Unimaginable Nationalism

Any kind of nationalism is kinda fucked up and weird to me.  Born and raised on stolen land, soaked in blood and slavery, the whole nine yards.  I don’t belong here but I don’t belong anywhere else either.  Citizen of the world?  Except you can’t be.  Every inch of every place that hasn’t had the natives fully eliminated is staked out, by people who would die for the dirt, kill for the dirt.  Give me this dirtpile or give me death.  But better to give you death, other people who I have decided should not be here.  Nationalism, like colonialism, is the seed of genocide.  Some flavors of it are so mild and banal that you could miss it, but it’s always there, waiting to blossom.

It’s especially wild to me that some people want to kill or die for land in the Middle East.  There are much nicer or more interesting deserts and plains and beaches, and most of them don’t have nearly as many genocidal terrorists or fascists, don’t have as many centuries of decapitations and flayings and immolation and destruction.  If any place in the world is hell, it’s the holy land.  If I was Jewish, I’d be glad to be nowhere near it.

Might feel some type of way about it, since the history of the shituation is very different from that of my ancestral island.  What would it be like, to have lost your homeland for over a thousand years, to never be allowed to feel at home anywhere in that entire time?  To at last be given a promise of a return there, of a homeland – a promise literally predicated on nationalism and colonialism both – and to see that come to exactly what anybody with an ounce of wisdom could have seen a hundred years away?  Poison gift.  I’d keep Brooklyn, thanks.

Seriously.  People who feel magical about that piece of dirt.  What even?  I can’t imagine a worse place in the world.  Here I can walk down main street and feel the ghosts of natives choked in disease, driven from their homes, murdered in the wilds.  Not great.  There, I’d be walking the same streets where so many people were slaughtered in so many ways it’s fucking near unimaginable.  I’m willing to bet there is not a person in the entire region who is without genocide in their hearts.  How could you live through that history and not want to see everyone on the other side of the conflict disappeared?  With cruel violence?  At least on some level.  I know there are peace activists in Israel and bless their hearts.  But how often are they tempted to just give up, and join in finishing the job on their opposites?

The overwhelming hate of it all.  For dirt.  If I was born there, I’d have left and never looked back.  The USA is bad enough, but at least I’m not living on a land mine, living in torture alley between people who want nothing more than to see each other reduced to shreds, to blood and then dust.  Ain’t no god and ain’t no land and ain’t no ideal worth living in hatred.

This is the only thing we have, when fascists rule the day.  The freedom to have moments of peace in our hearts.  Because above all they love hate, and we have the ability to love life.  They can’t be happy unless horrible shit is happening to someone, somewhere.  We are capable of living for good things, and they aren’t.  We win even when we lose, given that.  What if we didn’t have the option tho?  What if we were born into an endless war, gestated in amniotic fluid poisoned with cruelty, with lust for annihilation?

I advocate a no-state solution.  Everybody lives as refugees in other countries for another thousand years, and moves back when they’ve learned to play niceys.  I used to be more flip about the idea all the holy cities should get nuked (rome, jerusalem, mecca – ideally with everybody moving out first), and I’m not that grody nowadays.  But should anybody be living there?  No.  What’s the half-life on genocide?  How long before that land is no longer glowing with hatred?

My guess is that for the remainder of humanity’s time on this world, there will be nothing in Israel or Palestine worth preserving, except for people – who would be much better preserved by leaving that hellhole behind.  The touristy beaches, the shopping malls, the ultramodern gleaming skyscrapers, the perfectly irrigated fields – yeah, even the nice parts.  They are not nice, because of what they cost.  Leave them.

With my nazi-ass country in your corner, Israel, things are about to get even worse.  So much worse than you’ve ever imagined.  To those of you who love genocide, you may find that getting what you wished for is the worst possible outcome for your people, for humanity.  And your day in the sun won’t last.  Your whole country will be destroyed.  And then rebuilt again, I’m sure, with or without you, and whoever lives there?  Probably gonna be genocidal zealots as well, of some flavor.  It’s in the dirt.

Fuck dirt.

