Evidence of the essential nastiness of marsupials--courtesy of linguist, animator, software guy, writer, nature photographer, cultural observer and renaissance man Rodney Hill:
There. Is. No. God.
And check this one out:
As you can see in the detail below, it has birdseed up its nose. All creatures great and small, huh?
Writes Rodney:
The O’Possum clan, ... after eating, defecates all over the remaining food – looks like wet, mostly cylindrical, partially digested granola bars. Eli and I refer to them as “marpoopials.” Can one assume they intend to ward off other diners and return, in spite of the mess, to resume the meal later? I have no empirical evidence, but it is a theory.
Thanks, Rodney, for supplying this heartwarming image of interspecies harmony ... reminds me of a picture of heaven from the copy of Watchtower somebody gave me one time:
I remember hearing in a class or maybe reading in a book of Stephen Jay Gould essays that there were once marsupial analogues out there to most normal, placental mammals. I just don't care for that idea ... it's kind of unheimlich. Know what I mean?
Marsupials are nasty. Those beady little possum eyes that catch your headlights from the ditch? Demonic. Man, I hate possums, with their insidious little possum teeth. (I refuse to call these rat-tailed gremlins by their proper name, which I consider to be some kind of obscure ethnic slur against the Irish.) I'm glad to live in a neighborhood with only one native marsupial.
So okay, you're saying, what about kangaroos? Kangaroos are interesting enough ... I guess they're the deer of the marsupial world? I don't know. But if you ask me, marsupials are kind of gross, period. Look, carry your young until they're ready to be born, and then pop them out. AND KEEP THEM OUT. I'm really glad people don't have little larval PEOPLE clinging to them for months after giving--or should I say "loaning"?--birth ... clinging to their fur and crawling in and out of their pouch at will. As my mother used to say if I couldn't make up my mind between going outside or playing indoors: "In or out."
I don't wish ill upon marsupials, mind you. I think extinction is pretty tragic, even if the animal itself is an abomination:
And there's something tragic about watching what might have been the last one of them wandering around in a zoo. But don't be lulled into too much sympathy ... these are marsupials we're talking about!
You can see where I'm going with this, right? Here's a scary headline for you: "Marsupials And Humans Share Same Genetic Imprinting That Evolved 150 Million Years Ago." If you ignore the article, you'll see why I'm afraid that marsupial people are living among us. I didn't make this up! More than twenty years ago, the visionaries who created the so-called fiction film Howling III predicted the same thing. What they didn't predict was that people weren't ready for this idea (hence the 2.4 star rating on IMDB). Look, it's got a Roman numeral in the title. Roman numerals, people ... that gives it a gravity that's almost Biblical, if you ask me.
I have a pretty strong opinion about sea horses, too ... remind me to tell you about it sometime.
This song strikes me as one of those that's in a class by itself. I don't like the video, but it's the easiest way to direct your attention to the song. Feel free not to watch, just listen. I saw these guys on Conan O'Brien (I think) a while back, and the song just kind of blew me away ... kind of breaks my heart. I'm a sucker for that hillbilly harmony, as I've said.
You know I don't usually get political here, but here's a love song from Steve Earle with some possible subtle political overtones. Might be funnier in the overall context of Earle's oeuvre, which I wholeheartedly encourage you to check out.
I've always had a love-hate relationship (more accurately, a hate relationship) with the local news. This goes back to my childhood growing up halfway between the Pittsburgh and Youngstown markets. One Youngstown station had a guy who was kind of ugly but very professional, so I usually watched that one (I won't identify him because I'm afraid that it might lead to him having a minor auto accident, like Morgan Freeman). This was before beauty became the most important thing about local news ... back when, if you were lucky, you'd catch a news broadcast on channel ll that featured Chilly Billy, the weekend horror host, who also played a newsman in Night of the Living Dead.
Clearly George Romero isn't just a genius ... he's a metagenius. But that's a topic for another entry.
How local news has devolved over the last few decades! I'd say something kind of negative about how hotness has apparently become the main requirement for local morning news teams, but to do so would imply that local morning news has substance that deserves more gravity than the average colon cleansing infomercial. So why do I watch the morning news rather than Night Court and Designing Women on TVLand? This is one of the mysteries that will continue to plague us. I hope it's not because the women on the news are, uh ... hmm. Well. Anyhow.
Okay, I'm going to work harder to avoid badmouthing people here. I mean, the lengths people will go to to make me look like a dick. Seriously, Mr. Freeman, you could have just snubbed me in an elevator or something. You didn't have to go and wreck your car.
But I have to say, the news story makes him sound pretty damned cool, even to the asshole who's trying to take his picture. I wish him a full and speedy recovery.
I've been putting off embarking on my next woodworking adventure by taking care of some other odds and ends I've been meaning to get to. I'm not being thorough, I'm procrastinating.
One of my earliest projects, in fact one that I started before I had many tools at all aside from some hand power tools, (drill, sabre saw, circular saw) was a bass guitar.
See, several years ago I acquired a bass: brand name "Series 10." Apparently they used to give these things away with Ampeg amps. Cheesy sparkly plywood body, sloppily dipped chrome plated bridge, tuner, etc. But the neck was okay and the frets seemed to be located in basically the right places. So I thought I'd build a new body for the bass. I went and bought a hunka hunka solid mahogany because I didn't even have the clamps to glue up a body, and I got my dad to cut it out on his bandsaw and drill out the neck pocket with forstner bits.
And then I brought it home and started shaping it. by hand. With rasps and files. It was a lot of work, unrewarding and, in my South Carolina garage, damned hot. Everything I did made the thing look worse. So ... I quit.
Fast forward to the present day, maybe five years later. I have tools, now, an embarrassment of tools, and a nice cool basement woodshop. And a large, ambitious project I'm kind of avoiding! So yesterday I decided to have at the bass.
Shape-wise, it's about where I want it to be. The curves and contours are pleasing to the touch. The next steps will involve fitting the neck and routing and drilling for the electronics (once we've settled on what the electronics will entail). Then I'll give it the final sanding, allow the color to even itself out (age and exposure to light seems to change the color of the mahogany dramatically, hence the blotches you can see in the photos.
A few funny moments here ... as indicated by Colbert's deep mental breath before telling us who's pooping in our pools at about 4:10. I think I've experienced a few of these side effects.
