New Goal in Life:

To be the first person to cite an article from Homing News and Pigeon Fanciers' Journal in a dissertation submitted in an English department.*

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* Francis Galton's "Notes on Fitting Normal Curves to Distributions of Speeds of Old Homing Pigeons" (6 April 1894): 159-60.  That my discussion will focus on the shuffleboarders of the homing pigeon community is pure gravy.  Sadly, no one has thought to upload the "PASSENGER PIGEONS!" scene from Ghost Dog and my copy is VHS, so this is the most pigeon I can muster.

Comments

[John Emerson]

Probably there are no ferret-leggers in the homing pigeon community. Indeed, the two communities are probably bitter enemies.

[eb]

When you're ready for more pigeon, I recommend watching this.

[Sisyphus]

... it makes me think of Indians. They got names like, uhh, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Running Bear, Black Elk.

(pause)

Mmmmmooooo!

[The Necromancer]

A noble goal to feather the dissertation nest such.

[JPool]

After my last horrendous commenting experience, I thought I might leave well enough alone, but no. I must ask small and pointless questions!
First, who are the shuffleboarders of the homing pigeon community. Surely this is a metaphor rather than a venn diagram sort of thing.
Second, isn't Homing News and Pigeon Fanciers' Journal a rather strange and unbalanced construction? I assume that it was the result of a merger between two previously separate publications, but normally isn't there some work done to shuffle the two prior names together (ie, Homing Pigeon News and Digest or something)?
Finally, isn't this the best of all possible pidgeon videos?

[SEK]

Emerson,

Please tell me you wrote that entry yourself.

eb,

That is, in fact, one sweet pigeon video. (You know what I mean.)

JPool,

After my last horrendous commenting experience, I thought I might leave well enough alone, but no.

Couldn't have been that bad if I can't even catch the specific reference. (Conversely, maybe's it far worse and I remember too many.)

First, who are the shuffleboarders of the homing pigeon community. Surely this is a metaphor rather than a venn diagram sort of thing.

What I meant was, Homing News and Pigeon Fanciers' Journal is full of curmudgeonly remarks about other members of the pigeon fancier community. I swear they're one step from actually calling their opponents whippersnappers.

Second, isn't Homing News and Pigeon Fanciers' Journal a rather strange and unbalanced construction? I assume that it was the result of a merger between two previously separate publications, but normally isn't there some work done to shuffle the two prior names together (ie, Homing Pigeon News and Digest or something)?

I don't actually know it's publishing history, since I'm trying to limit my footnotes to only the mildly irrelevant, as opposed to the hilariously unnecessary. But you're right about the construction. Damn it, now I'm actually interested in this but the Internet, it is no help. (It's me, eBay, the article itself and where I found it in JSTOR.)

[JPool]

It was likely only horrendous to me. It was one of those cascade of typos that tell me I should go back to mistyping my own work. I almost included a note to treat that second question as rhetorical, so as to avoid the spider-trap of footnotes, but it says something about my distractable state these days that I couldn't leave the question unasked.
Kids today, they don't even know how to fancy pigeons.