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Life List: Pigeon

The rock dove, aka the rock pigeon, the common pigeon, the dove, winged rats, etc etc, this is a feral domestic animal found all around the globe – especially around humans.  They’re on the “life list” of birds I’ve seen, and they’re on yours too.  Along with Canada geese, they’re the biggest purveyors of bird feces where you don’t want them to be, in much of the USA.  But still, they’re ours -we made them- and I do like them an awful lot.

Pigeons are a cool group of birds.  Different species are found all over the world, and it’s surprising to me what they have in common.  Some diverse far-flung groups of birds like woodpeckers have more variety in proportion and shape than pigeons do.  For some reason, doves all have that broad powerful chest, stretchy neck that narrows at the top, and a lil’ head with pigeon beak.  How do I describe that beak?  You know what it looks like, and it looks the same from ivory-colored desert beauty on one side of the planet to upside-down parrot-colored jungle freak on the other.  Dodos were the one outlier in that beak shape.  I know the cloning projects have been scams and bullshit, but I’d love to see it happen.

In my neighborhood there are only two species of pigeon that I know of:  the one this article is about, and invasive Eurasian collared doves.  I do like the invaders, as rarely as I see them, but this article is not their time.

Domestic doves are known for coating the cities of the world in guano.  At one time in the Middle East, silo-shaped dovecotes had chutes designed to spill fertilizer into fields of crops.  Smart.  Now people remember after the fact that anything humans can build, pigeons can perch on, and they have to cover unintended landing strips in bird spikes.  I heard anarchist cockatoos in Oz are tearing up that hostile architecture; good job.

Lingering traces of domestication syndrome haunt the gene pool of these animals, some over a thousand generations removed from active human care.  You see it in their lack of fear around humans, of course, but also in their mottled colors.  Many have reverted to natural enough color schemes, like if feral domestic cats had achieved higher rates of brown tabby in their numbers, but many pigeons are missing a category of pigment, or gone leucistic or piebald or polka-dotted.  I like the natural colors, but the mutants can be very pretty.

The first place pigeons became important in my life was as supporting actors in John Woo movies.  Some other random experiences:  Seeing them puffed up to the size of bowling balls, trying to hunker down for the freezing weather in the International District bus tunnel.  Seeing their fucked up malformed feet, and seeing an article on the subject just as my curiosity about it was reaching its peak.  Seeing a baby pigeon ganked by crows on Mother’s Day.  Seeing baby pigeons close up for the first time, in a nest at the Federal Way Transit Center.

I’ve wanted to have a pet bird I could easily snuggle with, and if I ever get over the annoyance of cleaning the cage etc, pigeons are on my list.  They’re domestic animals so would feel less nervy about it than 99% of parrots, and they’re less scratchy / bitey than chickens.  I wouldn’t even get a fancy pigeon.  Plain ol’ winged rat is good enough for me.  I would hold it under my arm like a football and get gross stains on all my clothes.  Worth it?

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Using AI to Write

Where does one draw the line with using AI to create art?  A court ruled AI art could not be copyrighted, but what about AI assisted art?  Is there a percentage where the sin overtakes the whole endeavor?  If I painted a fifty foot long mural and glued a stamp-sized print of AI art to it, is the mural’s entire design rendered public domain?

What if the art is writing?  I was recently trying to come up with an idea for a story and not liking anything that came to mind, so I had a convo with chatgpt about it.  At what point in this conversation does the writing become my creation, or does the fact it started like this invalidate the entire project – even if I wrote a million words off the concept in iambic pentameter, all from my own brain?

