making owls cool since 1986

We moved to Arizona to see burrow owls. Where the hell are all the burrow owls?

Friday, November 10, 2006

Political Tropes

Metaphor for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld -

You're on your way home and you've been driving for ten minutes when suddenly a rumbling in your lower abdomen alerts you that a shit is on the way. This will be not ordinary shit; nay, this will be a painful one, possibly diarrhea, a horrid gastric catastophe brewing like Krakatoa in you lower GI tract. You feel a sense of panic - you still have sixty more minutes of driving to go before you reach your house. After a while you try to stop at a convenient store and use the bathroom, but you just can't do it. The turd remains. This invidious feeling, this one life function among many is turning the entire body against you. You sweat, your mind races, your stiff legs make it difficult to drive.

Finally, just as your are certain you will shit your pants, you turn arrive home, run up the stairs and purge yourself of that horrible peice of shit that has been plaguing you. The feeling it euphoric - It's gone! It's gone! Even though you know there is still some serious wiping yet to be done, being rid of the shit is still a massive improvement of circumstance.


An anology on George W. Bush -

If Donald Rumsfeld is a haggard diarrhea shit, then George W. Bush is a jagged kidney stone.

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Sunday, November 05, 2006

Borat Movie is just O.K.


Jagshemash!!!! I like you.

These are the words with which Sacha Baron Cohen begins virtually all of his skits when playing Borat, the Kazakh news reporter. The movie, Borat: Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan begins with the same four words. We saw the movie last night with Sarah and Damien. It was OK. I plan to talk about it in some detail in the following entry here, so if you have not seen the movie, be forewarned that it contains some spoilers.

Erin and I first saw Borat on Da Ali G Show when we were staying in San Fransisco. We had free HBO. In the skit we saw, Borat was attempted to learn karate and asks the instructor "What is a move to stop a Jew?" and "What is a move to silence a woman?" At first we were baffled, but once we figured out Cohen's variety of humor, we were hooked.

I maintain that I think Sacha Baron Cohen might be the funniest person alive. I also think that, in comparison to other movies, the Borat movie is extremely funny and definitely worth watching.

That being said, the movie definitely lacks something that makes the character on the show so funny. Take, for instance, the scene where Borat is dining with some upper-class Southerners. Those viewers who are seeing Borat for the first time should know that the scenes in the movie are often adaptations of skits Borat has done on the show. The scene in the movie is funny, especially when Borat excuses himself to the bathroom and returns with a plastic bag full of shit. There is also the element that he is simultaneously, in another situation with shots of the two scenes being intercut, learning manners from an etiquette coach.

This exact format was done on Da Ali G Show, only it was much funnier. The Borat in the movie lacks some key elements of the Borat on the show, namely subtlety, believability, and confusion. On the show, Borat talks about having sex at the table and seems confused that the topic is unacceptable. In the movie, Borat orders a prostitute that shows up at the house. On the show, he merely tells people that he is glad his wife is dead and points out that he smells shit. In the movie, he shows up with a bag of shit. It's just not believable and Borat's follies seem less based on cultural stupidity than a rush for a prank. Also, the scenes in the movie seem staged. I don't know if they all were or not.


The movie also focuses more on the storyline, which is Borat trying to get to Pamela Anderson, and less on Borat's interaction with people. Another element of Borat that fails to translate into the movie is Cohen's use of antisemitism as the butt of jokes. Borat, being Kazakh, is antisemetic - Cohen is Jewish and the pith of the humor is how stupid he makes antisemitic people look. In the movie, antisemitism plays a prominent role in the humor, but it lacks the poignancy of a country music hall full of people singing "Throw the Jew down the well." Instead, antisemitism is parodied in more outlandish and ridiculous ways that just never approaches at the genius of the show.

Chances are that you will think the movie is funny. I do think it's funny, but it just never quite arrived at the level of humor Borat attains on Da Ali G Show. He's just not confused enough. It seems that maybe when making the movie, Cohen and others didn't trust that a large movie audience would have the same patience and attentiveness that the show presumes and replaced subtlety with slapstick. Oh well.

