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Natural History and Borscht!
Jun. 9th, 2006 10:02 pmFirst week of work: Completed! With a fair degree of success! Things seem to be going well and I'm feeling optimistic about the rest of the summer.
But best of all, friend and former roommate Corey (aka Borscht) came to NYC this week!! SO AWESOME! It was totally a surprise because she, ah, forgot to tell me she was coming. So, yesterday morning Katie and I are sitting in the lunch room before work. (we get to work at around 8:10 and start working at 8:30, so we normally chill in Dad's office but he came in late yesterday, so we were in the lunch room) And I get a call on my cell phone, so I thought it was dad. But no! It was Borscht! She was at the airport in Buffalo, heading to New York! And she wanted to meet for lunch!
So I planned to take an extra half hour lunch, but then Dad said why didn't I just take the whole afternoon off? So that is what I did! First I met Corey at the New York Public Library, which was very pretty but a lot of stuff was closed so it was sort of a bust.
Then somehow I brouht up the Natural History Museum and the giant blue whale model, and Corey said she'd never been! So we expertly navigated the subway system, and soon we were at the museum! Which was totally awesome! It was pretty much like I remembered--I hadn't been there in a long time so I was worried they might have changed things. But there were still all the great dioramas. We made a beeline for the Marine Life hall to see the whale.
The marine life was both awesome and horrifying. Much of it was creepy and disturbing but in a kind of good, fun way. I'm too much of a wimp to see horror movies, so looking at Giant Japanese Spider Crab models is about as far as I can go.
More on that later.
Then we wandered around the museum and tried to find mammals and totally ignored birds. But, you know, the Hall of Birds is the greatest thing in the world! Of course.
We had to cut our visit short because Corey was supposed to meet her mom on the other side of Central Park at 4:30. So we didn't get to see the gems, the meteorites, the reptiles or the dinosaurs. But that's ok. We'll go back some other time, perhaps ;) We ended up just walking from the museum (at 81st street) down through central park to 59th street (and from the west to the east side of the park). It turned out her mom didn't show up until 5:15, but that's ok. It was a really lovely walk. The day turned very nice and we enjoyed the park a great deal--the sun even came out! I'm starting to get good at navigating Manhattan, but Central Park is still quite the mystery to me. It's a goal of mine to get to know the park better.
Anyway, I caught the 5:47 train home, and it was a lovely day.
Today, Corey and I just met for lunch. First I went to meet her and then went to J&R to pick up an order of jewel cases (for CDs, not jewels) that my unit ordered--Dad helped. They were very heavy. Then we went back to the office and I dropped off the cases, and then it was time for lunch! There was a little street fair on Murray Street! Awesome! So I got, like last year, a crepe with chocolate and strawberries. So tasty! Then I got an Arepa, which is a sweet fried corn bread thing with mozarella cheese (they might be "mozarepas"). It was very good, but by that point I was only able to eat half. I also got a dozen fried oreos!! SOOO good! And. . . I got a sundress!! It's very pretty. It's a nice light blue fabric with a pretty pattern of darker blue flowers. And it's a halter top--slightly racy! It's a little too big for me in the bust, but I'm really flat chested and it fits better than a lot of other dresses I've tried on that have that sort of gathering at the breasts. Anyway, it looks good, even if it isn't a perfect fit, and I'm not going to fool anyone into thinking I have decolletage. I'm very pleased with it--I've been looking for a pretty sundress. I don't really buy pretty or very feminine clothes that often, but I wanted a nice sundress since I saw a beautiful $70 one in northampton that looked really nice on me. This one was $26!
And now it's the weekend and I'm going to a party with family in the Bronx. I'm looking forward to it.
Back to the marine life. Corey and I were most horrified by the diorama of a giant squid and a whale locked in combat. Completely horrifying!! Oh dear god. It was under the stairs, and it wasn't really lit, so it was only lit by the lights from the room as a whole and the surrounding dioramas. It was hard to notice, cos it was underneath the stairs, and there was no glass. Like, Corey and I were soooo afraid of it. We noticed it, and then shrank back and had to stand, like, 15 feet away from it for about 10 minutes, screwing up our courage enough to go near it. But we were totally fascinated by it.
