Noted Without Comment: Scooby Doo
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Tag Archives: pictures
Noted without comment: Alice
False Advertising
So a few weeks back, zaiah and I went shopping, and found a bargain basement bin of B-movies (say that ten times fast!) for about five bucks each.
Some of the movies were cheesy old low-budget horror flicks that have been re-released on DVD by a company which uses a woman being ravished by a tentacle monster as their logo:
Now, I may be a purist, but I don’t think that anyone should be allowed to put a picture of a woman being ravished by a tentacle monster on the front cover of any DVD that does not actually contain scenes of a woman being ravished by a tentacle monster. That is DEFINITELY false advertising, it is.
I also think it’s kind of interesting that “woman being ravished by a tentacle monster” has apparently become kind of synonymous with “horror movie.” I <3 living in this society...
Kittens!
We have, through no fault of our own, kittens.
Six of them. All black. Five boys and one girl. One of the cats at zaiah‘s farm house got loose when she was in heat, and got knocked up almost instantly, so kittens! Six tiny fuzzy cute little tiny cute fuzzy little kittens!
They need homes. If you want one of these kittens, and you’re in or near Portland, let me know! My cat Liam, who is not included in this offer, loves them to death.
The many Faces of Liam
Since zaiah and I have moved into our house here in Portland, I’ve set up my office in the basement. One of the things I’ve done since moving in is put a set of shelves on top of my computer desk, the very same desk where I spend a great deal of my time working for clients who tend to pay me late.
But I digress.
Anyway, the cat Liam has taken over the bottom shelf on top of the desk, and likes to sit there while I work. In fact, he likes it so much that zaiah put a small blanket on the shelf just for him.
I spend my afternoons working at the computer desk, and Liam spends his afternoons on the shelf watching me. These pictures were taken over a span of about a week and a half or so.
Yes, I know my desk is a mess. Hush.
Noted without comment: kittens
More back art!
I’ve written a couple of times before about zaiah‘s habit of drawing on me with Magic Markers. Last night she did an especially interesting bit of art that I have an especially bad photograph of; the one thing I don’t like about my iPhone, which is in all other respects a life-changing piece of technology for me, is the crappy camera in it. C’mon, Steve, you can do better than this.
But I digress.
Anyway, clicky here for octopus!
Noted without comment: Biblical marriage
Marketing Claims FTW
Last night, zaiah and I went shopping at Target for curtains for our new house.
There are, as it turns out, a bewildering array of different kinds of curtains, in different patterns and textures, almost all of which are stunningly ugly.
One brand of curtain carried by Target is Eclipse brand curtains, which are entirely opaque and block out…well, let me show you. Apologies for the poor quality of the image; it came from my iPhone. The bit I’ve circled in red is the interesting bit.
The wonder of the physical universe: Naica, Mexico
Naica, Mexico is home to a number of lead and silver mines. It is also home to a geological formation that appears to be unique in all the world: the Crystal Cave of Giants, discovered accidentally by mine workers in 2000.
The Crystal Cave is a gigantic underground formation containing the largest natural crystal formations ever recorded. The cave is superheated by a pocket of subsurface magma, and until recently was entirely flooded with water that was supersaturated with gypsum and other minerals. The combination of high temperature, superheated and supersaturated water, and time (lots of it–about 500,000 years, to be exact) produced one of the most mind-bogglingly beautiful things on earth:
The cave has been pumped dry by mine workers, who accidentally broke into it while mining for lead. It’s still superheated by magma; the temperature within the cave is a steady 122 degrees F with a humidity of over 90%. Explorers in the cave use special chilled suits and breathing masks, and even with this equipment can only remain within it for 15-45 minutes at a time.
The cave is doomed; when the mines are played out over the next few years, the mining companies will stop pumping the water out, and the influx of new, non-supersaturated water will destroy the crystal formations. There’s more about the cave, and more pictures, here.
I love the physical world. There is not a single day of my life that goes by when I am not boggled and awestruck by how magnificent this universe is. Should I live to be ten thousand years old, I will never, ever stop being awestruck by how awesome all of this is. Take a handful of basic particles, make them obey certain fairly simple rules, and the things you end up with are beautiful and magnificent beyond comprehension.
We, as self-aware entities, are the part of the universe that understands itself, and that one simple fact gives us incalculable value. I will never understand the tendency of some people to turn away from the wonders of the physical world into a tiny, feeble make-believe universe that’s a paltry six thousand years old and soon to be rendered obsolete by some invisible man with magic powers who lives up in the sky and spends a great deal of time worrying about what kind of clothes we wear and how we have sex.
The universe is incomprehensibly large and incomprehensibly fine-grained, ancient and mysterious and filled with so much beauty that it’s hard to imagine any person seeing it without being filled with reverence and awe. The more we learn about the physical universe, the more beautiful and magnificent it is. The desire to turn away from understanding the world around us and retreat into an imaginary bestiary of little gods and demons is the desire to turn away from the greatest beauty we can ever hope to bear witness to.