Reblogged from You Are What You Eat:

Gentle Readers, today I cheat, but you will see why: “In 1849, hungry gold miners crossing the Nevada desert noticed some glistening balls of a candy-like substance on a cliff, licked or ate the balls, and discovered them to be sweet-tasting, but then they developed nausea.  Eventually it was realized that the balls were hardened deposits made by small rodents, called packrats … Not being toilet trained, the rats urinate in their nests, and sugar and other substances crystallize from their urine as it …

One of my favourite reports from the Joe Chip Laboratory, especially as I put so little work into it – thank you Professor Jared Diamond for one of the grossest stories I read last year!
The reference to “wise parents” is something that died, but referred back to a post that asserted that wise parents do not leave their babies lying around in pig pens for the pigs to eat. True, but ultimately trite, I’m afraid.

If only the beak had been on the other side ... if only he hadn't gotten himself so blurry

My best photo of an azure kingfisher so far, I have a lot of work to do on these.  They usually fly off before I can get my camera ready, so I’ll have to be a little bit happy with this.

Your mate has been busy and has a lot of work to do, so not much in the way of commentary today.  He has solved all of the world’s food security problems here.  I am a little surprised that he has gone all tabloid on us here and provided details of his own personal Cuban crisis ( a sultry night … a chance encounter … with JFK … you join the dots, but not on your screen, the ink may not come off).  He provides well meant advice on delicate family relationships here, but one is left wondering whether he understands what understands means.  He’s even managed to pen and publish a poem about adolescent longing and sunburn here.  True art.

Your mate was in geek boy heaven this week watching Shark Harbour.  What more could one ask for from a documentary – sharks, gadgets, sharks, cameras on sharks, satellite tracking devices on sharks, shark attacks, sharks?  I got to watch people at work who are absolutely enthused about what they do.  Your mate is passionate about very little (he is a plastic doll, after all, as evidenced by his gravatar), but he so likes to see enthusiasm in others.  It was odd, I was sitting there watching it (it isn’t gruesome) and I realised that I was feeling happy.  You have to realise that in my part of the world, reports of shark sightings and shark attacks are portents of Christmas, and I suspect there was a bit of childish enthusiasm bubbling up around that, together with some excitement about “safe fear” (that will not feel so safe next time I am at the beach).  Every Christmas holidays, the newspapers would report dangers and crises – funnel web spider bite fatalities, shark attacks, “Deadly blue ringed octopus found in children’s pool”, stranger danger, and brewery strikes, so that now emergencies give me a Christmassy feel.

Reblogged from Not Trevor:

I reject the path of Trevor, whether well trodden or not.

Aaahhh, where it all began!

Crimson Rosella

There we go, as promised in various places, if you don’t like the words, at least there is a bird to look at.

Your mate really has no business blogging when there are so many other calls on his time, such as hiding from creditors and looking at birds, but he cannot let you down.

Looking around the Joe Chippish traps, a message has got through from Glossolalia, though it is hard to understand.  I suspect evil Trevor has been up to something.  In honour of Valentine’s Day, the Joe Chip laboratories have conducted an in depth analysis of love (scientific name: LERV), to see what its all about, Alfie.  You may be surprised at our results.  Or you may not.

Continuing with the romantic theme, you may be intrigued by the strange attraction your mate has to the Australian billionaire, Gina Rinehart, and the question he asks: does she have ninjas?

In the poetic realms, we consider the effect of the cryptid creature, the numb-bat, and those who seek its bite to remove all feeling, and why light is a bad thing.  (Who is this “we”, Joe?  I don’t know, you tell me, Joe.)

This week’s shout out goes to Osteoarch, who is a freelance osteoarchaeologist, and how cool is that?  Most interesting job description I’ve come across in a while, and she gets to wear a white coat in her pictures, which I don’t.  Check out her site.

Just finished “Embassytown” by China Mieville, the bestselling communist fantasist.  He continues with an obsession about religion.  In earlier books such as “Perdido Street Station” he wrote of demons, though they were throughgoing materialists, existing on the physical plane.  In “Kraken” he was a bit more direct, depicting a London populated by members of thousands of obscure and generally warring sects.  He has a respectful Marxist approach to religion – he does not believe a word of it, but acknowledges it as a real and continuing part of human existence.  While a complete sceptic, he does not take the dismissive approach of a Dawkins or Hitchens, no doubt in part stemming from his Marxism, in that religion cannot be reasoned away until the material conditions of humanity change and the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system are resolved and the state withers away and so on – he has his own apocalyptic agenda whether he realises it or not.  I don’t know that too many religious believers would see themselves reflected in “Kraken”, though perhaps their detractors would.  yes, they can be evil, intolerant, scheming, whatever, but they can also be loyal, devoted, selfless and self sacrificing – in other words, human.  However, religion is reduced to subscribing to an arbitrary series of postulates (unlike, say, Marxism).

