May 2006

There were 21 posts published in May 2006 (this is page 2 of 3).

Saving Baby Jay

Note: Though this entry may at first appear to be filled with cat on bird violence, it has a happy ending. I think.

I was sound asleep in the tub tonight when Kris came barging into the house. “Nemo just caught a juvenile jay!” she shouted, distressed. I woke with a start. Outside there was a raucous squawking riot. I rose from the tub and dripped to the front door, naked.

Nemo was slinking around the back of the house, treasure in mouth. Simon was making his way to the azalea hedge where the capture had occurred. “What do I do?” Kris asked.

“Scare Simon,” I said. I ran to the bathroom for my pants. When I came outside, Kris was pouring her water bottle over the azaleas. “No,” I said. “Hit the hedge with a stick.” She did so, and Simon bounded out. So, too, did another juvenile jay. Simon saw it, but Kris was quicker: she scooped it into her hands.

“What do I do now?” she asked.

“Hold on,” I said. I grabbed Simon and shut him in the house. Mama and Papa Jay were flying from limb-to-limb, squawking at us.

“I’m going to make a nest for the baby,” Kris said. She bunched up some ivy in the crook of some pine branches, then placed the fledgling inside. While she worked, I walked around the house to find Nemo.

He was back by the dogwoods, seated in loaf position, watching his baby jay as it hopped along the ground. Nemo wasn’t even trying to play with it. I thought for sure the thing had been mortally wounded, but when I picked it up, I was shocked to find that it was wholly uninjured. How was that even possible? As I carried it back to the front yard, it squawked — louder than any adult jay I’ve ever heard — and struggled to be free. Its parents squawked in reply.

“Is it alive?” Kris asked after she had locked Nemo in the house. She was as shocked as I was. “What do we do now?” she said.

“Put it in the tree with its brother?” I suggested. But when I crept behind the azaleas — naked except for my pants — the other fledgling was gone. “Ouch,” I said, pricked by holly leaves and pine needles. Kris took a turn looking in the pine and on the ground nearby, but there was no sign of the bird. Can a parent jay carry its children? we wondered.

I let the feisty jay free on the grass where it immediately hopped for cover underneath a lawn chair. “We should feed it,” Kris said. While she looked for worms, I grabbed my camera. I loved the little bird’s personality, his indomitable spirit to have survived Nemo.

“Worms are more difficult to find when you need them,” Kris said, bringing a little one for the baby jay. The bird pecked at it, but did not eat it.

We spent half an hour trying to get the parents and the baby to reunite. Mama and Papa Jay were aware that their baby was with us; they flew from hedge to bush to tree, keeping low to the ground, but they would not come into the open to get their child. And we didn’t want to let the fledgling hop into the bushes (which was what it wanted to do).

The mosquitoes feasted upon our flesh: I was still wearing only a pair of pants.

As dusk fell, we brought the bird inside and put it in a cat carrier. (Oh! The irony!) We gave it a dish of water and a dish of millet. We made a bed of straw. While Kris fussed over our young charge, I googled for information. I found a page about how to care for baby birds — unfortunately, its advice was to let the fledglings hop into the bushes where its parents can care for them, something we had prevented. By this time it was dark out, and we were worried that the parents had given up on their child when we brought it inside.

“I’ll get a box,” I said. I found a shoebox, and we moved the bird and its water and its millet inside. I took the shoebox and placed it behind the azalea hedge, beneath the pine tree.

Will our little jay survive? I don’t know. I hope so. Our feline children will not be allowed outside for several days, that’s for sure. The first place they’ll go when we let them out is the azalea hedge, hunting for birds. I’m hopeful that by the weekend the juvenile jays will be able to fly, and thus elude our hunters.

Cat and Bill disapprove of the fact that we allow the cats outside, partly because they do hunt, killing birds from time-to-time. I respect their position, and understand their concerns, but mostly I believe that the cat-bird dynamic is hardcoded into nature and ought to be allowed to play out. However, I recognize that as a moral human animal, it is my responsibility to do what I can to protect all intelligent life when possible. Nemo killing a goldfinch once or twice a year is one thing; Nemo picking off baby jays who have left the nest is another.

What line has been crossed here? I can’t articulate it, but I do know that so long as it’s within my power to save these baby jays, it’s my responsibility to do so. I feel no remorse at the death of a goldfinch, but the death of a jay seems reprehensible. Whine as they might, the cats are restricted indoors for several more days.

