Category: Jerks

Good news!

Rodrigo is alive! Something told me to go to the plaza by the Metro station tonight. I walked around looking at the Pidges, and then I looked up and saw him:

A Pigeon sitting on a street lamp.

He recognized me, that’s for sure, because he was studying me intently. At first I thought he had lost his leg entirely, but when I put down some birdfeed, he flew down and used both feet and I was able to confirm it was him by his injury.

He’s still limping, and I tried to get him to take him to the vet, but he’s skittish. Can’t say I blame him, as it’s a somewhat busy plaza and not all humans are kind. So I just sat there for about 40 minutes putting out seed, sitting on the ground, sitting on a wall, holding my hands out gloved and ungloved, and just letting him get used to me. By the end of the evening, he was getting within a foot of me, and he gave me a wing and leg stretch, which is a sign of welcome and acceptance. But I still couldn’t get him, so I’ll have to try another night. A young woman must have been watching me because when I turned and saw her, she smiled and said “You’ve got this!” I told her a little of the story and how Rodrigo and I knew each other, and I was trying to catch him to get him to the vet for an evaluation.

Another Pidge joined him and Rodrigo puffed up and fanned his tail out, but more in rivalry than friendliness. It seemed he was tolerating the other bird, and occasionally he would give a little chase. Then they had a slapfight! Ever see a Pigeon or Dove wingslap? It’s hilarious, but you don’t want to catch one yourself because they sting.

Here they are in a calmer moment, Rodrigo on the left.

Two Pigeons walking on pavement.

I didn’t see Isabella, though. A Pidge couple has been coming to my balcony again, and the female looks like her, but is a little bigger, so I’m not sure it’s her. Plus a smaller, brighter Pidge comes to the balcony alone, and Isabella had pretty bright feathers, so I need to take some photos and compare the two females to make sure. The male of the new couple looks so much like Rodrigo, I might have thought it was him but that his feet and legs are healthy. He’s a little smaller than Rodrigo, too.

I know Pidges usually mate for life, but they can also get divorced. If the female with the new male is Isabella, the male may have run Rodrigo off from her. (And she must like the tall, dark, and handsome type.) Or maybe if the smaller, brighter Pidge is Isabella, she may have abandoned Rodrigo if he couldn’t mate with her because of his injury. I’ll have to sort all of this out.

And now for a little stump speech.

If you let your kids chase birds or other critters, you’re an asshole and I will correct your kids for you. Consider it my participation in the village.

A girl of about 6 or 7 and a boy of about 3 were running around the plaza barefoot while their moms/aunties ate at a nearby table. They stopped short when they saw the Pidges a couple of times, and I just knew they wanted to chase them. I continued to feed the birds, hoping the kids would observe and learn how to be kind to our feathered friends.

No such luck. They noticed me noticing them and they ran off, and the smaller one, the boy, must have stubbed his toe or stepped on something unpleasant because he stopped short and started hopping on one foot, all the while screaming and crying bloody murder. I’m just diabolical to snicker to myself because both of them had been causing chaos, yelling, running around and nearly into people who were walking through the plaza or sitting on benches having a snack and trying to relax. They also ran around a couple of unhoused people, waking up one who was asleep in a chair and startling the other as she was rummaging through her things. I mean, come on. Pay at least as much attention to your kids as you are to your margaritas and gossip.

And letting them run around barefoot in a city plaza? That’s just gross. You know many bugs, bird poops, rat poops, and bits of food they must have run through? It’s only a matter of luck that they didn’t step on glass, and their feet were completely black on the bottom. Their mother made them put their shoes on and all I could think was “now the insides of their shoes are filthy, too.”

I sat with the Pidges until they finished eating what I put out for them, and when I stood up, Rodrigo wandered off and then flew up into a tree. The other Pidge walked around a bit and the boy came over and started following him. He was just about to start running after the Pidge so I gave the boy a serious but flat and not loud or scary “No.” He stopped and looked at me like he was putting two and two together, and I guided the Pidge away from him until that Pidge also flew up into a tree. Then I headed home.

Seriously, watch your kids, make them keep their shoes on while they’re on city pavement, and teach them to leave wildlife alone. If you can’t do that, then you have no talking room when someone corrects them on a good day, or heaven forbid snatches them on a bad.

As for Rodrigo, I’ll keep going back and trying to catch him. If he had a big infection, he’d have passed by now, but his injury is bugging him and maybe the vet can do something to help him like remove dead tissue or set the leg if it’s dislocated. Other than that, he seems to be in decent health, has energy, has blood flow to the foot and remaining toe on his injured leg, eats well, and doesn’t take any guff from other birds, so overall, he’s a survivor and a strong little Pidge—especially after coming through all of the noise and air pollution from Drumpf’s excessive and stupid fireworks display at half past midnight last Saturday. Still, if Rodrigo is in pain, I’d like to help him. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.

A Dimmer

My mind is a bit muddled tonight, like my brain is saturated in goo, owing to a whopping two hours of sleep. I just didn’t feel tired when last my head hit a pillow, perhaps because I forgot to turn on my blue light filter, f.lux. That app is a lifesaver when I remember to use it. It gradually turns your screen a dark salmon color as the sun sets outside. The idea is to keep your eyes from tricking your brain into thinking it’s daylight. Daywalkers need that like a hole in the head, so I’m glad for the wonders of modern technology that counter the other wonders of modern technology.