Here, the theological concerns are definitely non-theistic.  In “Embassytown”, humanity is confronted with a pre-lapsarian world, with creatures who cannot lie.  This is no “Case of Conscience” James Blish world – they are not innocents – they scheme, they kill, they profit.  However, for purely Darwinian reasons, they cannot lie.  Humanity then introduces the serpent into their world.

It is all very interesting, however for all the discussion in reviews of the cleverness in its discussion of language and so on, it still felt arbitrary.  This thing happens because these creatures happen to do this when this other thing happens.  Hardly a criticism, I know, isn’t that a description of life, however I don’t know that it is justified to raise the discussion of the book as high as it has gone in some circles.  It is one of the slimmest of his books (his books are getting a lot shorter than when he started, whether that is a good thing depends upon how much you were enjoying them), but frankly I thought it could have been a lot thinner.

There are many excellent science fiction touches.  I enjoyed the Turing machine, however it left me feeling a bit stupid – its role just drops off, and I  was left thinking that I must have missed something obvious about it and its inability to adapt.  Perhaps there was a comment in there about Turing machines being a test of whether humans are conscious independent sentient beings that I missed in reading it on my daily commute.  The stuff about interstellar travel on the immer and floaking are fairly lovely for those who enjoy sf.  Philip K Dick when interviewed  said that the pleasures of reading AE van Vogt for him included that they hinted at things unseen.  There are plenty of hints in this book – interdimensional lighthouses built in the immer – leading to the irony of the narrator, existing in a world so exotic to us, being led by the human instinct to leave her humdrum existence behind and strike off into even further beyond.  Whatever we reach, there is always something further.  However, while I enjoyed these aspects, to me they were a little bit of a cheat.  When I was elbowing my way into the novel, trying to settle in and get comfortable, there was a scene of a ship returning from the immer that was insufficiently quarantined.  Suddenly, something breaks out, and reality begins to be converted into the stuff of the creature.  A monster from the true beyond, something strange, a great weird moment.  I thought this was a hint of the crisis to come, of the crux of the novel.  No, it was mostly a throw away scene.  *Sigh*

An intriguing premise, some lovely dollops of weird, but in terms of playing with words and their manifestation, I preferred the playfulness of Steven Hall’s “The Raw Shark Texts”.  Perhaps I am shallow.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Your mate loves youse all!

Its good to be the king

You may like to click on a few links and see what else your mate has been up to this week.  Your mate has felt very poetic, as well as very Erich von Danikenish.  He has carried out a thorough scientific but also poetic analysis of ancient astronauts and relationships with fathers here.  In a not unrelated vein, he has considered what car God drives and resolved all intra-religious bickering about the issue of evolution here.  It is good to get these things settled and out of the way.

Speaking of things poetical, there is even a ditty about Leonard Cohen picking is nose.

If you did not catch last weeks “Not Trevor”, you may be interested, given the almost psychic way your mate predicted the announcement this week by an Australian scientist that a solution to environmental problems in Australia’s Northern Territory may be to release wild elephants.

Your mate has given advice to a fellow about the marriage his parents have arranged for him.  Heartfelt.  Touching.  Emotional.  Check it out here.

Interested in China and martial arts?  WHY WOULDN’T I BE, MR CHIP? Exaccerly.  This week’s shout out goes to Nathaniel, who can tell you how not to get hit.

This week:  Watched Moon.  Enjoyed it very much, even though they used a forbidden idea.  Read “The Afrika Reich” by Guy Saville – the action keeps rolling, interesting but less plausible than Deighton’s SS-GB, but I get annoyed when I get to the last page and find there is a sequel coming, which is not really a sequel, but a continuation.  Reading “The Watcher” by Charles MacLean – certainly horror, and getting weirder.  Worth a read: “Things we didn’t see coming” by Steve Amsterdam.

Brown falcon - a country killer

Hello Your mate hopes that you are comfortable.  What are you wearing?  That’s interesting.  This is the Joe Chip portal, with highlighted links to the various places Your mate rants during the week, only a left click away.

In an act of repentance for writing a mean poem about her, Your mate advised Ms Thatcher that he would not be going to see that new film about her (and that in any event, she was much nicer looking than that Meryl Streep), and she was very kind in her reply.  However, Your mate did see the new fascist propaganda film “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, and while he enjoyed parts of it, he does not understand why they were making Kim Philby out to be a bad guy.  He was resourceful and a hard worker, what more can any employer expect?  This follows on from Your mate’s cry from the heart in favour of internet censorship (which did not meet universal approval, and left several people wondering if they were really Kate Bush.  NO THEY ARE NOT.)

