by hilzoy
This wonderful picture appeared on Greenhammer:
with the caption: First Case of Bird Flu Hits Florida.
(Well, I thought it was funny…)
In other news, my irises are starting to bloom, my house closes next week, my students’ papers are about to come in, plunging me back into The Hell Of Grading, and spring migration is in full swing. And you?
Stopped putting out bird food, the raccoons are tearing down the suet feeders, but rose beasted grosbeak was visiting feeder in neighbor’s yard!
Weather is still good for Dallas, highs 80-85. Lots of rain, after last year’s drought it just feels so green. Took the dogs to the lake, they love to wade up to their chests thru the water for hours. Rush up the bank, shake, run back in. They can and will swim if they see a reason farther out.
So flash! I bought a pool. $19.95, 50 gallons. Dogs won’t go in. I stand in the middle with treats, they laugh at me. Got a real big drinking bowl in the back yard.
In other news, my irises are starting to bloom…
For a moment there I thought you meant that you too had had eye surgery…
“For a moment there I thought you meant that you too had had eye surgery…”
I was going to ask after her corneas, as well, myself.
Other thoughts: hoping her house is open, later, but expecting that.
And enjoying language, and English, as ever.
Irises are my favorite flower of then all. Can’t grown them here in sth east Queensland-too warm. Will by a bunch occasionly. Good luck for all the grading. Is is this the usual tribulations for this time of year? A bit extra work if you are moving as well, I send many positive vibes your way.
Debbie
Gonna take the day off today — a relative rarity for a Saturday. Son to hockey practice shortly, dink around a bit, drink a couple of juleps later in the day.
My band is participating in the 48 Hour Film Project tonight. We’ve been asked by David Nuttycombe to contribute 30 seconds of original music for the credits of the movie his team will be contributing, which they began creating at 7pm last night. We’ll be in a studio from 6-9pm tonight recording whatever we come up with. Fun!
drink a couple of juleps later in the day.
Never been able to get the balance of a julep quite right. It’s always either too harsh, too cloying or (rarely) too floral; gonna have to spend some quality time in Kentucky at some point learning the finer points of julep-making.
The wildflowers in the meadow below the house are fantastic this year. The iris did great as well. The spider-wort (another wildflower) is totall cool.
I’m with Bob (except a little further north) the rain has been nice. We need a lot more to fill the pond.
Speaking of rain, it’s raining at this moment. My granddaughter was supposed to have a pool party here today. Good thing she cancelled – wet OUTSIDE the pool, and cold to boot, is no way to hold a party.
Jake
Still falling below freezing at night but most of the snow is now gone. (Last snowfall was April 15, we got 9 inches). The lake is still frozen, of course, except M’Clintock Bay where about 2,000 Trumpeter and Tundra swans have now mostly finished refueling on their way north.
Three different species of chickadee were on the bird feeder simultaneously this morning and the four different woodpecker species that nest on our property all appear to be moving in to their abodes. Yesterday I counted 20 different bird species on or over our 3 acres. A good time of year for birds.
Our main bird feeder drives the squirrels crazy. It’s not one of those squirrel-flinging ones, just plain old wood, but it hangs just-out-of-reach from every nearby vertical. They climb up the porch posts, get right up on the windowsills even if the cats are right there, try to drop down from the roof overhang, sprint top speed toward the house and try to bounce themselves off the window (not kidding — it’s terrifying to see) and up onto the amazing repository of delicious seeds.
This morning one of the new generation who hasn’t internalized the futility of it all tried to use the hummingbird feeder (which is about 1/3 of the way there and which can be reached if you squeeze in between porch post and drainpipe and launch from there). Alas, the hummingbird feeder swings freely and sucks away all your momentum when you try for the mother lode… It also splashes you with sugar water, which is amusing for the humans but probably irritating if you’re a squirrel.
Fortunately we’re
total suckerskind and generous humans, so we make sure we’re really sloppy and spill a bunch when we’re refilling the feeder…We got a surprise family of orioles around last year and we were hoping they’d come back, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to.
Our main bird feeder drives the squirrels crazy. It’s not one of those squirrel-flinging ones, just plain old wood, but it hangs just-out-of-reach from every nearby vertical. They climb up the porch posts, get right up on the windowsills even if the cats are right there, try to drop down from the roof overhang, sprint top speed toward the house and try to bounce themselves off the window (not kidding — it’s terrifying to see) and up onto the amazing repository of delicious seeds.
