Completely Unnecessary

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!

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
• Obama Election Night Rally in Chicago

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