Fly Like an Eagle

Stephen Colbert and I share something, other than a love of sarcasm -- a love of eagles. If you've watched his show, the intro has a giant animated eagle screeching as it flies towards the screen. I don't have anything like that here, unfortunately.

I get a huge thrill from seeing eagles, though, and it happens relatively often, living in the Pacific NW. It seems like I see a bald eagle at least once a month, usually when driving over or around Lake Washington, a weekly occurrence as I ferry Hutton to various appointments. I saw one yesterday as we were heading home from Hutton's "Friendship Group" at the UW, driving over the Lake Washington 520 floating bridge. The eagle landed on a light post on the bridge, and was just so amazing.

I guess my fascination with eagles comes from many aspects. There's the fact that they're our national bird (tough luck, turkey!), that my parents loved to listen to their namesake band (see this post for more on my youthful intro to The Eagles), but probably most from the fact that growing up, the love our our endangered national bird was indoctrinated into us in elementary school. By first grade, I was learning about how the eagle was endangered from DDT thinning their eggshells, and it really struck me as a young environmentalist, how screwed up the world was if our national bird was endangered because of the use of pesticides.

Of course, DDT was only part of it. Loss of habitat, and shootings and/or poisoning of eagles and their prey by humans were other causes. The Bald Eagle Act, passed in 1940 helped stop the deliberate killings. The banning of DDT in 1972 helped further the destruction of eagles. Though if you believe this story, DDT had nothing to do with the deaths of eagles. Huh. But, strangely enough, I don't believe anything that Faux News has to say. Cough, biased, cough.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm still a tree-hugger, and I still love eagles. The eagle population has recovered enough that it has now been moved from "endangered" to "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, and it could possibly be delisted from the Endangered Species List next year!

For your further eagle enjoyment, I found these web cams so you can watch eagles live! No, not those Eagles.

Great Site

My friend Amy sent me this link today. It's the Archive of Misheard Song Lyrics. We've all done it. There are some really funny ones on here. Unfortunately, I started reading this when I should have been getting dressed to go to a class at the gym. So, now I'll continue to be out of shape, but at least I'll be entertained. Yes, I know I could still go the gym, but I hate just working out. I need to take a class to stay motivated. I'm lame that way. And if I go now, I'll be really hungry for lunch and won't be able to focus. I'm a very good rationalizer, aren't I?

My fave misheard lyric so far:
Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name" sung as "Bingo was his name-o." Yeah, that's what Zack had in mind. He was singing the children's favorite right up to the end when he starts screaming out, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" Yeah, fuck off, Bingo!

My own misheard lyrics from childhood are mostly from the Eagles. Yeah, they didn't e-nun-ci-ate very well. Let's see there was, "Lion Eyes" about a woman with a big mane of hair and glowing, bright green eyes trying to hide under the bed. Hey, I was four. I didn't know lions had more amber colored eyes, and they didn't glow. Fortunately, I wasn't really listening well to a song about a gold-digger cheating on her old man. Also from that era, there was, "Take it to the Liver." The full chorus goes, "Pussy on the highway/And show it a sign/And take it to the liver/One more time..." This one involved a cat walking down the street, being shown the sign to where the deli package of liver was waiting for it. Again, I was four. When I was older I became a better listener, though I still thought "Heartache Tonight"
was "Party Tonight" for a while.

So, there you have it. Now, go waste some time. And remember, "I live for all the ugly people." That's from The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" if you didn't know.

EDIT: I almost forgot one of the best misheard lyrics, EVER! My friend, Kelly, from college told us that when she was little, she thought the chorus to Journey's "Open Arms" went as follows. Instead of, "And now I come to you/With open arms..." she always sang it as, "Gol Stan Bee/Gol Stan Baaa." Yes, we all gave her lots of crap about the fact that these weren't even words. I mean, the fact that I still remember these misheard lyrics should say something. On the other hand, it's not like The Police's song "De Do Do Do" means much, either.