This morning one of the new generation who hasn’t internalized the futility of it all tried to use the hummingbird feeder (which is about 1/3 of the way there and which can be reached if you squeeze in between porch post and drainpipe and launch from there). Alas, the hummingbird feeder swings freely and sucks away all your momentum when you try for the mother lode… It also splashes you with sugar water, which is amusing for the humans but probably irritating if you’re a squirrel.
Fortunately we’re
total suckerskind and generous humans, so we make sure we’re really sloppy and spill a bunch when we’re refilling the feeder…We got a surprise family of orioles around last year and we were hoping they’d come back, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to.
I know I’m not the only American who has read tremendously about Australia, and entertained fantasies of moving there (I have several friends in the past who have).
It’s a grand and interesting land. (Own problems not withstanding.)
I don’t garden. I appreciate them.
Now here was a dude who didn’t let “white guilt” get in the way of expressing will.
No White Guilt For You!
(A response to Steele)
Just got back from the Baltimore kinetic sculpture race (just a spectator). Very entertaining. It was my first time, and I’ll probably return next year. Weather was great, though being a vampirically pale computer geek I do tend to tire out quickly when it’s so aggressively sunny.
But Gary, who on that show did have a deep characterization? At least Dr. Smith wasn’t boring, which is more than can be said for half the characters. I can’t even remember the names of the ones who weren’t Dr. Smith, the Robot, Will, or Penny.
Hey Yukoner–where in the Yukon are you?
(My dad’s folks are in Whitehorse, and we’ve also spent a lot of time around Carcross.)
It’s beautiful in New York now, the calm before what’s probably going to be a scorcher of a summer. As of last weekend, the tulips and cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botantical Gardens were still splendid. And I thought I saw a redtailed hawk on the apartment building across the way last week, but they could’ve just been weirdly shaped pigeons. Maybe I need to get my eyes checked.
I hope someone makes feeding pigeons a crime when avian flu comes to North America. “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,” my eye. Rats with wings, sez I.
All the world seems in tune
on a spring afternoon
when you’re …
A spring-like day, asserted with the tinge of desperation that we aren’t, by all that’s holy we can’t be, moving directly from supra-Seattle winter to fog-enshrouded SF summer.
Note to TV disaster junkies: it should be a rip-roaring California wildfire season this year…
“But Gary, who on that show did have a deep characterization? At least Dr. Smith wasn’t boring, which is more than can be said for half the characters. I can’t even remember the names of the ones who weren’t Dr. Smith, the Robot, Will, or Penny.”
Um, Guy Williams, his wife, and Major Wossname? And older daughter with the long blonde hair?
All I said was that it was a crap show, even to a seven-year-old.
Note to TV disaster junkies: it should be a rip-roaring California wildfire season this year…
Wait, but I heard California had had record rainfall this winter! Does that just translate into more foliage to burn?
“…the Brooklyn Botantical Gardens….”
Man, I spent my entire youth going on the then “D” train from Avenue J to the, well, we’ll skip the particulars, as well as how to get there via bus, from Coney Island Avenue, of K and J, to how I spent all those weekends at Grand Army Plaza Library, and the Brooklyn Museum, and the adjacent Gardens.
It was just my entire youth, all those weekends, most of which I was a volunteer at one place or another.
I loved it all to death.
Franklin Avenue was always peculiar, though, even before Will Smith got there.
Then there might be some strange nostaglia factor in this post I filed on the way home. It speaks to this blog spat, somewhat. Ah, New York.
I’m trying to work up the energy to visit the Bronx botantical gardens. I hear the greenhouses are, independent of their contents, architecturally marvellous. I want to be convinced that I’d be mad to pass up the prime season. I’m looking for exhortations–anyone?
“I’m trying to work up the energy to visit the Bronx botantical gardens.”
Good lord, don’t get me started on when I lived on Fordham Road, with my best beloved.
The only borough in NYC I’ve never lived in was Staten Island, Richmond, though former friends once lived there, and told me stories.
But the Bronx Botanical Gardens were, years ago, effing marvelous. Gorgeous. Among the wonders of the world. Beautiful. Green and wonderful. Awesome. Life-changing.
Is that a start?
