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Museums. (Musea? Museii? Whatever.)

Monday, July 11th, 2011

This past weekend I went to two museums. One was the Museum of Sex and the other was The Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically to see the Alexander McQueen “Savage Beauty” exhibit. First, the Museum of Sex. It was okay. I’m going to make an analogy: Often places that specialize in sexual material are skeezy, like a middle-aged man with scruffy gray five-o’clock shadow and a dirty trenchcoat that doesn’t cover his knobby knees rubbing his hands together and chuckling softly to himself. That kind of gross. The Museum of Sex, however, more resembled a New York lady with oddly-shaped glasses who goes to gallery openings and gives lectures on women discovering their sexual selves in front of a giant painting of rockets. It was a lovely museum, although quite small. There were three exhibitions: Sex in Cartoons (lots of R. Crumb and Tom of Finland), Sex in Film (lots of…sex in film), and The Sexual Lives of Animals. Cricket and I saw an exhibit in London called Sexual Nature which was all about the sex lives of animals, so we thought that this would be the same. We were wrong. The one in London was all tongue-in-cheek, charming and naughty. This one was more ANIMALS BE DOING DURTY THANGS. There were life-size paper-mache sculptures of the animals doing the no-no acts, but in the interest of good taste I only took pictures of the placards near the art. There was this one:

This one:

And my personal favorite:

I’m surprised Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum haven’t outlawed Mallard ducks. If I were them, I would.

By the way, the funniest thing I saw there was a security guard who was clearly hired from some big agency and was profoundly displeased about working at MoSex (as the kids call it) with a black and shiny gold tie that read “I LOVE JESUS” over and over and over. It was his tiny little protest. Cricket and I were like, oooh honey, you need to find another line of work.

In somewhat keeping with the sensual theme, I went with Neenernator to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Alexander McQueen exhibition. Alexander McQueen was a brilliant fashion designer who recently died, and this was a big retrospective of his work. I was vaguely familiar with this clothing and accessories, but now I think he might be my favorite designer. He was extremely concerned with taking the normal lines of the body and reshaping it – making different parts look longer or shorter or thinner or fatter, putting things in the incorrect place. Artists like Lady Gaga and Bjork really liked his work. McQueen stated that some of his influences were Tim Burton, The Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allen Poe. You’ll notice there’s a lot of references to death in his work, as well as S&M. At best, his clothes were uncomfortable to wear, and at worst they were probably a bit painful. I’m going to show you some of the more impacting pieces.

At the end of most fashion shows, they finish with the wedding dress. I love the fact that McQueen used antlers in one of his. I was told by my mother that under no circumstances was I allowed to ever get married with antlers on. She never lets me do anything.

One of the things McQueen was most well-known for was the lobster shoe. It is a ballet-shoe with a crazy-tall heel and the front bit protrudes out, making it look like a lobster claw.

Here’s a tattoo someone got of the lobster shoe. Hardcore, dude, hardcore.

My favorite dress that changed the perceived silhouette of the body was a dress I called the Christina Hendricks dress, because, well, it puts padding where one would have it if one was Christina Hendricks. Here two pictures of Christina Hendricks:

And here’s the Christina Hendricks dress:

My favorite dress was the horse dress. It’s molded to look like a nude woman on top, and then the bottom flares out and has horsehair hanging below. What makes this dress so great is the bottom flounces like the ponytail of the snottiest cheerleader in your high school.

And if you watch this video from 2:59 to 3:09, you can see the skirt-flouncing in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5gY5DXrb48&

My second-favorite item was the jacket made from the skin of a Thompson’s Gazelle with gazelle horns coming out of the shoulders. You don’t need to wear makeup or earrings or anything with that, the horns do all the work for you.

There were also some stellar accessories on display. Like the face disc:

And the metal jaw:

And let’s not forget the external metal skeleton corset or the feathered ear things:

But, not surprisingly, I was drawn, once again, to wearing dead things as ornament. Specifically McQueen’s dead bird phase. At one point I turned to Neenernator and said, “IMMA GO KILL A DUCK.”

So, today I went on the internet and looked up dead birds I could purchase. It turns out that whole dead bird skins are kind of expensive. I wanted to buy this Grey Peacock Pheasant skin, but it was $300.

And since I have less than no idea what I’m doing, I decided to go with some starling skins that are a mere $7.00 each.

We’ll see what I make of this. I have been inspired. I may very well go and see the exhibit again. I recommend you see it too. It closes August 7th.

