Life List: Barn Owl

Barn owls are one of those species with “global distribution,” where one could consider the barn owls of Europe to be the same species as the ones in Texas and Kinshasa and Kwangtung.  Are they tho?  I’m sure there are “cryptic” species hidden within that range, noteworthy subspecies, etc.  They are the most visible members of their branch of owlkind, the Tytonidae.  Tytonids are less likely to have feather “ears” than “true owl” strigids, and generally look like “shy guys” from mario brothers.

I’ve personally seen one in a zoo and one in the wild.  I used to walk back and forth across Auburn in the middle of the night, often between two and four AM.  Once – I think this was when I was living in the adjacent tiny town of Pacific – I was walking the Interurban Trail and saw a ghost white headless-looking thing float above the trail, from the trees on one side to the trees on the other.  A fleeting glimpse, but enough to – in conjunction with range information – positively ID the suspect.

My dad used to know this shitty neonazi who dabbled in “vulture culture” before that term was coined.  Barn owls are not infrequently hit by cars, and this dude randomly hit barn owls twice within a pretty short time on the exact same stretch of road.  He preserved the bodies in some way, I don’t recall – skeletonizing or taxidermy, whatever.  I never actually saw them.  When this particular neonazi hadn’t fully turned but was beginning his descent, he gave my dad his Dead Kennedys tape, and that’s how I came to receive my first hardcore punk rock album, In God We Trust, Inc. (prior to this i only had dead milkmen CDs).  I guess as the punk became nazi, he felt the need to fuck off.

When I was in junior high, we got to dissect owl pellets.  Some may have come from barn owls; impossible for us to know.  But it was super cool and interesting.  I don’t normally like anything to do with excretions – piss, shit, vomit – but dry owl pellets seem rather sterile.  Bleached white by stomach acid, they are little blocks of compressed fur and bone that came out the front end of the bird, so they didn’t have to waste digestive resources on the hard bits.  Pick apart a little block of fur and find interesting tiny bones.  The skulls of those rodents looked so cool to baby Bébé.

Anyway, being a massively successful species, they provide some hope to me for the biosphere.  Whatever we do to this world, barn owls will probably pull through.  Shine on, you funky ghosts.  Keep eating rodents and puking up the cool parts.  I’m down.

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The Politics of Not Working, in Song

Hey anybody here remember the Wham Rap?  Is this song for or against leaning on welfare when you’re young and sexy?  I literally can’t tell.  The lyrics about how people should not do things they do not enjoy, those feel earnest.  But the characterization of the narrator, who advocates living off of welfare programs, is as selfish, looking out for number one.  It’s ironic people see social welfare as greedy when the main reason rich people don’t want to pay a reasonable tax to support society is because of absolutely inarguable baldfaced greed.  People “on the dole” need food and shelter.  Rich people don’t need a second yacht.  They just fucken don’t.  Anyway, dubious politics aside, it’s a bop.  Glad I remembered it exists.

One could make a whole study of references to welfare in music, and what they say about social perspectives.  Roots Manuva had a song called Mind 2 Motion with the line “Social survivor still scratching on, I’ll pay that money back when I get my hit song.”  This is eminently reasonable.  Rely on what you need when you are needy, pay your taxes when you are not.  And yet, I heard that he’s just another boring conservative greedlord.  Unsurprising if true.  One day Biggie Smalls was talking about how he lived in the projects and suffered poverty, feels blessed by his wealth.  The next he was literally saying “fuck the world, don’t ask me for shit.”

Sticking to the UK for another moment, commie rapper Bobbi from QELD and Pavlov’s House reliably hates on working for a living.  Warnings for flashing lights, doom-tinged chorus, and tankie feelz.  Austerity politics will get you feelin’ that kind of way.

The USA has its own communist rappers.  Boots Riley from The Coup is the number one guy on that scene, blowing up the World Trade Center on an album cover before that became unpopular for reasons.  But on the topic of social survivin’, I’d like to quote Killer Mike’s guest rap on The Coup’s WAVIP:  “I’m over here with the welfare recipients, we ain’t ever payin’ but we stay gettin’ shit, I am with the people on the bottom fella, we gon’ riot loot rob ’til we rich as Rockefeller… The one percent better learn this shit is VIP, if we don’t nut up everybody gonna D-I-E.”

There are more low-key ways to say Fuck a Job.  In Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s seminal extremely hateable dogshit buttrock classic “Takin’ Care of Business,” the drunk guy on the mic sez, “If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed, I love to work at nothing all day.”  I don’t know why I find that more offensive than intentionally offensive punk rock on the subject.  All he’s saying is “get an easy job.”  Could be worse.  I just don’t like the genre.  Speaking of punk rock on the subject, little known Desperate Bicycles had a song about making rock, with a very likeable message.  Backup vocals by the literal child on the drums.  “It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.”