(Also, do the Cloisters, for god’s sake, please, if you haven’t. Fricking tapestries will change your life!)
As it turns out, there are times I’m nostalgic for bits of NYC, though I really wouldn’t want to switch living here amongst the beautiful mountains, and small town, though Science/Space/Climate Town, living, for the nasty grind, actually.
But I did grow up there, and love it as a son, even if I don’t want to move back.
I have visited the Cloisters, where, I’ll admit, the provenance cards fascinated me almost as much as the art.
Okay, your exhortations regarding the Bronx botantical gardens are beginning to tip over my laziness. Time for me to break character and organize a picnic!
KCinDC: How do you feel about squirrels?
The thing about the Bronx Gardens is that I actually last visited them in the early Seventies, with my deceased best beloved.
And they were beautiful and wonderful, then.
Since then, I’ve read muchly of the major redesigns, which reputatably have made them vastly more wonderful.
They sounded completely plausible. I’d link, but that’s not my job. Go, and report! (If you’re disappointed, let us know, and surprise me!)
Also, anyone who ever visits a NYC museum, including the Modern, and the Metropolitan, not to mention the Brooklyn, but all the others, should always think of me, in each step, as they walk around.
I take personal credit for them all.
😉
(But I do love the Met, and most of all, the Brooklyn, where I spent endless weekends as a volunteer as a kid, supervising other kids, and docenting for adults. Eqypt! Africa! Modern! Early 20th! Everything! It had it all.) (And don’t get me started on my love of the Main Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, just down the block.)
Also: Bronx Zoo.
Ok, not a bad day. The first communion party (for my son’s friend’s brother) went off without a hitch. Later, my horse didn’t win, and the juleps were a little sweet, but it’s always nice to be with the folks I work with in a social setting, and I like their spouses. Sox won handily. My daughter says she’s quitting smoking. Had a nice time writing a blog post about my three legged dog, reliving my 1980s, and reading a book by the father of “Javelina,” reliving my 1960s.
Neat, CC. I spent 9 1/2 hours nominally helping students study for their finals. Somehow, I think your day was the better spent 😉
Anarch, I was mainly just responding to Jackmormon, but I do agree about pigeons. I don’t think I’ve ever been hit by squirrel droppings, or had masses of squirrels blocking the sidewalk and flying toward me suddenly, so I’ll give squirrels a pass, unless they need to go as part of an anti-pigeon plan, in which case I have no particular attachment.
I do wonder about Lehrer’s claim that “it’s not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon”.
*ahem*
And maybe we’ll do in a squirrel or two…
(:
I do wonder about Lehrer’s claim that “it’s not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon”.
I’ve been wondering about Lehrer. An attributed quote to him was that he said that Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize made satire obsolete. This page may be of interest
In short, the emergence of the New Left, which allowed for the success of the folk-protest song, effectively killed Lehrer’s music. As the split between liberal and conservative became wider, the tension between the two sides increased, leaving little room for the cheerily humorous songs of Lehrer.
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The Onion AV Club had an interview with Lehrer some time ago too.
This page may be of interest
The stuff about Lehrer is interesting, and the stuff that tries to fit it into its cultural context is unintentionally funny. Win-win!
“This page may be of interest.”
Excellent paper. Thanks for that link.
Not at all sure what you are referring to, though, with “the stuff that tries to fit it into its cultural context is unintentionally funny.”
Lehrer’s comment here seems spot-on to me:
And I grew up in an apartment (bottom half of a tiny house, actually, at 1047 East 10th St., between J and K) where Mom pretty much was musically deaf, but Dad played the Limelighters and Pete Seeger and other folkies. Including Lehrer. I grew up drinking that.
I was also, incidentally, reminded of Richard Thompson’s “I Agree With Pat Metheny.”
Brilliant.
I’m trying to work up the energy to visit the Bronx botantical gardens. I hear the greenhouses are, independent of their contents, architecturally marvellous. I want to be convinced that I’d be mad to pass up the prime season. I’m looking for exhortations–anyone?
Completely worth it. The big conservatory is spectacular, and the outdoor gardens are peaceful and beautiful. Everyone should visit. I take my kids every so often, as we’re pretty close.