Posted in Activitays, Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., My Art/Design/Business, Nature, New York, Teh Intarwebz | 1 Comment »

Birds of Prey Day.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

For weeks now I’ve been looking forward to going to Birds of Prey Day in Brewster, NY. It’s on a farm and the poster said there would be 100 birds of prey there! You know what that means: OWLS. I was so excited I didn’t know what to do with myself. Cricket and I drove up to Brewster (a 45-minute drive) and OMG I’M GONNA SEE A MILLION OWLS!!

Okay, so it was a bit of a letdown. There were indeed about 100 birds of prey, but they were mostly eagles and hawks and falcons. In fact, this was predominantly run by a falconer’s association, so people were walking around with scary killer birds on their arms like it was no big deal. There was this bird:

And this one:

And this and this and this and also this:

And this adorable baby goshawk who was soft and warm and precious:

And they’re beautiful, but I really dig owls. Owls are my bag, man. What I learned there is owls are not for having. If you’re a member of the falconer’s association (which I could never be because I live in an apartment and you need to have a falconer’s outdoor area which must be approved by the association) you can slowly (over seven years) work up the falconry ladder getting to bigger and more dangerous birds, but at no point can you have an owl. You cannot buy an owl. You cannot acquire an owl. There are no owls to be had. I was very forlorn. It seems my dream of owl ownership is slowly fading away.

But not all was lost! There was a wildlife rehabilitation group there and they had some owls! Granted, they didn’t have the ones I really wanted to see (Eastern Screech or Saw-Whet) but they had this lovely one that was trying to catch a bit of a snooze, I think it’s a Barred Owl:

And a grumpy-pants horned one who gave me some serious stink-eye.

I love how because their eyes work independently in a lot of ways (pupils dilate and contract, eyelids blink) it looks like there are two separate expressions on their faces.

The best owl experience of the day was a with a wee tiny fellow. He was a short-eared owl, and he was a seething tiny puffball of rage in a wooden holding thing. I asked the nice rehabilitator man if he could pull out the little guy for me so I could get a shot of him and he said, “No, and I’ll tell you why. That bird is new, he’s wild and he’s feisty. But I’ll take a picture of him if you’d like.” I handed him my camera, and the man walked up slowly to the box, snapped a photo as quickly as he could and pulled his hand out of there. I found it great that this large, six-foot-one man was wary of this itty-bitty tiny smootchie demon-beast. Here’s the photo.

Evil Death-Bird…of DEATH! And Cuteness! But mainly DEATH!

There was also a wolf at the Birds of Prey Day, and that was kind of exciting. The wolf handlers were really nervous about having the wolf be around so many kids, but I was psyched. “Wha…? There might be a mauling? I don’t want to miss that! Lemme get my funnel cake and I’ll be right there!” However, this was the most mellow wild animal I have ever seen in my life.

The wolf handler asked the audience if anyone had a really fragrant perfume or lotion and someone did, so she poured it on the ground, and the wolf rolled around in it. He does that to mask his scent from his prey. So now, before his prey is taken down, it will be wondering why the forest smells like Bath and Body Works.

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Jessica and the not-particularly-great 24 hours.

Friday, May 13th, 2011

I’m not having a stellar time over here in Jessicaville. One of the things that have gone wrong in the last 24 hours: My entrails and I are having differences of opinions. I would like them to work, they would like to take a hiatus from their appointed tasks and re-watch all of seasons of The West Wing. Hopefully we can come to a reconciliation at some point. Until then it means I have to eat things like gruel and porridge, basically things that look like clinical depression in a bowl. I grow weary of weak tea.

I had a very pleasant yesterday, when I gave my very first lecture to a group of librarians on simple design techniques. They were not mean to me and had good questions, it was all lovely. I got home where my computer was in sleep mode. I wiggled the mouse and tapped the spacebar and wiggled the mouse and tapped the spacebar and…nothing. So I shut it down, gave it ten seconds and turned it back on again, where it promptly went into sleep mode and could not be roused. I then looked around for seven dwarves because clearly I’m sharing my home with Sleeping Beauty (B’doom CHING! I’m funny!). I called Cricket and informed him of my woes, so after work he came over and took the side off my Tower of Power, tinkered around in there, and sadly informed my that my hard drive has Teh Computer Deaths. So until my new hard drive arrives in a week, I have a sculptural element in the corner of my bedroom. The screen, it taunts me with its blackness. “I could play music or surf the web, buuuuuuuuut I don’t think I will. Neener neener.”

