to die the animals?

J:  Yes.

N:  How do they die the animals?

J:  (OK, really didn’t want it to come to this.  So forgive me for this one, Jenn.)  Well, usually they shoot them in the head.

N:  They shoot them in the head?

J:  Yes.  Cows, anyway.

N:  I don’t want to hurt cows.

J:  OK.

N:  I don’t eat ammamulls.

J:  OK.

N:  (With determination.)  But I do eat things made from ammamulls.

J:  OK.

Mika, our beloved cat, died this morning in her hospital incubator following surgery.  She never regained consciousness.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in, publicly and privately, to wish her and us the best.

Sebastian is recovering well after his surgery, and is expected to make a full recovery.

Mika
1999 – 2007

Mika, our cat, is dying.  I got a second opinion this evening, which was essentially to keep her comfortable and put her to sleep when it seems that she is in pain.

Our glassy-eyed beast of the night whom we have loved since before we were married is going to be gone.  I am a wreck right now.

Friends of Mika, please make arrangements to come and see her.  She doesn’t bite any longer.

I’ll keep readers updated.

I’m working on a new hypothesis.  My hypothesis is that philosopher Peter Singer is actually attempting to achieve flight by waving his hands so frantically in his arguments.  I’m reading Practical Ethics (maybe for not much longer).  He’ll plod, at a fifth-grade reading level, through obvious facts.  Occasionally, he will try to shoehorn in some extremely counterintuitive arguments, apparently hoping the reader doesn’t notice.  Then he will skip a couple steps in his argument and make grand pronouncement.  The Far Side is recalled.  “Then a miracle occurs.”

From the Cambridge press Second Edition:

[The] most important human interests [include] avoiding pain, … developing one’s abilities, … satisfying basic needs for food and shelter, … enjoying warm personal relationships, … being free to pursue one’s projects without interference.  p. 31

Let’s stop here a moment and divide these into three columns.  Food, pain avoidance, and shelter we’ll put in Column 1.  These are basic animal drives.  Warm personal relationships we’ll put in Column 2.  This is a social animal drive, probably requiring a complex nervous system.  The drive to develop one’s abilities and being free to pursue one’s projects without interference we’ll put way over in Column 3.  These are highly complex and abstract, probably requiring a cerebral cortex and a whole host of supporting drives.  A lyre bird cares not to develop its singing skills for the skill’s own sake.  It does so as a programmed behavior that predisposes it to having more grandchildren.  And pursuing one’s projects without interference?  He’s using a word with multiple meanings.  Who has projects, narrowly construed, but Homo?  I suppose one could call nest-building or mound-digging a project, and bless it into the Column 1, but that seems not to be what he is getting at, as he discusses drive, initiative, challenge, and what we would traditionally call calling.  So he has, rather haphazardly, combined three strata of “interests” into one paragraph.  Which is fine, so far as it goes, when we’re just talking about humanity.  But then:

Interests are interests, and ought to be given equal consideration whether they are the interests of human or non-human animals, self-conscious or non—self-conscious animals.  p. 74

Of course this is what he was aiming for all along, as he is the author of Animal Liberation.  But not only does he not get there, he’s not even aiming correctly.  Human interests admit all three Columns.  But a male lion does not yearn for warm personal relationships.  It does not study mycology for the sake of bettering itself.  It does not build an abode.  It may have a project, widely construed, to chase, subdue, kill, and devour an antelope, and may in fact be rather miffed if there is interference in this process.  But it is patently false that “Interests are interests”.  Human interests are not lion interests, and when there is non-conformity, we need to investigate.

It may be thoroughly unethical to use a nonhuman animal as a means to an end.  It may be thoroughly ethical to do so.  The question might not even have a truth value.  I’m putting that aside.  I’ve struggled with personal vegetarianism and veganism in relation to personal ethics since I was nine years old, but that’s not the point.  Interests are not interests.  Interests differ.  And basing an entire ethos upon a Benthamesque desire to decrease suffering, while it may be admirable, is not accomplishing one’s mission if one has axiomatically declared “developing abilities” and “pursuing projects” as core interests.  You need more.

Or, perhaps, you need less.  You identify human interests entirely with Column 1.  My guess is Singer probably started here, then was pressured by discussion with colleagues and editors to admit Columns 2 and 3.  But once those latter Columns are axiomatic, the barn door’s open and the horse has escaped.

