IN THIS EDITION: My new duck * New Peduto graffiti has appeared and it’s perfect * Why doesn’t the Pirates’ mascot have a name? * Another European city with a confluence * I asked ChatGPT to come up with a new Pittsburgh sports team * Random n’at
(This one is a bit long, so your email provider may truncate it and you’ll need to click a link at the end to read it all. You’ll live.)
1. Chuck the Duck
I have a duck. His name is Chuck.
This is not the start of a Dr. Seuss book; I am telling you that I literally have a male mallard duck living in the water atop my inground pool cover. I named him Chuck and my teen daughter said, “How long did it take you to come up with that?”
In the weeks after he first discovered my pool, Chuck visited briefly each morning and early evening. My dogs, as you might imagine, handled this backyard development as only Jack Russells can … with wild-eyed quivering lunacy. They’d go out in the morning, spy Chuck sitting there at the edge of the pool, looking peaceful, and they would lose their minds and tear off in a barking sprint to try to destroy Chuck. Chuck likes to play chicken with my dogs, seeing how close he can get them to come at him before he breezily evades them by slipping calmly into the water. For my part, I’ve come to like Chuck and his unbothered nature, so before I open the screen door to let the dogs out, I always shout, “Hey, Chuck!”
Chuck usually responds with a quack to acknowledge that the house creature has spoken.
“The dogs are coming!”
Milo and Juno have now learned that this phrase means I’m warning the duck, and that reminds them there is a duck so they become agitated and start gnashing teeth at each other to be first out the door to sprint down the deck steps to try to murder Chuck.
These days, Chuck spends nearly all day at my pool. Occasionally he brings a male friend, and each evening his mate appears. Yesterday, they got busy in the water and it was so violent that for a whole minute, it looked like Chuck was alone in the pool. I ran out onto the deck to scream, “YOU ARE GOING TO DROWN HER, YOU IDIOT!” but she resurfaced unharmed and flew off to smoke a tiny cigarette.
I like Chuck enough that I’ve Googled, “What can you feed a backyard duck?” and “If you feed a backyard duck, will hundreds of other ducks show up?” and “Should you cut grapes in half before feeding them to your backyard pet duck?”
All this to say, I have a duck and his name is Chuck.
2. At least it doesn’t say “ur mom”
The chalk-wielding Pittsburgher who appears to be targeting Bill Peduto with some pretty innocuous and hilarious graffiti has struck again! Spotted in Lawrenceville:
One thing I think we all can agree on is that Bill Peduto probably does know your dad. They’ve probably had a beer at Cappy’s or toe-tapped in unison at Banjo Night at the Elks or got into a slow-motion fistfight during an old-guy hockey game.
As a reminder, I AM NOT CONDONING THIS GRAFFITI. But I am loving it. But I don’t support it! But I hope you all find some more and send me the pictures. Don’t try to understand me. It’s not possible.
(h/t Kiera)
3. We don’t talk about Pirates, oh no.
I still can’t write about the Pirates. I’ve been such a fan for so long, that to see them winning gives me and lots of other fans some acute anxiety. We are very close to falling into Zack Morris’ arms all, “I’m so excited. I’m so excited. I’m so … scared,” because we suspect this can’t last much longer. We are just waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop … or perhaps be thrown angrily at us when we least expect it.
It’s all fun and homerun sword dances until the baseball gods start whipping chancletas at our heads. So instead of focusing on the Pirates’ ability to crush my soul in the month of May, I’m taking us in another direction. The minors! When Drew Maggi was called up after toiling in the minors for 13 years, all the talk about our Double-A Altoona team made me wonder why I didn’t know much about the Pirates’ High-A team, especially since I know of the Low-A Bradenton Marauders.
If you haven’t yet, meet the Greensboro Grasshoppers out of North Carolina, who only became our affiliate in 2019. They call themselves the Hoppers and their logo features a determined-looking muscled-up baseball-throwing grasshopper:
Their mascot is Guilford the Grasshopper, who weirdly bears an uncanny resemblance to the Pirate Parrot. Wait. I am just now realizing the Pirate parrot has no name. Like, his official name is Pirate Parrot. How can this be?
The Penguins have Iceburgh and the Steelers have the dead-eyed soul-suck named Steely McBeam. Hell, even the pierogies have names! But the Pirate mascot gets the equivalent of a cat named Kitty. Pirate Parrot is not a name; it is an observation. “Look. A pirate parrot.” The Pirates should absolutely name their parrot. I’ll help since I’m great at naming birds.* How’s Chuck sound?
Anyway, here’s Guilford and some nameless bird:
Definitely a common ancestor.
I had fun familiarizing myself with our High-A team, and will be ordering a shirt or hat from their shop (not an ad, but also, I bet your Pirate-loving mom would like these!).
