Megafauna, as defined in wikipeda, refers to "species of large animals." Some examples of now-living megafauna are elephants, rhinos, hippos and giraffes--all (coincidentally) native to Africa.
Or, perhaps not coincidentally, as Mr. Weisman hypothesises in his book. Turns out, there used to be lots of weird giant animals, everywhere. And the woolly mammoth is just the begining. These animals are so strange that they transcend any possibilities you are currently conjuring up in your head:
"...Giant armadillos and the even-bigger glyptodonts, resembling armor-plated Vokswagens, with tails that ended in spiked maces...giant short-faced bears, nearly double the size of grizzlies...giant beavers, as big as today's black bears...the dire wolf, the largest of canines" It gets weirder--there were "Shasta ground sloth[s], which was the size of a cow," "litoptern[s], that looked like camel[s] with nostrils on top of their nose[s]" and "toxodons, one-ton brutes like a cross between a rhino and a hippo, but anatomically neither" (Weisman).
Ok. An armadillo the size of a Jetta with a mace-tail? Beavers the size of black bears? Litopterns!? Seriously. What. The. Fuck.
This stuff used to live right here in the US of A until the Pleistocene, when some theorize that early humans (called Clovis for their pointed deadly spears) killed every last one. Everywhere.
Here are pictures of a Shasta ground sloth and a litopterns, respectavily:
Now that is fucking crazy.
After last post, I decided we could all use some lulz tonight. Without further ado, I bring you two weird and cute lil' stories that cracked my shit up this week:
1. Snopes.com reported a story called Seagullibility about a Scottish seagull named Sam who has taken to stealing "crisps" (chips for us Americans) from a local store. The gull waits until no customers are around and the door is open. He sneaks in, grabs a bag of Nacho Cheeser Doritos (always same brand), runs out as fast as he can and flys away to a spot where he rips open the chips to share with his gull buddies. Locals have even started paying for his stolen snacks because he's become such a celebrity. You think this story is too hilarious to be true, but it actually is true and has been captured on tape a number of times:
2. Unrelated, but equally hilarious and charming, is the clip of a three-year-old girl named Kassie who explains how she is going to "kick the ass" of any bedroom-invading monster she comes across. This youtube gem landed young Kassie a slot on Ellen (amazing what gets you on TV these days).
Maybe it's just bader-meinhof, but this is something that seems to keep coming up everywhere I turn. It's in the nyt, it's on wikipedia and apparently it's now the subject of a new documentary film. It's Body Integrity Disorder (BIID) (or sometimes Amputee Identity Disorder or apotemnophilia) and I'm sorry, but it's really fucking weird. BIID is, "the overwhelming desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs or other parts of the body" (Wikipedia). There also exists a community of people who are attractive to amputees. sometimes termed as "devotes." There are also "pretenders," defined in BIID.org as "an individual who ties or binds up a limb and plays the role of an amputee, perhaps using crutches. The term may be applicable to those who desire to be a brace user or a different disability." But this is another story altogether.
People with BIID can be as young as 4 or 5. While it's currently listed in the DSM, BIID activists claim that it should be removed, citing queerness as an example of a past "similar" incorrect listing. I hate to come off as insensitive here in this brief jaunt into editorial thought, but there's a gigantic difference between being in love with someone of the same sex and feeling like you won't be happy until you saw off your leg. JUST SAYIN'.
This isn't to say that BIID is not a real problem or that it isn't extremely sad in some cases, but the fact of the matter is, it is undeniably strange...and I'm slightly offended that people have the audacity to link it to Gender Identity Disorder. Way different, friends. Way, way different.
Some doctors seem to think BIID is actually an anxiety disorder that serves as a "block" to other, more pressing pyschological issues and almost all cases are linked to depression. One final fact: men suffer from BIID more than women.
Similar to The Guy Who Traded a Paper Clip for a House, The Kid Who Traded an iPod for a Car is a tale of the weird that goes like this:
17-year-old nerd boy spends summer hacking iPhone with three (presumably nerd boy) collaborators.
Said nerd boy trades hacked iPhone for Nissan 350Z and three new 8 gig iPhones, estimated combined list roughly $30,000, or in other words, about what I make in a year. He also gets a consulting job with the company he used for parts.
Weirdly ingenious. Weirdly kind of annoying. I'm weirdly kind of jealous.
I thought I would bring you another post about a website that is simply wonderful and weird, although this one actually fulfils
a purpose in the world.
I want to keep up posting to this thing fairly regularly, so I may occasionally post something that backtracks through the repertoire of my personal blog. Since I am scrambling around trying to pack for vacation at the moment, tonight will be one of those nights. And so, I (re)present to you:
www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com
Again, that's
www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com
No, this is not a joke.
These fuhrer-resembling cats are called kitlers.
This is the blurb directly from the site:
Does your cat look like Adolf Hitler? Do
you wake up in a cold sweat every night wondering if he's going to up
and invade Poland? Does he keep putting his right paw in the air while
making a noise that sounds suspiciously like "Sieg Miaow"? If so, this
is the website for you.
Cat+that looks like hitler = kitler = hitler:
It's eerie, right?
