And Now, Some Music...

Every time I hear a Guns N' Roses song, I hate Axel Rose some more.

Exactly one new record in 17 years, Chinese Democracy, recoded without Izzy or Slash, two of the better guitar wizards (eat your liver, "Beck", you arrogant, self-aggrandized, overrated studio hack).

Axl has an incredible voice, beautiful even, which could transform anydamnthing into a classic. There's that line in the bible - don't hide your light under a bushel. Axl's talent is so huge, so bright, only he can hide it, and starve the world.

Why Axel, and not Sting? (Or, as Joe Walsh called him, "Stink".)

Have you checked out Neko Case yet? If not why not? Plan to live forever? If so, Neko Case will make every day worth living. If you only try one, make it "Deep Red Bells". If that voice doesn't move you, you have too much in common with Lot's wife. (The Morton girl.) Or, in the words from the beginning of Big Audio Dynamite's "E=MC (squared)", "I don't like music all that much".

Do you need software to use mathematical notation like "upshift 2", for quantity squared? Thank goodness that's all I have to worry about. Oh yeah, and Google's new image search has made it next to impossible to pirate "Public Image" photos for this blog, or to download quality porn.

There is a bird watcher's term - G.I.S.S. - General Impression of Size and Shape (much better than my Get It Straight, Stupid), pronounced, of course, jizz, and introduced to me by Luke Dempsy in the book A Supremely Bad Idea. The book is really funny and informative, he an a couple flying and driving about to various noted bird destinations.

Jizz is developed with familiarity, and is why you don't confuse, for instance, a red wing blackbird with a crow, or either with a turkey vulture. It's done without thought, and doesn't work at all for, say, a crow and a raven. It is helpful when driving to note an American kestrel, which are nearly the same size as mourning doves, but the shoulders, head and neck are enough to tell you whether to slow.

I have been wearing something black every day for several weeks now, as I haven't seen a belted kingfisher in some time. Yesterday I was on the highway (don't like it) and was looking for color in what was probably an indigo bunting. They sit vertically erect, and the small size completes the jizz, but the color is both conformation and endlessly beautiful.

Instantly what for me is the most distinctive silhouette in the bird world appeared just next to the bunting: belted kingfisher. Strong jizz. There was a ditch fifty yards on, but this was the furthest I had ever seen a kingfisher from water.

My birthday is coming up. Rather than send me wishes, please pray or send best wishes or keep in your thoughts my great nephew, who couldn't wait to set the world straight, and is spending some time in the Infant ICU, while his body catches up with his ambitions.

Thank you.

Amphibians and Reptiles

Took a walk through the piney woods last week and a couple from Connecticut asked me how to get to the Seven Pillars. Turns out I was going there anyway, to get the dogs in some moving water. Which was good news for them, because they absolutely would not have found it, even instructed.
The Seven Pillars is a lovely dolomite formation in a cliff about thirty feet high, remnants of the Tethys River. On the facing side of the river the Miami have a campground, but there is access.
As we five were walking to the river, a frog jumped. The guy jumped about as far in the opposite direction, and I was, of course, six decades past getting to the frog. Good for it.

Driving home Sunday there was a turtle in the road just outside town.
I stopped and picked up the most bellicose, belligerent painted turtle ever.
She was on the large side of the species, which gave her clawed flippers full access to 100% of my hand and wrist. I turned her over and rubbed her belly, which really pissed her off. I put her in the truck bed, and she went crashing back into the tailgate.
Okay, she had traversed about two acres of lawn, and was about two feet onto a goddam hot asphalt road, when I interrupted her apparent bliss. On the other side of the road was at least another acre of lawn. There was no water, no shade, anywhere.
Excuse me.
I took her to a reasonably healthy pond, endured another vicious attack, and eased her into the water.
She dove, blew some bubbles, surfaced, threw me a flipper, and dove again. I left in some haste.
No good deed goes unpunished.
It is noted such behavior is a typical fear response, but every other painted turtle I have handled (not a lot, mind) has resigned itself and drawn up. Not this hellion.

