Unimpressed octopus(?) lawn sculpture

The eye/face expression seems... unimpressed. As if to say, "really? this is all you want me to do? sit on your lawn?"

This post's theme word is quaggy (adj), "marshy; flabby; spongy." Amongst invertebrates, "quaggy" is more complimentary than we vertebrates usually consider it.

Computer-augmenting stickers

Forgive the poor lighting conditions, I snuck this photo in a darkened airplane. My neighbor had a delight-inducing sticker on the back of his laptop.

Is this a reference, or just a usual tentacled one-eyed cartoon sneaking around the edge of the iconic fruit?


This post's theme word is tragus, "the small fleshy projection at the front of the external ear, slightly extending over the opening of the ear." The tentacles unfurled and tickled his tragus.

Courtship tokens

My desk already had fun math puzzles, as decoration and to occupy my hands and mind while I spin my brain-wheels on research problems.

To these I now add recently-received wooing tokens, these two octopuses.

As far as romancing goes, I cannot think of a more attractive feature than access to a 3D printer and willingness to print tiny, creepy cephalopods.


This post's theme word is cumshaw, "a gift or tip." This cumshaw octopus collects scrimshaw.

Video game art

An interesting and high-concept, fancy exhibit of video game art included swooping drops of tone down to doodles on the wall, including several featuring a very stupid rabbit (citation needed?) who goes on adventures, often of a fatal and pratfall-humor nature.

The squids, tentacly, badly lit in this awkward photo, and in a spaceship, were a favorite with me.

This post's theme word is quisling, "a traitor, especially one who aids an invading enemy." Is there any other kind?

Binti

Binti is an excellent novella by Nnedi Okorafor. Her previous fiction was vicious, and incisive, and demanding, and exhilarating; in this shorter format, she captures some of those features, but mostly the story serves as a small Petri dish, a focused look at one single character, the choices she makes, the way she finds of fitting herself into a broader cultural narrative that moves palpably around her, shaping her life and influencing her choices.

The short format made for a quick read, but the subject matter --- a mathematically-gifted woman takes a scholarship, and a spaceship ride, to the biggest university (planet-sized!), and encounters warlike betentacled space aliens --- meant that I inhaled Binti. It came out yesterday, and one of my horde of automated robots reminded me, so I purchased it. Then, 24 hours later, the entire contents were embedded in my brain, with no clear discernable moment where this happened. It read so quickly. It was a delight, with tension and drama and a narrator's voice that is firmly grounded in reasonable decisions and a knowledge of herself and her (extensive, impressive, but not superpowered) abilities.

I loved it.


This post's theme word is hecatomb, "a great public sacrifice (properly of a hundred oxen)." (Brought to you by China Miéville's Kraken, p. 483.) The other students served as a hecatomb for universal peace, or at least a lessening of universal, murderous animosity.

[Update: More specific, slightly spoilery review available at the publisher's website.]

Scrap octopus Fabrice

One month of Saturdays spent, and --- lo! --- a large collection of worn and stained green shirts (plus one old spherical pillow) is transformed into one fantastic pillowcase octopus. 

Fabrice, my scrap octopus.

I quilted the "skirt" portion for fun, and also as an experiment in quilting t-shirt cotton. It was interesting. I will certainly take the lessons learned here forward in the next sewing project. One main lesson is: don't quilt t-shirt cotton, it's too stretchy. Another is: finishing touches matter. I spent a lot of time considering how to attach the tentacles and make the underskirt, and these things have much less of an impact than the shape of the head and the style of quilting.

The rest of my shabby old clothes have a reprieve now, while I focus on other projects. The other residents of the bedroom should beware, though... Fabrice's octopus head is stretchy, so he is quite capable of consuming other softies.

This post's theme word is celadon, "a pale green color," or "a type of ceramics having a pale green glaze, originally made in China." Fabrice's original habitat offers many mottled celadon backdrops against which he is camouflaged.

"Sunrising jellyfish"

The 2011 National Geographic Photography Contest winners are posted. Although it only got honorable mention, Angel Fitor's "Sunrising Jellyfish" is my favorite.
It is very aesthetically pleasing, the colors and edge of the sun blending into the top of the jellyfish. Plus, for some reason, it makes me hungry.


This post's theme word is nankeen, "a yellow or buff color," or "a sturdy yellow or buff cotton fabric," or "(nankeens) Trousers made of this cloth," or "a Chinese porcelain having blue designs on a white background."

Octopus returns... knitted-style

You may recall this lovely dearie who joined my household in October. Well, I asked for the pattern and then learned to knit. And -- lo! -- behold what I can create over Christmas break: a monster is born!Knitting is apparently an art wherein the consistency of the yarn tension matters a lot. My yarn tension was varied, so the tentacles turned out rather more kinky than the nice, even, smooth ones previously shown. For this pattern, the unevenness of my knitting worked in my favor. It gave the tentacles a grasping look, as if the devious, malicious mind behind those protruding pink eyeballs (and distributed throughout the octopus as a series of decentralized, interdependent neuron clusters) is reaching with intent.
This octopus is on the prowl against a delightfully Goreyesque backdrop.
It has found a crevice for lurking.


