Holy Shit, Jellyfish!

I mean...look at that thing. What? Whose idea was it to make a living creature of the oceans of this Earth look like that? Why would you do that, nature? What's the deal? What happened here? Just for a start: depending on the species, jellyfish bodies are between 95 and 98% water. Plain old water, plus two percent fleshy, translucent membrane.

They have no brains. No specialized digestive system. No blood. No nervous system. No vascular system. Just a one-size-fits-all cavity where food meanders its way in and is passively digested. The gastrovascular cavity is basically a hipster nonchalantly swaying to the music at a Death Cab for Cutie show, because they're not as hip and unknown as they used to be and it doesn't want to look too enthusiastic.

"Yeah, Ben Gibbard is alright, I guess," he said, tears glistening on his cheeks as "Transatlanticism" reached its climax

The only thing jellyfish can consciously do (if you can even call it consciously, which you probably can't) is flex a single muscle that kind of, sort of, in a way, gives them control over their motion. Like spreading your arms and legs out to slightly alter your heading while you're falling from 20,000 feet without a parachute.

The way they reproduce is weird as hell, too. A bunch of them get together and basically make a big old cocktail of sperm and eggs, which eventually leads to mass fertilization. The eggs hatch into little larvae called planulae, which stick to a firm surface and grow into polyps. Polyps are essentially what you'd expect to get if you cross-bred a jellyfish with a sea anemone, and if there are any mad scientists reading this and thinking that sounds like a good idea, please don't. You are the most boring mad scientist in history. Stop it.

If this diagram shows up in your plot to take over the world, there are several somethings wrong with you.

So the polyp grows up a bit, and suddenly things take a turn. In many cases, the polyp will spontaneously just...clone itself. Because jellyfish are both sexually and asexually reproductive organisms. And then sometimes, just for kicks, a few polyps will decide they're not in a place right now where they can afford to live on their own, so they'll find some roommates and form a colony. Not to save on rent money, mind you. They share a goddamn stomach. Because of course they do.

Finally, they fly the coop to become an ephyra, which is more like what you imagine when you think of a jellyfish. Then it grows tentacles, and becomes a medusa. Then it haunts your nightmares and inspires Nintendo to design a creature that can literally suck your life force out of your upper torso.

If you played games in the '80s and '90s, you are now having PTSD-esque flashbacks.

Holy shit.

"Ben Gibbard 2" by Sharat Ganapati - originally posted to Flickr as Ben Gibbard. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ben_Gibbard_2.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Ben_Gibbard_2.jpg

Holy Shit, Gamergate!

If only.

For as long as I can remember, "gamer" has been one of the main points of my identity. Gaming was a constant companion for most of my youth. Several of my strongest and most enduring friendships were formulated on the foundation of shared interest in games. Games were a comfort and a release when I was a morose teenager.

Recently, I've started to shy away from calling myself a gamer. There are several reasons for the change. I have newer, more important ways to identify myself these days -- like husband, and more recently, father. But it's not like I don't still play. I do. Every chance I get, even if said chances are few and far between.

The bigger reason is Gamergate. Gamergate is a movement that is ostensibly about corruption in the games journalism industry. That's a very real problem. There have been instances of journalists being fired for writing honest reviews of games whose publishers were providing advertising revenue to the host site. That is all kinds of unethical, and it's not an isolated problem.

But we got these guys out of it. They're cool I guess.

But that's not what sparked Gamergate. Gamergate started when the jilted ex-boyfriend of an indie game developer posted a video manifesto that aired all of their dirty laundry, including accusations that she had cheated on him and exchanged sexual favors for positive coverage of her game. The Internet exploded in the way it only does when there's a new woman to harass. Of all people, Adam "Jayne from Firefly" Baldwin coined the movement's title...in the midst of one of his bat-shit, right-wing Twitter rants. 

Jayne, your mouth is talking. You might want to look to that.

It could have been a decent movement, to be honest. But from its inception, the people who were saying, "If that's true, it really says something about the state of games journalism" were instantly drowned out by the hordes of ignorant shits screaming, "It must be true! What reason would a jilted ex-boyfriend have to lie about his ex-girlfriend to her peers? Our only reasonable course is to threaten to rape and murder her."

They're like this, but with death threats.

