Metamorphosism

Gamma joke

Dad, want to hear a joke? Gamma asked me.
Okay, I said.
A guy walks into a bar, she said.
(I love it when little girls tell me jokes that start that way).
He orders a beer, she said. After it comes, a big, mean guy appears and drinks it down in one go. The first guy starts crying.
What kind of sissy are you, the big tough guy says, crying over a beer?
It's not just the beer, the first guy says. This morning, my wife left me and I decided to kill myself. I tried to hang myself, but the rope broke. I tried shooting myself, but the gun jammed. Now I just put poison in my beer, and you drank it.

She told me the joke about twice a day for a week. Luckily it's a funny joke.

Tonic

There's nothing like a day off in the middle of the week to perk you up, I thought.

Sleeping in. Finally getting that workout I had been too busy for for so long.

No more feeling old for me. Spring had arrived, I thought, and I feel perky and youthful. Besides the only alternatives to getting older are dying or getting that weird Hollywood-actress-Madame-Tussaud-wax-person-with-a-concussion look.

Face it, James Dean never got to sit in the middle of an orchestra hugging a cello vibrating madly with a roomful of music, which is pretty cool, as I discovered Wednesday evening.

I remember reading Meike's blog years ago when she was writing about playing in an orchestra, and I wondered if I would ever be good enough on the cello to experience that.

And, now, eh, I'm not exactly good enough, but there I am in the middle of it. That's pretty cool. I just play the bass part when things get fiddly. I gather that's legitimate.

Anyway, I went outside and smelled the air and looked at the flowers.

I played with the tortoise.

Well, not exactly played. I was upstairs in my office and heard some bumping noise and thought the cats wanted in (they knock) and checked but it wasn't them. Then I saw the kitchen door was open, and couldn't find the tortoise and thought maybe she had staged a daring escape. I couldn't find her anywhere. I even looked in the cellar, in case she had gotten frisky and tumbled down the stairs.

I found a book Gamma had been looking for under the kitchen bench.

I found the tortoise in the living room. She was trying to burrow through the door, she had been knocking on it with her shell.

What the hell, I thought, I'll make a day of it: I called my haircut person and made an appointment. Not with her, she had the afternoon off. But with the new woman.

We negotiated my haircut, including safe word. She did a good job. She didn't talk as much as my regular person. So, not being a conversationalist myself, it was a pretty quiet haircut. Buzzing and snipping, mostly. She asked me if I wanted my sideburns trimmed. I had just had a nightmare about my sideburns, where this guy was obsessed with their length, so I told her to go ahead and do whatever she wanted to them. So now I have medium, normal sideburns.

Then she said, "should I trim your eyebrows while I'm at it?"

"...," I said.

"Uh..." I said.

"Cause, you know, you got a few long ones in there."

"Sure," I said.

When I got home, I couldn't find the tortoise again. The kitchen door was somehow open again, so I looked in all the usual places -- reception hall, billiards room, ballroom, gallery 1, gallery 2, kitchen, dining room, dungeon, torture chamber.

I finally found her in the library/music room, snuggled in a corner behind my cello.

A Cello Rondo

Ethan Winer has a lot of shirts!

I know it's true...

...I read it on the Internet.

Ass

I won't say I lack passion, but the only time I taste blood is when I floss.

I don't want to say I lack passion because saying that makes you sound so old.

I thought it was the long winter. Then I thought it was the sudden spring. We're still tripping over the cross-country skis in the cellar, and people are running around in t-shirts outside.

At least, they were until it got cold again. And those spring evening skies. And snowdrops and flooding in the woods, and crocuses blooming, finally. And the turtle tortoise up and about and high-centered on another rolled-up lettuce leaf in the kitchen.

I never thought I'd hear myself saying that I loved a reptile, but that's one sweet tortoise. I was so relieved when she came out of hibernation!

So I thought it was the weather wearing me down. Sapping me. Or my environment eroding me somehow.

Then I took some pictures of Gamma with Beta's digital camera. And some of myself. Those of Gamma turned out okay, despite the camera's high-tech blemish-seeking lens, because being eight she has no blemishes.

In fact, she sparkles. At the moment, there is glitter from the part in her hair to the soles of all our feet, because a lot got on the floor. And on her homework, and on breakfast.

