The Muppets Christmas Carol - One More Sleep Til' Christmas

It's true. There's only one more sleep til Christmas!

COMICS!

Nothing like a good old cartoony comic strip to brighten your day, right? Libby and I have been enjoying the newly opened archives of American Elf, one of the most entertaining web comics around. It's a strange mix of touching family strips, humorous commentary on the mundane, and then all of a sudden there will be a bunch with lots of bad words and "adult" situations. Anyway, I recommend it in a very qualified way - if you're sensitive to this kind of thing you'll likely be offended by looking at the site (and I won't put up a link but obviously Google sees all).

So, on a slow night last week a while ago we made our very own comics. Since we don't have a scanner, I just put up on the fridge and took pictures of them. Here're the results:




Libby's is the top, better, one. Mine are the two lower ones. Aren't we brave to post them on the internet?

My Students Love Me

Christmas vacation has begun. Today was just a half day at school. We had a Christmas party in the classroom, and everyone exchanged gifts. Here's the gift I got from the class:
It's a tree hung with about 20 gift cards to places such as Baja Fresh, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Blockbuster, Mervyn's, Red Robbin, Rudabagorz, California Pizza Kitchen, Baskin Robbins, Cold Stone, Regal Cinemas, REI, and more!

And that's just the "class gift." Most students gave me individual gifts as well. Among these is an awesome book called Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die. It's great. For each destination, there's a picture, an essay based upon an interview that the author had with the birder who recommended that destination, and an "If You Go" section with information about tour companies that lead birding trips there, the best time to go, and accommodations.

Here's the funny thing about a book like this: it makes me want to start another "list" just for it. So far, Jonathan and I have been to one of these places: Southeastern Arizona. So we've got 49 more to check off the list.

We can just coordinate our vacations around this book for the rest of our lives!

Biola Birds

Yesterday I went birding at Biola during lunch. This is the best time to do it because the students are gone. That means that people don't look at me weird when I wander around with binoculars, but, more importantly, it means that there are more birds! The birds come out of the woodwork around the dorms during the break - hopping right up to the doors. Since nobody is around, they are able to access food sources more comfortably.

Anyway, it yielded a good snapshot of what Biola's avifauna is like in winter. I did a little walk from about Thompson, down the creek, and then back over McNally Field to my office. I expected Yell0w-rumped Warblers to be the most common bird, but I was wrong! There was a huge flock of finches and waxwings down by Stewart. Many more than I've seen, anywhere, at one time!

Here's a list, in no particular order:

1. Western Bluebird - 12
2. Hermit Thrush - 1
3. Yell0w-rumped Warbler - 40+ (1 Myrtle's behind Hope!, the rest Audubon's)
4. House Sparrow - 15
5. Allen's Hummingbird - 2
6. Anna's Hummingbird - 10+ Anna's Hummers are currently mostly swarming the blooming Eucalyptus Trees. I heard more than I saw, and mostly around my office.
7. N. Mockingbird - 2 (heard only)
8. Scrub Jay - 1 (heard only)
9. Common Yellowthroat - 2 or 3
10. Nutmeg Mannikin - I saw 1 clearly, but it was part of a flock of three that settled in some willows by a drain. I think there may have been more, but I can't say for sure.
11. House Sparrow - 15 or so.
12. California Towhee - 2
13. Song Sparrow - 1
14. Lincoln's Sparrow - 1 There are quite a lot of little Melospiza sparrows hiding around the creek. I think most of them are wintering Lincoln's Sparrows because they're incredibly reclusive (whereas my experience with Song Sparrows is that they're much less reclusive). I've never gotten a perfect look, though, so I might be wrong.
15. Savannah Sparrow - 10+ I've never seen one of these at Biola before, that I remember, but a group of them were feeding along the edge of McNally field behind Hope.
16. White-crowned Sparrow - 3 or 4. This was weird - much fewer than normal, and I saw two individuals sitting high in trees, not doing anything and without an evident flock. Atypical, to say the least, for a gregarious bird that feeds on the ground. They are pretty nomadic, so it's hit and miss. Lately there's been a flock by Rose Hall, but I haven't been there lately.
17. Black Phoebe - 3
18. Cassin's Kingbird - 5 At dusk, more than 2 dozen come to campus to roost. They must disperse a bit during the day.
19. Red-shouldered Hawk
20. House Finch - 100+
21. Lesser Goldfinch - 50+
22. American Goldfinch - 50+
23. Cedar Waxwing - 50+
24. American Crow - 1
25. Mourning Dove - 25 or so
26. Rock Pigeon - 1 flyover from the flock on Biola Ave
27. Gull - 2 (probably Ring-billed or California, flying overhead at a great distance)
28. European Starling - 2 (there's a big flock that roosts at Biola, but I didn't see them at lunch time).
29. Mallard - 30+
30. American Wigeon - 2 I don't know why they'd hang out with Mallards.

