Don't look up

	Jessica Tandy in Hitchcock's "The Birds": more than just a bad hair day.

A bird in your face is definitely not worth two in the bush. Bird attacks seem to be on the upswing, The Christian Science Monitor reports. Last month, a downtown Houston street had to be closed after a gang of grackles attacked pedestrians. They seemed particularly interested in a lawyer, who got knocked to the ground. (Pause for tasteless lawyer joke.) In Washington, an aggressive hawk (bird, not congressional warmonger) buzzed cars. In upstate New York, a woodpecker with self-esteem or possibly depth perception problems has developed an oddball criminal sideline -- destroying dozens of car mirrors, apparently upset by his own image. What's up? Suburban sprawl gets indicted once again. The spread of wood-shaded suburbs has upped the tension between bird and man during nesting season. When eggs crack, parent birds go on the offensive. Mockingbirds, bluejays and crows are particularly skilled dive-bombers.

Counting crows

It's happening in London, too, and this time creeping suburbanism can't be blamed. Justin Keay was minding his own business on a lunchtime jog in Battersea Park last week when two crows swooped down and essentially mugged him. With blood gushing from his head, it took him several minutes to fight off the crows. The 44-year-old father of two said he jogs past the same crows every day. The difference this time: Baby birds may have fallen out of a nearby nest, according to The Evening Standard of London. The crows looked like they're wearing the black hats here, but let's remember: They're just trying to be good parents. It's nothing we haven't seen at tense Little League games.

Heads up!

Turning to the geo-political scene, you might not have known your Kyrgyzstan from your Cousin Stan until the former Soviet Republic made headlines with recent political turmoil. The news flow continues. President Kurmanbek Bakiev, who took power during the troubles, has come up with a way to get rid of certain members of parliament -- I mean, keep them on their toes. As part of a culture of "healthy living," each must pass a set of tough physical challenges to stay in politics. Among these: weightlifting, marksmanship and ... grenade-throwing. Did we miss something? Has grenade-throwing become an Olympic event? And exactly where do the judges stand?

How am I doing?

From the AP
• Man Buys Smoker, Finds Human Leg Inside • Coach Stops Runaway Horse by Biting Ear • Man Allegedly Tries to Use 'Blurry' $100 • Police Break Up Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese • Suggestive Card Ruffles Farmer's Feathers • Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women • Toilet to Tap? San Jose Probes Plan • Seattle to Allow Pygmy Goats As Pets • Yankees Rookies Dress Up in Oz Costumes

It's not clear that Indonesia's first directly elected president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono thought through his grand gesture. Over the weekend, he made his cell phone number public, so citizens could call or send text messages with complaints about government services. More than 3,000 calls had been made to the number, according to Reuters, and by yesterday Indonesian newspapers were carrying stories of people complaining they couldn't get through. It was not clear if Yudhoyono had answered any of the calls himself. Nor was it clear whether he thought they'd be only a handful of complaints about government services. A survey in March showed 92 percent of Indonesians had a favorable impression of Yudhoyono, and 57 percent were satisfied with his administration. Now, his numbers can only go down.

"And the rockettes' red glare . . ."

Americans are used to having celebrities mangle the Star-Spangled Banner, but the Germans have bigger problems with their national anthem. The country's top pop singer Sarah Connor got confused at the opening of a new sports arena in Munich last week. Instead of singing the anthem's line "Blossom in the glow of this happiness," the singer improvised: "Brew in light of this happiness", perhaps in tribute to the country's beer-making tradition. Days later, Reuters reports, German-Italian tenor Luciano Rondine had the crowd in stitches before a basketball game. "Brotherly with heart and hand" came out: "With unhappiness and refuge." Rondine's hilarious rendition renewed a national debate that has roots in Nazi abuse of patriotism. According to a poll by Spiegel Online, few Germans can recite the anthem by heart, much less sing it properly.

New English words

It so happens that the English speak English, too. The latest edition of the Collins English Dictionary contains 1,500 new words in use in the old country. A sampling, courtesy of Yahoo.com:

heteroflexible, someone who is usually, but not always, heterosexual.

go commando, to wear no underpants.

property porn, escapist television programs showing desirable houses being sold or redeveloped.

retrosexual, a direct rebuff to the well-scrubbed "metrosexual" is a man who spends little time and money on his personal appearance.

squeaky-bum time, the tense final stages of league competition, a phrase popularized by Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson.

Squeaky-bum movie

Of course, real-life bird terrorism can't compete with Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic "The Birds". Here are some factoids from the Internet Movie Database:

Tippi Hedren was actually cut in the face by a bird in one of the shots.

The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds near the end of the movie took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not get away.

In May 2001, the son of "The Birds" novelist Daphne Du Maurier reported that he and his wife were being terrorized by seagulls nesting outside their cottage in Cornwall, England.

The climactic scene, in which Tippi Hedren's character is attacked in the bedroom, took seven days to shoot. Hedren has been quoted as saying it was "the worst week of my life". The physical and emotional tolls of filming this scene were so strong on her, production was shut down for a week afterward.

Rod Taylor claims the seagulls were fed a mixture of wheat and whiskey. It was the only way to get them to stand around so much.

This is not a joke

Youngstown State University is hosting the 17th annual conference of the International Society for Humor Studies this week. Researchers from 21 countries are attending the four-day conference, which opened yesterday.

Here's a description of a few opening sessions from the conference Web site, ishs2005.com:

Ontological Semantics of Humor
The seminar addresses the question of how the dominant linguistic theory of humor works and equips the participants, linguists and non-linguists alike, with the skills and resources for using the theory as intended. Both Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humor (SSTH) and its revision and expansion, the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) were presented for a multidisciplinary audience without any technical descriptions. No doubt this enhanced the books' accessibility beyond the linguistic profession. At the same time, this opened the theory up to loose metaphorical extensions, well beyond its original intention, as well as to irresponsible criticism about its lack of formality.

The seminar demonstrates how the theory analyzes the text and determines whether it is a joke (potential) or not. Since the theory's inception in the late 1970s, the underlying formal semantic script theory has evolved into ontological semantics, whose resources include the language-independent ontology, language-dependent lexicons, and the text-meaning representations (TMRs). After a brief introduction to ontological semantics and its online resources, the seminar will deal with two central issues: how ontological semantics is expanded for the analysis and synthesis of humor; how to use short cuts through these resources of one is not a linguist but still needs to capture the script foundation of a joke.

Using microethnography for humor research
Microethnography is both a method and a view that uses participant observation and detailed analysis of videotaped data. This allows us to notice subtle aspects of language and interaction. Within this framework, analysis of associated nonverbal behavior is also incorporated. Microethnography looks closely at what speakers and hearers do together to build exchanges. The central concern of this method is daily social interactions; therefore, the focus of this seminar is how to investigate naturally occurring, face-to-face, instances of humor in every day (ordinary) conversations.

Teaching the College Course in Humor
While the number of humor researchers seems to be growing the number of courses offered in humor is still quite small.

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Correction/Clarification: (Published June 15, 2005) The actress depicted in the above photo from the movie "The Birds" was not main character Tippi Hedren as indicated in the June 14, 2005 version of this Morning File. It was Jessica Tandy, who was in the movie and posed for the poster.