The Happening, Back to School, and Nudibranches, oh my!

1. I saw The Happening, the new M. Night Shamalamadingdong film. (Side note: who here cannot stop thinking of “The Bloodening”, the fictional Simpsons horror film, every time they hear that title? Just me? Okay.) For anyone living without the benefit of the internet, newspapers, television or semaphore, The Happening is what happens when plants have had enough of humans and their crappy destructive ways. They release a pollen/spore/icky airborne that causes people to kill themselves (in super-creative ways, a guy runs over his own head with a combine). I know I’m supposed to be rooting for the humans, but I was, well, not. If I was a plant, I would be testy about humans as well. While this was not M. Night’s best film, he sure does know how to increase tension with creaking branches and rustling leaves. I came home and said to my houseplants, “If you don’t start nuthin’, there won’t be nuthin’, k?” Gotta keep an eye on those houseplants.

2. I was at Target the other day and they were all kinds of hawking back-to-school supplies. I realized at that moment how blissful it was to not care about going back to school. I went to school for seventeen years of my life (kindergarten, 1 through 6, middle school, high school, college) and I do not miss it one bit. If I want to read the collected works of Bloom County and Foxtrot all summer, I can. I don’t gotta write no paper at the end either. Oh, and when I was a kid my mom would make me go to summer camp, so I would have to get up early every day anyway. Now, I get paid to do that. Oh yeah. Being an adult rocks.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still take classes periodically in various programs so I can be a better designer. But it immediately causes me to make more money, which I can then spend on books which contain pictures of Opus the penguin wearing a sun hat. Kids? Stay in school. So that you can earn a decent living so you can buy a computer and only read blogs if you want to.

3. Every time I think I’m a crazy wacky artist coming up with crazy wacky ideas, something comes and knocks me off my crazy wacky pedestal. National Geographic ran an article on nudibranchs. What’s a nudibranch, you ask? Here’s a description:

A nudibranch is a member of one suborder of soft-bodied, shell-less marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusks, which are noted for their often extraordinary colors and striking forms. The suborder Nudibranchia is the largest suborder of heterobranchs, with more than 3,000 described species. The word “nudibranch” comes from the Latin nudus, naked, and the Greek brankhia, gills. Nudibranchs are often casually called “sea slugs”, a non-scientific term which has led some people to assume that every sea slug is a nudibranch. However, while it is true that nudibranchs are very numerous in terms of species, and are often very attractive, there are numerous other kinds of sea slugs belonging to several taxonomic groups that are not very closely related to nudibranchs. A fair number of these other sea slugs are colorful and thus are even more easily confused with nudibranchs.

Nudibranchs that are toxic often have rather festive coloring and horns and feathery things and a variety of other components to convince you that they taste like reheated poop and may also kill you. Here are a few of my favorites from the NatGeo article:

nudibranch1.jpg

I don’t care how creative you think you are, you cannot top this. I will never make anything that interesting or fascinating to look at. And I’m alright with that. And you should be too. Let’s all hug.

One Response to “The Happening, Back to School, and Nudibranches, oh my!”

  1. […] Nudibranches, as I’ve mentioned before, are amazing vibrantly-colored underwater slugs. They are gorgeous and insanely varied. […]

Leave a Reply