My So Called Life

Horror movie waiting to happen

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Sometimes, things that happen in nature are 100 times scarier than anything you’ve seen in the movies.  I give you the Emerald Cockroach Wasp:

If you ever see one of these buggers, run!

If you ever see one of these buggers, run!

Looks innocent enough, right?  WRONG!  Let me tell you a little bit about the way this dude goes about his business.

1) The wasp stings a cockroach, temporarily paralyzing it.  Then it stings it again in a very, very specific place disabling a specific part of it’s brain.  I repeat, it has evolved to know just the exact place to sting, like a cockroach brain surgeon.

2) The cockroach’s brain is damaged in such away so as to leave no survival instinct – but everything else is intact (once the paralysis wears off).  That is to say, it can eat, move, etc. as it could before.

3) The wasp then chews off one of the roach’s antenna and uses it to lead the roach back to its burrow like dog on a leash.  Having no survival instinct at this point, it complacently follows.

4) The wasp lays an egg in the roach’s abdomen

Now here is where it gets truly horrifying.

5) The roach stays alive in the burrow making no attempt to escape. When the larva is hatched, it “consumes the roach’s internal organs in an order which guarantees that the roach will stay alive” until the larva is ready.  So again, this thing has evolved in such a manner that it’s young know which order to eat a roach’s organs to avoid killing it!

The part that creeps me out is the way it modifies the roach’s behavior only, leaving it capable to escape but having no desire to do so.  It kind of reminds me of The Happening, which is a super creepy movie that people didn’t like for some reason but I thought was haunting.

So what is creepier?  The Emerald Cockroach Wasp, or the fact that I recieved an email containing only that link with no explanatory text from someone?

Grandma’s Pickles

/ Shane / 3 Comments

My Grandma’s homemade pickles are the greatest food on this or any other planet in this or any other reality.  FACT.  If I were stranded on a desert island and I could only take one food with me to have forever, it would be my Grandma’s pickles.

I just wanted that on the record somewhere.

GZUS

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I saw the best license plate today at the grocery store.  GZUS N ME.  GZUS.  I like it!  I think the guy could use an image update.

I would have snapped a cell phone picture or something, but Evie was sobbing “POO POO!  POO POO!” at the top of her lungs in regards to the state of her diaper, so it didn’t seem like a good time.

Give it up for G-Zus!

Batter Blaster

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Today I was walking through the grocery store and I saw something amazing:

“We have to buy this” I said, “so I can blog about it.”  It was even on sale.  So, it is a giant whipped cream can that contains pancake batter (as the name implies).  You spray it on the pan and, boom, pancakes.  It actually comes out a lot thicker than I was expecting, but then somehow the pancakes turn out really thin.  Maybe because of the thinness or something about the batter, but I was able to make them all look perfectly done.  I was very excited about these pancakes, but it turns out they weren’t that good. Well, at least I should say that I didn’t like them as well as regular pancakes.  They are a little sweeter and have a different sort of taste.  It is hard to describe.  Also, they were a little tough.  On the other hand though, there were no dishes to clean up and dinner took like no time at all.  So I would definitely recommend it for people in a hurry or for those lazy bachelors and college students.  Also, Sara pointed out it could be good for camping.

So, long story short, idea is A double plus, the implementation is meh.  I should also mention though, that it didn’t occur to me that you could write or draw with the pancakes until I was doing image searches for this post.  That certainly adds another dimension!

Babies know from birth that bacon is delicious, FACT

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I was frying up some bacon yesterday and apparently the smell is somehow inherently delicious.  I don’t know how Evie would know the smell of bacon or know that it is something that she wanted!  She was just sobbing and sobbing, “Baaacon!  Baaacon!” and demanding “bacon” on her “plate” in the “big girl chair”.  On one hand it was quite funny on the other hand it was very sad because I too know the want of bacon when you don’t have any.  I was kind of thinking about grabbing the video camera for bacon posterity and then Sara said, “You’re thinking about recording this, aren’t you?”

So, the other day Sara sat me down for a Zombie Intervention.  “Shane” she said, “You know that zombies aren’t really going to attack, right?”  This was a funny thing to say since she had just given me the Zombie Survival Guide for my birthday.  I told her that of course I didn’t really believe that and it was a big joke and I am astounded that after all of this time she couldn’t tell the difference.  She seemed to accept that, so I think it bought me some more time to really get my zombie plans in place.  I mean, I know i might not be zombies per say, it could be velociraptors for example.  Anyway, she said that she was sure that some readers of this blog wouldn’t be able to tell if I were joking or not.  So what do you think, gentle reader? Vote in the comments.

I’m only half way through the Survival Guide, but so far it has been pretty good.  The only downside is that it presents only one type of zombies and says that is the only type.  So if you depend only on this text and it ends up being fast zombies or voodoo zombies or comet zombies, you will be in trouble.  Anyhoo, it has opened my eyes to a couple of interesting points, for example, consider holing up in a school.  They are often on lock down (at least inner city schools) and you will have access to both food from the cafeteria and first aid supplies from the nurses’ office.  So I am now thinking about abandoning my house (as I’ve said, it is indefensible) and moving to one of the schools down the street.  In addition to the benefits of schools, it also has a fenced in back yard with like 12 foot fences which could potentially allow for a secure vegetable garden of some sort.  “You see” Sara said, “This is when I start to think you take this too seriously.”  “I’m doing this for you!” I replied.  Oh well, when the dead start to rise, we’ll see who gets the last laugh…

In other me news, I have been quite the handy man about the house lately.  I’ve put up coat hangers and shelves including wall anchors, replaced 3 very high light bulbs, replaced a light switch and even repaired our broken, all-set-for-the-trash coat rack with some cement.  I even had to make two different trips to the hardware store.  Carpenter, electrician, mason…you want it, I got it.  In fact, the garbage disposal was clogged and I was a little disappointed that the trick I read about on the Internet cleared it out, because I was all set to take apart the pipe and add plumber to my resume.  Oh well, all’s well that ends well.