Quantum Decision

ilovepandabears:

and everyone thinks that whore is a fucking genius

When you’re on Tumblr and you see someone post something that is obviously something they saw on Reddit. And everyone thinks that whore is a fucking genius.

Just sayin.

This is why I love mastiffs. The bigger and wrinklier they are, the nicer and cuddlier they seem to be.

I hate when I visit facebook to rsvp for a party, and I don’t realize chat is on… and then ten people I don’t want to talk to barrage me with WORDS and I’m too polite to just close the window. >_<

Shark Week starts July 31st this year- and what better way to celebrate than to watch a different Michael Fassbender film each day?

Click Read More to see my proposed film list!

Read More →

Sometimes I catch people by surprise with my high pain tolerance. Whether I’ve broken a bone and not realized it, or cut my finger open to the bone, or sliced a chunk of leg off while shaving, I’ve learned to shake it off.

THERE IS A METHOD TO MY MADNESS. I thought I would share it with you today, in honor of hooking myself through the back of my knuckle while fishing and proceeding to forget about it until now.

Here’s how I do it:

You are in pain. Zone out, and look in, if that makes sense. Imagine you are looking inside your body, as if your nerves are roads and you’re in a car on them. Move to the source of the pain, recognize it, and stare at it. Give it the evilest glare you can, and tell it “I know exactly what and where you are. Stop hurting right now.” Focus on the pain, as if you’re mentally drawing a circle around it to contain it.

When I do it, the pain numbs, either partially or completely, allowing me to forget about it and do other things. It’s a sort of will-power placebo effect. Or maybe it makes you realize that it really doesn’t hurt as much as your over-exaggerating brain wants you to think it does.

I have no clue if it will work for you.

I caught three small catfish. My dad caught about ten small catfish, and almost pulled in the mother of all catfish before it broke his hook in half with its immense weight and got away. Also, there were fish-that-weren’t-catfish flopping at the water’s surface EVERYWHERE. And yet, we didn’t catch anything but catfish.

Didn’t see any mantises, but there were lots of dragonflies, damselflies, and diurnal moths. Didn’t catch any; was too lazy to bother and I had a line in the water anyway. There was also a blue heron fishing near us, and what may have been a clumsy deer crashing through the brush of a small peninsula in the reservoir.

Go Jeremy Wade on their asses!

I’ll try! I’m not good at fishing though. I only catch sunfish and turtles. And trees.

Occasionally myself.

I’m going fishing with the padre tomorrow. With any luck, I’ll catch myself the biggest baddest bass you’ve ever seen. Of course, I’ll settle for a four inch bluegill, since that’s my normal catch.

With even more luck, I’ll get my hands on some praying mantises for my collection. There simply don’t seem to be any near my house, and I need two- an adult and a nymph. I must search elsewhere… I have to admit, though, I’m this close to ordering an ootheca (egg case) online and hatching my own (and selling the extras to classmates).

I’LL GET YOU MY PRETTIES

And the moment right after when I wonder why ANYONE is following me.

Oh, you guys. I’ll never know why you follow me, but it makes me giddy that you do.

I actually caught some stuff this time. I managed to get my net over a few large brown moths (I’ll try to identify them when I put them in a different container tomorrow) and a small yellow one. Also captured were a mosquito (I ninja’d it into a container right as it tried to land on my arm) and a fabulously streamlined looking male wolf spider (genus Pardosa?).

I also took some photos of the orb-weavers living above the porch. Here’s my favorite: a shot of the fat (presumably) female spider.

Even though they’re both spiders, you can see the huge difference in body type between this orb-weaver and the wolf spider above in a glance. The wolf spider doesn’t make a web; instead, he wanders the land actively hunting unsuspecting prey. He has excellent vision, and a sleek, powerful body. The orb-weaver, however, relies on a web to catch prey. Each night, she eats her web (in part or in whole, depending on the species) and rebuilds it, and then simply sits on it and feels the silk with her legs in order to sense prey that gets stuck. Unlike the wolf spider, she has poor vision- she doesn’t rely on it to find food. Truly fascinating.

