Bones

Things Bones do: shatter splinter crack break bruise grow cancer hollow out with calcium deficiency mold themselves over foreign objects glow in the dark laugh like a mindless maniac in cartoons turn into rock curve like bonsai pit and chip like sandstone get tired dissolve in acid crumble quiver shake shiver

Bone:

n.

1.

a. The dense, semirigid, porous, calcified connective tissue forming the major portion of the skeleton of most vertebrates. It consists of a dense organic matrix and an inorganic, mineral component. When buried underneath a house, especially in the case of murder, will rattle and shake and sometimes whisper strange things.

b. Any of numerous anatomically distinct structures making up the skeleton of a vertebrate animal. There are more than 200 different bones in the human body. There are no bones in a squid.

c. A piece of bone. Will choke you someday, and you'll lay there gasping and dying in the middle of the restaurant while everyone around you freaks out and watching their inept panicked faces, you will realize in a hard moment that you care nothing for any of them, not even as humans, the only thing you care about is yourself and not dying right now and none of these fuckers are qualified to help you at all.

2. bones

a. The skeleton. Dead.

b. The body. Dead.

c. Mortal remains. Dead.

3. An animal structure or material, such as ivory, resembling bone. Poached and cut and sawed off.

4. Something made of bone or of material resembling bone, especially:

a. A piece of whalebone or similar material used as a corset stay.

b. bones Informal Dice. Roll those bones, shake those stays, snake eyes.

5. bones The fundamental plan or design, as of the plot of a book, or the broken remains of a building, or the arches of a mine.

6.

a. bones Flat clappers made of bone or wood originally used by the end man in a minstrel show.

b. Bones (used with a sing. verb) The end man in a minstrel show. Because that was a thing once that everyone knew.

tr.v. boned, bon·ing, bones

1. To remove the bones from. As fast as you, tearing the animal carcass apart in smooth practiced butchery.

2. To stiffen (a piece of clothing) with stays, as of whalebone. He peeled the bones from her torso like the skin of a peach, each panel tearing off in slow careful rags.

Phrasal Verb:

bone up

Informal To study intensely, usually at the last minute: boned up for the final exam. To drink so much coffee you have more fear that your heart will explode than of whatever it is you are studying for.

Idioms:

bone of contention

The subject of a dispute.

bone to pick

Grounds for a complaint or dispute.

To Bone: to fuck

When they came to eat you, it was not because they were hungry and you looked the tastiest. It was because they were mindless vicious murderous beasts intent on tasting the blood of every living thing that skittled and scuttled across their path.

Have you ever actually touched or held a reptile egg? They are the most fucked up alien things ever. Rubbery and artificial looking and soft. They make no sense in this world when compared to the nice hard sensible bird egg. The point at which a reptile looks most prehistoric is in the egg, it is a snapshot of what the end of world domination really looks like. The actual fall of a life form, millenia, not just piddly centuries, something that actual might matter in the universe even in footnote fashion.

What is, I think, most intriguing to little kids about dinosaurs is the complexity of them. For instance, they have huge scary wonderful unpronounceable names. They are the size of buildings. They have brains in other parts of their bodies. There are two types of monsters - animal based and human based. Dinosaurs are the ultimate animal based monsters, which makes them inherently more sympathetic. Anything large and dumb, even the villainous, T rex, is instantly fantastic for it's pet potential. It's funny how we try to turn these crazy dangerous monsters into happy fuzzy things for children, because it's supposed to encourage them to get into science, which is of course the best thing for any child to be into. But I was always way more interested in the really scary dinosaurs. I think everyone naturally is. So I don't understand why there aren't more children's shows about dinosaur death matches. Children respond to bloodshed and natural order. And then of course, there's Shark Week.

