I believe in positive thinking. One of my greatest missions in life—aside from making sure I never miss a meal opportunity—is to promote seagull pride. And I do a lot of research to bring you some of the best good-news stories about seagull-human interactions. When I see that humans are naming something of theirs in honor of us seagulls, I assume they're paying us a compliment, showing us respect. Once in a while, unfortunately, I encounter something so derogatory, so demeaning, so downright crude and offensive that it even makes my search engine blush. I will refrain from sharing this kind of garbage with you, because it’s not the kind of garbage I enjoy digging into, and because I have too much respect for my readers. But I'll admit I sometimes fall for deceptive language. When I encountered the expression "seagull manager," I immediately assumed it referred to an uncanny ability we gulls possess. We can size up a situation, take control, and get results. Take this scenario, for example: a seagull sees a red snapper slithering out of a pelican's beak. Not wanting to see a good meal go to waste, Mr. Gull seizes the moment, glides onto the scene just in time to rescue Mr. Pelican's catch and prevent the delicious fresh fish from being lost back to the ocean. His reward? Mr. Gull gets to fly away with a highly satisfying supper. This strikes me as a win-win situation. To my dismay, I learn that "seagull managers" are actually undesirables. What at first appeared to be a compliment turned out to be an insult. In an article at talentsmart.com, "How Seagull Managers Make Everyone Miserable," Dr. Travis Bradberry writes: The boss finds his staff stumped by a problem and decides it’s time to step in. But, instead of taking the time to get the facts straight and work alongside his team to realize a viable solution, he swoops in squawking, dumps orders riddled with formulaic advice, and then abruptly takes off, leaving them behind to clean up the mess. And an article at managers.org.uk elaborates: Erratic, ill-prepared and arrogant, seagull managers damage staff morale by talking down to colleagues and blaming everyone else for their failures.
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What's a Regular Boar? I assume it's a more interesting creature than a Regular Bore. And what would be the opposite of a Regular Boar? An Irregular Boar? A Premium Boar? When the Regular Boars get together, what's on the agenda?
Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall at a Regular Boar meeting*? Bet you'd have a lot of company... *The Limelighters perform today's musical link—"There's a Meetin' Here Tonight," from 1961.
Sometimes I feel like the world is just passing me by. Like, April is almost over. And, by the way, what ever happened to March? It's been gone for almost a month, but I'm just now missing it. I can't even remember if it went out like a lamb or a lion. There was all kinds of marching going on back in March, and I missed out on that, too. Marching for X, marching against Y. Marching to remember Z. Marching to get something started. Marching to end something.
Is there a verb "to April?" If there is, I bet we seagulls excel at it. Because April* means time to make more seagulls. We're good at that. But we're losers when it comes to marching. *Today's musical link brings you "April Love," a 1957 hit by Pat Boone.
This week, I'm taking a question from C.A. of Grand Forks, North Dakota, who asks: "Geo, I remember an 80s techno-pop band called A Flock of Seagulls*. Please tell me if it is appropriate to call a gathering of seagulls a flock."
* The musical link is "I Ran (So Far Away)" from 1982. If you'd like to be the next person to have Geo answer your Fun Fact Friday question, click Comments in the top right corner of this page. Keep in mind that you must say "please" if you really expect Geo to answer your question. I just got an email that says I can spend three nights in Iceland for under $400—if I hurry... The offer ends at 11:59 p.m.
Ten teams currently compete in minor league baseball's Southern League. That's just enough franchises to justify organizing them into two divisions. So some Southern League teams play in the South Division, but others must play in the North Division. Sounds a bit like a Civil War reenactment. North squads this season include the Montgomery Biscuits and the Chattanooga Lookouts. Names like the Pensacola Blue Wahoos and the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp stand out in the South.
Today's musical link is Jo Stafford's 1951 pop hit, "Shrimp Boats."
