Completely Unnecessary

Remember how for the last several months everyone, everywhere has been like, “Boo China! Boo! Torch, human rights abuses, Beijing is a smoggy nightmare, military crackdown, boo!’

The Age has been running at least a story a day about how horrible everything is in China.

Until today. Today’s age.com.au is more or less: ‘Shiny, happy, pretty! Oi, oi, oi! OMG, can you wait for the swimming?!?!’

And no, I can’t wait, because the US is going to kick some overachieving antipodean ass. And Michael Phelps shaved off his mustache, so that’ll probably skim another 87 million seconds off his times. We will crush you. (Sorry guys, swimming is about the only thing I get patriotic about.)

And the swimming’s also about the only Americans I’m likely to see on the TV. (Seriously Channel 7, the Australia v Belarus women’s basketball game? The only thing interesting about that match up was how many air balls there were. Apparently the women’s shooting was really cool - the Czech Republic upset China - but no…)

Women’s gymnastics doesn’t even seem to be on the schedule, which has to be a mistake. (I also get vaguely patriotic about gymnastics.)

Anyway, given the chance for Aussie gold in the men’s cycling, we’ll be showing that all afternoon. It’s kind of nice, actually. They let one of the Chinese riders lead the pack through most of downtown Beijing. And all the cyclists are taking it easy through the first section, chatting and smiling with people from other countries.

It’s what the Olympics are all about!

SBS is running women’s beach volleyball, which is so only an Olympic sport because there are women in bikinis. Norway versus Belarus (again!). How do you get into that sport in either of those countries? It’s the middle of summer, and it’s freezing in Norway. Belarus is landlocked (though they appear to have some nice lakes…)

Bikinis!

Which, as I mentioned above, is more or less what China’s doing. But, you know, with fireworks.

Oh, I also learned this morning that equestrian dressage commentary is what hell is like. They had nothing. During the two and a half minutes I watched it, the two commentators completely ran out of things to talk about. Actual quotes: “Oh, and I hear he’s quite the singer. Yes, yes, he definitely enjoys singing.”

Mix that with watching a horse trot and you’ve got the best reason for putting dressage on in the morning when no one is watching.

Except people who are avoiding work!

Vaguely Related

• Olympic Unimpression
• Green and Gold Commentary

No, no, no, no!

I live, what, 500 metres from the Melbourne Museum (ah, but in which direction, stalker-types?), and I missed the public dissection of the giant squid?

Oh, had I but seen The Dark Knight at the IMAX, I might have seen the announcement. I blame Avi.

I also blame you, Gus Steph, for no reason more compelling than that you should have known knew about this.

I also blame the annoying people living above me who are either hammering or repeatedly dropping something at 10:30 at night. I’m giving blogging a go, since reading about Alaskan Jews (pretty sure I can be describing only one book here) is becoming difficult through the red mist of rage.

I also blame Itunes, which is on a Green Day kick. 6400 songs in my Itunes, 20 of them Green Day. Second one in 30 minutes. Shuffle, my ass. And now onto the second Unicorns song in the same time period. Seriously.

But back to the squid.

First, the researchers learned that it was a girl. And then I learned that I do not want to be reincarnated as a female squid:

Male giant squids have a penis of one-and-a-half metres, which they use like a nail gun, with the sperm placed under the skin of the females in their tentacles and head, Dr Norman said.

I’m tolerant, but that is a dating no-no in my book.

Also the multiple locations implies several different… nailings. I imagine female giant squid must be even more dubious than female lions. (And that’s the kind of knowledge a childhood of PBS nature shows yields.)

I feel like, “I have a headache,” probably doesn’t adequately cover the desire not to have sperm injected into your head.

So, in lieu of squid dissection, the most exciting part of my day was learning that the sushi place next to Sinbad’s will make you salmon handrolls without mayonnaise.

Actually, that information is probably more vital than anything I would have learned at the Museum. I don’t know what it is, but I find Vegemite is preferable to the mayonnaise here.

To sum up - see what distractions do to my writing (and thought process)?

