At Bat

Sorry I've not been pestering you folks for the last few days. I've been hanging out in Long Creek listening to birds, and, since the work on our cabin has progressed to the point that the rest of the family will actually stay in it for a few days, we've been enjoying the magnificent combination of spring rain followed by warm weather which forced us to go kayaking. All that and visits with friends have put me in such a pleasant mood, it is tough to work up a good rant, though there is much fodder to be found. (happiness makes for lousy art)

Somehow, our contractor Tom, my wife, and I , have reached accord on the work left to be done on the cabin. I don't see the rush since only I started this thing 20 years ago.

There is a small area of unfinished siding roughly twenty feet above the ground that has served as the access for all the little creatures that like to move out of the forest and into the walls of nice warm houses. In order to finish the wall on the inside, we have to finish the siding at some point. Well, you can't get to it from the outside of the house because it's too high off the ground...a little detail caused by poor planning and design and locating the foundation on a slope where using a ladder is a bad idea. So we'll do what we can from the inside.

As the three of us were staring at the wall with ripped up insulation, flying squirrel nests, and bat droppings, Tom shook his head in that "Damn, why did I say I would do this job?" manner. We weren't sure whether he was kidding or not, and he probably wasn't sure either, when he said, "Um, you'll have to get the Hazmat people to come in and deal with this... We don't deal with hazardous waste and Hanta virus and stuff..."

"Well now, Tom, you are thinking about this all wrong," I said. "There have been fortunes made in the fertilizer business and what you see as bat shit, is really bat guano and as part of the deal, you can have it!" Visions of fiscal abundance were not dancing through Tom's head, and I'll keep you posted as to how the bats fare. I kinda like them but they smell bad and keep you up at night. I'm researching bat houses and nailing screen wire in strategic spots, because even though I am awake lots of times during the night and enjoy the creatural activity, I enjoy the company of my wife more.

Damn the choices a man must make.

Peace,

Steve



*****

Prairie Weather put me on to this little device. You screw it onto the back of your TV and FOX News disappears! I don't know for sure how it works, but it could be the Bull Shit detector we've always wanted. For $8.95 you get FOX news surgically removed from your TV and an e-mail sent to the top FOX advertisers saying you refuse to watch their ads. I might add that Howard Dean has called for a boycott of FOX News advertisers who pay for "opinion presented as fact";:

With every order placed, FOXBlocker.com will send an e-mail in your name to the TOP 10 advertisers at FOX News letting them know that yet another subscriber has opted out of FOX News. With a little luck and a lot of volume, we can shut the FOX up!

foxblocker

Freedom to be imprisoned by the Truth Squad:

Freedom is ever-marching, and its latest target for emancipation is none other than the Gulag Academia, where millions of students are held hostage by totalitarian educators whose cruel practice of teaching them things they don't already believe could soon be put to an end.

For far too long, higher education has been concerned with "education" and "instruction," mere euphemisms for harsh indoctrination into the totalitarian ideology of Fact.

freedom-from-reality

A longish essay but worthy...How do we hear truth above the noise?

in a world where the airwaves are overloaded 24/7 with the mindless babbling of complete idiots, it isn’t very hard to make inconvenient facts disappear, or create new pseudofacts that reinforce whatever bias or cultural affinity you want to cultivate – particularly if the audience is already disposed to prefer your reassuring lies to discomforting truths told by strangers

billmon.archives

billmon.org//