James’s Blog

Ever since Yen and I found the sheep head at a meat counter in a Chinatown grocery store, it seems like sheep-themed stories are all around us. First there is the upcoming New Zealand horror movie Black Sheep, then there are all those controversies with the gay sheep studies. I suppose it’s only natural that someone wrote a story from the gay sheep’s perspective. I cannot get over the following paragraph:

Finally, my dad found me with Rick, and he flew into a blind rage, yelling that he had no son, and that if I was lucky I’d end up as a cheap Peruvian cardigan worn by a truck-stop hooker in Alaska. And so I ran away, and I went wild. I experimented with everyone and everything. Bulls. Mules. Duck, duck, goose. I found out exactly why they’re called the Three Little Pigs. Call me Old McDonald, because I had the farm. I even made some adult films, and maybe you’ve heard of them: “Wet Wool,” “Lassie, Come Here,” and the mega-selling “Hoof and Mouth.” Then, one morning, I woke up next to a horse, a hen, and an ear of corn—that’s right, all the food groups. And I was disgusted with myself. What was I, livestock?

I found this hawk on campus today, near Wells Hall. Looks like it is a ferruginous hawk. It was trying to catch a squirrel, albeit unsuccesfully. The hawk seemed a bit languid, probably because it was too hot. It then decided to hunker down in the shade, let me come pretty close, and gave me plenty of time to snap lots of pictures. See more in the gallery.

While sifting through some old emails, Wolf reminded me of the story of the whale that exploded in the street of Tainan, Taiwan. Which inevitably brings up that other story about the whale that beached 35 years ago in Florence, Oregon. They tried to get rid of the carcass by dynamiting it. The results were mixed.

There is now a website dedicated to exploding whales, and other exploding things.

Hmmm….

Many more cats that may or may not look like Hitler.