The Files of a Public Service Fox

Creamy Punch

2007-12-23T19:21:00.000-04:00

Mister Mayor Says:

A weekly advice column written by Mayor Michael Stag, published every Sunday in The Forest Trumpet and online at forestlegislature.blogspot.com.

Dear Mister Mayor,

D'you have any good hangover cures?

From Sweeny.

This is a timely question, Sweeny. Since of course we have just finished celebrating the Solstice, some of you may still be nursing the consequences of the festivities. Or there is the New Year' celebrations to think of, and the next few days of recuperation that could be reduced with the right restorative.

It's said that Milk thistle and Ginger root are helpful, as are apples eaten on an empty stomach the morning after. But for me, the best remedy is avoidance. Instead of alcoholic beverages, have some cranberry juice instead, or try this recipe for Creamy Country Punch!

1 quart vanilla ice cream, slightly softened
1 quart lime sherbet, slightly softened
1 quart milk
6 ounces can frozen lemonade concentrate
6 ounces can frozen limade
2 cups water
4 cups ginger ale

In large punch bowl, stir together ice cream, sherbet, and milk. In pitcher, stir together lemonade concentrate, limeade concentrate and water. Pour over ice cream mixture. Add ginger ale; stir until slightly mixed. Serves 32.

Try this and be safe and careful this holiday season!

(To contact Mayor Stag, or anyone at Forest Legislature 138, Queen’s County, please email m.stag@hotmail.com)

PATRIARCHY!

2007-12-19T18:09:00.000-04:00

Okay. So you grow up in a nice quiet part of the forest and you think, "Hey. This is a pretty good stable place to live, why move?" So you look for a job and inconceivably land an appointed position in the most disorganised, neurotic and hectic local legislature known to beast-kind. Oh and you can only work nights. Which means of course that you come in to mop up everyone else's messes. Perfect. Wonderful. Tell yourself it's not insane and stressful, tell yourself it's challenging and rewarding, in the long run. Yeah Right.

This Is Nancy Bat's Rant!

Being one of the few female animals working at the legislature, I sometimes encounter interesting predicaments. Such as the fact that no one here seems to understand that I sometimes need to take "mental health" days. And by "mental health" I mean of course, I need a mani/pedi before I go postal on their asses.

Yesterday I called in to say I wouldn't be able to make it in until 7:00, I was planning on getting a nice facial and maybe a short massage before and do you know what that day receptionist said to me?

"I'm sorry, Mayor Stag says you've been coming in late too often, I think you'd better just skip that day spa trip."

Now here I was thinking that no one had known about my little jaunts to Ivy Grove Spas. It turns out, the entire office does. And they make jokes about it. Jokes like, "Did you know bats aren't blind but in fact have very good eyesight?" "Yeah I did, or we'd have an administrative assistant who was actually here!" Okay so it's not a good joke but it's still a joke at my expense. Which makes me want to go into work even less.

But of course, I cancel my appointment and go into the office at 5. And as I flap in, everyone who is usually rushing around getting things done turns to look at me, Just for a split second, just so I know that they disapprove. Or maybe I'm just a little paranoid.

Anyway, there's my lesson for the day: If you absolutely need to knock off work for personal hygiene reasons, come with better excuses than, "I'm going to get into a traffic accident." especially if you don't drive.

Lewis Talks About Music - Holiday Edition

2007-12-17T14:28:00.000-04:00

Okay so, Renard sucks at writing blogs.

Which means it’s up to me to save this thing from suckage.

Now, Now, save your applause till the end.

I’m here to tell you what music you need this season. If your lady or your guy to gets you one of these excellent disks, they totally deserve some compensation. And you know what I mean by that.
(I mean they deserve chestnuts or maybe even hazelnuts, man.)

For Your Lady: If you want any action in the New Year, get your lady love this amazing disk by Dragonette. Galore is what all girls want. Full of ‘empowering lyrics’, sung by a tough broad with a pretty face, with some cute guys in the back playing the instruments; It’s a sure hit with the ladies. And you can’t go wrong givin’ somebody this with the crazy mash of styles and slick heavy rhythms. It actually sounds good, with a re-listen value of about 8. Plus it’s got a cute pink cover. When it comes to girls, no matter what they say, pink always helps.

