God-cursed brutes

Baboon,
originally uploaded by milkfish.

The illustration of the musculature of a snarl is from a book of gross anatomy of primates (baboons, chmpanzees, and humans) and makes me think about the Beowulf story and the first of the monsters in it, Grendel. From Seamus Heaney's translation:

Suddenly then
the God-cursed brute was creating havoc:
greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men
from their resting places and rushed to his lair,
flushed up and inflamed from the raid,
blundering back with the butchered corpses.
Lines 120---125

Maybe Grendel could have been an enormous baboon larger than a man, his fangs and claws used to grab and carry off his prey, for some reason impervious to edged weapons but susceptible to Beowulf's might in their one and only fight, at the climax of which he has his arm and hand torn off. I could imagine that. Then Grendel's mother would be an even larger sort of baboon wreaking vengeance on the Danes on account of her loss then retreating to her marshy lair, where she too is confronted by the hero:

Quickly the one who haunted those waters,
who had scavenged and gone her gluttonous rounds
for a hundred seasons, sensed a human
observing her outlandish lair from above.
So she lunged and clutched and managed to catch im
in her brutal grip; but his body, for all that,
remained unscathed: the mesh of the chain-mail
save him on the outside. Her savage talons
failed to rip the web of his warshirt
Lines 1497--1505

So perhaps an amphibious, part-human, part-baboon enormous monster race of super-mandrills or the like, able to wield a knife (line 1546) and adapted to live in frigid northern waters. I think that would make a pretty good spectacle, in a graphic novel format or in CGI video.

Pride in what one does

Inspired presumably by the native Americans who used every part of the bison.

Meet you at the food court

Greedy turtles swarming from Ivan Kwan on Vimeo.

This is what it feels like to go to a shopping mall around here on a Saturday, recession or no recession. Except for the water, which the mall management replaces with cold air.

Roach Sushi makes Gregor Samsa miserable

RoachSushi 2,
originally uploaded by FeltedChicken.

This item makes me think there might be a market in making revolting tableaux as diet aids. You would put one or more of these around your kitchen and dining areas as appetite suppressants, and since they lack the characteristic odors and scutling noises of the real thing, when company comes around you could just sweep them into a drawer and they would be none the wiser.

As you become habituated to the fake roaches, you could achieve the same effect by coming up with more and more disgusting stimuli. It could be a subscription you would sign up for over six weeks, say, where a package would come to your house with more and more disturbing replicas so that you would not get too used to things.

The flaw in the plan, which I do not yet have a ready way to get around, is that one could simply leave the house to take meals elsewhere. It would generally not do for one to take one of the fake roaches along with oneself to a restaurant where it would be likely to disturb other customers and drive them off.

Breeding shows

Slightly NSFW

And today White House insider Gordon Johndroe (his real name) appears to confirm Barney's troubled attitude toward people who do not own him.

Well of course. He's a son of a bitch.

Intelligent design in my soup

I was listening to Shirley Temple sing about these and thougth I'd do a search on Flickr. Seems to me that someone should have a line of animal crackers including dinosaurs, trilobites, etc., to appeal to those arguing for a young Earth. And don't forget the Serpent!

You learn something every day from the Web

Wikipedia tells me that this non-whale downtime page is depicting the larva of a Geometer moth. Perhaps, based on its companion who is speaking, it is a Dwarf Cream Wave, which sounds delicious?

Incidentally, with regard to the caption of this picture on that first Wikipedia page, I feel obliged to point out that Caterpillar Locomotion would be an excellent band name.

Top 20 names for a stoat

This post has been scientifically designed with an optimal title which will appeal to blog readers everywhere.

1. Chrome Hrothgar
2. BeeBeeBeeSharp
3. Michael Phelps the Ferret
4. Arwen Undersofa
5. Overclockster
6. Dawg
7. Kilometry Cyrus
8. Sssssss
9. Unhandled Exception
10. Mahdi Fruvous
11. Antiquark Aggregate
12. Kansas City, KS
13. Madame Bovril
14. Lowermost Saxony
15. Finasteride
16. #AA328C
17. The Ruler of Sol 3
18. Strawberry Finn
19. Edward Teach
20. Password:

Zagback

A-Litter at 6 weeks old.,
originally uploaded by djitl.

