Meet the beetles

Published by Twisty on May 2, 2009. 34 Comments
Celer crab spider lurking in the rose vervain

Celer crab spider lurking in the rose vervain

UPDATE: The flowers pictured above were originally misidentified by the Spinster Vegetation Dept. as phlox. They are, obviously, rose vervain. We blame a crappy Wildflowers-at-a-Glance laminated pocket guide. But we do not apologize for any inconvenience. It is hard to imagine anyone being inconvenienced by a mistake on a heartwarming nature crap blog.

A ridiculous heterogeneity of flora has sprouted up almost overnight here at the rancho. So spectacular is the tableau that I have to wipe a heartwarmed tear from the Twisty eye whenever I leave the bunkhouse. Floral spectacularity, like certain airs in minor keys played on violins, is the opiate of the obstreperal lobe. So it can be somewhat startling, when you sproing across a field to stick your nose in a flower, to discover that the object of your nostalgic spasm is full of bugs.

Most of the flowers around here are full of bugs. It turns out that the only flowers that aren’t full of bugs are the ones you pay a dollar a stem for at the grocery store.

Flower scarabs yukking it up in a prickly pear

Flower scarabs yukking it up in a prickly pear

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and Heartwarming Nature Crap. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt harkens to call of the wild

Published by Twisty on May 1, 2009. 27 Comments
Eastern phoebe nest in the roof of the Spinster motor pool garage. My golden retriever Bert contributed a significant percentage of the building materials.

Eastern phoebe nest in the roof of the Spinster motor pool garage. My golden retriever Bert contributed a significant percentage of the building materials.

Uncle!

You saw it coming. It is no longer possible to resist the siren call of the drunken wood-nymphs on the bunkhouse stoop. Actually, they’re not so much calling as banging on the door and hollering. “Hey, get your ass out here and check out this awesome fungus! Bring beer!” is pretty much the refrain.

“Can’t it wait,” I ask, “until I’ve finished writing another essay on the perniciosity of the sexbot continuum?”

“Do not toy with us. This fungus isn’t going to appreciate itself!” is the answer. “And what the hell is a sexbot continuum? And where the hell is our beer?”

So, until spring subsides, I’ll be out traipsing over hill and dale, shoving the odd rock into my pocket, picking minuscule pink flowers, listening to cricket frogs, dodging nettles, lingering on riverbanks, looking at shit through binoculars, waiting for the Eastern phoebe eggs to hatch, and more or less reveling ceaselessly in the divers attractions on offer by the non-human world.

Even if all this happy-go-lucky traipsing did not disincline the spinster aunt toward the unpleasant business of patriarchy blaming, it would leave little time for it. I’ll still be posting, but I’m afraid it will be mostly heart-warming nature crap for a while. Today, for example, I’ll be shoveling a rank vulture corpse into a feed bag and dumping it somewhere where my golden retriever Bert can’t get at it. Then I’m going to watch it decompose.

Rotting dead vulture, with flies.

Rotting dead vulture, with flies.

I am aware that decomposing vultures offer little in the way of feminist ideology, and may not meet the blamer’s daily requirements. It can’t be helped. Undoubtedly there is a way to blame the patriarchy for a dead vulture, but frankly, I don’t much feel like it.

I will say this, however. The compulsion to fart around in the country looking at bugs and flowers, and lapse into a dreamy poetical stupor, and, you know, connect with nature and shit, is pretty strong, but that’s only half of my problem. I am also compelled to identify, to catalog and collect and compile and quantify and qualify. So I’m stuck with these damned field guides.

I’ve curled the Twisty lip at field guides before; their purported scientific objectivity masks a deeply ingrained systemic misogyny. Take the patriarchal notion of the male as the default, no matter what the species. Especially when it comes to birds, the females of which are always described in terms of the males. Check out the shamelessly biased language in this description of the summer tanager in Birds of North America Online:

“Some females sing, but song is poor rendition of male song: slurred subfigures, brief (if any) pause between subfigures, and short overall duration.”

There are two sound clips of male summer tanager on the website, but the drab old female is so untalented and derivative that nobody has bothered to record her. She should just shut up and sit on the eggs, already.

This sex bias does nothing but ensmallen the ornithological horizon. Was that yellowish bird I heard this morning a summer tanager? I’ll never know, because birdly schmucks seem to think it’s a great idea to ignore and even disparage half the constituents of the species.

Posted in Announcements and El Rancho Deluxe. Bite me, Chad.

Bunting bonanza

Published by Twisty on April 27, 2009. 39 Comments

No time to post. Bunting hunting in progress. An effing mural of buntings, both painted and indigo, are hopping around the Spinster Ornithology Compound as we speak.

