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Costa Rica 2013, Part 6.

Sunday, April 21st, 2013

Guess what? I went to another rainforest! I know, I haven’t mentioned a rainforest in the last five minutes. But hey, I went to Costa Rica to hang out with plants and animals, and that’s what I did all day every day. This particular rainforest had a research center in it and it was on the side of a mountain, so I got to go to the research center and take an open-air aerial tram through the canopy. The research center was impressive. There were shadow boxes on the wall of, and I am not making this number up, the 1,000 different species of butterfly the scientists had discovered in that particular rainforest so far. That’s a lot of butterflies. I took pictures of some of them.

And here are some giant furry moths pretending to be snakes or owls so predators won’t want to eat them.

They also had what I assume is an Orchid Bee. I’ve always wanted to see an Orchid Bee because I believe (bee-lieve! Ha ha ha!) they’re the only bees that are metallic green. On Wikipedia it says there’s another reason that the Orchid Bee is special, but I cannot figure out what it says because I do not speak science.

Euglossine bees, also called orchid bees, are the only group of corbiculate bees whose non-parasitic members do not all possess eusocial behavior.

Speaking of bugs, I saw the biggest grasshopper ever. He was like an antagonist from a 1950s drive-in movie come to life. Humongous. That’s a banana leaf it’s sitting on if you’re looking for scale.

And I saw a millipede! Well, the back third of a millipede. The rest of him was under a log. He must have been over six inches long. I am very familiar with the African Millipede who is a shiny black tube-shaped fella with evenly distributed legs. This millipede was totally different. First of all, he was brown and matte. He looked like he was made out of one of those toys little kids play with where you can make objects longer by snapping more plastic segments onto it. But the thing he has in common with the African Millipede is that when he’s scared he can shoot burny chemicals out of his butt that taste atrocious (so I’m told, I didn’t test this out myself).

We saw a plant that supposed to be unchanged since prehistoric times. It looked so fake. It felt fake too, like vinyl. I thought it was plastic until the park ranger broke off a small corner of one leaf and I could see and smell its life-fluids.

This is a Walking Tree. It’s called that because if it decides there’s more water and nutrition on the left it will kill off its roots on the right and grow new roots on the left, shifting itself about a meter. It takes about a year to do that, but considering that most trees move nowhere in a year, that’s really impressive.

• | • | • INTERMISSION • | • | •

Since they use a lot of well-water in Costa Rica which has not been filtered in any way, it is unwise to drink from the tap. Therefore, I purchased a big bottle of local spring water every day. I took the time to read the label on this one. I really, really hope “S.T.D.” means something different in Spanish.

• | • | • INTERMISSION OVER • | • | •

Oh, I almost forgot to include the snakes. At the research center there were some snakes in captivity and I fell in love and ached to reach through the glass for snuggle-time. My two favorites were the green vine snake:

And a brown vine snake.

Then, to get to the other research station at the bottom of the mountain we took this open-air aerial tram. It was cool. I looked straight down at one point and was astonished by the variety of shapes in the foliage.

And we went past several towering trees that are believed to be 300 years old. It’s really hard to date them because, and I found this really interesting, since there are no seasons in the rainforest the trees don’t have rings. I never realized the rings are caused by seasonal change.

Finally, here’s a tree with roots that look like walls:

And a waterfall.

Brace yourself because tomorrow… SLOTHS!

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Costa Rica 2013, Part 5.

Saturday, April 20th, 2013

Before trail story-time, let’s look at some carts! The oxcarts in Costa Rica are hand-painted and it is a wonderful art form. I took pictures of a two carts and one yoke. So pretty.

Rainforest Walk! The Moomins and I were told that we were going on a “nature hike”. For three hours. I was petrified. I am not athletic, and what if I go on this hike with other people and we climb a mountain for three hours and they’re good hikers and I slow them down and they all hate me and then I throw up and pass out? I was skerred. However, I knew once I saw our guide we were a-okay for two reasons. One, he was morbidly obese, and two, he was wearing flip-flops. I immediately was like, yeah, I’m going to be fine.