Resources about caring for baby birds:

Be well, little bird!

HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach

For my birthday, Kris’ parents gave me a Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer. This thing has an incredible reach, and suddenly my hedge trimming chores aren’t so daunting. Mostly.

Look at the features of the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer!

  • 2.6 amp motor
  • 24″ extra-long blade
  • 3/4″ max cut capacity
  • dual blade action
  • 6.2# lightweight
  • 2-position pivoting blade
  • improved control
  • extra reach
  • increased accuracy
  • “clean, aggressive cuts

The box claims that the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer cuts branches faster and easier with 40% less vibration.

What’s my evaluation of the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer after eight hours of use? Well, it does cut hedges, but it’s certainly not very good at it. Clean, aggressive cuts? Try ragged, passive cuts. This thing even has trouble cutting through boxwood! If you’re slow and patient, however, it will cut anything. Just not cleanly. It sort of tears the camellia.

This Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer gets 2-1/2 stars at Amazon. The most recent issue of Consumer Reports rated it as Fair with a score of something like 62. That’s not very good.

But don’t let that scare you off! I’m actually glad to have my Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer. Its extended reach feature is worth its weight in gold. Next year when I trim the arborvitae hedge, I won’t have to work from both sides; I’ll be able to get it all in one pass. I also like the 2-position pivoting blade, which allows me to trim from multiple positions. I am very grateful for this tool, and it’s sure to get lots of use.

(I won’t be getting rid of my Black & Decker TR165 16″ Hedge Trimmer any time soon, though. This badboy is smaller, lighter, and has almost as strong a motor as the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer. Each of the machines has its uses, and I carry them both with me as I roam the yard, keeping the shrubs in check.)

I’ve been meaning to get in our yard and use the hedge trimmer, but one thing after another has reared its ugly head: I started two new weblogs, we got busy at work, I got sick for two weeks, and so on. Finally, last week I was able to get outside for four consecutive afternoons to trim the camellias, laurel, boxwood, and skimmia that encircle our house. It took me eight hours, but I finally got the job done. I also managed to trim the camellias next to the workshop.

Now I need to find time to:

  • Mow the lawn again
  • Prune every other hedge on the property — I’m maybe half-way done with my hedgetrimming for the spring
  • Cut up all of the lilac and laurel limbs that we pruned recently — we took down a small fraction of the wood on this place, and yet it feels like we didn’t do a thing

I hope that this hedge trimmer comes in handy for many years to come. Thanks, Chris and Claudia!

Garage Sale Update 2006

The first day of our garage sale went well. I was by myself, so I couldn’t be as social as last year. This also meant that when I needed to relieve myself, I simply ducked behind the garden shed to piss on the camellia.

I had fun chatting up the customers, though I still haven’t learned which people lack social graces and see friendliness as invitation to ramble on about their Aunt Margaret’s gall bladder surgery. It’s like a minefield: you gab with the buyers about the weather, about the neighborhood, about the garden, and then all of a sudden there’s somebody who lingers for twenty minutes to discuss how evil those fucking Democrats are, how they’re ruining the country.

Mostly though, it was a relaxing day, warm but overcast. I sat on the reclining love seat (only $60!) and read. I used an extension cord to plug in my Airport Express outside so that I could have internet access. (The Airport Express relayed my wireless signal from the house to the driveway. I didn’t get much time to use the access, but it was there.)

I worked on an article about garage sale tips for my personal finance weblog. Simon kept me company.

He hung around all day, lounging in the garage, in the driveway, in the garden. Early in the day he climbed onto the roof, where he entertained the customers. After a couple of hours, he decided that he didn’t know how to get down. He meowed piteously. I tried to help, but he was scared. Ultimately, his solution was to step down gingerly on to the newly-trimmed ewe hedge at the edge of the driveway. This did not make him happy: the hedge sagged and bowed beneath him. He whined some more. I managed to get him down, but not without a struggle.

To recover, he spent some time lounging in the midst of Kris’ purple irises. He had been there for some time when a hummingbird came chit chiting along. The hummingbird and I were both startled when Simon leapt from the irises and came within inches of nicking a tasty snack. I never thought a cat could catch a hummingbird, but I’ve changed my mind now. Given the correct circumstances, I believe it’s possible.