Link:
Giant Squid a Huge Attraction [The Age]

Vaguely Related

• Squid and Polar Bears
• Also - Extremely Large Squid!

First it was cougars. Cougars (well, a cougar) five blocks from my house.

Now it’s an armed standoff a mere three blocks away. And by standoff, I mean a guy in his house for 2.5 hours before surrendering peacefully to police.

Someone go protect my mother before Kalashnikov-wielding pandas descend on the family home.

Actually, someone protect the pandas. She will not take kindly to someone coming in and messing up her dining room table, no sir.

I’m not even allowed to set my water bottle on it; imagine the mess with pandas!

ps - Make sure to check out the Tribune’s helpful ‘Area of Threat’ map. Though, arguably, one could just zoom in on the coach house where a single individual was holed up rather than calling it an ‘area.’ Hilariously, the url it reads ‘lakeview-threat-map.’ Love it.

Vaguely Related

• I Wasn’t Home, Cougar. No Hugs…
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

They both like water.

As if I haven’t had far more specious links between things I wanted to talk about. These two are both animals and, as previously stated, enjoy a dip.

First up! Time to look at the colossal squid found last year!!! [Ed. note - people totally jones for squid. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't come by my blog looking for large squids.]

Paul Brewer from the museum said there were some fears the huge animal would collapse when it finally thawed, because it lack of a backbone.

To try to unfreeze the specimen successfully, it will be removed from its freezer and placed in a specially-designed tank filled with salty water.

Because salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water, it is hoped the squid can be kept at or below zero degrees celsius while the fresh water block of ice surrounding it is melted.

It is expected the thawing process will begin the night before scientists want to examine the animal, but the defrosting could take three to four days to complete.

This AAP writer is clearly missing the excitement of day; the audacious boringness of this prose is completely inappropriate. Curse the writer that does not appreciate the squid beat.

(Actually, the entire story reads like, “Um, I am just writing down what they told me because I don’t know the first thing about squid defrosting’).

Secondly, poor Knut! He really likes people and he cries because he’s too big to play with and no one likes him because he’s not a baby anymore.

And his handler doesn’t want to hug him anymore because he’s enormous and potentially deadly in his love.

He needs to learn a party trick like Mike, the polar bear at Lincoln Park Zoo when I was growing up. He used to bounce off the walls. It was charming at the time, though now I realize it was a repetitive coping behavior caused by crushing boredom.

A different LPZ polar bear seems to have kids on the menu. Maybe Knut should try rage… He is a teen, after all.

I went looking for a cougar update, but got bored with the Trib’s foolish website. It’s at the Field Museum and various people are poking at it. The story I read the other day only had two authors and not nearly enough breathless wonder for my cougar-article-tastes.

Links:
Scientists finally get close squiz at colossal squid [The Age]
Grown Knut ‘cries out’ [Chicago Tribune]

Vaguely Related

• Threat Vortex Moving Closer to My Mother
• I Wasn’t Home, Cougar. No Hugs…

I still kind of wish I’d been a zookeeper:

[Via Jezebel]

Vaguely Related

• Threat Vortex Moving Closer to My Mother
• Things I Love About Living in Australia: #546

Chicago police killed a cougar in my neighborhood Monday.

I was reading along, scrolling down to see where on the northside the animal had been found. Little did I expect to see:

The animal was shot by police shortly before 6 p.m. Monday in the 3400 block of North Hoyne Avenue, police said.

That’s five blocks from my house!

My guess is that the cougar was en route to my mother’s for hugs from me, but didn’t realize that I don’t home until July. Poor bunny.

What did my loquacious mayor have to say about the incident?

“Now, I just want to tell you, if the cougar attacked a child, they’d sue the city because the police officer didn’t do their job,” Daley said”I didn’t see a neighbor run out and grab it and say, ‘Oh I love you’ and bring it in the house.”

I repeat, I don’t come home until July.

And, boy, it must have been a slow news day at the Tribune. The front page is currently rocking a photo of police covering the dead animal with a cloth. The story is an absurd 1,050 words long, and has two reporters on the byline, as well as third contributor. Which I guess you need to write that much cougar copy.

