Month: May 2014

Interesting … or Something Like That

DeAzara, Striped Hyena (detail) ca. 1839

Just one of those paragraphs:

The root of all this sexual mythologizing? Well, it turns out that female hyenas have extremely enlarged half-foot-long clitorises that look almost perfectly like penises, complete with what appear to be testicles, which actually are their labia that have folded up and fused. They even get erections. Oh, also, they give birth to a two-pound cub out of the enormous clitoris.

(Simon)

Carry on. Sleep well.

____________________

Simon, Matt. “Fantastically Wrong: The Poor, Misunderstood Hyena Can’t Help That It Has Weird Sex”. Wired. May 28, 2014.

Image credit: Detail of illustration by Felix de Azara, 1839.

A Note to “Responsible Gun Owners” in and Around Mill Creek, Washington

The unhealthiest seed

Let me clear my throat.

You know, when I find your spent bullet in my garden, it would be difficult to imagine how such a thing might please me. Indeed, we think the bullet was fired around 10:30 pm on April 7, but that is based on a memory of a weird sound that was too long after a meteor sighting to be a cosmic rock exploding in the atmosphere. And it didn’t have the right resonance, either. Rather, it sounded, well, like something small striking something hard at high velocity. A pebble on the windshield, only more so. Of course, neither can that noise, which compelled us each to ask the other what had happened, be definitively established as the event. We’re having trouble figuring out where, exactly, the bullet hit the structure. Note the relatively light deformation from impact.

There were no reports of major crime in the area such to land stray rounds about the neighborhood; the nearest gun range is out of range and, at any rate, indoors.

Responsibility, indeed.But among all the rattles and clangs and bangs of traffic and construction in this area, every once in a while there comes a sound something akin to a responsible gun owner celebrating his or her constitutional rights.

To which end I would like to thank all the responsible gun owners in and around Mill Creek, Washington, for this treasured reminder of how they’re all keeping us all safe.

No, really, you do realize, do you not, there is a reason why I laugh whenever I hear the phrase responsible gun owner? You’re all responsible gun owners until one day you aren’t. If it is too much to ask that you keep your (ahem!) “responsibility” to yourself, then maybe you’re not the sort of person who should be allowed to possess or handle firearms.