This has, possibly, had beneficial effects on the horse’s interests.  But the interests of an airtight logical argument?  Not so much.

Jenn and I had just switched places, Jenn replacing me under Niall’s nylon pup-tent shaped like a locomotive.  Niall was the other occupant.  Jenn is claustrophobic.

“I’m kind of freaking out in here,” Jenn says to me.

“Why?” Niall overhears.

“Your mommy doesn’t like closed spaces.  Your daddy does.”  A pause.  “When daddy goes cave exploring, do you want to go with him?”

He looks at me and regards me carefully for fully ten seconds.  He doesn’t want to disappoint me.  “Ummm.  Ummm.  There might be bears.  I’m not sure if I want to go.”

Jenn and I exchange startled looks.

“That’s true,” she says.  “Sometimes bears do live in caves.”

Suddenly he’s not sure if we’re pulling his leg or not.

“Silly!” he accuses.  “Bears aren’t real!”

“Oh, yes, they’re quite real,” Jenn explains.  “In the sense that they are actual animals living on the planet.”

“Yes, bears aren’t monsters, they are real animals,” I elaborate.

A puzzled look.  “Why?”

I think about that for a second.  It’s a really good question.  Why are bears real?  Not, “Why did they evolve?” but “Why did humans allow carnivorous, predatory, terrestrial megafauna to survive into the 21st century?”  A fitting question for Jared Diamond.  Were bears just too ferocious, too tenacious, or too remote, maybe?

Japanese firms divest themselves of whaling interests.

Well, now it’s official.  A whale cannot sue a person.

This is one of the long posts I’ve been intending to write for a couple of years, along with a planned police harassment post and a medical post. But this post, the scam post, was prompted by the introduction of Snopes’ Daily Scam Report.

It is really easy to get scammed in our society. Considerate, well-raised people want to help, and want not to be thought poorly of. But thereare tons of people ready to take advantage of you at the slightest opportunity.

Disillusionment is hard, but necessary. I think more people are scammed than we think, because after a scam people tend to be embarrassed for being made a sucker. I hope to do my part here by presenting a sampling of the scams people have pulled on me, both
successfully and unsuccessfully. For the record, I’m listing the races, ages, and dress of the perpetrator, to help indicate that all sorts of people will try to scam you (and to dispel any myth that it’s mostly minorities: I’ve been hit up far more frequently by Caucasians.)

The Successful Scams

The auto body work scam (2003)

Setting: Strip mall parking lot, Rosemead Blvd and Foothill Blvd, Pasadena, California

This one is long, and for clarity I’m adding footnotes.  Check at the end of this section for the numbered list.

The 2000 Audi A6 models have a design flaw which causes front bumpers to become caught on curbs and parking lot cement blocks. There is currently a class-action lawsuit trying to get Audi to recall the cars, but it hasn’t happened yet. In 2003, after my front bumper had been mostly detached for about a year, I was stopped in a parking lot by a pair of Hispanic men in their late twenties or early thirties wearing respectable clothes driving a white van. The passenger said “I’m a body shop guy, and I can fix that bumper for you.”

“Oh, what shop?” I asked

“A-1 Auto Body in Pasadena.  But our uncle owns it and he lets us do work on the side.”

I was hesitant. He told me he could go to my workplace and do it while I worked. He could do it in a commercial parking lot if I wanted.

We could go to my house and fix it there. He told me that if I didn’t like how it turned out “I wouldn’t owe him a dime.” I told him thatthe dealership had quoted me a price of $1300 to fix it. ¹  He thought for a moment and said he could do it for $900.  I told him that no, I was busy, but if he gave me his number I would call him if I changed my mind. He rattled off the number, but said that if I did it today he could do it for$700. ²  He said he’d do such a good job that at the end I’d want to give him a tip.  I was pondering this, and he asked me if I was a Christian.³  I told him that, no, I wasn’t.  “Well, I’m a Christian,” he said, “and I wouldn’t cheat you.”

