outrage fatigue

[robling_t]

Rectal breathing gives dragonfly nymphs another distinctive talent: they are capable of ballistic defecation, shooting fecal pellets at high speeds over surprisingly long distances. Researchers have measured this phenomenon with some precision in nymphs of the Eastern Pondhawk, which can shoot the pellets about 23 feet. It's not clear what advantage, if any, this unusual skill confers.

-- Wild Guide: Dragonflies, Cynthia Berger

Apropos of nothing in particular, but why should I be the only one who has to suffer with having that mental image lodged in my brain.


Despite threatening skies I think I'll choose the Grant Park movie over boardgames meetup tonight, because I'm feeling rather cooped-up and anyway if it's not raining yet then it's not that the park will already be a swamp before we get out there. Just the same, I'll bring my "Keroppi" umbrella, so if you see a giant frog-face wandering across the lot, it's probably either me or rollick...

Spent most of the last couple of days mulling over a job offer of sorts from our landlady to be the on-site person to show apartments in our building, for a small bounty if the prospects become tenants here. I don't think I'm going to do it: even leaving aside my personal opinions of the place, I've learned over the course of the Year of the Living Workmen that I get absolutely nothing done, not even tidying up around the house, when part of my brain is listening for the door all day, and here it is August already with a net total of only three agents contacted because of the continual distractions from my efforts to prepare and improve the necessary agent-finding paperwork. (I worked out this morning that I've spent a total of three months this year waiting for workmen, wondering if workmen were coming, and babysitting workmen when they did bother to show.) The bounty on offer isn't mathematically significant enough to be worth the brain-devouring hassle of being on-call all day like that, even if I was a morning person to begin with.

Which, of course, means that I have to get on the stick about the Agent paperwork. The next few prospects are synopsis-and-sample types for the most part, which means chasing the synopsis around the room with the whip and chair again. Since I'd suspect that nobody's paying much attention to business matters during the heat of August anyway, the timing is probably just as well, providing I can get the damn thing sorted in the next couple of weeks. This was supposed to be the year that I would spend tilting at this windmill full-time, after all...


And in a brief digression prompted by a news snippet overheard during my breakfast just now, is anybody else more than a bit steamed at Russell Yates? I mean, driving your wife so nuts that she drowns the kids, and then divorcing her so you can go remarry and have more isn't exactly my idea of Christian charity.. {hmph}