I looked in in the dead chick again tonight. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act may bar me from collecting it, but there’s no law against observing its decomposition. And who knows- in a few months I may happen across a “house sparrow” skeleton below my bushes. Fancy that.

You can just barely see the chick in the center of the photo, well camouflaged on the mud and dead plant matter. That grainy looking mass below it and between those two leaves are actually maggots. At the rate they’re breaking this chick down, it might be bare boned within a couple weeks. I also saw ants in the mix, though, which means there might be no chick at all by then. Ants are great for cleaning up dead flesh, but they also have a tendency to wander off with whole limbs and bodies of smaller creatures.

In the United States, almost every single wild bird native to this country is illegal to kill. Not only that, it’s illegal to salvage their corpses, or even pick up their feathers or eggshells.

Why is this, you ask? Back in the day, birds were killed off in the millions for fashion. Everybody wanted that feather in their cap. Problem is, that feather is often one of a few decorative feathers on an individual bird.

This led to the extinction of New Zealand’s huia and the endangerment of many other species of bird. The US government took action by passing the Migratory Bird Act in 1918. The reason it was made illegal to own parts of the listed birds was due to the reason people wanted them- for fashion. A person could easily lie and say they found the bird dead, when they really killed it for its feathers. Likewise, people purchasing feathers from poachers would be supporting their endeavors. Therefore, even owning the feathers was prohibited.

Time passed, and today, the feathers of non-domestic birds are rarely seen in fashion (not counting antique pieces still in use). In fact, I don’t see feathers in much fashion at all. When they are, the feathers are those of farmed chickens, turkeys, or ostriches. And yet, the law persists- it is still illegal to pick up any part of a bird on the MBTA list. So when you’re walking through a park and pick a blue jay feather off the ground, you’re instantly a criminal. Bad news for people like me, who like to collect bones, fur, and- you guessed it- feathers. Also bad because I can’t legally salvage the body of that dead chipping sparrow chick I mentioned a few posts ago in order to preserve its skeleton. Instead, I’ll have to let it rot away, when it could be cleaned and used as an educational tool.

It’s worth mentioning that there are permits that let select people collect listed birds. However, it’s a federal permit, and the officials in charge are extremely reluctant to hand them out even to scientists with legitimate reasons for obtaining one.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if the law is still necessary, or if it can be amended without incident. Most people would prefer not to harm living birds, instead just longing to hang onto that beautiful feather they found, content to be so close to something that once belonged to a quite majestic creature.

dude you’re like pro at finding wildlife drama. :D Where do you live?

Nah, I just know when and where to look to find the critters around my house and yard- as I should, since I spent the last fifteen years living here. Were it anywhere else, I’d be totally clueless where to look for wildlife drama.

I live in rural Illinois. :P

I was prowling around tonight outside trying to catch some moths for my collection. Unfortunately, it seems the heavy rains have kept them grounded and sluggish, since I only saw one (and failed to catch it). I did, however, happen upon three more fat little orb-weavers just below the roof’s edge on our porch, busily eating and rebuilding their webs (a nightly affair for these spiders). From what I could tell, at least two of them were Gray Cross Spiders like the one I added to my collection a few days ago- the third was too high up for me to be able to tell in the dark. One of them was also gigantic, presumably female. They had all built their webs in a neat row. I can’t recall ever having so many of this species around the house before. Perhaps a female’s egg sac hatched nearby and all of these Gray Crosses were sibling spiderlings that floated in on a string of silk in the breeze.

I also made a less happy find, tonight. This year, a pair of Chipping Sparrows decided to nest in our evergreen bushes- the first time anything but a robin, starling, or grackle have nested in our yard.

Earlier today, I spotted one of the parents in a tree in front of our house and called it lower with some spishing.