I relented.  We went back to my house⁴ and they started working on the car.  They removed the bumper, and the very nice guys⁵ explained what they were going to do. I forgot all the steps, but it was something like they were going to fill in the torn fiberglass places with resin, then re-attach the bumper, then putty the joints, then seal the putty, then paint the putty (”I think your paint color is such-and-such,” he said.  “There are just a few stock colors that cars come off the line with.⁶  We have that car paint in our van.”), then apply a coat of wax.  Sounded reasonable to me.

It took them a couple of hours, and then they applied a liberal coating of mostly opaque white wax. As this was going on, my mom called and mentioned that she had been in a small accident and would need some body work done. I told her about the guys and asked them if they could handle repairing the bumper on a Ford Escort. They told me that they could, for $300. My mom stopped by and they pounded out the back of her car where it had been hit, allowing the hatchback to close again. The rear bumper was ruined, but they said they worked with a guy who ran a wrecking yard. They would bring by a bumper for the Escort after I gave them the money. There were also a couple minor pieces of the Audibody that they said they could get for me.

I wasn’t that stupid, I thought.  (Yeah, I thought.) I told them if they came by the next day I’d go with them to get the car bumper from their friend, then they could come back and finish fixing the Escort. I wouldn’t pay them for that until the job was done. But they wanted payment for the Audi now.

But then we remembered it was a holiday Friday. The banks were closed. I offered to write a check. They knew where I lived, so I thought it would be a safe proposition for them (they could come back if it didn’t clear), but no, they wanted cash. So I told them to come back the next day, and I’d get the money.

That night I started getting suspicious. I doubted that the guys would follow through with getting the parts for me. I was also suspiciousabout the opaque coat of wax that was covering the bumper, that they had told me to leave on “for 24 hours.”

The next morning I woke up and soaked a rag in soapy water and began to remove the car wax. It didn’t look that bad, but the paint was obviously not the same color, and certainly not the same gloss. The guys showed up, and I got into their van to go to the body shop with them.⁷ As we drove away, the driver explained to me, “Joshua, if I take you to the auto shop, I’m going to lose my job.” He had a somewhat flimsy-sounding excuse that I saw right through, but it was now two against one in someone else’s car. They certainly had the upper hand, and I was a intimidated. I was talked into giving them a tip, “like we had talked about,” even though we hadn’t, it was just something he had brought up the day before. I went in and withdrew $740 from my account and $300 from my mother’s account, for which she had given me her ATM card. I gave them the $740 — that’s $700 for this job, plus a “tip”. We went back to the house, and he showed me where the bumper would attach on the Escort, and how easy it was. Their friend from the scrapyard would come by and could put the bumper on in about 5 minutes.⁸  He would come by later that day.  After a bit of cajoling, I ended up parting with the $300 as well.⁹

After they left, I started to get the feeling of a pit in the middle of my stomach.  I just knew I’d been conned.  Reluctantly, sheepishly, I called the number he had given me. No such number. I called telephone information and asked for a listing for A-1 Auto Body in Pasadena. No such place. Shit.

I even waited home for the rest of the day, in case the guys from the body shop came by.  But of course they didn’t.

Follow-up: Their repaired bumper popped back off the next week. I never saw the guys again. My mom had to have work done on the Escort to fix the “repair” the guys did. And since then four more guys have approached me in parking lots offering to fix my bumper. To the last one I just sighed and said “Your the fifth fucking guy who’s asked me, dude, giveit a rest.”

The loss: $740 (me), $300 (my mom), several workday hours, and the entirety of a Saturday.

1. Stupid.  Why the hell did I tell them how much they quoted.  I think these guys would have done it for $50.
2. Common: the hard, immediate sell.
3. Also common.  Watch for people who try to con you based on your religious or political beliefs.
4. Stupid, stupid.  Don’t tell scammers where you live.
5. Yeah, they’re nice.  Scammers won’t make any money if they’re not nice.
6. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it sounds really unlikely.
7. Stupid, stupid, stupid!  Getting into their car?  What’s wrong with me?
8. Again, unlikely, in retrospect, but they couldn’t have scammed me if I knew more about cars, could they?
9. Aargh.  Stupid-to-the-fourth power.  How did they get the $300 from me?

The “I’m a little short for the bus” scam (2003)

Setting: Old Town Pasadena, California, an alley between shops.

A simple, quick one. A guy stops me and says, “I’m a little short for the bus, could you spare a quarter?” Of course it’s a scam, but oh well. I hand him a quarter. “In fact, I’m short by fifty cents, so if you have another one that would be great.” Sigh. I hand himanother quarter and walk off.

