Considering Marriage?
Humor
Drunk Ecosystem
I am an ethnologist embedded within Chicago for St Patrick’s day. I am building the ecosystem for drunks that are the “pillars” of the St Patrick’s day experience.
You need crowds of drunks in green and the ubiquitous taxi drivers. I talked to a cab driver recently and he said that St Patrick’s day is the biggest day of the year for cabbies – bigger even than New Year’s eve. This is probably due to the fact that it starts earlier – he said he is generally picking up smashed patrons at 10am – and it goes all day and all night long.
Other pillars are porta-johns and bagpipers. While bagpipers are needed for police and fire funerals this is likely the only day of the year when playing the bagpipe gets you action with the ladies.
Urban Cow, In Concealment
Be vewy, vewy quiet … you never know when a cow will be watching…
Texiana – Mr. Cannonball Was Not His Friend
Thomas William Ward was born in Ireland of English parents in 1807, and at the age of 21 took ship and emigrated to America. He settled in New Orleans, which by that time had passed from French to Spanish, back to French and finally landed in American hands thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. There he took up the study of architecture and engineering this being a time when an intelligent and striving young man could engage in a course of study and hang out a shingle to practice it professionally shortly thereafter. However, Thomas Ward was diverted from his studies early in October, 1835 by an excited and well-attended meeting in a large coffee-room at Banks’ Arcade on Magazine Street. Matters between the Anglo settlers in Texas and the central Mexican governing authority helmed by the so-called Napoleon of the West, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had come to a frothy boil. Bad feelings between the Texian and Tejano settlers of Texas, who were of generally federalist (semi-autonomous) sympathies had been building against the centralist (conservative and authoritarian) faction. These developments were followed with close and passionate attention by political junkies in the United States.
The Intelligence of the Crow
A while back I read a book called “Ravens in Winter
When I was in Norway I came across a Carrion Crow (or at least I think it is; I looked it up on wikipedia) that found a clam-shell container that usually contains take out food. The crow obviously knew that it was correlated with food and poked it with its beak and shook it about deliberately before throwing it to the ground in disgust. I took a video and uploaded it and you can see it in HD here which I find very humorous.
Before 9/11 I traveled to Tasmania and had an encounter with what I believe was a Forest Raven, although once again I am not an ornithologist. The bird was AMAZINGLY persistent – when our car pulled up to a clearing it jumped on the side mirror (the window was open) and looked me right in the face (with big yellow eyes) and started cawing for food. I rolled up the window and it sat right on the hood of the car staring at me through the dashboard. I have never seen an (ostensibly wild) bird so unafraid of humans.
Cross posted at LITGM