Thursday, July 16th, 2009
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11:45 am - moar toast
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Thursday, June 4th, 2009
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11:26 pm - brilliant!
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There's a guy who designs and makes fancy belts, with themes like Old West Zombies Vs. Gunslingers (including zombie horses), and also Dinosaurs Making Toast, which is like a look into the landscape of my mind!
("larger photo" doesn't really work on either of those pages, but the 360 view does.)
Also I am in Utah, which it turns out is pretty super!
current mood: oh man sakes alive
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Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
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1:14 am - good gosh it's a meme
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"If you saw me in the back of a police car, what would you think I'd been arrested for?"
Oh man I don't need to ask, since I'm pretty sure that some day law enforcement will come knocking on the door and then have no botanical knowledge or sense of humor.
DEA: What are all these things growing under tiered lights in your closet?
TK: Carnivorous plants, mostly.
DEA: Are they psychoactive?
TK: No. Well, maybe yes if you're an insect.
DEA: Aha!
****You have been arrested!****
current music: every day is illegal day
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Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
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7:02 am - tadaima
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I'm back from my road trip, which was excellent and full of novel animals and has slaked my wanderlust for the time being. I took off again the day I got back and am now in New England for the first time, or else I would be subjecting you to photos of Death Valley. Today it is supposed to reach the balmy height of 65, so if my ride ever wakes up I think I'll go to Providence and view zoo animals and some of the places that Lovecraft loved so dearly, and then probably spend most of the rest of the week eating maple sugar and attending various science museums.
I tend to remember northeastern locations as either The Capitol or A Small State Over There, so I'm actually not sure*, but aren't a bunch of you from out here? What are some neat things around here that you like?
*Seriously-- I only realized a couple of weeks ago that it would indeed make sense for MIT to be in Boston, and then only because alumni started giving me public transit tips. That was also when I found out what state Harvard and Nantucket are from. Turns out Nantucket is an island; who knew!
current mood: alas, Six Flags is closed
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Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
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11:16 pm - road trip wooooo
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I will soon be embarking on the first instance of my new serieses Don't Take the US For Granted / The Devil Has a Lot of Stuff World Tour. I'll be using fall's meagre 11 hours of daylight to the fullest and heading through most or all of:
Yosemite NP (road still open and no sign of snow)
Mono Lake
Bodie, California's official state gold rush ghost town
Mammoth Lakes
Devil's Postpile National Monument
the White Mountains
Death Valley NP (featuring Devil's Cornfield and Devil's Golf Course)
Rhyolite (ghost town)
Las Vegas
Valley of Fire SP
Mojave SP
Calico, California's official state silver rush ghost town (this actually looks fake and stupid, but is sort of irresistible as a Halloween camping option)
Kern NWR
Fresno
Chowchilla, where they may or may not still have ostrich chariot races
I haven't even seen photos of most of those, so it'll be super-fun to find out what they're like. If any of you have been to those places and have fond memories or firm unrecommendations, I'd like to hear about it!
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Thursday, September 25th, 2008
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11:34 am - guess what!
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For my birthday I got:
1. so very many books
2. A FLAMETHROWER
(Well, more like Junior's First Flamethrower, but whatever)
I predict that soon there will be blacksmithing and weeding, everything non-flammable will be sterile, and "burninate" will come up in conversation a lot more.
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Monday, August 18th, 2008
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10:38 pm - Live at The Schoolhouse
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A surprise visit from my parents this evening eventually resulted in the premier performance of the all-Kunkar wonder band. They'd been curious about Rock Band for a long time, and after various demos were easily persuaded to pick up plastic instruments and jam. My dad played bass and my mom joined us on vocals for some Blondie and Boston. Then we played every song written before 1980 while I had reverse deja-vu visions of a future with my descendants semi-patiently explaining how no, I need to wait for the pentametric fan to flammulate before psy-actuating the dingle arm. Apart from taking forever to understand score multipliers, my parents were kind of astonishingly proficient. Dad got 88-96% on everything on Easy, which is pretty great for someone who hasn't touched a video game since 1992.
current music: Santa Monica ain't gonna deplenerate itself
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Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
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4:53 pm - PSA
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Just so you know, Cold Stone jellybeans are quite firmly not delicious. They taste like a more chemicaly version of how old scratch-n-sniff smells, and ought to be sampled whilst near a basin.
current mood: forearmed
current music: ack ptooey
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Saturday, July 12th, 2008
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4:26 pm - follow-up with quantification
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This site for downloading supposedly adult-inaudible ringtones has a bunch of samples at different frequencies that you can attempt to listen to. 17.4 kHz is easy, and I can barely make out 18 kHz if I tilt my head just right.
That site says their original teen-repelling noise is 17.4 kHz, but I think the crickety sample in my previous entry was made by different people and at more than one frequency.
current mood: .org?
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Friday, July 11th, 2008
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11:09 am - secret senses, human edition
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Via Tinymammoth I have learned that kids can hear high-pitched sounds inaudible to adults, a fact that in recent years has been utilized to play annoying teenager-repelling noises in bus shelters and malls and other places where loitering might occur. Which was quickly followed by ingenious teens sampling the sound and using it as a teacher-undetectable ringtone for exchanging secret messages in class.