The loss: $0.50 and a bit of self respect.

The “You’re approved for a credit card!” scam (1998)

The setting: Thousand Oaks, California

This one is common. I was in my first apartment, my senior year of college. I was desperately short on funds, as I was only working half-time. I received an enticement for a free credit card with perhaps a $39.95 sign-up fee. Did I mention that would have been my first credit card, too? I signed up and sent in a check, expecting my Visa or Mastercard. Instead, I get an “in-house” credit card from a catalogue-based sellerhawking its own overpriced items by mail-order.  I call customer service, livid.  They send me a refund check.

The loss: $0, thankfully, but it could have been $39.95.  At least they were honest crooks.

The “Free access, just use your credit card to verify your age” scam (1999)

Setting: Global

I wanted to visit an access-controlled website. “Just enter your card number, we won’t charge you, it’s just to verify your age.” So I entered my bank check card number, and got access to the site, which sucked. And sure enough, I got charged, I believe $19.95. I called my bank and complained, and they gave a provisional credit. They sent a form to fill out for credit card fraud, which needed to be notarized.

I paid $15 for a notary fee and $0.33 for a stamp, and mailed it in to recoup my $19.95, which netted me $4.62 of my own money back for an hour of my time.

The loss: $15.33 plus an hour of time, valued at that time at around $22.

The Unsuccessful Scams

The “I’ll give you my eyeglasses for collateral!” scam (1995)

Setting: Santa Anita Mall, Arcadia, California

This one is absolutely priceless. I was at the Santa Anita mall in Arcadia, and I was in my late teens. There was a stocky black man (This will become important in a moment. I’m white. This will also become important in a moment.) in strong Clark Kent glasses outside B. Dalton Books. He asked me if I could help him with bus fare. “Sure,” I said. “OK, I need $48 to take Greyhound back to Northern California.

I’ll mail it back to you when I get there,” he said. I balked. “I thought you meant $2.25 for local bus fare,” I croaked. “I’m not goingto give you $48.”  It was a moot point.  I didn’t  have $48.  I didn’t even have an ATM card.  But he launched into this very well-rehearsed sob story.

The gist of it, as I remember through the haze of almost a decade, was this. He worked for a company that worked with racetracks. He had come down with his boss to the Santa Anita racetrack to help organize something, with his boss. His boss, an asshole of some garden variety, was called back home, and he left the victim to straighten things out. But he had left him stranded, and if he didn’t show up onwork on Monday, he’d be fired.

“Now, you’re probably thinking I’m a criminal because I’m black,” he said.  “But I’m not.  I’ll give you my eyeglasses as collateral!” It was at that moment I realized that his absurd eyeglasses must have been from a Salvation Army or a ShareOld Spectacles program.

“No, I’m sorry, but good luck,” I said.

“Well then, can I have the $2.25?”

“No!”

The follow-up: My friend told me he had been approached as well. I saw the same guy two more times in front of that same store, wearing a different pair of absurd eyeglasses each time. I guess some heartless bastard took the poor guy’s eyeglasses for collateral. The third andlast time I found a security guard and told them what he was doing.

The tow truck scam (1997)

The setting: Movie theater parking lot, Santa Monica, California

This is a really common one, I’m told.  A well-dressed white woman in her mid-thirties, appearing to be upper-middle-class, approached me and told me her friend’s car had brokendown.  They didn’t have AAA and they needed a tow, and she was looking for $20.

“Where’s the car?”

“Around the corner.”

“Can I see it?”

“It’s down a ways.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have $20.”  It was a lie, but she was lying too, so fuck her.

“But you just came out of a movie theater!”

“Yeah, I used a credit card.”  Another lie.  But fuck her again.

“Well, could you go by an ATM?”

What the fuck?  If there’s an ATM, why doesn’t she use it?

“No,” I said.  “I’m leaving now.”

The “I’m a little short for the bus” scam, redux (2003)

Setting: Old Town Pasadena, California, an alley between shops.

Another simple, quick one. A guy stops me and says, “I’m a little short for the bus, could you spare a quarter?” Sound familiar? Yeah, same guy, the very next weekend.

