widening gyre

Absolute chaos. Just listen to this: “Within the world of taxonomy, the stable 'Classical System' of Michaelsen (1900) and Stephenson (1930) was gradually eroded by the controversy over how to classify earthworms, such that Fender and McKey-Fender (1990) went so far as to say, ‘The family-level classification of the megascolecid earthworms is in chaos.’” If this doesn’t shake you to your very core you’re made of some pretty stern stuff. Then this: “An unidentified Tasmanian earthworm shown growing a replacement head has been reported.” That’s just sloppy reporting. Get the earthworm’s name, dammit. We’re not here to publish unsubstantiated hearsay.

We need to talk.

First of all, try to calm down. Babbling and flailing like that, all you’re achieving is to make me nervous and I have my own concerns to worry about. Deep breaths. That’s it. Think things through. Try to look at the big picture and your place in it. It’s not like throwing your weight around will make a bit of difference. The boat has about a 52,000 ton edge on you and it’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. So. Now. If it pleases you to do so, this is as good a time as any to rearrange the deckchairs. 

Just to clarify,

I like monster movies if by that term you mean a big foam rubber biped stomping around causing HO-scale oil refineries to burst spectacularly into orange flame. I don’t like actual horror movies since real life is all I need to often feel afraid and disgusted. James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein is more atmospheric than scary. It’s famous for Colin Clive exclaiming “It’s alive!” and that cool part where three sequential flat cuts make the monster bigger and bigger. To a grownup, the only really horrific scene is the man walking through the village with the dead child in his arms.

Milestone or millstone?

If I had a nickel for every word I ever typed for 100 Word Rant I would have nearly $5,000 all in nickels which would weigh over a half ton but that’s not my point. What I’m alluding to is the fact that we just last week reached the 1,000 rant mark. It adds up to 99,999 words (there was an anomalous rant in there) which is about 17 percent of the word count of War and Peace, a book you haven’t read either. Not that I’m comparing myself to Tolstoy. I leave that for succeeding generations of discerning readers. 

Bluegrass

If you like tuning an instrument more than you enjoy playing one, then the mandolin is definitely for you. If you don’t give a rip whether your instrument is in tune or not, then you were born to play the fiddle. Pick up the guitar if you like the idea of random strangers borrowing your instrument to play better than you ever will. But if the guitar confuses you and you enjoy moving bulky unwieldy packages, get a bass. Finally, if you’re lonely and have a hard time making friends, take up the banjo. Then at least you’ll have enemies.

Forfend. Approbation. Look 'em up.

Believing that you should run the world is good evidence that you should not. If I was to find myself (heaven forfend) in a position of power and authority and also (which should go without saying but is often, it seems, neglected) responsibility, among the first things I would attend to (after decreeing that bagels in the break room would henceforth be an everyday thing [to universal {and well-deserved} approbation]) would be to hire some people whose entire job would be to keep tabs on what I was saying and doing and to let me know when I was wrong.

incorruptable

The English spy novelist Len Deighton died earlier this year and since he did so at the age of 97 it’s not remarkable that he would do so. He kept putting it off, I guess, before finally getting around to it. He wrote good books, but what I want to relate is how he refused a knighthood in the most badass way possible by saying: “To allow someone to give you a knighthood is to admit that there is someone who is allowed to appraise you on a scale which you are going to agree with. The audacity of it!”