Now let’s get back to naming the Pirates’ bird. Let’s see … oh! How do we feel about … Chuck?
*I’m especially great at naming pigeons. “Beelzebub. Lucifer. Satan. AntiChrist. Jagoff#666 … Chuck.”
4. Pittsburgh is actually a TRIPLET?
Not only did a reader send me additional Peduto graffiti, but another sent me an additional CONFLUENCE*! We have Pittsburgh (three rivers/two inclines); we have Kaunas, Lithuania (two rivers/two inclines); and now we have Passau in southern Germany with her three rivers and zero inclines!
Here’s their point where the Danube, Inn and Ilz Rivers meet. Notice the two different colors of water, much like the Allegheny and the Mon:
You’ll see that in a space where Pittsburgh has 12 bridges, Passau has a whole TWO. Therefore I have to assume Passau people truly do say, “Will I need to cross a bridge to get there?” Because it seems like that shit will take hours. They must boat everywhere.
The other similarity between Pittsburgh/Kaunas and Passau is that they too have a high hill that looks over their point.
Definitely separated at birth or the product of a supernatural copy-and-paste.
Passau has a nickname—Die Drei Flüsse Stadt, and I need you to not freak out or demand the number for the Passau visitor’s bureau after I give you the translation:
Or, The Three Rivers City. It’s going to be okay. I promise. Stop looking up the country code for Germany. We’re going to get through this together.
As for the zero inclines, the reader who tipped me off to Passau mentioned that there has been an ongoing effort to have one built! I hope they do it. Welcome to the sisterhood of confluences (GIRL BAND NAME!), Passau. We just need to talk about your nickname; Pittsburgh already owns it, so let’s get you a new one.
How do you feel about … Chuck?
(h/t Emily)
* Drink! Also, I’ve had people ask, “Why do you always say ‘drink!’ after you use the word confluence?” This is a silly drinking game I started a long long time ago because I’m weird. Anyway. I just used it again. Drink!
5. I asked AI to name some new Pittsburgh sports teams
As you know, I love AI so much. Love studying it, reading about the science of it, and finding new ways to incorporate it into my life and work. In an effort to procrastinate on my final paper for this semester*, I decided to ask ChatGPT an important question.
Impressive, but “Ironmen.” Oh, you adorable robot who learned gender bias.
Blaze Queens is definitely the name of my new band and if you love pyrotechnics, have we got a show for you. I asked Dall-E to create a logo for Blaze Queens (“A stained glass black and yellow logo of a powerful female silhouette wearing a crown of fire with a bridge in the background”):
Someone start a sports team I can join so we can use one of these as our logo. Preferably a team that involves zero running and lots of cookies.
And crowns of fire.
I asked ChatGPT for some possible names for a Blaze Queens rival in Cleveland that would give the impression they were weak and unskilled, and that damn robot lectured me about my negativity and unkindness …
… before suggesting the Cleveland Strugglers**.
I AM SCREAMING. I love robots.
* This one is a historiographic overview of the “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918 and collective memory/amnesia. I chose this topic to fit in with my future master’s thesis on Pittsburgh’s response to that pandemic.
** Their team bus would LITERALLY be the Struggle Bus. I’m crying laughing. Send help.
6. Random n’at!
Before we wrap it up for this week, just a few things to share!
Local data/map/city legend Chris Briem created an extremely cool graph to compare the pace of the Pirates’ start this year with other years, and it’s really a thing of beauty and also a nice way to further stress yourself out that THE SHOE IS COMING. Be ready to bob and weave like George Bush, my peeps.
Pittsburgh and a Carnegie Mellon team were featured in a very cool German-TV documentary about Pittsburgh’s innovative Dark Sky Initiative. Yes, it’s in German, but it’s full of Pittsburgh goodness and worth a minute of your time to bounce around it (click “Zustimmen”). Opening shot? The Highmark building.
So many of you reached out with lovely messages about the speech I gave at the Pitt SHRS graduation last weekend. If you missed the earlier email, you can read the speech here. For those interested, you can watch the speech here, starting at about 1:04:33 in. I’ve mostly responded to every email and message received, but I still have a few to work through. Thanks for being patient with me!
7. That’s all!
Have a fantastic week! Be kind! Dim or turn off your outdoor lights on clear nights! Don’t make direct eye contact with the Pirates win-loss record [glares glaringly at Donald Trump]! Do email the Pirates and tell them to name their gosh dang bird already!
If you love me, you’ll suggest Chuck. Also, here’s my Chuck with a pissed off Juno:
If you put your ear up to your screen, you can hear Chuck gloating, “You lose, loser. Go get back on the Struggle Bus.”