For Your Guy: If you don’t got a lady and you got a hunk instead, try Led Zeppelin’s old-is-new collection Mothership. It’s a two C.D. set, so you might need to splurge, but it’ll be totally worth it. All the key tracks a Zep fan craves without the downers or needin’ to flip the album over in the middle. It’s paradise, and of course it being Led Zeppelin, it automatically gets a re-listen of 11. You may not get why this crazy tuneless screaming cost you 25 bucks, but your guy will love you that much more for it. Trust me.

For Your Younger Sibbies: Get ‘em hooked young on music that doesn’t suck by throwing either of Billy Talent’s albums at them. Literally throw it at them. Hopefully that’ll knock them out long enough so you can turn off that god-awful High School Musical slurry and substitute it with a nice mix C.D.

Speaking of mix C.D.s though, I’ll give you a list of stuff to rock your little furry (or hooved or webbed or cloven or whatever) feet and get those awful Holiday Carols outta your head. This list is Canadian Themed, because winter makes me patriotic (and gassy, but that’s a completely different story, for a different kind of blog)

1. Polar Bears and Trees - Rheostatics
2. The Canadian Dream – Sam Roberts
3. L’Amour Ne Dure Pas Toujours - Feist
4. All The Things I Wasn’t – Grapes of Wrath
5. Underwhelmed - Sloan
6. Nova Heart - Spoons
7. Locked In The Trunk Of A Car – Tragically Hip
8. Explode – Nelly Furtado
9. Devil’s Eyes – Buck 65
10. Into Your Hideout- Pilate
11. Dead Disco – Metric
12. Celebration Guns – Stars
13. The War of 1812 – Arrogant Worms
Bonus Track: Dandelion – Boards of Canada (They’re actually Scottish)

Festive Lichen

2007-12-16T19:20:00.000-04:00

Mister Mayor Says:

A weekly advice column written by Mayor Michael Stag, published every Sunday in The Forest Trumpet and online at forestlegislature.blogspot.com.

This winter season, for those of you who don’t hibernate or migrate, don’t forget to stay warm and dry. Try this delicious recipe for festive baked lichen!

(Please be careful, if lichen is not in your regular diet, consult a physician before attempting to digest it.)

1/2 cup butter
8 ounces cream cheese
2 mounds lichen, frozen
1 package of onion soup mix
Crushed Pine Cones

Melt butter in a large frying pan. Add 2 mounds of lichen. Break up and stir. Add cream cheese and onion soup mix. Stir well. Place in a casserole. Top with pine cones and bake at 300F for 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

(To contact Mayor Stag, or anyone at Forest Legislature 138, Queen’s County, please email m.stag@hotmail.com)

PIGEONS!

2007-12-12T19:15:00.000-04:00

Okay. So you grow up in a nice quiet part of the forest and you think, "Hey. This is a pretty good stable place to live, why move?" So you look for a job and inconceivably land an appointed position in the most disorganised, neurotic and hectic local legislature known to beast-kind. Oh and you can only work nights. Which means of course that you come in to mop up everyone else's messes. Perfect. Wonderful. Tell yourself it's not insane and stressful, tell yourself it's challenging and rewarding, in the long run.

This Is Nancy Bat's Rant!

(Now officially every Wednesday)

So, I came into the office at sundown yesterday, as usual. And as usual, all hell has broken loose.It started out very quietly. Three Italian Pigeons are standing before Renard's desk, being very ominous. How did I know they were Italian, you ask? Well, for one they were all wearing gold chains with catholic medallions of saints around their necks. That and the fact that as I flapped in, they were arguing in Italian. A major tip-off. So I ask them if I can help them and they ask to see the mayor. I say he's out ruminating and they say, "That's what the fox said, but we didn't believe him."

And so now, terrified that they'd been hired to knock off that stupid fox for whatever mess he'd gotten himself into now, because guano, these Pigeons were BIG, I ask, "Where is he now?"

"Ain't here."