30's a fair number. Earlier this week I saw a N. Flicker and a Say's Pheobe on campus, but they weren't there yesterday on my walk. Downey Woodpeckers are year-round residents, and I missed those. I'm not sure where the Green Herons are, there used to be a resident pair of them on the creek (and they had two babies this last summer), but I didn't see them, either. No Snowy Egrets or Great Egrets, either. Snowy if fairly common along parts of the creek, but not yesterday.

Psalm 23

This is just. so. cute.

Midnight Excitement

Last night around 11:40, Libby and I awoke to a bizarre loud whining sound. It was obviously an alarm or something - just one note, one pitch, and at a persistent level. It triggered a car alarm. Then that died down, and it took a little break. I relaxed. It immediately began again.

So, I finally got up to go look out our back windows. BAM. The bedroom window lighted up. I'm thinking - gunshot? I walk into the dining room and peak out through the blinds:

A white SUV was entirely consumed in raging fire. This was about 50 feet from our window, straight out from our apartment. Libby came out, and I called 911. They said deputies and fire were already on their way. The only other people we could see were in the back door of the dojo across from us.

As we watched, it suffered one more tiny explosion, sparks flying from the undercarriage. I should have taken pictures, but I was honestly worried that somebody might have been in the car, and I didn't want to take pictures of that. The fire was completely in the passenger area, not under the hood.

Fire showed up pretty quickly and they got it put out in less than five minutes. They didn't look too concerned at that point, so I guess nobody was inside. Good!

December 7, 1941

Wikipedia has a recording of Roosevelt's speech on December 8, 1941. I don't believe I've ever heard the entire speech in its entirety before. You can listen to it here.

Every gun makes its own tune.

Libby and I finally finished the Man With No Name Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone last night. They're all quite good.

Some highlights:

1) Fistful of Dollars seemed the most human to me. I rooted for the Man with No Name most strongly in this movie. The whole concept seemed Dantean - playing evil men against each other is just what they deserve. I suppose it's not surprising to find ideas from Dante in a Western if the movie's Italian, though, eh?

2) The gun battle at the end of A Few Dollars More is amazing. More amazing than the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly's iconic fight. The way Leone played with music was beautiful, and how it was intrinsic to the actual scene made it that much more powerful. Oh man, when Eastwood opens up the watch!

3) The last act of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly makes the whole epic worth-while. It's slow up to that point, but the movie from the point where they get caught by the Union until the last scene is a great poetic meditation on human life.

I especially liked the scene where Tuco is standing on a cross, with his neck through a noose, gazing at money he thinks he'll never gain. While this affords the Man with No Name time to escape, it's also intensely purgatorial. This movie is really image driven, somewhat like Dante, but without the medieval structure.

Also, does anyone know if this was intended as a kind of prequel? What does it represent when Eastwood picks up the Poncho he wears throughout the other movies? Is it like a vestment?

It's curious to watch the most American of genres through the eyes of a foreigner. While American Westerns offer a stylized image of our own past, Sergio Leone offers a stylized image of that very image, and this new image is as revealing as the initial. Everything looks, on the one hand, so stark and austere. The sets are sparsely populated, the cities small, everything made of wood, dwarfed by the landscape always threatening to swallow it up. On the other hand, everybody's filthy dirty - inside and out.

Finally, Clint Eastwood played one cool character. I'm working on my sneering squint as I write this.

P.S. Funniest dialogue in the movies?

Tuco: "See you soon, id... id... ids... "
Eastwood: "'Idiots'. It's for you."