scolopendra

This beautiful animal has provoked an amazing amount of revulsion on my friend's lj (50 comments and counting!) Of course, once I was outed as a centipede lover (and cockroach owner!) it was all over for me. They'll never listen to anything I say again. Oh well! :)

http://home.grandecom.net/~rachel/images/bug1.jpg

It's on the bottom of one of those 5 gallon buckets, so it must be a bit over 6 inches long. Just gorgeous. Too bad they killed it.

Edit: Whoops! I meant to post this in invertebrates only. But when you consider that this creature found its way into an office building in Austin, I guess it belongs on The Urban Pantheist, too. And you thought you had it bad with house centipedes! http://entmuseum.ucr.edu/images/Scutigera.jpg

POLITICS

I've been pretty good about avoiding politics in my zine, I think. Even on this journal we have only briefly discussed it. I'm just going to touch on this a little.

The Democrats (and the left in general) are ineffective. Despite being accused of pulling the strings of the media (laughable, at best) they are impotent before the bold, blustering right, who value moral absolutes over reasoned thinking. Liberals consider other peoples' viewpoints and even their feelings, while conservatives say what they want when they want and to hell with anyone who disagrees.

This is why I'm starting to like Ted Rall. Here's an excerpt:
On 9/11 Mythic Bush rushed to reassure his subjects that everything was fine and that he would promptly kick whatever asses needed kicking. Real Bush turned tail and ran like a girlie boy, hopscotching Air Force One from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska. The American people heard nothing from their head of state until over four hours later, when a man clearly in way over his head broadcast an assurance that other officials would carry out "the functions of your government." Half a day later, he snuck back into D.C. under cover of night. The speech everyone remembers, the one atop The Pile with the firefighter, happened three days later--after Bush's underwear had undergone a thorough bleaching.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ucru/20040902/cm_ucru/156tuesdayslater

Crude, insensitive, dubious...everything that conservative commentators are.