#14: Birds

 

Photo by Sentrawood courtesy of Flickr

Dear Birds,

Apparently you think you are special. You think you can get up at 5 a.m. every single day and start chirping your brains out and waking everybody up. Well, I have news for you: 

a) You’re not special. Have you ever heard of airplanes? Or space shuttles? Or dandelion fluff floating on the breeze? You’re not the only ones who can fly, Birds, so get over yourselves.

b) Your feathers aren’t that rad, either. Hello? Have you not seen Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat? Have you not noticed the wonders of chemical dyes? We can make way cooler colours than you and we can change them every single day. Unlike SOME people (I mean, birds.)

c) You think that people swoon over your “songs?” Listen. If any “musician” got on stage and squawked out the same word in the same pitch for about two hours solid, let me tell you, he wouldn’t last long. Are you seriously trying to attract a mate with that racket? Why don’t you try batting your silent eyelashes instead? Oh. That’s right — you don’t HAVE eyelashes.

So basically, what I’m saying, Birds, is that your game is up. You’re a one trick pony, and this is the end of the line for the pony express. 

Oh, and also, have you noticed that earthworms are BLIND? You eat BLIND things. Things that can only get away from you by inching away slowly in the dirt. 

I’ve seriously had enough of your despicable, attention-seeking behaviour. No one wants to hear your lame-o songs except for Rachel Carson, and she’s dead.

Yours,

The Goat

#13: Retail “girls” and “boys”

Photo by Gabu-chan courtesy of Flickr

Attention shoppers,

Just because we work in retail or service, it doesn’t mean we’re pre-teens.

Don’t call us “girls” and “boys.” As in, “Give the chocolate bar to the girl so she can ring it in.”

We’re not children. We’re just poorly paid.

Thanks,

The Goat

#12: Plastic Paddies (fake Irish)

photo by KatDeiss courtesy of Flickr

Dear Plastic Paddies,

Oh – you’re Irish too? Cool! Oh… your great-grandfather came from Ireland. Which county? Oh – you don’t know which county, or even what a county is. That doesn’t matter – if your great-grandfather came from Ireland, then you’re totally Irish and that makes you really special.      

I mean it’s not like everyone’s great-grandfather came from Ireland, ‘cause it’s not like Irish people’s favourite activities after drinking are emigrating and having sex, and not just after drinking but during and before it too. So it’s not like they’ve basically taken over the world, just in a less on-purpose, more intoxicated, broken-condomy way than the British. And with the exception of, um, six counties, but you don’t know what those are anyways so let’s just move on…

What? Oh – you’d love to visit Ireland someday? Cool, you totally should! Oh – but yeah, you’re right, the U.K. is pretty far away. I guess you could always visit places closer to Canada though… like some of the other states. 

But where were we? Oh yeah, we were talking about how you’re totally Irish. Even though you’re only like… let’s see, great-great… hmmm …just calculating here… yeah… yeah. One-billionth Irish. 

Okay, one eighth. You’re one-eighth Irish, and you’re right, that means you’re Irish. What am I doing – I should be buying you a Guinness! Yeah – yeah you’re right, I did just pour a drop of Guinness into this glass of water. This drink is one-eighth Guinness. So, it’s Guinness! Just like you’re Irish.

Unless you’re Barack Obama. In which case… let’s see, just calculating again… great-great-great… County Offaly… the year 1850… hmmm… yeah, in which case, you’re exactly 110 per cent Irish. What’ll you have?

Sincerely,
Michelle the Guest Goat

#11: The Economy

Photo by dvwtwo courtesy of Flickr

Dear Economy,

What, you weren’t getting enough attention?

All those full pages in the business section of every single daily newspaper devoted to stocks and bonds and commodities and currencies weren’t enough for you?

All those incomprehensible acronyms we were forced to digest every day as we watched the morning news? DAX, NASDAQ, TSX, STOXX — I mean, come on! It’s like you were just trying to see how many Xs and Qs you could get on the TV screen at once.

Well, I’ve got news for you, Economy: two can play that game.

You’ve had your spot of revenge. You’ve made us all whimper and moan for a good long while now. We all now know how powerful you truly are, even if none of us understands you.

Look, we’ve all worked really hard for you. We go to work every day in shoes that pinch our feet. We put up with co-workers who bring stinky steamed broccoli to the lunchroom. We’ve licked many, many postage stamps. We’ve tried hard to make you happy.

Please. All we want are our jobs baq. So why don’t you pull your kniquers up, grab a Qleenex, and kixstart our lives again.

I swear, Economy, you’ll make front page news.

Yours, 

The Goat

#10: “I was just going to say…”

Photo by QuintanaRoo courtesy of Flickr

Dear students,

 

Lively debate makes classes very interesting, and thus, I have no issues with you contributing to discussion. I have no problem with you debating in class. And I have absolutely no bones when you make valid points that I don’t agree with.

 

But when you raise your hand, and the teacher calls on you, please, please don’t mutter these words: “I was just going to say.”

 

In actuality, you weren’t “just going to say,” because you ARE saying it right now. The phrase “I was just going to say” implies that you never got your chance to say anything. But that’s not true… you did indeed say it. You weren’t just going to say, you just said.

