Farm News
Sunday morning, after chores, 52°, light drizzle
A faint flush of green in the grass
'Fro's Future Funebrial
What does one do with a rooster that has far outlived his usefulness? 'Fro is one of four Polish Crested chicks I raised from some very expensive eggs. The chicks grew up to be three hens and a rooster, all uglier than I thought possible for a Polish Crested. The eggs were supposed to hatch bantam Polish Crested but the chicks were standard size. So, lesson learned, I put them in the hen house with the laying flock. There was no rooster in there at the time, Nero, the beautiful Black Australorp rooster, having died of old age the previous winter, and 'Fro immediately became better off than Colonel Sanders.
'Fro fancies himself to be a very tough street dude, a black guy with an attitude, hence his name. He's actually a wimp and the fancy crest of feathers on his head is mostly bald from being pecked out by young cockerels and uppity hens. He's noisy, he's useless, and he chases the bantam hens. He's about to get fired.
Would anyone like to adopt a retired rooster? They're cleaner than retired cowboys in most respects and they don't whine when you make them sleep in the barn. They do raise a fuss in the morning, especially they if live where they can hear another rooster. Roosters have loud voices, excellent hearing, and spend a lot of time saying the same thing back and forth to each other.
'Fro was the barnyard marshal for a short time. I hung a plastic star around his neck and told him to go enforce the peace. Nothing else paid any attention to him, though, and he lost his star somewhere after about twenty minutes. When I saw him wearing that star I thought of the parking lot guard at a nudist beach, a guy wearing a cowboy hat on his head, a star hanging around his neck, and flip-flops.
There are several other roosters on the place, including Claudius, Golden Sebright bantam rooster and the Chief of all Chickens. Unfortunately for Claudius, his Chief status suffers whenever he tries to tackle 'Fro; Claudius always ends up hiding somewhere. While Claudius hides to plot a new strategy, 'Fro acts like a rooster and inseminates all the Golden Sebright hens and tries a few ducks, too. 'Fro is the man, all right.
“Oh! That's easy,” you may say, “Just lock up 'Fro in the chicken house yard.” That might work if 'Fro didn't have the skills of the Thief of Baghdad and the Pink Panther rolled together. 'Fro can escape from any confinement, period. Just before he hatched his egg was accidentally touched by the wand of a careless passing fairy and 'Fro was given some interesting “strange powers”. If you decide to adopt 'Fro you must be ready to accept the fact that he will escape any facility you build to contain him, and, if you challenge him sufficiently, will make his way into your house before sunrise and announce the same from the foot of your bed.
'Fro thinks that his job is mating with hens and he pursues that job with great vigor. The problem is that he is about as ugly as a high-rise in a wilderness and allowing him to pass on his genetics would be a real insult to the Polish Crested gene pool. Nor will the Golden Sebright gene pool gain from any injection of his genes, at least not by any measure of benefit that I can imagine.
“He's pretty much no good for anything.” That's what I was starting to think about old 'Fro. Then, one day, 'Fro walked up to me and said, “'Fro likes children! 'Fro can do tricks and entertain children. 'Fro become traveling entertainer, visit kings and castles.” 'Fro always talks sort of funny, like he's got a piece of chicken stuck in his throat.
The Family Farm is pleased to announce that 'Fro the Crested, Hero of the Battle of Twisted Hedge, Star of more than One Thousand Dawn Productions, will be accepting invitations to reside and perform at suitable Castles and Palaces. If you would like to have 'Fro visit your castle, please contact his tour agent, trash@FarmNews.
Last autumn Calvin and I put some of the Polish Crested eggs, the product of 'Fro and his hatch mates, in an incubator. As a result of that act, there are now two half grown Polish Crested chickens, a cockerel and a pullet, both ugly, living in the barn and being a nuisance. The pullet is okay, but the cockerel has what B. F. Skinner called an “animal superstition.” For some reason, known only to the cockerel, he feels compelled to peck my shoes whenever I am within range. It doesn't hurt, but it does become annoying to have a chicken underfoot all the time in the barn. I've accidentally stepped on him a half dozen times or more but that has done nothing to inhibit his desire to peck my shoes.
