–No, we’re not talking about Big Bird, that mellow yellow fellow with the endocrine problem universally endeared to children on Sesame Street. This is about cryptic birds big enough to carry away small children, as reportedly happened in Lawndale, Illinois in 1977. At that time, a 4′ tall boy weighing 56 lbs. was reportedly carried 35 feet by an enormous black bird with a white ring around its neck. The bird was said to have had a 4-1/2 foot body, and each wing of the bird exclusive of the body measured 4 feet. The boy pounded at the bird and was eventually dropped after having been carried that 35′ distance; he was physically unharmed, but suffered psychological problems afterwards. The bird came to be referred to as the Lawndale Thinderbird, after the enormous birds of Native American legend…
Archive for September 1, 2008
The Lawndale Thunderbird
September 1, 2008The Agony and The Ecstasy…
September 1, 2008
— Permit me a digression. I went to my first demolition derby last night. It was both repellent yet oddly fascinating at the same time, kind of like a mummy or Dick Cheney. The entire experience was reminiscent of the scene in Artificial Intelligence where anti-technology humans smashed and burned functional yet obsolete robots before a gleeful crowd. Artificial intelligence, however, will never substitute for natural stupidity! At the price of admission I thought I’d see at least one ejection, but that was not to be. I did see yesterday’s Cadillacs, Fords, and Chevys in mortal combat. In the heat of battle so much dirt and smoke was generated that you could barely see the combatants; engine components caught fire, and sheared-off bumpers littered the field. The assembled crowd of spectators spanned the age range of infancy to old age; redneck knows no bounds, and there are far worse things to be. It was a very stupid, yet strangely purgative experience, one which perhaps expresses the love/hate relationship that humans have with their cars…
…and to think that they call us animals!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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