Which is my general position on Cephalopods as a whole. They're horrifying, but fascinating. I mean, they're so awful that they're fascinating. I mean, if i was making a monster movie or an alien movie, I wouldn't have to create a creepy look for the monsters. I'd just look in the oceans. There's a starfish that's covered in spikes, and it grabs things and surrounds them and then digests them externally. And, like all starfish, it creates two separate starfish when torn in two. There's also some type of marine creature, I forget which, that is sequentially hermaphroditic. That's right, sequentially. There are others that are simultaneously hermaphroditic (simultaneous might not be the right word there. . .), they have both sets of sex organs. The sequential ones, there's one male and a group of females. And when the male dies, the largest female turns into a male. She just. . . her organs. . . she changes! It's insanity. (Speaking of one male and a group of females, a male sea lion will have a harem of about 30 females) (or maybe that's elephant seals? cos the weird noses help to make their cries louder, which is to warn off other males).
Anyway. My point is that Cephalopods are awful. I was already afraid of Cephalopods, due to my long-standing hatred of the nautilus, and also dinosaur comics. They have extremely complex nervous system--the most complex of any invertebrates, and highly developed eyes that can see the polarization of light. And they're cannibals!! Also, their physical appearance is just deeply disturbing. it's sort of like Cthulhu--we know we're supposed to be scared of those tentacles. Not that people don't keep cuttlefish and octopi as pets. But you have to keep them alone, cuttlefish, because they will eat anything smaller (including other cuttlefish) that shares a tank with them.
But among these watery horror stories, the kings of my nightmares is the Giant Squid. Never seen alive in its natural habitat, the squid was thought to be a mythical creature for many years. In fact, the first sign that we had that giant squid actually existed where large sucker-scars on the skin of sperm whales. Because they fight sperm whales. Actually, there is one type of shark that eats giant squid but they may just scavange, rather than actually being predators. In which case, the sperm whale is the giant squid's only predator. Can you imagine, these two giants? The sperm whale, the only threat the the giant squid; the squid, waiting in the deep, plotting to destroy its life's nemesis? Then, they meet. Battle rages! The sperm whale is determined to make a meal of the squid, the squid just as determined to defeat the whale. The whale goes for the squid with its huge mouth--the sperm whale is the largest toothed animal ever to inhabit the earth! But the squid refuses to go down without a fight. It wraps its 25 foot long tentacles around the whale's head, desperately trying to prevent itself from being sucked into the sperm whale's gaping maw. These tentacles are not only covered in suckers, but also lined with teeth! They dig into the whale, tearing its skin! Using this grip, the squid levers its way out of its predators mouth, clinging to the head of the 60 foot beast! It wraps its arms around the whale's neck, slowly squeezing off its air!
Anyway. Giant squid. Possibly up to 60 feet long. 8 arms, two tentacles (I referred to the arms as tentacles before for effect ;) Much of what we know about them now is based on squid bits found in whale stomachs--including their indigestible beaks! That's right, they have beaks. And the largest eyes of any living thing, about a foot in diameter!
Here's a little story I thought I was pretty awesome, found here:
How big can a squid get? Estimates based on peices of carcasses found in the belly's of sperm whales range up to one hundred feet. One unconfirmed story, though, suggests they might get even larger. One night during World War II a British Admiralty trawler was lying off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. One of the crew, A. G. Starkey, was up on deck, alone, fishing, when he saw something in the water:
"As I gazed, fascinated, a circle of green light glowed in my area of illumination. This green unwinking orb I suddenly realized was an eye. The surface of the water undulated with some strange disturbance. Gradually I realized that I was gazing at almost point-black range at a huge squid." Starkey walked the length the of the ship finding the tail at one end and the tentacles at the other. The ship was over one hundred and seventy five feet long.
Geezus. FREAKSOME!