GAS:
put this plot outline into a format you can easily understand, short phrases and simple formatting:  (here I posted a four act gothic plot outline mashed up with save-the-cat screenplay bits)

ChatGPT:
Act 1: Rise from Obscurity
Opening Image / Character is not Valued
Tone and concept established…  (it responded competently)

GAS:
list seven ideas for sources of supernatural power that come at a terrible cost

ChatGPT:

  • Blood Pact with a Demon
    Power:  Grants immense strength, magical abilities, or immortality.
    Cost:  Slowly consumes the user’s soul, leading to eventual damnation or loss of humanity.
  • Cursed Artifact
    Power:  Bestows knowledge, wealth, or abilities.
    Cost:  The artifact demands a toll (e.g., harming loved ones, madness, or eternal servitude).
  • Forbidden Knowledge
    Power:  Unlocks hidden truths, magic, or control over reality.
    Cost:  Warps the mind, creating paranoia, hallucinations, or inability to return to normal life.
  • Ancestral Spirit Possession
    Power:  Access to ancestral wisdom, battle prowess, or supernatural senses.
    Cost:  The spirit takes control intermittently, eroding the user’s autonomy.
  • Blood Magic or Life Sacrifice
    Power:  Casts powerful spells or grants regenerative abilities.
    Cost:  Requires offering the life force of others—or the user’s own lifespan is drastically shortened.
  • Cosmic Entity Bargain
    Power:  Grants the ability to manipulate time, space, or destiny.
    Cost:  Reality becomes distorted; the entity’s influence seeps into the user’s life, erasing relationships or memories.
  • Monster Transformation
    Power:  Unparalleled physical prowess, healing, or shapeshifting.
    Cost:  Gradual loss of humanity, uncontrollable urges, or permanent disfigurement.

GAS:
list seven variations on the concept of a vampire, a noble class that uses supernatural power to oppress the people, but not literal blood drinking

ChatGPT:

  • Dream Eaters
    Feed on the dreams and ambitions of the people, leaving their victims apathetic and without hope.
    Use stolen creativity to maintain their grandeur and invent new ways to control society.
  • Soul Harvesters
    Extract fragments of souls from the populace, weakening their victims’ vitality and willpower.
    Hoard soul energy to maintain eternal youth, power, or invincibility.
  • Emotion Leeches
    Drain intense emotions (joy, love, anger) from others, leaving them numb and subservient.
    Use this energy to amplify their charisma and influence, manipulating the masses.
  • Shadow Lords
    Absorb the shadows or “life essence” of others, which leaves victims sickly and feeble.
    Their stolen power allows them to control light and darkness, creating fearsome displays of authority.
  • Pain Feeders
    Draw strength from the suffering and despair of the oppressed, perpetuating violence and hardship.
    Use this energy to fuel supernatural resilience and cruelty, ensuring their dominance.
  • Memory Thieves
    Steal memories and identities from their subjects, erasing rebellion and rewriting history.
    Use the knowledge gained to maintain a perfect grip on power while ensuring no one remembers life before their rule.
  • Time Parasites
    Drain years of life from their subjects, shortening lifespans in exchange for their own longevity.
    Create an illusion of fairness by taxing the life of the poor while claiming eternal reign as divine justice.

GAS:
in bloodborne the healing church uses cursed blood from the elder gods to heal people, gaining favor, but the blood eventually turns people into monsters, and it ushers in an eternal inquisition as those that became beasts are being hunted.  in elden ring, outer gods have bred with humans to create a noble class with a supernatural power of “the grace of gold,” but their might causes their power struggles to rip up the world itself. list seven similar ideas, but try to make them as different and distinctive as possible.

ChatGPT:

  • The Whispering Veil
    A noble caste gains supernatural wisdom by communing with an ethereal “Veil” that reveals hidden truths.
    Over time, prolonged exposure causes their bodies to fragment into translucent, ghostly forms, rendering them unrecognizable.
    Their attempts to rule through divine knowledge breed paranoia and civil wars, as they suspect each other of treachery.
  • The Forge of Embers
    A sacred forge grants its wielders the ability to create living weapons infused with fire and metal, capable of reshaping reality itself.
    However, using the forge binds their souls to the weapons they create, slowly transforming them into inanimate, mindless tools of war.
    The world becomes a desolate battlefield as these cursed weapons perpetuate endless conflict, with no one left to wield them.
  • The Harvested Horizon
    Nobles consume fragments of a celestial being’s body that fell to earth, granting them the ability to terraform land and summon crops.
    Overuse of this power corrodes the natural environment, creating barren wastelands and causing the nobles to mutate into colossal, immobile “roots” that consume all life.
    The oppressed are forced to fight both their parasitic overlords and the spreading desolation.
  • The Starbinders’ Oath
    A celestial pact grants nobles the ability to manipulate the heavens, altering seasons, weather, and even time.
    Their bond with the stars, however, slowly pulls them out of sync with reality, turning them into disembodied echoes incapable of understanding human suffering.
    Their unfeeling interference fractures the world’s timeline, plunging the realm into cyclical chaos.
  • The Choir of Depths
    Nobles receive their powers by harmonizing with a cosmic “Song of Creation,” which grants them the ability to reshape matter and minds.
    Singing the Song too often causes the nobles to lose their individuality, merging into a horrifying, ever-growing chorus of flesh and voices.
    Their subjects live in terror of being assimilated into the Choir, even as they revere the beauty of its creations.
  • The Thorned Crown
    Nobles achieve dominion by donning crowns grown from a mystical tree that connects to the collective lifeforce of their subjects.
    The crowns grant immense power but drive the wearers mad with visions of every subject’s pain and suffering.
    As the nobles succumb to insanity, the tree begins consuming the people it was meant to sustain, leaving the land twisted and overgrown with carnivorous flora.
  • The Light of Hollowing
    A radiant crystal buried beneath the earth empowers nobles with the ability to project light that heals wounds and invigorates armies.
    The light, however, siphons the emotions and humanity of everyone exposed to it, leaving the populace as emotionless husks.
    The nobles, desperate to retain control and their fading vitality, begin to drain one another, turning their court into a cannibalistic struggle for survival.

GAS:
take any three of those and make them Christmas themed.

ChatGPT:

  • 1. The Choir of Frost
    Nobles attune themselves to a mystical “Caroling Frost,” a sacred hymn carried by the icy winds of a cursed winter.
    The song grants them control over the snow and cold, allowing them to create eternal winters and summon crystalline ice structures to awe and oppress their subjects.
    However, the more they sing the Frost’s melody, the more their voices freeze into hollow echoes, and their bodies become statues of living ice.  Over time, they merge into frozen monuments, incapable of thought or speech, yet still radiating the chilling hymn that numbs the hearts and spirits of the people.
    The world becomes locked in a perpetual winter, with frostbitten villagers whispering prayers to thaw the cursed song.
  • 2. The Thorned Wreath
    Nobles gain power by donning enchanted holly wreaths said to be blessed by the Spirit of Winter Solstice.  The wreaths grant the ability to summon endless feasts, gifts, and celebrations, making the nobles beloved as symbols of holiday cheer.  Over time, the thorns on the wreaths grow inward, piercing deeper into their flesh and souls.  The more they indulge their power, the more they become driven by greed, feeding endlessly on the joy and warmth they create.
    As the wreaths take control, the nobles transform into monstrous “Yule Fiends,” evergreen hulks that spread cursed festivities, forcing villages into endless, lifeless celebrations where no one can leave or rest.
  • 3. The Starbinders’ Noel
    Nobles form pacts with a celestial “Yuletide Star” that appears every winter, granting them the ability to summon miraculous lights and deliver blessings of warmth and hope to the people during the darkest nights.
    Each use of the Star’s power, however, draws them closer to its fiery essence, causing their bodies to burn with an inner light that they cannot extinguish.  Eventually, they become radiant, hollow shells, consumed by the Star’s endless hunger for devotion.
    As the nobles ascend into blazing constellations in the night sky, their subjects are forced to endure their light, which grows ever brighter and hotter, turning the joyous season into an unbearable, fiery trial.

GAS:
take the second one and make it into a sort of conspiracy situation, where the source of power is kept secret – some kind of lie makes it seem like something else, less a supernatural power than a more banal source of privilege.

ChatGPT:
The Thorned Wreath Conspiracy

The nobles appear to rule through mundane wealth and tradition, claiming their authority comes from ancestral ties and their ability to preserve the realm’s prosperity through seasonal festivities.  They maintain the illusion that their power stems from their role as caretakers of a sacred winter holiday—a benign, cultural privilege tied to generosity, feasting, and the supposed goodwill of their forebears.