A group of buntings is also known, for some reason, as a “sacrifice.”

Indigo bunting, female. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009

Indigo bunting, female. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009

Indigo bunting, male, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

Indigo bunting, male, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

This painted bunting looks like he's balancing on his tail, but is in fact jumping to get at some grass seed. Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

This painted bunting looks like he's balancing on his tail, but is in fact jumping to get at some grass seed. Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Nyerk/Tsuck: small brown birds of Cottonmouth County

Published by Twisty on April 25, 2009. 54 Comments
This poor thing was getting buffetted pretty severely before the winds carried it off, tail over beak, into the wild blue. Female summer tanager (?), Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

This poor thing was getting buffetted pretty severely before the winds carried it off, tail over beak, into the wild blue. Female summer tanager (?), Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

There are some pretty flashy birds flitting around the Spinster Ornithology Compound, but few of them ever seem inclined pose for our cameras. My Gaudy Bird Perching Reticence theory is that, because the air is solid live oak pollen at the moment and it’s blasting nonstop at 30 MPH, the branches they perch on are not guaranteed, in weather like this, to stay attached to the trees. So they biff off lest they find themselves riding a twig of death on a downdraft to hell.

Alternatively, there are those who would aver that the weather has nothing to do with it. I might, they observe, get more exotic shots if I weren’t too lazy to lug the giant bird lens around instead of just keeping it pointed out the lab window on a tripod and setting it to go off every 15 seconds, just in case a cormorant or a blue booby or a Peking duck happens to fly in and perch on the ledge. Admittedly, this method has been producing a somewhat unremarkable result. I may have to rethink it.

Meanwhile, I give you the plain brown Eastern Phoebe. The Eastern Phoebe just laughs at our ceaseless tornadoes. It cleverly nests in an I-beam down at the Spinster motor pool garage, and hangs around on solid objects like this rusty steel pipe fence. It’s no Painted Bunting, but it does something no other bird does. It says “fee-bee, fee-bee.”

The stalwart Eastern Phoebe. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009.

The stalwart Eastern Phoebe. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009.

That’s right. This post is nothing but an excuse to put up pictures of the only birds I’ve been able to snap recently. Small brown birds.

Maybe you could give a rat’s ass about small brown birds. I was once like you.

Before founding the world-famous Spinster Ornithology Compound, I was a dolt and an ignoramus. I lived in the city and had no time for small brown birds. I had places to go and straight girls to convert. When I gave any thought to birds at all, it was to be annoyed that their poop was always all over the last empty table at Jo’s. Furthermore, I believed that every bird that wasn’t an ostrich — that is, all small brown birds — were sparrows. One dismisses sparrows on accounta their ubiquity (this is a grave mistake, perhaps because sparrows are in fact an invading alien cyborg species and perhaps not; it remains to be seen, but in any event that’s another story).

But you’d be amazed how many small brown birds aren’t sparrows at all. For example, the Carolina wren.

Small, check. Brown, check. Sparrow, nope. Carolina Wren, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

Small, check. Brown, check. Sparrow, nope. Carolina Wren, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

This wren usually implements a cloaking device, so feel free to congratulate me on having spotted one. It creeps up tree trunks eatin’ bugs, which is a behavior I wouldn’t mind being able emulate in these tough times. Hordes of them invisibly infest the real estate directly outside my bedroom every morning. They go “chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt” really loud. It’s the kind of noise that, if you hit the sack early the night before, compels you spring from your TempurPedic singing “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” but if you have a hangover, it turns you into a wrenicidal maniac.

“Chirt” is the official designation, by the way. I did not make it up. Birds of North America, the bird-nerd website of record, also lists the following interesting phrases in connection with the Carolina wren: cheer, ti-dink, dit, chatter, rasp, chirt, pi-zeet, scee, pee, growl, nyerk, and tsuck.

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt resorts to posting Onion link

Published by Twisty on April 23, 2009. 22 Comments
Turkey vulture perceives that I have found the right lens and changed the dead battery, so naturally it biffs off before I can focus. Note dead duck toy in lower right.

Turkey vulture perceives that I have found the right lens and changed the dead battery, so naturally it biffs off before I can focus. Note dead duck toy in lower right.

This is all I got, goddamit. I might have had a hilarious picture of the giant turkey vulture that just landed in the dog run and tried to scavenge offa Bert’s stuffed toy dead duck, but you know how when giant turkey vultures land in your yard to peck at dog toys you never have the right lens on the camera, or if you do, the battery’s dead, and by the time you pull it all together the giant turkey vulture has buzzard off?