I came staggering out of the pine furnace today, onto the closed road where I saw the bumblebee walking home (one of the amazing things I ever saw, armed with the knowledge why he was walking), and a 2 1/2 foot garter snake essed across the road so swiftly that recognition trumped reaction. And he was gone.
But he did remind me...
When I was in tenth grade, I usually cut through a meadow of sorts walking to school, and in spring there was often a garter snake available. Most were of a size to fit comfortably in a shirt pocket, and several went along for some quality Elwood Schools education.
Whether by chance or design, some became active during Latin class, with very gratifying results. The teacher, who was previously famous for dealing with balky or itchy bra straps, did not appreciate reptiles. Once the snake stirred, stuck his head out of my pocket, and began sampling the ambient air with that famous forked tongue, she would slam a chair into the furthest corner, mount it, and howl until the snake left the room.
It was pretty much a lock that no amount of study was gonna get me a grade. Also evident that I was gonna pass, because I sure wasn't coming back.
Would have been a great plan, except I didn't care at all.
We went to the Seven Pillars again in today's heat. On the road was another frog. I'd like to tell you what kind of frog it was, but Google has totally fucked up the Image Search, and I couldn't even find me.
Anyway, I backed up, pulled over, and the frog sat. I got out and up to him, and, as I reached, he leaped about sixty feet.
Okay, it was less than six, but come see, come saw. Much too far for a dick-wit with a body atrophied to dry cereal.
Cool frog though. Shit, at least I saw him.
I had planned this evening for days. It was hot, hotter than most, and I took the dogs to a closed stone quarry for a little dip. Me too. Except storms were coming in quick, scaring much hell out of Abbe. We all got down to the water eventually and I pushed out into the lake. My puppy stood with the water tickling his underneath and yelped, Abbe swam out to me a couple times, and we got resoaked with a driving cold rain getting back to the car.
Do I know how to have fun, or what?

Do Something

Back in 1968 the Stones released Beggars Banquet and the song "Salt of the Earth". For the Brits, who insist on the antiquated, a "billion" is a million million. So in the song, the line "Let's drink to the two thousand million" means two billion. The approximate population of the third rock in 1968 was 3.7 billion
In 40 years, the total has doubled.
I became an environmentalist in 1972, reading Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle (1968). It predicted world-wide starvation in the '80's and was dismissed and ignored: too many fish in the sea.
Ahem.
In 2006, more than 36 million people died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition.
1968 would have been an excellent time to ditch those two insane directives of the most perfidious book ever: go and populate the earth, and have dominion over all its creatures.
We have succeeded at the first such that it will take all four horsemen to rein in our rapacious herd, and a fox in the henhouse would be a far better steward.
For starters, there are too goddam many chriscons, those bastard children of manifest destiny who stole every square foot of this country and continue to deplete and denude every last inch. They rip the tops from the mountains in Appalachia, destroying the entire mountain in the process with the machinery and the wastes piled in the valleys. They drill from the Gulf to the Arctic, and spill, ruining square miles of oceans, killing everydamnthing, and ripping wilderness and irreparable tundra habitat to waste. They bottom drag the oceans for the last fish extant - over 90% of the world's large fish are fucking gone - they shoot whales, which may very well be smarter than we, with cannon, and set fire to the last remaining sea turtles to "clean up" a well still spewing. They kill our wild horses while "managing" them, then turn a blind eye while the auction buyers haul our wild horses, our wild heritage, off to meat slaughterhouses in Canada & Mexico.

It's your turn. Pick a cause, and fight back.