I can't remember any more disturbing facts. Oh, except this, from wikipedia:
"The reproductive cycle of the giant squid is still a great mystery, but what has been learned so far is both bizarre and fascinating; male giant squid are equipped with a prehensile spermatophore-depositing tube, or penis, of over 3 feet (90 cm) in length, which extends from inside the animal's mantle and apparently is used to inject sperm-containing packets into the female squid's arms."
prehensile spermatophore-depositing tube. dude. that's up there with techno-phallus!
But to really sort of grasp the horror of the giant squid, you need to look at pictures. And imagine being in the deep, just one small source of light illuminating the unending blackness around you! You spot movement! Is it a tentacle? You twist around, trying to light the area around you, but whatever it was has disappeared into the darkness. Then, all of a sudden! A mass of huge tentacles explode toward you! They're as thick around as your leg and several times longer than you! You're surrounded! Engulfed! They dig into your flesh, and pull you closer and closer to something huge. A long tube, as big as your body comes into sight. The tentacles bring you towards it. Towards its beak! It rips into you! Actually, most squid specimens have been found with empty stomachs so we don't know much about their eating habits.
Haha. ::coughs:: This is sort of what goes through my head. I come up with very dramatic sort of horror movie encounters. It's fun to scare myself--but just a little. I guess there's just so many layers of horror. The tentacles are freaky, and the general shape, and the large eyes, and then also, we're sort of used to squid being a certain size. The giant squid--whales are big, but we're used to them being big. It seems like giant squid are regular squid that have mutated to some monstrous being. Cephalopods really do appear so alien, so unlike mammals or fish or birds. There's a lot of crazy stuff out there.
Also! Cannibalistic creatures? ALWAYS creepy!
All right. That's all I've got for the moment on marine life that scares the pee outta me. I love the giant squid cos they're just so legendary. I guess I find the unexplored frontiers so interesting and exciting. it's nice to think that there's still significant amounts of things that we don't know, not only about the universe, as I learned in physics this year, but also about the biological world.
But best of all, friend and former roommate Corey (aka Borscht) came to NYC this week!! SO AWESOME! It was totally a surprise because she, ah, forgot to tell me she was coming. So, yesterday morning Katie and I are sitting in the lunch room before work. (we get to work at around 8:10 and start working at 8:30, so we normally chill in Dad's office but he came in late yesterday, so we were in the lunch room) And I get a call on my cell phone, so I thought it was dad. But no! It was Borscht! She was at the airport in Buffalo, heading to New York! And she wanted to meet for lunch!
So I planned to take an extra half hour lunch, but then Dad said why didn't I just take the whole afternoon off? So that is what I did! First I met Corey at the New York Public Library, which was very pretty but a lot of stuff was closed so it was sort of a bust.
Then somehow I brouht up the Natural History Museum and the giant blue whale model, and Corey said she'd never been! So we expertly navigated the subway system, and soon we were at the museum! Which was totally awesome! It was pretty much like I remembered--I hadn't been there in a long time so I was worried they might have changed things. But there were still all the great dioramas. We made a beeline for the Marine Life hall to see the whale.
The marine life was both awesome and horrifying. Much of it was creepy and disturbing but in a kind of good, fun way. I'm too much of a wimp to see horror movies, so looking at Giant Japanese Spider Crab models is about as far as I can go.
More on that later.
Then we wandered around the museum and tried to find mammals and totally ignored birds. But, you know, the Hall of Birds is the greatest thing in the world! Of course.
We had to cut our visit short because Corey was supposed to meet her mom on the other side of Central Park at 4:30. So we didn't get to see the gems, the meteorites, the reptiles or the dinosaurs. But that's ok. We'll go back some other time, perhaps ;) We ended up just walking from the museum (at 81st street) down through central park to 59th street (and from the west to the east side of the park). It turned out her mom didn't show up until 5:15, but that's ok. It was a really lovely walk. The day turned very nice and we enjoyed the park a great deal--the sun even came out! I'm starting to get good at navigating Manhattan, but Central Park is still quite the mystery to me. It's a goal of mine to get to know the park better.
Anyway, I caught the 5:47 train home, and it was a lovely day.
