The payoff

We travelled west last weekend and stopped in Chapman, Kansas (home of astronaut Joe Engle) to visit my grandmother and wait out the storm.

The reward, in addition to spending time with family, was this amazing sunset as the storm passed. These pictures don't do it justice.

(click to embiggen)


tagged: Kansas, Chapman, storm, sunset, rain, weather, pictures

Creepy update

This is an update to this post about a recently discovered and evicted tenant of my basement.

As you recall, I snapped this image of the uninvited guest shortly before crushing her in the iron grip of my household totalitarian regime.
In keeping with my own personal modus operandi, I smashed the little bugger first and asked questions later. The question: What manner of spider is this that insists upon nesting in my laundry room?

Thanks to some great comments from people wise in the ways of insects, and thanks also to Google and Wikipedia, I have come to the following conclusion.

The specimen in question was a Steatoda triangulosa, also known as the triangulate cobweb spider (because of the triangular markings on its back, get it?).

Note the similarities in the markings of this specimen presented by the University of Arkansas entomology department:So now I have a dilemma. As Jane noted in the previous post, this spider belongs to a group of spiders commonly known as "false black widows" because they are sometimes mistaken as such. They also tend to share the same kinds of habitats and, Jane suggests, where there are false black widows, the real things tend not to be far behind.

But according to the wikipdia article and a few others I came across, this particular species includes the black widow and other "harmful" beasties on its dinner menu.

The triangulate cobweb spider is known to prey on many other types of arthropods, including ants (including fire ants), other spiders, pillbugs, and ticks. It preys on several other spiders believed to be harmful to humans, including the hobo spider and the brown recluse.

So on the one hand, I don't fancy sharing my home with any bugs. But on the other hand, if this thing is going to keep away the "bad" spiders, maybe it's not so bad.

Better the devil you know than the one you don't, right?

tagged: spiders, spiderman, creepy, arachnid, arachnophobia, false black widow, triangulate cobweb spider, Steatoda triangulosa

YouTube Tuesday: Speaking of Etch-A-Sketch

I never had the patience to do more than my initials or some dopey blocks on the Etch-A-Sketch, but artist George Vlosich has noting better to do than spend 70 to 80 hours etching out these incredibly detailed portraits.



tagged: movies, YouTube, video, Etch-A-Sketch, George Vlosich, art, pop culture

Friday Blogthing: Sketchy

Ah the '80s. A time of great music, relevant television programing, cheap gas and a well-defined and universally hated enemy.

How I long for those halcyon days of yore when life was simple, phones had cords and MTV still played music videos.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you?

You're an Etch-a-Sketch!! You're the creative, artsy type who doesn't need to actually utilize a single muscle group in order to have fun. Doesn't matter though, you're still cool. Take this quiz!

tagged: quiz, meme, game, 80s, 1980s, etch-a-sketch

More creepy crawlies

NOTE: Click here to read the update to this post.

So I'm helping my Supermodel Wife with the laundry Sunday evening. I get out the drying rack (one of those expanding wood ones) to hang up some clothes when I find I have disturbed someone's new home.

The eight-legged tenant of the laundry room in my basement had, by the look of the dried bug corpse in her web, just finished dinner.

Let me just say that I'm not especially a huge fan of the little buggers, but spiders freak me out a lot less than they used to. I used to have a huge phobia of spiders stemming from a childhood incident when I somehow found myself alone in an abandoned campground shelter -- one of the walls shimmering with thousands millions of long-legged dancing arachnids. I had to walk through a foot-thick layer of cobwebs to get out.

Writing about this now, I can still feel the sticky strands of spider silk clinging to my hair and skin.

Anyway, I'm much better now. I'm much more tolerant of spiders. The way I see it, they're keeping down the rest of the insect population that I have a much bigger issue with. No, spiders and me have an understanding these days. They stay at least six feet away from me at all times and don't inhabit public spaces, and I don't crush them out of shear abject terror.

So you can see my dilemma when I found this particular spider had reneged on the deal. I don't want to be unreasonable and smash the thing on general principle, since the drying rack was put away when she decided to live there. But surely you can see that I can't allow the use of the drying rack for a spider home, especially on laundry day.

I was standing there pondering my next move when I took a closer look at the specimen. It had interesting markings on it's back and belly (do spiders have bellies?).That's when the thought struck that I might have something special here. Given the radon levels in our basement, this quite possibly could be the kind of radio active spider that gave Spiderman his powers. How cool would it be to go to work the next day fit and trim and casting webs all over the joint.

So I put the thing on my hand and tried to get it to bite me. Unfortunately, it wasn't feeling very aggressive (I think because it had just gorged itself on a cricket or housefly or whatever the corpse in its web was). So alas, no superpowers.

But I am curious about what kind of spider this is. I know that there are some bloggers out there who are into biology and entomology, so if you could be so kind as to take a stab at identifying the thing in the comments I would appreciate it.

After all, I feel like I should have a name for the thing I ended up smashing.

tagged: spiders, spiderman, creepy, arachnid, arachnophobia

3A.M. Poll: Your favorite movie villain

Sure, we all love the heroes, but it's the villains who really make the movie happen (or not).