It was fantastic. The Cahuita National Park goes right up to the beach.

The trail was about twenty feet inside the rainforest, so as you were walking through this crazy lush foliage you could hear the waves crashing on your left. It was paradise. Speaking of the beach, this type of ocean was something I had never experienced before. I’ve been in oceans many times before but they always had some way to slow down the current, whether man-made or natural. This chunk of Caribbean had nothing. There were signs everywhere that you go swimming at your own risk and that there was a rip current. The Moomins decided that we would forgo any warnings and live dangerously. Here’s some video I took before I even got into the water. I’m standing right at the edge. Notice how it’s all grabby and yanky. Very aggressive water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cBwgXMTJSc

So The Moomins and I went in up to our mid-thigh and it was intense. This actually happened, I have a witness: I was standing there when a wave crashed into me so hard that it made a “crack” noise against my abdomen. I belly-flopped standing perfectly still and upright. But the water was warm and clear, so we spend about forty-five minutes getting crotch-punched by Neptune. It was enjoyable in a weird way – you just had to be super-aware because the sand kept getting pulled out from under your feet and you would lose your footing if you didn’t stay on your game. I did discover something unfortunate when I got back to the bungalow. When I showered, the amount of sand that had been violently thrust into my crevices was astonishing. I felt like when a magician pulls that colored roll of tissue paper out of your mouth. You know Montezuma’s Revenge? I decided this should be called Poseidon’s Dilemma: the discovery of even more sand every time you shower for a week afterwards. “I thought I got it all” is the catchphrase.

I digress. Back to the nature walk. First, I thought I was seeing things because it looked like the ground was moving. It turns out it was covered with little holes that were inhabited by little crabs. When we would walk by, the wee crabbits would scuttle sideways into their holes to hide. I loved them.

There were also small lizards that were shiny and bright.

We walked past an iguana sunning himself.

And a basilisk lizard, also know as the Jesus Lizard for his ability to run on the surface of the water.

On the left we saw a little something move in a tree. A troupe of Capuchin Monkeys were all around in the bank of trees between us and the ocean.

We passed a male and female trogon. Trogons are birds that, in my opinion, look like they got knocked out in a bar fight and they’re trying to get their bearings. I’ve talked about them before. I always want to walk up to them and say, “How many fingers am I holding up? What day is it? Who’s the president?” Mr. Trogon is the teal-colored one, Mrs. Trogon is dark gray.

It was getting close to midday which is when animals tend to take a siesta. We walked right through a troupe of Howler Monkeys resting. We made some noise as we passed through and the leader opened his eyes a bit, decided we weren’t any kind of threat, and went right back to sleep. I like how the guy in the second picture is holding onto the branch so he doesn’t fall out the tree while napping.

And then! OMG! We came across a teeny-tiny eyelash pit viper. Even if you don’t like snakes, this one was cute. He was sitting on a leaf and he had his tail wrapped around the stem. I tried desperately to get a good picture, but my camera got uppity and decided to focus on things in the background. “Never mind this awesome snake right in front of us, let’s really draw attention to that rotting tree stump way the hell over there, that’s where the real action is!”

Every fiber of me was like I WANT TO PET IT but my brain wisely was like LET’S NOT LOSE OUR HAND TO NECROSIS TODAY so I didn’t pet the snake. There was a creek we had to cross at one point. We had to take off our shoes and walk along the beach to get through it. The creek-water was brown because there was a mangrove cluster along the route the creek takes, and mangroves apparently give off a lot of tannin so it had stained the water. I liked how it looked as it flowed into the ocean.

We finally reached the end where the coral reef began, ate some fruit (so delicious) and I watched the hermit crabs scamper around.

