Thursday, August 29, 2013

Carcharocles megalodon

Meant to transfer this from FB weeks ago...

Megalodon fake documentary: How an extinct monster shark became the next Bigfoot


"The 70-foot shark is not only the stuff of legends, the two-hour special offers, it still lurks and hunts, making its presence known only occasionally. And it still exists.
Perhaps. At the least, nobody can prove otherwise.
On Tuesday the Discovery Channel dived into the brewing controversy of fact versus fiction that has surrounded the "Megalodon" fake documentary since it aired Sunday night as the kick-off to the network's popular Shark Week."
People are apparently all up in arms about this (including my sister, who alerted me to the debate). Something that wasn't completely true was aired on TV! Heaven forbid!! But was this really a fake documentary? The Blair Witch Project is a fake documentary. This special was more like a real documentary on people who study something that doesn't really exist. Like a Bigfoot documentary, only apparently the general populace is clever enough to realize that the Abominable Snowman doesn't exist... some people are dumb enough to believe Sasquatch (Sasquatches?) are running rampant around north america probably influenced by shows such as Finding Bigfoot, but that's their own fault, right? Shouldn't it be the same case with Megalodon? (Heck, the History Channel has a whole series called Ancient Aliens. The History Channel. I mean, wth!!) Megalodon (the show, not the organism... the organism probably wouldn't be much for talking, even if there were still living specimens) even admit they never proved anything.

I think the real issue here is that people are poorly trained in using their own background knowledge to make judgments and just listen to what people on television tell them. This is all the more amplified by the fact that the ocean really is a large, mysterious place, so people are more willing to believe extraordinary things about it. But I'm here to tell you; don't just reply on what TV tells you! Don't just take the word of floating heads with pretty faces and seductive voices! Use common sense, and logic, and maybe even a little of the basic science you learned waaaay back in school.

And if that fails, Wikipedia.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Irony

Isn't it ironic?


...that the parents of toddler pageant contestants are generally poorly dressed and unattractive

...that in college you learn how to answer questions but in grad school you learn how to ask them

...that reality tv stars now have just as much cosmetic surgery as actors

...when everyone complains about gas prices but speed and tailgate on the highway regardless

...how people cry for social change but are still callous towards people they see every day

...that people will ridicule others for mean posts on Yahoo! answers but won't stop two teenagers from ganging up on another in the mall

...that in a world where freedom of religion is rallied for but actual practice of religion is socially ridiculed

...that everyone agrees others would benefit from therapy but no one thinks they should go themselves

...how people are so upset by the thought of the government spying on them but unconcerned about private corporations collecting personal information about them

...that people will drink hundreds of calories worth of alcohol but forego the cake because they're "trying to lose weight"


Eat the damn cake, people.

Traditional Anniversary Gifts


Traditional Anniversary Gifts
















Please click for larger view

Special considerations:
+ This list only refers to anniversaries, which are in addition to presents which should be exchanged for birthdays, Christmas, etc

+ Breakups done after one month done through email or via text message may apply the gift due to the following anniversary milestone

+ Partings due to cheating entitle the cheated party to call the police every time the cheater hosts a party for the next 12 months

+ Terminating a relationship without giving any type of reason or while intoxicated allows the former partner to refer to you as "that crazy asshole" for the rest of their known existence

The author does not advise anyone to actually follow this list and takes absolutely no responsibility if you carry through on her excellent ideas.


Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Labels

The other day, I met a fellow sane person in an insane world.

It was on a date, a very good date, and not just because we went to a museum of natural history :)

The two of us were swapping dating stories, not any of the really bad ones, mostly just generally amusing anecdotes, like the guy who gave me a multiple choice survey. I ended summing up by saying that I feel that most men my age just don't know what they want, which surprised the guy I was with. I tried to explain, saying how it had happened to me twice that things had been going pretty well with a guy for a few weeks, that they had said things were going well, and then after not talking for a few days, they called it off, saying that things "weren't working out".

This is a baffling and hurtful way to be broken up with. It causes feelings of insecurity and periods of dwelling on what you must have done wrong. You feel like a leper. You have to fight the belief that you must have some terrible flaw unbeknownst to you, such as rancid breath or the fact that your face looks exactly like Jack Nicholson in certain light. Dating is very similar to interviewing for jobs. In both situations you want to be able to say, confidently, that things ended on good terms but you're looking for something different. In both situations a red flag probably goes up when the interviewee says, "I don't know why it ended, but I got booted."