Today, Corey and I just met for lunch. First I went to meet her and then went to J&R to pick up an order of jewel cases (for CDs, not jewels) that my unit ordered--Dad helped. They were very heavy. Then we went back to the office and I dropped off the cases, and then it was time for lunch! There was a little street fair on Murray Street! Awesome! So I got, like last year, a crepe with chocolate and strawberries. So tasty! Then I got an Arepa, which is a sweet fried corn bread thing with mozarella cheese (they might be "mozarepas"). It was very good, but by that point I was only able to eat half. I also got a dozen fried oreos!! SOOO good! And. . . I got a sundress!! It's very pretty. It's a nice light blue fabric with a pretty pattern of darker blue flowers. And it's a halter top--slightly racy! It's a little too big for me in the bust, but I'm really flat chested and it fits better than a lot of other dresses I've tried on that have that sort of gathering at the breasts. Anyway, it looks good, even if it isn't a perfect fit, and I'm not going to fool anyone into thinking I have decolletage. I'm very pleased with it--I've been looking for a pretty sundress. I don't really buy pretty or very feminine clothes that often, but I wanted a nice sundress since I saw a beautiful $70 one in northampton that looked really nice on me. This one was $26!
And now it's the weekend and I'm going to a party with family in the Bronx. I'm looking forward to it.
Back to the marine life. Corey and I were most horrified by the diorama of a giant squid and a whale locked in combat. Completely horrifying!! Oh dear god. It was under the stairs, and it wasn't really lit, so it was only lit by the lights from the room as a whole and the surrounding dioramas. It was hard to notice, cos it was underneath the stairs, and there was no glass. Like, Corey and I were soooo afraid of it. We noticed it, and then shrank back and had to stand, like, 15 feet away from it for about 10 minutes, screwing up our courage enough to go near it. But we were totally fascinated by it.
Which is my general position on Cephalopods as a whole. They're horrifying, but fascinating. I mean, they're so awful that they're fascinating. I mean, if i was making a monster movie or an alien movie, I wouldn't have to create a creepy look for the monsters. I'd just look in the oceans. There's a starfish that's covered in spikes, and it grabs things and surrounds them and then digests them externally. And, like all starfish, it creates two separate starfish when torn in two. There's also some type of marine creature, I forget which, that is sequentially hermaphroditic. That's right, sequentially. There are others that are simultaneously hermaphroditic (simultaneous might not be the right word there. . .), they have both sets of sex organs. The sequential ones, there's one male and a group of females. And when the male dies, the largest female turns into a male. She just. . . her organs. . . she changes! It's insanity. (Speaking of one male and a group of females, a male sea lion will have a harem of about 30 females) (or maybe that's elephant seals? cos the weird noses help to make their cries louder, which is to warn off other males).
Anyway. My point is that Cephalopods are awful. I was already afraid of Cephalopods, due to my long-standing hatred of the nautilus, and also dinosaur comics. They have extremely complex nervous system--the most complex of any invertebrates, and highly developed eyes that can see the polarization of light. And they're cannibals!! Also, their physical appearance is just deeply disturbing. it's sort of like Cthulhu--we know we're supposed to be scared of those tentacles. Not that people don't keep cuttlefish and octopi as pets. But you have to keep them alone, cuttlefish, because they will eat anything smaller (including other cuttlefish) that shares a tank with them.
But among these watery horror stories, the kings of my nightmares is the Giant Squid. Never seen alive in its natural habitat, the squid was thought to be a mythical creature for many years. In fact, the first sign that we had that giant squid actually existed where large sucker-scars on the skin of sperm whales. Because they fight sperm whales. Actually, there is one type of shark that eats giant squid but they may just scavange, rather than actually being predators. In which case, the sperm whale is the giant squid's only predator. Can you imagine, these two giants? The sperm whale, the only threat the the giant squid; the squid, waiting in the deep, plotting to destroy its life's nemesis? Then, they meet. Battle rages! The sperm whale is determined to make a meal of the squid, the squid just as determined to defeat the whale. The whale goes for the squid with its huge mouth--the sperm whale is the largest toothed animal ever to inhabit the earth! But the squid refuses to go down without a fight. It wraps its 25 foot long tentacles around the whale's head, desperately trying to prevent itself from being sucked into the sperm whale's gaping maw. These tentacles are not only covered in suckers, but also lined with teeth! They dig into the whale, tearing its skin! Using this grip, the squid levers its way out of its predators mouth, clinging to the head of the 60 foot beast! It wraps its arms around the whale's neck, slowly squeezing off its air!
