Things have started getting pretty heavy in "The Walking Dead," not that it was a game of Candy Land before this week's episode, titled "Save the Last One" (referring to a bullet, in case the zombies catch you, so you can go out on your own terms and not theirs!)
If you haven't watched the episode yet, you might not want to read any further because I'm about to discuss some fairly significant plot developments.
Lori Grimes, a.k.a Debbie Downer, strongly considered letting her firstborn son perish so he could stop enduring the endless nightmare, and Shane Walsh took a serious heel turn, capping poor, fat Otis and letting him get devoured by walkers. Not cool, bro, not cool at all.
As if all that existentialism and nihilism wasn't enough to digest, Glenn and Maggie discuss the existence of God on the porch of Greene Manor, where characters really like to stage philosophical debates, it seems.
The action picked up in this week's episode after a pretty slow showing last week, when only one zombie was eradicated. In "Save the Last One," there were around 10 zombies popped before the first commercial break. Shane and Otis were getting after it at the high school, home of the Fighting Cougars, accounting for about 90 percent of the zombie murders. At one point those zombies were really piling up against that chain link fence. It was like teenagers clamoring to get into a Spin Doctors concert in 1992.
I can't quite figure out why exactly Shane did Otis like that, other than that Otis was slowing them down. Or maybe it was a strategic move, using Otis like a big pile of hot dogs to distract the zombies. Either way, Shane was looking at himself pretty long and hard in the mirror when he got back to the farmhouse.
For the record, he did say "I'm sorry" before shooting Otis, and Otis saved a lock of Shane's hair to remember him by.
The maneuver did pay off, allowing Shane to get back to the farmhouse with the medical equipment just in time for Hershel to successfully operate on Carl. Things got worse for Carl before they got better though, as he went through a pretty wicked seizure after reminiscing about the time he almost touched a deer.
Meanwhile, back at the highway, the relationship between Dale and Andrea continues to play out like that of an overbearing father and his icy teenage daughter. To get a little space, Andrea goes off on a little ghost walk with Daryl, leading to one of the coolest scenes of the season so far.
Out in the woods, Daryl and Andrea find a lonely fellow who decided to "quit" by hanging himself. Now he's a zombie and stuck there like a pinata. To add insult to injury, other zombies came along and ate his slacks and leg meat, leaving a pair of skinny, fleshless stilts dangling there for all to see. Nice...
Alas, Daryl and Andrea's search for Sophia turns up empty. So one child saved, one to go. "Save the Last One," get it?
2011年10月31日星期一
2011年10月16日星期日
A job that's for the birds
Like that revelatory moment when martinis start to taste good or summer turns with one chill breeze to fall, that's how chicken farming entered my synapses -- synap, crackle, pop.
Our friends Mitch and Teresa were taking the kids on vacation for a few weeks, leaving their pre-pubescent hens in the hands of several neighbors, who tag-teamed the task. One neighbor one week, another the next. I found our stint with the chickens just long enough to fall in love with the whole concept.
"I want chickens too," said the little guy. So there you go.
Reminds me of disco, the senseless way raising your own chickens has swept the country, except that I think there is something deeper to it, more symptomatic of our current neuroses over the economy. Being self-sustaining seems suddenly very appealing.
All I know for sure is that organic is good, but nonorganic is far cheaper. And a chicken is really a beautiful and impressive bird, particularly when properly seasoned and roasted. In Mitch and Teresa's case, they were simply seeking some fresh eggs in the morning, along with a little hobby for their two boys.
When I first visited, I'd expected something like that yard in "The Wizard of Oz," with chickens running everywhere and gingham-wearing movie stars falling into hog pens, but Teresa and Mitch's backyard was remarkably normal. Nice pool. Cabana. Chicken hut.
There were tomatoes reddening in the garden, and loads of lettuce, which we were told we could feed to the chickens because they love greens. There was also a tub of chicken feed.
Basically, like me, a chicken will eat anything.
Mitch had built the 10-foot-by-10-footcoop . Before the California real estate crash, it alone would've fetched $450,000. Now far less. Because the schools are decent, probably in the $200,000-$300,000 range. Like I said, they have a pool.
Anyway, the first thing a backyard chicken farmer does is acquire some chicks, which apparently -- like Canadian Viagra -- can be bought through the mail.
"As long as the birds are properly packaged and can reach their destination within 72 hours of hatching, the U.S. Postal Service will accept live birds for delivery," a National Geographic article explains.
