This is today's dose of disgusting modern "culture." Here are the latest two links to the Times Union on bird hatred and cruelty. I don't own a gun, in fact have never shot a gun, and don't think it is a good idea to wildly wave guns around. My mother has one, I think she refers to it as her 4-10, but I could be slightly off because I am not up on guns. She has it at the farm mostly to scare predators away from the horses (that could include predators of the human kind). Although I am not a violent person, in my younger days I did appreciate pranks, and still occasionally fantasize about committing one again. I would never actually carry out the fantasy, however (there's a sentence that would not be necessary if this was a private journal).

Anyway, when I read the latest installment about the ducks in the suburbs, I got a vision of borrowing Ma's 4-10 (if that's what it's called) and shooting out the windows in that jerk's house (or should I say McMansion, because you know that's what he lives in) who has been killing the ducks. (I don't get a similar vision when I read about the crows, because there are far too many nutjobs with guns involved already. I just feel sick. And not about West Nile.) Getting back to the 4-10, though, I've had that same thought about Target's stupid sign for the location that is now where the Defreest-Church house once stood. It being a bullseye makes it even more tempting. The latest mind-numbing TV commercial for that despicable retailer reminds me of this every time.

And speaking of McMansions, a plastic person has had one built down the road. Incredible, in this old village with no vacant land and tiny 100 year old houses perched on all the hills, someone stupidly contracted for an ugly, enormous track house on the steepest slope. It is causing erosion of that hill and run off into the street. When it is cold the run off freezes into an ice/mud creek. I believe the house in front of it is suing because the McMansion violates all sorts of code. As I pass by and see it looming above our street, I wonder what it would look like with its tacky arched windows shot out?

Here's something completely different than 4-10 fantasies. It's a link from the Chronicle (and for a change it's a freebie) that made me laugh. I don't feel that I am treated badly -- maybe because in my former life I was an administrator (with tenure) and so know the meaning of abuse. But even at that, many of these points ring true. It's just that in my case, I don't want to be tenure track instead, I like to be free (see administrator with tenure, above). And if I am honest about what I really want to be, the answer is always the same: a writer.