Dear lord. You’d think it was the story about the coyote walking into a West Loop sandwich shop and climbing in the drinks fridge. (Which happened right near my old work, actually. Animals love me.)

Update: There is also the most amazing/absurd photo gallery of the cougar’s crime scene. 2,4,6 are the best - the captions are incredible. And 14 would get a big tick in the ‘images of metacoverage’ box on my research coding schedule.

Link:
Cougar killed on North Side may have wandered from Black Hills [Chicago Tribune]

Vaguely Related

• Chicago Tribune Celebrates 4/20
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

Sure Huckabee won in Iowa tonight, but don’t think he didn’t leave havoc in his bread-eating wake.

On the way to the caucus, I ran into a patch of (no doubt) Huckabee-laid black ice. This isn’t such a problem if you’re going straight. If, however, you’re going downhill as three deer cross the road it’s nearly impossible to stop.

What is it with deer!?! The last one in line sauntered jauntily across the road as death careened slowly toward it. I wasn’t going fast at all - about fifteen miles an hour. And yet downhill, so not stopping either. All I could imagine as we slid toward the final deer was the collision with its body simply causing the car to cease moving. And perhaps a small bounce.

Instead, while I rode the anti-locks and grabbed the emergency brake, we came within three feet of the Huckadeer. How he missed the right fender is beyond me.

Utterly terrifying. Similar, in fact, to the thought of a Huckabee presidency.

And yet, surprisingly, a Huckabee candidacy would be awesome. I want to hear more about his dog-hangin’, porn-lovin’ sons over 10 months of totally not running negative ads whilst politely asking that the media air them for free.

See this rambling? This is what happens when Mike Huckabee steals all the good bread and you’re forced to eat inferior Subway bread.

It’s all in the carbs.

And on that weird note, I’ll blog about the caucus itself tomorrow, but leave you with Jenny’s sage wisdom:

Me: So! What’d we learn about the caucus?
Jenny: It takes forever and there’s not nearly enough eye candy.

Now there is an Iowan.

Vaguely Related

• Mike Huckabee Ruins Iowa
• Iowa: Midwestern Dopplegangland

Walking home from uni today I looked up and there was a big cockatoo just hanging out on someone’s downspout. He flew around the back of the house when a crow came up for his perch. Animals we have in the zoo back home are just hanging out around the city. It’d be like having cardinals in the zoo - you don’t see them that often, and it’s nice when you do, but it’s not day-changing.

I still like the magpies the best. They evil little bastards (watch your eyes), but they make the coolest sounds I’ve ever heard.

Vaguely Related

• Yea the Age!
• Women and the World: It’s Not Going Well.

Knowing of my love for cephalopods (not a joke), Sam sent me to this story in The Age. The massive squid caught last month weighed in at a shocking 495 kilos. If I’ve remembered my metric conversions, and there’s no reason to believe I have, that’s 1089 pounds of calamari. There’s an impressive photo in the story, so Sam probably thinks she’s blown my world.

Little does she understand what I dork I am.

I already had a picture of the beast in question on my desktop, which would be kind of appaling if it wasn’t so cool!

[I'm sorry to report that I'm not sure where this photo came from. I downloaded it last month for purely personal enjoyment, but am now using it without accreditation. This is, of course, against both copyright and good taste. If it yours, please let me know and thanks for reading the blog. Please don't sue me.]

Now, I don’t eat calamari (see above for declaration of love for squids, octopi, and cuttlefish), but apparently they’re going to use a huge microwave to defrost it. Insane. I feel like there’s a short story to be had in here somewhere… but that could just be the Cuban coffee talking.

By the way, the title originally read “Also - Giant Squid,” when I was informed by myself later (thanks self) that the squid caught was actually a colossal squid, not a giant squid. The colossal is fatter, but not as long. Pictures of a giant squid here.

Vaguely Related

• Squid and Polar Bears
• Giant Squid Dissected at Melbourne Museum