Monthly Archives: December 2008

Just when you thought it was safe(r) to go in the water…

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Prepaqre for the invasion of the jellyfish. That’s the result of a National Science Foundation study, which reveals massive swarms of jellyfish are appearing in oceans worldwide in apparently unprecedented numbers.

I don’t know about you, dear reader(s), but jellyfish scare the crap out of me. They’re just…weird. They’re goopy, tentacle-y, and they don’t even have brains!!! How can we compete with such a beast???

I remember summers on the beach at Port Aransas as a kid, having to dodge beached jellyfish and Portuguese men-o-war (which also contributed, I’m sure, to a lifelong fear of Lusophones.)

Incidentally, having spent all of my childhood beachgoing at Port A and Corpus Christi, Texas, I was in my early teens before I learned that it is not normal, after a day at the beach, to sit in the tub and clean tar off of yourself. Thank you, offshore driliing industry!

Back to the jellyfish, though…if we’re already having problems with depleted fisheries, melting glaciers, and oceanic “dead zones,” the thought of angry swarms of jellyfish in coastal areas is, well, troublesome. I will be spending all of my vacations in mountainous inland areas from now on.

Portugese Man o’ War pic from Wikimedia Commons

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Tattoos hit the political mainstream, finally, sort of

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After years of hard-fought, oft-thankless struggle, a tattooed she-devil may finally have a shot at the United States Senate.

Okay, that’s a gross exaggeration, actually. It would appear that Caroline Kennedy has a tiny, partially-removed butterfly tat on her left arm that, now that she’s pondering a Senate run, is making a few waves here and there.

Could this be the defining moment for body art on the body politic? Perhaps. It’s much more likely that the Mainstream Media just didn’t have very much to do today. Still, I have been pondering for some time where all of this is leading–those of you who don’t live in Austin in the summer months may not be used to the sight of more tribal patterns than a New Guinea jungle (was that racist? Maybe a little–I was just going for a “tribal” analogy. Apologies to all Melanesians who might take offense.) Will the bulk of my generation of Austinites eventually come to regret their dragonscale sleeve tats? For my part, I think the HR directors of the future will have little to no cause to bemoan others’ ink, as they will no doubt be (at least partially) concealing old tramp stamps from their wild college days.

I leave it to history to decide.

And anyway, Ms. Kennedy has a tiny butterfly, big whoop.

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