Savage ducks

Sitting at our picnic table on the shores of Black Lake, watching the local gang of mallards getting fed cheesey poofs or something by one of the neighboring campsites - a seagull swooped in to take part, and the ducks mobbed him. He couldn't even take off again.  I've never seen aggressive ducks before.

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Makes you think (I hope)

Of course, we know virtually nothing about the Oslo incident yet - It'll be interesting, in fact, to see how long it takes for even an official, let alone an accurate account of motives and scope emerges.

But whatever was going on, you gotta remember: this apparent blend of extreme religion and extreme politics isn't an isolated position. It's the far end of a range along which lie gradations of the same points of view, less festered, less obscene, but still on the same road.  Think about it when you vote -- or even when you pick a news show or buy a paper.

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Heirogliphics of a sort

We did our obligatory quick run through the State Street Art Fair last night, and over by Rackham, there was a large, sparsely staffed set of tables from Applegate Farms. They were doing nothing at all that I could see except giving away free samples of their hot dogs, along with brochures and the pin shown here.

The translation they were trying for, I assume, is "I love meat," a marketing cliche in which "love" is represented by a heart shape. But by replacing it with an apple, I suppose they were trying to link it to their name, Applegate. But then, in the inevitable back and forth with the CEO, I imagine the following dialog went on.

CEO: I apple meat? What does that mean?
Marketing Creep: Well, it still means I heart meat, but the Apple is for Applegate, you know, tying it to us.
CEO: I don't get it. How much do these pins cost?
Marketing Creep: Well, maybe we need to strengthen the imagery -- what do you think, artist?
Artist: Uh, how about if there's an arrow through the apple? Like what's his name shooting an apple off somebody's head? That would strengthen the apple-ness of it.
CEO: What? Paul Revere or somebody like that?
Marketing Creep: Yeah, or Ted Nugent -- he's hot right now.
CEO: Couldn't we get Ted Nugent to do an ad for us?
Marketing Creep: You think the pins are expensive?
Artist: And there's all this feral pig thing, tied to Ted right now. We might want to hold off on that until we see who comes out on top.
CEO: On top of what? Ted Nugent is in favor of feral pigs?
CFO: (Popping in) Are you winding up? I need the conference room.
CEO: Oh, hell, I don't care. Put an arrow in and run with it.
Artist: Actually, you know, it would make a pretty good logo. We should put it on everything.
CEO: Fine, fine. Just don't go nuts with the budget.

I have long wanted to create and copyright a heiro-phrase like this myself, in which the characters would be:

I X-a-(drawing of a shipping container) (topic)

Which would be read as I execrate New York or Michelle Bachmann or something. But it would just cause traffic accidents, I suppose.

And by the way, they were terrible hot dogs.