Um yeah duh, I thought, but obviously didn't say, or I'd be writing this from Oakridge Memorial. Anyway, I found Lewis in the lunchroom and asked him about the Pigeons. Through a mouthful of pistachios, he told me Renard had gone to find the mayor for the Pigeons. When I asked him why the Pigeons wanted to see the mayor, he told me that they'd been sent by their Boss, Giorgio Piccioni. And when he meant boss, he didn't mean the guy who gave them their holiday bonuses. He meant the guy who ordered them to cut off dewclaws for gambling debts.

So I go in there and very politely ask the Pigeons to come back later, and they tell me very politely that they 'ain't leavin' till they have a l'il chat with Antlers". And I tell them that His Worship the Mayor isn't here and they'll have to talk to me. And then I smile at them.

I guess I forgot that I'd been eating some pomegranate seeds before I left for work and a lot of them had been stuck in my teeth. When I smiled nervously at them, some of the seeds burst, and red juice came squirting at them. Which is pretty gross. And I guess they figured I was a vampire bat or something because they left pretty quickly. And haven't come back.

(Renard's note: I later found out that the Pigeons were not from I Piccioni, but from a construction company interested in building a birdhousing complex here in the forest. Oh well, looks like that won't be happening any time soon.)

Why Renard?

2007-11-21T22:46:00.000-04:00

After much prompting from Lewis, who finds this story 'funnier than that time in the east grove with the peanut butter pine cones', I reveal the misted and epic origins of my kit-hood and my redundant name.

My mother was a good loving mother, but one thing she was not, was imaginative. At one point before my birth, she met a Goose from northern New Brunswick, who spoke pretty much no English and learned plenty of interesting French swearwords. She also learned how to say 'Fox' in French.

The first four kits in the litter were named John, Luke, Matthew Mark and Mary Margaret and when it came time to name her youngest kit, she'd run out of names (not having read much of the Bible, it seems) so she named me Renard James Fox. Which is literally Fox James Fox. It sounds like some sort of cheesy spy name when you say it that way and it's really entertaining when speaking to native French speakers.

Like the time Marcel Tortue, an eminent playwright, came to the forest. Being the Public Service Fox, I was in charge of greeting him and showing him around. Our first meeting went like this:

Me: Hello, Mister Tortue, welcome to The Forest. My name is Renard, and I've been asked to show you around.
Tortue: Come now, there's no need to be so formal, what's your first name?
Me: Uh... Renard.
Tortue: No, your FIRST name. I know your family name is Renard, I can see the bushy tail, but what's your first name?
Me: My first name IS Renard. My last name is Fox.
Tortue: So... your name is Fox Fox?
Me: No my name is Renard J. Fox.
Tortue: Fox Jay Fox? I hope you didn't legally change your name to that just to be 'interesting'.
Me: No, My mother named me.
Tortue: I'm so sorry...

Lewis still sometimes puts a bowl on his back, gets a fake french accent, totters up to me and goes, "I'm so sorry."

2007-11-20T18:38:00.000-04:00

Last night was the bi-annual Forest Safety Awareness Meeting which is HELL for a Public Service Fox, because I am in charge of everything and logistics is crazy. There are so many nit-pickers in this neck of the woods. Mike Bear wanted to hold it at his cave, and that was okay for awhile, but then the Salmon Family began to complain because they wouldn't be able to attend. So we moved it to the river, which was good for the Beavers and Otters too, but of course the Snakes were pissed and The Mountain Lion, Candy, didn't want anything to do with a meeting so near a body of water (not that anybody cares if she shows up anyway). So we moved it to a clearing near the river, where the Snakes were safe and dry but the Salmon could still hear. And then the time. All the nocturnal animals wanted it in the evening, the birds all wanted it early morning, and Lewis and his friends all wanted it at mid-day. We had it at three pm. It was pretty much arbitrary. Nancy ended up not going though, the light hurt her eyes too bad.

We covered safety in the woods to prevent falls and accidents, the dangers of unrestrained grazing or foraging, the importance of having an earth friendly nest or cave, and a bunch of other stuff specific to the animal group (the Snakes had a seminar on looking before you bite, for example).

I've been working on this for a while, and it turned out all right, I guess, but really, I wish the birds wouldn't put up such a fuss when I bring my lunch to meetings. It's not like they knew that Canary.