Foolishly obsessive over all new activities, I picked up a copy of "Recipe for Raising Chickens" by Minnie Rose Lovgreen, who is to chickens what Shakespeare was to broken hearts. "You can test a hen to see if she's laying," Lovgreen writes. "There are two bones (on) either side of a hen's rectum. You see, a hen only has one vent for everything. If you can fit two of your folded knuckles ... ."
OK, let's move on.
Lovgreen advises that it's good to clean the henhouse once a year with lime, and the thought of all these suburban moms and dads spending a Saturday brushing lime paste onto nesting boxes makes me think this chicken-raising phenomenon might last about one more week.
"Another kind of mite gets on the chickens' legs, and their legs get scaly," Lovgreen writes. "Rubbing carbolated Vaseline on their legs at night should help this problem."
There's another activity that will be hugely popular with our suburb's Chardonnay Moms.
Meanwhile, Lovgreen says roosters are necessary if you want fertile eggs, and "it's perfectly all right to eat fertile eggs, or non-fertile eggs. They taste the same. Sometimes people wonder about that." Other things people might have wondered about:
"If two roosters get to fighting hard, the only (thing) I can do is take a board and slap one of them in the face," Lovgreen writes. "I did that one time and the rooster never did know what hit him, so he gave up fighting."
"And the flies," confesses our friend Teresa. "That's another thing.
"The first three weeks of school, I was overwhelmed," she says of caring for the new chickens. "I do hear them more than I thought. I smell them more than I thought.
"But would I do it again? Absolutely."
"I would definitely do it over," says Patti Ann Miles of suburban Chicago, another friend. She has kept chickens since 2004. "We keep a very small garden, but we don't eat from it; we give it to the hens. So it's a nice cycle. And the eggs are truly delicious."
So I'm all ready to order some chickens, though given today's economy, I'm thinking it might be better just to lease a flock: three years with no money down, because you never want to put money upfront on a lease.
Rubber chickens are another option. There's nothing funnier at a retirement party. Presumably, they lay rubber eggs, which I would then use to make my own car tires.
Or a herd of hogs might be good. More vents. Higher yield.
And bacon goes with just about everything.
Our friends Mitch and Teresa were taking the kids on vacation for a few weeks, leaving their pre-pubescent hens in the hands of several neighbors, who tag-teamed the task. One neighbor one week, another the next. I found our stint with the chickens just long enough to fall in love with the whole concept.
"I want chickens too," said the little guy. So there you go.
Reminds me of disco, the senseless way raising your own chickens has swept the country, except that I think there is something deeper to it, more symptomatic of our current neuroses over the economy. Being self-sustaining seems suddenly very appealing.
All I know for sure is that organic is good, but nonorganic is far cheaper. And a chicken is really a beautiful and impressive bird, particularly when properly seasoned and roasted. In Mitch and Teresa's case, they were simply seeking some fresh eggs in the morning, along with a little hobby for their two boys.
When I first visited, I'd expected something like that yard in "The Wizard of Oz," with chickens running everywhere and gingham-wearing movie stars falling into hog pens, but Teresa and Mitch's backyard was remarkably normal. Nice pool. Cabana. Chicken hut.
There were tomatoes reddening in the garden, and loads of lettuce, which we were told we could feed to the chickens because they love greens. There was also a tub of chicken feed.
Basically, like me, a chicken will eat anything.
Mitch had built the 10-foot-by-10-foot
Anyway, the first thing a backyard chicken farmer does is acquire some chicks, which apparently -- like Canadian Viagra -- can be bought through the mail.
"As long as the birds are properly packaged and can reach their destination within 72 hours of hatching, the U.S. Postal Service will accept live birds for delivery," a National Geographic article explains.
Foolishly obsessive over all new activities, I picked up a copy of "Recipe for Raising Chickens" by Minnie Rose Lovgreen, who is to chickens what Shakespeare was to broken hearts. "You can test a hen to see if she's laying," Lovgreen writes. "There are two bones (on) either side of a hen's rectum. You see, a hen only has one vent for everything. If you can fit two of your folded knuckles ... ."
OK, let's move on.
Lovgreen advises that it's good to clean the henhouse once a year with lime, and the thought of all these suburban moms and dads spending a Saturday brushing lime paste onto nesting boxes makes me think this chicken-raising phenomenon might last about one more week.
"Another kind of mite gets on the chickens' legs, and their legs get scaly," Lovgreen writes. "Rubbing carbolated Vaseline on their legs at night should help this problem."