I'm glad I'm not in high school and living in a place where any of that occurs, because then I would be forced to seek out and destroy mall speakers and classmates for making me listen to infernal ultrasonic chirruping all the damn time.
I can hear the sound quite well, and I'm really curious how many other non-teenagers can. You can listen to a sample here (there are some crowd sounds mixed in), and the short article where I got that link is here. Please tell me your results!
[The sound is easily blocked by loosely putting my fingers in my ears, which doesn't have much impact on other ambient sounds, so if I were a mall-loiterer I'd wear headphones and loiter extra-hard out of spite.]
current music: chirrup chirrup chirrup chirrup
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Monday, June 2nd, 2008
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11:35 pm - +1 scrub jay
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I am extremely pleased that I know people who, upon being greeted with "I found a dead bird on the way here! Can I stash it in your freezer?" will agree immediately without even changing their cheery expressions.
current mood: hurray
current music: tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred
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Thursday, April 24th, 2008
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12:07 am - this griffin will win at mummy checkers
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Friday, April 18th, 2008
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12:25 am - Wednesday's griffin redux
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Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
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8:18 pm - Wednesday's griffin will eat your foe
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Friday, January 25th, 2008
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12:01 am - Thursday's griffin is surprised by a camera trap
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Today's griffin is for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pietraluz, and is a Sumatran striped green-rabbit. It's a cross between the Sumatran green-pigeon Treron oxyurus/oxyura and the Sumatran striped rabbit Nesolagus netscheri (color photo here), which both live on forested mountains.
The rabbit is only seen or photographed about once a decade, because it's elusive and nocturnal and there's increasingly less forest to see it in. Walker's Mammals of the World reports that several captives survived "fairly well" on a ridiculous diet of rice, bread, tropical fruit, and no vegetables, which is something I have in common with them. Sumatra, I have a spare bedroom if you need somewhere safe to put your bunnies. We'll eat banana sandwiches and make fun of lettuce together.
There's one more striped rabbit species, the Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi), which was first discovered in a Laotian market in 1999.
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Thursday, January 24th, 2008
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2:50 am - Better Holmes and Gardens
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A while ago I simultaneously got copper beech seedlings and found out about Shakespeare gardens, which contain only plants mentioned in his plays and are probably the main market for Shakespeare busts on pedestals, and was inspired to compile what I'm pretty sure is the first list for a Sherlock Holmes garden.
Please correct me if any of you happen to be Victorian gardening experts or find a plant I missed.
I've decided that food items (and timber) don't count as plants so apple, cabbage, "cocoanut," potato, sweet potato, and yam aren't counted. The corn and wheat crops probably shouldn't count either but I've included them anyway. I stand firm in my conviction that parsley isn't food.
The page numbers cited behind the second cut correspond to The Complete Sherlock Holmes, 1992, Barnes & Noble, Inc./Doubleday, ISBN 0-88029-261-x.
The later stories sure suck! But The Hound of the Baskervilles is pretty awesome.
( The plant list, with probable species names and notes thereupon. )
( The plants in context. )
I will sleep soundly in the knowledge that I have added a piece of nerdery to the world today.
current mood: I want a moor
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Saturday, January 19th, 2008
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10:29 pm - Friday flightless griffins
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Friday in spirit if not in fact! Yesterday evening I was ambushed by a sudden ski trip, and so I spent today snowshoeing, which is like stomping over the countryside with big semi-invincible feet. I saw marvelous lichens and tromped up hills and stepped in a tree well.
These two griffins are just for kicks, or perhaps my Christmas present to myself. There'll be more soon; I'm particularly fond of exotic rodents and was quite distracted while looking up reference photos.
( Read more... )
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Monday, January 7th, 2008
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6:38 pm - Christmas presents part 1
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Thursday, December 27th, 2007
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2:23 am - ahoy
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Happy Christmas and New Year's and assorted other holidays I know little about!
I'm in New Mexico, where there are cliff dwellings and sopapillas. During the interval where I vanished completely I was in Western Australia for a few months, and before that was mostly preoccupied with being a procrastinating jerk who hates writing. Writing takes a thousand years.
I have an idea for a little New Year's present for everybody but need further data. If you'd like a silly present, it'd be helpful if you told me some of the animals you particularly like and included at least one bird (unless you find birds unappealing, of course). Or instead you could say what animals you don't care for, so I can avoid them.
current mood: inarticulate
current music: half my friends list likes rats a lot
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Friday, July 6th, 2007
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2:08 pm - it is summer
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Yesterday I went to a trampoline pit, and while my legs and back emerged unscathed my shoulders are madly sore. Perhaps those are my "flailing wildly" muscles.
I haven't been in a warehouse with a bunch of high-velocity shouting strangers for a really long time. I should make this the beginning of a tour, and hit up the wave pool and ice rink next.
When my dad was a kid trampoline pits were the hot new thing and quickly multiplied to outnumber mini-golf courses, before meeting their demise in a swarm of lawsuits. Old-style trampoline pits apparently had concrete and wood around the edges instead of padding, which was insufficient safety even for back then. That story is usually followed up with a recounting of how there used to be x-ray machines at the shoe store that you could wiggle your feet under and watch the bones move.
current mood: trapezius, actually
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