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Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The Lair of the Axeman




My mother grew up on Wixtead Court in Douglas, MA. As a girl, she and her friends often played in a field behind her house. They played sports and engaged in all sorts of fanciful imaginations, even producing plays with neighborhood casts in an old chicken coop. However, their games transpired alongside a fear of a named evil who lurked in the woods surrounding the little dead-end road. The name was the Axeman. Ok, so maybe the Axeman might seem a bit archaic to we denizens of the information age, but kids in the sixties didn't have the luxury of Sony's pixelated SOMA and therefore needed to rely on the adrenaline produced by a good, wholesome scare.

Recently, Erin and I were looking at a map and we noticed that there were allegedly caves in Douglas. These caves, called Castle Caves, were situated near the border of Douglas and Sutton. Astounded, we began asking people if they had ever seen the caves. Almost everyone had heard of the caves, yet no one had actually seen them.

When I brought up the caves to my mother, she told me that, while she never saw the caves herself, she knew of their existence. In fact, those very caves were rumored to be the lair of the dreaded Axeman! She had told me about the Axeman and the idea of finding a connection to some aspect of my mother's childhood really drew me in. Erin, Sean (my brother) and I decided that we would find the caves.

Our attempts were initially thwarted. The two road that lead to the woods where the caves, Brown Street and Caswell Court, were both dead ends with houses and "No "Trespassing" signs blocking our way. Cleverly, Erin thought of going into Sutton and down Whitins Road. A little way into Sutton we found a path, parked the car and headed off the find the caves.

Our trip began with a most promising stroke of luck. Across from the path was a house and there was an older gentleman sitting in the garage. As it looked obvious that he owned the land were planned on trespassing on, we decided to talk to him. He was very friendly and gave us permission to go ahead and he even gave us some directions to the caves! Were were off in grand style.

The hike was somewhat longer than expected. Also, were realized very quickly that we were not really certain of what to look for. The image I had in my head was of a rock with a door shaped hole in it resembling the paradigm of an old caveman cave from the movies. As we walked along we encountered many more paths, turns, junctions, and obsticles. We did find this neat balloon though. It seems that whenever Erin and I go out into the woods, we run into fugitive balloons.











The sun was already setting when we encountered a huge rock face. For those of you familiar with Purgatory Chasm, it was about the equivolent of one side of the chasm. I immediately knew this was our place, yet the actually caves themselves did not stand out and the cliff was really, really big.

We began traversing the face of the cliff, searching for any signs of caves. I went pretty quickly and, as I turned a corner, I spotted something about half way up the face of the cliff. There were spray painted words that read "The Who." Any good explorer knows the vandalism marks the spot. I went back and retrieved Erin and Sean. We abandoned some of our heavy bags and camera gear at the foot of the cliff and started on up. The dry leaves and pine needles made the climb rather treacherous, but up we went. Finally, we arrived at one of the caves.

It wasn't huge but it was pretty deep. I crawled in a little bit and took some pictures, but they didn't come out. By that time it was getting pretty dark out and we didn't want to linger too long on the side of a cliff anyhow, so we decided to set off for home and be out of the woods before dark.

Then something stupid happened. Erin and Sean climbed up to the top of the cliff because that was actually easier than going back down on account of the leaves and pine needles. I went back down a bit to get a camera case and, feeling that at that point I was already committed to descent over ascent, I agreed to meet Sean and Erin on the trail. We had left the balloon on the trail, but within the time it took us to explore the caves, someone on an ATV came by and they must have picked it up or moved it inadvertently. After I picked up the camera case and my backpack, I walked down the rest of the way to what I thought was the trail. The balloon was gone and I had actually stumbled upon another trail. When Erin and Sean didn't show up for a long time I set off to find them, only the trail wound around behind the cliff and I didn't know that. I was calling them and they were calling me and we were all kind of freaking out because it was definitely getting darker when we finally found each other. We hadn't heard the calling because the cliff had separated us. After we calmed down for a second, we booked it out of the woods and made it home before dark.
Well, I'm not sure we can absolutely dispel the myth of the Axeman. Perhaps he just wasn't home or we found a different cave. Either way, Castle Caves proved to be a lot of exercise and a interesting look at something few people have seen.

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