passengers in amber

Martha, the last passenger pigeon, replicated in amber to the power of 9 or something.

What do you think the guy that felled the last tree on Easter Island was thinking at the time? “better get this one before someone else does”, “timber!” -probably something like that. I guess he might have said a prayer.
ok, and what was the 14 year-old in Ohio thinking 100 Marches ago when he shot down the last wild passenger pigeon? “hot damn!” most likely.

there used to was billions of ‘em! flying around in 300 square mile flocks that took days to pass over at 60 mph. ideal for target practice, food, feed and fertilizer. dead ones shipped around the country by the boxcarload.

Martha turned out to be the last of the last, namesake of the first first lady. when they found her dead on the floor in Cincinnati, they entombed her in a giant ice block bound for the Smithsonian. that was on my birthday in 1914. in a final act of benevolent coextinction, Martha had taken 2 species of lice with her into genetic oblivion. the bird lice somehow did come back though, a lousy little miracle.

like I said, here she is, casted and kebabbed in amber by Rachel Berwick.

You remember when Richard Attenborough is brandishing his amber-headed cane and Jeff Goldblum is all like, “life finds a way” and stuff. pterodactyls everywhere! admit it, you were scared too. no way they’d ever let 550 real pigeons near that hardwood, illuminated and angelic as they look.

will everyone please remove your hats and sandals for a moment

that will do. thanks, you look great.

James Hampton: Director of Special Projects for the State of Eternity

This could be a self-timed shot since nobody really saw this stuff while James was alive. he had said something to Meyer, the guy who rented him the garage space. James had told Meyer, “that’s my life. I’ll finish it before I die.”
every night, after finishing his swing shift as a janitor, he would head to the garage and work until dawn. he was making The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly; which is like 10 feet tall and hundreds of … (anyhow, you can see the picture). man, look at it! magnificent! St. James looks like a baron with cufflinks and pinky rings or something. ornate treasures, doubloons, Escalades, carbuncle bling and rich stuff. the elaborate stockroom of a merchant of jagged metals. but he made it all from secondhand furniture, foil, spent light bulbs, cardboard, glass fragments and junk, held together with pins and glue, under God’s direction and for His glory. now you can go see it at the Smithsonian in DC.
James Hampton didn’t have any close friends and he never married or had much money. why don’t you take another look at the picture? if he ever had anything like a resume it could have looked something like this, or better this. James also wrote notebooks full of his revelations in his own encrypted script, if you’d like to take a crack at it.


check him out-
St. James the Janitor- Steve Marshall
the Miracle of St. James Hampton –Mike Walsh

quadrupedal and bonnetted turks

some scientists went out to southern Turkey to check out these 5 Kurdish siblings. one of the theories they came up with was genetic: reverse evolution. this idea presupposes direction, or that evolution happens “to generate us as the summit of life’s purpose.” Steven J. Gould totally would have given these scientists noogies, probably after beating them all at arm wrestling. the BBC even made a TV special (about the hand walkers, not arm wrestling) and this was going to be the next big thing. now it seems headed for the Piltdown file.
these guys don’t crawl around on hands and knees like babies but “bear crawl” on hands and feet. no, not like cartoon bears (that go on 2 legs with shirts and no pants). the siblings wear pretty regular clothes and get around like regular bears. they are mentally handicapped but, the scientists observed, “otherwise they had quite strong legs and arms;” they don't mention whether the scientists carried out arm wrestling tests. the siblings’ ability to walk on 2 legs might also have been better studied if the scientists tried them on a course of ladders, rope bridges and waterslides. this way when the science fair and media circus left town the family would be able to keep the assemblage; a boon to the whole community. as things went, they were at least left with new plumbing and electricity. and for now nobody needs to go revise the Sphinx’s riddle.

old people can be so cruel

Shasta the liger has a posse

I can’t believe all the attention that’s been showered on ligers lately. it’s really quite a milestone for them and for all hybrids, really. if only my favorite lion-tiger hybrid could have lived to see this day. Shasta was born nearly a half century ago this month, and lived through the better part of the cold war. she overcame all of the typical hardships that tend to afflict ligers: blindness, depression, growth dysplasia. anyone who grew up along the Wasatch front since then should not only think of Shasta as cheap soda pop but as our 1,000 lb unofficial community mascot- whether you saw her in the flesh or, like me, preserved in a gallant stance behind glass.

I don’t know about magic but it seems ligers are quite skillful at manipulating their zookeepers. mythical or not, the official story goes that they named her Shasta because they were always like, “she hasta have this” and “she hasta have that.” How do you like that? –preying on the selfless nature of zoology majors. but anyway, what suckers!

now it seems everyone’s got a liger. zoos all over, and they're increasingly required prerequisites for some of the better jobs in ringleadership. “no liger? forget it.” a real proliferation, I’m telling you. is this really good for us? how many ligers is enough? every one of them does deserve dignity, don’t get me wrong. but isn’t each individual a little diminished by the existence of so many? as if they didn’t have enough afflictions already. let’s remember, these aren’t sodas; they have feelings.

found poetry

a rhyme incarnate

wow! thank you Thomas Grünfeld for smuggling these splendid creatures into the new world. and to think that I was barely able to get a box of couscous through customs. photos taken last december at the OMR gallery in mexico city. yes, it is sleek and handsome, but does it rhyme in German?