Simon came to sit on my lap, where he was once again a crowd favorite. When he was bored of dad, he began to do whatever he could to climb into the garage rafters. He tried to scale a support post. He tried to jump up from a high vantage. Eventually he found a slanted wooden brace that he was able to walk up and into the exciting unknown territories. For the next hour or so, he walked around on top of the garage doors, causing trouble.

Meanwhile, we had a lot of traffic. It seemed about twice as busy as last year, in fact, though sales weren’t double.

We sold $153.25 yesterday (up from $123.50 on the same day last year). Of that, $64.00 is mine, $46.50 belonds to Kris, and $42.75 is Tiffany’s. Last year we collected $206 on Friday and $222.50 on Saturday. I have high hopes for this year, too. Somebody buy our television! Buy our couch! Buy Joel and Aimee‘s old intermittently-operational DVD player!

Most of all, buy my comic books!

The Street of Cheap Dreams

Get your geek on!

Come browse the third annual Geek Garage Sale. Part of an entire street filled with sales, ours offers comic books, board games, role-playing games, computer books, movies, Star Trek stuff, baseball annuals and a whole lot more.

I’m going to be selling the comics for cheap — basically a buck a piece unless something’s especially cool or especially lame. I have a run of Marvel’s Conan from 26-50, a large chunk of Wonder Woman, a (nearly) complete set of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a bunch of Star Wars comics, and so much more.

I’ll be selling some assorted comics compilations, too, including Watchmen, Sandman, and a stack of Marvel Essentials. (The Essentials are $5/ea, the others are $10/ea.)

This year we’re selling a reclining love seat in great condition. (We just don’t have room for it in our house.) We’re also selling a gas range in not-so-great condition (but it’s cheap). We have vases and women’s clothing and plants and pots for said plants and hundreds of compact discs (mostly eighties and nineties rock). There’s a fully-functional television, a sometimes-functional DVD player, a cordless drill, and — if you want her — a bitchy twelve-year-old black cat.

Most of all, there are books. Lots of books. So many books that you can basically name your price.

Oh yeah: I’m finally selling my typewriter. Can you believe it? That’s wholesale commitment to the Information Age…

The eighth annual Street of Cheap Dreams (and third annual Geek Garage Sale) takes place Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 9-5. The Geek Garage Sale is located at 15112 SE Lee Avenue in Oak Grove, just south of Milwaukie, and only twelve minutes from Portland. (We’re just twenty minutes from Canby, so come on up, old friends!)

While you’re out here, check out the other neighborhood garage sale.

(Note that because of the garage sale, I probably won’t have computer access tomorrow or Friday and maybe not on Saturday. I have a big entry planned for tomorrow, though, so it’ll probably end up postdated. Watch for it.)

The Cat Came Back?

Warning: This entry may not be suitable for sensitive readers.

I was nearly to work this morning, was wending the s-curves between the Lone Elder Store and Martin’s Town and Country furniture, when a cat ran out in front of my car.

As always happens in situations like this, time slowed. From the right of my peripheral vision, I spotted a blur of motion. I turned my head slightly and slowed the car from around 35mph to I-don’t-know-what. The blur resolved itself into a long and slender cat — orange and white with subtle striping, beautiful — racing at top speed at an oblique angle to the road. Into the road. I smashed the brakes, but even then I knew it was too late.

I hit the cat.

My car scraped over the top of the cat and a small something flew across my windshield. The cat made no sound. There was no hump or thump. No yowl. The car simply scraped over the top of the cat. My stomach fell. I felt momentary panic.

There was no traffic approaching me, and there was not traffic behind me, so I slowed to look for a place to pull over. (If it were my cat, I’d want somebody to do the same.)

Suddenly I was startled to see, in my side-view mirror, the cat — seemingly whole, but who can tell? — continuing to race away at top speed, across the road, leaping a ditch, and then dashing into the alpaca pasture. Surely it didn’t survive?

I didn’t stop. How could I find the animal now? I drove on, my stomach sickened, hoping that the cat’s people find it soon and take it to the vet just down the road.

Be well, little cat. Be well.

I haven’t hit many animals before, but it does happen from time-to-time, especially out in the country.

