A snap of me exiting a hotel room in Indonesia. Frodo, Pippin, and Sam Gamgee will be over for tea presently.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Cucumber Love
Sea cucumbers are strange enough when they sit on the ocean floor, doing normal sea cucumber things. The sea cucumber family is a diverse one, with wide variation in color, pattern, texture, size, degree of firmness, and what I think of as slime factor, a personal numerical rating system that frequently proves useful when dealing with underwater creatures. Some sea cucumber traits are universal, though: long, sluggish, poop-shaped bodies slowly undulate along the sand, slurping up algae covered detritus and reforming the detritus into long strands of pearl necklace-like poo that winds along the bottom. Weird.
There is a species of sea cucumber here that is one I have not seen elsewhere. This guy has a mottled cream and brown body with large dark leopard spots. He also has pointy white spikes that stick up at regular intervals. They look dangerous, but are actually just as soft as the rest of his body. A member of the cucumber genus commonly called the lion’s paw, he sports a series of short, dark, feelers that protrude slightly from the underside of his ‘head’ when he locomotes and feeds. Looks like a whole row of little feather dusters waving around underneath the front part of his body. Big guy, maybe two feet long, fully extended. He’s a common sight on the wrecks.
Here’s the decidedly uncommon part. I was ending a dive today on a wreck that is settled on its side, just cruising along the high side of the hull on my way back to the Odyssey. Next thing I know I’m the Muad Dib surrounded by spice worms, except they are only two feet long, and I’ve never even been to Arakis. (Frank Herbert is rolling over in his grave right now, and not just because of how thoroughly disappointing all the sequels to Dune were.) But seriously, that’s what it looked like. Materializing in front of me in the murky water are seven or eight of these sea cucumbers, all but the last six inches of their cylindrical bodies held erect, vertical from the wreck, swaying slowly to some unheard echinoderm tune. It looks like they all just decided to skip several rungs on the evolutionary chain and walk upright. Or at least dance around a bit.
When I carefully moved amongst them, I noticed that they were all giving off a milky white fluid from a pore on the backs of their heads, and it was then that I realized with a combination of horror, amusement, and maybe just a little bit of titillation (hey, I live on a boat in the middle of nowhere), that I had stumbled into the middle of a full blown group groping gamete gooing echinoderm orgy. I try not to think about the embryonic larval spawn fry hatchling krill spore supersaturated sexually active stew in which I work, yet here I was in the middle of it all, front row seat to the love fiesta taking place amongst these striving, earnest creatures. Even as I watched, two more cucumbers quite literally reared their ugly heads and joined the party, broadcast spawning for all they were worth. How much more simple would life be for humans if the entire act of courtship, relationship, and mating consisted of walking into a bar, spewing gametes all over the place, and leaving? How much more complex? Something to ponder as I bumped air into my buoyancy compensator and slowly ascended away from the undulating cucumbers and their fertile love cloud. They were still going strong when I lost sight of them, and good for them, I say.
Squeaky Wheel
On my flight from Jakarta to Singapore, I was unwilling witness to an act so heinous and misconceived that it boggled my mind. I shake with rage as I write this, flashing back to the incident. As soon as the seat belt light was off, the stewardesses (flight attendants? air hostesses? sadistic villains?) began moving purposefully around the cabin. Their first act, before the normal drinks, meals, pillows, or reading material, routine was to pass out plastic bags of squeezable squeaky toys to every child on the plane old enough to grasp the proffered parcel with a chubby fist. I am going to give you a minute to digest that one. No, really, take another second. Squeaky toys. Children. Airplane. It was like watching someone pass out copies of The Bell Curve to a plane-load of right wing talk radio hosts.
So wrong, on so many levels, that I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just wade in and start flailing. First, the packaging. You can’t find a plastic bag anymore that doesn’t have a choking hazard, this bag is not a toy warning printed on it, and here they are passing them out to children. Each bag is sealed by a folded piece of cardboard secured to the plastic with ummm…two metal staples? Here ya go, kiddies. Hey, if you are having trouble getting it open, just use your teeth, okay? Not that some of the toddlers receiving the bags were old enough to even have teeth, mind you.
