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This morning I killed another chicken. I’ve lost count. Maybe 60 chickens. These hurt, though. Pollack escaped from the pasture, killing four chickens and leaving four others so wounded I had to finish them off.

Poor Doris. Poor Trick Chicken.

It was all my fault. I should have brought the dogs in before leaving for the store. I should have pounded a t-post into the ground next to the gate. Pollack is strong and skinny. Should of… should of…

Laura had called me while I was out and said it was horrible. She was right. Feathers everywhere. Four dead birds in the coop. The ducks escaped damage; I’m guessing the chief male duck confronted Pollack. He has seen one duck die and another nearly strangled to death. He confronts the dogs, chases Jack around the cars and generally let’s it be known no ducks will be hurt on his watch.

I only wish I had his sense of responsibility.

I failed those eight birds.

I’m no friend of satire, but Mike Judge does it right. By now everyone has seen Office Space. His last film, Idiocracy, nearly matches the former in genius. The premise is smart people are having fewer babies and dumb asses are having too many babies. The result: A man of average intelligence in 2005 would be the smartest man in the world 500 years later. I loved the chart of the world’s IQ declining steadily.

Judge pokes at advertising. Several characters tag their conversations with ‘brought to you by Carl’s Jr.’ because they get paid. The big screen tv has a 13 inch viewing area with its borders containing ads. Several US Government agencies have been sold to large consumer brands, resulting in Gatorade replacing water everywhere except for the toilet. Apparently, Carl’s Jr. acts as both the nation’s food source and provides children protective services.

I thought of this movie last night while Robinson and I watched ‘Dateline.’ We don’t normally watch tv, but the NCAA tournament is on, and I’ve been enjoying it despite the announcers (there’s something odd about a bunch of guys nearing 90 broadcasting college games).

While I snuck outside for a smoke, Robinson flipped to NBC. There was Dateline reporting (cough, cough) on a group of moronic teenagers in East Moline, Illinois. Now, why everyone on the episode spoke like they’re from western Kentucky, I’ll never know. Anyway, I come walking back in and hear “bi-curious and bi-sexual girls.”

Hmmm. Well, I’ll catch-up on the score during commercial breaks.

As we’re watching, I couldn’t help but make comparisons to ‘Idiocracy.’ The beady-eyed boy who claims the girls were really fighting over him (NBC would cut to photos of him with a Michael Jackson hair-do only blond). The reporter would ask him a question about his disturbing behavior and the kid usually responded: “We we’re high.”

Reporter: What did you do after burning and dismembering the body?
Beady-eye Boy: We went to McDonald’s.
Reporter: How could you?
Beady-eye Boy: We were high, man. We were smoking, like, all day.
Reporter: What did you have?
Beady-eye Boy: Double-cheese burger.

Of course, the girl’s murder happened in the middle of the day in front of a Taco Bell.

I think Mike Judge jumped a few centuries too far into the future.

In this part of Michigan, you have to do your job searches with mlive.com. A typical online newspaper. Not as bad as the Sun-Times, but pretty bad (at least mlive loads fast).

I’m doing my weekly job search and an annoying Dell ad pops up. You know the type, the one that floats and you either have to wait for it to finish its animation or click the close button. I close it. The jobs link doesn’t work.

Ok, I’ll let it finish its animation — reload the page. Still, the link doesn’t work. Close the tab and open a new tab. Same problem.

Are you telling me it isn’t Firefox compatible now? That’s exactly the problem. I suppose their developers use IE6 and IE7. That’s a bad sign. You test on IE6 and IE7, you don’t use it.

All this trouble and the search results for computer work was much the same — medical (RN, LPN, etc). Apparently, we’re a sick bunch here in this corner of Michigan. At least our local economy has one growth industry.

It’s a large flock of birds that might run and hide when they see a dog coming but they’re not taking any nonsense off of some random, neighborhood cat.

Scott called me out to see the chickens and ducks go on an offensive against a Tabby that had been on top of the “neighbor’s” pump house and was showing a little too much interest in the birds. The cat ran away before I could get a picture and the birds were starting to disperse.

From Boing Boing–

Detroit houses selling for less than cars

Houses in Detroit are selling for less than new cars:

Folks, the ground underneath the house goes with it. You do know that, right?” he offered.

After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: “The lumber in the house is worth more than that!”

Link (via MeFi)

Update:
From the same article: “At a weekend sale of about 300 Detroit-area houses by Texas-based auction firm Hudson & Marshall, the mood was marked more by fear than greed.”

They couldn’t even find a Michigan-based auction company to sell the foreclosed homes?