Zimbabwe is much in the news these days, and when I think of Zimbabwe, I think of Rhodesia, and when I think of Rhodesia, I think of Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Shouldn't these be called Zimbabwean Ridgebacks by now? The -wikipedia article gives no inkling that this might be the case, though it seems that I am not linguistically alone in this notion .

The problem, I feel, is that the breed would miss out on the delicious alliteration of the R sounds. I briefly considered “Zimbabwean Z-back” until I considered that it sounds too much like “zweiback”, an unfortunate and disturbing association. “Zidgeback” would be a possibility were it not for the naysayers would would point out that zidge is not a word, and does not convey the essence of the salient physical feature of the creature.

Zimbabwean Zagback works, however. The rest of the fur zigs, but in the middle of the back it zags. (Or perhaps it is the other way around and the dog could be called a zigback instead.) And while it might seem harder to say than Rhodesian Ridgeback, it makes up for that in coolness. Plus, it scores points on the political awareness front.


Still thinking about the csae of the Burmese Tiger.

Little horsies

I have found just the place to provide the essential ingredient in my plan for peace in Iraq. The evildoers will be crushed by our massive superiority in cuteness!


[Via monkeyfilter]

A modest proposal to help bring peace to Iraq

When I read about the Ohio police dog who helps socialize inmates (among other things she does), I started to think about other individuals who might benefit from the loving contact of a pet. Top of the list: the warring factions in Iraq, a place which is on course soon to be known as the former Iraq.

One hitch in the plan: many Muslims consider dogs to be unclean. And cats don't have the same kind of social nature, not being pack animals. So, instead, why not go all out and use horses (or, rather, ponies) in their place? Nearly everybody knows about the noble Arabian horse, so what warlord or insurgent leader would turn down a chance to accept a gift equestrian

Every fairy child may keep ....,
originally uploaded by Lynn Morag.

Let's run the numbers. The increase in war spending is estimated at $80 billion, and let's assume that 10% of that can go to this project. A pony might go for something like $25k, and with the overhead of getting the animals over there, supplies, veterinarians, wranglers, and whatnot, we might imagine a total upfront cost of $250k per animal. That translates to 32000 pretty ponies we could send over there (assuming there are that many to be had). Some estimates of the number of insurgents range up to 17000, that would be enough for nearly every insurgent to be given a pair of ponies of their very own.

Now taking care of a pony is a lot of work, which would take time away from such things as constructing and planting IEDs, firing RPGs, and blowing up oil pipelines. Also, you can ride a pony, which would help relieve the gasoline shortage that many Iraqis have to face, even among those who wouldn't personally be receiving the actual pony. Finally, the nonviolent and pastoral image of ponies trotting in public in places like Baghdad and Basra would radically change the image of Iraq, particularly if rebel cells could be induced to spend at least part of their time giving pony rides to children.

Once the animals are old enough to breed, Iraq could develop a thriving commerce that would help bind the different regions together. So it would be important to make sure that healthy animals go to the Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish areas fairly.

Of course, we would still need to have US forces there to help out, not least of their new responsibilities involving helping with the shoveling. But perhaps we could persuade outside contractors to take on some of this load until the revitalized Iraqi nation can take care of its own needs in this regard.

You may think of it as a crazy plan, but I feel that if it is presented in the right way to the American people, they would see the underlying old-fashioned common sense behind it and support it. If you agree, I urge you to write your Senator and Representative in Congress so we can get started on this new direction.

Combine and conquer

Compare the recommended techniques for playing with a piglet and with kids. I'm thinking that the ideal solution is to bring a piglet to one's babysitting assignment. "Best. Babysitter. EVAR."