As to the toys themselves, and I say toys because there were more than one in each bag; yeah, two squeaky toys per bag, one for each under-aged fist to ensure stereo irritation from every child. Anyways, what’s the first place these toys are going to go, assuming the kids aren’t already choking on the plastic bag or the staples? Into their pieholes, of course. I’m all about exposing kids to germs to encourage a healthy immune system, but I guarantee that whatever filthy sweatshop these toys, made of snacklicious low grade petrochemical ingredients, came out of did not have children’s health in mind during production, packaging, and shipping.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m no crusader for child safety and probably wouldn’t flinch if the stews were passing out sleeping pills, bourbon bottles with rubber nipples affixed, or rolls of duct tape for the kids. I must know, though, what criminally shortsighted corporate buffoon seeking in-flight entertainment solutions for the younger crowd hit the send key on the shipping order for SQEAKY TOYS? Please note a characteristic lack of capitalization, underlining, and italics in past entries and understand that if I were relating this story in person, I would be screaming the above words. Whoever made the decision to take the annoyance public at the ‘approve the distribution of noisemakers to children at the beginning of a two hour flight’ policy meeting must be willfully malicious, deaf, a direct descendant of Torquemada, or, at the very least, terminally myopic.
Somehow these toys made their way down the pipeline, though, the orders passing across the desks and the toys passing through the shipping channels of a whole army of people who didn’t give a second thought to the end result. Eventually boxes of squeaky toys made their way aboard planes and into the hands of stewardesses, the people responsible for not only your comfort during the flight, but your safety and, in the case of emergency, even your life. Bad omen if they lack the judgment to realize that handing out irritants to kids is the wrong call. Who’s to know if the sky hostesses make the conscious, sane choice not distribute the noisemakers? They have plenty enough autonomy to simply not pass them out, right? I doubt there is some sort of sophisticated distribution monitoring system. Warehouse guy: “Hey, you need another case of squeaky toys?” Head stewardess: “No thanks, all good here. Not many kids aboard lately.” Simple. But no, smiles all around and here you go, junior, something to annoy us all with for the duration of the flight. You can’t tell me that even the most jaded, inured, stoic flight attendant can tune out a ruckus that sounds like ten litters of puppies set loose in the toy section of the pet store. What’s next, handfuls of Flinstones shapes amphetamines to ensure that the brat behind you will be kicking the back of your seat for the duration of the flight?
As a last resort, we can surely depend on those directly responsible for the children’s safety and public behavior, right? Thank goodness for the good judgment of parents, gatekeepers and guardians of not only their offspring but those who their offspring’s behavior may impact. Right? If my flight is any indicator of the present state of parenting, our future generations are doomed. I always considered parents who bought their children toys with loud sirens, speakers, cymbals, and bells to be masochistic, but it’s their choice to turn their own homes into aural chaos and call it cute. Keep it at home. If someone was cruising the aisles passing out whiskey and fireworks, you wouldn’t let your kid have them, would you? So why noisemakers? Why? Parents of the world unite under a flag of decency, common sense, or, at the very least, respect for the sanity of those exposed to your children’s antics. Squeaky toys for my toddler on a trans-oceanic flight crowded with innocent strangers? No thank you, stewardess. So easy, so logical, so obvious.
Ever get into a situation where a lifetime of moral habituation and pack behavior tendencies prevents you from committing an act that, stripped of its sociopathic underpinnings, makes a lot of sense? If so, then you will understand the vivid technicolor detail of my whole flight-worth of fancy visualizing a hunt for everyone responsible for the manufacture, sales, purchase, distribution, storage, and dispersal of cheap squeaky toys on airplanes .