In truth, the nobles’ grandeur and influence come from the Thorned Wreaths, enchanted relics hidden beneath their ostentatious holiday crowns.  Each wreath feeds on the warmth, joy, and hope of the common people, amplifying the nobles’ charisma and material abundance by siphoning life force during the season of celebration.  The public is told that the lavish feasts and seemingly endless gifts come from centuries of careful stewardship and family wealth, when in fact the wreaths are drawing vitality from the very people they claim to serve.

The wreaths grow thornier each year, the hidden barbs pressing into the nobles’ minds and hearts, warping their personalities.  While they are celebrated as benevolent lords of the season, they secretly become cold, calculating, and deeply paranoid.  The cost of this power remains hidden: villages sink into depression after each “festive season,” with the populace left drained of energy and hope, unable to rebel or question the system.

The conspiracy is tightly controlled.  A secret society of nobles, calling themselves The Keepers of the Holly, works tirelessly to suppress knowledge of the wreaths.  They stage elaborate holiday spectacles to distract the people, enforce the narrative of familial legacy, and ruthlessly silence anyone who comes too close to the truth.

However, cracks are beginning to show. Rumors spread of servants witnessing nobles removing their crowns, revealing twisted wreaths of holly beneath, their vines crawling into their skulls.  Commoners whisper about the increasing sterility of the land—fields that won’t grow crops, towns that never recover from the holiday season.  Meanwhile, a small resistance begins to uncover fragments of the truth, learning that the wreaths were not gifts of the Winter Solstice but ancient, cursed relics that the first nobles stole from the wilderness to gain their power.

The question is: if the wreaths are destroyed, will the nobles crumble into husks—or will the land itself, so dependent on their ill-gotten vitality, fall into ruin with them?

GAS:
a gang of street thieves does a heist on a noble, and at first it’s fun and games, but they fall prey to jealousy and betrayal.  ultimately one must use dark knowledge to vindicate himself, at a terrible cost.  how could this plot go?  a short summary.

ChatGPT:
A gang of street thieves targets a wealthy noble during a grand winter festival, believing the score to be easy and the spoils immense.  They infiltrate the noble’s lavish estate, stealing what appears to be mundane riches: gold, jewels, and an ornate holiday wreath.  The gang celebrates their success, reveling in their newfound wealth.  However, tensions rise as jealousy brews—one thief claims they deserve more for their role in the heist, while another begins to suspect the leader of withholding the best prizes.

Amid the infighting, strange events occur.  The stolen wreath exudes a sinister aura, and those near it feel their deepest insecurities amplified.  One thief, desperate to outshine the rest, secretly dons the wreath, unknowingly activating its cursed power.  They gain unnatural charisma and strength, but the wreath begins to twist their mind, driving them to betray the others.

The gang implodes in violence and paranoia.  The leader, framed for betrayal, is left for dead and abandoned by their comrades.  Desperate to clear their name and seek revenge, they consult a forbidden source: an old hermit who reveals the wreath’s dark truth—that it feeds on ambition and life force, granting power at a terrible cost.  To expose the traitor and vindicate himself, the leader uses the knowledge to claim the wreath’s power, sacrificing part of their humanity in the process.

In a climactic showdown, the leader confronts the corrupted former ally, now fully consumed by the wreath.  Though victorious, the leader realizes they have become just like the noble they robbed: a vessel for the wreath’s hunger.  With their gang destroyed and their soul tainted, they are left to wander, a hollow shell of their former self, carrying the weight of their choices into an uncertain future.

GAS:
remember the generic plot outline you helped me with before?  make your plot summary here fit into that outline.

ChatGPT:
Act 1: Rise from Obscurity
Opening Image / Character is not Valued
The gang of thieves struggles to survive in the shadow of the nobles, resenting the disparity between their lives and the wealth flaunted by the elite.  Their leader, though clever and ambitious, feels underestimated and unappreciated by their crew.
Incidental / Accidental Accomplishment (Catalyst)
During the winter festival, the gang pulls off an audacious heist, stealing gold, jewels, and an ornate wreath from a powerful noble…  (you get the idea.)

