Okay, I was working on finding a way to provide an outside company with a sort of index to resources that are a mix of documents and links -- so I thought h'm maybe a blog that's restricted to those who are invited might work. So I looked at WordPress (sorry, Blogger, I need more flexibility for this purpose, though I love your integrated simplicity for my own privative needs). Okay, always exciting to see the ferment of plug-ins, add-ons, and fanatical user ideas at WordPress (new version just released!), so I was enjoying that, but then my eye fell on this link to a site that is evidently dedicated to celebrating failure in signage, videos, and juxtaposition. It's called the Fail Blog. So, even though I was working (really), I took a look at it. The signs like this one, for example are very funny, especially the fractured English ones. So I was looking and laughing and sort of monitoring why I was laughing and feeling pretty horrible about laughing at a video of a poor broken-headed gymnast, when I browsed to an item labeled "Interview Location Fail".
And it's the lovely Sarah Palin, chattin' away about Alaskan politics, and "awl," and finance in front of a cage of what turn out to be white turkeys getting their affairs in order. And between the doomed turkeys and Gov. Palin was a workmanlike workman fiddling around with a farm implement on a table -- it was hard to see what exactly he was doing, which made it all the more fascinating, but as you squint at the screen, you can make out a pair of enormous chicken feet protruding from the cone-shaped sleeve suspended above a sort of wooden table or trough, and as you note that the workman is attending to the bottom of that cone -- where, if those are feet, then what's there ought to be a head, and what is he doing with it? Then you notice that the wooden bench below the plastic? fabric? cone is "painted" bright red. The video is grainy, but that red looks sort of -- liquid. You have plenty of time to work this out, because Gov. Palin goes on and on and on, while the workman behind her first listens politely, facing her, and holding what turn out to be the turkey feet above what we now know to be the cone of death, and then, as politely as he can, the fellow turns away and back to his work at the cone -- he projects an air of "well, I haven't any more time to give to this stuff: I've got work to do." Having completed the task -- whatever it is that he did to that white turkey while it was quietly upside down in the cone -- he gets to the point where it's obvious to all watching (and I can't imagine anyone watching this who would not be fixated on the workman at this point)that he would now normally lift the turkey out of the cone and carry it away. He glances at the camera, apparently the only one present who considers that perhaps his activities might not be just right for the five o'clock news to broadcast, and you can tell that the poor fellow is just trapped there. He wants to go get another turkey and keep things moving, but it just goes against his grain to show the world what will show when he lifts the turkey. There's a pause. The workman gathers his resolution -- you can see him doing it -- and he lifts the turkey out of the cone, shielding it from our view with his body. So we still don't know what's really going on in that cone. Gov. Palin talks on and on, and a little while later, the workman sidles back into the frame, holding (I presume) another turkey upside down by the feet (they do all look alike), and now he looks like he's a little fed up with how this is going on and on and on and interfering with his work. He turns his back on the camera, lifts the turkey and stuffs it head-first into the sleeve. Well. This turkey is not having any of this -- the sleeve sort of billows and the alarmingly large feet thrash around so the workman has to concentrate to get a good grip on them. Then, once the turkey is subdued, he turns his attention to the bottom of the cone again. What is he doing? We still don't know. We're peering at the screen, looking for clues -- is that blood? Will the head still be on when he lifts the turkey out of the cone? And oh, yeah, there's Sarah Palin still goin' on and on. Even she has noticed the turkey activity out of the corner of her eye by now, and she's got that sort of fixed smile that you see on a person who is wishing they were elsewhere. The interviewer continues to ask questions, so Sarah Palin takes the situation in hand and starts to slowly move away, though she continues to talk; she's sort of pivoting, trying to get the camera to move its angle out of the line of sight of the workman's activities. The cameraman does not cooperate. At this point, I realize that the cameraman probably does not like Sarah Palin very much. And I have to say that here's a Democrat who saw his chance and took it. And took it. It's with a sense of real civic pride that I celebrate an American who can use the media to take a stand. Off camera.
Here's the clip:
Okay, something I learned after watching the clip is that this was an interview immediately following the Governor's ceremonial "pardoning of the turkey" -- presumably that specific turkey had been released from the pen and was not actually watching the dispatch of all his or her friends and relations. Actually, I lived near a turkey farm for a while (thank god, not too near -- there's a lot of guano involved in turkey cultivation.)Apparantly, one of the hazards of turkey farming is to make sure they're tucked in for the night in cages because otherwise, they'll fly up to the tree limbs and lay their eggs into the air: splat, splat, splat.
Watch for the reporter's "on the chopping block" question around 1 min 20 seconds. Also, Gov. Palin's characterization of this event as an opportunity for "a little bit of levity." is a stopper -- but I suppose...no, I have nothing, it's still death.
