I highly recommend "The Possum Experiment," the new episode of "This American Life," which is centered on the question whether people are basically good and can be trusted.
All the segments were high quality, not just the part about the possum experiment. There's also a part about a black male comedian who went blind:
Here's something that I philosophized this little trip. It's a trip for me. This fucks with my head a little bit. My blindness is diffusing the scariness of my Blackness. That was one of my secret weapons to be a big brother, and people get nervous. Oh, fuck. There's a big Black guy. Watch out. That shit is powerful. It was a thrill. Once people find out that I can't see, my Blackness is out the window. They treat me like I'm a Make-a-Wish baby. Uh oh, watch out. There's a big Black guy. Oh, he just walked into the broom closet. OK, no worries.
And the last part is about the alternative endings to "Clockwork Orange."
According to [the novelist Anthony] Burgess, when the book was published here in the States, the publisher told him they wouldn't put it out unless they could cut chapter 21. This was way before the movie was optioned. It was still just a novel. They said the optimistic ending was Pollyanna-ish, naive, and bland. They were like, we Americans are tougher than you Brits. We can handle a nihilistic ending. Some people are just beyond hope. That's more realistic.
But the story wasn't so simple, and Burgess seems to have been bullshitting.
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One of my blogs is about opossums. My reason for the blog is explained in this first article.
Someone pulled something similar a while back in Chicongo with chickens - calling them "mini-emus" on the sign - which itself was a reference to the comedy sketch "Markets of Britain".
More of a sensible chuckle than a hearty guffaw. Markets of Britain is funnier and higher production. I highly recommend watching it if a chance presents itself.
Never underestimate the ignorance of people. Bear spray is not used like bug spray:
https://www.backpacker.com/survival/bears/pro-tip-bear-spray-goes-on-the-bear-not-on-you/
Sane and competent people have genuine problems understanding the blind confusion of the insane and incompetent people out there.
my cousin is All The Time posting on Facebook, about how "possums are our friends" and such.
I'm impatiently waiting for her to wake up and see my post about the Cat Found
i WAS assuming that she'd laugh.. But now i'm afraid she'll be like the 90% and be nice
Am I the only one who finds Ira Glass' voice (and vocal mannerisms) unlistenable? I literally can't listen.
The 21st chapter of Clockwork Orange totally changed it for me. I thought it MADE the story.
Of course, the paperback's intro was all about "secret lost chapter" and such
Last year or so, there was the story about a policeman who saved some puppies only to find out that they were baby foxes.
I'm seeing it as an ersatz episode of the Beverly Hillbillies. With Cindy Crawford gallivanting around a pole it's gotta'be close to Beverly Hill (🎶 swimmin' pools, movie stars 🎶).
Granny - "Vittles! I've got a big of Possum stew."
Jethro salivating hyperbole...
My son has this poster. The first time I saw it I did a double-take before getting the joke.
Satire or not? Local woman posted photos of a small coyote on the neighborhood Facebook page as a lost dog that somehow got in her fenced backyard. She seemed genuinely shocked to learn what it was and the wily pup had leaped out by the time animal control came to remove it. Possums are so ugly! Like overgrown rats.
Ride Space Mountain
There's no need to be that way. It'll hold you back.
"Possums are so ugly! Like overgrown rats."
They eat ticks, almost never get rabies, and aren't aggressive.
American opossums actually originated in South America, which after the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana (incorporating South America, Africa, Australia, Madagascar, India, and Antarctica at one time) for tens of millions of years floated as an island continent much like its cousin Australia — while similarly inhabited by many marsupials, though South America also included placental mammals — not to speak of unusual creatures by our lights such as giant 10'-tall carnivorous birds (the so-called “terror birds” — Phorusrhacidae).
A handful of millions of years back, volcanism built up the isthmus of Panama, geographically connecting South and North America for the first time in, oh, more than a hundred million years. Placental mammals from the North (wolves, cats, et al.) moved south and marsupials and terror birds from the South moved north — all competing with each other.
Much of the southern fauna, including most marsupials and the terror birds, ultimately did poorly in that competition (though one of the terror birds made it as far north as Florida, before going extinct). But opossums not only survived but flourished in North America — our little bit of ancient Australia-like conditions.