As for the intentionally offensive punk rock on the genre, the Dead Milkmen have two strong examples.  Nutrition is an all-around classic, covered by other bands, well-liked, and a good tune.  It captures the vibe of feeling like you were born to work but just don’t wanna, feeling simultaneously petulant and ashamed about it.  A lesser tune with a more didactic message, just literally “fuck working,” is Chaos Theory, from a later album.  “I used to get up and do my job, now I enjoy doing nothing better, I think I’ll go bum around, I think I’ll enjoy this lovely weather.  Maybe some day there’ll be a revolution, maybe some day we’ll have meaningful jobs, until that day I’m gonna be lazy, I’m not gonna be no working slob.  I am the god of unemployment, the antichrist of the american dream, I used to fight for church and country, but now I don’t give into the corporate schemes.”

That’s just being a bitch about it.  Not saying that’s my number, but I did spend a few years on unemployment at one point, and spent a lot of time back then walking around under blue skies.  Like the part in One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer when George’s landlady saw him leanin’ up against a post…  This could go on forever.

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Edit to Add:  How in the fuck did I forget Agenda Suicide by The Faint?  Content Warning:  The Obvious, Generally Grim as Balls.

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Haven’t been very active lately on here.  Or have I?  Maybe the fact I’m not reading other blogs, not up on what my FThBlggies are up to, that makes it feel like I’m out of touch.  &/or out of time.  But I’m out of my head when you’re not around, oh oh oh, oh oh OH.  By the way, that Hall & Oates track is part of an anime-inspired Thursday meme.  There is another Thursday meme inspired by another anime, with Asuka Evangelion wishing you a Feliz Jueves.  It’s only Tuesday though, no time for that.  I’m OUT of TIME.

There’s a song by the Dead Milkmen called Dean’s Dream, from their album Big Lizard in My Backyard.  I think it’s about the way a dream feels significant and you want to tell somebody about it, but that sense of importance cannot be communicated, and ultimately dreams are silly garbage.  The climax of the dream in that song is, “We argue and fight and one pulls a knife;  He hits me in the back but I’m alright.”  I had a dream my boyfriend was in one of the crushed floors of a partially collapsed building and I ignored the warnings to go in and save him.  He was just standing there, alright, in his purple flannel shirt.  He’s alright.

On an unrelated thing, I think it’s very possible my dying words will be, “I don’t feel so good Mistew Stawk.”  After that moment in Marvel’s TV’s Revengers: The Semi-Finals, I quickly came to feel profoundly amused by that supposedly serious moment in the movie.  Even the idea that for some other people the drama landed, genuinely choked them up for a moment, felt real … it just adds to the hilarity somehow.

Now, however many years later, whenever I have low blood sugar or am otherwise wobblin’ or wimpy, that’s the first thing that springs to my lips.  Ergo, if I’m having a heart attack and it’s one of those stealthy boys where you just feel out of sorts until it’s Die Time, I’ll probably say the line right before my entire life is rendered a joke.  Correct and appropriate, I suppose.

I’m starting to think I’m mildly bipolar, which is funny I never realized that before, given my brother is medicated for that and our father is a straight cartoon character off that diagnosis.  But it’s OK.  I just get delusions of grandeur sometimes.  They’re probably a good thing, when they don’t keep me up nights.

This is pretty much the epitome of Random Thoughts from Satan posts.  I hope it wasn’t a waste of your time.  Have a sweet day.

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Monsters of Love

Content Warnings:  Horror Content, Unhealthy Relationships, Ironic Ableisms

My writing discord did an event called Monster Hearts, named after an RPG that’s probably too racy for people like ourselves to actually play.  The idea is, like in our Spooktober, to take a monster type and come up with a story idea to go with it – one for each day of the month up to and including Valentine’s Day.  This time, though, the stories have to involve a passionate relationship between a human and a monster.  I give you my monster hearts.  Happy lovin’ day.

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Comedy in Music

Novelty songs and the bands that specialize in them can be musically skillful, but the focus on lyrics makes them less able to lead one’s mood, less fundamentally affecting than music undiluted in artistic intent. Personally, everything I’ve heard of Jonathan Coulton that wasn’t provoking snickers with dirty words? Aggravating as hell. Especially that one with the office zombie gimmick. That was as entertaining as a bad Dilbert joke run on too long. Tim Minchin? Eh. Once in a while.

And I can see how people with less tolerance for lyrical “wit” or lyrics at all could want to throw the entire discographies of The Dead Milkmen, They Might Be Giants, and Electric Six in the garbage. I don’t begrudge them that, but I really like a lot of that stuff. I also recognize that makes me a “geek,” and in this day and age, that should be a real mark of shame. There isn’t a dimension of geek culture that hasn’t been tarnished by the fucking unspeakable conduct of the worst of us. Nonetheless, this.