Humans are all recycling the same six story ideas ad infinitum and have been content with that for ages.  Don’t tell me the bot here is being less creative than five thousand romantasies about muscly dudes with big donks loving up on the normal girl who turned out to be the secret faerie queen.  Any one of these ideas could turn into successful commercial media, in the right / wrong hands.

Or can it?  There is that court precedent which could limit commercial application.  Well, doesn’t matter much to me.  Copyright law will never protect me from the deep pockets of corporations, regardless of whether I write my own shit or bot it.  The law exists solely for them.  Disney could copy-paste the entire history of this blog into Frozen 4 and I’d have to eat shit about it.

This is the world we live in.  As creative people, what will we do with it?

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PS:  This is the post you can point to if you want to join in the AI version of the Satanic Panic, where saying anything neutral to positive about AI will have a gamergatesque mob braying at your door, calling into question the legitimacy of every piece of art you’ve ever made.  Act now while supplies last!

Life List: Dark-eyed Junco

There are some birds that are so successful I have to wonder if they’re out of balance with nature.  It may be an indigenous species, but is it overpopulated because humans messed something up for them?  Causing problems for less human-adapted cousins?  Crows are known to have had a major population spike in the Pacific Northwest.  How about chickadees?  How about dark-eyed juncos?

Dark-eyed juncos are in the New World sparrows, or Passerellidae.  They could be the most populous bird in Western Washington, or a close contender to the more obvious ones.  But you might not know it.  In parking lots and urban centers, invasive starlings, house sparrows, and house finches are much more obvious.

It’s when you get into areas with a little less pavement, like the apartment complexes across the street from the grocery store, that the native mobs give them a run for their money.  As ground feeding birds, juncos are more visible than chickadees and nuthatches, and they are just everywhere.  So many of them, making a call like a wobbling wire, flashing the white feathers on the sides of their tails like flamenco dancers, as they flit from bush to beauty bark to bush.

Passerellids are LBBs (little brown birds) that can be hard to ID, but hereabouts the dominant morph of dark-eyed junco is the “Oregon,” which has a strongly black hood.  The only ground-feeding bird you might mistake them for is a spotted towhee, with black hood and reddish flanks, but they have very different habits and calls, the towhee with a dramatic blood-red eye and white spots.  Juvenile juncos make a cricket-like chirp when begging for food and attention, following around a parent.  They can distinguished because the hood is less strongly black and the flashy white tail feathers are short.

I didn’t look up anything outside of the genealogy.  I just picked all this up from observation, which was easy as hell because there are so many of them.  Still, it’s nice to see a native bird doing well, and they are very cute.  Their little white beaks have a lavender hint which is more obvious in photography than in flyby.  They do fly by, almost like barn swallows, in front of your bicycle wheels or your car grill.  Is it to show off for potential mates?  A daredevil routine?  The must do it well; I’ve never seen a dead one.

I don’t have a lot of stories about them.  The one time I saw brood parasitism in action, a junco was the victim.  I once did a series of four small mixed-media paintings, birds with roguish accoutrement and nicknames.  Gangster birdies – a house sparrow, house finch, dark-eyed junco, and white-crowned sparrow.  The only one that sold at the gallery was the house sparrow, for thirty-five 2010 dollars.  The junco lost that contest, but they still win every day.

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Remember This One?

I remembered this post about a pesty cat micturating upon a 15th century scribe’s book; it did the rounds a few years ago.  “Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night.  Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others too.  And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.”

What I didn’t remember was that this was a translation.  The original script was in Latin.  “Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam.  Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum.  Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi catti venire possunt.”

So if you wanna curse a pesty cat in Latin, just remember “confundatur pessimus cattus.”

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Life List: Great Blue Heron

The largest bird I can see with any regularity is the great blue heron.  Technically there’s some overlap in wingspan with bald eagles, but I see those less often, and I do think they are smaller overall, for not having a heron’s snake neck and long bill.