There’s a free mp3 download of ‘I agree with Pat Metheny’ on Richard Thompson’s audio downloads page, here. While there, I noted that it has been updated; there’s a wonderful acoustic version of ‘Uninhabited Man’ that begins with RT reading William Drummond’s ‘Book of the World’. (Why we love him: not only is he one of the best guitarists in existence, but he knows obscure Jacobean poetry 😉 )
Coming here is such a pleasure, not only to read but to encounter links to amusing and instructive material.
Of course I too am a Tom Lehrer fan (I memorized the songs and the patter from the records as a kid). I suppose I knew at some level that there was patter to go with Songs by but I’ve never heard it.
In light of Steven Colbert’s recent appearance it’s interesting to read his (Lehrer’s) view of the effectiveness of humor in political discourse (approximately zero). So is a rant better? What would be better (that is, more effective)?
I happen to be visiting New York City this week, but alas I don’t think I’ll get to the Botanical Gardens.
I so would be willing to have Richard Thompson’s babies.
I can only dream of eventually meeting a woman who shares my view on this, yet uses contraception.
Just because:
Wonderful. (And, mind, I’m grateful for von Braun’s contributions, and I really wish everyone else would view From The Earth To The Moon, amongst a vast number of other such proper appreciations.) (Not to mention, since I can never help not mentioning it, the line: “I shoot at the moon [von braun’s autobiography title], but sometimes I hit London,” as said by Mort Sahl. Man, I date myself, don’t I?)
1. It looks a bit like our kitten has just mowed down all those flamingos.
2. Another article on Lehrer.
He’s responsible for maybe two of my favorite rhymes ever:
“2, 4, 6, 8
Time to transubstantiate”
&
“As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my aunt Hortense
To be smut it must be utterly without redeeming social importance”
3. You’re all making me miss New York. Unlike Gary I didn’t quite grow up there–I was born in a high rise apt. (literally) but my family moved away when I was two.
Also unlike Gary I want to move to Brooklyn the first chance I get.
I’ve never been to the Cloisters or the Bronx Botanical Gardens (I stay in Park Slope when I visit, so it’s far away & there are similar attractions within walking distance), but I discovered a few years ago that I can still find my way around the Bronx Zoo without even looking at the maps. I can also find my way around the hall of rocks, gems and minerals at the Museum of Natural history, where I think I actually used to play hide and seek with my sisters. (I may be making that last part up, it was a long time ago.)
My favorite thing, though, is the walk over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Short film of Bisson’s They Are Made Out Of Meat. Sort of apropos given the picture above.
Not at all sure what you are referring to, though, with “the stuff that tries to fit it into its cultural context is unintentionally funny.”
Seemed funny to me, anyway. I guess I was in the mood for it.
Do you miss New York?
The Mort Sahl joke is one of my favorites, but I don’t think von Braun wrote an autobiography. It was a film, “I Aim for the Stars”.
@Bob McManus: the next time you infuriate me in comments I’m not going to be able to stay angry; I’m just going to think of you standing in the middle of the kiddie pool with dog treats… Dang you!
Jackmormon,
I’m at Marsh Lake (having the good fortune to own a beautiful piece of waterfront), but grew up in Whitehorse.
Just passed through Carcross yesterday on a trip to Skagway, it is another beautiful spot. Do you have a family connection to Carcross as well as Whitehorse?
Hey, I’ve been to Marsh Lake! Very beautiful.
My dad used to spend summers with his cousins who lived in Carcross. My grandad built a cabin on Tagish Lake, and we spent every other summer out there when I was growing up.
If you grew up in Whitehorse, you might know some of my family, so I shouldn’t embarrass them by giving more details.
If you grew up in Whitehorse, you might know some of my family, so I shouldn’t embarrass them by giving more details.
Very wise of you. It is a very small town/territory. I am still amazed, however, at how many people I don’t know or haven’t even heard of who have lived here for donkey’s years.
I am helpless before the Small Cute Furry.
I live in a very sweet townhouse condo complex in North Seattle, bordered on 2 sides by greenbelt. We have longtime critters here, raccoons and possums and squirrels. Plus a motley assortment of kitties, some of whom are street kitties and some of whom (like mine) are indoor-outdoor cats.
My neighbor Joan puts vast bowls of kibble out on her porch for any-who-need. Some nights she has a squad of raccoons waiting politely on one side of the porch and a squad of kitties waiting politely on the other side of the porch. There’s so much food to go around, nobody needs to fight to get some.