“Oh, that’s really unlucky, ” I said.  “Two weeks in a row, huh?”

He broke eye contact with me and walked away.  Heaven help him if he tries again.  I have the perfect esprit de l’escalier planned.  It will entail being a bit of an asshole, but I’m looking forward to it.

The “save the whales” scam

Location: Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts (1997)

This was on my first pilgrimage to Concord. I was outside Faneuil Hall and was approached by a white man in his forties with a big bushy beard. He carried a clipboard, the top sheet of which had some cut-out whale pictures photocopied into a collage on it. He asked ifI would sign a petition to help protect whales and other sea mammals on the coast of New England.

“I’m not a registered voter in Massachusetts,” I told him.  He told me it didn’t matter, this was a public action campaign.

OK.  I signed his form.  Then he asked for a donation.

I laughed.  “I’m not going to give you money,” I said.

“But I thought you wanted to help the whales!” he said.

“Look, I don’t know you.  I don’t know anything about you.”

“What, you think I’m ripping you off?”

I walked away.

“Well, thanks for being an asshole!” he called after me.

So I found a security guard. “There’s a guy over there soliciting and using profanity,” I said, and described him. They hurried over.

The food scams

These are maybe the saddest. People are apparently hungry. You want to help, you really do. But in the end, it’s a dirty, thankless business.

The Mikey scam (1996)

Setting: Pasadena, California, on a hot summer day.

There is a local character (for the record, he’s white) named Mikey who always stands on the same street corner asking for change. He has cerebral palsy and is mentally retarded, and seems like a nice but down-on-his-luck guy. He also smokes, but that’s another story.

One day I was driving by and felt sorry for the guy. But I didn’t want him spending the money on booze or cigarettes. So I went across thestreet to Burger King, where they were having a 99 cent Whopper promotion and bought him one.

“Yo, Mikey,” I said, driving back.  “I got you a sandwich!”

He grinned widely.

“A Whopper?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Great!  Hey, you have any change?”

Sigh.  “Yes, Mikey,” I said, “I’ve got some change.”  I handed him about a dollar.

What’s that they say?  In for a penny, in for a pound?

The loss: About a dollar.

The “piece of cake” scam (1997)

The setting: Vons parking lot, Thousand Oaks, California

A poorly-dressed, hungry-looking white woman in her late fifties or early sixties approached me as I left the grocery store, looking fortaxi fare to Newbury Park (the adjoining city).  It was late.  She looked tired.  She looked hungry.  She looked devoid of life.

“Look,” I said, “I’m not going to give you any money, but I’ll buy you dinner if you want.”

She agreed.

We went to the deli area of the supermarket and she picked out a “po’ boy” sandwich. The we went to the dairy case and she picked out a pint of milk. I turnedto walk her to the checkout line.

“Wait,” she said.  “I’m going to go get a piece of cake.”

WHAT THE FUCK?  I’m going to go get a piece of CAKE?  Aargh!  If you are a heartless bastard like me, or are rapidly becoming one, tattoo that motherfucker to the inside of your eyelids, then any time you’re approached for money, just blink. I was pissed.

“No, you most certainly are not,” I said.  “Now do you want the food or not?”

She started pouting, but followed as I marched up to the checkout line. I took out $5 and set it on the counter as I walked by. Thecashier didn’t understand.

I jerked my thumb back.  “It’s for her food.”

“Oh, that’s really nice of you!” she said.

I smiled thinly.  “Yeah, thanks.”  I walked off.

The loss: $5, and my remaining faith in humanity.

The Church’s Chicken dude (2004)

I was taking my father to a concert in Inglewood, California. Within three quarters of a mile — this sounds like a bad racist joke, but I swear I’mnot making it up — there were  five fried chicken restaurants.  One of them was Church’s.  I like Church’s, so my father and I stopped there. On my way in I was asked by a fifty-or-so-year-old black man for change so he could “buy a piece of chicken.”. I told him no. We ordered more chicken than we could eat,though, so on the way out I asked if he was hungry.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You can have this chicken if you’re hungry,” I said.

“OK.  Hey, you got any change.”

“No.  But if you’re hungry, you can have this chicken.”

“OK.”

As we drove off, the box was sitting beside him unopened. In my father’s words, “I guess he’s looking for a beer to go with it.”

