Today’s Wikipedia P.O.D.:

An illustration of the pharyngeal jaws of a moray eel, a “second set” of jaws contained within an animal’s pharynx, distinct from the primary (oral) jaws. When the moray bites prey, it first bites normally with its oral jaws, capturing the prey. Immediately thereafter, the pharyngeal jaws are brought forward and bite down on the prey to grip it; they then retract, pulling the prey down the eel’s esophagus, allowing it to be swallowed.

And here’s Morey, showing us how that works:

Sometimes, when we feed Morey a shrimp that’s a bit too big, and even his pharyngeal jaw can’t quite get the whole thing down, he ties himself in a knot and pulls his head through to dislodge the piece of shrimp that’s still sticking out. Which is just cool.

Bobcat Goldthwaite, on Scott Baio: (try to get to 0:45-ish if you can, unless you like a lot of screming. personally I find the screaming rather cathartic. )

you know, it’s time.

it’s not like this is a new thing, but i’m not even sure if most of my friends even know this about me. since most of my socializing is online (yes, it is, so what?) anyway, i’m not at all sure they notice when they are in a bad way and ask for prayers, and i mumble something comforting and/or do the old ‘you are in my thoughts’ & send hugs, love, comfort, etc. i haven’t been in a discussion about this with anyone, and that’s ok, i have no driving need to debate anyone on the subject, as i do not disagree with anyone’s personal beliefs – those are yours, these are mine, and this shouldn’t feel like that much of a big deal, yet it does.

the closest i’ve come is to change my religious preference on facebook to pastafarian, quietly & without fanfare.

i’m not even sure why it is so difficult to come right out and say it: i’m an atheist.

according to wikipedia, “Atheism can be either the rejection of theism, or the position that deities do not exist. In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities.” i do not take the position that deities do not exist; negatives in general are difficult to prove, and this one in particular is virtually impossible. i would never confront someone with beliefs and attempt to dissuade them, in fact in some ways i actually envy those who are able to suspend disbelief and experience the faith and attendant comforts that these convictions offer – i just don’t have the knack for blind faith, though i did for the record try.

i spent a good portion of my life seeking faith. i went to bible camp, i tried several flavors of christianity, i invited door-to-door mormons in and even visited their temple; i considered judaism, investigated hinduism, even hung out with the hari krishnas in people’s park on the odd weekend in my youth. the closest thing i could accept would have been buddhism, however since they insist it is a religion, and i appreciate it as a philosophy, well, that’s kind of a problem. but i tried, i really did. in the end i had to find acceptance, even though this goes against the countless examples throughout history in which humans have demonstrated it is in their nature to believe in something, how many religions have their been? how many now? it’s overwhelming, and i exist outside of each and every one of them. i am not alone, and i am in very good company, but i’ve not up to this point been very active in those circles, mainly due to the whole stealth-atheism thing i’ve been doing.

but you see, when i watch a video like this one, i realize that skepticism is my thing, because this just tickles my intellect and also appeals to my very deepest instincts. this video is just full of aha moments for me, explaining things much better than i ever could:

i am not opposed to anyone whose spiritual life includes the blind faith i have no knack for, however i am deeply offended by fundamentalists of all kinds, especially the sort quoted here:

i fear their fear and their hatred, and i know that by coming out as an atheist, i open myself to attacks from that end of the spiritual spectrum, but then again i’d hardly be alone — that bunch attacks everything that moves and doesn’t one hundred percent agree with it. so no worries there.

my main concern is the awkwardness inherent in being a member of the smallish minority who does not believe. as such, i am in a disadvantage whenever the conversation devolves into the religious: i have absolutely no beliefs to bring to the table, and no desire to defend these non-beliefs with my wide array of reasons because in doing so, i feel that i would be criticizing those who do believe, and i do not wish to do that. i would never want anyone with beliefs to feel they had to defend them to me. as long as those beliefs are peaceful and benevolent, i respect them completely and wish with all my heart i shared them – it’s not the most comfortable state, this disbelief, but it is mine, and i have come to treasure it in spite of the uncertainty. i have, in fact, embraced and even rejoiced in this not knowing, and in the unknowability of these sorts of things in general – the best part about this is the acceptance and subsequent getting on with it no matter what, just because. life is amazing, and does not really need greater meaning, it is an intrinsically divine collection of moments, any of which might end it, and this is the one common truth shared between all lifeforms. a lifetime, whether measured in minutes, or weeks, or decades, is still a lifetime, a distinct yet infinitely unpredictable unit of measure into which a life fits, and that’s it. i’m not explaining this in fullness but i wish i was, or wish i could, though not sure i can.

