cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Return of Squeak Shit just got way out of hand. So last week I thought it would be an interesting idea if there was a class offered to locavores and slow food people and 'tree-huggers' to teach them how to hunt deer. Covering biology, ecology, natural history, shot placement, gun safety, rifle shooting, field dressing and butchering. I figured that there are probably scads of other people like me out there who did not grow up as part of a hunting or shooting culture but would like to learn how to do it. In my own case, I spent years as an adult teaching myself how to do all of this shit. Weeks every fall and winter sitting in blinds or stalking through the woods. Countless hours every week reading books, magazine articles and scientific research papers on deer, hunting and ballistics. I learned the hard way about how to butcher a deer, then scoured the internet for different ideas about how to do it, tried comparative techniques and then settled on what was best. As it turns out, nobody does this. Nobody. You only hunt if you grew up in a family of hunters. Otherwise you are shit out of luck and will never have the opportunity to learn. The fact that I stuck with it for years and devoted an outrageous amount of time and effort into studying the craft independantly and as an adult is a totally unique thing. So the point is that I wrote a blog entry on my 'real name' blog about this idea. And within hours I was getting bombarded with emails from people asking to sign up. Then the media started contacting me about it. And suddenly I was being interviewed on-camera for Fox News (not that I'm a big fan of Fox) and it turned into a whole big thing. Followed by still more people emailing me to sign up. Well, fuck. Now it's not just an idea, is it? Now I HAVE to teach this class. In 7 parts, plus field trips. Not through any other organization that deals with getting the space or managing sign-ups or any of that shit. I am the whole show. The good news is that I don't think I'm necessarily in over my head. I've helped manage political campaigns, which means directing volunteers and managing spaces and paper so that should help. And I've taught continuing education classes for licensed members of my profession, which meant writing course outlines and producing hand-outs and all that shit. I certainly know the material here. So I should be capable of pulling this off. But, fuck. I'm not going to be getting paid anything for this. Is this just going to be an on-going source of stress and scheduling hassle with absolutely no reward for me of any kind? I don't know. Maybe at the end of the class I can take my lesson plans and notes and cobble together a book out of them. 'Hunting Deer, Liberally.' Something like that. In other news, it was my birthday a few days ago. I got an arm brace with a built in ice pad for my elbow. That's it. Literally, that was the only present I received from anyone. I asked Trish for a blowjob but didn't get one. My birthday was shit. Squeak the toad showed up yesterday. I was moving some stuff on the porch and there he was, dozing in a puddle where some water had dripped from an air conditioner. I swear he's put on weight amazingly quickly. But it was definitely the same toad, because he still has the scar from where the snake bit him. Ida and Harry came outside to see him. We picked him up and petted him and then put him down in a nice moist spot beside the porch with plenty of soft dirt to dig down into. I tried to feed him an especially large potato bug but he wasn't interested. 10:16 a.m. - 2009-08-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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