A Brief History of The Qi-Mong

2007-11-15T00:25:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of talk about Chipmunks here already and this is only my fourth post so I thought I would give, for those of you who don't know, a short history of Chipmunk-kind. I'm not going to do this for Fox-kind because that history goes like: "They ate some chickens." That's about it.

But Chipmunks are much more interesting. You see, Chipmunks originated in China where they were known as Qi- Mong. Which is gibberish of course, because Chipmunks didn't have proper vocal chords at that time and were just named for the sounds they made (like Pokemon). The very first few Qi-Mong were said to be gifts from heaven to teach all of the forest creatures the fine art of kick-assery. They began in Shaolin and eventually worked their way around the world, becoming renowned for both their elite fighting skills and the tasty stew they made if caught. Being rightfully pissed at being made into stew way too often, the Qi-Mong formed into a great army determined to wipe out all other animals so that they would never be made into stew again. Of course that didn't work. But they did impress the other animals so much that everyone became too afraid of them to eat them. If you saw a giant wave of fuzzy squeaking rodentia rounding on you brandishing bo staffs and nunchaku the size of toothpicks you'd be terrified too.
And then later a Qi-Mong hero settled in North America after winning proper vocal chords for all in an epic battle of epic proportions. He Americanized the name to Chipmunk and that's what it is now.

Wrote this with a bit of help from Lewis and Juan (who specializes in Muay Thai, not Kung Fu for some reason)

This blog was recorded using the speech to text software, Woodland Accomplice ver.4.9.

2007-11-12T13:31:00.000-04:00

After playing with this speech to text thing for a while, I figured it out. Mostly. One thing I learned is to never let chipmunks write your 'About Me' section thing. The one that's up now, is the cleanest of the fifteen Lewis wrote for me. He's the only one who's any good at using a keyboard so we had to let him do it, the software wasn't enabled for that... widget? What the hell kind of a name is a widget, Nancy?

That's just what they call them Renard.

Whatever, I guess the Internet isn't supposed to make sense.

I'm sure if anyone is reading this, they know that I've been voluntold to write this blog about the ins and outs of my dear local legislature. Not that I'm complaining, Mr. Mayor.

A good example of how the local governance works just happens to also be an explanation of how this new career direction for me came about.

So here goes nothing.

I have a friend from Forest Intermediate School, who recently moved to a different constituency and lost track of the goings on here. I've been getting Lewis to help me keep in touch with her through MSN (a gift from the Internet gods, that thing is). Somehow, Mayor Stag got ahold of the saved conversations (I blame you, Lewis) and thought that I would make the perfect candidate for this new blogging outreach program to get the public more involved in local politics.

Great Idea Mr. Mayor. Pick the surliest, most iconoclastic member of the legislature and get him to write a blog trying to encourage people to get involved in this comedy of errors. Great Idea.

(A note from Lewis: Renard only likes to think he's surly and iconoclastic, because he read too many comic books in the nineties and now wants to be an anti-hero.)

This blog was recorded using the speech to text software, Woodland Accomplice ver. 4.9.

First Post

2007-11-12T13:24:00.000-04:00

Nancy? Nancy? Is this thing on?

Yeah, Renard. See how the words are coming up as we're speaking?

Oh, right. Thanks Nance.

No Problem, Mr. Fox. You should probably get down to work now, though.

Okay... Right.

This blog was recorded using the text to speech software, Woodland Accomplice ver. 4.9

An Introduction From The Mayor

2007-11-12T13:07:00.000-04:00

Good Afternoon Everyone,
I'm just writing to officially launch this "weblog". On behalf of us all here at the legislature, I'd like to thank Renard for "volunteering" for the prestigious position of Official Forest Blogger in addition to his appointed position as Public Service Fox. For those of you who are new to the Forest Legislature (because of course the Internet is made of many tubes that run globally), a public service fox informs the other forest creatures of important changes in forest legislature. Renard here is an excellent example of why the position is necessary and worthwhile, and I am very optimistic that he will prove the same for this new post.

What we hope to accomplish with this online journal is to create a place where members of other Forest Legislatures may see what works locally for us, here in Queen's County and of course enjoy some of Renard's considerable storytelling talent.

Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions and enjoy learning about The Forest Legislature.

His Worship Mayor, Michael Stag.

This blog was recorded using the speech to text software, Woodland Accomplice ver. 4.9.