And then, drawn by the siren song of pineapple, the Capuchins showed up and concocted elaborate plans on how to distract us and steal our fruity treats. You know, how they do.

Next, the Veragua Rainforest Park and the wonders therein. And then… SLOTHS!

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Costa Rica 2013, Part 4.

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Before we get to frogs and others, I want to talk about a couple other things.

One, our hotel in San Jose didn’t have a door. No door. As a New Yorker I can’t wrap my mind around that because we don’t have seasons, we have SEASONS!!!! With the cold and the hot and the rain and the sun and the hail and the sleet, etc. San Jose just has hot, not quite as hot and some rain. It was still dumbfounding for me. “But… how do they… close the door if they don’t have… I… my head hurts.”

Two, a comment about trees and language barriers. Our daily tour-guides spoke a great English, but often it was covered in a thick paste of local accent. There was only one time I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what our guide was saying. We went by a wooded park in San Jose that was filled with rainbow eucalyptus. They are very beautiful. The trunks look like watercolor paintings.

Our guide said, “This park has rainbow eucalyptus but the city plans to cut them down because they are an introduced species. The city plans to replace them with a species native to Costa Rica. Also, they are very tall and dangerous because of the LYYYYYYYYYNE.” I swear to God, that’s what she said. I said, “Ummm, what now?” and the guide responded with, “The LYYYYYYYYYNE, from the sky.” Finally she said the combination of “Thunder and LYYYYYYYYYNE,” and I was like, “Oh, lightning. Okay.” But it took a while. If you see me, ask me to do an imitation of how she said it and you tell me if you have any clue what I’m saying. I bet you’ll say no.

Frogs! Costa Rica has 138 types of frogs and toads. I went to a protected rainforest that had a chart of the difference between frogs and toads, which I found very helpful. I wrote down what it said:

Toads tend to lay their eggs in long chains. Frogs tend to lay their mass of eggs in clusters.
Toads tend to have skin that is dry, rough and full of wrinkles. Frogs tend to have moist skin that is soft to the touch.
Toads use short hops to get around. Frogs tend to move about with giant leaps.

I saw what was some kind of tree frog, but the camouflage was amazing. It was right in front of me, like in front of my face, and I still had trouble seeing it. It looks like a wet blob of leaf. Amazing.

Similar-but-different frog.

The frogs I saw the most were the poison dart frogs. As it says in my The Wildlife of Costa Rica book:

Small, diurnal frogs that inhabit leaf litter. Noted for spectacular coloration and elaborate forms of parental care. The brightly colored species generally advertise powerful skin toxins derived from a diet of alkaloid-rich invertebrates. None of the eight Costa Rican poison dart frogs pose a threat to humans.

The poison dart frog that’s actually used for poison darts is the Golden Poison Dart Frog from Colombia. One frog can kill you and nine of your closest friends. Scientists don’t know how they get so venomous but they assume it’s from what they eat, same as the Costa Rican ones, because Golden Poison Dart Frogs raised in captivity and fed non-native bugs aren’t toxic.

I saw a ton of the strawberry kind. They’re neat because sometimes they’re tomato-colored, sometimes cherry-colored. Sometimes they’re just red, sometimes they have little black freckles, sometimes their legs are blue. I liked all the varieties.

And I saw a ton of the green and black striped kind. They’re a little bit bigger. They are the only frog with carnivorous tadpoles. They hatch in the leaf litter, and then the daddy carries them up into little pools of water in the trees, water trapped in the hearts of bromeliads. This part is cool. In order to keep them from eating each other (carnivorous), he calls out and lady-frogs come from neighboring villages, climb the trees and lay unfertilized eggs in the water. That way, the wee tadpoles have something to eat without committing fratricide. Nature – it’s fantastic.

Cows! I love hot-weather cows, the kind from India. In Costa Rica they are called Zebu and I think they are so pretty. We were driving past a hillside and I insisted we stop because there was a calf there with lop-ears like a bunny. I was smitten. As you will see from its expression, it was not nearly as infatuated with me.