Probably on my new laptop as well. Thanks, Jessica! I went ahead and bought Jessica's iBook, and it's working great. Gamma and I are making music on it. We need more loops though. Anyway, the iBook glitters now.

So, I looked at my pictures and man.

It's all my little sister's fault. When she was born, I was seven. When she was, what, 18 and going to school in Bellingham, I was 25 I guess, living in basements in Seattle or something.

I was the big brother, like one of those showgirls riding on the nose of the killer whale in the orca show at Marineworld or something, and my sister was the orca, buoying me along age-wise. And a couple weeks ago she turned 40.

Do the math in your head.

The camera lens found burst capillaries, man, that I hadn't even noticed. Time to get out the old Nikon and some b/w film. And go on a diet.

On the plus side, I was stuck in traffic behind a car from this company this morning. And through a skillful choice of lanes, I got way ahead of it during my trip through town. Right at the end, I got stuck behind a bus and a similar-looking car passed me up, but the company must have lots of cars and it was probably another one.

They say the rain might stop this afternoon. They say we might even get to see the partial solar eclipse.

Why mortality was invented

Gamma: "Gah. This movie is so long!"
Gamma's father: "But just think: if you were going to be executed when it was over, it would seem too short."

Little-known facts about smelt

• The smelt is a highly political fish, said to be closely allied to the grayling of the salmon family.
  
• One particular type of smelt, the candlefish is so fat at spawning time that you can stick a wick up its ass and burn it like a candle.
  
• When a smelt accidentally buys a cellphone with a camera because the zero broke on its old phone, the smelt smells trouble (with olfactory organs which are deep indentations with a smell-sensitive lining).
  
• After waiting in vain for an epiphany, the smelt will give up and go back to the store where it bought its Siemens C72 phone and ask how to get pictures it takes onto a computer, and will be told there is a cable that will do the trick, only it's not in stock and the saleswoman doesn't know when it's coming in, could be in a week, could be tomorrow.
  
• No fool, the smelt in such a situation will go next door to another electronics shop and buy a cable.
  
• Unfortunately, no one tells the smelt that this particular cable only works on a PC with 500 mA USB ports, and it wastes an hour installing, deinstalling and reinstalling, deinstalling, downloading, unzipping, installing, deinstalling and reinstalling drivers on its work and home PCs before it reads the directions and checks and finds out that all computers to which it (the smelt) has access have 100 mA (actually more like 98) USB ports.
  
• The smelt will swear in such a situation that this is the last time it buys Fuxxor brand anything.
  
• Or anything with moveable parts, or containing copper for christssake.
  
• The smelt sometimes wonders what percentage of the gadget industry's annual turnover can be attributed to consumers accidentally purchasing incompatible gadget accessories.
  
• Little is known about the smelt's sense of taste. Its eating habits are sometimes destructive and cannibalistic.

On teaching morality

Father: [Closing book, reaching to turn off light] And that's why you should be a good girl and never, ever lie.
Gamma: Dad, look at me.
Father: I am looking at you.
Gamma: No, I mean directly at me. Straight-on.
Father: Like this, you mean?
Gamma: Yeah, I thought so. Your left eye is bigger than the other one.
Father: Bleener eye.
Gamma: What?
Father: I have bleener eye. That's why I look brain-damaged in pictures.
Gamma: Heh. Bleener eye? It's called bleener eye?
Father: Yeah, some people have one eye smaller than the other and that's what you call it. How about now, are they the same size now?
Gamma: No. The left one's still bigger.
Father: Hrm. Anyway. What were we talking about? Good night.
Gamma: Good night. And come check on me every...
Father: Every five minutes, sure. As always.

The Leprechaun's Paw

We celebrate St. Patrick's Day by building a fire and telling this story to the kids before bed. How do you celebrate?