So, going back to the conversation I had been having on the date, I was a little apprehensive admitting this. My companion, however, impressed me with what he said.
"That sounds like a problem with them, not with you. If they said that everything was fine, and nothing changed, then they just started thinking differently."

Hooray!!! You don't know how precious such an thoughtful response is in the vapid world of dating. His response was what I believed to be true, but in the end was only what I hoped others would believe as well. I no longer felt like a leper. Even if others might be suspicious of my breath, this man right here was also sane. It was a liberating and comforting experience. I think it also speaks to the wisdom and maturity of my companion, as males (in my experience) tend to be somewhat rodent-like in their tendency to be skittish and suspicious (and having food and reproduction constantly on the mind). He earns my admiration and appreciation for being logical, observant, and honest.

Natural born hunters

Elee:
ewwwwww 
HOUSE CENTIPEDES ARE SO SCARY 
its like 4 spiders in one insect 
Me:
worse 
spiders aren't that fast 
and the ones i killed like exploded and their gross legs blew off and were twitching on their own 
I HATE THEM
Elee: 
 gag

Me: 
 again, Rosie cat: useless

Elee: 
same with Abby! 
but if there's a harmless tiny moth, its like, clear your calendar 
Me: 
 OMG. I was JUST going to say that
On the same night as the last centipede, 
I was freaking out and proud at the same time cause I thought she had another one 
but no 
a tiny, tiny moth
probably a dwarf baby moth

Elee:
 "Mom, LOOK! LOOK WHAT I GOT!"

Me:  Exactly.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Short People Magazine: Shark Week Special

This week SPM joins thousands of adults and pre-teens staying up past their bedtimes in celebrating Discovery channel's shark marathon. Contrary to current programming, the big D was making sixty minute "documentaries" centered around a mere forty seconds of actual footage of the topic in the early '90s* (of course, the reigning champion is still the History Channel, which, after producers grew bored of historians' voice-overs while showing clips of colonial-era paintings, began airing crackpots' voice-overs while showing clips of artists' renderings of alien beings). The D channel kicked off this year with "Is Megalodon Still Alive?", a special wherein actual people pretending to be skilled scientists dipped each other into dark oceans filled with everyone's favorite bloodthirsty marine vertebrates (sharks), with the objective hypothesis of finding any shred of proof for the existence of the ancient over-sized predator, Megalodon. Citing proof such as "recently discovered" Nazi photographs, from an unidentified source, showing a large dorsal fin (actual science factoid: "dorsal" is science-speak for "back") and a beached whale with a severed tail (actual science factoid: we did not intend for that to rhyme), D-covery claims that the Megalodon is to blame for a recent boat capsize in South Africa. Jawbones of this gargantuan fish have been unearthed, but since they were found in soils dated back millions of years, scientists concluded that the Megalodon was an ancient animal.

D'channel, and many fans, beg to differ. An imaginary survey of 100 people in New York City's Times Square found an overwhelming majority of positive answers when posed the question "Megalodon: Fact or Friction?"

"Yes," replies native New Yorker Sally Bastille-Buttocks. "The oceans very big." Others see the Megalodon debate in a political light, accusing the United States government of covering up Megalodon sightings by the navy to bury evidence of global warming. Harrison Dolittle reports, "The government knows that this monster is real, and is a sign of things to come. They don't want us to know about it because it's in their agenda! The politicians don't want to help the average middle class working man." (Dolittle also notes that the government is hiding a natural cure for cancer while pushing a petroleum-based treatment; you can read more about it at his blog, ImAFingNutbag@bloggersport.com)

Discoverer's special ended with (SPOILER ALERT!) (THAT MEANS WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT HOW IT ENDS!) (NOT THAT IT MATTERS!) the "researchers" (not a single PhD among them) acquiring a jumbled recording of dark undersea footage (evidently they're not all that talented with cinematography, either). They did manage to shoot a tracking device, however, and watched it "dive" to a depth of 6,000+ feet, an unexpected drop for their objective. They took this as evidence for the Megalodon's extraordinary ability to swim down to depths with gut-crushing pressures. Others are still skeptical. "I think it sank," says Coach Z, the janitor on the explorer's vessel. (Of course, Z probably harbors resentment at his directors' record-breaking achievements.) Then again, as an anonymous PhD Candidate points out, "None of these people have published a single scientific paper, nor do they have any training. I'm not sure they know what they're doing."

Perhaps, perhaps not, but Twitter trends don't lie, and Shark Week is anticipated to dominate the social media this week. And THAT is a fact.



*Please note that 90s does not have an apostrophe, as it is not indicating possession.