The Urban Pantheist

The house sparrow chatter outside makes it sound like it's a beautiful warm spring day. In fact we're getting our traditional March First snowstorm, first of two parts. Today it's light and fluffy but sticking. Tomorrow it's supposed to pile up to nearly a foot. I guess my Texan coworker will get her chance to go sledding after all.

Life has been interesting, maybe a little too interesting. I haven't really posted about it on livejournal since my mom died; I've been going a little bonkers on facebook, where people know me as me, and not as The Urban Pantheist. There I feel a little better about posting music videos and trading funny insults with old friends.

I took a gun safety course yesterday, and fired a real gun for the first time in my life. I can see where people think that's fun. I'd like to go back to the range and try shooting with a little more distance--I shot the hell out of the target at 15 feet, but that's just outside of point blank, really. Being in a gun club in Massachusetts was interesting. The instructor and much of the club staff are clearly in the "liberals want to take my guns" camp. And they kind of have a point, but they aren't going to convince many liberals that there's anything wrong with that, with their wide-eyed tinfoil hat approach to the issue.

The zoo has an annual film festival, composed of 10 minute movies made by staff. I went last year and it was really fun, with movies ranging from painfully amateurish to charmingly amateurish. This year I was asked to emcee the event. I agreed, but I really have no idea what I'm going to do. Some people want me to be funny, but I think the organizers just want someone who doesn't think they have to put on a show. Last years' emcee changed his costume four or five times, and clearly thought this was funny.

I also agreed to be on a committee to help plan a zoo trivia night, and zoo movie night (where we show hollywood movies in the zoo for staff to enjoy). So far the increased stress of this is mild, but as the events get closer, I can tell they will take a toll.

All this stuff is happening in the next several weeks. With the spring months, peoples' calendars thaw out, and tons of events come splashing out everywhere. Also in April I'll be teaching a Pest Control Class, starting the stable fly and mosquito control programs, and going on vacation for a week. I know the vacation is the good part, but it's hard not to see it as a week that just disappears from the calendar while events fill up all around it. After that is a spring Mushroom class, and I really should rejoin the mycology society so that I can brush up on mushrooms and actually sound like I know something.

And I haven't run an urban nature walk in months, owing to family stuff and hatred of winter. Now I'd really like to bring the group to Dane Park but it would best if I could find someone who knows a lot about geology to help guide us through "terranes" and the continent of Avalon and such. Anyone know a geologist who would like to help?

Then it's summer, and I'd really like to not have anything planned for it, but I also would like to get out and enjoy what could be my last summer in New England for a while. Oh, and there's a distinct possibility that we could move to another unit in our building in the summer, and have our current unit renovated.

Time to stop volunteering to do things, I think.

(also somewhere in there Maggie will have her second surgery, we'll go to vermont, my dad and I will go overseas, and then it's fall)

Well, Satan must be happy; I joined Facebook.  I ain't hard to find.  I'm not sure what the advantage of it is, except now I know where I could contact a lot of old classmates, if for some reason I wanted to.  Also, it's a hell of a lot more active right now than livejournal.  Where the hell did everyone go for the weekend?

Do real army guys and football players whine about videogames that portray what they do as much as real musicians whine about Rock Band and Guitar Hero?  I swear if I read/hear another comment from some snob who can actually play an instrument complaining about how a videogame is not like really being in a band...I'll just say "You know, you're right!  The heck with GTA!"  Then I'll punch them in the face and take their car.



Okay, enough of that.  So, thanks to drhoz  I'm now aware of an inch-long amoeba like protist.  Really!  a single-celled organism the size of a grape!  The article makes a big deal about the fact that it leaves a track as it bumbles along the ocean floor.  I don't really care, I'm stuck on the fact that there's a giant amoeba that I've never heard of!  Can you keep them in an aquarium?  Do they eat goldfish?

I'm feeling a little stagnant.  I need to take a class or a workshop or something so I can feel like I'm learning and growing in some conscious way.  I don't really have any idea what kind of class I'd want to take.  Actually, work will pay for three pest control related classes in order for me to maintain my certification.  I should look into that.

My downstairs neighbor asked me to move my bike from the front stairs area to the basement so he could store his baby stroller there.  He said "I noticed it hadn't been used in a while."  Ouch.  Then to rub salt in the wound, I noticed him coming home from a bike ride yesterday.  Bastard.

The check engine light in my car went off long enough for me to get my inspection sticker.  The AAA guy says I need a new battery cable, which I suspect is the reason my check engine light comes on and off all the time.  Those dopes at Midas never noticed it, they just replaced everything else they could think of.

Netflix giveth and taketh away.  For some reason, after 24 hours or so of being able to watch stuff instantly, Netflix has decided it's not supported by my operating system.  It worked yesterday, what gives?  It works fine on Alexis' laptop though.  Now if we could get through an entire episode of anything without falling asleep.

That's my life in a nutshell, folks!

New spider species discovered in Vietnam. Vietnam is like the new species discovery capitol of the world these days. Now, a new spider's nothing too exciting, they probably find new little ones all the time. But this one's REALLY BIG.