Finally, I came back to work today to hear a tale that chills me to the very core. Here is the story as told to me. Upstairs, an employee came into their office to find a poopy smell and two hefty piles of crap on the floor. I was like, WTF?!?? I mean, I’ve seen the rats outside the building and they are big, but really? When the employee called office services, they found out that we have bedbug-sniffing dogs that come through here, and one of them must have just let it all out in the office. All my co-workers were like, Oh isn’t that just a hoot? NO. IT IS NOT A HOOT. I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of thing, EVER. If I wanted a job where large animals took dumps in my workplace, I would have become a park ranger. I am not a park ranger. I am a graphic designer. NO LARGE DOGS CRAPPING IN MY OFFICE.

Also, allergies.

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Random animalia and the creepiest ad ever.

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

1. I am always lovin’ the beasties, but right now I’m going through a weird animal phase. For example, I recently cannot get enough of the capybara. Let’s all look at a picture of a capybara with squirrel monkeys riding on it.

The capybara is the largest member of the rodent family. My love for it is primarily because it looks so “over it.” Its expression says, “Oh, you just discovered the greatest thing in all of time? That’s nice. Whatevs. Snore.” My co-worker Børkke didn’t know what one was, so I typed “capybara” into YouTube, and the first link I got was this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d0nBcQyeBA

She didn’t find that helpful at all. So thanks, YouTube, for further confusing Børkke.

This is the most recent video that reminded me of two things about the capybara. One, they like water (They have webbed feet for swimming!). Two, either they are the most relaxed creature ever, or the stupidest creature ever. Jury’s still out.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sayomg/capybara-spa-time-tah

The other creature that fills me with a thirst for knowledge about it is the sage grouse. The female sage grouse is rather ordinary, but the male sage grouse, well, he has what appears to be two giant yellow testicles draped over his shoulders like boxing gloves. He keeps them inside these white feathery pockets, but when he feels like mating he pops those puppies out, which causes them to make a noise not unlike a very, very large leaky faucet dropping a very, very large drop of water. Needless to say, AWESOME.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KdOvNSDxws

I also appreciate the delightful prairie chicken, who has smaller orange neck-testicles, pointy feather-ears and foot-stomping, but the sage grouse has my heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJCy0d94YS0

2. I was on Facebook the other day, and you know how they have those sponsored ads on the side? And how, more often than not, the picture has nothing to do with the ad? Well, this is what I got.

AHHHH! Demon Child!! If social work has anything to do with this Chucky-doppelganger, I decline, thank you! I actually hit “refresh” in order to get an ad that didn’t have a growling spawn glowering at me.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Teh Intarwebz | 1 Comment »

Reasons my family left Russia.

Friday, April 8th, 2011

You might think it was the persecution or the lack of opportunity, but you’d be wrong. It would be the wacky animals that get waaaaay too close to the humans. I work in a highly urbanized area. I am accustomed to interacting with squirrels or little brown birds. In Russia, it is different. I would leave too.

Example 1: Cop stops guy at routine traffic stop, quickly leaps into vehicle due to a pack of wolves running by.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vACtukwBHTw

Example 2: Cuddly bear who wants to eat your feet off. Notice the moonwalking at 0:40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8VDd1wzskI

And my favorite, Example 3: Wild hamster who looks like he’s wearing overalls. Hey, guys filming, hamster does not want to be petted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhO-qMeMjtA

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Iceland and The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Monday, March 7th, 2011

I had lunch yesterday with B. who is going to Berlin this summer. On his way home he plans to stop off in Iceland just in time for puffling-rescue season. Brace yourself, this is a lot of cute coming up. Puffins live in Iceland, and they all have babies around the same time. Near the end of summer the parental puffins are done with the parenting thing, so they leave. The baby puffins, called pufflings, emerge and try to fly off into the North Atlantic. Unfortunately, the lights of people nearby throw them off their game, and many of them fly into town. Since they need water to take off from, they are hopelessly landlocked and would most likely die, either from starvation or being eaten by a cat or dog. However, for many generations now people go into the nooks and crannies of their villages, collect the pufflings and bring them home for the night. The next day, they are released into the ocean to fly or swim away as intended. It’s a whole lotta cute. Here’s a video about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn1Ym3TQdiI

So B. might get to fling ornery baby waterbirds into the ocean like a quarterback. I am envious.