This post's theme word is mazard, "face, head, or skull." That animal is all malign mazard!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! I hope you are enjoying a vacation day, wherever you are, in whatever way you most prefer.Even cultural institutions as innocuous as a benevolent chubby man who uses a massive slave-labor force to manufacture and distribute candy and gifts can be eldrich, when viewed properly. (GIF from Tor.com.)



This post's theme word is Caganer, "a nativity figurine depicted in the act of defecating." No nativity scene is complete without a Caganer; I shall have to find one to add to my family's set.

Giant squid puppet

I received a postcard from penpal M. featuring a giant squid puppet, seen here at an incomplete stage:It was built by Les Machines de l'île Nantes, a puppetry workshop in a shipyard. Their projects look very cool. I want to visit!


This post's theme word is swale, "a low or hollow place, especially a marshy depression between ridges." Beware that swale yonder, the locals claim it is infested with giant squid!

Octohedron octopus

On my desk this afternoon, I found:
The note reads (in an unsteady hand),

Greetings from under the sea! I am not too good at writing I heard you are kind to the tentacled. I was teased for being green. I disguised myself as an octahedron to slip past the mathematicians, take me home? [wiggly octopus self-portrait]

So of course I grabbed that green tentacle and shook it in a firm handshake, welcoming it to come home to my (increasingly silly) collection of tentacled things. When everted, the purple octohedron becomes the ink in a green octopus.
Many thanks to A., who was ultimately responsible for the creation and delivery of this octopus!


This post's theme word is imbosk, "to hide," usually in a wood. Environmental limitations make octopus imbosking impractical.

Cartographic octopodes

The "land octopus" is historically used on maps to emphasize evil imperialism ... or is it communism? See for yourself. (HT: MetaFilter.)
This post's theme word is solferino, "purplish red color." An imperialist octopus spreads the thick, solferino gore of its rivals across the globe.

Octopus attack and Pynchon

I'm reading my way through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, a book so substantial that merely "reading" it does not convey the magnitude of the task. It floated to the top of my reading list (or "budged" or "shoved," given overcrowding on the list) because I finally recovered from the mental reverberations of finishing Infinite Jest and wanted a comparably "dense and complex" read before I attempt to reread that behemoth.

This is just a diversion. I'm actually reading Against the Day, but after about 100 pages it became difficult to keep track of all the characters with their giddy names and quaint adventures, strung together through chance encounters and narrated by an author who no sooner introduces a character than becomes more interested in another character in the background of the scene. It's a long-form study of attention-deficit writing. It's an entire fictional universe, explored depth-first. I bought the book because the first scene, with its tongue-in-cheek narration of an intrepid crew of boys on an airship, captured my interest in a bookstore. I hope that we eventually return to those characters, about whom I enjoyed reading. I have two pages of notes taken while reading to help me remember the trailing thread of connections, but I was about to roll over to a second sheet of paper and feeling frustrated.

So I picked up Gravity's Rainbow, figuring I'd start with a more famous book by the same author. Maybe this would help me figure out how to properly read Pynchon's writing.

It has helped, a little. Instead of pages of notes on the plot, I have one long list of unknown words to look up. The narrative of Gravity's Rainbow sticks more adhesively to a small set of interwoven storylines, but sticky lines are very snarl-prone. It is no easier to understand. About 1/4 way through the book, I gave up trying to figure out what was happening. Now I'm just enjoying the ride: the abstruse writing with its forays into excitement, humor, and disturbing situations; the hints at many hidden plots, plots-within-plots, characters scheming together and against each other in continuously varying groupings; the tiny planted details which bloom unexpectedly into entire scenes.

Like this octopus. I think it is no spoiler (as I understand it) to reveal that there is a large octopus peripherally involved in Gravity's Rainbow, and that one scene features this octopus attacking a bathing beauty. I came across this print of a similar scene:Via Fuck Yeah Cephalopods. (N.B.: I did not know about this octopus when I started reading. It came as a surprise, and perhaps confirmation bias: the more I think about octopodes, the more I see them wherever I look. Look around you...)


This post's theme word: neritic, "of, relating to, or inhabiting the ocean waters between the low tide mark and a depth of about a hundred fathoms (200 meters)." This post is written like H. P. Lovecraft.

Octopus leak

Although the oil leak is apparently capped, oil will be washing ashore for some time to come. I came across this lovely print:
(Via Fuck Yeah Cephalopods.) I've never seen a drippy octopus before, but I really like the aesthetic.


This post's theme word: diaphoresis, "perspiration."