And I am not fucking kidding about that. Zoe Quinn was driven from her home by threats of sexual violence and death, from people who had found and published all of her personal information, including her address. Anyone of any standing in the industry who spoke in her defense was given the same treatment, including Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist critic who had already seen her share of death threats because of her video series that asks the question, "Do the games industry and gaming culture maybe treat women poorly?"

GEE I WONDER

The movement is completely out of control at this point, and it might be the biggest threat to gaming since the industry crashed in 1983. A largely falsified rumor about a woman's sex life has started a horrific campaign of harassment against women who are interested in games and want them to be a more inclusive medium. I mean, Jesus Christ, when I was a teenager my heart would have burst with joy if I learned that games were considered "art" enough where they could be subject to feminist critiques. I've always insisted that video games could be more than toys, and now that people outside of the traditional gaming demographic are acknowledging that, a bunch of children are trying to drive them away with death threats.

So as much as I'm not done with gaming, I'm done being a gamer. I know from the responses within the industry to Anita Sarkeesian and to the Gamergate lunacy that I can look forward to a richer, more diverse culture surrounding games. But gamers? I won't be a part of that world anymore.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Giraffes!

I'm gonna make this a short one since it's bed time as I write this and I am currently treating sleep as a precious commodity. That guy up there, as you are no doubt aware, is a giraffe.

I could tell you about how endangered they are. I could tell you about how they gestate for 15 months before being born at about six feet tall. But those facts would just be interesting. Not holy shit interesting.

So I'm gonna tell you how gay they are.

Very.

Giraffes are very, literally gay. Somewhere between 30 and 75% of what scientists coquettishly refer to as "mounting incidents" occur between two male giraffes. It usually happens after "necking," which in this case is a bit more violent than the traditional human definition of "making out."

I guess that makes this foreplay, though.

Two males will hilariously slap their necks against each other until one of them cries uncle. Then they cuddle and caress each other for a bit, which eventually culminates in the stronger male hopping up, mounting, and boinking the one he just out-necked.

And again: this is a more frequent occurrence than mating in the world giraffe community.

Holy shit.

Holy Wombat Shit!

I'm going to make this exceptionally brief, for brevity is the soul of not-feeling-like-taking-the-effort-to-write-out-a-whole-blog-post-right-this-secondness. This is a wombat.

Yes you are, you cute little marsupial!

Yes. He is the cutest little doofus you can imagine. Now, here's his poo:

The logical next step.

It's square. It is a square poo. Wombats poop squares.

Why? Because the distinct shape helps to mark their territory, like a building block.

And it helps them identify potential mates, like that video you found in your uncle's special box when your parents weren't looking.

So, to recap: Wombats are adorable, but they're into square scat porn.

Holy cubic Shit.

Holy Shit, Silphium!

I decided to go a little festive for this week's entry and talk about Silphium. It's nearly Valentine's Day, after all, so it's only appropriate. Silphium was an herb that was so valued for its flavor and medicinal properties that it was said to be worth its weight in silver. It's been found on ancient coins from Cyrene in North Africa. And its seed pod looked like this:

Yes. That's why it's festive.

If that looks more like a heart symbol to you than an actual heart does, you might be onto something. In fact, it's possible that Silphium seed pods are the origin of the heart symbol as we know it. There are other theories, too, but it's usually best not to illustrate them.

This close, they always look like landscape.

Silphium was apparently a wonder plant. It was described as an incredibly aromatic herb that every good cook should always have in their kitchen. It was also used for a medicinal purposes, treating all maladies that stretched from sore throats to pregnancy.

The reason this plant is thought to be the origin of the heart symbol, you see, is that it may have been an early form of birth control. And what could be more romantic than sending your sweetheart a message that says, in essence, "I want to have consequence-free sex with you."

"I Birth Control New York" has...what I'll call an interesting ring to it.

Alas, the ancient civilizations eventually had to give up their herbal anti-baby love drug. Through some combination of over-harvesting, over-tilling, over-consumption, or over-grazing, Silphium became extinct early on in the Common Era, around the time of Nero.

The way I choose to see it is that people were so excited to discover that they could easily make with the hanky-panky and not worry about babies, they all ran out to the fields and harvested the shit out of Silphium until there simply weren't none left for nobody. Thus did the promise of copulation lead to the demise of a pillar of the North African economy.

Holy shit. Happy Valentine's Day!