Hi there, faithful reader (aka Mom)! Seems like it’s been a really long time since I have posted. One would think that in all that time I would have come up with some deep, poignant, enlightening insights, but I… um… I’ve been busy doing lots of other stuff. Important stuff. So instead here is a series of detritus collected from the windmills of my mind. Enjoy.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF THINGS MY BROTHER-IN-LAW WISHES I WOULD NEVER SPEAK OF AGAIN: Duck Genitals
Now ya see, most birds don’t have penises. I don’t really know how the reproduction thing works, exactly; must be flaps and slots, levers and pulleys, stuff like that, but I’m not here to give you a lesson on the birds and the bees (which, as you probably know, are mysteriously vanishing, which is driving up the price of almonds, among other things. When someone mentioned this in my pilates class, my teacher snorted, “That’s ridiculous! Almonds don’t grow in flowers!”) As, I was saying, I’m here to talk about ducks, specifically. Duck dicks, to be even more specific (Sorry, Mom!)
The male duck, or drake, does indeed have a penis, and they can be as big as 14 inches. That’s right, you heard me. (Daffy sez: It ain’t braggin’ if it’s draggin’!) This is not altogether good news for the lady duck, which, by the way, is called a duck. I don’t know why she doesn’t get a special name. Anyhoo, the lady duck isn’t so into her massively endowed partner because duck sex is NOT consensual. The male grabs the female’s neck and forces her head under water (which doesn’t seem like it would be such a big deal, but apparently it is) and then rapes her. Nature is a cruel mistress and drakes are assholes. But the lady duck has a trick or two up her sleeve- well, not up her sleeve, exactly, but up her incredibly complex and highly evolved hoo-hoo. In her Fowlopian Tubes, if you will. (Get it?) It seems that the duck vagina has these false passages that lead to no safe haven for duck sperm to dwell and thus impregnate the sweet ducklet. By contracting her muscles she is able to steer the sperm of prospective mates either to the quackless zone or the bingo bucket. She even has one canal that ends up in a corkscrew shape that sends the sperm into a swirling vortex! I forget why, but still I will tell you about it. I can’t understand why Eduardo doesn’t just love this stuff….

Horses, afraid of getting buried in the titanic snow drifts scrambled to the top of massive school chairs thoughtful Denverians had erected for just such occasions.

Red and gray foxes broke into peoples house to eat their food and drink their beer:

It was traumatic. I’m ok, though. Don’t worry about me.

Today, March 22nd, is the 22nd anninversary of my 22nd year. It is the first Sunday in the spring, and it is a very good day.
Thank you, thank you to all of my loved ones who give my life quality, meaning, peace and joy. Yay, life!

There are a bunch of Viking Princess pirates – they look like Pippi Longstocking with eye patches and horn-helmuts . Pippi, of course, became a business woman and started a chain of fast-food restaurants, but that has nothing to do with piracy. There were French female pirates (ooh la la!), and escaped slave women pirates and a woman named “Gunpowder Gertie , the Pirate Queen of the Kootenays” from Canada. I knew Canadians had kooties, but I waas unaware that they also carry kootenays. My favorite piratesses, though, were the renowned Mary Read and Anne Bonney, who dressed up as men and fought and drank and swore and carried parrots with the best of them. They were fierce, I tell you; Mary Read once fought a man to save her wimpy sailor lover and Anne Bonny baffled a boson (whatever that is!) by baring her bound boobies during a duel and yelling “Ha!” He was so surprised by her clever cleavage camouflage that he didn’t even get a word out before she skewered him with her sword. Bad-ass! Bonney and Read found themselves on the same ship in the Caribbean; one tried to seduce the other, who happened to be married to the captain, Jack Calico, and when the first revealed her true gender, the women became lovers; that’s right: lesbian pirates!! You can’t beat that for box office gold, ladies and gents! (Maybe my sister is right; perhaps I am a bit overly enthusiastic about lady pirate love!) When their ship got captured they both “pleaded their bellies”, and, as it turned out, they were both six months pregnant, so their lives were spared. That’s right, folks! Bisexual sea-rovers, the lasses were! Really, you can’t beat that!!! Aaargh! These ladies shook their pirates booties and MESSED STUFF UP! I wonder if when they washed up on islands and came down off the ship onto terra firma, people referred to them as land hos. Get it? Anyway, I think they were the scurvy scourges that Johnny Depp and Keith Richards (who, in an unrelated story, snorted the ashes of his father and then TOLD A REPORTER ALL ABOUT IT!!) were trying to be in those stupid movies.

I like these women because they reveled in who they were. They were different, and they went through hard times, but they found ways to be happy. Sure those ways included murder, pillaging, cruelty and plunder; I’m not so into that. But still they were unique and interesting, like Dorothy Parker, or Zora Neale Hurston, or Fiona Apple, or Marlena Dietrich, or Marie Curie. They changed how we thought about things, like Ayn Rand or Ethel Rosenberg or Margaret Sanger. So many women who paved the way for me to be how I am, who I am. Like I said, there’s a long line of strong, opinionated ones. Happy Day Of the Women, everyone!

My friend X just sent me this email that has all these sites where you can get random information and images. This whole idea really appeals to me, and I’m not exactly sure why. I am, and have always been a big believer in the “shit happens” theory, but, at the same time, I am fascinated by patterns, and am actually fearful of chaos. Maybe there is wisdom in the unplanned, sanctuary in serendipity. Maybe I am thrilled by the mind’s desperate power to make sense of the illogical, the unintelligible, the incomprehensible. Whatever. I just spent hours on the flickr site, looking at other peoples photos, marvelling at the beauty, creativity, emotion and wonder they captured. So cool! If you have the time and are so inclined, check these out:
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ Random Photos
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 Random quotes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Random information
Does anyone know if there is a site where I can pick up random music?