Pat and Mike had eaten their fill of corned beef and cabbage, more than their fill, in fact, and had enjoyed more dark, glossy Guinness and warm amber whiskey than was sensible on such a dark night and on their way back to their cozy cottage from a trip to their outhouse, or the "bog" as it was their quaint manner to refer to it they got quite lost and wandered until the morning when Pat said, "Mike, would you look at that rainbow." And Mike said, "Christ, Pat, got any more of that whiskey or a fag at least that'd be yer man," and Pat replied, "a pot of gold, now that'd be yer man indeed." And they followed the rainbow to its end where they found not a pot of gold but a leprechaun busily checking his treasures behind various trees and under elderberry bushes and hidden in fairy forts and the like and they nabbed the wee bastard quick as a wink and tied the fucker snugly with the lengths of white nylon rope they always carried with them being highly sought-after riggers for the surprisingly active western Irish B&D scene, or at least the bit stretching from Kilkee and Limerick in the south northwards past Galway to Clifden in the west and Athlone and Roscommon. They tied him up because neither trusted him alone with the other and left him there whilst they sprinted home for their spades. Upon returning with their digging utensils they found not a leprechaun, but something nearly as good: the little wanker had chewed through the ropes to free himself and it had nearly worked, but they had bound him so well that he had been forced to chew off his own left hand to get away and so that's what they found.
Detached from his body it looked forlorn and was beginning to wizen but still retained a bit of his magic.
Neither trusting the other to be the first to make a wish with the object, since each knew that, given the opportunity, he would wish to have the item for himself in one way or another, either by wishing calamity on the other or some equally effective misfortune, they found themselves of necessity forced to make their wishes jointly. The novelty of this practice quickly wore off, due in no small part to the fact that it was only a chewed-off left hand and not a full leprechaun, so any wishes it granted them (as it was forced to, being in their possession) it only sort of granted, besides which any wishes they made were compromises and that opened the door for a bit of alienation, a certain degree of estrangement from the wishes they made, which they thought may have also diluted the magicalness of the results, likewise the fact that two people were doing the wishing simultaneously. At any rate, their first wish, for example, was for a pot of gold, but all they finally received (after a week) was a pot.
In a like manner, they got not a new house, but a coat of whitewash on their cottage at least, and new shoes but the wrong size, and cases and cases of empty beer bottles they were at least able to return for the deposit. They decided to sell the object after the tank of their automobile (not new, but without all too many miles on it for the age, and not free, but purchased at a fair price) was filled, magically, with diesel fuel, which they had to pump back out seeing as how the car took super. They figured an American tourist was their best bet and hung out at Galway shops that dealt in bulky woolen sweaters and Claddagh rings until they finally unloaded the thing, now as dark, tough and fragrant as a rasher rind to a sales representative from somewhere in the eastern half of the United States to be frank they weren't paying attention that closely they just wanted to pass it on to someone else and they did and good riddance to it.
The end.

Artist's manifesto, in which Samuel Jackson gets out of advertising and god does a cameo

The work of art should contain the seeds of its own destruction. This can be accomplished by presenting both sides of the story, in one way or another. Here, I do it by leaving comments open, at least until the spammers show up.

Also, there should be a narrative arc of some sort. Yesterday, in the performance that is my life, I hurt someone I love, not to mention broke my own heart by being a jerk in the morning, to which I plead frustrated booga-booga middle-aged male menopause freak out, and was in the evening restored by a hug from Beta.

Personally, that is about all the narrative arc I can take in a week. On the other hand, how nice it would be if every day could end the way that did, without starting the way it did.

Although, actually, that's not the way it ended. In fact, it ended with me going to bed happy, after locking the door and turning off the outside light so that when Alpha got home from her business trip she couldn't get into the house, and it was snowy outside, and she tried knocking but no one came, although I was on my way, running down the stairs as fast as my little pig hooves would carry me in an effort to get to the door before she gave up knocking and rang the bell, maybe waking Gamma but she gave up before I could get there and rang but luckily Gamma didn't wake up.

I suppose that's not the nicest welcome home, is it, being locked out in the cold.

A narrative arc is a joke, but it helps hold reader interest, as does the beginning-middle-end thing, but it's not life. In life, everything is middle, isn't it.

To be honest, I've had enough of this snow. I'm waiting for spring like a kid who already knows he's flunked and has to repeat a year waits for the end of the school year.

I was driving to work this morning. The roads were much better today. They were dry, for one thing, and snowless, although the fields were quite snowy, as if I had said, enough snow already, what's with all this snow, and god answered, the snow is your fault, it's going to snow until you finally paint those pictures of snow you are dreaming of painting, to which I replied, but I don't have enough different whites to which god replied, snow's not white. Also, leave me alone, I'm late already for a golf game with Bill Gates, Paris Hilton and the Pope. To which I respond by asking, why don't you just turn back time then you won't be late, to which god replies, I could do that, but where would the fun be? The whole structure of the universe would be an empty joke if I turned back time and went all omnipotent on everyone's ass all the time.