Bones though. I don't have the same emotional reaction to human bones that I do dinosaur bones. Dinosaur bones fill me with a sense of really huge history and time and place and looking at their giant joints makes me feel the tendons in my elbows and knees so clearly, the movement of my neck too, staring at the size and shape of their elongated vertebrae. Human bones, even the earliest ones, give me nothing. I feel no connection to them. They are like toys. The frozen ash shadow people of Pompeii are statues to me, there is no proper communication of pain, no empathy. That tragic experience of human frailty that people exclaim over? Nope, I am a cold blooded girl. I understand the hunger and instinct in the shape of the dinosaurs better.

The relics of human development that affect me are the creations of it, the cave paintings and the rough tools. The closest I ever got to the same feeling from humans was when I went to the Bodies exhibit, the one where that guy filled cadavers with plastic resin? And you could see all the strings of the muscles and the impossibly delicate filigree of veins and arteries. After all, that was sort of the perfect combination of human remains and human creation. We are such morbid fucking things.

Its hard to not look at things like this as an example of Nature trying and failing, as if we are a superior species, an improvement. It's the Mammal's Bias. Maybe we are. Or maybe we are just another form of life, rising up and falling as they do all the time. In five hundred thousand years our entire world order will be different - the plants, the skies, the continents and ocean. Notice how science fiction sort of tops out at a certain length of time into the future? You don't have a lot of scifi that takes place millions of years from now, because jesus, who can even start to think of that? That's the sort of shit that will drive you crazy for sure. That's like looking into a black hole. We won't even be around. What the fuck will genes have done by then? It reminds me of that awful song they used to play on the oldies station, before the oldies became the eighties, that "In the year 2525" song. I hate that song, it makes me so uncomfortable.

The future is what dinosaurs do to me. They make it exist. They make me have to keep my eyes open to the void.

Harry the Dinosaur

So if you've ever wondered what would happen if Marty, Rebecca, and I were stuck in a room together with no tv and lots of ducktape? This. This would happen.

And so it came to pass the Earth fell and I became Master of my dominion

This week has been extraordinary slow, hasn't it? Starting with that boring boring solstice, that pretty much sucked the life out of me and our atmosphere. I mean, it's been boiling hot. You can't be witty when it's boiling hot. You have to tend to your melting eyeballs and stinky crevices, don't you?

There have been some interesting going-ons though. General McScrappy thought he was gonna be cool and hip, and get all loose with the young folks. Rolling Stone fed him some hard candy, and he said some things it's not quite smart to say in front of someone who may then seal your words into zeros and ones, distribute them everywhere, even up to the castle where the Wizard may hear. And then he may turn you into a frog, a frog with a long career ahead of him of security consulting. When the first corporation creates the first not secret private corporate army, my money is on McScrappy to be at the helm. Since he's old, you can tell I think that's coming soon, right?

Also we learned about BP burning endangered turtles, and then that cleanup boat captain shot himself. Seems a little suspicious to me, shooting yourself in the morning, when you first get on the boat, instead of after a night staring at the bloodied sea. It seems awfully daytime working hours-ish. Well, if its true, you good and gentle man, I hope you are completely blissfully unaware of it all now. And BP, if you are suddenly bringing all Michael Crichton's nightmares to life, if you are risking the exposure of your dark underbelly because of your floundering desperation? Well, probably nothing will happen to you. You will likely never get caught. This world sucks. Speaking of corporate armies, I hope yours loses. I hope Kraft kicks your ass.

CNN supposedly put out a call for someone to come up with the good side of the oil spill (no they didn't). I have several:

1) Shrimp were obviously destined to someday become the superior race. We've nipped that in the bud.

2) The Mermen army that was being slowly built up on the ocean floor, in preparation for the rising tides of 2012 and their ascent to conquer the Landmen, has also been neutralized.

3)The oil companies will eventually form an international conglomerate to protect themselves against interference from silly civilian governments. They will go on to destroy half the planet, but they will also discover time travel in an attempt to go back and kill way more dinosaurs in much more convenient areas. Thus all the dinosaurs will become extinct, and people will finally stop putting any credence in that silly asteroid theory.

