(no subject)
I've been working on a rattlesnake project in southwestern New Mexico, and I thought I'd post some pics of the place and a few of the critters I've seen thus far. It's a lot of photos, but, hey, I'm a pretty crapulent guy. Seb at least will feign semi-convincing interest, if he can tear himself away from his precious banana smoothies for a minute or two. So clockwise from top left: landscape, Merriam's kangaroo rat, short-horned lizard, desert patchnosed snake, ground snake, juvenile rodent impaled on barbed-wire fence by shrike (male shrikes do this to impress females, demonstrating what good providers they would be to any prospective young), prairie rattlesnake, coachwhip, banner-tailed kangaroo rat. Kangaroo rats are the only rodents in the history of everything that do not bite and shit all over your hand when you pick them up. They are, as the pictures suggest, very sweet.
We saw Bob Dylan last night. Merle Haggard opened, and thus it was a three-hour celebration of craggy, weather-beaten world-weariness. Merle looked the part in his all-black ensemble; Bob as well was obviously going for flinty and scabrous, but he threw it all away with his curious choice of a bedazzled white cravat. The audience was a strange mix of tired old hippies, paunchy, feathery-haired blue-collar types, and try-hard young scenesters. Merle sounded really good, his deep, smooth, resonant voice somehow defying the years that have ravaged his stooped, broken-down body. It's always cool to see Dylan, but Aud and I were a little disappointed in his set. He had reworked his songs such that many were almost unrecognizable. He played keyboards the entire night, never once picking up a guitar. I know such dabbling must help stave off the boredom inherent in playing the same songs for 35 years, but I suspect most of the audience wanted to hear the versions we fell in love with. But overall we had a good time, and there were substantial bright spots, among them "Queen Jane," "Blowin' in the Wind," "All Along the Watchtower," and "Make You Feel My Love." Anyway, it was all worth it, if only to see a tiny, squirrelly, implausibly agitated old man throw his half-eaten hot dog into the drinking-fountain basin instead of the garbage can two feet away.