So who's your favorite? If it's not on this list, just choose the last option and let me know your (wrong) opinion in the comments.



tagged: movie, villans, poll, vote, pop culture

Check out this big cock

I saw it at Suburban Lawn and Garden last weekend. I'm thinking about buying it to put out on my patio for the express purpose of being able to say to house guests "Would you like to go out on the patio to see my cock?"

You can fill in your own jokes in the comments.

tagged: rooster, statue, yard art, landscaping, humor, joke, cock

Uninvited guest

"Just don't tell my Supermodel Wife about this," I said to Bill as we drove back to the house.

I needed to give this one a few days to blow over before breaking the news to the wife. After all, we still had a two and a half hour drive home and I didn't need her worrying about this.

Bill (my way hip step-father-in-law) and I were helping my sister-in-law with some home improvements. Her husband Nick is serving a tour in Iraq, dodging IEDs, so this seemed like a meaningful and fitting way to celebrate Memorial Day.

And part of building the new fence in the back yard required us to make a trip to the local hardware store in Junction City. The trip was uneventful, just needed to pick up a few lag screws, washers and L-braces for the project.

But as we returned to my car, from across the small parking lot, we saw what looked like a thin shadow floating across the pavement toward rear passenger side of my car. As we came closer, we saw a rather large, thick black snake slithering toward the protection of my car.

It was about four feet long, about an inch in diameter in the middle and black as fresh tarmac.

There was no rattle, and it didn't have the triangular head of venomous snakes so I wasn't worried about being poisoned. I was content to let it crawl away, or if it didn't, I would just run over it when I pulled out of the parking space.

But Bill, who was on that side of the car, saw that the reptile had other ideas.

"He crawled up into you wheel well," Bill said.

Clerks from inside the store had seen the events and were now approaching with a broomstick.

"Was that another snake?" said the clerk with the 'Rachel' name tag. Evidently, this sort of thing was a regular occurrence.

The brave Rachel bent down to poke the handle of the broomstick under my car. But by now, Snakey (I had named him) had taken up residence inside the wheel cavity, or bumper, or my tailpipe, or someplace else out of sight but still in my car. There was nothing to do but go back and finish our projects.

"I know where I wouldn't be parking tonight," joked Bill. And he was right. The car would stay parked in the driveway, not the garage.

For the rest of the afternoon, I kept wondering if Snakey were still in my car. If so, where? My fear was that when we left for home, he would be coiled up on the floor when we put our 4-year-old in her seat in the back.

And during the two-and-a-half hour drive home I worried that as the temperature cooled during the night, the serpent might climb higher into the engine to seek warmth, there to be chewed up by the various pistons and belts of the car's mechanics. Am I going to wake up to the smell of rotting snake carcass on my way to work one morning?

But the biggest question I have is when will it be safe to tell my supermodel wife that she may have shared the car with a 4-foot long snake yesterday.

So to any of you biology experts, how long does a garden-variety snake go without eating? Could he still be in there? Could he have survived two hours at 75-mph?

Maybe I'll go to Midas for a quick brake inspection/snake removal.

tagged: snake, serpent, reptile, animals, Memorial Day, car

YouTube Tuesday: "You spell 'honour' like a Brit"

It was painfully obvious over the weekend that all of the good TV shows were on hiatus. But luckily, we have the emerging art of short-form Internet 'webisode' serials to scratch out pop culture itch.

Previously, we've featured the Chad Vader series, and God, Inc. among others.

One of my favorite new series is Tiny Plaid Ninjas. In the first of the three episodes, two mortal enemies must work together to defeat a common foe.



tagged: tiny plaid ninjas, YouTube, video, TV, animation, humor, satire, argyle

Son of Hogzilla

By now you've read about the rather largish wild pig killed by an 11-year-old Alabama good old boy with a pistol.

If you haven't read the link. You can also check out posts by XO and ElBorak and a host of other bloggers.

Why would you want to do that? Well, if you're like me, it's because you have nothing better to do than mouse around on the internet reading other peoples' thoughts.

And, like El Borak, I think what people are saying (writing) about this story is as interesting as the story itself.

There are those who don't like to think about where the meat on their table comes from, who think all animals are doe-eyed fluffy unicorns in the land of the Peppermint Princess:

that's disgusting. i don't know which is worse the fact that you shot the innocent creature for three hours strait or that you where smirking in that picture. I wish i could beat that smirk right of your face you dick head. i cant understand why anybody would kill a poor animal. You people disgust me, I hope you rot in hell.

Then, there are those who think parents have no business teaching their kids how to kill monstrous swine -- at least with a hand gun.

Our own Xavier Onassis falls into this category:

I cannot imagine teaching a 5 year old to kill or handing an 11 year old boy a .50 caliber pistol and watching him shoot a half-ton pig eight times an then spend 3 hours chasing it through the woods to kill it and turn it into sausage.

That is definitely not the way I would want to raise any son of mine.

Sure XO, you say that now. But when the oil runs out in a couple of years, and the apocalypse comes and we're living in a Road Warrior-like dystopia, it's going to be kids like that who are feasting on the entrails of their enemies.

Learning to kill giant mutant omnivores? The way I see it, that's just good parenting.

tagged: pig, giant, hogzilla, Jamison Stone, Alabama, PETA, hunting, oil, Road Warrior