I hope he ate it.  I’d have eaten it the next day myself if he didn’t want it.

Anyone read Dutch?  Can you tell me what they are saying about my hamster photo on this page?  Scroll down and look for the picture to the right.

Note added 18 Jun 2003: OK, I heard back from the author of the hamster post.  Apparently she was saying the hamsters are ‘zielig’ — ‘miserable’ or ‘pitiful’.  I think it is because there are several in the same cage.  And she is right!  But in my defense, shortly after the picture was taken I moved the hamsters to individual, much larger habitats.  Chronologically, here are the posts about hamsters: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], and [7].  The last link is about the hamsters’ deaths.  Note also that “eulogies for hamsters” was one of the searches in my Two Years of Google Searches.

If anyone out there speaks Dutch, I would still like a summary of what was said in the thread.

The Smoking Gun prepared a FOIA request for complaints and injury reports by workers and guests at the Los Angeles Zoo.  My favorite is a worker’s injury report:

I was scratching the male maned wolfs [sic] shoulders through the chain link fence when he turned suddenly [and] bit my left hand”

The supervisor, quite reasonably to this reader, responded as follows:

Keeper should never have put fingers into animal area — she is experienced enough to know this.  More safety talks cannot replace common sense.

The PowellsBooks newsletter has a bizarre and addictive feature called, and I’m quoting this literally, “Fup. Store Cat.”  Yes, the periods included.  As far as I can gather, Fup is the name of their store cat; that’s a picture to the right.  “Fup. Store Cat.” is like a train wreck: you can’t quite pull your eyes away, even if you want to.  You see, every newsletter presents a new “chapter” (just a couple hundred words) about Fup’s adventures.  In each chapter Fup, joined by compatriots Bear, Zooey, and Wiggums, adventure their way through unwieldy prose:

Let’s follow a path in the sun,” Bear purrs.

“There are no paths in the sun,” Wiggums reminds him.  “You’re sitting in the last patch of sun we’re liable to find for three days.”

Up and up the fir trees go, so far beyond the leafy pockets nearer to the ground that there’s no telling where they stop. Their tops end somewhere in the sky, is about all you can safely say.

“We could climb until we’re above the tree line,” Fup suggests, “but that would be an odd thing to do, seeing as it’s trees we’re looking for.”

“Trees you’re looking for?” someone says.

Fup looks at Bear.  Then Fup and Bear both look at Wiggums.  An echo would be the most natural explanation, except that they hadn’t noticed an echo before.

Fup repeats herself, but a little louder this time: “Trees we’re looking for.”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

Down by the creek, Zooey begins to growl.

They search the woods around them, but it’s like trying to find fish in a deep lake, Fup realizes, staring into the tangle of leaves and branches.  She notices for the first time how loud the bird chatter has become — or had she not been listening before?  She can’t see a single bird for all the leaves and branches, but suddenly birds are all she can hear.

Each time the newsletter arrives, I’m presented with my WTF moment for the day.

The National Audobon Society has a Guide to Seafood to educate consumers about the impact of various fishing operations.  Fish are conveniently rated into “red”, “yellow”, and “green” categories, and information is further broken down by population status, management status, and bycatch and habitat concerns.  Not surprisingly, shark, swordfish, and orange roughy top the list.  As I mentioned on my veganism blog, orange roughy can reach 150 years and do not reach sexual maturity until age 30, leading to a rapid depletion of the species.  Shark and swordfish populations are also being severely depleted.  Shrimp, surprisingly to me, entail the highest bycatch (incidental catch of non-target species) of any seafood.  On average, for every pound of shrimp retrieved, seven pounds of other sea animals were accidentally killed and were then shoveled overboard.  Groupers are subject to the same low growth rates as orange roughy, and even if measures are in place to “toss back” juveniles caught, they frequently die anyway due to pressure changes when they are pulled up from their deep water habitat.  Anyone following the saga of British cod fisheries knows that Atlantic groundfishes (including cod, haddock, and monkfish) are in critical danger.  Chilean seabass have almost disappeared and suffer from rampant illegal fishing.

Some species are in slightly less dire straits but are still poorly managed, in decreasing supply, or entail significant habitat disruption: salmon, tuna, red snapper, Pacific red snapper, and lobsters fall into this category.  Species that are generally safe to eat are halibuts, mahi mahi, mackerels, squid (calamari), farmed tilapia (also known as Nile perch), crabs (other than Alaska king crabs) and striped bass.