Now, The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. I go every year. Here’s a previous blog entry I’ve done. The dogs, as always, were spectacular. The owners/handlers were, as always, extremely weird. If your dog needs to gain more weight, there are online shops that offer effective and safe weight gainer for dogs.

Here are some of the pictures I took.

Here is my favorite breed of dog, the Borzoi (or Russian Wolfhound). So pretty, like a giant hairy cloud.

In order to keep the long-haired and/or long-eared dogs from getting shmutz on their fur-ends, the groomers have come up with a myriad of preventative devices and techniques. This is a Yorkshire Terrier getting its fur wrapped up in plastic bags and rubber bands.

And this is an Afghan wearing a snood.

I’m not a big Chihuahua fan. I’m not opposed to them either, I just don’t care very much one way or the other. This particular chihuahua, however, was extremely sweet. I could learn to love him.

Aside from the actual judging of the beasties, the other main activity is grooming. I’ve been in Supercuts that had less equipment than this event. There’s the dogs that should have smooth, straight fur:

And then there are the dogs that should have floofy, puffy fur.

The most astonishing thing to most people is how the dogs don’t bite or nip or anything. Mostly they just lay there and take it.

The most impressive example of this was the woman who, with a flashlight and an electric razor, was carefully shaving a Boston Terrier’s genitals. I am not making that up.

This groomer was great. She was grooming her Shih-Tzu in the middle of Madison Square Garden in her petticoat and bra. I guess she didn’t want to get her show outfit dirty, but have we learned nothing from The Jersey Shore? This is the ideal time to wear the shirt before the shirt.

There was also people-grooming stations. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that.

The dogs have a lot of time to kill, so they nap, and play with small squeaky toys, but these two Shelties just stood there. Occasionally they would say something to each other. They were like the twins in The Shining.

And here’s a plethora of shots I found around the internet taken by other people.

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London, Part 7.

Friday, February 25th, 2011

OMG, museums! Today it’s the British Museum. But I’d like to start us off with some random shots.

The weather wasn’t always glorious. Some days were exactly what you would expect if you went to England.

Cricket and I split up one day: I went to the V&A and he went to the Churchill War Rooms and Buckingham Palace. Right next to the Churchill War Rooms is St. James Park, which has a lovely assortment of ducks and geese.

And whatever this thing is. Its legs make it look like it’s wearing a black unitard with a skeleton painted on it. Odd little waterfowl.

Doorknobs in the center of the door. Europe – things are different there!

Okay, The British Museum. I think when it was originally built there were a bunch of buildings in the Grecian style around an open courtyard, and it appears that at some point a large rotunda was built in the middle of the courtyard and a glass roof was installed over the whole thing, connecting all the buildings without having to go outside. It really is huge, the rotunda, so I tried to make a rough composite shot of the space. It’s very impressive.

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the British Museum because a large portion of the exhibits are stolen or looted from their place of origin, like a goodly portion of the Egyptian section, or the stones off of the Parthenon (Greece really wants those back, they’re very cranky about it). But I was just excited to see all the historical things. For example, the Rosetta Stone.

And the plethora of Egyptian relics.

These ladies were terrifying. They’re about the same height as a man, and you can feel them silently judging you.

And they have so many dead things. Like mummified cats.

And a mummified ibis next to a mummified falcon.

And canopic jars for holding your internal organs.

And let’s not leave out Ginger, a seriously dead guy surrounded by his grave-goods. Ginger died in 3400 B.C. and is naturally preserved. And dead.

I really enjoyed looking at the hieroglyphics. I kept seeing this reoccurring slug hieroglyphic. I wonder what it represents. Or it could be a startled snake, with cartoon “startled” marks around its head. I also wonder what that would represent.

Aside from the Egyptian section, there’s a whole bunch of other neat stuff that we saw. They have an excellent collection of Assyrian wall art (probably stolen). I studied the Assyrian artwork in art history class. That’s where I learned something interesting about large guard-sculpture’s legs.

The stonecarvers wanted him to be able to look like he was guarding both to the front and to the side, so he has five legs. Go ahead, count them. Five.

I also had to study all these wall carvings with themes like lion hunts and battles and the like. Say what you want about the Assyrians, but they could relief-carve a lion and a horse like no one’s business.

Other things from the British Museum that caught my eye: The death mask of Napoleon.