Toucans! I forgot to bring them up yesterday. At the refuge there was another giant atrium that had rescued toucans. They were accostumed to humans so if you held a little birdseed, they would come down and perch on you for a bit. The ones that came and perched were Keel-Billed Toucans. This was a woman who was with us on our tour.

And then there’s me! I really liked the toucans. They are sweet and gentle and not rowdy at all.

There was a Chestnut-Mandibled Toucan:

And at one point this little guy hopped over and stared right at me for a while. He’s a Emerald Toucanet.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about my nature walk. Yes, yours truly walked on a trail for two miles through a rainforest. The things I do for cool animals.

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Costa Rica 2013, Part 3.

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

Before we get to the anymules, I want to talk about orchids. I love orchids, I really do. There are so many different kinds. Every year there’s an orchid show at the Botanical Gardens here in NYC and it is mind-blowing. Here’s my post on it from about a year ago. And in Costa Rica they just grow wild! No cultivation required! So envious. They’re similar to bromeliads, which are plants that don’t need dirt to flourish. The orchids just wrap their root-tentacles around whatever’s nearby. I took pictures of several I came across.

Now before I left, I took my The Wildlife of Costa Rica: A Field Guide and I ended up reading it from cover to cover. I’m glad I did because I now know many things, things like the Mexican Burrowing Toad’s advertisement call is a bellowing uuwwaaaa, likened to the sound of a person vomiting, which is how they earned their common name “sapo borracho” (drunken toad”), or the Oilbird is the world’s only nocturnal avian frugivore (congratulations to you, Oilbird!).

So, on one of my first days there, The Moomins and I went to a refuge where indigenous animals that had been recovered from smuggling operations and were deemed unreleasable were kept. Our guide took tours through this refuge fairly frequently, so the animals were familiar with him. For example, he walked past an enormous avian cage and a Caracaca, which is a scary carrion-eating bird, flew down immediately and waited for head-skritchins. It was adorable.

We saw Scarlet Macaws being all parrot-y, squawkin’ and squabblin’ and flappin’ around.

And there were two Two-Fingered Sloths. They were sleeping. Because sloths.

But those weren’t the most amazing things there. The two things that were magical for me was the butterfly atrium and the hummingbird garden. Holy pumpkin-seeds, people. First, the butterfly atrium. Big, airy building filled with plants the butterflies enjoy.

There were two types of butterflies that were especially prevalent, the Blue Morpho and the Banded Owl Butterfly. However, there were other ones flittering around as well.

There were SO MANY. Here’s one of the fruit stations.

Seriously. Butterflies on all the surfaces.

One even landed on The Moomins and kept her company for the entire time.

They had plants that had butterfly eggs and caterpillars all over them. The eggs were beautiful, the caterpillars were beautiful – every aspect of the life-cycle of the butterfly is visually appealing in some way, it seems.

In the corner, staff had hung up all the chrysalises and there was a newly emerged guy with curled-up wings.

The only thing in the butterfly atrium that bugged me a little was this freaky plant that looked like a portal to an abyss. It was huge and veined and it had a dark pit in the center. It looked… menacing.

The other life-altering thing was the hummingbird garden. A little way outside was a small garden with five or six hummingbird feeders in them and a few small trees. Those trees were PACKED with hummingbirds.

It was pouring down rain and I could not have cared less. I stood there in the rain, water dripping off my nose, staring at all these teeny birds whizzing past my head. They make a cool noise when they go by, like a frrrrrrrmmm sound. It’s absolutely delightful. Here’s some video that I took.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER8JOUdfrxg

They were mostly green hummingbirds with white eyefeathers that makes them look very alert.

There was a smaller, more colorful fellow who kept zipping in and out with a stunning aqua-colored head. I could not get a picture of his awesome aqua hat while he was sitting at the feeder, but I managed to get a vague shot of it as he zipped away. In the second picture, that turquoise smudge, that’s his cool head color. Don’t yell at me, I’m doing my best here people, hummingbirds are fast.