The population explosion must be smothered. Legislation has continued to fail the chriscon, even as judges were named to Federal benches for eight years solely on their professed christian conservative leanings, while abortion laws in this country soldier on with the approval of 70% of the populace. That hasn't stopped countless frivolous lawsuits attacking every phrase of the Roe v. Wade decision, costing millions.
But terrorists have done far more to limit free access to abortions, as guaranteed by Roe. Harassing and haranguing seekers, bombing clinics, killing doctors.
There are 3 (three) abortion providers listed in the Indianapolis yellow pages. The city is a whole damn county, 403 square miles, with a population larger than six states. And 3 abortion providers in the yellow pages. Maybe they're all on bus routes, so the poorest can have access to the degradation and scorn heaped on them by sanctimonious cocksuckers while they try to rectify one very bad mistake. Think it's an easy decision? For anybody?
You can help.
What about the PreCambrian notions of the Roman Catholic Church in regards birth control? A blight on the ass of the poor world, yet Haitian Catholics who survived flocked the churches the Sunday after what would have been the most destructive earthquakes in history, if fucking Haiti had anything to destroy.
You can help.
Suggestion: fire-bomb a Catholic church, preferably full, or you're only doing half the job.
C'mon, you are damn smart, or you wouldn't be reading this.
Hell, hand out condoms on high school & college campuses, downtown at bars, in poor neighborhoods. Huge impact. Take along a kielbasa to demonstrate. A finger leads to tragic conclusions.
You can help.
Several groups are trying to rein in big coal. They can use your help. Don't get carried away and go to Appalachia. You'll be carried home. This is not a joke. They eat their dead children.
Still, you can help.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill isn't even among the top 50 largest oil spills, was only 54th when it occurred, but was the most environmentally devastating until BP did it better.
This crap has got to stop. Oil companies receive government subsidies, as in your tax dollars, and log record profits quarter after quarter, while everyone worries about starving Mexicans working jobs no one else will take anyway.
Want cheap beef, chicken? How about you get rid of all the illegals in the slaughterhouses, people who lose fucking body parts and don't report the accidents, don't even miss work, for fear of being fired, and replace them with unionized meatpackers? How about $12.50 a pound for hamburger, $11 for chicken parts?
You can help.
Boycott BP, boycott Exxon - if you buy either, you're going to hell. Google, our best friend, can put you in touch with groups that will pressure the oil-owned Congress to rein in the runaway profits of these parasitic bastards.
Tough nut to crack, Big Oil, but it starts with you.
Whaling and fishing are almost impossible to regulate in International waters. Try Pew Trust for fishing guidelines, and the more stalwart will want to join Greenpeace, or surely support them.
When I was a kid, the Elwood A&P had fish sticks and canned salmon. Today, Marsh, Meijer, even Wal-Mart, has "fresh" fillets of whatever's left, which ain't much. BP just shut down Gulf shrimp and oysters, and I strongly suggest you learn to do without both, or be very, very disappointed. Southeast Asian shellfish doesn't make good garbage.
What else can you do? Develop a taste for farm-raised catfish. Mild, tasty, and easily prepared, every one's fish for the future.
There are sizable numbers of chriscons trying to pass legislation to reopen horse slaughterhouses in several states, after it took years to get them closed. Here's the story on the last three: one was in operation for over two years in Illinois after it was voted out by the people and the legislature and signed out by the governor, only to be kept open through stays issued by idiot fucking Republican-appointed judges. What the hell kind of system is that? One fucking guy thwarting the will of the entire state?
The other two were in the Lame State of Texas, which enacted state law banning horse slaughter in 1949, but it took Attorney General John Cornyn to enforce it in 2002. Another five years of idiot judicial decisions kept the charnel houses open, until the court of appeals finally upheld the by-then nearly 60-year-old law.
WTF?
You can help. The uber-nutcase Dan Burton is actually on target on this issue. Contact him, and the White House, about the the totally inept Bureau of Land Management and their abominable track record in caring for our wild horses. A recent stay on the Nevada roundup was lifted, and four wild mustangs died the first day. (The reason is the horses are "hazed", stampeded for up to 20 miles with helicopters, across arid wilderness terrain, to round-up pens for sorting and winnowing. Many too many just don't make it.) Do not entertain arguments about whether wild horses are "native". The very first horse, eohippus (eo meaning first, hippus meaning horse), is found only in the North American fossil record.
You can help.
Admittedly, this is weighted towards the horses, as I've been active with this issue for ten years. The BLM is so far a brick. But I'm working on it.
And you: pick one, or find another.
Do something.

Apologies.

Sunday I saw a male cardinalis cardinalis on a wire. Some dope wrote in this very blog that Northern Cardinals do not perch on wires. Obviously, they do.

There was a red tail on a wire east of Oak Hill Schools, one that I have seen several times. He might very well be the cemetery red tail. Perched on the wire just above and slightly to (my) left was a redwinged blackbird. When the red tail flew, the blackbird immediately mobbed him.

Okay, I haven't a guess why smaller birds do this, except they can. No matter the size of either bird, the most efficient hunters in the world have absolutely no answer for mobbing.

I have straps for my two "larger" pair of binoculars which, through foam padding and a shock absorber, reduce the weight on the neck to practically nothing. One of the straps came off quite some time ago and today I spent twenty minutes getting everything perfectly aligned. And when I went to leave, I noted that one of the loops was backwards.

I threw the glass on the table and left, being ill-inclined to dick with it further.

Walking along the roads at Pearson's Mill SRA, I heard songs from about fifteen different birds, with one unifying phrase: somewhere, in each song, came the distinct sound dumb ass.

Driving home, there was a small hawk on a wire I couldn't get a good look at, as some dumbass left the binoculars on the table in a snit.