There's another activity that will be hugely popular with our suburb's Chardonnay Moms.
Meanwhile, Lovgreen says roosters are necessary if you want fertile eggs, and "it's perfectly all right to eat fertile eggs, or non-fertile eggs. They taste the same. Sometimes people wonder about that." Other things people might have wondered about:
"If two roosters get to fighting hard, the only (thing) I can do is take a board and slap one of them in the face," Lovgreen writes. "I did that one time and the rooster never did know what hit him, so he gave up fighting."
"And the flies," confesses our friend Teresa. "That's another thing.
"The first three weeks of school, I was overwhelmed," she says of caring for the new chickens. "I do hear them more than I thought. I smell them more than I thought.
"But would I do it again? Absolutely."
"I would definitely do it over," says Patti Ann Miles of suburban Chicago, another friend. She has kept chickens since 2004. "We keep a very small garden, but we don't eat from it; we give it to the hens. So it's a nice cycle. And the eggs are truly delicious."
So I'm all ready to order some chickens, though given today's economy, I'm thinking it might be better just to lease a flock: three years with no money down, because you never want to put money upfront on a lease.
Rubber chickens are another option. There's nothing funnier at a retirement party. Presumably, they lay rubber eggs, which I would then use to make my own car tires.
Or a herd of hogs might be good. More vents. Higher yield.
And bacon goes with just about everything.
2011年6月12日星期日
Environmentalist Leopold deserves continued study
Our state has long been home to many people who treasure nature in all its vast and varying forms. People traveled to this state from far-away homes to establish new lives, made possible by the bounty that the rich waters and soil yielded.
Those who understood and appreciated what our resources provide were sometimes moved to do what they could to protect or conserve them. Manitowoc County has certainly has had its share of conservation legends, some of whom helped preserve Point Beach, Collins Marsh, the Rahr Forest and Woodland Dunes.
In particular, two people from Wisconsin are often held in highest esteem among conservationists, and both had connections with the University of Wisconsin as well. The first is John Muir, who came with his family from Scotland at a young age to the central part of the state to farm. He later attended UW just a few years after its founding, then left to embark on remarkable journeys of discovery of nature, journeys which eventually led him West where he was an important spokesman for conservation and later founded the Sierra Club and helped establish our national parks.
The second was Aldo Leopold, who was born in Iowa and who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and in the 1930s the Forest Products Laboratory, a position that brought him to Madison.
After a few years he began a teaching career at the University of Wisconsin, and he is considered to be one of the originators of modern wildlife management methods. Leopold remained in Madison for the rest of his life, contributing much to our knowledge of wildlife and helping to found the Wilderness Society.
While there, he purchased an old, bankrupt farm near Baraboo, renovated its chicken coop as a family cabin, and visited on weekends to work to restore its land, observe and record its phenology (seasonal natural events), and to write about nature. As he thought about nature and peoples' impact on it, he developed what he called a land ethic — a philosophy, or morality, relating to how we have come to use or abuse natural systems. A number of his writings were gathered and published as "A Sand County Almanac."
Those who understood and appreciated what our resources provide were sometimes moved to do what they could to protect or conserve them. Manitowoc County has certainly has had its share of conservation legends, some of whom helped preserve Point Beach, Collins Marsh, the Rahr Forest and Woodland Dunes.
In particular, two people from Wisconsin are often held in highest esteem among conservationists, and both had connections with the University of Wisconsin as well. The first is John Muir, who came with his family from Scotland at a young age to the central part of the state to farm. He later attended UW just a few years after its founding, then left to embark on remarkable journeys of discovery of nature, journeys which eventually led him West where he was an important spokesman for conservation and later founded the Sierra Club and helped establish our national parks.
The second was Aldo Leopold, who was born in Iowa and who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and in the 1930s the Forest Products Laboratory, a position that brought him to Madison.
After a few years he began a teaching career at the University of Wisconsin, and he is considered to be one of the originators of modern wildlife management methods. Leopold remained in Madison for the rest of his life, contributing much to our knowledge of wildlife and helping to found the Wilderness Society.
While there, he purchased an old, bankrupt farm near Baraboo, renovated its chicken coop as a family cabin, and visited on weekends to work to restore its land, observe and record its phenology (seasonal natural events), and to write about nature. As he thought about nature and peoples' impact on it, he developed what he called a land ethic — a philosophy, or morality, relating to how we have come to use or abuse natural systems. A number of his writings were gathered and published as "A Sand County Almanac."
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