Yep, From the Great Upstate New York Village of Lake Flaccid Comes...
barrabusmunn-dayne, the The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man
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It's raining dead fish here in Lake Flaccid today. We'd prefer dogs and cats, but, hey, you know the weather. The temperature only got down around 60 up here in this one spot last night, while all around us temperatures dropped below freezing. I just saw on teevee where it's just 30 over in Lake Placid right now--going up to 60 over there which means it'll probably go up near 70 here in Lake Flaccid.
All the people who count up here are fine. Charlie Hooch wrecked his cigarette boat. I can see it across the lake from my back porch here. It's up in some pine trees way over by Run-Down Falls and Johnny High Cloud's bottle house. Charlie said he had fun wrecking it--I think he said the boat hit an oil slick and went flying through the air into that flock of pines--or at least he thought it was an oil slick--it could be that brown-flowing stream that runs from the Saranac Lake sewer system overflowing into Lake Flaccid several times a year. Though it could be an oil slick, too, since the Playboy's Dock is notorious for dumping old used oils and lubricants from their boat drydock into the lake. Whatever kind of slick it is, it's probably why the fish are floating belly up all over the place this morning. Oh well. The smell? Hey, you get used to it. Like in war where you get used to the smell of dead bodies. Guys in World War I, the War to End All Wars, who fought in the trenches, when their buddy next to them in the trench got killed, they'd just roll his body up atop the trench sandbags and use it as a rifle mount, or then use it as a pillow when the action subsided long enough for them to take a short break.
Cecil the Dog-Faced Boy III said he has been asked to be a judge at a Freak Show in Miami coming up in November. He doesn't know whether he's going to do it or not. It's not humiliating; he said there were plenty of new-age dog-faced boys that look more canine than he does, so it's not out of professional jealousy he's reluctant to do it. I think it has more to do with fees that anything else. He warned me that while he was in Miami his normal-looking sister would be using his house. I didn't let him know it because I know how he hates his sister, but that was good news to me. I got a little thing going on with her last time she was here. Cecil would turn on me if he found out I might be making it with his normal sister. I'm curious, would our kids be dogged-faced?
Jots & Titles
--New companies or products I've never heard of before recently:
BB&T Bank (since 1872, their ad says); TDAmeritrade; Advair (a "breathing" drug); Spiriva (another "breathing" drug); ADT (their motto: "always there"); Prestiq (a new depression drug); TIAA-CREF (I have no idea what this company does--they advertised during the President's Cup golf matches); LG (refrigerators); Constellation Energy (of Baltimore; they say in their ads they promote nuclear energy as renewable energy).
--Ingmar Bergman, who just died, had 9 children by 6 different women. What a man! I'm very envious of a man who women can't resist.
--A movable poem by Emmanuel Gaunt:
Whoever They Are
All
are wholes,
A hole,
you dig?
A hole
for the Holy Ghost
All holes for the Ghost
All wholes
All A holes
for the A-1 Holiest of Ghosts
whole-ly Ghosts
A Ho-Ho-Hole-y Ghost
Holy, Wholly, Holey...
All
are whole,
A hole,
A hole
for all wholes
and A holes
whoever they are.
emmanuel guant
riverdale, new york
--marvelousmarvbackbiter must be a happy man. The Phillies and the Dodgers are going for the National League title; the Yankees and Angels going for the American League title.
--Chiura Obata: I noticed the Growler staff has put up the Japanese-American painter Chiura Obata's Website over in the righthand links sidebar (do we still use that term?)--it's called The Great Nature. Chiura came to America in 1903 at age 18. To Seattle. He fell in love with the natural beauty of the US Northwest and then after he moved to San Francisco he started spending time sketching in Yosemite Park, a place that got into his system as a spiritual being and inspired him to give forth some of his best work. That work was the woodblocks shown on The Great Nature Website. Chiura, of course, during WWII was rounded up and sent to an internment (concentration?) camp because of his family and business connections in Imperial Japan. What did Chiura do to pass his time in the concentration camp? Why he started an art school.