These two Polish Crested teenagers are beginning to realize that, for some reason which must be related to my incompetence, I consider them to be a nuisance. They think I don't appreciate them, which is true, and are threatening to follow in their father's footsteps, which I would appreciate, and leave home. They call themselves The Somerset Twins, which they aren't, and claim they sing, dance, and do impersonations of waterfowl, which is true. Their tour agent is also trash@FarmNews.
When I announced that 'Fro would be replaced soon, the hens in the hen house responded by doubling weekly egg production. Old 'Fro has lots of talk and strut but no slow and easy pleasure slipped in on the side. They want a real gentleman in their hen house, they say. The trouble is that they are a bunch of cranky old hens and Antonio Banderas probably couldn't get a cackle out of them.
Women (and Men)
I can't remember where I picked this up, but there is an interesting difference between the sexes. For most measures of psychological characteristics, the normal distribution curve for women tends to be much higher and steeper than the curve for men. The median lines for the two curves might be offset slightly from each other occasionally, but the differences in curvature are there for most measures.This is used to explain why so many more men than women enjoy being serial killers. The flatter curve for men means that there are many more men out on the extremes than there are women.
The optimism-pessimism scale might be a good example. On a 1-100 scale, most women are going to be close to 50 with practically no 1's or 100's, but men will spread out more on the scale so that way overly optimistic, or pessimistic, men will outnumber their female counterparts by several orders of magnitude.This whole thing is subtle but important. Women don't always understand men because they don't live their lives out on the edges as much as men do. Men are on the edge more. All those flat curves mean that probably every male is a good distance from the median in at least one measurable category.
FOOL Bake Sale Makes Chief Look Foolish
As Chief FOOL my first big event to manage has been the Valentine's Day Bake Sale, Death by Chocolate. Friday, February 11th, was the big day. The FOOLs, by the way, are the Friends of the Oskaloosa Library, who honored me with the office of President this year.
For the last two years I have been taking orders from various merchants and professionals to have Jeannette's Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pies delivered for $25 each. Last year Jeannette's pies accounted for about half of what we made. Jeannette wanted to make a big splash this year and I was supposed to sell the pies. I failed miserably at my task and by Wednesday noon we had orders for just six pies.
Jeannette took over, made some phone calls, and then baked eighteen pies. She gave two of them to Mark, the nice guy who runs the grocery store in Osky, in return for the supplies, and, adding the ten she sold to the six I sold, made $400 for the bake sale. It's like a Brit country village sitcom around here, sometimes. Quiet Jeannette, an aging spinster, suddenly became a high-speed hustler, doubling the bourbon content of her Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie recipe and selling the resulting pies to fundamentalist teetotalers for $25 per pie. If I hadn't failed to sell pies, Jeannette wouldn't have turned hustler, and our local culture would not have had the shining moment of rising to the sitcom level.
My job was to deliver the pies, some in Lawrence, one in Perry, and some in Oskaloosa. Jeannette decided that I was not a responsible adult (a responsible adult would not be the Chief FOOL), and sent David with me to tell me where to go and what to do. Spinsters can develop interesting ideas about men, such as thinking that two men will be more responsible than one man. Nevertheless, David and I delivered the pies and collected the money. We took two of Nyn's bunnies with us to guard the money and drive the car while we looked for coeds in Lawrence.
Two dentists, one in Lawrence and one in Oskaloosa, each bought two pies. Dentists like gooey, sticky, sweet stuff, I think.
The final figures are not yet computed, and probably never will be, but it looks like the FOOLs 2005 bake sale made $580, a new record. How in the hell can the bake sale come out with a record return and I still end up looking like a fool?
