Yet another example of life imitating art beer commercials.
Are you impugning the artistic integrity of the beer commrecial? Fie, sirrah!
Casanova (yeah, that Casanova) supposedly taught his parrot to trash one of Casanova's former lovers. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?endeca=1&isbn=1567316859&itm=3
Jinx! I linked the same story with about the same amount of commentary. Our respective choice of post titles is informative.
I'm just impressed by the accuracy with which the parrot picked up the incriminating information to repeat -- after all, how much time, in talking to someone, do you actually spend saying their name?
(One wonders if this weren't a supremely passive-aggressive breakup routine on the girlfriend's part: "Come on, Ziggy, say 'Gary'. That's right, say 'I love you, Gary.' Good parrot." She doesn't have to tell her boyfriend she's leaving him for someone else, and as a bonus, she spoils the boyfriend's enjoyment of his beloved parrot, who she doesn't seem to like much.)
Maybe the parrot was repeating things she said over and over again, and they left out, "Let's do it while the bird watches," and "Oh you naughty thing" for the sake of their readers' sensibilities.
Ogged ogged ogged. (If I can unjinx him.)
African greys are incredibly smart and can pick up phrases they have heard only a couple of times. The one in the back of the bird store down the street from me (she belongs to the owner) has a stunning repertoire of phrases that she intones in different voices, both male and female. Totally freaky.
The best I've heard come out of her: "Hello, Candy. Aren't you a pretty girl? OW! MY FINGER!" [followed by a low chuckle]
On a serious note, African greys are *really* smart. I don't remember where I read/saw this (Nat'l Geographic?), so perhaps sans link it will be greeted with skepticism, but there was an African grey who had been trained to sort blocks by color and shape at verbal command.
Whereas the Norwegian blue just kips on its back.
Ogged ogged ogged.
s/b over and over again in bed
Juxtaposed without comment.
Dang, you could teach one of those a few buzzwords and catchphrases like "paradigm" and "think outside the box" and do away with a layer or two of management.
And no, I do not mean anything derogatory toward beer commercials. Well, maybe that one...
The best I've heard come out of her: "Hello, Candy. Aren't you a pretty girl? OW! MY FINGER!" [followed by a low chuckle]
(muffled giggles)
Whereas the Norwegian blue just kips on its back.
It's not dead. Just resting!
It took the longest time to convince my wife I was not cheating when our dog kept repeating "Ruth Ruth Ruth."
African grey parrots are amazing. I read some great book about one, the name of which I forget. They kind of blow to hell the notion that brain size is determinative of intelligence. (People always like to say that the Stegosaurus/Apatosaurus was dumb because it had "a brain the size of a walnut.")
Stegosauri/Apatosauri also had underdeveloped vocal cords -- I think they would have a hard time even getting out "Polly want a cracker! Awk!"
Ogged ogged ogged. (If I can unjinx him.)
I think I remember: If apo had called "jinx—personal jinx," only apo would have been able to unlock Ogged. But apo didn't, so I think Tia successfully unjinxed Ogged.
only apo would have been able to unlock Ogged
At the Mineshaft.
Plus, cleaning the cage of a tame talking Stegosaurus? A real bitch.
There's some kind of phoneme cap, too—I think it went "1-2-3-no-backs"—that the jinxer must say before the jinxee mutters the counterjinx, in order for various restrictions of the jinx (e.g., the "personal" jinx) to apply.
If ogged reset his TiVo with Apostropher (not that there's anything wrong with that!), I don't ever want to hear about it.
Wait, no, I take that back.
If ogged reset his TiVo with Apostropher
And it goes a little something like this.
I remember reading an article somewhere about a couple that owned a parrot and a dog, and called in an animal behaviorist to find out why the dog would cower whenever they came near it. Eventually the animal behaviorist bugged the house and it was discovered that the parrot, imitating his owners' voices, would berate the dog at length while they were alone: "bad dog! bad bad dog!" They could hear the dog whimpering.
The wife said the parrot used a really mean tone.
I knew a parrot who would call the cat in the owner's voice ("heeeere, kitty kitty kitty"), and when the cat would run into the room, the parrot would throw bird seed at it and laugh.
22: From bitter experience, it's "jinx personal jinx no touchbacks."