This may be the wrong post to make a guess like this, but I'm thinking Coopers Hawk, as sharp-shins prefer some greenery about them. Purely Speculation 101.

Last spring and earliest summer I watched a sharp-shinned in a dead tree for several weeks before his mate showed and identified a nearby nest. Poor health kept me from finding the nest.

This year they didn't come back, and the area is posted as a Wildlife Resting Area, No Trespassing.

At the intersection of Slocum Trail and Red Bridge road, there is a nest box nailed to a light pole.

Several years ago I stopped for the road and noticed some birds working around and in the box. It was incredible. The birds darted about, and flipped the bit of string or twig in the air and caught it. Or another bird would swoop in and grab it, which never bothered the first bird. Like they knew. These were tree swallows, subtly beautiful, and this was surely pure play. Sometimes we assume animals are having "fun", like when a polar bear in a fucking zoo in Memphis when it's 105 degrees is fetching carmelcorn bags out of the pool. Yeah, some fun. Except, you know, the temperature is about eighty degrees past their comfort zone.

These birds had no need to preform these amazing aerial acrobatics to get this job done.

Saw a couple goldfinches - one in the woods, one in my yard (why travel?) But no swarms or gaggles or herds or flocks. One reason could be the newbies have fledged, this spring's mate has flown the coop, and this is an Indiana summer bred in hell. So, if I could fly, I'd head due north until it cooled down a good bit.

Then again, I may not be looking hard enough.

The most frustrating thing in BirdWorld is to see a "new" bird with an obviously defining characteristic. Except, you get home and it isn't. Even. Close.

I saw a bird on a wire with several others, and the tail was completely forked, something I have never seen before. Three trips through Sibley's turned up nothing of the sort. Wish somebody had brought the binoculars.

A red tail came off a wire and flew along, and I was turning back, watching,and the pup started barking and the hawk wheeled away

Okay, I haven't won a computer chess game in over 5 days. There are 10 levels. The first three are for pre-schoolers, one for "Special Needs" or otherwise "challenged" children; the second is for so-called normal kids, aged 3 - 5; the third, for "advanced" tots.

I play at Level 2.

How To Melt Cheese.

Fact is I do not know how to melt cheese.

Another fact: if I wasn't a glutton, I would starve to death trying to cook.

On occasion I fry a pretty good steak, or get bacon, eggs, sausage, or hash browns right. Never in any combination.

I cannot make a hamburger or cheeseburger to suit me.

I cannot stomach my own chili.

If I stay on track, I can fry a passable pork chop.

I have wasted hundreds of dozens of eggs on omelets, made some that were okay, and many fewer that were really good.

But the omelet problem has been redressed. I have been introduced to a way of making good omelets every time.

The key is reductionism. Two-egg omelets, in a large, sprayed & buttered skillet, never turned.

Stir the eggs, or beat them, if you are a tad sadistic, adding a splash of water. Pour into the gently-heated low-medium skillet: you're cooking, not reducing to carbon 12. Swish around a bit (the eggs, not you) and when the eggs bubble some, add your filling stuff.

S-P-A-R-I-N-G-L-Y.

Not much stuff: too much is about the only way to screw this up.

Add any cheese you like, and as everything sets up and the cheese melts, slide your treasure onto a plate, and use the pan to fold the beauty over.

Perfect, every time.

There are only two ways to mess this up: too much "stuff", because this omelet isn't much thicker than a crepe, and the package must be kept tidy, and overcooking. Trust me on the former, and fear the latter, always.

There is a turn-in to a few acres of pretty rough meadow on the south side of Red Bridge, about half way to the trail. If I have the patience to Z-weave Mister Buckles all the way there, that meadow is my favorite place to ride since we left Crooked Creek to their dealings.

Driving past yesterday I looked over and saw a coyote, full on, ears pricked, about 30 yards in. I slowly backed up, which was an exercise where false hope trumped reality. I have no guesses, sex, age, and stuff, because it's the first coyote I have seen not spread on some fucking moron's tailgate in quite some time.

What I really miss is riding Mister Buckles in that meadow. It exits up on a dead-end road. Once, coming out, there was heavy machinery digging a pond just at the south side of the road. And there was a doe, large, standing not 30 yards away watching them work. I have no idea what kept me in the saddle. Were it a moose the shock wouldn't have been greater.

Going east on the way to the reservoir last evening, I approached an intersection, and there was a male red tail atop the first pole past. I watched until traffic built, then turned north.