I've seen this picture before:

But Cracked.com finally gave me context: a Chinese circus. What do you suppose are the intermediate steps to training that little trick?

The same Cracked article posted the famous photos of the lightning storm caused by volcanic ash. If you haven't seen it, you should go look at it, because as their writer puts it, "It’s like every single AC/DC album cover came to life and punched your eyeballs right in the dick."

Throw Shoes at Bush!

I got the annual newsletter from The Antigua and Barbuda Humane society, which I put in one slim day of volunteering at, back in January. One of the more interesting animals there was a sheep that was missing most of one front leg. He hobbled around awkwardly, getting around better than you might expect, but still kind of painful to watch. The staff there told me they were waiting on a prosthesis. He got it!

(Donated by Or-Pro Medical, of San Juan Puerto Rico!)

My happy thing from yesterday was when I went to the Tropical Forest exhibit at the end of the day, to bring them back their frog. That's nice in itself (recovered patient) but the cool thing was being in that building at dusk. It's basically a dome with a translucent cover, so natural light can filter into it. There are a number of individual exhibits throughout the building, cleverly arranged so that incompatible animals are separated (the ocelots can't eat the tamarins etc) but most of them share an open top. The upper area of the building is a free-flight zone, and tropical birds are free to fly from planting to planting. If you look up from the monkeys and snakes and stuff you see tropical trees and vines with birds moving around in them. BUT ALSO there are fruit bats, which are usually pretty difficult to see. Yesterday in the waning gray light of dusk coming through the roof, straw-colored bats flew overhead; I could see the webbing of their wings lit through as they flapped and soared with more room than I've ever seen in a bat exhibit. I stared in wonder with a dumb grin on my face. Not many people come to the zoo in winter, but this is a clear advantage of the early sunset hours--big beautiful bats. (Note to AmyZoo: we have straw-colored bats Eidolon helvum and Ruwenzori bats Rhinolophus ruwenzorii)

Edited to add: I thought I posted this this morning, but it's been sitting here unposted all day.

Paying attention to politics angries up my blood.  Watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on hulu.com helps a little bit.  Now that the conventions are over, maybe I'll stop thinking about it for a little while.

I just read this news story.  The gist of it is that one guy is complaining that the local game and wildlife service (of Pennsylvania) didn't respond to his calls about an emu on the loose.  First, that's stupid.  Emus in North America are livestock.  Call animal control.  Second, as a footnote in the story, the police eventually responded to the situation and did what police seem to do every time they are confused.  They tasered the emu.  Yes, you read that correctly, faced with a large, loose, exotic animal, the cop shot the animal full of painful electricity.  Good going!  Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, the emu dropped dead rather than running headlong into traffic or civilians or something.  Does nobody own a fucking net?  Whatever happened to dogcatchers and their big nets?  Can we put a moratorium on police taser use until they stop using them on animals and nonviolent protesters?

Here's a kind of cool story.  In an certain zoo's animal hospital, it was noticed that some of the poison dart frogs were getting thin.  Upon close observation, the frogs were targeting and striking, but not capturing the prey (wingless fruit flies).  One vet, a herpetology specialist, had the idea that a vitamin deficiency could be the cause.  The mucus-secreting cells on a frog's tongue are adversely affected by a lack of vitamin A.  The tongue becomes less sticky, so that the prey does not stick to it.  After a topical application of vitamin A supplement, the dart frogs were able to successfully catch their prey.

In other interesting zoo animal news, the world's heaviest flying bird (a bit heavier than a wild turkey and about tied with the mute swan) is the kori bustard of sub-Saharan Africa.  It needs large territories away from humans in order to survive, so expanding human populations and the encroachment of agriculture is threatening its survival.  Adding insult to injury is the fact that its feathers are highly prized for the bizarre hobby of fly-tying.  This is a craft wherein bits of feather are cut and and shaped and affixed to a hook, to mimic the appearance of a flying insect that lives near fresh water.  Sometimes these are even used in an attempt to catch fish, or lure tourists to Montana.  (I kid; even my writing hero David Quammen puts on rubber pants and wades into freezing water in an attempt to snag trout with an artificial caddisfly.)  These hobbyists will pay obscene amounts of money for their desired feathers.  Hunters and poachers in Africa are all too willing to kill bustards to satisfy the market for their feathers.  Part of the Species Survival Program for the kori bustard is an attempt to flood the market with cheap or free feathers to whomever wants them--a donation is asked for, but that's all.  There are about 150 kori bustards in captivity around the world.  Hopefully they can help protect the species from this peculiar source of predation.

On a personal note, Alexis and I have been doing more fantasy home shopping, but strangely they've all been in the same area.  Hmmmm...

Today was probably the last hot day of the year.  I celebrated by getting sweaty and filthy at work.


EDIT:  One last political note.  Earlier this week I made a flip joke about Hillary supporters voting for the Dark Side because of the VP pick over there happens to share their anatomy.  An old classmate of mine has made buttons (and stickers and shirts?) that cleverly refute the assumption that women would do such a thing.