They’re pretty cool.  The way color and texture of feathers varies over the body lends interest, but the dominant color is low key blue-grey.  Classy.  Herons, egrets, and the hilarious bitterns are in the Ardeidae, united in having the long legs, snake neck, and stabbing beak.  They skulk, they wade, they snap up a small animal, and they swallow it whole.

I once saw one put away a very chubby rodent like this.  Grab it, toss it in the air, then swallow.  Freaky.  I’ve read that they are so voracious they will die from swallowing inadvisable prey.  There was a case in California where one had swallowed an eel that produces choking mucus, and died.  Then the heron next to it grabbed another eel and went out the same way.  C’mon, guys.

More random experiences…  On a birding trip to the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, I got my best view ever of one, through the free mounted telescope.  The bird had landed on a rail further down the walkway, and through the scope was as easy to see as a pet cat in your lap.  Cool details, beautiful animal, but when it defecated, it looked like somebody chucking a coffee mug full of liquid paper out the backside.

One time I took a vacation all by myself when I was alone in life, no friends family or lovers to bring along.  It was the dark of winter, cold and abysmal, taking a ferry from Seattle to Port Townsend.  The weather kept me from seeing as much wildlife as I would have preferred, but I got to hear the call of a heron for the first time – a great croak, like you’d imagine coming from a man-eating toad in D&D.  Nice.

Right after that I returned to art school on the Seattle waterfront, the early class having me there before dawn.  I heard the call again, and looked down just in time to see one gliding between the masts of docked sailboats, illuminated by amber street lamps.

A few times at beaches in South King County I was able to wade within thirty feet of one while it fished.  Not as good as the telescope view, but kind of fun.  One time while birdwatching in Ballard, I saw one across the locks in a park where they are known to nest, feeding a chick what looked like a four foot snake.

I just like to see a big-ass bird in flight.  They’re not the truly big ones, but respectable, and they’re what I’ve got.  Watch the big angel wings beat the sky, and if you’re lucky, hear the big devil croak.

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Don’t Care

I’m sure that weird Luigi kid is being set up by the NYPD.  But if he wasn’t?  Don’t care about his politics or qualities as a human being.  Regardless of who did it, they should get the jury nullification pass.

Fucking lynch mobs benefitted from that in the ’60s*, because murdering black men was a bit uncouth but understandable, to people who are still alive and voting to this day.  Why shouldn’t someone with a genuinely understandable motive get a pass?

If the wacky theory proved to be true, that the CEO had himself whacked to dodge the SEC?  Then good work, CEO.  If nazi bitch Nick Fuentes did it, I’d exonerate and salute him on Monday, and kick his teeth in for unrelated reasons on Friday.

Doesn’t matter who did it.  They should walk.  Not saying they should’ve done it or it should be done again, but we deserve one.  As a treat.

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*shit, when did trayvon’s murderer walk?  fuck ameriKKKa.

EDIT TO ADD:  a video that gone taken down by shitass yewchoob BOOOoo!

Life List: California Scrub Jay

TLC said they don’t want no scrubs, and it was clear when that song debuted that it was about me.  I was born further south than where I was raised, so I am a California Scrub.  I’m just one descriptor shy of being this bird: the California scrub jay.  CSJs are on the boring end of jay styles, with a very generic bird profile, and more brown and grey than most other jays.  But they’re a cool bird.  Decent size and a tendency to briefly alight on fences and awnings, so easy to spot.

Less chonky and clumsy than crows, they don’t stick around for long.  Blink and you’ll miss them, and when I was a kid, I did a lot of blinking, because I only ever saw them once, and not close enough to ID.  I had assumed they were the blue jays known as blue jays, which, as it turns out, do not live in the region at all.  I am only confident those were CSJs in retrospect, because I am once again living on the very same street where I was at the time of that encounter, and CSJs are everywhere here.

