pigeons vs. rats

This is something I was talking about with nuncstans the other day, and I am curious: is it weird that I am more grossed out by pigeons than rats? I really find pigeons to be the most repulsive life form I have ever encountered. Not the scariest--I am, in fact, probably more scared of rats, but the most repulsive. I often have pigeons in my dreams, and they are always metonymic with disease, hopelessness, sickness, miasma of the soul, etc. It's weird, because on the whole, I LOVE birds. Anyone who has known me for long enough has probably seen me coo over budgies and parrots that I insist on stopping in to see at the pet store in Greenpoint, or heard me tell detailed stories about my two childhood parakeets, Rocky and Lara. When my former boss was out of town, I would stay at her apartment and babysit her green-and-yellow Amazonian parrot Ruben who followed me around from room to room and I would just sit and play with him for hours and hours on end. I think birds in general can be the cutest, sweetest creatures, and they usually take to me as well. But oh my god, I am so disgusted with pigeons. Possibly even more so, because in some way I see them as this perverted monstrous variation on something that I love (i.e. birds en masse). So the other day while we were walking through the East Village I was relating yet another dream to nuncstans where pigeons made a guest appearance. She has pointed out the prevalence of pigeons in my dreams before. I said that I thought of them as flying rats, and then she asked me if I was more disgusted by pigeons or rats, and I had to say pigeons, which she thought was highly unusual. Is it highly unusual? Is anybody with me on this one?

(no subject)

This is weird. A woman makes a joke about Shrub's chicken legs in a Borders store and gets banned from the store. The thing is, it's strange, because Borders is by far one of the better large-evil-conglomerate companies. I worked for Borders on and off for three years, and they are a company that got started in Ann Arbor, they are pretty fucking liberal for a big corporation, at least in Chicago they sponsored a large part of the Gay Pride Parade every year, they try to display and promote books with good politics, and their unofficial policy is that they like hiring the artistic, pierced and queer contingent, among whom they encourage creative expression in dress code. Very different from Barnes & Noble, where there is a mandatory "uniform" and, of course, Starbucks. so I really hope that this incident will get some redneck regional manager canned. C'mon, Borders, we don't live in Das Vaterland yet, even if it seems like it more and more on a daily basis, we can make fun of The Fuhrer's Chicken Legs if we so desire, and a knee-jerk violently disproportionate reaction to an ad hominim is doing nothing to dispel the sense that the geist of the Fourth Reich is in the air.