 

So next time you raise your hand, think about the point you are going to make. Think about likely rebuttals. But most importantly, please think about what you’re not going to say – those six worthless words that have no meaning, make no sense and do nothing but continually frost my doughnut.

 

Yours,

Rich the Guest Goat

#9: Close walkers

photo by iirraa courtesy of Flickr

Close walkers,

You know who you are. You walk a few footsteps behind me on the sidewalk. You’re so close you could pick gnats from my hair.

Do I need to paint some chevrons? Back off!

This habit of yours is poor locomotion etiquette for so many reasons, Close walkers.

a) It makes me feel that I should speed up when perhaps I just fancy a sauntering pace. Maybe I’m elderly or have difficulties with mobility. Cut me some slack and quit pressuring me.

b) When you’re a guy and I’m a girl, it’s just creepy.

c) It’s really just annoying. And if you’re wearing clippity-cloppety shoes, it’s orders of magnitude more annoying. 

So please, just speed up and pass me. Pretend you’re a DeLorean. I won’t mind. 

The Goat

#8. Tangled phone cords

 

Pre-mayhem phone cord. Photo by only alice, courtesy of Flickr.

Dear Alexander Graham Bell:

I keep having this nightmare. In it, I wear my hair in pigtails and lie prone on my bed, kicking my legs up in a jaunty fashion. The bed is bequilted in muted tones. There are teenie-bopper photos on the walls, stuff I clipped from magazines. I’m talking on a pink rotary telephone, twirling the cord with my finger absently, giggling and giggling, twirling and talking.

But soon the cords supercoils upon itself. It becomes increasingly snarled and coiled until I’m tangled in its single greedy tentacle, intended to bring gossip and does-he-like-mes to my ear. It grows hungrier; I struggle but that just makes matters worse. The pink cord is tightening, constricting, growing stronger now — pulling in other small household appliances and dragging us all into a nest of helplessness. And I never get to hear the end of Jenny’s dumb story.

Horrific, right? Except it’s hardly a dream or a nightmare. This happens all the time. In reality.

Lighten up, you say? No, you lighten up. I will cut you.

No love,
A Goat

#7: Brown stuff dumped on the white stuff dumped on the region

 

Photo by Travis Jon Allison courtesy of Flickr

Dear dogs,

Now, don’t get me wrong. I adore you. I smile at you when I pass you on the sidewalk, I stop to pet you all the time, and I practically weep with joy when I see you with your heads hanging out of car windows in the summer, your tongues lolling to the side and your ears a-flappin’ (although I’m always a bit concerned for your safety when I see you doing that, since you’re obviously not wearing your seatbelts.)

But dogs, come on. You’ve got to do something about this winter poo problem. I mean in the summer, you poo in the grass, it quickly decomposes, and no one’s the wiser, right? But in the winter, your poo just sits there. Freshly deposited and warm, it sinks a little into the snow and then bammo! It’s frozen. And there it remains, cryogenically preserved, until the first lovely, spring-like day or unseasonal thaw.

Except that day isn’t actually lovely at all, because as the snowbanks start to melt, your poo rears its ugly face again. And again. And again. It’s all over the place – a little log on the sidewalk, a little mound on the corner, a smear across the pavement, sometimes even a little trickle of diluted liquid poo dribbling down a crusty bank.

This needs to stop, dogs. Now I know you’re probably getting your cute pouty faces on, thinking, “But we don’t have opposable thumbs! We can’t pick it up!”

Come off it, dogs. You’re pretty smart. You bring Neo Citran to lost people. You can figure out how to grab a plastic bag before you leave the house, and then give it to your opposable thumb-bearing human to do the dirty work.

So please. Quit dumping brown stuff on the white stuff dumped on the region.

Yours,

The Goat (who, incidentally, is permitted to poo all willy-nilly-like because on farms poo is called “fertilizer.”)

#6: “White stuff dumped on the region”

photo by SIR: Poseyal Desposyni courtesy of Flickr

Dear journalists,

I have many questions for you.

Why on earth do you feel compelled to describe snowfall in your area as “white stuff dumped on the region?”

Do you call rain “the wet stuff?”

Or sunshine “the bright stuff?”

No, you do not.

Also, a reader may be fooled into thinking that 12 inches of icing sugar or cotton or shaved coconut is waiting to be shovelled off the sidewalk.

So, journalists, please quit confusing your readers and stick with terms we can all understand.

Yours,

The Goat

#5: Clippity-cloppety shoes

 

photo by macient zygmunt courtesy of Flickr

Yes, yes. I know that for most men, the sound of clippity-cloppety shoes is like an siren alerting you to the presence of a woman, and that it means that you should sit up and ogle already.

Well, for everyone who doesn’t have the sound of heels hard-wired into her pelvic region, the sound is more like the death-knell of her sonic peace. It’s like a clock ticking inside her brain. Or Chinese water torture. (Not that, thank gosh, I’ve ever been tortured with Chinese water.)

Also, high heels will give you back problems later in life.* Goats sort of have heels, one might argue. But they’re hoofs, really, and we’ve evolved to handle the weirdness of walking on our toes. Human females haven’t evolved to a goat-like state yet. I rue the day this will happen.

Yours,

The Goat

* There is no scientific evidence for this statement, as far as this goat knows. But do you see those old ladies using walkers to get around? I’ll just bet they wore heels when they were sprightly lasses.