Letter to the Editor
The following was written in response to a sentence in a friend's letter, "It is time for the reawakening of the populist movement to throw some control over these corporations."
Read John Lukcas: The Hitler of History
Read it again.
The enemy is populism and its successful great nephew – nationalism.
The common people stayed with Hitler to the bitter end.
The real political danger to FDR was not A. Landon of W. Wilke, but Huey Long.
McCarthyism was a populist movement and as such had to be taken a great deal more seriously than it merited.
The homegrown populist movements in this country (as in all others) are racist, anti-Semitic and irretrievably ignorant.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” Dr. Johnson
The genocide of the Amerindians was populist in inspiration.
Populism and nationalism are the driving force of the Republican hegemony. The divers complexities which govern civilized interaction simply cannot compete. Try to imagine George Marshal as secretary of state for our beloved obersturmbahnfuherer.
The good new is that such ideologies invariably overextend themselves.
The bad new is that they eventually wreck the polity they have captured – but they do so without sacrificing the support of their chief victims.
Observe the attempts to rehabilitate Hitler and Stalin. Observe the implicit denigration of reason and knowledge in contrast to power. Observe that no responsible person can claim to be unpatriotic or to observe that our troops (through perhaps no fault of their own) need, as did their fathers in Vietnam, to get their asses kicked. The heroism of the wermacht in 1941 was exemplary, but it remains the case that their cause was a bad one and its results inevitable.
Fasten your seat belt. Civilization was amusing while it lasted, but there was a range of idiot emotions it never learned to domesticate. The Krupps of this hemisphere have rediscovered them.
Peter Rabbit
Well, that is all pretty interesting, but it has nothing to do with chickens, rabbits, turkeys, garlic, sunflowers, or anything else. I know, I started the political raving, but from now on the rule is that, to be published, any submission must make some mention of things associated by mainstream society with living in the country. If nothing else, sign it “Peter Rabbit.”
E-mail Subscribers: Subscriptions are free until 2036, when they will increase to $5 per year. To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
A faint flush of green in the grass
'Fro's Future Funebrial
What does one do with a rooster that has far outlived his usefulness? 'Fro is one of four Polish Crested chicks I raised from some very expensive eggs. The chicks grew up to be three hens and a rooster, all uglier than I thought possible for a Polish Crested. The eggs were supposed to hatch bantam Polish Crested but the chicks were standard size. So, lesson learned, I put them in the hen house with the laying flock. There was no rooster in there at the time, Nero, the beautiful Black Australorp rooster, having died of old age the previous winter, and 'Fro immediately became better off than Colonel Sanders.
'Fro fancies himself to be a very tough street dude, a black guy with an attitude, hence his name. He's actually a wimp and the fancy crest of feathers on his head is mostly bald from being pecked out by young cockerels and uppity hens. He's noisy, he's useless, and he chases the bantam hens. He's about to get fired.
Would anyone like to adopt a retired rooster? They're cleaner than retired cowboys in most respects and they don't whine when you make them sleep in the barn. They do raise a fuss in the morning, especially they if live where they can hear another rooster. Roosters have loud voices, excellent hearing, and spend a lot of time saying the same thing back and forth to each other.
'Fro was the barnyard marshal for a short time. I hung a plastic star around his neck and told him to go enforce the peace. Nothing else paid any attention to him, though, and he lost his star somewhere after about twenty minutes. When I saw him wearing that star I thought of the parking lot guard at a nudist beach, a guy wearing a cowboy hat on his head, a star hanging around his neck, and flip-flops.
There are several other roosters on the place, including Claudius, Golden Sebright bantam rooster and the Chief of all Chickens. Unfortunately for Claudius, his Chief status suffers whenever he tries to tackle 'Fro; Claudius always ends up hiding somewhere. While Claudius hides to plot a new strategy, 'Fro acts like a rooster and inseminates all the Golden Sebright hens and tries a few ducks, too. 'Fro is the man, all right.
