Barnacle Goose

I went and saw the funker vogt show tonight. I've noticed goth and rivethead dancers tend to be strangely considerate of glasses during concerts. Tonight one of people from out of town had his glasses fly off and the whole section of the dance floor stopped and helped him locate them before resuming. I saw something similar happen at a Sisters of Mercy concert where Andrew Eldritch's sunglasses fell off into the crowd during the performance and the crowd politely handed them back rather then tearing them to pieces as one might expect from a concert crowd. Not to say that the crowd tonight was completely considerate there was also this guy that kept trying to crowd surf was got dropped head first at least twice.

Art

Goal for the week 20hrs

Animal

photo by omarrun

The barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis) is a striking black and white goose from Europe. It was once believed that they sprung from gooseneck barnicles (suborder Lepadomorpha) as the barnacles looked a bit like the geese and were believed to grow being found generally on drift wood. The barnacles were seen only in the summer while the geese were seen only in the winter and at that time it was unknown that birds migrate. The monk Giraldus Cambrensis claimed to witness geese springing from the barnacles. The pope also declared them fish because they sprang from barnacles, so they could be eaten on fish days. Actually, in the summer barnicle geese nest on cliffs in the artic. As the babies are not yet able to fly but must feed them selves, the first action a baby barnacle goose must take in life is to leap off a cliff and hope the fluff slows it's fall, quite a lot of them don't die.

Marsupial mole

I've been listening to some of Rick and Kristen's radio shows online. Apparently they have been putting their Sunday WEFT shows up in a blog. Pretty much all goth and deathrock.

Art

Goal for the week 13.5 hours

Today 

work on the sphinx

Animal 

The southern marsupial mole (Notoryctes typhlops) is a very strange marsupial from southwest Australia. It is well adapted to swimming through the sand it has no external eyes or ears (they do have ear openings) and it's pouch faces backward to keep sand out of it. It is thought to eat mostly insects, lizards and seeds but very little is known about it's diet or behavior. It is only recently that that scientists were sure it was a marsupial rather then the link between marsupials and monotremes. It shares different characteristics with many of the living groups of marsupials making it difficult to place. Based on genetic evidence they have worked out that marsupial moles split off of  the main group of marsupials about 50 million years ago and have been evolving on a separate branch into something that very much resembles a golden mole. They are difficult to study as their tunnels collapse on themselves after they pass and they do very poorly in captivity. In captivity they spend a lot more time on the surface and tend to faint for hours at a time they tend not to survive more then a month in captive conditions. Some of the the Aborigines call them itjaritjari and they are associated to some extent with the creation of Uluru/Ayers Rock. They were also regarded with sympathy for their helplessness and only eaten durning very hard times. 

Sea Angel

I've been playing with the last fm website. They seem to have a pretty good selection. I've not had the problems that Grace described so far, only a little  Alien Sex Fiend so far, mostly from Corpus Delicti. So far one band I will need to check out Zeraphine it looks to be a few of the members of Dreadful Shadows in a new project. If you are not familiar with Dreadful Shadows and enjoy goth music I recommend them highly.

Art

goal for the week 16hrs

Today

get the stuff picked out for Capricon

inspect and touch up anything that needs it

fill out forms for Capricon

sand 

Animal

photo by Matt Wilson

The sea angel (Clione limacina) is a free swimming sea slug that lives in northern arctic waters. It is the largest of the cliones reaching a maximum length of 5cm. They feed almost exclusively on sea butterflies, thecosomatous, they do this by approaching the sea butterfly then shooting 6 tentacle-like buccal cones from the top of their head. They are mutual hermaphrodites and when they meet will fertilize one another. They then lay their eggs in free floating gelatinous masses. I think the video below does a better job describing the weirdness of this animal then I can.

Japanese video showing the sea angel's feeding behavior

Troodon part 2 Mythology

We had a significant temperature drop last night and club was dead. There were 10 people including Rick and Kristen and their SOs. I hope Stuart wasn't too bored, I danced a little more then usual not being intimidated by the people. We also saw a little bit of a John Carpenter movie about liquid Satan in a Jar I'm not entirely sure what was going on there. Stuart had observed that the movie had physics comparable to the movie "Anaconda"'s grasp on zoology. Oh also mostly for Grace, you may wish to check out "The Merry Thoughts" its creepy how much they sound like the Sisters of Mercy.

art

Goal for the week 15hrs

Today

assemble buffalo pipe

sand boxes

Animal

photo by Cryptonaut

In researching Troodon formosus for my last snippet on the them which you can see here, I discovered that these guys had developed some pretty extensive modern mythology. The mythology mostly relates to the dinosaur men they might, had they not gone extinct, have evolved into, often called "Reptoids". Most of the mythology falls into three camps. There are some cryptozoologists that think dinosaur or reptile men may exist in remote areas such as Scrape Ore swamp, Thetis Lake, and Loveland Ohio where you get some lizardman type monsters. Then there are some ufology sorts that say reptoids evolved on a parallel earth in another dimension and occasionally visit this dimension and interact with grey aliens to some extent as some have seen them during their abductions. Then to elaborate on the ufology sorts there are some conspiracy theorists that think the reptoids can shapeshift and are infiltrating the US and UK goverments.