Yeah, well join the fuckin club.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Mass Media and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt trots out statistics from Internet to make point

Published by Twisty on April 22, 2009. 81 Comments

How long has it been since you’ve had the pleasure of reading some opinionated spinster auntly pronouncements?

Well, that’s too long.

Today I have two things to say, and, as usual, I’m probably gonna use too many words to say’em. So, if you’re short on time, here’s the synopsis:

  • Anyone who uses the term “funbags” can kiss my entire flat ass.
  • The War on Drugs is stupid (statistics say so!).

    • 1. A link shows up in my Huffington Post feed entitled “Denise Richards Funbags.” It’s a video in which Denise Richards, a Beauty 2K-Compliant celebrity, says the words “my funbags” about 893 times. At the end there are little boys saying it, too, as well as a little girl who can’t wait to grow up and have funbags of her own.

    You know what kind of bag would be really fun? A bag full of obstrerperite, a synthetic programmable nanobot compound found on my home planet. You find the knob who made that asinine video and sprinkle this obstreperite into his latte. It bonds to his lobes and compels him to abandon his career as a misogynist video prick, whereupon he takes to standing on street corners, wearing a pencil skirt and a sign reading “I am a human stain. Kick me.” If you program it right, the obstreperite will also give him a permanent erection, making him a social outcast.

    2. The next link is “Tijuana: Body Found On Fire, Head Wrapped In Packing Tape”.

    !

    Another drug-related gangland-style execution. For the lovagod, legalize the fucking drugs, already!

    That goddam War on Drugs! One of my least favorite wars. Like all wars, it’s classist, racist, misogynist, anti-kid, violent, unnecessary, and absurd. But the drug war takes war-absurdity to the next level. For example, it is absurd to the point of insanity, this arbitrary prohibition of chemicals XYZ, based on nothing but uneducated emotional response and cultural conditioning. As you know, delicious, legal cigarettes kill two-and-a-half times more people every year than homicides, suicides, car crashes, liquor, firearms, all drugs (including regular old medical pharmaceuticals), and snakebites combined. Way, way, way more people croak because they like sitting on their butt with a plate of Twinkies than because they overdose on heroin. But neither social policy nor legislation calls for the incarceration in state prison of anyone who gets busted with high triglycerides. I’m not saying it should. I’m just saying this paternalistic “it’s bad for you, therefore it’s illegal” crap makes no sense. Marijuana never kills anybody.* [cite]

    It is also absurd to the point of insanity for a society to grant the state the power to wage a war against its own citizens. If the ruling class really were motivated by a moral imperative to preserve human life, you’d think they’d stop murdering their own supplicants with tobacco and Twinkies.

    “We love the human race, therefore we hereby voluntarily cease production of Marlboros and creme filling. But feel free to grow your own.”

    However, the ruling class is not motivated by its love for humanity. It appears more likely that the ruling class is motivated by a self-preservational imperative to create classes of, and maintain control over, the poor and the marginalized.

    Because what’s actually getting snuffed out in this “war”? Not drugs, that’s for fucking sure. Surprise. The real casualties are people. Specifically the oppressed classes. According to the HuffPo article, over 10,000 people died in Mexico’s drug war in 2006. I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to surmise that few of them were rich white guys.

    These folks aver that the drug war is actually a war on education; it has created its own permanent underclass by siphoning youths out of society and into prison. Once kids are jailed for drug offenses, they don’t get educated and they have a prison record, turning them into untouchable outcasts. So back underground they go, doomed to lurk forever in the dank subumbra of America’s effed-up drug policy.

    According to Human Rights Watch, black men are incarcerated in state prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men. Human Rights Watch does not include anything about women in their “Key Findings at a Glance” chart — why should they, since women aren’t human — but I was able to ferret out of the Internet this statistic:

    At midyear 2007, the incarceration rate of black women held in custody (prison or jail) was 348 per 100,000 U.S. residents compared to 146 Hispanic women and 95 white women. With the exception of females ages 55 to 59, black women were held in custody at higher rates than Hispanic or white women across all age categories.

    And I don’t have to tell you what goes on in women’s prison. But I will.

    In 1997 a US Justice Department investigation of women’s prisons in Arizona concluded that the authorities failed to protect women from sexual misconduct by correctional officers and other staff. The misconduct included rape, sexual relationships, sexual touching and fondling, and “without good reason, frequent, prolonged, close-up and prurient viewing during dressing, showing and use of toilet facilities.” (CIV97-476, US District of Arizona). [cite]

    The War on Drugs wrecks lives, rapes women, orphans cute babies, and kills people. It’s gotta go. If you wanna eat Twinkies on the couch all day, I’m with you! If you wanna shoot smack on the couch all day, I’m with you!