“Oh! That's easy,” you may say, “Just lock up 'Fro in the chicken house yard.” That might work if 'Fro didn't have the skills of the Thief of Baghdad and the Pink Panther rolled together. 'Fro can escape from any confinement, period. Just before he hatched his egg was accidentally touched by the wand of a careless passing fairy and 'Fro was given some interesting “strange powers”. If you decide to adopt 'Fro you must be ready to accept the fact that he will escape any facility you build to contain him, and, if you challenge him sufficiently, will make his way into your house before sunrise and announce the same from the foot of your bed.
'Fro thinks that his job is mating with hens and he pursues that job with great vigor. The problem is that he is about as ugly as a high-rise in a wilderness and allowing him to pass on his genetics would be a real insult to the Polish Crested gene pool. Nor will the Golden Sebright gene pool gain from any injection of his genes, at least not by any measure of benefit that I can imagine.
“He's pretty much no good for anything.” That's what I was starting to think about old 'Fro. Then, one day, 'Fro walked up to me and said, “'Fro likes children! 'Fro can do tricks and entertain children. 'Fro become traveling entertainer, visit kings and castles.” 'Fro always talks sort of funny, like he's got a piece of chicken stuck in his throat.
The Family Farm is pleased to announce that 'Fro the Crested, Hero of the Battle of Twisted Hedge, Star of more than One Thousand Dawn Productions, will be accepting invitations to reside and perform at suitable Castles and Palaces. If you would like to have 'Fro visit your castle, please contact his tour agent, trash@FarmNews.
Last autumn Calvin and I put some of the Polish Crested eggs, the product of 'Fro and his hatch mates, in an incubator. As a result of that act, there are now two half grown Polish Crested chickens, a cockerel and a pullet, both ugly, living in the barn and being a nuisance. The pullet is okay, but the cockerel has what B. F. Skinner called an “animal superstition.” For some reason, known only to the cockerel, he feels compelled to peck my shoes whenever I am within range. It doesn't hurt, but it does become annoying to have a chicken underfoot all the time in the barn. I've accidentally stepped on him a half dozen times or more but that has done nothing to inhibit his desire to peck my shoes.
These two Polish Crested teenagers are beginning to realize that, for some reason which must be related to my incompetence, I consider them to be a nuisance. They think I don't appreciate them, which is true, and are threatening to follow in their father's footsteps, which I would appreciate, and leave home. They call themselves The Somerset Twins, which they aren't, and claim they sing, dance, and do impersonations of waterfowl, which is true. Their tour agent is also trash@FarmNews.
When I announced that 'Fro would be replaced soon, the hens in the hen house responded by doubling weekly egg production. Old 'Fro has lots of talk and strut but no slow and easy pleasure slipped in on the side. They want a real gentleman in their hen house, they say. The trouble is that they are a bunch of cranky old hens and Antonio Banderas probably couldn't get a cackle out of them.
Women (and Men)
I can't remember where I picked this up, but there is an interesting difference between the sexes. For most measures of psychological characteristics, the normal distribution curve for women tends to be much higher and steeper than the curve for men. The median lines for the two curves might be offset slightly from each other occasionally, but the differences in curvature are there for most measures.This is used to explain why so many more men than women enjoy being serial killers. The flatter curve for men means that there are many more men out on the extremes than there are women.
The optimism-pessimism scale might be a good example. On a 1-100 scale, most women are going to be close to 50 with practically no 1's or 100's, but men will spread out more on the scale so that way overly optimistic, or pessimistic, men will outnumber their female counterparts by several orders of magnitude.This whole thing is subtle but important. Women don't always understand men because they don't live their lives out on the edges as much as men do. Men are on the edge more. All those flat curves mean that probably every male is a good distance from the median in at least one measurable category.
FOOL Bake Sale Makes Chief Look Foolish
As Chief FOOL my first big event to manage has been the Valentine's Day Bake Sale, Death by Chocolate. Friday, February 11th, was the big day. The FOOLs, by the way, are the Friends of the Oskaloosa Library, who honored me with the office of President this year.
