Whaz Up!?! Khmer New Year

Howdy y’all!

It’s been an EXCITING week this past week! We had a run up to the Khmer New Year holiday, which is this week, so posts about Ye Olde Blogge’s misadventures during the week will be next week!

KHMER NEW YEARS. It may come as a shock to some of us, but not every place in the world celebrates the new year on 1 January even though most of us recognize 1 January as the beginning of a new year. Many traditions locate the new year as starting on or around the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. Others use a lunar calendar to determine the first day of the new year. Here in SouthEast Asia, including some of the southern provinces of India, Hindus in Pakistan, and the country of Sri Lanka, use a lunar calendar that puts the new year around 15 April because culture flowed east out of India in this part of the world. Wikipedia has a particularly useful write up of the traditions.

ANIMAL NEWS. We’ve had a couple of animal incidents this week!

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY! Some of you may remember that my sixth grade classes have adopted a giant African land snail found on campus as a class pet. She’s been endlessly fascinating to watch and interact with. Friday as I was taking her home, though, I observed a large white alarming protrusion from the right side of her “neck.” It looked rather like a pimple, and like so much of her body, she could expand, extend, and contract it at will.

Of course, I googled it as soon as I got home. As it turns out, our Mary has become a woman. The protrusion is called a “love dart.” Apparently, snails are hermaphrodites and exchange sperm with each other. They can also self fertilize. The love dart actually pierces the skin of the other snail and makes it more likely that the other snail will use its sperm to fertilize its eggs through an complex alchemy of chemicals and mucous.

Seeing the love dart emerge signals that the snail has reached sexual maturity.

That sound you just heard is the servers in multiple Republican dominated states banning Ye Olde Blogge. Let me know if you’ve been arrested or otherwise harassed by state officials for reading about hermaphroditism and snail reproduction. I’ll send you a file in a cake or something.

BARKING LIKE A DOG: We had occasion to visit the local computer and electronics store. It is in a lovely store front with the traditional enclosed courtyard. In theirs along with shoes, motorbikes, potted plants, and the odd stored item were two large bird cages. In one was a yellow parakeet or maybe parrot. In the other were two myna birds. While I stood in the courtyard waiting for Ma Belle Femme to complete our purchases, the myna birds began to talk!

They could say several things. The thing they repeated most often was something that sounded like, “low-high,” but they said it in a low-pitched masculine voice and a higher-pitched feminine voice. Also, one would bark like a dog! A dog!

I have to say, it was terrific fun to stand there and talk to the birds. If I worked there or had them as pets, I’d never get anything done. Mary is distracting enough. You’re lucky that I have enough discipline not to make this into an all about Mary blog filled with endless pics of the lovely snail.

The Week’s Reading

We’ve managed to return to the vaunted “normal” at Ye Olde Blogge and have begun writing posts in bits and pieces and scheduling them for publication to ratchet up the pressure to finish them on time. We’re quite pleased with ourselves. We’ve also begun reading regularly, so here’s what we found that was interesting.

The Professional Press

Stories that were published by legacy media, alternative professional sites, or by professionals publishing in their field.

• SIZE ISN’T THE ONLY THING: Apparently, men tend to overestimate several of their dimensions besides just their hands. One of them, as it turns out, is their intelligence! Ha! Three important things here: (1) IQ tests are controversial. This study is looking at perception of intelligence and using IQ as a measure of that perception, not actual intelligence. (2) The IQ scores of men and women do not differ in any meaningful statistical way. And (3) it isn’t the gender that you were born with that correlates with your misperception, it is how masculine you act as measured by the Bem Sex Role Inventory! Follow the link to take it yourself. Tell us what you think in the comments! I came out as “undifferentiated.” (Neoscope)
• TWO YEARS AND COUNTING: Now that we are starting our third year of #COVID19 as a fact of life, we can take a moment and look back at how bad the first two years were. Spoiler: They were bad. Here in graphic detail are just how bad it was. Have a visit. Getting a proper perspective is one way of validating the stress you felt and understanding our situation going forward. (Medscape)
• GOING TO THE DOGS! Dogs did evolve to lure us in with those cute puppy-dog eyes! #SCIENCEFACT! Scientists have looked at the number of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers in the faces of dogs, wolves, and people. The distribution in dogs is far closer to that of people than wolves. People and dogs use their fast-twitch muscle fibers to create emotional expressions. Since they fatigue quickly, the expression fades rapidly. The only reason dogs would have these muscles is to communicate their emotions, ergo, presto, they’re communicating like we do. (NBC News)
• POST YOUR OWN: If you’ve come across any fun or interesting news this week, please tell us about it in the comments!

