zipbampow

[zipbampow]

Mysterious backwoods murderer or vengeful spirit? No one really knows who the Grackle is, or was, but she remains in the shadows of local folklore, keeping her eyes open.

[zipbampow]

I was just sitting on my balcony, at midnight, and a bird is singing a song. They have been for hours. At times it sounds lovely and bubbly but a lot of the time it sounds like longing. I wondered for a bit if it was maybe mournful.

So I googled it. Like you do when you have any remote curiosity about absolutely anything. Rather than thinking about it for a moment, or taking it in, you --by you I mean I, to be clear-- instead of taking it in or thinking, you immediately jump to google it, to pantomime “learning” something new.

But what happens when you google stuff, is that you see the thought processes of people who’ve come before you. When I shattered my pelvis last year (long story, another time), I saw this really terrifying thing bubble to the surface when I was lying in a hospital bed, googling the feelings I was feeling in my reassembled crotch, I saw what people who came before me had been trying to find out... I realized that I was recovering in an insured Western medicine gold standard kind of way. I could see, plain as fuck by the google suggestions, that people were trying to recover from that injury (an open-book fracture of your pelvis is exactly what it sounds like; the female pubic bone is so gracious and polite, “oh excuse me! Let me get out of your way!” she seems to say, as she parts to let a baby out, or a motorcycle gas tank in... again, long story*, another time) on they own.  Google painted the picture of the uninsured self-diagnosing with keystrokes. At my job (at the animal doctor store) we jokingly refer often to “Dr. Google,” but, like... she’s almost everyone’s primary care (you thought Dr. Google was a man, right?).

Anyway. The google hole. You know what I’m talking about. It’s a focus group. It’s how you know Trump is going to be re-elected. That. Tonight the google hole kicked me in my heart a little when, thinking I was googling about mournful bird songs (turns out it’s probably just a horny or territorial dude, but you never know, right?), someone’s like, “Hey Siri, how do I make birds shut the fuck up?”

But then I imagine another person is googling at 1, 2, and 3am, expecting perhaps a different answer for each hour. Well, at 1am, the birds are doing their call to prayer. At 2am, birds are mostly just discussing the finale of Love Is Blind (Lauren Speed is a queen!!! Also, pretty mad Jessica gave her dog wine.). At 3am, birds are brainstorming for their sales meeting on Thursday.

*it’s actually not that long. A woman named Blaze (HER REAL NAME, Y’ALL) pulled a left turn in front of me and I put a 1000cc Ducati-sized dent in her front fender and scared the shit out of her. It’s always a fucking left turn.