Speaking of awnings, that was the only time in my life when you might have caught me lounging on a roof.  I was living in squalor and family dysfunction, but I was living on the second floor, and outside of my window was some rooftop.  I didn’t spend much time on it.  One night my brother and I saw something like the aurora borealis, but it didn’t make sense, middle of summer?  I know jack about shit.  I was skinny with long hairs, and I sang the Misfits’ Last Caress in the garage of that apartment, with my homies on instruments.  White people foolery.  Make the neighbors hate you.

CSJs only came back into my life again within the last couple of years.  I was living up the hill in Federal Way and commuting to work in the valley, at a building surrounded by scrubby fields of the exact kind you’d expect for them.  And yet I didn’t see them the first year I worked there.  Don’t know why.  When I did start to glimpse them, they were at long distance, shy, flighty.  Took a long time to get a positive ID, but once it happened?  Some pretty nice close encounters.

Sadly my work moved out of that building, which is surely slated for destruction by whoever it was sold to.  The enshittification of everything continueth.  But just as my work moved uphill to Fed Way, I moved downhill to Auburn, and CSJ City.

California Scrub Jays are blue on top, white on bottom, with a little reddish brown vest.  I’m not usually close enough to see this, but they have a bit of a black mask and white eyebrows.  They’re not the only jays in this neighborhood, but Steller’s jays prefer the cover of trees, are out in the open less often.  But I saw Steller’s pretty often during a decade of Federal Way, so scrub jays feel fresh and cool to me now.

I want to see scrubs
Scrubs are some birds that can get the love from me
I hear them inside when they have to cry
The sound down my chimney

Eh, needs work.  Not happening.

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Life List: Northern Flicker

My “life list” as a birder is unremarkable, but the wee beasties make me feel some type of way, so I thought, articles about them.  First entry…

I always liked nature, liked birds, but I somehow just didn’t pay attention to them – at least, not enough to notice just how many were around me, what they looked like, acted like, sounded like.  I’d see chickadees one month and by the time I took any note of another bird, forgot enough that I assumed house sparrows were the same species – then not noticed another bird for two years.

The first bird that sparked an abiding interest for me, at about age thirty, was the northern flicker – a very humble woodpecker.  Most woodpeckers in North America are bold black and white, with pure red flashes.  Flickers and their cousins are a tawny brown, where the black and white on them turn into “cryptic” camouflage, and the red ranges from rust colored to salmon to yellow, in the eastern end of their range.  Dull.  But still.

I used to see a brown bird on the ground with red bits and assume it was just an american robin (i’d rather call ’em the anglicization of their binomial, “migratory thrush,” because bitches do not look like real robins).  Until one day, I saw one of those birds take off, and reveal red all over the bottoms of its wings – then proceed to land on the side of a tree, in a way that was impossible for robins.  I stalked that bird all around Meridian Playground in Wallingford, hoping to get a better view, but the cryptic plumage and nervous demeanor kept it out of reach.

I went home and scoured the internet until I got my ID.  Despite my having never noticed them, they are extremely common.  There are no doubt tens of thousands of them in the region, maybe hundreds of thousands.  When you come to recognize their CHEEE! call, you realize how many there are, whether you see them or not.  And they aren’t that hard to see, because unlike most of the woodpeckers here, they feed near or on the ground.  I’ve seen them in the middle of a paved expanse, no trees in sight, flicking moss out of a sidewalk crack to get bugs.  They’re everywhere.  How did I miss them?

Now I try not to miss birds.  To honor the northern flicker, I got one tattooed on my left shoulder.  Still haven’t been able to get it colored.  Speaking of which, as plain as they are, they really are very cute.  They have these brilliant black polka-dots, a black crescent bib, red teardrop shapes sliding off their cheeks, and of course, the red under their wings.  Most birds are pale under the wing, for countershading, so it’s very cool to see a bird buck that trend in bold style – even if the red isn’t as pure as it is in their flashier cousins.  Compared to a lot of other brown birds, they are more tawny and pale, which makes their eyes look more dark and sweet.  They are about the same size as an american robin, but as woodpeckers, can easily move around on the sides of trees.  Powerful feet with two toes facing forward and two back.

I haven’t gone as deep into describing all the cool details about them as I could.  Check them out sometime, if you can.  Northern flickers.  Cool guys.

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