Then I checked on the nest from a peephole in the side of the bush. Yesterday there were two chicks in the nest, and when I checked earlier today, there was only one.

Tonight though, both were out of the nest- and I spotted the tiny corpse of one just below the bush the nest was in. I suspect these are first time parents; the nest was way too tiny for even one chick and a parent, let alone two. I think the chicks fell out and froze in the cold rain. I’ve yet to find a second dead chick, but I might come across it tomorrow. I intend to go back out when the sun is up to get some photos of my orb-weavers near the nest, and perhaps try and find some mantises around the yard.

It also occurs to me that google is a two-way thing, and that I’m supaslim everywhere. Those ex-friends could google me for the same reasons I google them and see this post and the last, and know what a really petty self-deprecating loser I can be sometimes (generally when I’m on my period).

It’s probably nothing they don’t already know, though, so whatever. They’re ex-friends because we both fucked up, not just them.

I hate that artist friends I had growing up are more successful than me today. I hate it. Especially because of how I parted with some of them. It wasn’t pretty. Phrases such as “never contact me again” were used, and usually came from me. Am I sorry for that? No. My life became largely drama free. But do I despise that they’re infinitely happier and more successful in the art industry than me now? Absolutely.

What I hate most, though, is how petty that makes me. What makes it worse is that I tend to feel that my art is better- not because we parted on bad terms, but because I simply see a noticeable skill difference and I can’t understand why I’m sitting here desperately trying to sell my art to anyone, but they’re doing alright with lower quality work.

Am I alone in thinking this kind of thing? Or does every artist have that ex-friend who is getting on in life better than them?

The first in my bug collection, a lovely (female?) Gray Cross orb-weaver.

Leaving it in the Kill Bottle overnight worked splendidly. Now I can only hope it will still be perfect when it gets moved to its permanent home in the fall.

I still feel like Hitler.

I just found out that I have to make a spider and insect collection for my Entomology course next semester, and that I should probably start during the summer in case I don’t have time during the semester or I can’t find some of the required species.

Well, I found this orb-weaver spider on my garage door today, and I need it for my collection. The way you collect spiders is you make a Kill Bottle- a sealable bottle or jar with cotton balls saturated with ethanol or rubbing alcohol- and put the spider inside. You leave it there for about half an hour while it slowly gets drunk and peacefully dies, and then you take it out and dump it into a second bottle filled with a mixture of ethanol/rubbing alcohol and water to preserve it.

The Kill Bottle, properly labeled. It seemed like a bad idea NOT to label it, really. Suppose I forgot what it was?

AND YES I PLAY PS3 AVIDLY. If you’re on the Network and play Borderlands, please do let me know. I need teammates who aren’t n00bish 11 year old boys.

And this is the preservation bottle. It used to be a paint thinner bottle but I’m poor and had to repurpose it. It’s sitting on my field notessssss

Well, I put my fat little orb-weaver in the Kill Bottle and left it for half an hour while I putted around the internet. Then I opened the jar, poked my spider with a pencil to make sure it was dead. It didn’t move. So I took it to my makeshift lab on the bathroom counter, prepared my storage bottle, and pulled the cotton swab (with spider on) out and put it down. Still no motion. Then I held the cotton swab over the storage bottle, poked my spider to make it fall in-

AND IT STARTED FLAILING LIKE A MOFO. IT WASN’T DEAD AND I ALMOST DROWNED IT IN SPIRITS. I ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK.

And now it’s back in the kill bottle, where I’m leaving it overnight, damn it. If that doesn’t kill it, I’ll release SuperSpider back into the wild where it clearly belongs.

Sorry for the near-oopsy, Monster Spider. I wanted to kill you in a drunk stupor, not DROWN you in one.

Was better than the film reviews say it is. Give it a chance. If nothing else, you can oggle Mr. Reynolds for a couple hours. :3

I will let you know how awesome it is.

And how lovely Ryan Reynolds is.

Thank you for making me smile. I really needed it.