That's Church

Internet, I have to post on a Sunday because my facebook, twitter and email accounts are going BLLLLLLLLLLLLL with links to this story and if I don’t write about it today, my little hat tip list at the end of this post is going to be longer than the actual post.

First, I love it that when people read pigeon stories, they think of me. As they should.

The story!

Pooping pigeons forced the Kings of Leon to abandon their St. Louis, Missouri, concert after just three songs Friday night, the rock band’s management said Saturday.An infestation of the birds in the rafters of the Verizon Amphitheatre bombarded the musicians as soon as they took the stage, according to Andy Mendelsohn of Vector Management.

Ah, yes. The pesky pigeons in the rafters problem.They do so love rafters. That’s how they brought that bridge in Minnesota down.

The aerial attack began during the opening song — “Closer” — when he was bombed in the face. His bass tech wiped most of it off with a sanitary wipe, he said.

Excrement struck each of his arms over the next two numbers, he said.

“I was hit by pigeons on each of the first three songs,” he said. “We had 20 songs on the set list. By the end of the show, I would have been covered from head to toe.”

People, do you know how many pigeons have to have been up in those rafters to generate that amount of poop?

Pigeons are evil demon knowing bastards, but an individual pigeon can only produce so much shit at one time. A shock and awe aerial assault like this would take planning, strategy, secret meetings with Satan, dry runs, and at least five dozen ninja pigeons with bloodlust and a willingness to die for the cause.

On the third song, when he was hit in the cheek and some of it landed near his mouth, they couldn’t deal any longer.

The cheek. Poop. Pigeon poop. Near the mouth. By the mouth. Next to the mouth. Within an inch of the mouth. Taste buds. Pigeon poop. Mouth.

I think I’m having a seizure.

(h/t Rocky, StateoMain, @squirrelfactor, @MacGirlie, @jeffkupko, @chrislovett, @lifeliberty, @kellydiane, @webchyk, @alizimm, Denise, Just a Simple Man, Jen, Tiffany, Annietiques, CrashJK, Yvette, Jennifer, Melissa B, Michael, and Melissa P)

My latest column is up at Pittsburgh Magazine, and in this one, I take exception to those people who think the only people that can be true Pittsburghers are those people who live in the actual city of Pittsburgh.

I beg to differ.

And I do it with lots of horror movie screams.

P.S. I WISH my arms were that skinny.

Last week I decided that my blog’s sidebar was a chaotic annoying sidebar that needed redded up in a major way. I’m not exactly sure what a widget is, but it clearly needed some widgets.

So this week, I asked my butler Woy:

“If I wanted to make changes to my sidebar without bugging you about it, I would do that how?”

“I would give you access to the sidebar editor and I would back that shit up.”

“Okay. I’m going to attempt some minor changes. So you should back that shit up before I destroy it.”

“When were you thinking of making edits?”

“I already started.”

“You are a dangerous woman.”

Church.

So I wrestled with my sidebar, with html, and with widgets (not really widgets, I just like to say widgets) for two and a half hours and I managed to add that little “Follow me” twitter icon you see there. Go me! But I couldn’t center it for the life of me. I also managed to entirely delete the border of my blog, and there were hundreds of gray divider lines running down the whole length of my blog. The coupons apparently taught the divider lines a thing or two about sex. I can only imagine the havoc that would be wrought if widgets started having sex. Regardless, my blog was a hot mess and it completely exploded when I forgot to close a <div> tag, which is apparently the virtual equivalent of pressing the detonator button on a hunk of C-4 in real life. I was covered in exploded remnants of incorrect HTML code. Brackets and back slashes all over the damn place.

Luckily, Woy backed that shit up and came riding in on his virtual white horse and saved the day.

He fixed what I effed up, and in a matter of 30 minutes total did all the other things I wanted.

So what you’ll notice has changed:

• I have removed the big “THIS IS THE YEAR” button because it was mocking me. I kid. I removed it because I’m trying reverse psychology on the Universe. Also, I asked real loudly to the angels if they thought I should take the button down and they whispered in my left ear, “Yes.”
• The Pittsburgh Mag button will actually take you to my archives over at the magazine instead of the magazine’s main page. Making your life easier.
• Mike put my blog archives into calendar form instead of the long list of months spanning five years. That list drove me nuts. It’s gone. It can kiss my grits.
• I deleted both the category listings and the tags, because my God, tag clouds are ugly, and because Luke Ravenstahl’s name was the biggest word in the cloud. If you want to find something, just search under the “Find something!” box and you’ll find it.
• The tag cloud and category list have been replaced by the most recent reader comments. Much prettier.
• And perhaps the sexiest update, when you click on a post you’ll find at the bottom there are now a few options for you to share the post a bit easier. You can email it, tweet it, facebook it, or click the green Share This button and choose your poison. Woy is working to have those options available to you straight from the main page.
• Widget.

I thought he was joking, but he was serious and now here at 10:13 p.m. on July 22, I have only one hour and 47 minutes (gosh, I hope I did the math right) to celebrate this day, this day that the associate minister of my church tells me is …

NATIONAL SQUIRT A PIGEON DAY.

It is an actual thing! This is like Christmas!

Now I was already ready for bed, but, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be the robed, crazy-haired, mudmask-wearing chick laughing maniacally as she chases pigeons with a Taser while blasting America the Beautiful on her iPod.

What?

Squirt, tase. Tomato, tomahto.

“Oh, beautiful for spacious skies …”

The Headline:

The forecast:

The question:

Am I the only one that doesn’t consider low-nineties to be “excessive heat?”

Come see me when it hits 100 degrees in the shade or when people’s eyeballs start cooking, otherwise, I call low-nineties … “summer.”