*Wow! That”s some excessive punctuation, non?!

Enjoy yourselves today!

Well, all, Happy VD ’09! A faithful reader (yes, I have faithful readers!) gave me this deformed and cracked mutant m&m to use for the blog, as part of the “may you find love in unexpected places” series. Thank you M&Mily! I am certain that there is a perfect metaphorical meaning for this candy coated holiday, but right now all I can come up with is “if you carry love around in your pocket for two days before remembering to take a picture of it, you will see its true significance; love may be lint-covered, battered, and have a funky spot on top, but the chocolate-y, peanuty goodness of it will never be diminished.” Poetic, non? Perhaps I will send this to the Hallmark folk and let them use it, free of charge, cuz I’m cool like that. By the way, just so you know, m&m’s WILL melt in your hands, or your car, or your pocket. They’re made out of CHOCOLATE, for heaven’s sake!

The way chocolate melts has to do with how a solid changes its molecular structure with the application of heat, and that is science, which makes for a smooth, organic segue to my next topic (clever, how I did that, huh! Watch and learn, kids!), which is that Thursday marked the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Charles Darwin. I am a big fan of Darwin, though I get a little tired of his constant need to prove himself, but apparently, that’s how scientist are, all factual and “can I recreate said process?” What’s wrong with theoretical science? Nothing! I like Darwin because I like evolution. I think we should all evolve, even if it means giving up things like our appendixes. Remember, ‘evolve’ spelled backwards is ‘evlove’, which is newspeak for the love of everything. In the great state of Texas, the Board of Education just decided that teachers would not have to teach “the strengths and weaknesses” of the Theory of Evolution as part of their curriculum. In other words, they could just teach the theory as a scientifically accepted principle instead of pointing out that maybe humans came into being because God made Adam in His image and then created Eve out of his rib. Texas decided to leave that theory for Sunday School. Chalk one up for Darwin! I raise one opposable thumb up in your honor!
I have been informed by a reliable source – the blog of a psychic who is also a real professor – that today marks the actual dawning of the Age of Aquarius. http://www.keen.com/CommunityServer/UserBlogPosts/PSYCHIC_PATTURNS/Aquarian-Alignment-Valentines-Day-2009/439177.aspx
Finally! I am so sick of falsehoods and derisions and am so ready for golden crystal revelations and the mind’s true liberation! Unfortunately, it appears that the celestial alignment that ushers in harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding began at 7:25 am and only lasts for 18 minutes. Ain’t that a kick in the pants.
Happy Day anyway!
P.S. Thank you KB, E.D., Anna, Dad, AES, Linda and Scherry and Big John for your VD love. (Eww!) This wicked spinster truly appreciates that you think of me!

3. We have been studying the Holocaust in class. I learned a lot from my students’ research projects, but here are some things that stuck out in my mind: Zyklon B, the cyanide based poison that was used to gas six million Jews, was invented by a Jewish man named Fritz Haber, who was a Nobel Prize winner. Ironic, huh? The kid also told us that cyanide occurs naturally in cassava, lima beans, soy, spinach and tapioca pudding, but we probably won’t be eating enough of these things to cause death. Quite the relief, non? He said the primary way earthlings (his word, not mine) ingest cyanide is by smoking cigarettes, and that he heard on the news that in the 70’s a man put cyanide into Tylenol and that it only took five grains to kill a person.

Mental note to self: watch this kid, and don’t take any of his drugs or creamy desserts, even if he gives them as Valentine’s Day presents. Fun and delicious, but not worth the risk.

4. The Crips (or is it the Bloods?) have adopted the Star of David as their symbol. Weird, huh? I have always been a little suspicious of Sammy Davis, Jr., and am going to do some further research on him and his crew.

5. The word ‘mocco’ means ‘booger’ in Spanish, though I think only if it is a masculine booger. I also learned that anything you can spell with a ‘c’ is cooler if you spell it with a ‘k’, like ‘koffee’ or ‘kaka’. I learned this when someone tagged (oldsters: that means “performed an act of vandalism, specifically graffiti, in the effort to gain acknowledgement or claim territory”) the front of our school with enormous MOKO’s on the steps and on the windows of the principal’s office. Skool is kool.

3. We have been studying the Holocaust in class. I learned a lot from my students’ research projects, but here are some things that stuck out in my mind: Zyklon B, the cyanide based poison that was used to gas six million Jews, was invented by a Jewish man named Fritz Haber, who was a Nobel Prize winner. Ironic, huh? The kid also told us that cyanide occurs naturally in cassava, lima beans, soy, spinach and tapioca pudding, but we probably won’t be eating enough of these things to cause death. Quite the relief, non? He said the primary way earthlings (his word, not mine) ingest cyanide is by smoking cigarettes, and that he heard on the news that in the 70’s a man put cyanide into Tylenol and that it only took five grains to kill a person.

Mental note to self: watch this kid, and don’t take any of his drugs or creamy desserts, even if he gives them as Valentine’s Day presents. Fun and delicious, but not worth the risk.

4. The Crips (or is it the Bloods?) have adopted the Star of David as their symbol. Weird, huh? I have always been a little suspicious of Sammy Davis, Jr., and am going to do some further research on him and his crew.

5. The word ‘mocco’ means ‘booger’ in Spanish, though I think only if it is a masculine booger. I also learned that anything you can spell with a ‘c’ is cooler if you spell it with a ‘k’, like ‘koffee’ or ‘kaka’. I learned this when someone tagged (oldsters: that means “performed an act of vandalism, specifically graffiti, in the effort to gain acknowledgement or claim territory”) the front of our school with enormous MOKO’s on the steps and on the windows of the principal’s office. Skool is kool.