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National Pigeon Day. Again. I’m Not Kidding.

June 3, 2009

The first National Pigeon Day on June 13, 2008, was patently absurd. I figured it was some kind of avian fluke. But it’s back this year and bigger than ever, taking place again in Central Park in New York City and launching a book heralding this foul fowl.

Woody Allen called pigeons “rats with wings.” I find that comparison funny but unfair. Rats are intelligent animals, used in experiments to help improve the human condition. But will there ever be a National Rat Day? No. Why? Because it’s a stupid idea.

Like pigeons, rats are fastidiously clean. It’s the squalor of their habitat that forces them to be loathsome, disease-ridden vermin. We should honor our unspoken social contract by allowing them to continue scavenging our rubbish.

In return, they enable us to go on being filthy swine who leave our trash in the streets. Hail them as heroes if you’re delusional enough, but for God’s sake, don’t feed them. They eat our garbage; that’s their job.

I wrote about this “holiday” last year, never thinking it would be repeated. But here it is again, so I’d like to take this opportunity to bring you my original post.

June 13 is National Pigeon Day- Ask Your Boss for the Day Off

June 13 is National Pigeon Day in Central Park. I found this announcement in New York magazine:

“We’re trying to promote a positive image,” says New York Bird Club founder Anna Dove…. “There’s such negativity for no reason. They’re harmless, defenseless. They can’t attack; their beak is very soft.”

It’s great that these disease-carrying merde machines that crowd out other bird species are having their day in the sun. I would like to submit a few more unsung heroes that I believe deserve to be honored.

The Asian longhorned beetle immigrated from China in cargo containers and feeds on maples and elms in New York City, helping us control the rampant tree population, since the only remedy is to chop them down.

Then there’s the Chinese emerald ash borer that’s helped to rid us of over 6 million ash trees in the Midwest. To paraphrase Springsteen (or Edwin Starr, if you’re a purist), “Trees-what are they good for?”

Possibly the most overachieving of these heroes is a plant. Kudzu came here from Japan in 1876 as a decorative plant.It grows an amazing 1 foot per day, smothering native plants and killing trees with its vines. Like something out of the X-Files, it has taken over many southern states and is on its way north. Then we can have National Kudzu Day when it’s overgrown everything else in Central Park. Hey, at least it won’t hurt our precious pigeons.

Kids will learn cool pigeon facts…as they nibble on pigeon-shape cookies, view pigeon-inspired children’s art, and take part in a candlelight prayer service.(Dove worries there might not even be urban pigeons in five years.)

Hey, here’s a cool pigeon fact. They eat meat. I remember one munching on my KFC like some happy cannibal reenactment on the Discovery Channel.

Meanwhile, she urges all New York families to “carry a bit of bread crumbs in your bag, a few seeds to show kindness and respect. The pigeon isn’t a threat or an enemy. It goes along with quality of life to show kindness and compassion to all living things.” That’s a lovely lesson for the children.

Yes, littering- what a great lesson. Here’s another one. Have your kids wait until after dark to see who feasts on the castoff pigeon cookie crumbs and detritus you’ve left in your thoughtless wake. That’s right, folks: our friend the Norway rat. He lives on unintentional handouts, like those yummy crumbs dropped from the pudgy little fingers of adorable children who want to feed the pretty birdies.

But let us not forget what is perhaps the greatest lesson of all. Make sure your kids toss those crumbs right next to the feet of a homeless man. This is a great way to teach your children about irony. He might’ve enjoyed that pastry you crumbled up before you came to the park. He’d definitely drop some crumbs around him to feed the pigeons. You know, those homeless have no manners.

And the Circle of Life continues.

Since I had no comments on the blog, I’d like to share the reaction of a reader on nymag.com after I printed a portion of my post in its Comments section.

Your bitterness towards the pigeon CATHCOM, is misplaced. It should be directed to the people who do terrible things to pigeons because they are helpless and vulnerable.

I won’t ask how a pigeon managed to get a bit of your KFC, but why don’t you take a peek at the PETA website to see what those chickens have to go through to provide you with that sandwich. Animal cruelty is an extreme euphemism. As for cannibalism, suppose if you were facing a life of having to eat garbage and street scraps, you might not be very particular yourself.

If the rats bother you, consider what a feast day they would have if there were no scavangers like the pigeon to remove most of it. You think that if people stopped feeding pigeons the rats would go away?