Noticing the year, mid-August 2008: the Canada goldenrod is blooming. This is my first concrete inkling that the summer is waning. Some ornamental cherries in the Riverway are shedding leaves, but they're weakened trees. Also, I'm wearing socks at home for the first time since May.

According to Rock Band (the videogame) and wikipedia, the song "Green Grass and High Tides" was a hit for The Outlaws in 1975. I listen to classic rock radio regularly and I'd never heard it until I was pretending to play drums to it in a videogame. I highly doubt this story about it being a real song; I think it exists solely to block one's progress in the game, in order to force you to buy new songs.

This will be the only weekend out of five (two before two after) that Alexis and I will both be home. We intend to enjoy it (sleep, play videogames, sleep more).

But next weekend I think I'll run an Urban Nature Walk, with the intention of looking at all the cool mushrooms in the Riverway. This has been an excellent summer for mushrooms, as those of you who have friended sin_agua, miz_geek, and
cottonmanifesto have seen the amazing pictures.


My main goal for the weekend is to finish up my yellowstone AND portland pictures, and post them so I can move on with my life and photographs. Aren't you excited.

view from the golf cart.

( special nsfw edition of random )

I wrote the other day that the callery pear trees look nice right now. When I was researching them for the 365 project I often found them described as 'overused.' That may be so, but in April when we are so starved for the beauty of life, you can't fault those who planted the trees along city streets.
( Read more... )

no good deed goes unpunished. it doesn't matter what i'm talking about, it's always true.

but let it be said that workplace communication theoretically works both ways. i would be a much better employee if i were a mind reader, but i'm merely an above-average listener with--apparently useless--good intentions.

i appear to have no working shift key, due to a second coffee spill. I STILL HAVE A CAPS LOCK, but that's not the same thing. can anything be done/

i should probably say something about charleton heston, since my review column is called 'soylent screen' and he suffered from the same disease my mother does, but i don't have much to say. it's interesting that he was in a few environmental message scifi films such as planet of the apes and soylent green, but his main legacy is being a demented mouthpiece for the nra. alzheimers' disease needs a spokesvictim from the other side of the political spectrum, though it is a dark pleasure seeing the likes of nancy reagan standing up for stem cell research, when the cold hand of reality rests on one's shoulder. republicans sure have strong principles until the controversy applies to them. anyway, thanks to you chuck, for planet of the apes, omega man, soylent green, touch of evil, in the mouth of madness, and bowling for columbine. i can't vouch for ben hur and the ten commandments, but they come highly recommended.

i'm in a bad mood that started when i started reading the chapter called 'good-bye' in 'a short history of nearly everything' this morning. this chapter is about the human-caused extinction event that started a few tens of thousands of years ago and continues at a brisk pace today, extinguishing species at a rate somewhere between 1000 and 120,000 times as dire as the average rate of extinctions. i need more time and silence to write intelligently on this, but i can feel where i'm going with this, from the point of view of someone who studies urban nature. urban species are those species that are 'compatible' [i can't escape that word] with humankind. all other species, more or less, are doomed. working at a zoo, with endangered species, it becomes clear to me that zoos are museums for the doomed species. please convince me otherwise, tell me that the conservation efforts supported by zoos and other organizations will have some effect against the juggernaut of 6 billion and counting building burning consuming and polluting.

or let's talk about movies. alexis and i watched the first half of 'no country for old men' last week, shutting it off when we needed sleep, planning to finish it later. at that moment, it was clearly a five star movie, reminiscent of coen brothers masterpieces like blood simple, raising arizona, and fargo. we'd heard from others that had already seen it that the ending was disappointing. we wondered how such a great movie could possibly be sullied by an ending. i should have remembered casino royale. right about the moment that woody harrelson appears in 'no country' you can feel it collapse. the anticlimax is when our antihero, a character who's actions we've watched in excruciating detail--we watch in what is close to real time as he dismantles a hotel room to stash an atache in an airvent--we come to realize he has died. the filmmakers decided that his death need not be seen, even though it's the most anticipated moment of the whole movie. this i suppose is meaningful in some way. i found it frustrating and infuriating. my wife and my father disagree, for reasons that as yet evade me, but make me wonder if the problem is not the film but my viewing of it. at least woody gets his pretty much when you expect/want him to get it.

are any of my bay area readers planning to watch or protest the olympic torch bus tour[questionmark]

Everybody's favorite harbinger of spring, pussy willow.

( an easter message and a city block )

1. I'm pleased to see that after the Atheist Apocalypse there are still pigeons. It wouldn't have killed the cartoonist to change it to an American robin, but hey, I haven't given up the room in my heart for pigeons.

2. On account of the exciting mortgage crisis (Low income people out on the street! Bailouts for Wall Street Usury firms!) our options for where to move have temporarily expanded. Here's a question I asked on thequestionclub with predictably binary results (considering the binary nature of the question): You have two choices about where to buy a house. You have a 300k budget. Do you a) Buy a tiny house with no yard in Oakland California or b) buy a nice house with a gigantic yard 30 miles outside of Austin Texas?