On my porch is the local watering hole: a self-refilling water dish. Sometimes it’s full of dirt, possibly from raccoons washing their hands and their dinner in it the night before.
During cold dark winter mornings, when I open the door to let Ariel out or back in, there will usually be a couple of raccoons looking at me hopefully from my porch steps. When I tell Ariel to come in for breakfast, often one of the raccoons will start to saunter across the porch with a “Breakfast? Don’t mind if I do, thanks!” expression on its face. I don’t let them in: knowledge of how raccoons don’t mix with cats or furniture/cabinets/anything indoors wins out over the awww-reflex every time. But it’s a near thing 🙂
A few weeks ago, I threw some nut mix outside after a party. A squirrel appeared and gobbled it all up (cutely). I thought no more of it until a few days later, when a peculiar noise outside got my attention. It sounded sorta like a demanding meow, and sorta like a birdcall. It turned out to be the squirrel, demanding more nuts. (I didn’t even know squirrels made noises other than tch-tch-tch.) Well, I still had a lot of that mix leftover, so I tossed out another handful.
I now put nuts out everytime I see the squirrel, who has begun to bring along his girlfriend and possibly some neighbors. Peanuts are cheap, so I keep a supply handy. The original squirrel is getting remarkably rotund; soon, he’ll be sporting love handles 🙂
Like I said: I am helpless before the Small Cute Furry.
CaseyL’s Bane.
I have been completely immune to the charms of squirrels since senior year of college.
They used to invade my dorm room, see. We were on the first floor, and the windows did not have screens, only a grate that a squirrel could squeeze through.
The real problem, though, was that the girls who’d lived there the year before thought they were cute, and used to feed them in the room.
I used to save the acorns I would find when I got home. I think it was 20+ by the end of the year.
when i lived in Rochester, NY, there was a small population of all-black squirrels. we had one near our apartment that would eat from my hand… this was before i learned that squirrels could carry the plague.
nonetheless, and all-black squirrel is pretty cool looking.
In college I came back to my room during the day to find my roommate had left a note on the door saying “Don’t let the baby squirrel out.” Apparently the thing had crawled up his leg so he’d decided to adopt it. Fortunately he got rid of it a few hours later.
My Lord, Raccoons are vicious, CaseyL. They are all the time growling and hissing at me when I see them, or more properly,when they see me. Plus they grunt and snort when they swim. There are not nearly as many around now as a few years ago, I guess thanks to the coyotes.
As for squirrels, they make a godawful mess at the bird feeder, they throw away everything but the sunflower seeds, those ungrateful little rodents. At least they could have the decency to eat a little cracked corn. Now I have piles of corn sprouting, it’s a damned mess and thank god for grackles or it would be worse.
The chipmonks are digging under my foundation, and the mice are crapping all over my garage. Me, I’d say the voles and the shrews are the only critters I totally approve of.
Plus the black squireels are moving into the neighborhood, what is the world coming to?
I had the wierdest thing happen to me just now: I had a comment to rilkefan all ready to go, hit Post, and wound up posting the comment at Cute Overload!
rilkefan, I think your link somehow captured my computer. Or something. Very strange.
Here’s my original comment:
rilkefan, I look in at Cute Overload almost every day.
But that’s the hard stuff.
I warm up first at dailykitten.com and dailypuppy.com.
(BTW, when you have a browser that thinks it knows what site you want after you’ve typed in just a letter or two, and “dailykitten.com” is for some reason the default choice rather than “dailykos.com,” and you haven’t had your first cup of coffee yet and hit Return without thinking, or looking, you’re in for a surreal experience as fuzzy adorableness, rather than angry political headlines, fills the screen.)
****************end original comment; moving on***************
DaveC, I keep hearing that raccoons are nasty, but I’ve never had any trouble from them. (Not that I’ve gone looking for it, like trying to pet them or anything.) As for the noises they make… I think those are just the noises they make, which sound pretty awful to us but are probably just conversational to them. (Like French, which always sounds so lovely and delicate and seductive, even if what’s being said is items on a shipping list.)
Raccoons: I used to leave one of my windows open, and one night a raccoon got in. It and I startled one another, and it tried for about five minutes before it managed to jump back onto the window sill and leave. This was very lucky, since had it stayed for just a little while, it would have found the cat food, and then it would probably have been back.