There was a bigger violet one.

And there was a teeny tiny little black one. He could have fit right in my palm.

I got an amazing shot from the back. He looks like a little jewel.

I really could have stood there in the rain all day. It was absolute bliss. I am now sorely tempted to get that strange hat with a mask and hummingbird feeder built in, so hummingbirds drink right in front of you. This one.

Tomorrow, frogs!

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Costa Rica 2013, Part 2.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

San Jose! San Jose is an interesting place. Even though it’s the capital of Costa Rica, only 290,000 people live in the city. Almost everyone who works there (about a million people) commute in from the ‘burbs via the bus. Here’s something that blows my mind about San Jose – they don’t have street names or numbers. They just don’t. If you want to go somewhere for dinner, you need to ask the restaurant what are some landmarks near it so you can tell the cab driver. That’s how he knows which direction to go. The Moomins bought a painting from a gallery in the center of town and I took a picture of their label.

That’s a legitimate gallery, and their address is “Diagonally Across from The Holiday Inn”. How, HOW, does the mailman deliver the mail? Do the envelopes say things like, “The Hernandez Family, pink house with green shutters, large tree in front, San Jose, Costa Rica”? They’ve started labeling some streets and avenues so at least there are blocks and corners now, but still no building numbers. If I lived there I would explode like a phoenix in a ball of fire completely fueled by frustration every time I had to go somewhere.

The city, similar to places I’ve been to in Africa and Israel, has that hot-climate stucco cement faux-Bauhaus architecture all over. The whole city looks like they hit 1974 and stopped, which is unfortunate, because 1960s and 1970s architecture is often plagued with a case of The Cube-y Borings.

Most of the buildings are no more than six stories tall because Costa Rica gets earthquakes pretty regularly. There are some faults running right through the country. I don’t know whether this fact is true or not, but I want it to be true so I’m going to believe it. One of the tour guides we had said the ridge of mountains running down the side of the country was originally part of the Andes from when Pangaea broke up. There are now some tall(er) buildings, built by Japanese architects using their earthquake-resistant techniques. There actually used to be a railroad weaving all over, but earthquakes ripped up the tracks and it was easier to switch to buses.

First stop, The National Museum of Costa Rica! We didn’t go in because we didn’t have time, but it is a lovely jaunty yellow building that vaguely resembles a castle. The really interesting thing is outside. There’s a weird round building and inside of it is a stone orb.

Costa Rica has about 300 ancient stone orbs scattered all over the country, like Stonehenge or those guys on Easter Island. The balls are really close to perfect roundness, at least the ones that haven’t been unevenly worn away by erosion, so many archeologists are trying to figure out how people from 200 B.C. figured out how to make giant marbles, and why. Here’s one theory:

In the cosmogony of the Bribri, which is shared by the Cabecares and other American ancestral groups, the stone spheres are “Tara’s cannon balls”. Tara or Tlatchque, the god of thunder, used a giant blowpipe to shoot the balls at the Serkes, gods of winds and hurricanes, in order to drive them out of these lands.

And here’s a picture I found of them on the beach so you can get a sense of scale. BIG balls.

Next, the Cathedral! Services were going on so I couldn’t really delve too far in, but I saw quite a bit and I was pleased to see excellent stained-glass windows and polychrome (painted wallpaper, common in the Gothic cathedrals of Europe).

I’ve mentioned several times that purple is a very difficult color to achieve in glass, so I was really impressed by this window in particular.

And this window was nice as well.

Then, The Pre-Columbian Gold Museum! I was blown away by the workmanship. These people hadn’t invented pants yet, and they were already using the lost-wax method of casting, and they had figured out that if they mixed copper in with the gold it would make the metal more malleable, etc. I mean, seriously, look at these lobsters.

