SQUID TIME!

Giant squid on video! Zomg!

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 02:26:52 -0500

Whoa.. Though I’m pretty excited to see this footage I’m a little scared of what comes next. My peeps have been dodging the camera for hundreds of years and this guy may have just blown it for the whole species cos let’s face it, when humankind gets close to nature, they fuck everything up. We’ve all seen what they do to normal sized squids (calamari, squid beak necklaces, noodles in black ink, takoyaki, etc.) sigh…

rhamphotheca: The Squid and the Whale Smithsonian’s National...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:17:56 -0500

rhamphotheca:

The Squid and the Whale

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History zoologist and giant squid expert, Dr. Clyde Roper, weighs in to debunk some common myths about the giant squid’s most famous predator, the sperm whale:

“Giant squid do not eat sperm whales. They eat small fishes, like orange roughy and hokie, and small squids. Quite the opposite…sperm whales eat giant squid, and many other species of midwater and deep sea squids, some quite small. The sucker rings of the largest giant squid are a maximum of 2” in diameter. Any scars on a whale larger than that are either old scars that have enlarged somewhat as the whale has grown.

The largest giant squid specimens ever recorded were 60 ft total length, back in the 19th Century. I have examined over 100 specimens in museums and on beaches all over the world, and the largest I have ever seen was in the 40-45 foot range. Please note that the two long feeding tentacles make up about 2/3 the total length of a giant squid.”

Smithsonian have just published a children’s book on the giant squid: “Giant Squid: Searching for a Sea Monster”, by Mary M. Cerullo and Clyde F. E. Roper, 2012. The book’s target audience is 10-14 years, but the whole age spectrum can learn something from it.

via the Smithsonian Ocean Portal:

http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life-ecosystems/giant-squid

Squid muffins!!

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 23:57:31 -0400

Squid muffins!!

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Tue, 12 Jun 2012 23:54:07 -0400

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Sun, 10 Jun 2012 02:25:51 -0400

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Sun, 01 Apr 2012 01:33:44 -0400

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Sun, 29 May 2011 01:40:56 -0400

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Sun, 29 May 2011 01:40:25 -0400

on vacation in hawaii!! <3

Sun, 29 May 2011 01:37:43 -0400

on vacation in hawaii!! <3

I finally got a squid tattoo! Over 6 years of being nicknamed...

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:33:54 -0400

I finally got a squid tattoo! Over 6 years of being nicknamed squid and 9 tattoos in, its been a long wait! Tribute to squids and gaming!!

BLOOPER TATTOO <3

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Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:32:02 -0400

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Wed, 16 Feb 2011 05:28:26 -0500

its true

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:54:03 -0500

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:39:50 -0500

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Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:39:27 -0500

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Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:37:04 -0500

encounter with an argonaut

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:38:24 -0500

From afar, she looks like one of those ubiquitous pieces of oceangoing flotsam washed from shore or ship and plying the ocean with indestructible endurance. I paddle towards her, bent on litter collection, only to discover that she is not a styrofoam cup or a plastic sandal but a living creature roaming inside her own home—an argonaut, or paper nautilus, probably of the species Argonauta argo. She is a member of a genus of octopus that long ago abandoned life on the seafloor in favor of roaming the open seas. Unlike her namesake, the chambered nautilus, her delicately coiled shell is not an external skeleton that she is attached to as we are to our fingernails, but a mobile home that she can come and go from like a hermit crab. I have never seen an argonaut alive in the sea before, and with fumbling hands I don mask, snorkel, and fins and slip over the side, dragging the va’a canoe by the float so as not to lose it. She is a timid creature and this may be the only opportunity that ever comes my way to see her in the wild. The thought going through my mind as I waft my fins is that I must approach as softly as a ripple.

It doesn’t matter though. She is engaged in one of those acts of violence that nearly preclude thoughts of personal safety. She is half out her shell, pulsing in bright red and yellow, the colors literally tumbling through her like reflections from flashing police lights. Her colors are so strong they bleed beneath the skin of her paper-thin shell, bruising it. She is administering the coup de grâce to a pteropod, a sea butterfly. Her eight arms are flared open, an umbrella turned inside-out, exposing the parrotlike beak. The pteropod is flapping its transparent wings in hopes of escape but the argonaut is reeling it in on the sucker disks of her arms, biting it, then tucking it under her bell, and rolling herself back into her translucent shell, where the flames of her hunting colors soften to pink.

Quietly now, her big eyes innocently wide, she floats a foot below the surface, arms wrapped over her head, the tips of them tucked daintily into her shell, leaving most of her sucker discs exposed. She observes me from a safe distance, one orange eye watching as she feints towards shore, the other watching as she tacks towards her home in the open sea.

Lithograph of Argonauta nodosa, The Tuberculated Argonaut, or Paper-Nautilus, Argonauta oryzata; Artist: Arthur Bartholomew (1870s). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Could this be that push I’ve needed? That extra...

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 04:03:21 -0500

Could this be that push I’ve needed? That extra inspiration? I’m not sure where you came from or what comes next but I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this before. I want to swim the seas with you…

old punk zine from charlottesville, va

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 04:00:38 -0500

old punk zine from charlottesville, va

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Sun, 07 Nov 2010 03:59:53 -0500