Ocean Invertebrates: My Love For Them September 19, 2010

I have been watching David Attenborough all day, and feel the need to rhapsodize about freaky marine invertebrates.

You will be assimilated. No, really.

I have been inspired by the delightful marine-nerd blog that is Star-Gazy Pie.  One of their links was to this news story maligning one of the most beautiful nudibranchs I have ever seen.

You can keep your whales  and your seals and most other vertebrates(unless they’re on this show); give me something slimy or armored and slightly translucent.  Preferably all three.  I’m sorry, but these animals do things that are a thousand times cooler than anything a mammal can do.

For example: my dear Star-Gazy just taught me that argonaut males can detach their penis-tentacle, called a hectocotylus (WHAT?) and it will swim on without them and mate with a female on its own.  Oh, and also, the hectocotylus was once thought to be some sort of worm.  Excuse me?  Marine biologists were trolled by an octopus’s detachable penis?  Hell yeah, argonauts!

My future wife

However, I will make an exception to my vertebrate rule for Joy Reidenberg,the comparative anatomist from the show I linked above.  I have never seen someone thigh-deep in whale guts looking so happy.  For that matter, I’ve never seen someone thigh deep in whale guts, but it seems like there’s nothing that adorable woman likes better.  Be still my heart.

Dating advice September 12, 2010

So I was looking at some dating advice today because I realized over the weekend that I have very little faith in marriage.

It’ll make sense in a minute:  My mom was telling me that my cousin and her husband were getting a divorce, and I laughed and said, “Well there’s a big surprise.”

“Oh, do you know something I don’t?” she asked.

“Um, no, I just have very little faith in marriage.”

“Oh no, that’s terrible!”  She wailed.  “Oh God, because your father and I got divorced and now you don’t think that people can stay married….”

Shit, I felt bad.  I petted her head and told her that it was in no way her or dad’s fault and told her that I just know way too many people that are divorced or in shitty relationships.  If my beautiful, productive, smart friends and family can’t hold down a good relationship, what kind of chance do I have?  My corn snake is a better judge of character than I am!

I figured some dating advice articles would make me feel better, and, you know, for someone who spends a lot of time railing against fear culture, I sure do love me some red flag dating advice.  Even when I get a new For Dummies book, the first thing I look at is the section called “Top 10 Most Common Mistakes”.  Makes me feel like I have an edge, somehow.

Anyways, while I was reading about all the different things that should make me want to dump somebody, I noticed that the nameless dud in the articles was always male, except for How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk by First Things First  They squeezed in “jerkettes” so boys could come to the seminars, too.  I went to Askmen.com to see what kind of dating advice the guys were getting.  This article I clicked on had the tagline “This week’s questions come from readers who make themselves too available. David D. explains why you need to back off to turn women on.”

Wait a minute, I was just reading something about how I should dump a man who doesn’t make himself available.  So the girls are learning how to OMG RUN FOR THE HILLS, and the guys are learning how to HUNT THAT BITCH DOWN, YOU PANSY.

Okay, fine.  I’ll just marry my cat.