The gold figures are almost always representations of animals. There was a jaguar, and a bat, and crab, and some lungfishes.

They had some pre-Columbian pottery as well. Two pots in particular caught my eye. One was a pot with the silliest-looking face on it.

And one was what I assume to be a armadillo, or perhaps a coati, shyly hiding his snoot in his paws. I loved it.

• | • | • INTERMISSION • | • | •

I like the Costa Rican fire hydrants. They’re red and there’s knobs and chains all over, they look like they’re very important and have very important things to do.

• | • | • INTERMISSION OVER • | • | •

Finally, the National Theater! It was built in the late 1800s by Italian craftmen and boy does it show. No one does ornate like the Italians. They are not afraid of some frothy gold decoration. All the marble is Carrara marble, the same kind Michelangelo carved his statues out of. It was a nice touch, though, that in the round paintings going up the staircase the painters put moonflowers and fruit, things that are common in Costa Rica, instead of Italian motifs.

And much to my delight, when I was outside looking at the facade I saw my familiar green obnoxious parrots, the ones who totally convince you they are laughing at you, right to your face. Because they are d-bags.

Despite the scary fences surrounding the houses, Costa Rica has the lowest crime rate in all of Central America, and the most common crime is theft which can be avoided to a large degree by using common sense, the same common sense you would use in any heavily populated city. I didn’t feel scared or uncomfortable at any point. San Jose is covered with beautiful parks all over, and there are bands rockin’ out in them and artists selling their wares and people playing chess and trying out stilts and doing tai chi and yoga and gymnastics. It’s life-affirming, I tell you.

Three other interesting things about Costa Rica. One, they have no army. It was abolished in 1949. If you want to attack them, go ahead, they ain’t gonna fight back. Two, even though they are a super-wee country, they contain 6% of the world’s biodiversity. And three, something like 97% of their population is literate. The rule is: if your village has kids, you need a school. Sometimes is a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher and five kids of differing ages, but it’s a school. I think that’s great. I would feel so lost if I couldn’t read.

Tomorrow, we will go into some of the fantastic beasties I came across during this week abroad.

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I’m going going, back back, to Costa Costa…

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

(Here is a link to the song I am referencing in the title in case you are not that familiar with Biggie’s works.)

I went to Costa Rica in January of 2012 and I liked it so much, I am returning to see even more awesome beastacular creatures. I love it there so much. It’s close (five-hour flight!), it’s relatively inexpensive, and awesomeness abounds. The one thing I was bummed about last time was that I was unable to go to the Sloth Sanctuary. Guess what, people? I’m going this time! Here’s a video on it:

http://vimeo.com/11712103

I am also going to a waterfall garden, a volcano, a serpentarium, a hummingbird facility, a butterfly exhibit and a scientific research laboratory located in the middle of the rainforest. I am so very excited. I may die because there is a bunch of hiking through muggy hot allergy-ridden forest, but it will be totally worth it. You know I will have tons of pictures on my return. Get emotionally prepared now.

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Some things that have recently been brought to my attention.

Friday, March 8th, 2013

1. I am tired. While I was typing the title above, I wrote, “Some things that have breen to my attention.” Then I looked at it and thought, “That’s not right.” And it took me far too long to figure out what was incorrect. I need a nap.

2. Nowadays when people say something was decimated, they mean totally destroyed. Poof, gone. I just learned, though, that decimated actually means “reduced by a tenth” (deci = ten). That’s not totally destroyed at all. You got a thousand guys attacking a village and one hundred of them die, you still have nine hundred guys! How did this word evolve to this meaning?

3. I was watching The Jeselnik Offensive the other night on Comedy Central, and I think Anthony Jeselnik is a reptile. He says a joke, and then he slooooowwwwwly licks his lips and slooooowwwwwly blinks his eyes like a komodo dragon. I feel like one day I will turn on that show one day and he will be calmly and quietly consuming an entire waterbuck.