there remains the aforementioned wide array of reasons, in which i am rather heavily intellectually invested, yet am not, at this point, elaborating on. however, if asked, i will elaborate at great length, so (as it is in all things) be careful what you ask for. and since posting this entry is something i’ve been putting off for a long, long time, and keeping typing would be such a much easier thing to do, i need to end this here and post now. i’ve revised extensively, and it still feels incomplete and too defensive, and like i’ve missed some important points, but i don’t know that it could ever feel any other way.

it’s time.

i am not sure what day it is. i know it has been five days since i’ve had the internet.

i have been blogging in notepad.

i have an hour to do five days worth of internetting. an hour.

“There is a last correlation that is slightly less clear than the others. The spirits one sees in hallucinations are three-dimensional, sound-emitting images, and they speak a language made of three-dimensional, sound-emitting images. In other words, they are made of their own language, like DNA.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

Then my friend said, “Yes, and like DNA they replicate themselves to relay their information.” I jotted this down, and it was later in reviewing my notes on the relationship between the hallucinatory spirits made of language and DNA that I remembered the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the logos” — the word, the verb, the language.
→ go read this article ←

if you read this place anywhere near regularly, you have an idea how much resonance there is in this, in me. of course, you’d find the connections in the really deeply spacey meditations on communication and language and spacetime, and i’m never sure how much of that actually makes any sense outside my head.

i have always been made of my own language. which makes me uniquely well-qualified to conduct further research on this matter, yes?

well, if the award is best deeply psychotic response to ‘poke the bunny’

i don’t think they let folks in lockdown psych wards surf the interweb, so it’s safe to assume this person lives among us, somewhere. maybe safe is the wrong word.

a large spaceship has crashed into harrods of london, and a large robot has emerged, and said, �take me to your lizard�. ford prefect explains this to arthur dent:

�It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see ��
�You mean it comes from a world of lizards?�
�No,� said Ford, �nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.�
�Odd,� said Arthur, �I thought you said it was a democracy.�
�I did,� said Ford. �It is.�
�So,� said Arthur, hoping he wasn�t sounding ridiculously obtuse, �why don�t the people get rid of the lizards?�
�It honestly doesn�t occur to them,� said Ford. �They�ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they�ve voted in more or less approximates the government they want.�
�You mean they actually vote for the lizards?�
�Oh yes,� said Ford with a shrug, �of course.�
�But,� said Arthur, going for the big one again, �why?�
�Because if they didn�t vote for a lizard,� said Ford, �the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?�

(brought forth from the old archives, it needed to be included here)

people ask me about the lizard thing. i try to explain, but the incidence of lizards in my life … sometimes difficult to express.

included in the more text is a story from a long time ago, six years, which i’ve included here for the record.

yet another lizard: my friend m.b. (who i haven’t seen in years, and miss, and should call) is an incredible artist. she is also the source of my philosophy ‘life is for living hair is for dyeing’. and at one point, she employed me as an assistant, and i helped make this papier-mache lizard, which adorns the ceiling of wild planet, which is a record head store shop type of place downtown (she also painted the place):

and wild planet is for lease, if you’re interested:

in other, non-lizard related news, the far right lunatic fringe is alive and well in our fair city:

about five years ago a neighbor of mine committed suicide. it was meticulously planned & carried out in the most thoughtful manner possible; this struck me as an unusual way to approach what amounts to a desperate last act.

he gave no outward indication of his intentions during his final weeks, as he was laying out his cover story, a planned medical procedure that would have him out of the house for several days. he arranged for his bird to be cared for with another neighbor; he delivered the animal right on schedule, along with generous supplies and an overly adequate budget to cover any contingencies. this was the last time anyone saw him alive.

the neighbor watching the bird had keys to the apartment. after several days, he went to check on things & found the suicide note – written in marker on a piece of cardboard about 3 feet high by 5 feet wide – & its author dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.

he had been sick for several years, in constant pain with no hope for recovery, yet no end in sight. he was unable to work & living alone, in poverty. he apologized for the inconvenience of his death. there were three envelopes taped to the cardboard, containing his will, letters to relatives, & copies of bank & vehicle records, all very neat, organized, methodical. according to the autopsy reports, he took a lot of pills. enough, actually, but at some point when the pills had loosened his psyche & he was ready, he put the shotgun in his mouth. methodical, & very, very thorough.

oh, and the neat note? all sane & logical, at least down to the last line, scrawled in large jagged angry (or terrified) letters, with a different pen (a red one), apparently as an afterthought:
*THE LIZARDS ARE OUT THERE*

the lizards are out there. i know what you’re thinking, and no, i don’t take that personally, because i know precisely what he meant by that — and i relate. it’s the same way with spiders — there are always spiders. the ones you see, & the ones you don’t see. spiders are far more aware of us than we are of them. we walk in a room, the spiders there know. but how often do spiders creep, unseen & unrealized, through our rooms, unnoticed occupants of our subconsciousness as much as anything else? often indeed, believe you me. there are always spiders.

there are the unknown knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns, you know?

the lizards are out there.

this is an old, old story – posted to an egroup i used to belong to, then on the old green/purple version of surreally, and then just reading about a a few ants here and there, somehow brought all this back.

look – i used to do capital letters. huh.

I have just had a uniquely horrifying experience, which I have decided to share with you all since I’m not going to sleep any time soon. I’m sitting in my kitchen, hyperventilating, my eyes burning, with my trusty spray bottle of about 1/3 bleach with water close by, just in case. I was tired, ready to go to bed, & then there they were. Thousands & thousands of them. In my bed, where my son had been eating rather messily, & they had found it. Ants.

I have a pretty serious insect phobia. In fact, I have made considerable progress, because I can deal with random ants here & there, pick ‘em up, squish em, roll ‘em off my fingertips…but this swarming horde set off what can only be described as a violent panic attack. I don’t have bug spray, because this ant thing has been going on in a mildly annoying way now for a very short time. Most household cleaners work just as well, but the only bottle I had left had perhaps an ounce or 2 left, & that was gone in minutes. So I grabbed the Clorox, poured it into the sprayer, & filled the rest with water, & then I got medieval on their…asses? thoraxes? whatever. I wadded up the sheet, filled with little creepy critters, & rushed to the bathroom, tossed it in the shower & soaked it. I sprayed everywhere. To hell with the carpet & furniture, besides, it doesn’t look so bad, considering that most everything was already extremely dirty, the kind of dirt perpetrated by 2 year old boys…what’s a few random spray patterns of bleach spots? I sprayed all around the bed, then found I could no longer walk on the floor because it felt so creepy, so I found a pair of sandals in my daughters room & proceeded to thoroughly bleach everything that could be considered even remotely appealing to an insect.

So there I was – exhibiting significant psychotic symptoms, blurting out expressions of alarm & breathing loud & fast, every inch of my skin just crawling with phantom pests. My eyes watering copiously from the bleach fumes, my bronchial passages clenching in the toxic atmosphere, I kept on pumping that sprayer trigger until my knuckles started locking up.

This all started around midnight, which was already way past my bedtime, I have to pick up my daughter at 6AM. It’s 1:30 now, & the adrenaline buzz is just barely winding down, & I’m going to be such a zombie tomorrow, but practical considerations like adequate rest cannot compete with the image of an army of leggy little bitty things surging across my sheets…had I gone to bed at a reasonable hour, I might not have seen where my little guy spilled his juice & got cookie crumbs on the corner of the bed…& that swarm would have had to cross me to get to the goodies…I would have woken up covered in ants, & I never ever would have stopped itching, ever.

Well, I am going to go do a little more spraying & lie down; at some point this crushing tiredness will overcome my anxious vigilance, & I will get at least a little rest; at least I hope this is possible, because I have school in the morning & a Microsoft seminar in the afternoon, & it’s a quarter to two AM…

with every box of haircolor product, there are gloves. there are sucky gloves that are terribly thin and barely make it through one usage, and then there are the good gloves. the good gloves are thick, stretchy, sturdy. they are quite wonderful. they only come with the high dollar haircolor, the feria for instance. but the elcheapo colorstay, that has the sucky gloves.

well, for this particular episode of hairmadness, i’ll be using the sucky kind, even when i move on from the rootbleaching to the punky colour. three uses, maybe four, out of gloves barely good enough for one.

the good gloves? i have at least two pair of slightly used good gloves, and about four pairs i haven’t even touched yet. i’m not sure what i’m saving them for, but they’re there.