The society provides a whole website dealing with this topic, including “seafood cards” that can be printed and kept in one’s wallet or purse to help one remember which are safe species, and a FAQ list that will help you with advocacy in your local restaurants and grocery stores.

If you eat seafood, please take a moment to commit this information to memory or download one of the memory aids.  As the Audubon society says, “Your choices can help make our oceans healthy again.”

The Life and Death of Albert.  Via Vegan Blog: The (Eco) Logical Weblog.

I’ve started a new side blog dealing with my switch to veganism.

Indication #1 that you should turn off in disgust the animal documentary that you have playing in the background:

Conservation groups in Asia are also working to protect another member of the bear family: the giant panda.

My hamster died last week.  This was especially hard as Jennifer’s died the week before.  We found Jennifer’s in the morning, cold and rigid in her nest, and we took her out to bury her.  For my hamster, though, it was different.

Last Thursday evening, Jennifer called me at work and told me that she thought the hamster was dead.  This impacted me, but I had an important presentation the next day and needed to stay and finish it.  I tried to keep my mind off of it.  Fifteen minutes later Jenn called back and told me that she wasn’t sure it was dead, that it seemed to be moving, and asked me to come home.

He was not doing well.  He was breathing very shallowly and infrequently.  He did not seem responsive.  When I picked him up, he opened his eyes and squirmed a little.  Jenn told me that was the most she had seen him move yet.

He looked like he did not have very long.  I held him and stroked him and tried to keep him awake.  I blew some air at him regularly.  I strongly believed he would not come out of this.  An hour later I decided I needed to hear it from someone else.  I took him to the animal hospital in town.  They agreed.

I took him home, made a small blanket out of fabric, kept him warm and kept stroking him.  His breathing was becoming increasingly strained.  His breath rattled, and after a certain point he made a little squeak at each breath.  I was an emotional wreck.  I held him for nearly two and a half hours in total.  He would breathe every ten seconds or so.  His final breath did not seem any different.  He just inhaled and never exhaled.  We buried him that night.

Life is precious.  I, as a vegan, try to live this concept in everyday life.  The hamster lived for fifteen months, enough time for me to bond but not long enough for the death to be understandable.  He had a personality.  He displayed curiousity.  He had goals and made efforts.  He was alive.

I miss him.

Parents: This post and all comments are kid-safe.  The rest of the site may contain content inappropriate for small children.  Please use discretion.

On Thursday Jennifer came home to discover a snake on our porch.  She called me at work to tell me about it: it was light brown with darker brown patches, and it had crawled into the plastic bin I use for charcoal ash and clippings from the garden greens.  She was worried about its safety and asked me to come home.

I know rather little about herpetology, but I looked at it carefully and looked online to try to track down the species.  My best guess it that it is a California Lyre Snake, a venemous species.  Our little friend was considerate enough to find a place to sleep that had a lid: I replaced the lid, taped it shut, and drove out to the foot of a nearby hiking trail.  A couple minutes along I walked about twenty feet off the trail and carefully pulled it out with a stick (urging it out had failed to yield success.)

The snake certainly felt threatened on our porch, coiling and flattening its head and occasionally trying to strike.  I’m sorry that the creature was stressed like this, but it was a treat to get to see this animal up close and help it get back to safety.

It is surprising how much personalities can differ between two hamsters.  Of the two, one is very shy and reserved, terrified of being touched, and content to stay in a tiny space all day.  The other is far more adventurous and will happily eat out of my hand.  He is also scheming ways to escape from the habitat.

I recently added an extension to his habitat (no picture yet).  I bought a larger module and connected them with a set of “toobs” [sic].  He climbs up a straight toob, across a longish flat toob, and then down another descender.  To get him to explore the new module I moved his water into it.  He was happy for a while to travel back and forth between water and nest-and-food-stash.  One day, however, he very deliberately moved house: he went to the new module, made a new nest by the water bottle, carefully moved his entire food cache over, then (apparently) destroyed evidence of his previous nest.  To be honest, I never considered that he would do this.  Now he lives primarily in the new (larger) module but still visits the other for foraging and exercise.