An impression bead where the animals look like “Where The Wild Things Are” characters.

A Celtic helmet with horns.

And a Roman mosaic of a duck. I liked this especially because it used all kinds of random colors, but if you stand far away from it, your eye blends the colors correctly for you, totally anticipating Pointillism by 2000 years. Go Romans.

That pretty much covers all the musea that I hit up while in London. In the next few days I will finish up the remaining dribs and drabs of photos and then we can get back to business as usual (whatever that is).

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

London, Part 5.

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

So Cricket and I were on the subway, and while he was reading the paper, I caught a glimpse of this article. I bolded the important part, the part that made me make a snorting noise in the middle of a crowded subway.

Mass murderer Jeremy Bamber today lost the first stage of his latest bid to overturn a conviction for the killing of five of his relatives. Bamber, who has always protested his innocence, has served nearly 25 years for the 1985 killing of his family in Essex. He has twice lost appeals against his conviction and remains one of 38 killers who have been given a whole-life tariff. The bodies of Bamber’s parents, Neville and June, his sister Sheila Caffell, and her six-year-old twin sons were found at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy. All had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. A total of 25 shots had been fired, mostly at close range. At first, suspicion fell on Mrs. Caffell, who suffered from mental illness and was found holding the murder weapon. Then, attention turned to Bamber after a blood-stained silencer was found in a cupboard in the farmhouse.

Here’s what it sounded like to me: “At first, we thought it was Miss Scarlett with the lead pipe in the conservatory, but it turned out to be Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the lounge.” I love England. They’re so…British-y.

MUSEUMS. We went to a lot of them. Let’s take the Natural History Museum first. If the museum was empty it would still be amazing, because whoever built it included natural history elements into the actual building all over, in both the interior and exterior.

It’s like going to atheist church. At one end of the giant hall, a dinosaur skeleton (see picture above). At the other end, a sculpture of Charles Darwin. I felt like there should be a choir singing hymns about evolution and survival of the fittest.

Once again, England kicks our American butts because their museums are free and you can take pictures. Here is a coelacanth (pronounced see-lah-canth) or, as I like to call it, the “Seriously, That Is Way Too Many Fins, No One Needs That Many Fins”.

Here’s the interesting story. This is an OLD breed of fish. Like, they thought it went extinct 65 million years ago. Then – poof! – someone fishing found one off the coast of Africa in the 1930s, and they’re back! This particular specimen is from 1964, so it has lost its deep-blue color. Also, and I found this adorable, it has little mushrooms growing on it.

They also have a phenomenal amount of dead stuffed things. My favorite last time I visited was the pangolins. My favorite this time was still the pangolins.

I will never get to see a pangolin in the wild, so this was thrilling for me. Plus, one of the pangolins on the tree looks like a zombie with his little stubby pangolin arms outstretched in front of him. Evil zombie pangolin.

Aside from more dead things than you can shake a stick at, they have a stellar mineral wing. I do enjoy a good mineral. Here’s a pic of the mineral wing.

Rows and rows and rows of neatly labeled rocks. I was so happy. I learned the difference between a pebble and a cobble. Here’s a cobble full of pebbles.

And did you know pumice is just frothy lava? It’s like lava meringue.

I want these agates. I want them real bad. Especially the one on the right.

The Natural History Museum has a terrific insect area, but I didn’t have time to visit it. However, I did get to enjoy its entrance. It has that great big ole beetle over the door, but I love how the many-eyed spider looks like he’s welcoming you in. “Oh hello!” he says. “Come on in! I made crumpets.”

Museums have specialty exhibits, and those you have to pay for. The Natural History Museum has an exhibit on right now called “Sexual Nature”, about the sex lives of animals. Really.

I couldn’t take pictures in there because it was dark in an attempt to be romantic (really, they had Barry White playing in the background), but I don’t know, seeing taxidermied animals posed in states of copulation doesn’t get my motor going. I did get a shot of how foxes have sex, which was totally different than I expected. They just back up into each other, ending up looking like a dog with two heads. Very interesting.

Also, around the exhibits and informative plaques were TVs playing Isabella Rossellini’s “Green Porno”. If you’ve never seen this, clear an afternoon, take some magic mushrooms, and hunker down for some of the weirdest television programming you’ve ever experienced. Here’s one just for a taste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BckqviVaWl0

Cricket’s favorite Green Porno episode was the salmon. I was partial to the duck one. You really must see them all.