    I propose instead a War on Rapists.

    ______________________
    * Quite the opposite. Back when I had the cancer, if you will excuse a brief excursion into my personal past, you woulda had to pry my one-hitter out of my cold dead hand.

    Posted in Sexploitation, The Entertainment Industrial Complex and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

    Rape culture and stupidity for your iPhone

    Published by Twisty on April 21, 2009. 51 Comments
    Turn your iPhone into a Dude Paradise Generator with this remote control app.

    Turn your iPhone into a Dude Paradise Generator with this remote control app.


    The iPhone used to be the purview of elitists and geeks. A current Apple commercial says it still is, attempting to illustrate the unsurpassed coolness of its product by demonstrating that it can be used to read books and MRIs.

    However, now that iPhones have filtered into the mainstream, they are little more than mediocrity-delivery devices. And less.

    As of this writing, the 20 “Top Paid Apps” at the Apple iPhone Lifestyle section contained:

    1. Bikini Blast
    2. Bible Shaker
    4. sexybytes
    9. Sexy Spin
    18. Bikini Girls 2
    19. Sexy Bikini

    “Lifestyle.” Man, I love that word. A set of behaviors and beliefs for which you must buy how-to manuals and that you must update constantly with the latest accessories.

    That Bible Shaker is a crack-up.

    Are you praying for someone to get healed? Shake out a healing scripture to back up your prayer and pray God’s Word [...] In these dark and troubled times, you need to be equipped with the Sword of the Spirit. What better way to live your life than with God’s answers right at your finger tips. [sic]

    But what’s with all the sexy bikinis? Is this Austin Powers’ iPhone?

    Recently released, but too stupid even for the Top 20, were:

  • iControl Her (a “mythical remote control” for women, with an off-switch for “nagging” and an on-switch for “love”)
  • Cute Asian Girls (“Are you down with the asian persuasion?” Photos of women in various submissive poses for 99 cents.)
  • Angels Lite Edition (“With two beautiful angels, you can easily set one to watch over you, and set the other for a family member or friend.” Magical thinking for your phone.)
  • Afterlife – Next life prophecy predictions for your reincarnation (“Using advanced iPhone analysis techniques and the powers of Numerology, Astrology, Chinese Zodiac and Feng Shui ‘Afterlife’ does the rest.” It’s a little-known fact that Apple’s iPhone OS has precognitive abilities and can predict the future you — digitally!)
  • iBlackBook (“This is a must to keep your women in order.” Application with mudflap-girl logo keeps poontang info handy for mack-daddies, stalkers, and rapists.)
  • The Girls of Miss Campus Queen 2008 Calendar (“Exclusive pictures of the most beautiful and talented college girls in Japan.” How could a person be expected to get through the day without ogling a Japanese teen?)

    • Of course the iPhone has applications that emulate “Spin the Bottle,” but just try to take a decent picture with the damn thing. Sex before functionality, that’s Apple’s motto. Who needs video and sound recording, cut-and-paste, and for the lovamike, the ability to send a fucking photo with my text message, when you can click on a “foreplay” button and hit that shit?

    Posted in Announcements, Godbagism, Men Hate You, Rape Culture, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

    Wingnut on liberal media payroll redefines bigotry as justice

    Published by Twisty on April 21, 2009. 45 Comments
    The rough green snake is over 2 feet long and drops from tree boughs onto your head without so much as a hey-ho-how's-your-toe.

    The rough green snake is over 2 feet long and drops from tree boughs onto your head without so much as a hey-ho-how's-your-toe.

    If only there were enough hours in the day. But there aren’t, so this here snake is all I got. And this here link.

    Salon. Yeah, I’ve stopped reading it, too, but once in a while a blamer sends a link, and the next thing you know, there I am, writhing in pain over another liberaldudelational paean to liberaldudeliness. Today’s article, written by a self-proclaimed “wingnut” (as part of an implausible feature called “Ask a Wingnut”), purports to explain to dullwitted Salon readers the whole anti-gay-marriage point of view.

    Essentially, the essay is an argument for the preservation of heterosexual marriage as the megatheocorporatocracy’s primary self-replicatory unit.

    According to Salon’s “wingnut,” the conservative objection to gay marriage is not based, “in large part or small,” on bigotry. Rather, it is the uncouth manner in which homos seem to inflict their repellent selves on regular Americans that chaps the conservative hide. Conservatives apparently draw a distinction between homophobia and conserving “social traditions that, over time, have demonstrated that they exist for everyone’s benefit.”