So wrong, on so many levels, that I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just wade in and start flailing. First, the packaging. You can’t find a plastic bag anymore that doesn’t have a choking hazard, this bag is not a toy warning printed on it, and here they are passing them out to children. Each bag is sealed by a folded piece of cardboard secured to the plastic with ummm…two metal staples? Here ya go, kiddies. Hey, if you are having trouble getting it open, just use your teeth, okay? Not that some of the toddlers receiving the bags were old enough to even have teeth, mind you.
As to the toys themselves, and I say toys because there were more than one in each bag; yeah, two squeaky toys per bag, one for each under-aged fist to ensure stereo irritation from every child. Anyways, what’s the first place these toys are going to go, assuming the kids aren’t already choking on the plastic bag or the staples? Into their pieholes, of course. I’m all about exposing kids to germs to encourage a healthy immune system, but I guarantee that whatever filthy sweatshop these toys, made of snacklicious low grade petrochemical ingredients, came out of did not have children’s health in mind during production, packaging, and shipping.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m no crusader for child safety and probably wouldn’t flinch if the stews were passing out sleeping pills, bourbon bottles with rubber nipples affixed, or rolls of duct tape for the kids. I must know, though, what criminally shortsighted corporate buffoon seeking in-flight entertainment solutions for the younger crowd hit the send key on the shipping order for SQEAKY TOYS? Please note a characteristic lack of capitalization, underlining, and italics in past entries and understand that if I were relating this story in person, I would be screaming the above words. Whoever made the decision to take the annoyance public at the ‘approve the distribution of noisemakers to children at the beginning of a two hour flight’ policy meeting must be willfully malicious, deaf, a direct descendant of Torquemada, or, at the very least, terminally myopic.
Somehow these toys made their way down the pipeline, though, the orders passing across the desks and the toys passing through the shipping channels of a whole army of people who didn’t give a second thought to the end result. Eventually boxes of squeaky toys made their way aboard planes and into the hands of stewardesses, the people responsible for not only your comfort during the flight, but your safety and, in the case of emergency, even your life. Bad omen if they lack the judgment to realize that handing out irritants to kids is the wrong call. Who’s to know if the sky hostesses make the conscious, sane choice not distribute the noisemakers? They have plenty enough autonomy to simply not pass them out, right? I doubt there is some sort of sophisticated distribution monitoring system. Warehouse guy: “Hey, you need another case of squeaky toys?” Head stewardess: “No thanks, all good here. Not many kids aboard lately.” Simple. But no, smiles all around and here you go, junior, something to annoy us all with for the duration of the flight. You can’t tell me that even the most jaded, inured, stoic flight attendant can tune out a ruckus that sounds like ten litters of puppies set loose in the toy section of the pet store. What’s next, handfuls of Flinstones shapes amphetamines to ensure that the brat behind you will be kicking the back of your seat for the duration of the flight?
As a last resort, we can surely depend on those directly responsible for the children’s safety and public behavior, right? Thank goodness for the good judgment of parents, gatekeepers and guardians of not only their offspring but those who their offspring’s behavior may impact. Right? If my flight is any indicator of the present state of parenting, our future generations are doomed. I always considered parents who bought their children toys with loud sirens, speakers, cymbals, and bells to be masochistic, but it’s their choice to turn their own homes into aural chaos and call it cute. Keep it at home. If someone was cruising the aisles passing out whiskey and fireworks, you wouldn’t let your kid have them, would you? So why noisemakers? Why? Parents of the world unite under a flag of decency, common sense, or, at the very least, respect for the sanity of those exposed to your children’s antics. Squeaky toys for my toddler on a trans-oceanic flight crowded with innocent strangers? No thank you, stewardess. So easy, so logical, so obvious.
Ever get into a situation where a lifetime of moral habituation and pack behavior tendencies prevents you from committing an act that, stripped of its sociopathic underpinnings, makes a lot of sense? If so, then you will understand the vivid technicolor detail of my whole flight-worth of fancy visualizing a hunt for everyone responsible for the manufacture, sales, purchase, distribution, storage, and dispersal of cheap squeaky toys on airplanes .
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