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And Now for Something Completely Different

June 16th, 2007 | Uncategorized

baby bird

Time for Wild Kingdom again. The phoebes’ babies have hatched. Remember the phoebes? The birds who were late returning to their nest in April?

Hm. While I was messing around on YouTube, my attention was directed to this interesting video challenge by a young gay man.

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One Response to “And Now for Something Completely Different”

  1. g-lo says:
    June 22, 2007 at 7:40 pm

    Comment restore

    —–

    1. Jay in Chicago Says:
    June 15th, 2007 at 11:32 pm

    Awww. My beloved calls me “bird”, so I have something of an affinity for them.

    2. Ginjoint Says:
    June 15th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

    Circle of life, Poomba. On that note…I, too, wonder what Susan would’ve thought (or written) about Annie’s photographs of her dead body. It’s an amazing book.

    3. Josiah Says:
    June 15th, 2007 at 11:41 pm

    What is the dead Susan Sontag photo thing about? I think I missed something.

    Quoth W.S. Gilbert:

    “What, little Phoebe?
    (Who the deuce may she be?)”

    4. Ginjoint Says:
    June 15th, 2007 at 11:43 pm

    Click on the words “babies have hatched,” and it takes you to a YouTube video in which Alison is speaking to her mother on the phone about Annie Liebovitz’s latest book. I think.

    5. Josiah Says:
    June 16th, 2007 at 12:10 am

    I saw the YouTube video — I just didn’t understand what Alison was talking about, because I had somehow completely missed the fact that Annie Liebowitz had published post-mortem photos of Susan Sontag. (I’ve since done a Google search, and found the photograph in question. It seems lovely, respectful, and appropriate to Sontag, who after all did say that all photographs are memento mori.)

    6. Alison Bechdel Says:
    June 16th, 2007 at 12:22 am

    Dude! I so agree about the memento mori pix of Sontag. My mom, not surprisingly, deems them an invasion of privacy.

    7. leighisflying Says:
    June 16th, 2007 at 12:42 am

    Perhaps not as sweet as baby phoebes, at this site you can watch the development of the cutest baby Peregrine Falcons. It’s completely fascinating to watch, but be prepared; Peregrines feed almost exclusively on other birds.

    http://www.cbc.ca/manitoba/features/falcon/

    (also the site is from my home town and I used to watch the Peregrins from our practice space window downtown in the summer evenings)

    8. HGD Says:
    June 16th, 2007 at 1:13 am

    Oh, I totally heart the Wild Kingdom videos. And baby animals.

    9. HGD Says:
    June 16th, 2007 at 1:17 am

    And the guy on youtube is adorable.

    10. Mothra in NYC Says:
    June 16th, 2007 at 1:57 am

    I sense a little subtext of worry here concerning the feedings and the bugs. It makes an interesting contrast with the sun on the leaves, but the difficulty of seeing the birds amid the greenery complements the sense of unease …

    Thanks, Josiah, for finding the Sontag photo. I guess that following the lives of small birds with a video recorder is a different sort of memento mori from a still photo (or is it?), but it’s also a reminder to pay attention to the life we live while we are still living it (and can still be hungry), hm?

    I think I recognize the overhang from the sketch diary and the roof rake incident, yes? I only discovered the DTWOF site this evening but feel retroactively deprived of the sketch diary, which hasn’t been updated in several months, alas … are the YouTube offerings replacing it? Hope not.

    Thanks to AB for the awesome site. I have recommended it to a YahooGroups crew who are currently having a heated argument about sociological surveys on discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the workplace–surveys that request that bis and transgendered people not reply to them. Uh-oh. The arguments have gotten really abstract, so I have recommended that people read DTWOF, which makes stronger points by showing readers the lives of real people. Real fictional people. You know what I mean.

    Anyway, thanks, and have a good weekend. Tweet, or pweet, or whatever those phoebes were saying.

    Mothra

    11. kate Says:
    June 16th, 2007 at 4:40 am

    phoebes!

    i think i might have to agree with your mom on this one, unless susan had given her express interest in having this done–it’s a respect sort of thing. if these were taken without that pre-approval, it feels like exploitation.

    william sledd is a youtube god (he has beautiful skin and that cute southern accent)!