I had a parrot.
His brain was the size of a pea but packed with intelligence and persnality.
I called him Squawkie.
I had him for 16 years, then one day, I don't know why, he flew out the back door, over the fence and away.
He had a cage but he only ate and slept there. he took baths with me and spent most of his other time on my shoulder. He didn't talk but he made little cooing sounds in my ear.
I don't know why he flew away. I hope he has found a flock and enough to eat. Even though it has been three months I still can hardly believe he's gone.
Has anyone ever inadverantly gotten pets involved in TiVo-resettage?
Kotsko, is there something you want to tell us about your "girlfriend"?
I'm just asking, have you ever like gotten... something on... the cat?
This is one of those Dan Savage "how'd that happen" moments, isn't it.
Anti-abortion wackjob Neal Horsley thinks that it's called "bestiality" because it's the best kind of sex there is. Actual verbatim text from Alan Colmes' interview of Horsley:
NH (laughing): "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."
AC: "Is it true?"
NH: "Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."
AC: "You had sex with animals?"
NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."
NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm...You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."
Mules are male, so we're not just talking bestiality, we're talking gay bestiality.
You see, elitist Democrats are out of touch with the real people.
In one of the redneck towns in Oregon (Molalla), a friend of mine was at some kind of family gathering when he noticed that a distant cousin was getting his groin licked by a dog. He didn't pretend it was an accident.
I was just thinking in terms of not shutting the door tight and the cat sneaks up on you, and you push her away but see that all of a sudden she's... grooming herself. (The cat, the female cat, so it's not gay or nothin'.)
Are you saying that watching a cat perform auto-cunnilingus (i.e. a pussy eating her own pussy) and/or auto-anilingus excites you?
We don't traffic in pussy jokes here, Frederick. Only cock jokes.
I'm not sure the two can be rigorously distinguished.
If I like pussy more than cock, does that make me some kind of sicko?
There's more to intelligence than mere brain size. There's some effect just from brain size relative to body mass ie chimps, humans, dolphins, etc. all display larger brains than you would expect when compared to mammals of similar mass.
Structure is likely more important. Birds have a much smaller, unfolded cerbral cortex than mammals, but it appears that they've gone in a different direction when evolving structures for processing information.
Fred, you go to other people's houses and commandeer the remote, don't you? Generally, in blogdom, and especially here, where so much of the commentary consists of in-jokes and and meta-commentary on the fairly complex dynamic that's sprouted here over the past few years, people lurk for several months before they feel comfortable commenting.
And in other brain size/intelligence news, a mere 90 minutes after arriving at work, I just realized I'm wearing my shirt inside out. Awesome.
That the buttons were on the inside didn't tip you off?
(Unless it's a casual, t-shirt place, then it's more understandable)
I'm getting the feeling that Fredrick should not now ask Ogged out on a date.
Am I reading the signals correctly, or is this one of those status and dominance diputes, resolved with much bellowing and butting heads to see who has the biggest rack, of antlers? Is there a voice-over track to help the newcomer understand what's on the screen? Oh, this isn't PBS? Sorry, I must be confused again.
people lurk for several months before they feel comfortable commenting.
Is this true? I don't think I've ever lurked at a board where I eventually became a regular commenter for longer than a few weeks.
It is.
Also. Seems I lurked for about a year.
Oh. If being an "occasional reader" qualifies you as lurking then I did so for several months. My understanding of the term suggested that a lurker would read the board regularly, like on as busy a board as this probably daily.
I think it was at least a month, probably two, of lurking for me. I think I started reading in July, and first commented in early September.
#47
A dashing ring neck T, but still...
We don't traffic in pussy jokes here, Frederick. Only cock jokes.
Google confirms this: no hits on this site for "pussy jokes" (I guess your use of the term here is too recent to show up), 262 for "cock jokes."
Fred, you go to other people's houses and commandeer the remote, don't you?
No.
I'm getting the feeling that Fredrick should not now ask Ogged out on a date.
Me, too. I'm not going to reset your Tivo, Ogged, even if you're gay after Brokeback Mountain and I'm overfond of my warm L.L. Bean jackets.
I did so for several months
Or even longer! -- If memory serves, that post was the first one I ever read on Unfogged. (And of course "commenting to fix a broken link" is in a different category from "commenting as a regular commenter".)