Which I can totally understand, even though, personally, I am not omnipotent.

Today the roads were dry, yesterday all hell was loose. We had some crazy snow.

Maybe you remember CRaZy SnOw. That Gyypco product that never really took off back in the days of the Slinky and Silly-Putty? It reminded people too much of radioactive fallout. And then it got used as a prop in that zombie sexploitation movie Debbie Does the Dead, and it's wholesome family image was in the shitter. That was it for CRaZy SnOw. You don't remember CRaZy SnOw?

You remember Gyypco, though, right? Remember those commercials, kids frolicking happily with some crappy new product, singing, "Gyypco, Gyypco, go with the flow-o?"

I never got why they had to add that extra "o" at the end, it already rhymed.

I can imagine, though, how they arrived at the slogan. Boss says, at the meeting, we need a slogan that rhymes with Gyypco. Something short that rhymes and fits into a jingle.

And everyone around the table brainstorms going, How low can you go? It's better than blow! Give us your dough! It never breaks until after the guarantee expires, yo! Favored by Jacques Yves Cousteau and Adrienne Barbeau! Put it in your trousseau. I think we've reached a plateau.

And someone says, Go with the flow.

And they all stop and say, hey. And young Samuel Jackson says, your momma's a ho and walks out of the room and catches a bus to Hollywood.

And the boss says, eh, why Go with the flow? That's what hippies say.

And the first guy says, so hippies will be our spokesmen. We coopt them, see. We coopt youth culture. It gives us a young image. And it's, it's, it's Taoist. Imagine the Chinese market, when it gets translated into Chinese!

To which the boss says, China's a market? That's where we produce our shit, not sell it.

To which the first guy says, some day, some day. And the boss says, whatever, you guys hash it out, I'm late for a golf game with Annette Funicello, the Pope and Billy Graham.

And walks out, and takes the bus to Hollywood with Samuel Jackson to discuss projects with some producers.

That's the kind of crazy snow we had yesterday.

No wonder I freaked out.

Little-known facts about krill

• Krill have more biomass than any other organism¹.
  
• The eyes of krill are high in vitamin A.
  
• Most krill glow in the dark, which makes you wonder how smart it is for them to hide from predators in the darkest depths of the ocean.
  
• When krill go to an electronics shop to purchase a cord for an Apple iBook, the saleswoman sells them a cord for an iPod, and although the krill inspect it in the store, they don't notice the big letters on the box reading "iPod" until they get back to their office.
  
• Krill young have iPods, so it's no big deal with the cord though.
  
• When krill, during the same visit to the electronics shop, also purchase a new cell phone because the zero on their old one broke, and they ask for a simple one with no doodads such as cameras, and the same saleswoman tells them, oh, sir, none of these cheap ones here have cameras, and they buy one, they later discover, messing around with the new phone while taking a train to Brno in the Czech Republic, that the new phone happens to have a camera after all, a crappy little one that they can't figure out how to upload the pictures anywhere else but still; and the krill find the crappy little camera nifty in a retro way.
  
• Whereas humans can paint a bedroom with no more than two coats of paint and it looks okay, krill need two entire weekends, as well as an extra day during the week, and a total of eight coats: one coat of creamy yellow, three coats of dark red, two coats of transparent gold effect paint, another coat of dark red over that when they realize the transparent gold effect paint is never going to look good, and a sponged-on coat of opaque shiny gold paint over that.
  
• While sponging on the final coat of gold, male krill have no patience for female krill telling them they're overdoing it with the gold. Luckily, adolescent krill thinks it looks okay.
  
• The average krill is 16 mm in length.
  
• Krill resent being mistaken for shrimp, which happens often, especially at cocktail parties.

¹You might want to double-check this particular fact before using it in a report for school.

On linking

What's up with these sites with no content of their own, only a mass of links on some specific topic (and of course google ads or something)? Some "cello" site has linked me, har har, as has a "flower" site. Today I see a Christian (?) parenting site has linked a post I wrote back in November 2003 on the applicability of the CI4 T*rtur3 M4nu*L as a source of parenting advice. [low-quality screenshot in case it falls off their page]

The Wall by J. P. Sartre

Mig had been planning to post something uplifting today but then it snowed yet again and he made the mistake of listening to Sigur Ros on his car stereo on his drive into work this morning, which combination put him in a frame of mind where all he wants to do is drink a pot of herbal tea laced with a quart of aqua vit and lie down in the gently falling snow and go to sleep while curious deer emerge from the surrounding woods and nuzzle his face with their velvety muzzles¹ and so it is necessary that I step in and, in his stead, uplift you with an essay on despair.