The Bloggosphere!

This week we hear from all the usual suspect!

• LIGHTNING DOESN’T STRIKE: Sex just isn’t as easy as Republicans and the movies make it out to be. And, for some of us, we’re more befuddled than others. Here’s an interesting letter from a fella asking for some advice in the area of what do I want from a sexual encounter with a very instructive answer. (The Honest Courtesan)
• …IZZAT FISH?!? What is it about sardines that brings about dread and repugnance? Does anyone really ever buy those tins of sardines and actually do anything with them other than leave them rusting on a shelf or feed them to a cat? I guess they actually do. (The Chatty Introvert)
• A STRANGLED CAT?!?! You know how much of a sucker Ye Olde Blogge is for a good dog story, but one that includes a dog whose bark can be described as strangling a cat, well, we all welcome spring in our own ways, don’t we? (Pretty Pirate Patty Reviews)
• PARADISE FOUND! With the world slowly returning to normal like a snail unfurling from its shell, those of us still not traveling much can live vicariously through the travels of others. Take a trip down Old Mexico way on the Baja Peninsula. Enjoy the sand, water, and beach! (bluewater)

The Friendlies

And, now for the best and most entertaining posts from those who are the particular friends of Ye Olde Blogge!

• SHOULDA WOULDA COULDA Why is it that those words of self-beratement are so universal? Why are they so especially true of those of us who aspire to write regularly and frequently? Here are a few poetical thoughts on it all. (Of Cabbages and Kings).
• THEY PUT THE SECRET into the secret service. Apparently, one of the 6 January Insurrectionists thought it a good idea to have Trump testify, and, so, served him with a subpoena. The server was turned away at the door to Merd de Lardo by an armed servant. Smart money is on it being a secret service agent. Since when is it the secret service’s job to protect its protectees from the justice system? (Mock Paper Scissors)
• HOME GROWN There are accusations, credible accusations, that the Oregon GOP is WORSE than the national party or any other state due to its open embrace of the Proud Boys and QAnon and other such conservative extremists. It is, after all, ground zero for extremist inspired hate crimes. (Homeless on the High Desert)
• HERTORY HAS BEEN MADE Burr covers all the coverage both big and small of the KBJ confirmation to the Supremes and all of the Putin war crimes and crimes against humanity, you know, just in case you missed something. There is some useful, instructive, and insightful commentary and actual reporting. (Fair and Unbalanced)
• A THRASHING GOOD TIME! Seriously, Tucker Carlson and Fox News are going to get someone killed. They are openly calling for violence over LGBTQ+ issues. This whole grooming thing when discussing gender identity is going to push someone over the edge. You have to think that’s what they’re hoping for. (Scottie’s Playtime)
• OOPSIE! THERE GOES SOMEONE’S HEAD! It’s difficult to get good help nowadays, what with the US unemployment to its lowest in decades and the Russian economy in shambles, you can’t hire anyone in either place. Well, Putin learned the hard way when Russian TV aired a clip of Ukrainian soldiers letting the world know what they thought of Putin and Russia. It’s all fun and games until Putin lops someone’s head off. Mike’s Blog Roundup is being curated by Jon Perr. (Crooks and Liars)
• IT’S NOT ALL BAD once you get to know it. Yes, the IPCC did publish a report saying that we’re all fucked, and we are if you don’t consider all the good things that have happened so far. I mean, if you want to get all caught up in is it enough, I suppose, you can, but really, we’ve done a lot, right? (Infidel 753)

huzzah!
Jack

Image Attribution

This is my picture of a mynah bird, so you can do with it as you please. It has no licensure.