To finish off my Natural History experience, here is a giant slice of a very old sequoia (with Cricket standing next to it for scale):

And here is a life-size accurate sculpture of a gulper eel. I made a painting on a gulper eel, but it’s different when you see one up close and personal. I didn’t realize their mouths were tetrahedronal. I was very excited. People around me were concerned.

And here is a poster outside the museum with a very startled-looking drawing of a lemur.

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London, Part 2.

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

And we’re back! So, London. Let’s start with the Tower of London. First of all, that’s a misnomer. There’s a bunch of towers in a walled area. It should be called the Towers of London. Plural. It feels good to get that off my back.

The weather was really, really good. I know! I was surprised as well. It made hearing all about the various horrible tortures and beheadings so much more pleasant. There also was a nice view of the strange London skyline. That building in front there is called The Gherkin.

The Tower of London is famous for housing The Crown Jewels. Sooooo pretty. This was one of my favorite moments of the trip. I showed Cricket the magical, magical shiny hats and asked him which was his favorite. He informed me that he really liked the door. Yep, the big giant steel door. Some of the finest jewels in the world were directly in front of him, and Cricket was digging the enormous steel bolts on the door. DUDE, BIG SHINY ROCKS! THE BIGGEST AND SHINIEST! THEY DON’T GET BIGGER! OR SHINIER! Fine, go look at the door. Sigh.

They also had a lovely collection of suits of armor. Here is Henry the Eighth’s.

Everybody assumes that the big bulbous codpiece is due to Henry being really, umm, gifted. I read somewhere that it’s actually because he had The Syph and anything touching his junk was really ouchy, so there was a lot of padding in there to keep Mr. Happy from bumping into anything hard, like a big metal suit of armor.

I also learned about Edward the First. He reigned from 1272 to 1307. He was 6’2″, which nowadays is pretty tall, but can you imagine in 1270? It must have been like being surrounded by Oompa-Loompas all the time. Anyway, it got him his nickname Longshanks and they had to build him a special bed because his whole lower half would hang off all the pre-existing beds.

Cricket was really excited about this gun. Once he explained it to me, so was I.

I might screw this description up a little, so please forgive me, I know close to nothing about firearms. Back in the day, you fired a shot and then you had to do this whole procedure with the powder and the musket ball and the flamey stick, it was a slow and tedious process. If you look closely, this gun has two barrels – and two firing mechanisms. You could fire one, and then quickly fire the other.

This was awesome. You know, if you went somewhere in the United States and they had a vermin problem, they would shut down until the problem was taken care of. In the Tower of London, they have signs like this.

How freakin’ great is that? “Keep a lookout for my friends and family!” And an adorable Quentin Blake drawing! It makes the spread of pestilence so cute. Sadly, I saw no rats. Disappointing.

I did see ravens, though. The other thing the Tower of London is famous for is the ravens. Ravens are really, really large crows. Really large. Like small turkeys. I, of course, am obsessed with them. There are presently six of them living in the Tower, and I made friends with the green-anklet one. Here is a picture of Green-Anklet hanging out near my feet.

And here he is sitting on a cannon and saying, “Blaaaaah!!”.

If you are planning on visiting the Tower of London, you should know there are a million stairs. And not just normal stairs, oh no. Awful 15th century stairs, all weird heights and jinky angles and tight spaces. My calves were tender for two days after. Now, anyone who knows me knows I am about as far from an athlete as it gets, so chances are this won’t be as much of a problem for you, but still. Lots and lots of awkward stairs. Up, down, spiral – it’s like a stair fetishist’s dream come true. Just so you know.

Now, signs. Crickets loves a good foreign sign. Since he has brought it to my attention, I am now aware of signs. Here are a few.

I am very immature.

Tee hee hee. Also:

Snort. Giggle.

This was my favorite sign. It was often all by itself, so I had no idea what it was referring to. This was the conversation that went on in my mind when I saw it.

“DON’T DO IT!”

“Huh? Do what?”

“AT ANY TIME!!”

“I…I don’t know what-”

“JUST DON’T DO IT!!!”

“Okay…I’ll try not to?”

“NEVER!! NEVER DO IT! EVER!!”

And then The Mad Hatter and the March Hare tried to shove the Dormouse in the teapot.