Returning an hour later, he was still there. I continued south, and 100 yards on was a big girl on the left, and she flew. I looked for her, and there was a big red tail in a big tree, many yards on and many yards back from the road.

I hate to guess, and do not ever pass along shit I don't know, but birds are every bit as territorial as you and I, and it as absolutely beyond imagining it wasn't the same bird, keeping an eye on me.

There are lots of big raptors about now, and you can find and study them from the comfort of your car. Lots and lots of Indigo Buntings too, on wires, and maybe you will be the one to capture that iridescence on film. At least you can appreciate it for what it is - as good as nature has to offer, and better than we can copy. Keep in mind that 20 years ago, indigo buntings were close to endangered status, given a sickening affinity for the grills of speeding automobiles. They seem to have outlived that, which may be why they perch high, and leave the wires away from the road.

I haven't seen nearly enough Goldfinches this early summer. Not panic time, but time to go to places I have seen them in numbers before. One in particular is about a mile east of Maconaquah's (aka Frances Slocum) grave and cemetery. A chore I'm sure I'll surely enjoy.

Bird Watching

Okay, a frank, open admission: I am helplessly, hopelessly, totally in love with Neko Case.

She wasn't lost, or undiscovered, so I didn't "find" or "discover" her, except for me.

Just fucking wow.

A pox on any of you aware of her music who didn't clue me in.

I title-picked 10 songs from her iTunes library and there isn't anything but wonderful in the handsful.

In my seventh decade (Stinkin' in the Sixties), hearing her new is knowing I've wasted decades listening to some rather weak shit.

Beatles, my fucking ass. Neko brings more voice to the table than the Blab Four, in any combination.

Neko Case. Perhaps the only person in the world I would pay money to see.

The first indigo bunting I saw was dead in a road near Noblesville. There was a lunatic dab of feathers, and I got out to look. That incandescent, iridescent, high-amped electric blue was otherworldly, but much too there to be faked.

If you have never seen an indigo bunting up close, or through reasonably good glass in favorable light, you are in debt to yourself.

Luck is with you! Throughout north central Indiana, there is seldom a mile stretch of wire without indigo buntings perched. Not together. When you see a tiny wee bird, stop well ahead, inside the useful range of your glass, check it out. Be ready.

Should you think that the only place for photography to go is through more filters, manipulating and overlaying exposures, and digital enhancement, know that there is no photo extant that even begins to capture the the glorious color of the indigo bunting.

Northern Cardinals, our cardinals, do not perch on wires. They are more thicket types, but cannot begin to hide the pure red in most cover, even in summer foliage.

In the spring and fall, migration of a sub family, the wood warblers, passes through the state. Very active, with beautiful, distinctive songs, these are the "it" birds for many bird watchers.

There are 20 or so species en passage, and, like our cardinals, they mostly prefer thickets.

Unlike our cardinals, they are small, and mostly vary by the location of a yellow splotch the size of a dime. If you know the songs, and you have the time and patience, you are belly-up to the bar of outstanding bird-watching.

And if you don't? There is much consolation in the presence of a more or less equal number of sparrow species. While they lack the panache of warblers, they are distinctive, more readily found, and don't have different spring and fall colors like warblers. Forgot to mention that? Sorry.I would love to be a warbler man, but I feel that time has passed. I am attracted more to raptors, who eat warblers. There must have been a first guy who looked at a salad set before him and said, "This isn't food. This is what food eats."

It is most surely gratifying to identify a yellow-rumped warbler, then watch, enthralled, as he picks about after seeds, berries, bugs, and such.

I watch transfixed as an American Kestrel swoops down on a sparrow, not much the smaller, and drives it into the ground.

There have been models for over a hundred years now of what dinosaurs looked like.

If they had originally been drawn as birds, and fitted over dino skeletons as they were re-assembled, the picture would be all but clear.

It's not easy for me to look at my chickens pecking through the yard and think of Thunder Lizards.

But look into the crazy-insane red-burning eye of a sharp-shinned hawk, and 300 million years melt away.

Okay, I'm going to dedicate this entire post to pro basketball.

Oops! WTF?

My brain just took a crap from my ears down my neck.

I was some befuddled yesterday by a website dedicated to Atheists. I was buying the horse on an examination of the wrong end. I am tired of being an "-ist", and there was never any influence from any individual or group in the my decision. Least a group of "atheists".

Danny Burns steered me around to the other end, the etymology of the term, and it's all so clear I'm too embarrassed to add.