    Also, gay marriage would spoil religion — that bastion of socially sanctioned hate and ignorance — for the religious. Regular Americans love religion just the way it is! Their right to hate people based on the whimsy of ancient barbarian mystics is ordained by God. Homos must not interfere in the special relationship regular Americans have with the Supreme Being. I guess it might piss him off.

    To sum up: marginalizing an entire class of people to preserve the social traditions of the dominant culture isn’t bigotry. The right to hate, it turns out, is essential for the greater good.

    Because “everyone” benefits from patriarchy!

    [Thanks, Glass Cleaner]

    Posted in Godbagism, Keep your bias off my gender, Knobjectivism, Mass Media and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

    “Life IS Life !!”: Commenter, in stunning intellectual leap, equates concept with itself

    Published by Twisty on April 20, 2009. 85 Comments
    I tried to upload a photo of a painted bunting, but this proved impossible, as it turns out I haven't actually taken any pictures of any painted buntings. Instead, please enjoy this photo of the spinster aunt's winsome young relative Finn. We were all surprised when her face <em>did</em> get stuck like that.

    I tried to upload a photo of a painted bunting, but this proved impossible, as it turns out I haven't actually taken any pictures of any painted buntings. Instead, please enjoy this photo of the spinster aunt's winsome young relative Finn. We were all surprised when her face did get stuck like that.

    It must be annoying, dealing with a spinster aunt who only pretends to be an Internet feminist.

    I admit it; I have been moonlighting as a flesh-and-blood person lo these past few days, flitting around the countryside as though the Internet didn’t even exist. Spring is boinging up all over the rancho, and — not to be too adorable-woodland-creaturey about it — there are painted buntings to espy.

    It’s not as easy as it sounds, espying painted buntings. They are not, apparently, my specialty. I mean, barn swallow: check. Summer tanager: check. Ladderbacked woodpecker: check. Scissor-tailed flycatcher, red-tailed hawk, mourning dove, roadrunner, assorted hummingbirds, Carolina wren, ostrich, black-crested titmouse, 8 black vultures sitting in a row on a fence: check, check, check.

    But the painted bunting? It might as well be a dodo.

    I regret that I do not have a decent post even now. In fact, all I have, in addition to my gripping bird-watching checklist, is a funny comment from the moderation box, left on an old post wherein I assert that culture is nothing but the realization of patriarchal fantasy. The comment goes like this:

    Hey You People !!

    I am a Man !! (Patriactical ??) …

    I have a wife AND, I have a child …

    I am (was) willing to step up to the PLATE (!!), to take the HIT from this loser, that was harassing BOTH, my wife AND my child …

    It’s just NOT the female’s OR the child’s nature, to really be able to protect themselves …

    Men are NECESSARY !!

    But, men are NOT God !! …

    And, men should Love their wives, and, men should Love their children …

    I’ve ALWAYS tried to do, just those …

    And, I’ve ALWAYS had a hard Time with art !!

    But, I’ve always believed in, “freedom of expression !!”

    So, I’ve put up with their art !!

    I didn’t have anything (!!) to lose …

    In closing, I don’t even know who Firestone is, but, Life IS Life !!

    Let’s get on with IT, shall we !!

    Yours truly,

    [email address redacted to protect our correspondent from a flood of marriage proposals]

    I offer the preceding, not as an excuse, exactly, but for your consideration as an explanatory condition regarding my obligation to take occasional unscheduled vacations from blaming. Even the spinster aunt, with her mighty nerves of steel, can only take so many ellipses before she snaps.

    Posted in Blogulation, El Rancho Deluxe and The Poetical Blamer. Bite me, Chad.

    All-girl ant species sends shockwaves through ant community

    Published by Twisty on April 15, 2009. 46 Comments

    Having undergone a BBC news feed relapse, I discover some South American ants who live in “a world without sex.” But the BBC exaggerates for comic effect, because of course the ants do not live in a world without sex. They live in a colony without males.

    The article claims that these ants are the only species in the known universe to “reproduce entirely without sex.” This is also a comic exaggeration. The globe is rife with asexual species. But they don’t get a lot of press, since, unlike chimpanzees, the structure of asexual animal societies is not as easily interpreted by humans to reinforce patriarchal mores.

    One parthenogenic species of lizard gets the nod, though, because although they are all female, they reassuringly have “fake sex” at egg-layin’ time. But I digress.

    As a spinster aunt, I am one of the world’s preeminent comical antologists, but even to a layperson there can be no mystery as to why insects that are “physically incapable of mating” because “an essential part” of their bidness has “degenerated” are considered female.

    Posted in Keep your bias off my gender, Mass Media, Number 1 Science Information and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.