Friday, September 02, 2005

Call the Ethicists!  I was reading an article yesterday in which various Ethicists were discussing which types of looting might be justifiable and which types might not.  And I thought, "Being an Ethicist would be a cool job."  Then someone I knew sent me an email that talked about how being an Ethicist would be a cool job, and that pretty much settled it in my mind.  I think they should do a TV show about an Ethicist.  It would be like that "Numbers" show, except each week the protagonist would solve various crimes and hypotheticals with various tools that ethicists use, like logic charts and word games and crystals and such.  And he wouldn't go after criminals so much as people who were simply unethical.  The show would have a kind of moral, like that just because somebody's not in jail, doesn't mean they aren't a bad person.  But if they never commit an actual crime, who's going to catch them?  The Ethicist, that's who!  Unfortunately, because unethical acts are not necessarily crimes, instead of Arrest Scenes each show ends with the Ethicist giving a strong admonishment and subsequent lecture about ethics.  But then the unethical people reform, and so in that way it is like Fucked By An Angel.  Look for The Ethicist, this fall on CBS! My friend Jim of Hyperbole just arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  He and his family left the U.S. late Saturday night, no worries about what was then still an unremarkable, though strong, storm.  When he finally got dial-up access a couple days ago he learned of all that had happened while he was traveleing.  How must it feel to turn on the radio and hear about a crisis in which Ethicists, urgent pleas for additional snakebite kits, and the Superdome are all playing a role? Not to mention the very sudden revelation of just how little has been done in the name of Homeland Security.  I think this is where it starts to unravel.  There are no excuses, not that they aren't trying... 11:21:45 PM    Say what?[]

Deer Over There I was sitting at my computer just moments ago when I heard a familiar sound in the street, perhaps 40 feet from my window. The sound of hooves. It's not a pleasant sound to hear, not in places where you don't expect to hear hooves, and you would think our house would be one of those places, except I've seen a deer here before.  Perhaps I've talked about it.  Big deer, horns.  Ring a bell?  I heard that one behind me one evening as I was walking up my front steps after an evening of carousing or some such.  If hearing hooves is bad, hearing them move very quickly from far over your left shoulder to very far past your right shoulder is even worse.  And worst of all is when it happens after a night of carousing and whatnot.  It makes the hair stand up on your neck when you hear a large animal that you don't expect moving that fast right behind you.  I turned in a panic and caught a glimpse of what I knew instantly was a large deer.  It had horns, but...I couldn't really tell you how many.  It all happened very fast, you see.  At a minimum, there was a large deer with a stick on it's head.  It freaked me out, seeing a deer just bolt down the street like that in our very residential neighborhood.  We are geographically close to the Mississippi River, but a deer would have to go through a lot of neighborhoods to get to us.  But, you have the various rail corridors, frontages, small creeks and parks, and deer can cover ground in a hurry if they want to, so here they are. That was at least two or three years ago, and I have seen hide nor hair of a deer since then, until tonight.  I was in the middle of getting waxed in a chess game, one of over 85 active games I have going right now, nearly all of which are an exercise in futility in the face of long odds, when I heard a faint clicking sound out on the asphalt.  I looked out and a I couldn't believe it.  There was a giant freaking deer out in the street.  And those were no sticks on his head, they were definitely antlers.  Six or eight points?  It was just standing there, kind of stepping softly back and forth with it's front legs.  I fumbled around for my digital camera and hurried out my front door, turning off the porch light as I came out.  That might or might not have been the right thing to do, but when I got to my outer door I realized there were two deer out in the street, the big male and a pretty decent-sized female right behind him.  I did manage to get my digital camera powered up and take two shots, but the deer had moved down the opposite alley by then, and I also didn't have the presence of mind (or time) to zoom in.  In one of the pictures, I can show you the silhouette of antlers that looks like the branches of a tree, though unfortunately the antlers are mostly surrounded by the branches of a tree.  Believe me, if the picture was any good, you'd be looking at it right now. But, the good news is that I got a great look at both the deer, and I did count 8 points.  Eventually I tried to get a third photo, but deer are skittish animals, and that in turn makes me skittish, and I have a credo about giving large stead to antlered animals, so I wasn't able to do that.  The deer trotted away down the alleyway, and then the strangest, and most unfortunate, part of the episode happened, which was where the deer went.  We live right by an off-ramp for I-35e.  In the block across the street, there is a short alleyway that parallels the offramp.  What happened was these deer trotted, the doe down the alleyway and the buck down the offramp, and then they slowly walked into a small brush area right on the corner of the offramp and Randolph Avenue, a half-block away from Lexington.  This brush area is maybe 150 square feet, maybe six feet high.  And it's not especially dense.  There's no way those deer are living in there.  I'd see them more than that if they lived there.  It's not possible for those deer to be living there.  And while I like to see wildlife around in the neighborhood, I don't like the idea that they aren't just passing through, that they could be waiting for me in my yard some night when I go outside.  Agh!  Goddammit.  Now every little sound I hear out my window causes me to look out into the darkness.  And let me tell you, when you've been sitting in a dark room, staring at a blazing white computer monitor and then you try to look out into a dark street, every single thing you see looks like a deer if you want it too.  But seriously, I don't want to get surprised by a deer.  Hell, I don't like getting surprised by a rabbit.  A rabbit will scratch the hell out of you and bite you and make you unlucky, which of course pales to what a deer can do to you with those hooves.  And obviously a deer with antlers can fatally injure a person.  I remember a guy in Minnesota got killed by his own pet deer.  He came home to feed it, the deer was in rut, or perhaps in a rut, and it hooked him in the crotch and ripped that carotid artery or whatever that one is that goes through your groin, and the guy bled to death.  And once a deer tastes blood?  Man, a deer in your grille is the last thing you want. 10:53:25 PM    Say what?[]

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