Here's his Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiura_Obata
--Yes, President Obama will fly on Air Force One to Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize. The President is seeing the world, but then he considers himself an "international" president, I think. But then don't trust me on politics. I'm a lefty and proud of it. We don't see ourselves as predatory carnivorous animals so we can't understand that peace is not a part of our "natures." There is no peace from which we evolved. Animals who eat the flesh of other animals are never at peace. They are always on the ALERT for animals trying to eat them or animals they can eat. Nature is a dog-eat-dog existence and as long as we're dependent up nature--the natural world--for our survival, well there's going to be conflict. Territorial conflicts mostly--for land, for space, for larger and larger areas of domination. I'm used to war. There's been a war of some kind going on somewhere every minute of the time I've been on earth. Expect more war. The common people of India are at war right now with their government and Coca-Cola over Coca-Cola trying to buy the rights to the waters of the Ganges River. Coca-Cola's water company bottles its stolen water under the Dasani brand. Recently in London, Coca-Cola had to admit that its Dasani water sold in England was tapped right out of the regular old London water supply. Coca-Cola on its Website brags about how it's working with water conservationists to conserve our world's water. Oh how generous of Coca-Cola, who got rich off sugar, water, and food coloring--stuff you mix with rum to get sloppy drunk off of; stuff you put aspirin in to get a little high; originally actually containing cocaine, the Coca in its name. Coca-Cola is by the way the largest land owner in Belize.
--What's Gore Vidal up to these days? From the Independent:
In Russian, the phrase "gore vidal" means "he has seen grief". As Gore Vidal is wheeled towards me across an empty London hotel lobby, it seems for the first time like an apt translation. In the eight years since I saw him last, he has lost his partner of 50 years, most of his friends, most of his enemies, and the use of his legs. The man I met then – bristling with his own brilliance, scattering witticisms around like confetti – has withered. His skin is like parchment, but the famous cheekbones are still sharp beneath the crags. "It is so cold in here," he says, by way of introduction. "So fucking cold."
Read the rest:
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gore-vidals-united-states-of-fury-1798601.html
--How does a fish breathe?
Many animals have gills at some stage of their life (even humans have them at an early stage of their development in the womb), but fish retained these gills and they are still a functional part of their anatomy. Fish use their gills to extract oxygen from their watery environment. The process starts with the fish’s mouth, which is how the fish takes in water. When a fish opens and closes its mouth, it is actually pumping water back through the gills and is thus breathing. Most fish have an effective pumping system that involves the mouth and the outer cover of the gills, called the operculum. When the fish’s mouth opens, the operculum closes, drawing water into the fish’s mouth. When the fish closes its mouth, the operculum opens, allowing fresh water to cross the gills. Other fish have a less effective pumping system, requiring them to swim constantly to keep fresh, oxygenated water flowing over the gills. These types of fish, such as tuna, generally swim with their mouths partly open. Incidentally, while many fish have nostrils, the nostrils are used only for a sense of smell, and play no part in respiration.
Once through the mouth, the water continues past structures called gill rakers. The gill rakers are essentially a filter system for the gills, straining the water to sift out floating food particles or foreign material. After passing through the gill rakers, the water continues through the gill arches and actually passes over the gills, which are suspended between the mouth cavity and the operculum. Each gill is made of two rows of gill filaments, which are extremely thin membranes sticking out into the water flow. Each of the gill filaments is composed of rows upon rows of lamellae, which are thin, disc-like membranes loaded with a capillary network. The water flows across the lamellae, and oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged directly across the capillary membrane. The capillaries are situated to take best advantage of the water flow; fish can actually extract up to 85% of available oxygen out of the water. Since water contains only 2-5% of the available oxygen that air at sea level does, such a high efficiency is extremely important.
From the gills, the deoxygenated water passes out the operculum, and the oxygenated blood joins the circulatory system. Despite the efficiency, some fish require more oxygen than others. This helps to explain why some fish thrive in specific habitats. For example, trout prefer northern streams because the cool water of the streams tends to retain dissolved oxygen, and the active trout need the extra oxygen. Carp, on the other hand, are sluggish and do not need as much oxygen, which is why carp can thrive in warm, relatively stagnant ponds, such as ornamental ponds. Goldfish, unlike most fish found in home aquariums, can survive in a non-aerated fish bowl because goldfish spend the majority of their time at the surface, where the oxygen content is highest due to the contact of the water with the atmosphere.
Credit: www.essortment.com/all/howdofishbrea_rlyl.htm
With that, a tah-tah to you all,
barrabusmunn-dayne, thedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman
for The Daily Growler
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