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President Bush does it. Congress does it. Pink Lady does it. And even the Texas Legislature does it (but not often enough the past couple of years). Sooner or later, everybody does it.Now, it is Lobby Duck's turn. (The photo should be your first clue.) It's vacation time! This means at least one important thing to Lobby Duck. Beer.See you right after Labor Day!(If something important comes up, I'll try to find a computer or maybe one of my guest duck bloggers will check in. If not, for sure after Labor Day, we'll be back and ready to tackle the election and other fun stuff.)
All of you must know that I don't like to brag. Seriously. What lobbyist does? (Oh. Wait. That doesn't sound quite right.)But, I just have to tell you. Recently, I had an awesome experience in San Francisco. I played golf at the Lake golf course at the Olympic Club. It was awesome. This is where important people play, if you know what I mean. And here I was, playing golf. I tee off. And, uh oh. Let's just say, my game was nothing to brag about. In fact, it really sucked. What can I say? I obviously need more practice.
Only in California. (Or, Austin. According to my dad, Austin really lives in California, if you know what I mean.)Ladies and gentlemen, in our first Lobby Duck's Believe It or Not!, I present an X-ray of a duck's stomach. And a dead duck's stomach at that. What?When workers at the Bird Rescue Center in California reviewed the X-ray of this dead duck's stomach, they were shocked to see what appeared to be the head of an extraterrestrial alien. Now, you ask yourself, what is really weird about this? Why would they be making an X-ray of a dead duck's stomach? Seriously. Only in California.
"It looks like a tiny alien in his belly, that's about all I can say," spokeswoman Marie Travers said. "No Elvis sightings that I've heard of yet." Really? I'm sure if you look hard enough, you'll see Elvis. Seriously.
As it turns out, when they looked into it (and I mean literally) turns out the alien image was mostly likely a lump of grain. Just a lump of grain? We don't need Mulder and Scully after all? Once again, proving that most things cannot be taken at face value. In life or in politics.P.S. Thanks to Robyn over at Capitol Crowd for the tip on this story.
Baby girls. For Brangelina, Bennifer, and TomKat. And, it's no surprise
to evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa.In fact, good-looking parents are 36 percent more likely to give birth to a girl than less-attractive couples -- which also explains why women are, on average, better looking than men, argues Kanazawa, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
But why are
beautiful people more likely to have girls? Kanazawa's explanation is way complicated. Let's just stick with my attempt to explain this. To continue the species, we must have, uh, let's refer to it as reproduction. And, given that it's a given men value physical attractiveness more than women do when looking for a mate, it's much better for the girls to have the good looks so that a man will chose her and reproduction will continue. Got it? (Yes, I know. Shallow of them, isn't it?)Whatever. As I've noted before, I'm an only child and a girl. My parents didn't have the "son." Well guess what, Mom and Dad, it's because you are beautiful people. The next time your friends are bragging about their sons, just let them know how sad you are for them that they aren't as good looking as you are.
I was down on Congress Avenue for lunch yesterday. Have I mentioned it was really hot? Unreasonably hot, in fact. Maybe we should start taking this global-warming thing seriously.Given the temperature, I was amazed to find protesters out at the South entrance to the Capitol. Of course, we all know that the Women in Black show up every Wednesday around noon. Hot or not. (Didn't their mothers tell them not to get out in the August sun dressed in black? Seriously.)
There were also a few guys protesting immigration. I thought this was old news. But, it seems they had just clued in that Superman is from another planet. You got it - you're way ahead of me here - making him (horrors) an illegal alien. And, this is protest-worthy. Even in the August heat.When President Bush heard about it,he said, "What? We're getting illegal aliens crossing our borders from other planets? That's just super, man. Send in the National Guard!"
Now this dude just simply doesn't have enough to occupy his time. Researcher Colby Tanner, a graduate student at the University of Utah, has found that ants are more aggressive when they think they're part of a larger group. In short, ants that think they are part of a gang are bad asses. I kid you not.I guess the first obvious question is why would this guy chose this as a research project? I'm not advised.
The next question. How did this dude conduct this research? He kept one set of ants in an environment with a lot of other ants, where they were constantly bumping into each other. Let's call these the city ants. He put a second group of ants in a less populated area, where they had little contact with others. Why don't we refer to these as the country ants.Then, the researcher had each set of ants fight enemy ants. Seriously. What happened? The country ants were hesitant to fight. However, the city ants were like, "Bring it on." Seems being in close proximity to all of the other ants made the city ants aggressive.As a guy I used to work for said, "What's the take-away?" To tell you the truth, I don't know why the researcher wasted his time on this project. He could have just studied the behavior of lobbyists during the session.Or, perhaps the real take-away here is that Mr. Tanner needs to get a life. Dude, become a blogger.
What does a lobbyist do during the interim? I'm asked that question by many people. (Even my family thinks I just sit on my tailfeathers during the interim.) Well, among other endeavors, I practice my golf game.A really good lobbyist needs a really good golf game. And to have a really good golf game, you must practice.Practice, practice, practice. What your mother told you is indeed correct. Practice makes perfect. Well, maybe the inverse is true. Without practice, you won't even be passable, much less perfect.So, as not to totally embarrass myself, I practice whenever I can. Which is to say, not often enough.What do I mean when I say "really good golf game?" Well, it's like this. You want to have a respectable score. But, you don't want to have a better score the the legislators with whom you are playing. A delicate balance for sure. Don't embarrass yourself and most certainly don't embarrass the legislator. And, it should go without saying, that a lobbyist doesn't want to hit a Senator in the head with his golf ball. Dude, take it from me, this just wouldn't be the thing to do. Leave that to the Senator's staff.P.S. I'll have more about golf later.