4. Speaking of antelopes and antelope-like creatures, did you know there’s a deer with fangs? Imagine a docile, pleasant deer. Now imagine it with those plastic vampire teeth you could wear at Halloween that never fit. That’s a pretty good description. Here, see for yourself:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdxozpT8T61rlhtaxo1_400.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/3e077b70d57151fb2deef602b1fc46fb/tumblr_mh1ydeKaDx1rmgx38o1_500.jpg

5. I saw The Patriot for the first time recently (Alternate title: Braveheart in the U.S.) and it was good and all that, but every time Jason Isaacs and Mel Gibson had a scene together, this is all I heard:

6. I finished all the frost around the edges of all my leaves! Yay and hooray! The tapestry now looks like this:

Now I will attempt to put extra points of frost extending out from some of the leaves to create the appearance of… more frostiness, I guess that’s what I’d call it. Extreme frostitude. Then Snorth will teach me how to finish the edges and I will have completed a project that has been a bother for well over a decade! So exciting.

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The internet is a treasure trove of magic. NSFW magic. Plus, fish.

Monday, January 21st, 2013

1. This story is disgusting and extremely well-written. I laughed. You should read it.

http://pamie.com/2012/11/how-i-might-have-just-become-the-newest-urban-legend/

2. There’s a site called Jezebel which talks about the news that most women would find important. Their articles are good, but whoever comes up with their titles makes me especially happy.

3. For New Year’s, Cricket went scuba-diving with his sister in Honduras. He took pictures and another guy took pictures and some of them are very nice.

This is what some of the ocean creatures looked like.

And this is what some of the fish looked like.

Cricket saw an octopus:

Some eels:

A sea turtle:

A jaunty stripey shrimp:

And a stonefish, who can kill you.

He also encountered a cute tiny fish that lived in a cute tiny hole in the coral.

As well as a cowfish, a favorite of mine.

And a flying gurnard! That does not fly. But is still lovely.

My favorite was the insane-looking lobster. That’s a lotta colors there, bud. If you went to Brasil’s Carnivale with that costume on, people would tell you to tone it down.

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Some stuff and also some things.

Monday, December 31st, 2012

1. I just saw this picture of Brussels. Why were the giant orange bunnies not there when I was there? I would have made a concerted effort to see them. Who took away my bunnies?!?! I’m gonna write a letter.

2. I decided a girl’s gotta look out for herself at holiday-time, so I went online and bought a big box o’ dead bugs! Happy Holidays to me! Really.

It was tough, but I waited and waited and then one day, there it was! My box of beetle corpses! There were only two problems. One, the box was clearly labeled “Dead Insect Specimens – For Scientific Use Only” and then the rest was Chinese characters all over, so my doorman handed it to me like, “What’s up with you, girl? You get weird things.” The other problem, and Snorth tells me this is a thing with all beetles, is the buggies have a smell. A pretty strong smell, in fact. It’s not bad, like rotting flesh or anything, but it’s not good. I would describe it as pungent. I think the closest thing I could compare it to is roasted peanuts and a touch of musk. Now they are laid out all over my dining room table on an oilcloth airing out in the hopes that it will dissipate the odd stink. There are gorgeous, though. An excellent gift to myself.

3. I saw a holiday-themed commercial for Pringles the other night, and then the next day I saw this:

He makes an excellent point, but that’s not the thought I had. Every time the British voiceover person says, “Merry Pringles,” at the end of the commercial, I can’t stop thinking about a scary campfire story about a forest witch. “Did you ever hear the tale of Mary Pringles? It’s said she roams this forest, shaking a long can filled with compressed, formed cellulose slivers to lure children to her den. Ticka ticka ticka, that’s what it sounds like. Be afraid of Mary Pringles.”

4. Everyone who reads this blog knows how I feel about owls, particularly teeny-tiny grumpy owls. I always assumed they had ears, but due to the feathers, I had never seen an ear. And now I wish I still had not seen an owl ear. Eeesh.

