Farm animals

https://www.b99.tv/video/never-duckier/

I haven't spent much time on farms.  They say that the pig is the most intelligent non-human in the barnyard, which seems a shame:  horses can pull plows, hens can lay eggs and cows can give milk, but pigs have nothing to do but grow fat and get slaughtered...

I wonder if there really are "horse whisperers" who can communicate with horses?  Or maybe it's just from having a lot of experience with them.  I couldn't communicate with a horse as effortlessly as many riders seem to.  Like after your horse makes a big exertion and you give him a pat that says, "Thank you!" I wish you could just say "Thanks, horsie!" and he could say "You're welcome, human!"

I often go to the Royal Winter Fair in November.  They have stuff like free samples of high-grade P.E.I. potatoes, Mennonite baked goods like a honey loaf, and a display of two dozen eggs holding up a 50-pound weight.  There's also the butter sculptures--or is that the Canadian National Exhibition in August?

And they also have contests for prize livestock like chickens.  There was this cartoon You Were Never Duckier where Daffy Duck was going to be in a best-duck contest, but he saw that the best-rooster prize was a lot bigger so he put a glove on his head Howie Mandel-style and passed himself off as a rooster.  But then Hennery the little chicken hawk came along and wanted to take him home and eat him...

Frogs

When I think of frogs, I think of Kermit the Muppet.  When I was little I saw this Muppet TV special Hey, Cinderella! with Kermit and Splurge, a big monster who liked radishes. (I recall Splurge saying, "Radish!!") The King was also a Muppet, and seeing the show in later years I noticed that he resembled Henry Fonda's father Eugene Pallette in the screwball comedy The Lady Eve.

Kermit was in another special The Frog Prince.  The prince sang this song that went:

They call me Sir Robin the Brave,

And history one day will rave!

I'm gallant and daring, and noble of bearing,

Courageous and gallant, a mountain of talent,

And all the girls curtsey and wave,

Because I'm Sir Robin the Brave!

But after being turn into a frog, he ended the song with, 

But now no-one will curtsey and wave, 

Because I'm Sir Robin the Frog...

There was this tongue-tied princess who kept saying about her evil stepmother, "Bake the hall in the candle of her brain," but at a crucial moment Kermit figured out that she meant, "Break the ball in the handle of her cane"!

There was another special, The Muppet Musicians of Bremen, who included a cat who was friendly with the mice, and sang a song that went, "You gotta know your friends, boys, you gotta know your friends!" There was also a mule who said to him, "It's time you retired....  I'll go get my gun and retire you!"

The bowling alley

I've gone bowling a few times in recent years.  I don't like those bowling alleys where they turn on all these crazy lights and music in the evening.  Gives me sensory overload.

When I think of bowling, I think of the Flintstones.  Fred would go up on tiptoes when launching a bowling ball, with this xylophone sound.  And there was one episode, I think, where Wilma was bowling and scored a strike, but in the wrong lane. (Women!)

You don't see bowling in the movies much. (I guess they see it as too much a working class thing.) I remember there was bowling in Frankie and Johnny, which was rather self-consciously blue-collar.  And there was also bowling in the Coen brothers comedy The Big Lebowski.

Overall, I though The Big Lebowski was a mess.  But John Turturro had a funny cameo as a gay Hispanic bowler with an attitude, named Jesus.  He'd say things like "Nobody fucks with the Jesus!"

An unusual experience

I haven't had a lot of unusual experiences.  There was the time I spent a week on jury duty, which was pretty stupid because I was still a student, and students never get chosen for the actual juries. (They're too unpredictable.) And there's the time I took our VCR in for servicing in Thornhill or somewhere, which was an adventure because I'd never been in that part of town before.

There's also the time my opera group did a master class, so I got to sing solo in a concert.  It can be a bit intimidating:  you're up on stage in front of an auditorium with this big vacuum for your voice to fill, and it takes talent to even half-fill it.  But if your voice is resonant enough to fill that space, there's no feeling like that!

I participated in a few of these master classes.  In one I sang the sorcerer's aria from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann.  In another I sang Mephistopheles' aria "Le Veau d'Or" from Gounod's Faust.  At one rehearsal Henry sang Gounod's "Ave Maria" just before me, and I quipped, "From Gounod's heaven to Gounod's hell!"

Australia

I've never been to Australia. But I like the Australians I've met.  Such an eccentric place:  it's the sort of society where the national animal jumps around! (I once got some Australian fruit cocktail that was packed in pear juice.) It's something of a frontier society, like the Canadian or American west.  They even had a big gold rush about the same time as California.

The Australians make a lot of good movies, like My Brilliant Career and Gallipoli and We of the Never Never.  Their culture has certain egalitarian squareness that appeals to me.

Australia does have its racist side.  After 9/11 the government managed to get re-elected by having a big crackdown on refugee claimants, appealing to the voters' xenophobia. (I hope Canada doesn't get that way.) And alas, they've treated their native peoples as badly as we've treated ours, if not worse.  I read somewhere that back in colonial days young men would shoot aborigines just for fun, like shooting birds!

Canada has produced few songs even nearly as good as Australia's "Waltzing Matilda." (And most of them are from Quebec and Newfoundland.)

Loss of a pet

I've never had a pet.  Too much responsibility!  My brother John had a dog called Theseus, acquired through animal rescue.  He was part collie and I'm not sure what else. (Mongrels make the best pets!)

Theseus was very smart.  He recognized several words, including "stick." Hearing that word would always make him excited, because it meant they'd be taking him outdoors to play with the stick! ("Walk" had a similar effect on him.) It was tempting to say "Stick!" to him just to see him get excited, like Pavlov ringing the bell to make the dog drool.

Eventually, Theseus got old and they put him down.  I suppose that saying goodbye to a pet is one of the ways we learn to say goodbye to a relative.

In one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books there's a wonderful chapter called "Growing Up," about Jack the family dog, who'd accompanied them on all their travels, walking under the wagon in the shade.  But now, as the family prepared their last journey, he was too old for more walking.  Laura got thinking about how Jack had always been around to protect her, but now she'd have to take care of herself. (That's a Garth Williams illustration at the top.)

They were going to carry him inside the wagon, but he saw the familiar preparations and must have sensed his time was over, and one morning he was dead.  After burying Jack, Laura's father told her, "Good dogs have their reward."

I remember this CBC radio comedy show did a skit about someone arranging a funeral for his dog Fluffo.  The funeral arranger said, "And then there's the bargain special--we put Fluffo in a sack and throw him in the Fraser River!" He also suggested an epitaph, like "He ain't around, he's in the ground."