Call me a "prepper" if you want. I've been called much worse. I am proud to say I am uniquely prepared for any doomsday scenario. I can survive any form of natural disaster you can imagine—earthquake, fire, flood, famine, pestilence, volcanic eruptions, the rogue planet Nibiru nearly colliding with Earth... The latter is believed by some evangelical Christians to be the event that triggers the Rapture, the second coming of Christ that ushers in the end times. And they think the planets and stars are aligned just right for that to happen today. We'll see what happens. They could be right. What—me worry? I'm confident that even when the world ends, there will still be leftovers I can pick through for sustenance. They didn't give me the nickname "garbage gut" for nothing. I've also heard that Armageddon could be nigh because Federal Communication Commission rules will take effect today that eventually will nullify the so-called "Net Neutrality" regulations that haven't really quite gone into effect themselves. (A convoluted, government-inspired sentence, that last one.) There are some who believe the death of Net Neutrality will signal doom for the internet. Yet, somehow the internet survived, prospered, and fostered innovation for a over quarter century with minimal government interference and without Net Neutrality.
Musical link by Kermit the Frog on Sesame Street, 1970.
As mentioned yesterday, English is my second language. Around my peeps, I speak Squawklish. But with you, my online friends, I communicate in English. Of course, this sometimes means circuits get crossed in my seagull brain, resulting in confusion, misinterpretation, mispronunciation, and miscommunication. To begin with, there are just plain too many words in the English language. And too many words that have the same, but not exactly precisely the same meaning as other words. And there are words that look and sound like they should have a certain meaning, except they don't mean anything close to what you think they mean.
From Leesburg, Virginia, M.L. submits this question: "Geo, please tell me, why do you squawk so much?" The answer is: I squawk so much because I love the sound of my own voice. And you correctly observe that I do a lot of squawking. It's one of my favorite pastimes. I may squawk a lot, but I try hard not to curse. Oh, occasionally I might become really, really frustrated. That's when I've been heard to exclaim, "Gull darn it!"
Because I am bilingual, I refer to my native language as Squawklish. To communicate with you, I can write in English. But due to anatomical limitations, I can only speak in Squawklish. Sorry, no poem today. I'll squawk to you again tomorrow. If you'd like Geo to answer your Fun Fact Friday question, click Comments in the top right corner of this page.
You must say "please" if you really expect Geo to answer your question. Yesterday's post featured both poetry and history. Today's post combines the two. On this date in 1775, colonial rebels fought British redcoats at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, in the opening skirmishes of the American Revolutionary War. The Patriots were the surprise winners, even without Tom Brady. In the course of learning the historical significance of April 19, 1775, generations of American school children memorized the verses of "Concord Hymn," by philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It's not easy being a wordsmith. Every day, I try to bring my best game to this blog. Some days are winners. Some days not so much. Yesterday, I hit a walk-off grand slam. It was a three-pointer at the buzzer. A hole in one. The gold medal. Nothing I can offer you today will measure up. I don't even think today's verse will take the bronze. It's only a quintain in iambic tetrameter. You be the judge.
When it was time to publish yesterday's post, I was up against a deadline. So I had to crank out the first thing that came to mind.
No, I take that back. The first thought that came into my mind was, "Where can I grab any conceivable thing to eat from anyone around here?" Amazingly, I was able to suppress that thought in favor of the second thing that came into my mind. As you can tell, the resulting post was a hastily contrived placeholder that enabled me to get on with more important things—mainly, finding dinner. Then, imagine my surprise when some readers actually liked my Punctuation Poetry post. It was only meant as a kind of faux haiku to express one of my pet peeves—people who don't refer to things like punctuation marks and keyboard symbols by their proper names. Whoa there! You did, perhaps, notice that I referred to a # as a "hashtag," when I know full well that it's technically a number sign (as in Punctuation Poetry #2) or a pound sign for weight (in place of the abbreviation lb.) or a sharp symbol in music (as in the key of F# Major). Now, some quirky techies who added a # to telephone keypads in the 60s wanted to rename it the "octothorpe" of all things. And for years a handful of outliers have insisted on calling a # a "hash" or "hash mark." Rather than just strut around and squawk about all this, I was merely trying to relate to the common Tweeter out there who only knows the language of today's "hashtag" world. Besides, when you look back on yesterday's post/poem, "hashtag" works