Striped Eel Catfish

I found out the live 365 station I'd been listening to will stop existing in March if you would like to check them out they can be found here. It is sad. Other then that, I got a registration sticker for my car today. As far as art I have exciting options available to me currently I can sand the 214 (well less now) similar boxes or I can sculpt scales. I may have to throw another project in so I don't lose my mind or stop working. Oh I did forget I'm doing Cryptic ConFusion in late January I put up a post in my other art Journal.

Art

goal for the week 16hrs

Today

sand boxes (I have a lot of boxes)

Animal

photo by Jens Petersen

The striped eel catfish (plotosus lineatus) is a saltwater catfish from the Indo-Pacific. They are the only catfish that regularly lives around reefs and they have a highly venomous serrated spine on their doral and pectoral fins that is occasionally fatal. The brightly striped juveniles then to hang out in large schools of up to 100 individuals in roughly a ball of fish shape.

Here is a good photo of one of the ball shaped schools

Jellyfish Lake - Golden jellyfish

Angel finally got that introduction to Goth music he was looking for with odd results. He liked Voltaire but thought the rest was like "elevator music". I'm not sure what kind of elevators Angel spends his time in. I'm really kind of confused I went a little heavy on the goth rock like Sisters and old Clan of Xymox and it was not arranged particularly well but otherwise it was pretty diverse. Maybe he wanted industrial, although I had just a smattering of that and also just a little EBM. Maybe he wanted gothic metal? I'm just not sure where the elevator music thing came from. I really only had one swoopy Changelings song as far as really slow things. It was not full of Black Tape for a Blue Girl or anything. Maybe I need to find this elevator?

Animal
photo by aSIMULAtor

The golden jellyfish (subspecies of Mastigias papua) is found in Jellyfish lake or Ongeim'l Tketau on the Pacific island of Palau. The site has become very popular with divers as the jellyfish have a mostly harmless sting and can be seen in the thousands. Divers do need to stay near the water's surface though as the bottom of the lake is heavy in poisonous hydrogen sulfide, the jellyfish descend into this hydrogen sulfide layer at night as part of their daily migration. They are a subgroup of the spotted jellyfish that has been isolated in a marine lake for around 12,000-15,000 years ago in this time they have changed a lot. Some of the ways the have changed are; losing the spots of the spotted jellyfish, strengthened their symbiotic relationship with algae, losing their terminal clubs, developing a complex daily migration pattern based on sun position, and having their sting reduced to something that is only really capable of killing very tiny crustaceans. There are nearby lakes (some of which have been isolated for less time) that also have isolated spotted jellyfish that have changed less or in slightly different ways, I've included an image at the bottom that shows some of the other varieties.

Video showing the view of divers in the lake

Different subspecies from the different lakes

Common Genet

Going to visit my family early tomorrow so the post tomorrow will probably be really late. Angel at work asked for an introduction to goth music that was kind of random. I will probably start with some Fields of Nephilim, as I know he likes Johnny Cash.

Art

probably just cleaning and packing today

Animal
The common genet (Genetta genetta) is a civet-like carnivore that ranges from southern Europe through most of Africa. They are nocturnal and solitary, they prey on mostly small birds and mammals. Like cats they can purr and their other vocalizations are some what cat-like. They can also secrete musk when frightened, as well as puff up their fur along their back as a cat. They are not particularly threatened in the wild and are occasionally kept as exotic pets in Asia and North America. They can apparently be litterbox trained.

A video of a common genet and a man watching TV

Baby genet

earless monitor

I was not able to get a hold of the guy about the misfits box, so that will have to wait. I also forgot the local goth night was going on last night until I got home from work, so I lost some work time on that, but had a good time. It has a particularly good set list this time. I'm going to be losing Sunday too, I had failed to consider that.

Art goal 9hrs (given I am losing Sunday)

Today

Work on dragon

Animal

The earless monitor (Lanthanotus borneensis) is an extremely rare lizard from Borneo and the only member of the genus Lanthanotus. It is the last still living link between old world varanid monitor lizards such as the Komodo dragon and venomous new world Helodermatids like the gila monster. There has also been some speculation that they represent a group of lizards that eventually transitioned into snakes, due to their lack of an external ear, transparent lower eyelid (possible precursor to the eye cap), forked tongue, hinged lower jaw, teeth on their palatine and pterygoid bones, their tendency to shed their skin in one piece, and lack of ability to regenerate their tails. Earless monitors spend most of their time burrowing and have also been found under water, they are presumed to eat soft bodied animals like fish. They had at one time been thought to be venomous given their relation to Helodermatids, but that has proven to be false.

Close up of a specimen's head