In Between Panels

Thursday, January 02, 2014

It's a Jolly Holiday in Antarctica

This was the picture from the i09 article, Strange Historic Photos From Antarctica and Other Kingdoms of Ice that caught my eye as something quirky without meaning to, I guess. Either the penguin doesn't care about the music it's hearing fom this stranger standing away from him or her or it's probably too scared to move. Or both.

Gilbert Kerr, a member of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition plays the bagpipe for an indifferent penguin during the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902-1904

But what if the penguins were swayed by the music? What if some birds showed some reaction and inexplicably danced to the music? Not like the ones in "Happy Feet" though. Ugh.

And then there were six:

That was fun.

Labels: aaahh, animated gifs, art, awesome, comedy routine, entertainment, funny stuff, movies, nature, new

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@ 7:52 PM ---> |

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Happy(?) New Year

Another year over. Can't say I felt the need to celebrate its passing as I holed up in a hotel in Ortigas to get away from the mindless celebrations like neighborhood videoke and loud upbeat music starting in the morning till, well, the early the next morning. The view from the room where I was holed up, while not totally impressive, I can see much of the area of San Juan celebrating the same way: with fireworks every few blocks or so. I guess up close the view of those fireworks really is a sight to behold but if you see the same things being played over and over and over again everywhere at the same time, it's solicits a kind of meh reaction from me.

Earlier tonight while I was going back over the memories of those I've seen outside the window and analyzing my thoughts over the matter the one thing that kept playing in my mind was, am I getting too old too fast for this? Ten years ago I took pride over the fact that I never looked my age and I was constantly aware of the fact that the best years of my life were slipping away. I lived in the past trying to hold on to whatever vestiges of it were remaining. But that was before a whole gaggle of disappointments came and destroyed my rosy view. Plus, being aware that each year seems to suck more and more (of course that's a matter of opinion but I'm basing this on my experience and what I know from everything I read and heard) things will never be the same and it's a bad thing. Society is shrinking thanks to social networking but at the same time these same members of society are becoming more cynical and pessimistic even if they try to deny it and look at every new year as something that brings a new beginning. I mean, realy? Then when calamity hits them they'd start crying and whining like babies because they never prepared for any of it since the start. It's the same cycle as every New Year's resolution. People get excited over the smallest things promising themselves they would stick to a set of list they prepared at the last minute only to forget about it after a week or so.

Incidental Comics

Am I cynical? There's no question about it. But I also know that most people are too even if they say they're not. How else can you explain the amount of celebration over the most mundane of things? Like monthsaries. Please. Don't get me started on the apparent hunger for any type of news people can "scoop" just so they can drumbeat about it on the walls of their or other people's Facebook pages. I can live with one or two posts like it but have a lot of people doing the same thing every minute or so and you have a new kind of pollution to deal with. People "liking" stuff for no viable reason other than what is known only to themselves is also another thing that gets to me but I'm working on it.

So what should we look forward to this new year? Realistically we can hope for the best but still expect things to go worse than before. Other than that, personally, I got my own outlook to deal with, old friendships to rekindle, new people to hang out with and old good habits I left at the side of the road before to pick up again. Other than that, well, like other folks, I'll take things one day at a time

Labels: aaahh, aha, controversial, dilemma, new, new year, pang-asar, reminiscing, sad news, whatever

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@ 11:44 PM ---> |

Thursday, July 02, 2009

"Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina Sewer!" the latest viral video to hit the intertubes sounds like the title of a B-movie (you can read the initial account here) but Gizmodo, the gadget blog, finally posted a report about the findings as released by DeepSeaNews.com who sent the video to Dr. Timothy S. Wood (an expert on freshwater bryozoa and an officer with the International Bryozoology Association) who had this to say, to quell the panic:

Thanks for the video – I had not see it before. No, these are not bryozoans! They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting. Interesting video.

Ok, so they're Tubifex worms (said to inhabit organically polluted waters). But what if it's a ruse? What if it's really one growing mass of unknown lifeform that escaped the government's clutches? When will we start calling Mulder and Scully?!

Labels: awesome, cool, curios, discovery, nature, new, uh-huh

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@ 1:10 PM ---> |