last fall when the chief addressed our nation he railed against hybrids. like Prednick, he wasn’t so scared of Dr. Moreau’s leopard people but of an arbitrary, wanton creator. you can understand, right? like most americans, the president fears absurdity. gosh, it’s like that x-men prophecy and I just saw the trailer the other day for the next sequel. this will surely be the watershed issue of our time. I think we have the social maturity to handle it though. nobody had vandalized this gentle fauna at least. but there was an armed guard downstairs.



alright, here’s some more polar bear trivia.
Q-do polar bears eat penguins?
A-yes. no, wait, I told it wrong.
Q-do polar bears eat penguins?
A-no -“why not?” your nephew or someone asks
-because they’re extinct.

polar bears and hearing aids

when I was walking into a restaurant on center street I saw these 2 polar bears whispering secrets to each other in a shop window. the shop was Harris Hearing Aid Center and it was closed at midday. as I was taking this picture a lady pulled up in her car and asked me if I’d like to go inside. absolutely! she unlocked the place and let me see the bears from another angle…

I was surprised to see they weren’t whispering secrets at all! their lips were raised in silent sneers and they seemed locked in some kind of patient restrained conflict. the nice lady also told me that if I wanted I could move the baby bears off their arms for a better picture. this was a polite gesture on her part but I don’t know what she was thinking; as if any sane person would dare interrupt what was going on here.

at this point I started suspecting the nice lady might be crazy, or trying to get me killed! these bears had probably been juggling baby bears until the nice (but crazy) lady & I had interrupted and they’d suddenly become shy, caught in what then appeared to be a King Solomon moment. also, there’s a great cheap Salvadoran restaurant next door! ($1.60 pupusas, yeah!)

don't touch my cat!

about 20 minutes into the movie Ed comes over and accidentally finds Rubin's dead cat Simon in the freezer: Rubin's had trouble letting go. from there Simon gets put in a cooler and they head out to the Utah desert to bury him, I recommend. these are storyboards that I got from a guy who got them from a guy who...Trent Harris.

Geezer, my (family's) dog of 12 years hit the streets last winter. He was getting old and arthritic, and his arthritis medicine made him incontinent. what can you do? he had been an inside dog but toward the end he was mainly between the yard and the garage. then he disappeared, ran away. I've heard that sometimes dieing animals/pets will wander off when they sense it's time. this picture is from a month or so before that - I also kind of knew it wouldn't be long. did he end up in someone's window well? under the scrub oak in a canyon drainage? run over?
how do these look as alternatives to being euthanized & cremated, mummified or fired off in a rocket?
yes, of course it makes me sad.

where do mummies come from?

this is the Summum temple where, for the price of graduate school, you can arrange to have yourself or a loved one mummified. for maybe a little less they also mummify cats and parakeets (you cheapskate). is there anyone else around that even makes mummies anymore? not that I know of. these guys also make wine, communicate with summa individuals, and run a “peafowl sanctuary.” while visiting, you can tank up on their sacramental water (9am-5pm). and if you can get your bishop to issue you a food order you can even pick that up a couple blocks over.

man, do these guys have it covered. I mean in terms of immortality, there are appeals pending on egyptology, angels and aliens, and if all else fails there are peacocks and wine for the present. bases loaded. check out the website for all kinds of wisdom from yogis, gnostics, saints, Einstein and Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne, yeah!).

all the same, none of us have a monopoly on immortality (I don't even like board games). we try botulism, mitsubishis, freezers, nanorobots, breakdancing (Fame) -singing “I’m gonna live forever, I’m gonna learn how to fly.” I can’t remember what else people have sung in ages past but I do remember the 1980s and nobody can take that away from me! anyway, how do you know that even when you have been made into a mummy they’re not just going to throw you in the furnace, use you to fuel a space shuttle or something later? I mean things are getting scarce these days, $3/gallon and I don't know if we have the patience for more dinosaurs.

tab energy drink

tab energy: latest harbinger of the apocalypse.
your thoughts?

fish without faces

a pedestrian approach to the small game of blogging. actually, you’ll see this is more jaywalking really. not even bipedal but like a one-legged jaywalking approach. I’m sure you can picture a tyrannosaurus rex typing his big blog with the 2 fingers of each hand. I mean is that lame or what?!

my brother (not me, no) made a mistake one time. he used the word “lame” in mixed company: “that’s so lame!”* I know what you’re thinking; you’d never do something like that. I know. I know. but he did. he didn’t mean anything by it. so this girl at work (2 legs) took offense. she asked him if he'd ever call something “crippled” or “retarded.” I forgot how he replied. I think he just felt really bad about himself after that so he pushed her over and clocked out.
this blog is called fish without faces and it’s all about that kind of thing, and other things.

“This fish you dream about. Let’s talk about that, It’s always the same fish, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Yossarian replied. “I have trouble recognizing fish.”
“What does the fish remind you of?”
“Other fish.”
“And what do the other fish remind you of?”
“Other fish.”
Major Anderson sat back disappointedly. “Do you like fish?”
“Not especially.”

-so bipedal, monopedal, quadrupedal, octapedal, whatever – we’re jaywalking here.