Anyway. Giant squid. Possibly up to 60 feet long. 8 arms, two tentacles (I referred to the arms as tentacles before for effect ;) Much of what we know about them now is based on squid bits found in whale stomachs--including their indigestible beaks! That's right, they have beaks. And the largest eyes of any living thing, about a foot in diameter!
Here's a little story I thought I was pretty awesome, found here:
How big can a squid get? Estimates based on peices of carcasses found in the belly's of sperm whales range up to one hundred feet. One unconfirmed story, though, suggests they might get even larger. One night during World War II a British Admiralty trawler was lying off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. One of the crew, A. G. Starkey, was up on deck, alone, fishing, when he saw something in the water:
"As I gazed, fascinated, a circle of green light glowed in my area of illumination. This green unwinking orb I suddenly realized was an eye. The surface of the water undulated with some strange disturbance. Gradually I realized that I was gazing at almost point-black range at a huge squid." Starkey walked the length the of the ship finding the tail at one end and the tentacles at the other. The ship was over one hundred and seventy five feet long.
Geezus. FREAKSOME!
I can't remember any more disturbing facts. Oh, except this, from wikipedia:
"The reproductive cycle of the giant squid is still a great mystery, but what has been learned so far is both bizarre and fascinating; male giant squid are equipped with a prehensile spermatophore-depositing tube, or penis, of over 3 feet (90 cm) in length, which extends from inside the animal's mantle and apparently is used to inject sperm-containing packets into the female squid's arms."
prehensile spermatophore-depositing tube. dude. that's up there with techno-phallus!
But to really sort of grasp the horror of the giant squid, you need to look at pictures. And imagine being in the deep, just one small source of light illuminating the unending blackness around you! You spot movement! Is it a tentacle? You twist around, trying to light the area around you, but whatever it was has disappeared into the darkness. Then, all of a sudden! A mass of huge tentacles explode toward you! They're as thick around as your leg and several times longer than you! You're surrounded! Engulfed! They dig into your flesh, and pull you closer and closer to something huge. A long tube, as big as your body comes into sight. The tentacles bring you towards it. Towards its beak! It rips into you! Actually, most squid specimens have been found with empty stomachs so we don't know much about their eating habits.
Haha. ::coughs:: This is sort of what goes through my head. I come up with very dramatic sort of horror movie encounters. It's fun to scare myself--but just a little. I guess there's just so many layers of horror. The tentacles are freaky, and the general shape, and the large eyes, and then also, we're sort of used to squid being a certain size. The giant squid--whales are big, but we're used to them being big. It seems like giant squid are regular squid that have mutated to some monstrous being. Cephalopods really do appear so alien, so unlike mammals or fish or birds. There's a lot of crazy stuff out there.
Also! Cannibalistic creatures? ALWAYS creepy!
All right. That's all I've got for the moment on marine life that scares the pee outta me. I love the giant squid cos they're just so legendary. I guess I find the unexplored frontiers so interesting and exciting. it's nice to think that there's still significant amounts of things that we don't know, not only about the universe, as I learned in physics this year, but also about the biological world.
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Date: 2006-06-10 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-10 03:36 pm (UTC)Oh man, though--I love when you remember stuff you did a report on. I did a report on Angola in sixth grade. And I did a report on. . I think the Iroquois in seventh grade that involved me recreating this (http://tuscaroras.com/jtlc/Wampum/five_nations_territorial_belt.html) wampum belt. With great success, I might add! Except I was using plastic beads! XD But my teacher was very impressed.