The biggest thing I ever hit was a dog. I was fifteen and had my learner’s permit. Mom and I were driving to Oregon City along back roads at dusk on an autumn evening. We came over a rise at moderate speed and a black lab ran out in front of the car. I didn’t even break — there was not time to react. “Should I stop?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Mom said, but I didn’t. I drove on, shaking.

On the drive to Costco today, I saw a more pleasant animal sight. A blackbird, glossy blue-black in the sun, had picked up a plastic produce bag — presumably for nesting material — and was attempting to walk with it, but it kept tripping over the bulky load and dropping it. Very funny. That bird probably thought he had hit the jackpot!

The Death of the Magazine

I’ve received some killer deals on magazine subscriptions lately. My business identity has found its way to publishers’ mailing lists, and I’m being offered “business rates” on publications like Newsweek and PC World and The New Yorker. Like a fool, I’ve been signing up for $10 and $20 annual subscriptions, sometimes for multiple years. “These are offers I can’t refuse!” I tell myself, not understanding that in most cases they are offers I should refuse.

You see, the magazine is a dying medium.

Magazines aren’t dead yet, of course; certain periodicals thrive and prosper, and will continue to do so for decades. Magazines like Harper’s and National Review and National Geographic and The New Yorker are filled with feature-length articles, the kind of stuff that you can curl up with in your favorite chair and devour on a Sunday afternoon. These kinds of magazines still have a future. (Kris wants me to point out that cooking magazines have a future, too.)

I’m more concerned for magazines like PC World and Macworld and Newsweek and Time — magazines filled with timely information. When I leaf through these publications, it’s like I’m living in a time warp. I’m literally reading yesterday’s news. (It’s no wonder that most of these magazines have robust web sites that actually contain more and better information than the print editions.)

The latest issue of Macworld arrived in my mailbox today. It’s all about the awesome new MacBook Pro. Too bad this was news in February. Macworld used to be a thick, dense publication, full of in-depth reviews and useful columns. When I started reading it in the late eighties, it was the primary source for Macintosh news. I looked forward to it every month. Now MacWorld is a lightweight hundred pages or so, most of which are ads. There wasn’t a single piece of useful information in the new issue. It’s a good thing my subscription was free, or I’d feel cheated.

My subscription to Newsweek, however, wasn’t free, and I do feel cheated. I thought I was getting an awesome bargain at $20/year, so I signed up for three years. That’s right: I’m a Newsweek subscriber until 2009. What kind of idiot am I? This magazine is worthless. Any “news” it contains, I’ve already read about on the internet, sometimes more than a week before, and from a variety of sources and viewpoints. It wouldn’t be so bad if there were keen features — there aren’t. There are whole pages in the back of the magazine devoted to celebrity gossip, and not even extended celebrity gossip, but little sentence-length nuggets about Britney Spears and Tom Cruise and I don’t really give a rat’s ass. I feel dirty having subscribed to this magazine. I’m starting a personal finance site and I make dumb mistakes like this? Somebody shoot me.

I suspect that newspapers are near an end, too. Why should I pay nearly $300/year for delivery of the Sunday New York Times when I can get most of the content on-line for free? (And if I want the really good stuff, I can subscribe to Times Select for $50/year.)

Newspapers won’t actually die until there are quality localized news sites to replace them, though. Here in Portland, there’s nothing that fits the bill. Oregon Live sucks: it’s difficult to navigate, doesn’t seem to be run by anyone local, and has an atrocious archiving system. The only site that comes close to a local news source is ORblogs, a local weblog aggregator, but it’s not actually the same thing as reading the paper.

Magazines and newspapers used to be the way we kept in contact with the world. Ten years into the digital revolution, the internet is finally putting the old media to rest.

Insomnia

My prolonged illness has thrown my sleep routine out of whack.

I was exhausted today, so I took two naps — one midday and one in the evening. When it came time to actually go to bed, I wasn’t tired. I tried to fall asleep, but I wasn’t observing any of my bedtime rituals: I wasn’t wearing my CPAP mask, I hadn’t taken my melatonin, and my mind wasn’t calmed.

I lay there staring into space.

Toto crawled over me, searching for the best nesting position. Kris snored. As often happens when I cannot fall asleep, my mind drifted to death. I imagined dying in a car crash. I remembered the day Dad died. I wondered who would die first, me or Kris?