There have been developments in Glossolalia, with Trevor taking action to ensure that the streets are more interesting (if not safer).

Following on from his discussion of wombats, Your mate has been considering the flavour of flags, in prose and poesy.  Mmm, yum.

The womb-bat controversy continues, with much debate in paranormal circles (is a paranormal circle a couple of wriggly lines?  Ahh, but if it is wriggly, is it a line?).

Please let the Great Lakes Socialist know that he has to knuckle down and study harder.  To twist the words of Kenny Rogers, there will be plenty of time for revolting, once high school is done.

Reading:  ”Surface Detail” by Iain M Banks – I used to be able to devour these things, but I keep wandering away from it – no doubt I’ll finish it though it seems like every Banks sf novel ends in suicide*;  ”The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield (via Ron Dionne), so good on procrastination; “Toward God” by Michael Casey.  Enjoyed:  ”The Misogynist” by Piers Paul Read (thank you Peter Craven); “River of Gods” by Ian McDonald.

*On this, I gave up reading a lot of genre fiction ages ago because of the sameness – yes one reads a genre because it meets certain requirements, but one of the requirements I have is to be surprised, to be dazzled, to be impressed, to go, yes, that inspires me.  One doesn’t expect that everyday, but you need it once in a good while.  (Clockworm has posted on some aspects of sameness here.)  Of course, literary fiction is also a genre, and so much of it is the same, or even if it isn’t, NOTHING BLOODY HAPPENS, or it is a reflection of those aspects of the modern world I don’t like.  (You don’t ask for much, Joe Chip.)  Goodness, I was even forced to read non-fiction.  And now I keep flapping about between it all.  Perhaps I am being dishonest – I’ve read too much indiscriminately over the years, and I want the old excitement without having to think too much. *sigh* Don’t worry Joe, you’ll cheer up when you win the lottery.

Rainbow lorikeet with moon

Your mate is nothing if not judgmental, quick to use national stereotypes to avoid thinking.  For example, Germany = militarism; USA = conspiracy theories; North Korea = fun times; Russia = a desperate fight to return to democracy; Australia = interesting animals.  And the most interesting of all animals are the cryptids, the subjects of cryptozoology.  Australia has plenty of them – phantom panthers, bunyips, yowies, and most intriguing of them all, the womb-bats.  I hope to provide photographs soon.  In the meantime, you can click on a link and learn all about them here.  Society has had to develop to accommodate these cute animals, and your mate has provided some advice regarding etiquette here.  It is very important not to confuse them with the savage, woman biting wombat, so for your own safety and edification, you must read this now.

Speaking about things strange and fortean, your mate had a very interesting discussion here about UFOs with partialsceptic.  Partial sceptic suggested most ufos can be explained by the weather.  Your mate challenged him on that, forcefully putting the point that it is unlikely weather could build advanced craft to fly around space in.

Meanwhile, in preparation for the coming world revolution, your mate has provided a list of topics you are not allowed to think about here.  It is very important that you read this, otherwise how will you know whether your thoughts are appropriate and you need to report for re-education?

Your mate hopes you have a very good week.

Hey Big Boy!

Found this fellow on my walk, probably a bit under a metre head to tail tip.

Nothing happening in Trevor land this week, however your mate ruminates about the nature of the universe and contact with ET here (if the editor will hit the right button and approve the post, come on Edgarberger you lazy bugger), and conducts a scientific analysis of homeopathy here.  The bad poetry continues here.  On a good poetry page, he has a chat about Dorothy Day.

More horrifying, your mate considers himself an agony aunt, and dares to give advice to anyone who will listen at WWJCD? (What Would Joe Chip Do?).  I bet this one won’t last long.  The first (and perhaps only) piece is inspired by Adrianna F, who lives here.

kookaburra sits in the frangipani doesn't have the same ring

hctrees is a poet.  Your mate is not.  That however has not prevent him posting poems on such classical topics as colonic irrigation, eyes falling out, and the colour blue, here.  You have been warned.

After a quiet period, more has been revealed about Trevor’s domination of Glossolalia, where your mate is unable to maintain relationships with anything human.  These fictions are a distraction from the fiction your mate is supposed to be writing.  Ron Dionne is refusing to be distracted and will be publishing soon.

Continuing on with colonic irrigation (and why wouldn’t we?), your mate has established that it does not taste like chicken here.  Check out his salad, a lot of work went into it.

Is it possible that the Russian spring will mean that for the first time in 22 years, free elections will be held and democratic freedoms returned to the Soviet I mean Russian people.  In-depth analysis here.

Good reads: “Thought Crimes” by Tim Richards; “Mirage Men” by Mark Pilkington; “Best New Horror Vol 22″ ed Stephen Jones; “On Evil” by Terry Eagleton.

we never liked those native flowers that take years to grow anyway