Didn't Jackson cross the street to avoid the black guy? Perhaps he believed it was a Hutu, one of Mandela's Xhosa, or a Kenyan elite.
And who could forget the back... black hole... whore h/t NAACP tragedy.
Diversity [dogma] is a many comic thing.
A dog, a piranha, perhaps, sometimes a goat, a maltipoo, ages 0 to 6 months. Collar not included.
Enigma said...
Never underestimate the ignorance of people. Bear spray is not used like bug spray:
https://www.backpacker.com/survival/bears/pro-tip-bear-spray-goes-on-the-bear-not-on-you/
This makes NO SENSE! how on earth would you ever get the bear to spray it? They don't have thumbs?
The blind black comedian story was incisive.
Muy fonny, thx.
When we had a dog, he would sometimes bring to the porch possums he caught. They really do play possum, complete with the tongue hanging out!
The dog never killed one of the little beasts. We'd leave them alone overnight, and they were always gone the next morning. Groundhogs, however, were another thing. Muffy would kill them and leave the bodies for us to dispose.
"Almost never gets rabies" isn't a very glowing recommendation.
Good story, Mike Sylwester.
Possums have a low body temp and don't carry rabies and many other things that are harmful to humans.
I had to remove a big one last fall from our recycle bin, and we know they are numerous in the neighborhood. We usually only see them when the dog does on one of his nightly backyard perimeter patrols.
I think they're cute, and admirable little critters.
One of the first books I mentioned here was Burgess's "The Wanting Seed" about an overpopulated world where the government pushed same-sex sex with slogans such as
"It's sapiens to be homo!"
Little did he dream . . . or maybe he did.
Perhaps Glenn Kessler or some of our other brilliant fact checkers can fact check that poster.
They eat ticks, almost never get rabies, and aren't aggressive.
They project aggression well with that snarly hiss they have! But they do seem to retreat when challenged. They are true omnivores also, eating fruit, bugs and even scavenging dead critters. I'll agree with Narr only so far as the babies are conerned, their tiny pink faces are pretty cute. But adults? Yuck.
i once put up flyers for a lost bengal tiger (named Exxon) on a lark. put a friend’s number on the flyer, however.
It reminds me of videos done to trusting family members to catch their reactions to share online.
The captured videos of the babies reactions when a slice of orange cheese is thrown at their face- or the man’s reaction when the girlfriend slams her door as hard as she can in the car…
I think those are mostly despicable.
Trust is eroding fast enough.
Why does everything crappy have to be an inside job?
Lem: the black racist? Isn’t that Chappelle?
Markets of Britain was indeed amusing. "As a genuine British person, I can tell you this is 100% accurate", reads the first comment at YouTube.
I'm one of those who find Ira Glass's voice unlistenable and so was happy to discover that the text is at the TAL site, too. It was one of those programs I skipped back in the days when I listened to public radio.
You can tell that IG lives mainly in the world of voice (or else he is simply bad at spelling): the opossum is 'bearing' its teeth in the one photograph.
The blind B/black racist on Chappelle is Clayton Bigsby.
Saw a "cat" just like that the other day in our apartment carport.
farmgirl said...
Lem: the black racist? Isn’t that Chappelle?
I was referring to the NPR show Althouse linked to. It's not about Dave Chappelle.
You can listen to the second story to find out what I was talking about.
farmgirl said...
Lem: the black racist? Isn’t that Chappelle?
I was referring to the NPR show Althouse linked to. It's not about Dave Chappelle.
You can listen to the second story to find out what I was talking about.
Let me rephrase my comment about the black racist.
You all may know he’s a character. I wasn’t talking about Chappelle!!!
My bad.
I read both of those stories &Micke’s post on possums.
Loved all 3: thanks!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BLNDqxrUUwQ
Clayton Bigsby
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BLNDqxrUUwQ
Clayton Bigsby
I used to come across possums in my back yard at night but no more. Guessing it's the drought.
It sounds like none of you has ever turned over on your back in a low crawlspace to insulate a pipe and encountered a terrified, trapped possum clinging to a beam two inches from your nose.
Their response may have been all bravado, and maybe they knew they wouldn't give you rabies, but that's not what you're thinking at the time. You also don't give "stand your ground" laws much thought. You do turn off the flashlight. I don't know why. Adrenaline is weird.
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