Disconcerted, I went downstairs to the library and read comic books for two hours. Toto came down to keep me company, perched on my shoulders, wrapped around my neck and purring. I read X-Men. I read Star Wars. I read Superman.

At midnight I went back upstairs and crawled into bed. I could not sleep. Kris was still snoring. My sinuses were stuffed. I lay there trying to imagine what kind of superhero I would be if I were a superhero. Would I run as fast as the wind? Would I fly? Would I read minds? Would I sleep?

I got out of bed again and this time took some melatonin. Why hadn’t I done that in the first place? I checked my e-mail. I sat in front of the television and flipped from one informercial to another. There seemed to be some sort of Brendan Fraser fest coordinated between channels. And a Kevin Bacon fest.

I turned off the television and tried to fall asleep on the futon, but a heavy truck lumbered down the road and stopped at the neighbors. I heard Curt come out and talk with the driver. The truck began to beep beep beep as it backed up. For the next fifteen minutes I heard the scrape of shovels and gravel. I could not see from the window, but it seemed to me that the neighbors were getting a dump truck load of gravel at one in the morning.

Eventually I fell asleep. All night I had to contend with Nemo, who wanted to be curled at my side on the narrow futon, and Toto, who wanted Nemo to die.

I’m not particularly well-rested this morning.

Texas Ranch House

For the past four nights, Kris and I have watched the eight-hour PBS series Texas Ranch House. Like the other “House” shows before it, Texas Ranch House transplants a group of contemporary Americans into a particular historical era — in this case, the Texas frontier of 1867.

At the start of this show, a Foreman, a Cook, and a group of about half a dozen Ranch Hands prepare a homestead for the arrival of the new Owners, Mr. and Mrs. Cooke, and their three daughters. The Cookes bring with them a single retainer: Maura, “a girl of all work”. Over the course of 2-1/2 months, the Cookes and their employees are responsible for making the ranch a viable business. In the short-term, this means rounding up and branding as many free-range cattle as the Cowboys can find.

As always happens on these shows, though, the task is complicated by strong personalities and by the participants’ refusal to discard 21st century notions in favor of modes of thought and work that are appropriate for the era in which they’re pretending to live. And, as on previous shows, certain personality types drive me nuts. This time it’s Mr. and Mrs. Cooke who create a perfect storm of self-centered obliviousness destined to doom the ranch.

From the start, Mr. Cooke is unable to maintain the respect of the Ranch Hands. They feel he’s incompetent, and not true to his word. He fires his Foreman within days. He fires the ranch Cook soon after. (Though, to be fair, he deserved to be fired.) When another Ranch Hand quits, the initial work force has been decimated, and Mr. Cooke continues to struggle with bunkhouse morale. Matters are made worse because the Hands feel that Mrs. Cooke is actually running the ranch, and because Maura the “girl of all work” feels oppressed by gender roles, and because Mr. Cooke is pathologically incapable of making and owning a decision. (The Ranch Hands seem to do little to make things better on their end.)

To these internal conflicts, the producers of Texas Ranch House add external conflicts.

One day two of the Ranch Hands (and their horses) are “kidnapped” by Commanche Indians. In 1867, these men would have been killed, but for the purposes of the show, the Commanche leader comes to Mr. Cooke to barter. He’s willing to trade horses for some of the ranch cattle. He’s also willing to trade Jared, a Ranch Hand, for cattle. (He’s already let the other Ranch Hand free.)

Mr. Cooke is eager to trade for the horses, but not for Jared. “I refuse to trade for human life,” he says, as if this is somehow a noble moral principle. He is unable to view the situation from the point-of-view of the Commanche, or of the Ranch Hands. The Commanche chief tries to give him outs, but he doesn’t take them. In the end, the swap is made, and Mr. Cooke performs complex mental gymnastics to convince himself that he’s not trading for Jared’s life. (This incident further damages his reputation in the eyes of the Cowboys. Does their Boss not value them enough to save them from danger?)

The Commanches pull a fast one on Mr. Cooke, trading him one less horse than he believed he was getting. He doesn’t bother to count until they’ve ridden away from the Commanche camp. (This isn’t the first math mistake he’s made. This man, who is a hospital accountant in real life, initially calculated that he’d need eighty cattle to make his mortgage payment whereas the real number was closer to 200. At the end of the project, when the Project Evaluators deem his books “indecipherable”, Mr. Cooke’s excuse is that he doesn’t have a caluculator.)

