lornamatic

When you go through an airport with a pet in a carrier, everyone is your friend.

When you spend four hours in the emergency room with some worm-infested fish in a bag, everyone is your friend, and is also an amateur scientist. Everyone.

I won’t mention the name of the restaurant, because I would own its search results within two hours. It’s probably not appropriate to list here. If you really must know, ask me in person or email. I’ll be happy to tell you. It’s a nice restaurant.

The halibut was delicious. From Alaska, fresh, and apparently never frozen. Apparently never fully cooked, either. Between two lobes of flesh, about 2/3rds of the way through the filet, a wiggly pink ~1″ worm was quite comfortably nestled. Actually, later in the ER, one of my eagle-eyed junior scientist neighbors noticed that there were two, happily wriggling around the remaining piece of uneaten fish.

What a freaking night. We drove straight to the hospital, where we watched two hours of South Park, and they carried my worm off in a little dated and numbered cool-whip specimen container. So now I’ve got a date with the LA County department of public health, as well as a follow-up with my friendly neighborhood infectious disease specialist. Stunning.

The good news is, normally the symptoms for this manifest within a couple of hours. It’s all treatable, and if I actually did manage to ingest a friend of the fully living, third-larval stage parasitic nematode that I got to bring home from the restaurant, well, at least it’s tremendously rare to experience severe symptoms.

Overwhelming anxiety and a phobia of anything related to Google Image Search Results for “Pseudoterranova decipiens” do not apparently count as symptoms.

There’s humor in this. The scene I made in the restaurant was pretty good. And oh, later, at the ER? The part where the psycho looking homeless guy comes in, carrying a paper, sits down two seats away from me, and within 30 seconds, slams the paper as hard as he can, right down on the baggie containing my worm? Comedic gold.

“Uh, hey…”

“Oh, was that yours?”

I guess you had to be there.

was at the Santa Monica Chevrolet dealer.

I have to say, there wasn’t much question before how I felt about it, but casting my ballot under the proud glow of our American flag, while surrounded by 70 ginormous Chevy SUVs really helped me clarify my position on Prop 87.

Next time, I’m hoping they’ll use the art store instead.

It’s beyond amusing to me, that people are interpreting the recent appearance of hind fins on a dolphin as a freak vestigal mutation, caused by the pollution of the oceans.

No one gives dolphins enough credit. My theory? They’re evolving, right underneath our noses. Getting ready to pop out of these filthy oceans and open up a mighty can of whipass on all of humankind. Samuel L. Jackson style.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish, bitches!”

Just in time for Halloween, a series of Very Yucky Desktop Backgrounds. I guarantee you (or your co-workers) will be completely creeped out by at least one, and they’re even mostly color balanced, and therefore suitable for doing design work over.

Considering my extensive collection of bizarre biology photographs and medical clip art, it just seemed unfair to NOT share. There are seven desktop backgrounds, at 1024×768 and 1600×1200.

Freshly posted, get them while they’re still warm!