People have been chattering about these errol morris essays - being too incompetent to recognize your incompetence ect ect. They are very interesting, and generally right. That's a trap too, you know. Very good points about the unknown unknowns, but at some point you have to draw the line and assert your own confidence, otherwise you're helpless, trapped by your humbleness. Yes, I don't know what I don't know. However what I do know is letting people die for no reason is wrong, just like hurting them is wrong. That's a stable enough foundation upon which to build a card castle of morals that are my choice. Everybody has to say "no I'm right"at some point. They are probably wrong when they do it, but they have to do it. We are all probably wrong most of the time. This is one very good reason I am an atheist. There are other reasons, but they mostly have to do with how cruel I think moral destiny is.

Finally, I discovered the Doctor, living right here among us...(also I've been watching too much Dr. Who.) Someone make him open his pocket watch.

You know how some people have a special thing they visualize, when they're trying to relax or meditate? Or they have an animal they picture as the embodiment of their virtues, their totem animal or their dream guide? It's a fragment of imagination that they use to control their mental state and inspire them, something that gains tangibility with the power of their desire.

Well today I found mine.




When Exactly Did Jack Kirby Become Awesome?

thank you M.

Did you ever have the nightmare where you were the goat?

I love dinosaurs. I love that they are huge, I love that they are alien, and I love that I can't pronounce or remember any of their names correctly. I love them with a passion I reserve for all things much much bigger that are capable of eating me. It's survival love, Stockholm Syndrome for atheists.

But, as all of us over 20 learned from Jurassic Park, I do not want a dinosaur as a pet*. A giant red dog? Sure. But a living breathing pooping reptile who wants to eat my face and drag my body back to its eggs as baby's first kill? No.

So why are today's toy makers trying to convince children that dinosaurs are their cute cuddly friends? Are they hoping to inspire legions of future archaelogists? Are they battling creationist forces? Or are they prepping the world population for a far darker future?

Meet Pleo.
Or rather, MEET PLEO, HE IS YOUR FRIEND.



"Every Pleo is autonomous. Yes, each one begins life as a newly-hatched baby Camarasaurus, but that's where predictability ends and individuality begins. Like any creature, Pleo feels hunger and fatigue - offset by powerful urges to explore and be nurtured. He'll graze, nap and toddle about on his own -when he feels like it! Pleo dinosaur can change his mind and his mood, just as you do."

If he feels like toddling over to your bed at night and staring at you with that demonic glass gaze until you wake up and piss yourself? He will! It's cute!

Remember Furbies? Same makers and therefore it's only a matter of time before we're all telling the same story about the friend of a friend who has one installed in his computer tower. Except no one uses towers anymore, do they? So it'll be a race to see who can program their Pleo to play Wii Tennis first. Watch and be simultaneously creeped out/insane with jealousy...



But when is the best time to indoctrinate children into false hope Dinotopia? 11? 12? How about 2?

This is Kota the Triceratops. YOU CAN RIDE HIM. Well, technically he (she?) doesn't walk, but you can sit on him and pretend you are riding him. Which when you are three years old is just as good.

"It’s fossil-sized fun standing just over 2.5 feet tall. A hidden handle helps kids hold on once they climb onto the dinosaur’s back. Realistic stomping sounds add to the make-believe fun as kids bounce in place on the spring seat. Talk to KOTA the Triceratops and he roars back with expressive tail, head, eye, mouth and horn movements. Touch his nose with your hand and KOTA “sniffs” it! In fact, it’s easy to trigger all of his sensitive spots – try tickling his belly or chin to make KOTA “laugh”. And when you think this pretend dinosaur has worked up an appetite, be sure to “feed” KOTA his leafy snack – it really sounds like he’s munching on it! "



So they want us to treat dinosaurs as beings with feelings, emotions, desires. They want us to learn how feed and take care of them, to pleasure them with belly rubs? And they want children (and some older adults who shall remain nameless) to beg and cry for dinosaurs for Christmas?

I think someone's been buying up islands off the coast of Costa Rica.




*This is obviously the biggest lie I have ever told in my life.