much better poetically than "number sign," don't you think? Anyway, I was stunned to receive compliments and calls for more poetry, and even a request to do a regular poetry reading. I'm going to have to think a while about that last one, even though thinking is something I hesitate to do for very long, because it makes my head hurt. Admittedly, some of the compliments I received were from readers who were relieved that I had stopped writing about baseball and soccer and high school mascots and such. I hate to break the news to you guys, but I haven't really stopped yet. I'm just taking a 7th inning stretch. You know—there's a break in the action, a time out on the field, and we'll be right back after this important message. Like that. So, stand by sports fans! And get ready, poetry buffs and punctuation punks! Here's my latest literary effort:
Again we reach into the proverbial mailbag for a Fun Fact Friday question. (However, I have been unable to find any proverb on the subject of mailbags.) This week's question was submitted by D.B. from Jupiter, Florida, and it's appropriate for Friday the 13th: "Geo, please tell me, do you have any superstitions?" The answer is easy. No, I do not. Now, can I go home for the weekend? I do have to admit, if Fun Fact Friday #13 had coincidentally landed on today's date, I might have hedged a little in my answer. However, I am neither a friggatriskaidekaphobe nor a paraskevidekatriaphobe. I do not let the calendar dictate how I live. I am more concerned about where and when I'll find my next meal. By the way, did you leave a few French fries for me? Some Cheez-Its, maybe?
To submit your potential Fun Fact Friday question for Geo, just click or tap the Comments link in the top right corner of this post.
Be sure to say "please" if you really expect Geo to answer your question.
On a totally separate plane from this blog...
As the nation of Israel prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its rebirth, I hope you will join me in acknowledging Holocaust Remembrance Day, as observed annually in both America and Israel. Learn more about this solemn occasion here. Read President Reagan's 1983 remarks to Holocaust survivors here. Recent surveys show fewer and fewer Americans have any idea of the magnitude of the Holocaust and the meaning of the names Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka, etc. Follow those links to fill the gaps in your knowledge of this horrible scar on human history.
The saga of these particular Gulls would be sad enough, but it was made even sadder for the team and their fans because they were essentially a reincarnation of another dead team that went by the same name and played from 1995-1998 in the ill-fated Western League.
In the summer of 1998, that earlier Grays Harbor franchise fell apart. But the Gulls of '98 played on, like zombies wearing caps and cleats, setting a record for the longest road trip of the 20th Century—62 straight games away from home. They had no choice. There was no home field to come home to! More about gulls in sports tomorrow, and more about Grays Harbor, too. If this blog had a mission statement, "Reinforcing Seagull Pride" would be front and center. So you can understand my recent preoccupation with humans dressed up as seagulls in sports. It warms my heart to find shining examples of humans who have followed the lead of a powerful seagull mascot and accomplished great athletic feats. It would be nice if humans would similarly celebrate the mental prowess of seagulls. But that's another story. Back again to the Better Late Than Never Department. Here's the big news from Everett, Washington—news that I missed back in March....
These winning Seagulls did it way back in 1989. That's when the small town Raymond High School girls basketball team, from the small western Washington town of the same name, took the state title and went on to win almost everything the next year, for a record winning streak. Almost 30 years later, I finally found out about this Seagull achievement, in an archived Seattle Times article.
Here's another one from the Better Late Than Never Department:
Anyway, the title game took place almost a month ago, and I just found out today.
Here's how it was reported at dailyastorian.com: S.T. from French Lick, Indiana—this is your lucky day! Your question gets the spotlight in this special thirteenth edition of Fun Fact Friday! Here's S.T.'s question: "Geo, please tell us—how do you find all this interesting stuff for your blog?" I'll try to answer without giving too much away. The way it usually works is that I get ideas. And then I get the urge to turn those ideas into words and digitize them. But I need facts and pictures and sounds to fulfill my readers' great expectations of a consistently entertaining and educational experience.
To submit your potential Fun Fact Friday question for Geo, just click or tap the Comments link in the top right corner of this post.
Be sure to say "please" if you really expect Geo to answer your question. |
Meet the AuthorHi. I'm Geo the Seagull.
I'm the distinguished Park Host on South Jetty Beach at Bandon, Oregon, USA. I'm a firm believer in First Principles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Your Lunch. Archives
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