birds not fooled

After spending weeks perfecting a loud and piercing whistle with which to alert motorists of his presence – one he could make without removing his hands from the handlebars – 35 year-old local velocipedist Juan Rifled was bummed to discover that it did not also trick the birds into thinking he was one of them. “I whistle while I work in the yard. Sometimes, my piercing tones will get the birds whistling, too, which convinced me for a short while that they thought I was one of them, that they had been fooled,” said Juan while mowing his lawn using a muscle-powered push mower of the spinning-wheel-of-death type. “I appears, however, that my whistle resembles the call of the striped-tailed hawk, a tenacious bird of prey, one that visits these parts frequently. Therefore, the small birds – the perching seed and berry eaters – upon hearing my whistling, approach cautiously, flying in close to the ground and hiding themselves in low-hanging branches and bushes; and after a bit of hopping around and peering through cracks in the leaves, they start chirping at me in what I find are menacing and admonishing tones. Especially the little brown ones, they'll stay at it as long as I am foxing around outside the house.”

While having a pow-wow in the pile of limbs and brush near the compost pit, the birds took turns clowning on Mr. Rifled. “What a douche,” said Mrs. Robin #8, of the South-Western Codorus Sheltered Valley Robin Flock. “First of all, the fact that he does everything by hand – felling the trees, bucking them, and then sawing the wood – when he would just as well be doing it with the chainsaw in the barn.” “Yeah,” cawed a small black crow sitting in the rear amidst his murder. “That, and bicycling everywhere? With the way people drive around these parts? That fucking idiot is going to get run over, right soon.” Hopping into a sudden patch of sunlight, Ms. Finch #14 shook herself violently before saying, “Well, at least he mows the lawn by hand, which means that about 99% of the bugs living in the grass survive, as opposed to all of his neighbors, who use power mowers that suck the bugs up into the vortex created by the massive spinning blades, mincing them and spitting them out as a pulpy grass-and-bug mixture that none of us can eat.” Waiting until the cacophony of dismissive and mocking calls had died away before relinquishing her perch, #14 was surprised to get a few supportive pats on her tail feathers from birds other than those of her own species.

Conversation turned feral-barn-cat-related until a small Starling – whom everyone recognized as Mr. Starling #137, that flock's spokesperson – jumped up onto the sunlit perch, whereupon all fell silent. (Due to the sheer size of their flock, the local starlings command a great deal of political power.) “After deliberation,” #137 said gravely. “We tentatively agree with Ms. Finch #14. Therefore, let's all ignore Juan for now, and not mess with him too much when he's out in the yard. If a few of us slip up and burst into song when he's making his pitiful little single-toned whistle, no harm done, but let's try not to encourage his recent and ham-fisted attempts at cross-species communication.”

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on abortion (counter-protesting)

  I am just come from counter-protesting the abortion protesters who have been infesting the central square in the small, rural town where I live. For weeks now, I have driven past them day after day, middle-aged men, grandmothers, and nuns standing out in the cold, standing up for that in which they believe. They carry professionally-made signs that say, PRAY TO END ABORTION, or, LIFE IS PRECIOUS. Some of the signs bear pictures of aborted fetuses, some pictures of cute and cuddly little babies.

  The first sign I made, at two Saturday morning with a head full of booze and a heart full of indignation, said, CHOICE = LIBERTY – KEEP ABORTION LEGAL. Having spent the day playing disk golf at Codorus State Park, I remembered the sign I had shoved into the trunk of my car the night before, and made it out to the square just before dusk, Saturday evening. Within a few minutes, two separate drives had either booed me or given me thumbs down, while one of the protesters, a young, sporty-looking woman, had waved to me at least five times. Fortunately, my disk golfing partner was there to back me up, and to take pictures for posting to the socialverse.

  Once again fresh from disk golfing, today I debuted my new sign, this one with two sides, and two messages. The first: CHOICE = LIBERTY – DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION. The second: KEEP YOUR PRAYERS OUT OF MY VAGINA. I made sure to hit the square around lunch time, this time without backup, to catch the midday traffic. Immediately, there were honks and jeers, thumbs up and down, brief conversations with drivers stopped at the light where I stood, and many, many people looking away in shame or embarrassment. More than one driver agreed that it was “only a matter of time” before someone did what I was doing. The sporty young woman waved once or twice, but her companions, two women in their seventies, never ceased shooting daggers at me, their looks dripping with malicious contempt, their polished little signs no match for the giant piece of spray-painted cardboard upon which I had clumsily scrawled my counter-slogans.

  I caught a half dozen drivers taking pictures, and a trio of proto-hipsters approached me at one point, to have their picture taken next to the vagina slogan, but the highlight of my hour on the square was the local rapid-transit bus that circled the block so that one of the passengers could take a picture of the vagina slogan, the bus's driver laughing and signaling to me with her hands to flip over my message-board.

  I believe strongly in my messages. According to just about every doctor on the planet, a fetus is just not a baby until it emerges from the mother's body. Until such time that it emerges, the fetus is the property of the mother – she has the inalienable right to do with it what she pleases. In the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, each person is granted the right to life, liberty, and property, rights that pertain to the body specifically, that property without which life is impossible.

  If one thinks that the fetus during the first trimester is human life (when it is only a cluster of cells), then abortion activists surely oppose (on moral grounds) surgery of any kind. During liposuction, living human tissue is removed from the body. Similarly, a cancerous tumor is living human tissue – when it is removed from the body, it dies. Who is protesting publicly to end the removal of cancerous growths? No one. When my pancreas is issued a passport, or when my trachea obtains the right to vote, I might agree with the protesters, but these internal tissue clusters are part of me, not separate entities: they are mine to dispose of as I please.

  No country of which I know issues a certificate of conception, whereas most countries issue some sort of certificate of birth. I think this shows us what modern, enlightened society understands: that anything growing within your body belongs to you. Our Constitutional rights must be guarded continuously from attacks by persons and groups that wish to take them from us. So stand up, speak out, and keep your prayers out of my vagina

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp