Dear Diary

Today was brilliant. I didn't sleep in too far, and gave myself a slow enough wake up/get up process that I felt absolutely fine, instead of shellshocked. The sun wasn't too hot, but lovely and deliciously warm and bright. The roll I ate while I walked was also delicious. We saw a cormorant fishing the rocks by the Clovelly cliffs, as if the dashing waves were just a dream. Clovelly was calm, with no swell and slap-happy waves, and so clear. The water bit us cold as we dove in, but Clovelly is full of different waters, and we passed through warm and cold waters alike. Right by the stairs, as if waiting for us, was Big Bluey, the dominant blue groper. An entourage of wrassers and bream followed him, and then smaller striped fish, toad fish and the odd goat fish. Such a glorious velvet blue. I'd never seen him before. Well over one metre long, big enough to grab and throw whole fair sized rocks while grazing. He was unfazed by our presence, and simply continued doing his business. Saw another two smaller females, and a smaller male. Each with entourage. The garfish have grown and grown, and the school is full now of thick ribbons of silver weaving away from me. With the water clear and the sun bright, their subtle colouring became vibrant. Blue shot through the tail, red down the dorsal. Never alone. I saw a small groper missing its upper jaw. Not an open wound, all healed. It was hiding in a crevice. I could see its teeth. Little nubs of enamel, four of them. We sat on the warm concrete and let the sun dry us and cuddle the cold from us. "John's Seagulls" were in court near us; two gulls who get handfed by John pieces of his sandwich, and who do an excellent job of keeping every single other bird away. This exchange takes place apparently every day. One of these gulls had white talons, which in its red webbing looked odd. Then we walked to Gordon's Bay, and clambered over barnacle-crusted boulders. The water here too was calm, and clear, and so deliciously warm. We waded in with ease, until I fell off the drop off. The sand of the seabed was pale and perfect, with small dunes laid down by the waves above, and goat fish leaving frenzied calligraphy on those dunes with their two chin whiskers as they fossicked for snacks. More wrassers, more bream, and many dark wrinkled medium sized fish that simply lay on the seafloor as if terribly depressed. We went looking for the stingarees, but none were to be found. The water was clear and the sand so bare, like floating over a pristine desert. And then I saw it, first thinking it was a clump of seaweed which had broken its mooring, turning to look at it and seeing a sea turtle. Gliding against that white sand backdrop. It caught sight of me and changed its path to give me a safe berth. The gropers of Clovelly have spoiled us with their relaxed and non-threatened nature. This turtle was shy. Once it figured out we were following it, it put the speed on, and without flippers we could not keep up. Extraordinary and completely unhoped for. We tried to high five while treading water and it didn't work. A couple had joined us on the rocks, with an 11 month old Great Dane called Julius, a younger Great Dane pup with enormous feet, and a wee Jack Russell called Troy. They were standing waist deep in the water, trying to get Julius in with them, and he wanted to, he so wanted to obey his human, but this water business. He just didn't know about it. He started barking and wuffing when his humans got too deep for his liking, poor silly boofhead. When we got out, he came over to say hello. Had no idea how big he is and stepped all over us, tried to sit on us. Lovely floppy dog. The puppy was adorable, and Troy came to sit next to us in the sun and get a good back scratch. There's nothing that can cause a grin like a happy dog, let alone three. We basked in the sun some more, and then parted ways. I feel so incredibly buoyant and clean and fresh. 

Stranger Things Happen At Sea

The Most Loyal of Black Dogs

Yesterday a friend dreamed of having a great big wolfy dog that never left their side. Yesterday my mum dreamed of one of our current dogs and one of our past dogs and the work she had to do to get them out of a thunderbowl.

It is therefore not particularly surprising that this morning I dreamed of dogs. One of our current dogs playing with an enormous St Bernard who simply adored her, as everyone does. A surprisingly non-confrontational dream, considering. Not at all my unconscious's standard fare.

What You Choose To Be Proud Of

I just put my laptop Eddie on mute.

Only one person reading this will understand the satisfaction I take from this statement. That person is probably laughing at me.

Sharks, Dolphins, Barracuda, Tuna, Whales, Gannets, and You

There was no summary of the year type post for 2009. This was partly because I was out of the country when the new year rolled around, but I had intended to write something up when I was reinserted in my life.

I wrote that post about four times, and then walked away. I'm still not entirely sure why. Sometimes I think it's because I'm still in the midst of some turning tides, and so have no perspective from which to analyse even that which is a year behind me. Say nothing unless you are sure of what you're saying. Don't give your future self any more ammunition to use against yourself. Or, it could simply be that the territory in which the currents have shifted the most are territories I do not wish to share indiscriminately with the internet. With increasingly frequency I pause when posting, as I do not know who reads this any more.

The vaguest of summaries states that in 2009 I became a solid person.

Entering 2009 I wrote;

We come into the world without shape. We're perpetual works in progress. We die unfinished. I have pondered what I need to do in order to recover and regain the parts of me I have lost, but I will take no such steps. The world will do with me what it will, and make of me what it would. We're none of us given time to be whole. We'll never be whole, always being shaped by what's come, and what's yet to come.

I also wrote:

Never been single-minded about anything.

I'm a school of fish. Not a very coherent school of fish. The individual parts of me were in constant opposition. Fish were zipping around in all directions, no agreement between any of them, with 'school' being used in the loosest possible sense.

There have been predators disturbing the water and so disrupting the fish, but I can't blame it all on the sharks and gulls. Even without exterior threats, this school of fish would be a churning chaos of frenetic fish going nowhere and doing nothing.

Last year, not only did all the predators disappear, but the fish just...came together. It almost felt like I'd reached the age I am supposed to be. Maybe it's the first calm water I've ever been in. I don't know why, but suddenly all the fish started moving in unison.

I just...I've never felt so whole. Solid. Strong. Certain. I trusted myself with myself, trusted myself with the decisions I made and that I could weather any consequences that came from them.

Which isn't to say I was a person, no. Just because a million fish move in unison doesn't stop them being a million fish, but if they behave as if they are one mind, then nearly the same as really being one mind.

Lately, there have been sharks in the water.



Doubt, my old friend. I haven't missed you.

Spanish Dancers (the nudibranch kind)

picture from here

I was all set to dig up fascinating and weird truths about this most graceful of sea slugs, but the internet offers no such treasures. They can swim, and they're big for sea slugs, which is a succinct summary of what the internet hivemind knows.

I'm forming the opinion that they get away with this by being gorgeous and entirely hypnotic. Who needs to be able to hold a conversation when you do this all day?



(Just ignore the dumbtard diver poking the poor thing, and the further dumbtard diver dancing, and the random apperance of a lion fish. Actual spanish dancing is at the 1 minute mark - it's the best footage I found on YouTube.)

ETA: I stumbled across this page in my GISing. It's a competition gallery of underwater photography that is well worth eyeballing. See?

"Kind of like Thor."

I was reading this, and was having a gay old time with it, but alas, could not finish the article. For some reason the cut feature is crashing both Safari and Seamonkey. Bummer. Stalked barnacles sound gnarly.

"What is so cool about barnacles anyways? They are the John Holmes of the invertebrate kingdom with penis lengths exceeding 8 times their body length...Imagine your self glued head first to a rock, kicking your legs out your front door to draw in a current, hopefully with food - that is the barnacle."

Being so thwarted, I clicked through to this article about mantis shrimp and how they see, and, like, WHOA. They possess the kewlest eyes in the animal kingdom, they see the difference when light is turning clockwise and anti-clockwise. I didn't even know light turned, my eyes are so dumb.

They also fuck your shit up.

"Mantis shrimps are no stranger to world records. They are famous for their powerful forearms, which can throw the fastest punch on the planet. The arm can accelerate through water at up to 10,000 times the force of gravity, creating a pressure wave that boils the water in front of it, and eventually hits its prey with the force of a rifle bullet."

Like, WHOA. The wiki article linked up there goes into further detail, stating that they're so fast, the energy from their punches creates light and heat, and the wake of their punches has enough pressure to act as a second punch. Holy smokes. Well, with a face like that, you can't really blame them. They break aquarium glass too. I want one. To go with my flamboyant cuttlefish.

There's a video at the bottom of that article showing a mantis shrimp wailing on a crab, but here's a different one.



It's also wailing on a crab, but this video has some great shots of how they move. There's something delightfully centipede-y about them. At the very end, it snatches the crab and drags it off into its lair in a very Alien-esque manner. Fucking OARSUM.

Mantis shrimp. Not a mantis. Not a shrimp.

Also, more unknown beasties found in the Antarctic depths, including these:



Nooooow, am I wrong in remembering that Lovecraft's At The Mountains Of Madness was set in Antarctica? And the beasties were starfishy? ZOMG. THEY ARE BABY ELDER THINGS. WE HAVE STOLEN THEIR BEBEES. WE ARE SO BONED. FHTAGN.

(I always thought the Elder Things were pretty silly looking, myself.)

Phew. I'm rather flustered now. That's far too much radical awesomitude for one day.

GTFO. No, Really.

Operation GTFO, Phase #1 -
Current Status: "ask me again later."

(I'm not hopeful.)

Sleight of Mind

There's a huge albino killer whale out in the ocean, fucking HUGE, look at him in comparison to his pod. Biggest, baddest ghost of the sea. Link also contains pictures of various other marine-related albino animals. Leopard slug included.

Flamboyant Cuttlefish

It is pretty, cute, flashy, limp wristed, POISONOUS and walks. Seriously, what a lump of adorable dragqueen death. This is a case of nature understanding the importance of packaging, and getting the contents right.

This Is The Tale Of Harry Houdini, Who Died And Came Back As A River Fish In Malaysia

Some time in early November last year, when I spent a brief week on the other side of the Equator, my father called me out into the paved laundry area of the house. There was a large polystyrene tube on the ground, with my uncle standing proudly over it.

Look at this, he said.

The fish was huge. Freaking huge. As long as my arm, and thicker too. Time and the river had coloured it a drab invisible brown. It barely fit in the tub, and sat idle on the bottom, clearly not much impressed with the situation.



Caught it in the river, my uncle said.

We used to catch these when we were kids, Dad said, they had teeth like this- and he imitated Tim the Sorcerer of Monty Python notoriety. I crouched down, but couldn’t see any sign of these giant fangs.

The fish spasmed once, thumping the tub. How did you get it home?

In the boot.

My uncle drives a BMW. With leather upholstery and all the trimmings. I didn’t say anything.

Going to eat it?

Dad pulled a face. He wasn’t keen on eating what was pulled from the river.

Again the fish rocked the tub. They put a folded deck chair over it, to keep it from jumping out. I peered at it through the cracks, and it ignored me.

The next morning I wandered out to have another gander. The tub was as we’d left it, with the deck chair as a lid. I leaned down for a peek, and couldn’t make the fish out. Odd. On lifting the chair, I discovered that this was because there was no fish.

Dad, where’s the fish?

There, he gestured at the tub.

No, it isn’t.

It is.

No, really, Dad, it isn’t.

He came over and inspected the tub for himself. Significant lack of fish. He must have given it away, he said with disgust, to one of his mates. Yeah, he must have. Dad walked off shaking his head, muttering. Why? I don’t know, it wasn’t as though he wanted to eat the fish anyway. I went back inside, disappointed.

Dad, being Dad, didn’t let it go. As more and more relatives spontaneously arrived for dinner, I heard him asking if my uncle had given them the fish. He asked my cousins and his other siblings, until at last my uncle came home.

Did you give the fish away? Dad asked, almost before he was out of the car.

No.

I could practically hear the questions marks forming in their minds. Where, then, was the giant fucking fish? The deckchair didn’t have any gaps in it large enough for even the most acrobatic of goldfish to leap through, and it hadn’t been moved. It was sitting flush on the tub when I discovered the disappearance in the morning. Suddenly, everyone was involved. Looking in buckets and checking in random pots, as if the fish was hiding in the kitchen, in the tool box, in the pantry. Where was the fish?

Then a cry; my aunt had found it. Out the front. In the drain.

Eww.

The tiled floor of the laundry slopes down into a gutter that runs out of the house into the drain, and presumably that is the path the fish took.

Eww.

I mean, ewwwwww. It’s the sort of drain that is deep and soupy. Opaque. Busy.

They scooped it up in a bucket, flopped it on the tiled floor, and pointed a hose at it. It’s possible I was imagining it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fish so relieved to be out of water. The grit and muck and filth ran off it and across the floor in thick streams. The fish just lay there. It didn’t flail and gulp at the air. It let my uncle wash it till it was visibly clean, and went back in the tub without complaint. It didn’t glare so much this time. I think it was pretty traumatised.

There, my uncle dried his hands. Fine. We’ll just change the water every day, clean it out. Good eating.

You know, Dad said, our shit goes in that drain.

A couple of weeks later, back on my side of the Equator, I asked Dad what the fate of the fish was. My uncle had changed the water as he’d said, but no one was game to eat a fish that had been in the drain, and eventually, they gave it back to the river.

So, I ask you, how did the fish get out?

---

My memory was prompted by this contest (tell a story, potentially win many stories). I’d been meaning to post this for a while, but it was overlooked in the whirlwind of moving house, Christmas, and all that jazz. I feel you should know I come from a family of (among other things) fish wrestlers. Yeah, they rock like that.

THEY CAME BACK



Yay!

Yet, my inbox remains lacking in emails from people who work for the CIA.

It was the chocolate, wasn't it? Wait a minute, let me see what else I can tempt you with...okay, for some reason there isn't any awesome food to be found in this fridge. Maybe you're not a food person. Let me find something else- aha!



They're blue whales, the biggest animal to ever live. Bigger even than dinosaurs. Bigger even than my ego. They're for you, mystery CIA worker. Hope they make your day bigger and bluer, and maybe make you write to me.

It is not Cthulhu's lollipop. It is a Neptunea Amianta atop an egg sack-stalk-thingy. Do you want to know more?

ETA:



"That's no moon. It's a spacestation GIANT FUCKING ANEMONE!" I particularly love how, after detailing its size, the article goes on to state, "That's just downright dangerous."

Well. Duh. IT'S A GIANT FUCKING ANEMONE! RAAAAAAAAAARRR! Cthulhu uses these to powder his nose after his choc-top. Totally.

here's to another year getting accustomed here

Around the age of 10, I realised I would never get to go to the moon.

It was one of those 'oh,' moments full of heart-break, not unlike being dumped, not that I had any idea what it felt like to be dumped when I was 10, but I did have a crush on this boy, who in turn had a crush on my best friend, which is probably a better analogy, because the moon is all about unrequitedness.

It still upsets me, because I'm the broody type.



At least once a week I paw through the gallery at The Deep, looking at the same photos over and over. I love these beasties, I really do. Knowing that they exist gives me that giddy delight that causes me to grin for no obvious reason.

But this act of looking at the photos is really a creepy stalker thing, because I know they're another moon, and I have even less chance of seeing these little fellas in the deep ocean than I do of playing leap-frog on the lunar surface, and looking at these photos is like timing yourself to stand on that certain street corner at a certain time hoping to catch a glimpse of someone who doesn't know you exist, which isn't healthy behaviour at all, but you carry on doing so anyway, and you never see them.

The world needs more ghostly octopuseseses.

Disclaimer: Nightshift, okay? I absolve all responsibility for any peculiar character traits I may be exhibiting. If you mock me, I will cry at you. It will be snotty. Nightshift does that, you know. I cry at the thought of being faced by dinner. Dinner, I can't handle dinner, why would you ask dinner of me? I CAN'T DO THIS.

You have no idea.

Have a not-so-peculiar chaser;

Around 2am I discovered kawaii not, a little webcomic of cute every day items being unsavoury. The following strip made me cackle.



Actually, the whole archive made me cackle. The poor banana dipped in chocolate.

It's Ugly! It's Slimy! It's 2 cm long!

The internet is being present-giving on this fine Saturday morning.

Most of you have probably already seen the Promachoteuthis sulcus posted on boingboing. Ignoring the fact that the scientific drawings make the little beastie look like a the devil's gonads, and that the little beastie is only a couple of centimetres big, and we are left with the fact that the little beastie is goddamn freaky.



Fangs are for making nervous. Human teeth where there should be no human teeth are for making screaming and running away actions. And then coming back to oggle the photo again, and again. That's fabulous. Why are all these monsters tiny? They should be the size of fat cats! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD.

And now look at this:

From JAMSTEC: Scaly foot--a spiral gastropod clad in iron sulfide scales. Found only in an extremely limited region of hyrdothermal areas within the Indian Ocean, which is called "Kairei Field". As the name suggests, this creature is covered in rugged scales that protect it from predators. How it actually creates its iron sulfide scales, however, is not yet fully understood. A JAMSTEC research team succeeded in observing the creature in an onboard tank for the first time in February 2006.

It isn't a snail with a house, it's a snail with a fortress. How very rocking is that? Said snail doesn't have a name yet, and is also only a centimetre big (WHY? WHYYYY?). This popped up in the gears_and_steam LJ community, of all places. Scienceblogs.com has a deep! sea! news! blog, and I never knew! Oh frabjous day, callooh, callay! She chortled in her joy.