If you see some irony in the homeless not being fed, ask yourself why society lays the blame for their homelessness on them. Like its their fault they don’t have high paying jobs or that they struggle with mental illness without care and treatment. To people like you however it all reduces itself to the problem of throwing a few bread crumbs to a pigeon. If you want irony we could teach our children how little we value the lives of other Americans, and showing kindness to a few pigeons is a great place to start. “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be determined by how its animals are treated”- Gandhi.

By Grimaldy on 06/13/2008 at 3:52 pm

My reply:

Thank you for your comment, Grimaldy. I’m sorry to hear that you are bitter toward people who do terrible things to pigeons. Those kind of resentments can wear you down, especially if you haven’t eaten enough protein recently.

I always specify that my sandwiches be made from chickens that have really suffered terribly. It makes them so much sweeter. And it balances out my diet of hobos quite nicely. The one thing I really can’t stomach is a vegetarian — too stringy.

By the way, I’ll wager you’re no more like Gandhi than I am. He didn’t have to pretentiously quote himself, after all.

By kathcom on 06/13/2008 at 5:23 pm

*****

Even with this only in its second year and a black man in the White House, I’ll bet it’s easier to get this day off than Martin Luther King Day. Good luck, everybody! Let me know how it goes.

7 Signs I’m Getting Old

May 21, 2009

1. I’m not sure if I’m middle-aged because I don’t know when I’m going to die. But with every birthday, the conceit gets closer to science fiction.

2. Two years ago, my husband and I went to an Ozzy Osbourne concert at Madison Square Garden. We were deaf for three days afterward and decided (à la Danny Glover) that we were “getting too old for this shit.”

Next week, we’re going to Radio City Music Hall to hear Karl Rove debate James Carville. I am so stoked. If Carville says my favorite line, “I wouldn’t piss down his throat if his heart were on fire,” I’m going to throw my bra onstage.

3. We’re big boxing fans. We saw the first Mickey Ward v. Arturo Gatti fight from the third row. We could smell the blood. I used to box with a personal trainer for fun. Now I get tired out after three rounds of boxing on the Nintendo Wii. I can taste the blood.

4. I consider a good bowel movement a major accomplishment. Not because I’m constipated, just because it’s creative.

5. If I ever lose my mind, I want to make sure I’m still patriotic. So my Living Will stipulates that my caregivers dress me in the following shirt.

6. When I die, I want to be buried in Florida. I’ll finally own real estate that even Disney can’t build on. That’s power.

7. I want my tombstone to say this:

Then again, maybe I’d rather it say something simple, like this:

I can’t decide, you see. I’m getting old.

By the numbers:
7 Good Band Names
9 Ways to Prevent Your Own Valentine’s Day Massacre

Ask the Right Question

April 1, 2009

Instead of asking if Bruce Willis, at 54, is too old for his bride, 30-year-old Victoria’s Secret model Emma Heming, we should be asking this: Isn’t she too old to be a model?

Faith Reconsidered

March 9, 2009

I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.

But not a new flower per drop, of course. That would be a doomsday scenario for the human race, pretty flowers choking out all life as we know it. Except possibly bees.

Sandwich Fixins #4

January 30, 2009

Between the fear and the hope, 2009 is shaping up to be a bumpy ride. I might be a newborn foal taking my first wobbly steps or I could be Old Yeller wagging my tail at the man with the gun. Too soon to tell. Either way, I’ve got some questions.

*****

Why does George Michael continue to use public bathrooms? How many times does he need to get busted before he’ll learn to put a bedpan in his limo? At least he only got caught with crack and pot this time. Maybe the glory hole was closed for the night.

*****

Has a friend ever come back from a trip to Europe and told you the public toilets there are great: they’re really clean? Define clean. Did you ever have someone barf into a helmet and then put it on? I trust the answer is no but I think you catch my drift. Those places would look like a CSI murder scene under a blacklight. Or like a bedspread at the Holiday Inn.

I used a public bathroom in Paris once. Supposedly it locked and cleaned itself between every use. So I thought, what if a bum got stuck in there? Would he drown?

*****

Why don’t environmentalists ever tell people they should stop having pets? What’s worse for the planet: dog shit or dog shit in a baggy, preserved in a landfill until the end of time? People run around bagging up crap behind Fido, but do you think they’d do that for you? They’d put you in a frigging home.

