So I dug out my car, drove over streets I couldn’t see, went by multiple wrecks, spun up the big hill, and sludged across campus.

Then UC cancels classes.

Hurray, I get to do it all over again.

Some info from Jeff Rovin’s The Encyclopedia of Monsters (New York: Facts On File, 1989).

The movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was not based on the Ray Bradbury story by the same name (as is widely reported). Originally the movie was called Monster from the Sea but someone noticed a similarity between Bradbury’s story and the movie before they began shooting (the monster is a prehistoric throw-back from the days of the dinosaurs and arrives at a lighthouse). The monster in the movie was designed to look like the illustrations from the story but nothing else was changed in the working script. Bradbury changed the name of his story when it was reprinted.

 Charun - Etruscan myths; looked like an old man with eyes of fire, the tusks and ears of a wild boar, wings and covered with snakes. Carries a hammer or a sword. Servant of Mantus and Mania, the king and queen of the underworld. He brings horses to the souls of the dead so they can reach the underword. When the souls get there, Charun is one of their chief tormentors.

 Godzilla only appeared in one movie in the series (Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954)) and remakes like Godzilla 1985 and the stupid American version starring Ferris Buehler).

All other Godzilla movies really featured Gigantis. Godzilla never fought Mothra, Rodan, King Kong, Mechagodzilla, Ghidrah, Angilas, Spigas, the Smog Monster or anyone else.

In Gigantis, the Fire Monster (1959), two mutant prehistoric monsters–Gigantis and Angilas– awake and fight.  Gigantis, the worse of the two, is buried in an avalanche and left under a mountain of ice. A few years later, he breaks free and suddenly becomes Godzilla.

Gigantis came out a few years after the original Godzilla movie and bombed in both Japan and America. The monster was a guy in a rubber suit that looked exactly like Godzilla except for slight modifications with the teeth and ears.

Toho Productions decided to go with name recognition so when the monster got loose again in 1962, it was King Kong vs. Godzilla. The monster doesn’t come when you call it so the name doesn’t really matter.

Writer Edmond Hamilton brought up the issue of global warming in 1940 in his story “Liline, the Moon Girl,” published in Amazing Stories but presented it as entirely positive.

Dan Milner’s The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues (1956) concerns a sea monster from 10,000 leagues deep. 10,000 leagues equals 30,000 miles–the earth’s diameter is only about 8,000 miles. Nothing else in the movie made sense so who cares?

William O. Douglas Jr., son of Supreme Court Justice, was a B-movie actor and appeared in the Outer Limits episode “The Galaxy Being” in 1963

I took Devilgirl and -boy to a program about owls at Woodland Mound. We’ve seen similar programs before but, with this one, the naturalist handed out owl pellets to dissect.

(Owls swallow their meals, partially digest it, then spit up the hair, bones, and shells.)

I picked mine apart and found, among numerous other bones, an intact skull of a rat. The naturalist said it was the first complete skull they’ve ever recovered.

Way back in the 11th grade, my zoology class dissected a clam and I found the equivalent of a pearl in mine. I might have a gift for finding treasures in dead animals but it’s a knack I haven’t worked to develop.

*Should be spoken in bad Arnie mode.

Weird Universe directed me to The Quotable Action Hero.  I knew a few but where’s “I’m here to chew bubble gum and kick ass and I’m all out of bubble gum”? Where’s the exchange: “Awful brave talk for a dead man. “  “I’m not dead yet!” ”You’re right – my watch is about ten seconds fast.”?

I’m sure I could do better if I wasn’t so terribly lazy.

The Florida Highway Patrol does not have a quota system as evidenced by “a spokesman for the FHP said they don’t operate on a quota system.”

The officer’s motivation was based on, uh, owls. Yeah, owls.

“Great humorists don’t tell jokes. They plant new species of jokes and then help them evolve, or just sit back and watch them self-propagate, grow and sprout again.” Richard Dawkins

Dawkin’s quote comes from Robert Mash’s How to Keep Dinosaurs, a pet guide for extinct animals. Like many books in this genre, it takes an absurd situation and takes it to a logical (or illogical, depending on the way you look at it) conclusion.

Probably the most popular example of this type of book is Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide but I’ve also read Meghann Marco’s Field Guide to the Apocalypse: Movie Survival Skills for the End of the World  and Daniel H. Wilson’s How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion.

It’s hard to judge these books against each other–they all do more or less the same thing–but Max Brooks was lucky/smart to pick the subject with the biggest draw.

This morning a wreck blocked the way on 275 so I had to take the long way to NKU. I would have made it but the parking lots were completely full. By the time I found a space  and got to class, it was 11:26 and everyone was gone.

After the university decided to make us pay for the privilege of coming to work, you’d think they’d squeeze in a few more spaces.

Aside: A certain instructor with a “Sands Montessori” sticker on his car decided to park in an illegal spot. Kudos if it worked out.

According to Augustus Brown’s Why Pandas Do Handstands and Other Curious Truths about Animals:

Some male Canadian red-sided garter snakes give off female pheromones so that other males mate repeatedly with them. When the other males are worn out, the transsexual male, mates with all the real females.

Marine flatworms are born with both sets of sex organs and when they meet, they jab each other with their penii (each flatworm has two a piece). The winner penetrates the loser, causing it to turn female and carries the winner’s eggs.

The sea bass can change sex in less than 30 seconds.

Gay dolphins often engage in nasal sex (penis to blowhole) and sonic sex (strong bursts of sonar to the penis) .

Approximately 10% of rams are homosexual, about 6% are asexual. Mountain rams are generally homosexual throughout the year except for mating season.

Mallard ducks engage in homosexual necrophilia. One was observed mating with a dead male for 75 minutes straight. 

One of the parasites of the American mayfly causes them to change to female.

DDT caused male seagulls to act gay.

This is all an evil illusion created by Satan. 

He’s got a lot of time on his hands now that Pat Robinson called him out about Haiti.

Sunday was Devilgirl’s 10th birthday. She had a million presents and went with her friends to Chuck E. Cheeses. I no longer fear Hell.

Ten years works out to 3652 days and, at a conservative estimate, I’ve changed on average three diapers a day with only five days break (three of which before 2002 and two in 2009). That works out to roughly 10,941 diapers at what I’d estimate an average of 20 cents each. Not much more than $2,000.

I’d put more cost on the labor involved but nobody’s asking.