I lurked for a long time. And then I wrote a lot of crappy comments with unnecessary literary allusions.
i still lurk. right beneath the surface. waiting for...
Going back to the parrots ... and I don't know why I'm telling you people this but someone asked about parrots and tivo ... way back when, ex and I had a pionus parrot and she totally loved him and hated me. For a while we had her cage in our bedroom because she would get pissy when we were making noise downstairs late at night and/or working late upstairs in our office. But then she started getting really possessive about ex and when he and I were resetting the TiVo she'd come stand on her cage door and honk at us. We moved the cage. And then no longer got to spontaneously reset the TiVo while downstairs and in her view.
Ah, those were the days.
I can't imagine having a talking pet. How can you not kill it? I suppose this also applies to children.
Usage note: I believe that "reset the Tivo" was originally intended to mean having sex after having gone without for a long time. It doesn't mean just "have sex." For that, the term is "boinking."
Parallelism broke down a bit there, but you know what I mean.
Yeah, well, at this point it has been so damn long since there's been boinking or resetting the TiVo that I can call it whatever I want.
And you have a point re: talking pets. That's why I've never tried to teach my potentially talking pets. It would be cute for 5 minutes. Then I'd have to live with it.
It would be cute for 5 minutes. Then I'd have to live with it.
Always wear a rubber, fellas.
"Resetting the Tivo" is an offensively geeky euphemism for sex. It summons up an image of man-on-appliance love which manages to make both the replay TV and the act of fucking seem simultaneously nastier and more boring, and I demand that a baser replacement be produced.
I demand that a baser replacement be produced.
Here are some possibilities. But maybe you're demanding an entirely new term?
Wiki's list is short on appliance-related slang. I guess "tapping the flesh keg" is kind of appliance-related. But no consumer electronics do I see.
I think I lurked for more than a year before I first commented. And even now I click the "Post" button with no small amount of trepidation.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a rash of nitpickery about the proper capitalization of "TiVo" ...
"Resetting the Tivo" is an offensively geeky euphemism for sex.
I agree. It is inappropriate to have a geeky euphemism for sex on a suave, cool intarweb comment board like this, particularly when that euphemism for sex implies that one has gone without sex for a very long time. Do we want everyone to think we're geeks?
The Pacific Island Pidgin euphemism for sex is "push-push". It's a noun. The verb must be "doing push-push", I guess.
Lily,
I don't know why he flew away.
That is a sad story. I sympathize, but if he was as smart as you say he was have you ever considered maybe it was the name 'Squawkie' that drove him to it?
Parrots can be pretty thin-skinned that way.
"But maybe you're demanding an entirely new term?"
Incidentally, anyone who wonders why WikiPedia's getting bad press these days should take a look down that list. "Resetting the TiVo" aside, even the geekiest of geeks should question whether "franking the fungus well" really makes the cut as a euphemism for marinating the nether rod in the squish mitten.
The Pacific Island Pidgin euphemism for sex is "push-push".
Two Samoan euphemisms are, translated literally, "Planting the taro", and my personal favorite "Doing the behavior."
When I was 10, my best friend John's older brother Mike killed himself. I'd call John's house years later and their parrot would would take his queue from the phone's ringing and start calling at the top of his voice, "MIKEY!! PHONE. JOHNNY! PHONE! MIKEY!" It was so sad. But they loved that bird. I suspect, that given the very long lives of parrots, many must often mention the dead, or, the otherwise departed.
I didn't lurk or even read before commenting -- I just clicked the link to "Unfogged," scanned the page for the first comment link, and went to town. This was the only site where that technique actually worked.
I think we should institute a blog-wide system of pre-registration: "If you think you might like to comment here at some point, register now. Your lurker status will expire after you have viewed the front page ____ times, and then you will be able to comment."
78 -- that would certainly be a useful system for people who come to the blogosphere because they feel inadequatly infantilized by real-world institutions.
Okay, this is a good point. I actually hate registration systems. But I do think that lurking is kind of standard bloggy etiquette, or should be.
Except when the blog is fairly new or is very low traffic. Then I find that people generally just appreciate the comments. LG&M certainly were grateful for their early commenters.