I recently linked a hilarious account of how exactly she was once moved to purchase a $4000 jacket while out of work by Mary H.K. Choi.
That story was so good that I immediately purchased her “How-I-Came-to-My-Senses-and-Got-the-Hell-Out-of-NYC” memoir (published as a quite inexpensive eBook).
It’s only 45 pages, and I got around to reading it last night. I particularly liked her take on San Francisco.
I loathe San Francisco. Sure, it looks like Jurassic Park in places, and the fog layer is enchanting with its plumes and trellises interweaving with the leaves and lichen on the redwoods. But everything else is like if New York’s Gramercy neighborhood got a whole town. On any given night there are way too many ‘going-out shirts’ and the women dress like there was a fire sale at some emporium that only sells clam-diggers and kicky little jackets with ornamental zippers. I have never so frequently witnessed pinstripe and patchwork meeting in the middle as I have on the tragic A-line skirts of Valencia Street. Every man who isn’t contemptibly rich enough to be famous for it reminds me of Matthew Lillard’s pigtail-braided Rollerblader in Hackers. I have never tallied so many ‘Pick-Up Artist’ hats or labret piercings outside of 1996. Fashion is no more than an indication of larger trends. Certain parts of San Francisco are what happens when white people have no natural predators. [emphasis added]
Tyson will attack you if you come within a two-mile stretch of the Grand Union Canal in Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire. Joe Davies learned this the hard way and capsized.
Hunting is strictly banned in post-Imperial India, but the progressive administration of that country makes the occasional exception, in the case of man-eaters.
Outside magazine reports that, in Uttar Pradesh, hunting has been authorized for a man-eating tiger.
Officials in Uttar Pradesh, India, have issued a shoot-to-kill order for a tigress that has killed 10 people since early December. The four-year-old Royal Bengal tiger has attacked villagers of all ages, prowling an 80-mile area in the Binjor District.
The situation has placed the livelihoods of local villagers at stake, as people are afraid to work in the fields harvesting sugarcane, mustard, and wheat. “We will starve if this situation persists,” Sahuwala village resident Mithilesh told CNN.
Tigers that have turned man-eater rarely go back to hunting wildlife, and it’s clear this tigress is no exception. “She’s gotten used to killing people,†wildlife conservationist Nazim Khan told CNN. “This is easy prey for her. She’s going to kill again.”
Both conservationists and hunters are tracking the tigress, riding atop elephants through impenetrable jungle and terrain. Though conservationists would rather see the tigress tranquilized and transported to a zoo, hunters and most villagers are in support of seeking vengeance via rifle.
Only 11 percent of tigers’ natural habitat remains, according to the Wildlife Trust of India, and there are only 1,706 tigers left in the wild.
It’s the overweight, sedentary blogger out in the country in northern Washington, a couple of hundred yards from his car, who sees “four animals silently streaking along in my general direction. My first thought, in the fading light, is that they are deer… but they aren’t running like deer. They also appear much bigger than coyotes, which are common in the area.”
If we were to go back a century, nobody would be silly enough to go wandering around in a wilderness setting inhabited by large predators (bear, mountain lions, wolves) and not carry a sidearm. Living in cities and their adjoining suburbs, where the possibility of being the object of predation is totally unthinkable, and where carrying guns is severely frowned upon, inculcates the mindset of the domesticated herbivore.
University of Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis look on during lunchtime show as a wild turkey chases a UPS driver around a FedEx truck and back to his own brown vehicle.
Intriguing picture, currently on Push the Movement, but it has apparently been circulating on the Internet for a couple of years with a variety of attributed locations, so the “drunk man” part and the “India” part are almost certainly not true.
Urban Legends:
Depending on which version of the story you read, the overstuffed python above swallowed a drunk guy in India, an unknown woman in South Africa, an unknown man in Qujing, China, a person of unknown gender in Indonesia, or a 4-year-old child in Malaysia.
All of the above can’t be simultaneously true, obviously. The photo, which I’ve not yet been able to trace to a definitive source, has been circulating online for at least two years and more likely than not documents a python digesting a goat or a deer.
Watching the video, it seems clear that the photographer could have stood up and, at least briefly thereby, frightened off the elk, and he would very probably then have had time to scurry off and take shelter in one of the nearby cars. It also seemed clear to me that the young elk was frequently very close to starting a really thorough hoof-stomping, antler-poking display of power.
The Knoxville television station reported yesterday that Park authorities sent that elk off to live on a farm, having apparently witnessed more than one incident of “human contact.”
Apparently, park visitors had been feeding him, and antler rubbing and close encounters of the cervine kind may have been his way of saying: “Feed me, Seymour!”
I saw a very unusual sight in Cataloochee Sunday morning. There were about twenty people lined up along the road watching and photographing a bull elk and his harem of about ten cows and three calves. Everyone was being very quiet and truly enjoying the sights and sounds of a beautiful Fall day in the Smokies.
Movement caught my attention to my right and there sitting on the pavement about seventy-five yards up the road from me was a spike elk sparring with a photographer. The spike had apparently come out of the woods behind the man and wanted to do a little sparring. I turned my camera and began recording the session.
The man lowered his head to avoid eye contact and covered his face with his arms while the spike placed the crown of his head between his antlers against the man’s head and began turning back and forth. The man protected himself as best he could with his arms while clutching his camera and this went on for several minutes.
Each time the spike stopped and backed up a few steps the man would look up and the spike would begin again. The man did not appear to be suffering injuries but the spike would not stop. Finally, a white car approached and turned toward the spike who backed up just long enough for the man to rise to his feet. When the man got up the spike moved toward him and lowered his head like he would charge. The driver of the car approached the spike closer and the man was able to get in the car.
Montana Outdoor Radio asked: “Have you ever seen anything like this in areas out west where the elk are used to people?”
Yes. Some years ago, Karen and I saw California idiots trying to pet a female Roosevelt elk from the Elk Meadows herd near Orick, California. As the human family advanced, the elk looked more and more alarmed, and it was easy to see that if that elk ever decided she was cornered, she was going to stomp or kick some of the offending humans good and proper. Fortunately for them, the elk found herself an exit from the crowd closing in on her, and trotted away. But there was certainly a real possibility for someone to have seriously hurt.
The Guardian has the story of an 80-Year-Old who fought a bear and was tossed off a cliff and still survived.
An octogenarian versus a hungry Russian bear. It was a confrontation that could have ended only one way, and yet shepherd Yusuf Alchagirov was sitting upright in bed this week and happily munching on the three traditional pies his family had baked in celebration at his survival.
The bear approached Alchagirov, 80, in a raspberry field in the southern Russian region of Kabardino-Balkaria last week, but despite his age, Alchagirov showered kicks and headbutts on the bear and managed to knock it off balance.
The bear, apparently irritated by the feisty shepherd, tossed him off a cliff and sauntered away, said Alchagirov in an interview with local television. He was hospitalised with bruises, bite wounds and four broken ribs, but was spared a mauling, and released within a few days. It is not known whether the bear suffered any lasting injuries.
“I got off easy. It would have killed me if I’d chickened out,” Alchagirov said.