In the final episode, the repercussions of the Commanche incident become apparent. In order to make the mortgage payment, Mr. Cooke must sell a certain number of cattle to an Army Outpost. His Cowboys drive 131 head of cattle to the designated location, where they discover that the Army will only buy the 86 animals that are ready for slaughter. The Buyer is a nice guy and gives Mr. Cooke a good price ($25) for each animal. He then lets Mr. Cooke convince him to buy the remaining cattle at a reduced rate ($18/head). It’s obvious to everyone but Mr. Cooke that the Buyer is playing along to give him a good deal for the sake of the project.

Rather than reward his Workers for their performance, when it comes time to settle payment, Mr. Cooke is a complete asshole. He takes delight in being a skinflint. The Cowboys are hoping to purchase horses from him, but he asks exorbitantly high prices. “I’m so proud of you,” his shrew of a wife coos after each cowboy has marched away in anger. (I kept thinking of Iago as I watcher her machinations.)

Mrs. Cooke is especially proud when Mr. Cooke re-negs on a deal he’d previously struck with Jared. Before the Commanche incident, Mr. Cooke had sold a horse called Brownlow to Jared for $25 (to be deducted from his final pay). Jared loves Brownlow. When settlement arrives, Mr. Cooke claims that Jared lost the animal to the Commanche and that the horse rightfully belongs to Mr. Cooke again. “I had to pay to free you,” he says. Never mind that in negotiations with the Indians he had made a huge deal about how he wasn’t trading for Jared’s life, how the very idea was abhorrent to him. Jared is shocked. He says that he’s going to take Brownlow because the horse belongs to him. “I’ll beat the shit out of you if you try,” says Mr. Cooke.

“I’m a man of my word,” Mr. Cooke told the Ranch Hands at the start of the project. “Honesty and integrity are important to me.” Except for when they’re not, apparently. The film editors have done a fine job of showing us what Mr. Cooke actually says, and then revealing how he often goes back on his word later, sometimes doing the complete opposite of what he had promised to do.

After the settlement, Mrs. Cooke convinces her husband to actually fire Jared, even though there are only two days left in the project. He does. When Jared rides off on Brownlow, the other Cowboys leave with him. Mr. Cooke doesn’t beat the shit out of anyone; he stands by with his family, accusing Jared of being a horse thief. Pot, kettle: black. He seems completely unaware that if this were 1867, he would have just doomed his ranch to failure. How’s he going to prepare for winter with no crew?

At the end of the project, the participants are evaluated by a team of Experts. The experts aren’t especially kind to anyone — Cooke family, Maura, or Cowboys — noting that not a single person truly embraced the roles of 1867. Nor did anyone exercise compassion or teamwork. The evaluations are especially harsh for Mr. Cooke, and rightly so. His family is appalled by the criticism, but that’s only because they live under a cloud of collective delusion. They are lazy, manipulative, dishonest, and pampered.

I feel that there is some common element that ties this show to Frontier House, but I cannot put my finger on it. (Frontier House is my favorite of this series; I just added it to our Netflix queue.) In each of these shows, a certain group of participants buys into the experience wholly, but another group treats it as a lark.

In Frontier House, Gordon Clune and his family continually circumvented the project by smuggling in makeup, trading with 21st-century families for box spring mattresses, and generally acting like asses. In Texas Ranch House, Maura — a woman I admire and whom I would love to be friends with in real life — is unwilling to do what she signed up for: play the role of an 1867 ranch Maid. She wants to break out of the gender roles. The Cooke family is indolent and self-absorbed. They constantly lay the project’s problems at the feet of their Ranch Hands, despite the absurdity of the proposition. (What? The entire group of Cowboys is trying to do you in?) When you have to fire your Forman, your Cook, when you have a poor working relationship with your new Foreman, and then when your entire staff quits in disgust, perhaps the problem isn’t with the help — perhaps the problem is with YOU.

The difference between the Clunes in Frontier House and the Cookes in Texas Ranch House is that the latter don’t seem to have learned a thing. The Clunes, especially the girls, grew as people during the experience, despite their foibles. The Cookes did not. The Cookes are, if anything, more convinced of their moral rectitude than when they started. They didn’t allow the experience to change them at all, and that’s a shame.