No, this is not sponsored content. I’ve been using that app for years. An ex-boyfriend who was partially color-blind hated it, so when I stayed at his place and wanted to keep him from looking over my shoulder while I was reading or writing, I’d turn it on.

See, one night, before you could stream YouTube directly out of your TV, I VERY STUPIDLY agreed to hook up my laptop to his huge flat-screen so we could indulge our sadistic humor with some FAIL videos. I had another tab open on my browser which just happened to display an old private blog of mine that had some randy fiction I had written when earthly pleasures like that still interested me. He clicked on the tab and the first line to the story on the screen was a doozy: Jake was always up for a good, hard fuck.

“NICE.”

“Oops. I had forgotten about that.”

“Who’s Jake?”

Ah, crap. Here we go.

“Don’t worry. This entire blog is fiction.”

“But who IS he?”

“It’s FICTION.”

“Who’s it ABOUT?”

“NO one.”

After about four rounds of that I said, “Will you look at the date on this, please? It was before I divorced my ex-husband.”

“So it’s about HIM?”

“No. I said it was FICTION.”

“So you made it up?”

“That’s what fiction is, yes?”

“I guess.”

I don’t think he bought it because for three months after that he kept trying to figure out who Jake was.

Anyway, that’s when I started turning f.lux on as a deterrent whenever I was reading or writing on my laptop at his place. That was about 12 years ago, so it’s an old app.

And this, kids, is why you don’t go poking around your beloved’s laptop when your beloved is a writer. You might up in said writer’s public blog years after you break up.

Now I need refreshment, so I leave you with this:

An oil slick, with a haiku that says "dark prism/slips over surface/suffocation"
Image: Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

Still Alive

How are you doing?

Things are hell in the U.S. Capital, thanks.

I could say so much about who needs to watch out for their rights being eroded. As in, married women who have taken their husband’s last name and don’t have a passport are the latest target, with the re-introduction of a Bill for the SAVE Act. Their birth certificates would no longer be a valid way of proving their eligibility to register to vote because it has their maiden, and not current, last name on it. If that’s you, either get a passport or change your name back to your maiden name legally. Same for if you’re divorced or widowed. You know, assuming we even have another election.

But there are so many people who are at risk that honestly? Going forward I think it’s up to each person individually to figure out their risks and how to protect themselves. It sounds cold, but freedom isn’t free. If ya want it, yer gonna have to work for it and be vigilant in protecting it. Get on your non-Facebook socials, preferably Threads, and start reading. I recommend Guy Fawkes News, who is also on BlueSky. Why? Because with the possible exception of the Associated Press, the mainstream media is not reporting everything, like, say, the protest in front of USAID where people were screaming “Shut down the Senate!” or the various activities of Anonymous, which as the kids say, has entered the chat. Anonymous has come out in opposition to the regime and have already doxxed the Phony Stark minions at DOGE who got into the government systems. As I understand it, Anonymous is having a hard time finding Phony Stark’s Social Security Number, which could very well mean that the SOB is not even an American citizen—which, by the way, would make the Fanta Führer guilty of treason by way of giving state secrets to foreign entities. See also, did you know USAID was instrumental in breaking Apartheid, and that the Inspector General for USAID was investigating Starlink’s business dealings with Ukraine right before Phony Stark shut the agency down? Make no mistake, the Fanta Führer isn’t running the country. Phony Stark is.

Anyway, the media is getting shut out and isn’t even going down swinging, so you’re going to have to rely on socials and that’s a you thing. Definitely get to BlueSky because if ZuckerBorg gets a wild hair up his arse, Meta products will become problematic, even Threads. If you don’t make the effort to inform yourself in nontraditional channels, you’re going to be an easy target and it’ll be your own fault so don’t come bitchin’ because you’ve been told—just like all the #leavingMAGA people were told all along that they wouldn’t be spared because of their whiteness.

And speaking of those people, yeah, no. No sympathy. Some on the left—usually men, because men have not been suffering since the Dobbs decision—have been talking about how we need to welcome the leavingMAGA people into the tent. Nah, this is the “find out” part of “fuck around and find out.” The leavingMAGA people are extra odious because they didn’t care about human rights and voting rights and deportation and government purges and cuts to social programs and so on until it affected them personally. Nah, it’s time for tough love, buppies, so…

Just remember, no matter how low you think the regime can go, it will go lower, because decent people just can’t imagine that kind of evil.

P.S. Dear Canada: We don’t want Wayne Gretzky, either. And it’s okay for you to turn off the lights. Don’t let Fanta Führer fool you. You’re going to have to treat him, and the USA, like a recalcitrant five-year-old who is waiting with boundless patience for half a chance to put his hand in the cookie jar when no one is looking. So keep watching, and boycott us. And that goes for the rest of the world, too. Boycott us until the Fourth Reich’s balls fall off.

Until next time, which is I don’t know when.

Subversively yours,

Zen