At my job, the proofreaders often have a difficult time with documents that come from the UK, because even though we speak the same language, some of the grammar and punctuation rules are different. For example, they use commas way less frequently. There was this sign in the bathroom:

And Cricket had to listen to me yell,

“Guests are reminded to take care when standing or walking on wet surfaces. For additional safety COMMA! non-slip rubber mats are available in the bathroom and also from Housekeeping. Moisten the base of the bath first COMMA! then place the mat in the bath.”

Dating a Grammar Nazi is fun.

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Washington D.C. – Roller Derby and the Zoo.

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

As you can probably deduce from the title, I went to Washington D.C. to visit a friend of mine, Moss. And we went to the Roller Derby. And the Zoo!

First, Roller Derby. I had never been to it, and I’ve always wanted to go. For those of you that don’t know, to simplify it down to its raw basic nature, it’s a bunch of strong women rollerskating with other strong women pushing each other out of the way, often knocking each other down and getting points for their team in the process. While it’s similar to every other sport in the world, the thing I like about this particular activity is the sense of humor. For example, the participatin’ ladies all have really swell nicknames. And they pick numbers that are related with those nicknames. My favorites:

Ovary Action – 28 Days
Chinese Cheker – 5354
Hoova Dayum – H2O
Marion Barrycuda – 311 (remember, this is Washington D.C. – ergo, funnier)
Dyke Diggler – 13 inches

There’s also HaBitchual OffendHer, Rachel MadHo, Lois Slain (she’s a reporter in real life, so that’s extra-cute), Ivana Tripabitch, Peaches N Cruelty and Wham Slam Bambi. The warm-up round was “Grinches vs. Santas”. The regular players had festive holiday nicknames like Blitzkreig Blitzen and Thumpa Coal, and they came out before the game and were introduced by the announcers. The grinches (dressed all in green) skated around the track in the shape of a Christmas tree, and the Santas (dressed all in red) formed the shape of a sleigh. Even the lead skater had a blinking red nose.

I tried to take pictures of the “jams”, as they’re called, but those girls move FAST. So here are my shots.

The next day Moss and I decided to see the pandas at the Zoo, but first we toddled off to experience the magic of chili. There’s a place in Arlington called The Hard Times Cafe. They have four kinds of chili. And they will put any combination of those chilis on a variety of substances. I chose half Texas chili, half Cincinnati chili on tater tots. Excellent decision, I must say.

Outside the Mecca of chili goodness was an oldey-timey truck…

…with a statue of a horse on the back, wearing mittens on its ears and fake antlers, and this sign propped up on its side.

Which is awesome.

Moss also showed me The Spite House. Here’s the story: A guy owned a house. He also owned the seven-foot alleyway between him and the house next door. People used to cut through the alleyway all the time, which really cheesed his crackers. So, Grumpy Guy built a house in the seven-foot alleyway, which is supposedly the thinnest house in America. It is called The Spite House and people do live there.

Now, on to the zoo. We did in fact see a panda, but he was far, far away, so I couldn’t take any pictures of him. I had never seen a panda before, and sure enough, they look like a soft, pillowy, black and white bear-shaped object. Which is nice to know. We also saw Indian elephants, a tiger, orangutans and a male lion roaring, which I had also never experienced, even though I have been to Africa a bunch of times, so that was so very cool. It is astonishingly loud and the sound really carries. It reverberates in your abdomen. I found a video of a lion roaring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOaQmkAlhUA

Does anyone who reads this watch Dirty Jobs? There’s an episode when Mike Rowe goes worm-grunting. You shove a wooden stake into the ground, rub an iron thingie over it, and it makes a groany sound. This causes the worms to come to the surface. You collect them and sell them to fishermen. The lion’s roar made me feel like a worm being grunted.

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/dirty-jobs-worm-grunting.html

Here are some of the beasties I got to take pictures of. The bestest one was the red panda. Normally, when I see red pandas, they are in trees and they are napping. This was the first time I saw red pandas sauntering around, doing red panda stuff. I got some great shots of what might possibly be the cutest animal in all of creation.

So cuddly.

I was in the small mammals building, and there was a window casting a sunbeam right into the meerkat’s habitat. And a meerkat was standing right in it. It was precious.

And other meerkats were just standing around because, you know, that’s what they do.

There were also degus, which are small rodents that live in South America. They do a great deal of napping. And look, there’s a degu napping on another degu! Awwww.

In one of the habitats there was an armadillo being all invisible and buried underground, but if you looked up OMG burrow owls! Teeny tiny owls that live in holes in the ground! So happy!