(One final note: During the summer, the ranch is infested with flies because nobody is willing to cart the manure from the ranch. “I guess this is something that they just had to deal with back then,” Mrs. Cooke tells the experts. Uh, no. They moved the shit away from the house, and they washed the dishes instead of letting them sit for days on end. The experts are appalled. I am, too. When I grew up, we had similar fly infestations every summer because the fields around our house were fertilized with silage. It sucked. It was gross beyond belief. The Cookes could have solved the problem; we could not.)

Here’s a collection of Texas Ranch House links originally compiled by Sir Linksalot:

Websites — Texas Ranch House
Texas Ranch House Official Site
Reality TV Links – Texas Ranch House
MooTube.com
Yahoo Group – Texas Ranch House

News Articles about PBS’ Texas Ranch House
San Angelo Standard Times 5/3/06 Fort’s re-enactors get reality check
Inside Bay Area 5/2/06 The best little ranch house in Texas
Agriculture Online 5/2/06 Texas Ranch House provides a glimpse of ranch life in 1867
Chicago Sun Times 5/2/06 Home on the range
Western Horseman 5/1/06 PBS sends two cowboys back to 1867 for its latest historical reality-show, Texas Ranch House
NY Times 5/1/06 Saddling Up for a Bumpy Ride Into 1867 on ‘Texas Ranch House’
NY Daily News 5/1/06 PBS’ ‘Ranch’ ideal for slowpokes
St. Petersburg Times 5/1/06 Here’s how the West was really won
Dallas Morning News 5/1/06 TV: ‘Ranch House’ participants tested their mettle
Seattle Times 5/1/06 1867 cowboys wrangle with 21st-century women
NY Daily News 5/1/06 ‘Texas’ cook has a beef with getting fired
Hollywood Reporter 5/1/06 Texas Ranch House
Western Horseman 5/1/06 Ranch House Cowboys
Hartford Courant 5/1/06 Living Like 19th-Century Texas Cowboys
Chicago Tribune 5/1/06 ‘Texas’ is a boring look at life in the Old West
LJ World 5/1/06 Back at the “Ranch”
Philly.com 5/1/06 ‘Texas House’ too annoying
Caledonian Record 5/1/06 Barton Man To Be Featured In PBS Television House Series
Staten Island Advance 5/1/06 PBS wrangles with life on an 1800s ‘Texas Ranch’
Oregonian 5/1/06 ‘Ranch House’ needs to rustle up emotion
Lansing State Journal 5/1/06 Reality, snakes settle in at PBS ‘Ranch’
Deseret News 5/1/06 ‘Texas’ travesty
American Heritage 5/1/06 Texas Ranch House: Is This Historical Reality?
Equisearch 5/1/06 ‘Texas Ranch House’ Airs in May on PBS
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Unaltered Star Wars Trilogy Coming to DVD

I don’t know whether to be ecstatic or irate: Lucasfilm has announced that the original, undoctored Star Wars trilogy will be released on DVD this fall.

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983. This release will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st.

Now, obviously, on one level this makes my geek heart swell. These three films are a part of me. I’ve seen the original Star Wars more than any other film. (I must be nearing one hundred viewings by now.) I absolutely want to own these versions on DVD.

But what makes me angry is that I’ve already purchased the doctored trilogy, the version in which Greedo fires first, the version in which Young Anakin celebrates on the forest moon of Endor, the version in which George Lucas has flooded the screen with all sorts of little critters and geegaws. Why did I buy these bastardized editions? BECAUSE FANS WERE TOLD THE ORIGINAL VERSIONS WOULD NEVER BE RELEASED ON DVD.

For years, the studios have been milking stupid fans like me by first releasing one version of a film and then releasing a Deluxe Edition at a later date. This is asinine. To give Peter Jackson credit on his Lord of the Rings bastardizations, at least he was very clear from the beginning just how the DVD releases would occur, and he stayed true to his word.

I will be buying the new Star Wars DVDs. I don’t like to admit it, but it’s a fact. However, I’ll also be selling all of the Star Wars DVDs I currently own: episodes I, II, IV, V, and VI.

More Star Wars rants and raves at foldedspace: I am a member of the Star Wars Generation, my review of Attack of the Clones, and my analysis of Why Star Wars Sucks.