I resent leftist and anarchist. Never spent any time with either, and can't say my politics deserved to be lumped together with theirs.

And I'm a bit of a "-path", socio- and maybe, measurably, psycho-.

What I am, totally, is a dumbath, and I'll share responsibility, along with nature and nurture.

A red tail sat on top of a pole in the humid furnace of yesterday, with plenty of birds for company on the wires to and from. (Okay, I know it's the same wire. What I can never be made to understand is that electricity doesn't travel in the wire, but sets up a field from one terminus to another, with the positive charge tending toward the negative terminus. By all means work that out for yourself. I have nothing to offer.) My guess is they felt safe in the near, as the beautiful giant would have no room to mount an attack, were he so inclined.

He had a variety of pickins. He could easily see a hint of movement for over a mile in any direction.

What's it like? Observe a drop of water through a good microscope. If you haven't in a while, prepare to be entertained. Step back and look at your drop, and what a small portion you are seeing, and know this is what the red tail sees. In every direction. From his perch. For over a mile.

I boarded my chestnut gelding, Mister Buckles, for some time at a facility called "Green Apple Stables', behind the Veterans campground on SR 22 east of Kokomo.

It emerged the owner was a fucking loonie, total literalist Christian, Home Bible schooling

three children.

The youngest child, a girl about 6, showed me a Silurian fossil she had picked up, perhaps from local, crushed stone. I told her that about 400 million years ago, this area was covered by an ocean, and this shell lived in it then.

I moved Mister Buckles because he had become agitated, even stepping on my foot and breaking some toes. Also, they were keeping bitches and litters in unused horse stalls, sensory deprivation I felt was unwarranted.

What little I knew.

E-mail and newspaper stories a couple years later noted that the little girl and her 8-year old brother were step-children, and being treated in every negative connotation of the word.

The worst was they were punished with confinement in a horse stall, for extended periods, to include overnight. They were taken in whatever they were wearing, even pajamas in the winter, and locked up, in an unheated barn.

The high sides of the stall had been wired up, to prevent them from climbing out.

Doing the Lord's work.

Prayer: "Dear Lord, protect me from your believers"*.

A problem I have (see "Shopping in the House of the Holy", Archive, Nov. 2, 2009) is the literalists with the no-holds-barred adherence to the word of god, and the realists, scholars and all other believers who accept the book as open to interpretation.

A simple dichotomy, for starters:Did god invent the world in six days?

Yes, out of nothing.

No, the genesis of the earth has been ongoing for billions of years.

Never mind, this is much too depressing.

I suppose evil, such as that loosed on those two little kids, would exist without god.

Prove it.

For Britt, whom I truly love. I could not be one iota happier for you and my nephew.

* The "prayer" is by Tim Dorsey, via Serge Storms, the absolute best anti-hero in all of creation.

Great Muic and Hell

Music is purely subjective, its beauty lying in the ear of the beholder, and a lesser being would hesitate to suggest a playlist.

Not this blog!

Here are some wonderful songs, mostly stuff you haven't heard, and all can be yours from iTunes for less than $15. That, dear reader is a bargain.

1.) Pepper, Butthole Surfers. Their music is what you would expect, but this song is the exception that proves the rule, and is worth the entire $15.

2.) Trick of the Light, The Who. I like the Who more than I ever realized, and this one shows some angst you don't expect from Pete Townshend. It fucking rocks, start to finish, with powerful vocals by Roger Daltry. Daltry and David Byrne (Talking Heads) may be the best vocalists rock has produced.

3.) Little Red Book, Love. Almost 50 years old, and would be a re-release smash.

4.) The Killer in Me, Smashing Pumpkins. Why this is obscure beats the shit out of me.

5.) Talk Talk, The Music Machine. Another dusty record, this song influenced everything that followed.

6.) Watusi Rodeo, Guadalcanal Diary. Absolute fun.

7.) The Runner, Manfred Mann. If you are one, were one, or even know one well, this song is all over the nerve.

8.) Second Skin, The Gits. Find it, play it, love it. The good die young, and Mia Zapata was just getting started.

9.) The Passenger, Siouxsie & the Banshees. Great band, great vocals, limited audience. Do yourself a favor and change that last.

10.) Maybe, Collective Soul. For me this song is inextricably linked with Krystal Gingerich. Listen, and you'll know who it was meant for.

And two live cuts. I have seen one movie adaptation that I felt did justice to the book - Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The book is one of my very favorites, and Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch made me wish he were my father. Okay, that might not be fair to my father, and were he around for my 8th or any subsequent birthday, I might reevaluate.

