pigs – Page 3 – don't confuse the narrator

winter approaches

When the white clouds lifted, they left behind
a hint of snow along the mountain ridge. The sky
is blue as any summer’s day and I walk to the village
in unbroken sunshine. On the way back, a neighbour
eases his donkey from amble to pause and greets me.
He wants some windfall apples “pa’ el guarro”. I agree,
but would so much prefer to let the patient burro
mumble fruit from my palm, not help to fatten
the squealing pig for Martinmas.

(First draft – which means I’ve only rewritten it half a dozen times and juggled the line breaks back and forth and to and fro, but haven’t added in additional material or stepped back from it very far.)
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self-fulfilling prophesies

I always check the stats page to see what people are searching for that leads them to the blog.

I already commented in pictures of pigs that I get a lot of visitors looking for “pig slaughter” – some of whom I hope go away satisfied that they’ve seen butchered swine on several pages, although, as yet, I’ve not actually been present at a matanza. (I do love the fact that Spanish doesn’t seem to distinguish between the idea of “slaughter” when it applies to approved animal killing for food, and “massacre” when applied to B-movie horror, e.g. La Matanza de Texas.)

Note that I’ve not been an eye-witness, but I have heard: there has to be a pun about “pigs’ laughter” and “squealing”, but I’m leaving that for another day.

Recently, though, there have been more searches for “science and technology poems”, and I think I am failing those potential readers. So I’d better do something about it (hence the post title).
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hunter of dreams

My neighbours may think I should be concerned about meeting wild boar(s) in the vecinity, but not all such meetings are to be feared.

The picture is a close up (full image below) of one such beast that I came across at the Feria de Arte in Arenas de San Pedro a couple of weeks ago and that I really wish I could have taken home with me.
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don’t confuse the slaughtered pig

list of search phrases — blog standard searches

WordPress – which is where this blog is hosted – provide statistics so bloggers can see how many readers they have and what brings them to the site.

I’m intrigued by the readers who arrive from search engines looking for specific things.

Or, more accurately, I’m intrigued by the things they are looking for. The image on the left shows the most popular search strings from a couple of days ago.

The variety of ways that people think of for searching for the same basic idea fascinates me. But, after all, if there’s more than one way to kill a cat, there’s probably more than one way to slaughter a pig.
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panics and pandemics

Last week I received a writers’ newsletter with yet another warning of a new phishing scam. This scam asks for your bank details so tax owed to you can be paid in directly. One of the recipients responded saying that she didn’t see how people could still be fooled; hadn’t we had enough warnings?

Of course people will continue to be fooled by such things because they want to believe that they are going to get a windfall.

But why people fall for a story like this one about swine ‘flu and zombism, is a bit more complex. It’s a brilliantly done hoax, but there are any number of clues that let a careful reader identify it as just that: a hoax.
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