The article I saw this in said, “Northern Saw-whet Owls are ‘earless’ owls in the sense that they have no ear tufts, as do Eastern Screech-Owls and Great Horned Owls. But the tufts on those species are not really ears – they are just tufts of feathers that probably serve in displays and in adding to the bird’s camouflage. In the photo above, we see the true ear of an owl. They are massive cavernous pits located on either side of the head, and covered by feathers. If your ears and eyes took up the mass of your head in proportion to a saw-whet, you would probably be making your money with the carnival crowd as part of a sideshow act.”

5. I saw these skeleton-painted vacuum tubes on SkullADay.blogspot.com. I think they’re adorable. So creative. I would like a wee battalion of skull-vacuums to guard my home.

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Belgium for Thanksgiving 2012, Part 7 and done.

Saturday, December 8th, 2012

Just to close the out the Flemish art theme, I saw some original Bosch paintings. And some other guys who painted equally weird things.

That guy in the first image is pretty famous. I believe he’s called The Mailman. When I went downstairs to the gift shop I became super-ultra-jazzed because lo and behold, a Christmas ornament!

He’s felty and glittery. His earflaps are beaded. I’m going to cut his little beak and put a small piece of paper in there that looks like an envelope and then I’m going to hang him beside my Chinese articulated Christmas shrimp ornament in my kitchen, thus creating a small collection of seriously weird ornaments for a holiday I don’t celebrate. My life is a Samuel Beckett play.

The rest of these images here are what’s now left that didn’t fit in the other blog entries.

A wine cask I saw in a liquor store window. If it didn’t weigh so much and wasn’t so cumbersome, I might have considered buying it because of the nifty doodles all over it.

The Museum of Music in Brussels. Designed by Horta. Shocker! I loved it.

Cool mural:

Niche with fountain beastie in it:

Architectural details:

The oldest bar in Brussels. It’s from the Renaissance. You have to walk down a creepy corridor/alleyway to get to it. Why must the city planning from the past have loads of places rife for pickpocketing and molestation? It’s almost like they wanted petty crime to happen.

As we exited the bar, behind was a tiny garden with big thorny vine trees, and sitting in the tree right next to my head was… a chicken. A freaky-looking chicken, just looking at me with it’s spooky velociraptor eyes. I thought it was fake. It was not fake.

Startled lion:

A sign for a children’s clothing store:

Some wrought iron from various buildings that made me happy:

The Brussels Cathedral. Also polychrome. Also distinctive windows.

Fox sculpture. He dustay.

In Bruges we went past a German Christmas shop. Holy macaroni, the Germans get Christmas on a level that mere Americans cannot understand. It’s in their blood or something. I ended up getting Cricket’s mother some creche trees there.

Alright, look at this picture.

Story from my childhood time. When I was three, four and five, The Moomins was writing her Master’s thesis on 15-century Flemish painters, so she would take me with her sometimes on reconnaissance missions to various churches and cathedrals in France, Holland and Belgium. I went to a Jewish day school, so I didn’t really know any non-Jews and you know, with kids you don’t explain everything to them all the time. So I kept seeing this guy on a cross with the word “INRI” over his head. I assumed it was an European spelling of the name “Henry”, so I called him Henry. For years. Only when I was about eight did anyone bother to tell me that he was not Henry. So when people yell the expletive, “Jesus H. Christ!!” I get very excited because maybe they called him Henry too! (They never do, but I keep dreaming.) Moving on.

They really, really, really like mushrooms in Europe. The one with the white stalk and red cap with polka dots on it. I saw them portrayed all over. Gnomes and mushrooms.

The Ghent train station had pertinent ceiling paintings. I kinda want to paint those all my workplace ceiling, see if anyone notices.

And finally, The Moomins and I wandered into a building and promptly died from the awesomeness of the interior. There’s a birdcage elevator! I love those! Why did we get rid of those?