Down at the Globe

1.) Do me a favor and go to the Hybrid Minivan Waiting List and add your weight to the demands for a hybrid minivan. Toyota has one, in Japan, and will probably bring a hybrid version of the Sienna to the U.S., but won't say when.
I'm tired of my cramped Subaru, people.

2.) Next, this is a product I have got to get me some of before Halloween. Cannot find it locally. It's supposed to look like you broke open a glow-stick and dumped the goo on your hair. Yeah! I want the orange, Mr. Three needs green.
God damnit, I'll bet it's at Ricky's. Yet another reason to miss New York.

3.) And in the Halloween spirit, here's another skull for you. A red colobus monkey collected in the early 1900's in northeastern Congo.



This monkey is currently listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, making the bullet hole in the skull a real nice touch.

Jeez, here's a funny story I haven't thought of in a long time... I used to work at the natural history museum in New York, I loved it, it was and is full of mysteries and surprises. Most storage and offices were onsite, upstairs or in weird spaces carved out behind the exhibit areas, and back then they trusted their employees. One key, which pretty much everyone had, opened most doors. So I used to skulk around sometimes and see what there was to see. Hippo skulls in the rafters. A Harry Potter-like office under a set of marble stairs. Hand-drawn maps of Peru. I used to smoke on a roof outside Margaret Mead's office.

One time, Bob was with me, and we were taking a shortcut from Invertebrates to the Library, through a set of back stairs in Mammalogy. If it sounds like Clue, it kind of was. This staircase was used to store things like trophy heads and sets of horns, and was cluttered with huge wooden crates.

For some reason (I had never done it before and never did again) we got it into our heads to peek inside one crate. It was like 6 feet long, 3 wide, and chest-high - a big fucking crate. Bob hoisted the lid at one end and I got the other. As we raised the lid, we saw that the wooden crate was lined in stainless steel and filled with preservation fluid. We had the lid up about a foot and a half when I jumped back and dropped my end. I only saw them for a second but it was about the most shocking thing I've ever seen - several large primates (my memory says chimpanzees but I could be wrong), dead and floating in the tank.

I am sure that they were collected more than 50 years ago, and I'm sure they form part of a valuable study collection. But still, I got the end with the heads!

4.) Last but entirely not least, Happy Birthday to Juliet! and cheers to the Monday night crowd!


We're quite a group, aren't we? Good hair all around. And somehow Lisa's head grew wings.