For the last two years I have been taking orders from various merchants and professionals to have Jeannette's Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pies delivered for $25 each. Last year Jeannette's pies accounted for about half of what we made. Jeannette wanted to make a big splash this year and I was supposed to sell the pies. I failed miserably at my task and by Wednesday noon we had orders for just six pies.
Jeannette took over, made some phone calls, and then baked eighteen pies. She gave two of them to Mark, the nice guy who runs the grocery store in Osky, in return for the supplies, and, adding the ten she sold to the six I sold, made $400 for the bake sale. It's like a Brit country village sitcom around here, sometimes. Quiet Jeannette, an aging spinster, suddenly became a high-speed hustler, doubling the bourbon content of her Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie recipe and selling the resulting pies to fundamentalist teetotalers for $25 per pie. If I hadn't failed to sell pies, Jeannette wouldn't have turned hustler, and our local culture would not have had the shining moment of rising to the sitcom level.
My job was to deliver the pies, some in Lawrence, one in Perry, and some in Oskaloosa. Jeannette decided that I was not a responsible adult (a responsible adult would not be the Chief FOOL), and sent David with me to tell me where to go and what to do. Spinsters can develop interesting ideas about men, such as thinking that two men will be more responsible than one man. Nevertheless, David and I delivered the pies and collected the money. We took two of Nyn's bunnies with us to guard the money and drive the car while we looked for coeds in Lawrence.
Two dentists, one in Lawrence and one in Oskaloosa, each bought two pies. Dentists like gooey, sticky, sweet stuff, I think.
The final figures are not yet computed, and probably never will be, but it looks like the FOOLs 2005 bake sale made $580, a new record. How in the hell can the bake sale come out with a record return and I still end up looking like a fool?
Letter to the Editor
The following was written in response to a sentence in a friend's letter, "It is time for the reawakening of the populist movement to throw some control over these corporations."
Read John Lukcas: The Hitler of History
Read it again.
The enemy is populism and its successful great nephew – nationalism.
The common people stayed with Hitler to the bitter end.
The real political danger to FDR was not A. Landon of W. Wilke, but Huey Long.
McCarthyism was a populist movement and as such had to be taken a great deal more seriously than it merited.
The homegrown populist movements in this country (as in all others) are racist, anti-Semitic and irretrievably ignorant.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” Dr. Johnson
The genocide of the Amerindians was populist in inspiration.
Populism and nationalism are the driving force of the Republican hegemony. The divers complexities which govern civilized interaction simply cannot compete. Try to imagine George Marshal as secretary of state for our beloved obersturmbahnfuherer.
The good new is that such ideologies invariably overextend themselves.
The bad new is that they eventually wreck the polity they have captured – but they do so without sacrificing the support of their chief victims.
Observe the attempts to rehabilitate Hitler and Stalin. Observe the implicit denigration of reason and knowledge in contrast to power. Observe that no responsible person can claim to be unpatriotic or to observe that our troops (through perhaps no fault of their own) need, as did their fathers in Vietnam, to get their asses kicked. The heroism of the wermacht in 1941 was exemplary, but it remains the case that their cause was a bad one and its results inevitable.
Fasten your seat belt. Civilization was amusing while it lasted, but there was a range of idiot emotions it never learned to domesticate. The Krupps of this hemisphere have rediscovered them.
Peter Rabbit
Well, that is all pretty interesting, but it has nothing to do with chickens, rabbits, turkeys, garlic, sunflowers, or anything else. I know, I started the political raving, but from now on the rule is that, to be published, any submission must make some mention of things associated by mainstream society with living in the country. If nothing else, sign it “Peter Rabbit.”
E-mail Subscribers: Subscriptions are free until 2036, when they will increase to $5 per year. To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
posted by The Geezer at 9:26 AM
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