I mostly prefer album cuts to live records. If you've spent any time with the Grateful Dead, you know every live track of the same song is completely different, and such personalized music doesn't appeal to me, unless, of course, I was there.

That said, these last two songs are so much better in live versions that it really is striking.

1.) See Me, Feel Me, The Who, from the Woodstock album. I have always felt this is the best song of the show, and worth the price of the 2-record set, even used, even scratched. If you were there, and you weren't, and you stayed after this song, you wasted part of your life. Remember, this was from the first rock opera, and Woodstock was in 1968.

2.) Blood Makes Noise, Suzanne Vega. On the album this is a nice song. The live song is murder rock, and you'll wonder why you never paid her more aural attention.

Then go and listen to the album cut and that question is answered.

If I get any feedback, I'll trot out a few more for your inspection.

A red tail flew from a tree in a roadside woods and outpaced me for about forty yards, then banked back into the woods. My initial thought was I hadn't seen one in the area before, and it occurred I was thinking like a human. A red tail's range is defined not by miles but by available food. Several miles' flight is effortless, and burns up far fewer field mice than the dead dinosaur juice you use to move your 3000 pounds of plastic the same distance.

So then the big boy was familiar, with numerous sightings in an area unbounded by the sky.

There was a saying popular years ago - "hotter than the hinges of hell" - which certainly described today. "Hinges" suggest a door or a gate, and one should consider if it keeps people in or out. If "heaven" is eternity in the presence of a god that lets children starve to death, that allows rape and debasement of women believers, allows Mia Zapata to die on the streets of Seattle at the hands of a crazed Cuban boatlifter from Florida, that visits natural disasters on the very poorest, like Haiti, that follows up a devastating hurricane with an oil slick likely to denude Gulf coastal waters, then I think I'll need to stand in line to get into hell.

History and Basketball

History, and especially American History, is not a good choice for my reading list. The outcome is not the story, but the flesh on another skeleton in our Nation's closet of horrors. I usually spend the last 2/3rds rooting on my good guys, who usually lose.

An exception are books about Little Big Horn, or the battle of Greasy Grass Creek (the "Creek" is dropped in discussions of a new Custer book - one expects so much better from the New York Times), where one can treasure every moment of Custer's denouement, in spite of the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of soldiers. The downside is too, too much information about this pompous, vain, arrogant, stupid peacock, he of the grandiose dreams and the rim-rider talent.

I am reading a new book about the Comanche, one-time rulers of the Southern and Midwestern Plains ("Empire of the Summer Moon", S. C. Gwynne, available at Amazon for $16.08). Despite being marginally well-written, the story is mesmerizing, except you know the end, and an "End" it is.

A very startling book is "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" by Juanita Parker. There have always been hints afloat about the dark doings of the Latter Day Saints: this darkness comes from the far side of the moon. Read this book ($13.57 at Amazon) and you'll keep a ballbat behind the door for the next visit from Mormon proselytizers.

A bit ahead of me, a female red tail left a wire and soared up to the north, banking, spotlighted by the sun. All I've seen the last few months are solo boys, and she looked enormous, and she was, and beautiful in the light.

A certain basketball blabbermouth has reduced a most singular and descriptive term

to comicbook status, and I fear the harm is irreparable, but the sight of this gorgeous beauty floating in the high bright sky was surely awesome.

Like a two-handed dunk, which scores exactly the same number of points as two converted free throws.

On a more urgent note: Dickie - shut the fuck up.

One of the Williams brothers won the Women's title at Wimbledon, and somebody is going to win soccer's World Cup, probably after a 0 - 0 tie and a shootout.

It seems to me that the "shootout" has shaved off the last peel of urgency in the game, and there is no incentive left in what was already a largely listless endeavor.

There is a market for soccer in America yet to be exploited. Promote sales of game tapes as insomnia cures. Complete with drool bibs. Instant riches.

A bird flew high and fast over the road at Pearson's Mill SRA, and the orange flashes could only have come from a Baltimore Oriole. Drink a toast.

And a blinding white patch on a black bird in flight that was surely a red-headed woodpecker. Beautiful. Drink a toast.

Okay, sot, that's three wonderful birds I have seen through my windshield in the last 24 hours.

What's stopping you? Lay off the juice for a bit, get out and take a look.

It's a wonderland out there.