It is not the expected, the obvious thing that drives a man to despair which is why a man can emerge in good spirits from 77 days solitary confinement held captive as a prisoner of war in a darkened tiger cage fed only cloudy, contaminated rice gruel and released once a day from his squatting position for a sound beating² but then find himself, decades later, reduced to tears by transparent glittery gold effect paint and the way that it, applied with a short-nap roller over the dark red walls of a teenaged girl's room, looks like hell, even the second time.

Not even the second time, applied carefully yet as fast as it would roll on this morning before leaving for work a bit late after letting his wife leave for work early so she could come home early, and himself seeing the younger one, the one known as Gamma off to school at eight; or, to make the actual chain of events clearer: first he got up, and made lunches, and coffee and tea water in anticipation of his wife getting up and wanting fresh tea, and took a shower, and dressed in his painting clothes, and after his wife and older daughter left made sure Gamma, was getting dressed and eating, after which the level of available light was such that he could see the walls in the aforementioned room and he unpacked his roller and started rolling, man. Evenly, from top to bottom, then horizontally to erase any trace of a roller track and leave the walls with a smooth, thin, uniform coat of transparent gold glitter effect paint.

Throughout all this he was keeping a close watch on the time, and was happy that Gamma has turned into the Keeper of Time, so every three minutes when he asked her what time it was and was it 7.15 yet because he had to quit and wash brushes and roller at 7.15 she had a precise answer for him until even she got tired of it and gave him her old Winnie-the-Pooh alarm clock so he would know what time it was.

At precisely 7.16 he ran out of paint, and all the walls of the room were evenly covered and he dashed down to the cellar to wash the bucket and roller and brushes and, on his way out, noticed that it was, for reasons mysterious to him, drying in patchy, flecky flecks and looking in general like crap. He ignored this, though, and washed and dressed quickly and hoped that it would look a lot better when finally completely dry but, eh, it didn't the first time did it.

Then he swept the sidewalk free of snow, a vain, pointless gesture in view of the constantly falling snow and yet, it gave him a certain measure of desperate satisfaction and something to do while waiting for Gamma and her school friend whose mother drops her off at his house early some mornings because she can't be arsed to wait around until 8 a.m. to put on their shoes and coats which kept him from getting nervous and hovering around them like some sort of large, male mother hen.

After that, despite his despair, he walked the girls to school, which is quite near the house, and although he was by this time teetering on the brink of a vast and deep and empty abyss of depression and existential futility, it made him feel a lot better and she asked him when he'd be getting home that night and he said a bit later than usual, maybe sevenish, and he even got a kiss goodbye.
____________

¹If, indeed, deer even possess a body part referred to correctly as a muzzle and if it is velvety and if they "nuzzle" anything with it, let alone sleeping drunken humans who the casual observer would assume present more of a threat to deer, traditionally, than an object of curiosity.
²Not that Mig, about whom this story is, this being his blog, was ever actually held prisoner in a tiger cage in solitary confinement, or beaten by anyone other than his parents^2a or ever actually in a war, or even in anything more military than the Cub Scouts and later, until the organized nature of it began freaking him out, the Webelos. It is more a merely metaphoric thought that occurred to him while washing his brushes afterwards in a metaphorically-susceptible meditative state, a man survives 77 days in a tiger cage and is reduced to tears by a red wall. Like that, rather.

^2aAnd that only rarely and, with one memorable exception, without great enthusiasm.

Favorites

Famous designer and illustrator Bran has been helping me with the redesign here. Thanks, Bran. There have been many changes to improve your reading experience, you may have noticed some of the more profound ones, which I hope were not too jarring or disconcerting, such as moving the "about" information to the top of the sidebar.

All that's left, once the archives finally finish rebuilding, will be to add a list of favorite posts, which might help the casual visitor go straight to some of the more attractive stuff here rather than wade through a lot of... you know, I love all of my children equally, but some people coming here for the first time might think, gosh, he writes about fish a lot.