Hoarding is so weird that it truly blows my mind, so I thought I would share it with you:
Hoarding (technically compulsive hoarding or pathological hoarding) is a strange behavior where people obsessively save/collect things (sometimes one specific type of thing) or refuse to throw things away. Although hoarding is not officially recognized in the DSM (seriously?!?!), many hypothesize that it is an offshoot of obsessive compulsive disorder or obsessive compulsive personality disorder, although no one is really sure why it happens. As stated in the wikipedia article on hoarding, "it is not clear whether compulsive hoarding is a condition in itself, or simply a symptom of other related conditions. Some may put off cleaning for a long period of time and then become overwhelmed and not be able to mentally rise to the hurdle of clearing the space; others actively collect one particular type of item. Oftentimes, hoarding behavior will manifest for a long period of time and then miraculously disappear.
Hoarders feel that they need to save things because someone in their lives may at some point need the things they are saving (kind of ridiculous, because they are often saving things like newspapers or soda cans or...whatever really). At some point, their "clutter" begins to overtake their lives, making it difficult to move around in their living space. it is common for hoarders to cut paths or tunnels in their homes in order to get around. It is also common for them to be forced to turn off their utliities because they are so embarrased at the thought of anyone seeing their living space that they refuse to let visitors in. This can lead to a life of relative isolation.
When I first learned about hoarding, I was instantly fascinated. I was sitting on my front porch in Ann Arbor, when Sean Schuster-Craig (aka Jib Kidder) first informed us of this strange occurance by recounting the story of the famous fraternal hoarders, the wealthy and eccentric Collyer Brothers,who managed to get a Model T into their upper manhattan apartment as well as "rope, baby carriages, a doll carriage, rakes, umbrellas, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, gas chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer's hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a checkerboard, a child's chair (the brothers had been lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands of books about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, a beaded lampshade, the chassis of the old Model T, British and six American flags, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, fourteen pianos, a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and, of course, countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old" (Wikipedia). This crazy tangle of mess and boobie traps actually killed the brothers.
It was weird, because after I found out about hoarding, I started seeing it everywhere. A friend Tom worked as a professional mover and had a story of moving a crazy woman out of the projects who was obviously a hoarder.
Another friend told me a story of going home with a guy who lived in a hoarding house, where pathways were cut from giant stacks of newspapers. A hoarding story appeared on snopes about a man who obsessively filled his condo with beer cans. I also learned about something almost everyone has experienced through a "crazy" neighborhood cat lady: animal hoarding. Hoarding was all around me and I began to suspect certain friends of having hoarding tendencies. I looked at people who passed me on the street and wondered, "do you obsessively hoard strange things in your home?" I did more and more personal research to indulge my fasciation, which lead to the following links, that I am proud to offer here today for your own edification:
Famous Hoarders/Squalor-Dwellers:
- Big and Little Edied Bouvier Beale (close relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and subject of Documentary/recent Broadway Show Grey Gardens)
- Eliza Emily Donnithorne (inspiration for Miss Havisham in Great Expectations)
- Edmund Trebus
- Beethoven?
Disorders Related to Hoarding:
The name of the first post of this blog is "A Snowman, Drinking Beer, Smoking Cigarettes and Playing My Ex-Girlfriend's Drum Machine/My 1st Post." I actually wanted it to be "A Snowman, Drinking Beer, Smoking Cigarettes and Playing My Ex-Girlfriend's Rubbish Drum Machine or My First Post," but I ran into a character limit. First Vox disappointment. Stop harshing my creativity, character limits!
BESIDE THE POINT.
The point is, I decided to start a new blog devoted entirely to WEIRD SHIT. More specifically, weird obsessions that I have, because I have a lot of them. They get me in trouble. I'll be somewhere normal, like a dinner party or at work or at a family function or hell, even a kegger and I'll say something like, "man, you know what I love? Hoarding! It's so weird...and fascinating!" and whoever I'm talking to, some poor innocent soul that I've probably just encountered, will say something along the lines of, "uhmm cool." I'll see the uncomfortable look in their eyes and I'll say something like "oh, but I'M not a hoarder. Heh heh. Ha. You think I'm a...haha. Nope. Just like reading about it. Yeah." This will not quell their fears. Their eyes will grow large and they will look disgusted.
BESIDE THE POINT.
The point is, I am staking my virtual flag in the brave new world of weird, right here, right now. I have decided that this substance-abusing agent-of-slight-personal-revenge electropunk snowman will be the temporary (or maybe even fixed) mascot of this project. He is a weird snowman.
And quite honestly, I'm just too tired to kick this thing off with hoarding.
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kot said:
yeah, i've totally heard of this. i think that those who live with BIID don't see it as about removing... read more
on Body Integrity Disorder -
kot said:
[this is good]oh, vox. read more
on A Snowman, Drinking Beer, Smoking Cigarettes and Playing My Ex-Girlfriend's Drum Machine/My 1st Post
yeah--this makes sense..but for some reason, it's very difficult for me to put "identifying as an amputee" on the same... read more
on Body Integrity Disorder