BP Strives to Destroy All of the South Central US

As much as the National Rifle Association would like to adopt a theme song by its poster boy - Ted Nugent - they remain forever hogtied to a Beatles tune: "Happiness is a Warm Gun", from the white album. In the day, albums were giant slabs of vinyl, and came cased in a 12" square sleeve, a perfect canvas for the great artwork that was a signature of rock & roll.

So the Beatles released their "last" album, a 2-record collection of mostly drivel, with a stone white album cover.

Why? Because they could, and it is forever remembered as "Te White Album".

I have never understood their appeal. None of their songs survived the 70's.

Rolling Stone, in some kind of huge joke, recently called "Hey Jude" the best R&R song of all time.

Bullshit. "Hey Jude" is an interminable dirge, more Gregorian Chant than rock, no backbeat, no fucking beat at all, a perfect loop tape to play in hell.

Try this: listen to as much Beatles as you can without puking, then crank some contemporary Deep Purple. Schlock and Rock.

By the way, the greatest R&R song of all time is "Gimme Shelter". No arguments entertained.

A kestrel flew from a wire today, the sun turning her underside into a glorious golden bronze, just stunning.

Days like today, the sun only 9 miles from the earth, cloudless, the light so brilliant that colors are either mesmerizing (the iridescent blue of an Indigo Bunting) or whited out, like the worst blowing snow on the same bright day. Most are the latter, so when you catch the right angle that lights up a bird, hold on.

The British Petroleum crude oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has continued since April 20. A deep-water blowout remains unchecked, puking crude into the Gulf, millions of gallons each day.

The Gulf is an intricate system, with vast estuaries created in the Mississippi River delta. So far, this area has been more or less "protected" by the massive June rains here in the midwest. As this huge flow subsides, the plume will encroach, dooming, for two, gulf oysters and shrimp. Hope you aren't attached.

But that's not all. A "dry" summer and fall will bring this shit up into the bayous, and they will not recover.

In 1991, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait on a green light from Donald Rumsfeld, acting for Bush 41. Iraq claimed Kuwait had slant drilled into Iraqi oil reserves. As they withdrew, the Iraqis set fire to nearly 700 oil wells, and mined the area.

Oil Money Bush could not abide this turn, and ordered the retreating Iraqi column destroyed, all 24 miles of it, incinerating perhaps a million Iraqi soldiers.

Point: this annihilation left the Iraq Army completely destroyed, which made them pretty easy pickins in Bush 43's War, and he couldn't even win that.

Counting all the time it took to secure the area, clear out the land mines, get equipment in place, and finally get to work on the wells, Texas studs working for Red Adair (RIP - he created the science), Boots & Coots, and others, got the fires out in nine fucking months.

Serious, what are these Brit pussies doing? This isn't the North Sea. Put a couple of Red's cowboys in the Alvin II and send them down for a look. Should have it capped by Saturday.

A flash of the most brilliant yellow anywhere and I saw a goldfinch in full display. This is color at its most pure, like that indigo bunting, like the singular blue of the Eastern Bluebird, and the heartstopping red of the Northern Cardinal.

The cardinal is our State Bird, and every bit worthy. It is similarly honored by six other states, including Kentucky, Illinois, and Ohio. Our State Tree is the Tulip Poplar, regal, statuesque, and altogether a most appropriate representative. The flowers, found only in the crown, are truly tulip-like, green with the very most pale orange "trumpet".

Our State Flower is a miserable stinky bush, the peony. They aren't even Indiana natives.

My house came with a small flock which I dug up and foisted off. Then I put the Garden Weasel to work.

No difference. Still they come. I've thrown in the towel, and now just wait for a good rain or an ant herd to drive the ugly blooms to the ground.

While we've joined the crowd on a state bird, nobody else favors the peony - for very good reason.

We have several indigenous orchids, hard to find (why they're still here) but around in some numbers, roses wild enough and each with outstanding qualities, and violets. Don't sniff at violets - five states honor them.

Today I saw a large stand of black-eyed susans, good enough for Maryland, and me.

Did you know 41 states have a State Insect? Most are butterflies, honeybees, or ladybugs.

What should ours be? Deer tick? Mosquito? Housefly? Blood-sucking Republican leech? Oh wait. Leeches are annelids, but, like Republicans, they are hermaphrodites, which explains where Republicans come from.

How about a State Reptile/Amphibian? Fully half the states have one or both, and a dozen of those honorees live here. My guess is many states have reptiles and/or amphibians because few people know there's a difference.

Did anybody read where a turtle dove can fly 55mph?