I also, sometimes, used to leave the back door open (this was all in California), and skunks would sometimes come in and eat the cat food. And on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, a badger (!)
Je vous assure donc que, dans un avenir bien possible et bientot, un equireuil bien mignon puisse etre votre contacte avec une peste noire resistante aux antibiotiques.
But then I’m well on the record as hating and fearing squirrels, for very rational and not disproportionate reasons, mind you.
Katherine
They used to invade my dorm room, see.
I lived in very close proximity to squirrels too, and it does not breed affection. For a few years we lived in a 1950s era one-room cabin that had been built using a wide variety of materials and techniques. The local squirrel family had a route (routes?) in that gave them access to the ceiling rafter cavities and most of the wall spaces. They had chewed a hole through the ceiling in order to have free run of the interior as well.
The kitchen area was their main target of course and the damage they did was incredible. (Plastic containers don’t work by the way, they just get chewed open). I often wondered what happened to one squirrel who ate (carried away?) a full two pounds of wine gums. They also targeted any clothing that took their fancy. My girlfreind was not amused when she found they had shredded her cashmere sweater.
But the very worst was that they decided our bed, and particulary the pillows, was the ideal urinal. They voided their bowels elsewhere, but the bed got pissed on regularly. (We made a plastic cover for it).
After many fruitless efforts to block their access to the cabin, I began shooting every cute and furry little squirrel I saw on our property. But new ones would just move in to the vacant territory and obviously would follow the scent-trails of the dear departed one right into the cabin again.
We thought our problem was solved at one point when a weasel moved in. Oh what a sweet little killing machine that weasel was! And he ate fresh-killed squirrel and mouse only, not my wine gums. And didn’t piss on the bed. Occasionally he would stick his head out of the ceiling hole, rotate it around, and emit a series of ear-piercing shrieks if he saw anyone, but this was a minor inconvienience. Unfortunately, weasels really don’t like to be close to people and he left after a couple of weeks.
So I decided that fall to just keep shooting the squirrels until no more moved in (at a certain point as winter approaches squirrels won’t move around looking for nuttier pastures). 28 of the cute and furry creatures were dispatched to the great spruce tree in the sky that fall and then we were free of them for the winter. It was heavenly. The next spring new arrivals (no doubt fleeing persecution elsewhere) moved onto the property, but the scent-trails were cold, they did not find their way into the cabin and we all lived in happy co-existence.
Following up on Yukoner’s comment, I feel I should note that squirrels are mighty good eating.
Funny, I’ve never had a taste for squirrel. Not much meat there anyway.
Whatever love I had for squirrels — which was marginal to begin with — died a horrible death upon going to Princeton, where armies of the vicious little bastards are the most feared predators on campus. My favorite story was from my neighbours sophomore year, when over Christmas break a squirrel had somehow jimmied open the window, broke into their closet, nested (i.e. shredded) amongst all their sweaters, and miscarried a dead squirrel fetus into their clothes* before shredding some more stuff and leaving a few days before they got back from break.
Needless to say, they were deeply unhappy and we, their friends, could barely stop laughing for a week.
* Infinitely preferable to a live miscarriage, I guess; I’m only repeating what they said to me.
Engineer-Poet makes an impassioned plea for increased gas taxes.
I hope someone makes feeding pigeons a crime when avian flu comes to North America. “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,” my eye. Rats with wings, sez I.
I just came home from a holiday in Bournemouth, and they had a campaign there “not a smidgen for the pigeon” 🙂
Lots of gardens and squirrels as well.
In the Netherlands we have less squirrels and my house only gets invaded by cats. Who have to be locked up in the house too in case of bird flu threat btw – I counted that as the only advantage…
DM, contact me offline. I need a smidge of advice for my one day visit to Holland in July.
There is no email link on your blog… 🙂
My email is m.noyce @ hccnet.nl
“not a smidgen for the pigeon”
Just to let you know, Tom Lehrer did that rhyme in his song too:
Engineer-Poet makes an impassioned plea for increased gas taxes.
That’s what I’ve been saying for years, actually, but it’s nice to have someone who, like, knows stuff and stuff come along and say the same thing.
KenB – it was my first encounter with the phrase. To my Dutch eyes it lookes weird, because I’m used to words that rhyme because they use the same letters, so I really have to read it out loud before I get it 🙂