*****

Where do creationists think oil comes from? It’s fossil fuel. But if the earth is only 6,000 years old and scientists faked the fossil record, where does the oil come from? If dinosaurs walked the earth with humans, which must be true because Sarah Palin believes it, those fossils turn to oil fast. That’s good news because the hamster you buried in your backyard is fuel by now. If we just stop cremation and putting our dead in boxes, we’ll soon be right as rain. Apply some pressure and pretty soon Grandma’s corpse will be bubbling up some crude.

*****

Does anyone actually think that paint-on abs look good? If I have a huge belly, the last thing I want to do is draw a big diagram on it. The only place I want to see paint on a guy’s belly is at an NFL game. And that’s just so I can make fun of him. For God’s sake, people! Even Stevie Wonder has a sense of touch: do you think he doesn’t know what fat feels like?

*****

Why aren’t there any winos anymore? Where have they gone?

Survey Says…?

January 28, 2009

On occasion, I participate in online surveys. If you’ve read any advertising telling you how much money you can make from filling them out, it’s true. I’m writing this to you from my yacht.

After completing quite a few, and marveling at companies’ need to hear my humble opinions, I felt I’d become something of an expert. At the very least, I was well-versed in answering the demographic questions which precede each one.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

Granted, I’ve seen different iterations of this question over time. It used to be simply: What is your gender? I assumed someone had complained about the plain-spoken rudeness of that when I started to see this variation: Which do you consider yourself? I still found this relatively straightforward. I remained confident of my reply.

But now they ask me this: Which of the following best describes my GENDER? Suddenly I’m confused. Who is doing the describing? If it’s the man who saw me pumping gas, wearing a plaid shirt after I’d gotten my hair cut too short, which way would he lean?

If I’m describing it, how best to judge? I’m not a fan of menstruation, but my junk is on the inside. I watch football but don’t spend all day taking a dump while reading the paper.

I could be a pre-op transsexual. If we haven’t had the surgery, aren’t we all pre-op transsexuals? Where will we get all those testicles? Will they use ping pong balls? Surely racquet balls would be too heavy. And where would we put them? It seems like they’d just be in the way. Why don’t more men wear skirts?

Okay, I don’t have testicles, but does that truly make me female? Wouldn’t a man whose huevos fell victim to an unfortunate threshing machine accident be offended that I’ve made this assumption?

Damn these online taskmasters! Describing, I can understand. I can do that. But best? How can I know for sure?

Don’t Mess with Mamet

January 12, 2009

It seems Jeremy Piven wished to be excused early from the run of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow on Broadway. He was just exhausted and incidentally wanted to attend the Golden Globe ceremony. The schedule was adjusted so that he could attend, tired though he might be, then return and finish his couple of weeks as the lead in the play.

Fulfilling his obligation proved too much for the actor’s constitution. He ditched his well-reviewed role and forced his costars to go on without him. Why? Too much sushi. Somehow he had managed to give himself mercury poisoning.

Forget that the man would hardly have time to utter a line between shoving fistfuls of tuna in his piehole to have that effect. Even if he were sucking, snorting and skin-popping the stuff—I think you catch my drift. Bullshit.

Surprisingly, there was much handwringing done over this. It was taken seriously, with urgent talk of mercury levels, fattiness of fish, highness on the food chain, et cetera. I believe a tuna may have been called in to testify. An order of protection may have been issued.

Whether Mr. Piven could resist the urge to leap facefirst into a sushi bar and wallow, snuffling, in its fleshy delights was a cause for grave concern. Limo routes were adjusted accordingly.

Needless to say, this medical crisis precluded Mr. Piven’s return to Broadway. His experimental chelation therapy via single-malt Scotch had doubtlessly already begun.

At some point, a reporter with Daily Variety thought to ask Mr. Mamet, the play’s author and director, his opinion of Piven’s untimely departure. Mamet said, “My understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”

Boom! This is why I love David Mamet. What a perfectly crafted line. I like you, too, Jeremy, but you’re the Tawana Brawley of Broadway. Don’t turn your back; there might be a writer there poised to take your measure.

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*****Since I had no comments on the blog, I’d like to share the reaction of a reader on nymag.com after I printed a portion of my post in its Comments section.*****

Since I had no comments on the blog, I’d like to share the reaction of a reader on nymag.com after I printed a portion of my post in its Comments section.