Two or three of you are new readers, I think, and the other two have been reading me for a longer time. I'd like to ask you a favor: in the comments here, or in an email, please let me know if any of the content here has stuck in your mind (sorry!) or if there is anything here you have especially liked or would recommend, or if you have any, you know, favorites.

Thanks in advance. The email account I check most often is metamorphosist at gmail dot com.

[Added later: Little-Known-Facts are here, more or less]

On painting

Beta's room was overdue for a paint job. She and Alpha picked out the paints, since Beta knew what she wanted and Alpha is able to visualize colors, unlike me. Then I went to the hardware store with the paint swatches and bought way more paint than I needed from a really good saleswoman, just in case, you hate running out in the middle of a job at midnight although who paints at midnight haha just in case, including a can of this transparent gold effect stuff just in case the matte paint I got rather than the semi-gloss option turned out to be too dull.

Then Alpha and I went somewhere while the girls cleaned out Beta's room, I had assumed that would mean putting all her stuff into the hallway but turns out it meant loading it all into Gamma's room meaning neither girl can use her room until the job is finished. Then on Sunday, because I had orchestra rehearsal ("okay Mig, this tricky part here you just play the quarter notes along with the little kids too") on Saturday, I started painting.

The creamy yellow went on ceiling and top half of the walls, the dark red on the bottom half of the wall. The yellow covered with just one coat, the red took three.

Of course it was too dull. Luckily I had a can of gold effect stuff. I tried that last night.

It turns out there's a reason they advise you not to paint rooms at night. I couldn't see a goddamn thing. I had reading lamps and shit shining on the walls but it's a glittery see-thru gold effect that you can only see, apparently, by daylight so it was like painting with invisible ink. Tried doing it with a brush, but that looked like hell so I tried a roller but that looked even worse, then Alpha came in and tried brushing some on because she thought the brush looked way better but I was all like You expect me to paint an entire room with a one-inch brush? and What are you doing painting anyway I'm the painter you choose the colors, that's the deal plus I was really insecure because it was looking like shit, what I was doing, and hers wasn't looking any better.

I ended up rolling it all on and then calling it a night. Hoping that in the morning, when the transparent gold effect paint had dried, the roller lines would magically have disappeared.

But they didn't. Luckily Alpha had bought a second can of transparent gold effect. I had planned to roll that on tonight, in the hopes that it would average out okay, but she called me on my way to work this morning with the suggestion that I do it in the morning, by daylight, such as tomorrow before work. Apparently there is a window of opportunity where there is sufficient light now that it's "spring" before I leave.

Meanwhile Beta's junk is all over the house and Gamma's sleeping in the big bed, or downstairs on the guest bed with her big sister, only last night she was in the big bed because Beta was in Vienna for some reason, and spent the night with someone in town.

Little-known facts about the grunion

• Between one and three days following the highest spring tide, the grunion lays its eggs in the sand at the high-tide mark on Southern Californian beaches.
  
• The grunion does this at night.
  
• Because it does this at night, no one has ever really seen a grunion, so this is all conjecture.
  
• Nevertheless, there the grunion eggs are in the morning, two to three inches below the surface of the sand. So somebody must put them there, why not a grunion?
  
• It's the simplest explanation for the phenomenon.
  
• Sometimes the grunion comes home at the end of a hard day at the end of a hard week to find that a pipe is leaking in the cellar, and its father-in-law is down there calmly mopping stuff up while its wife and mother-in-law are in the kitchen drinking wine and getting upset about the plumbing emergency.
  
• For grunions, if no one gets upset, it's only half the party.
  
• Grunion plumbing always springs a leak on the weekend, when plumbers charge between time and a half and double time.
  
• Grunions like snow, a lot, but it's March already. Enough is enough.
  
• Grunions live for the weekend, although a grunion weekend lasts only like about a few hours.
  
• The average length of a grunion is somewhere between five and six inches.

Little-known facts about the monkfish

• Monkfish prefer deep water, as deep as 2000 feet.
  
• Monkfish can distend their jaws to eat their prey, which includes fish, turtles and sea birds.
  
• Since they eat birds, monkfish can theoretically transmit avian flu.
  
• Speaking of avian flu, monkfish think the collective noun "a murder of crows" is finally starting to make sense.
  
• Young monkfish appear innocent and can lie so convincingly that father monkfish fall for it every time, and only mother monkfish can see through their stories.
  
• Mother monkfish attribute this ability of young monkfish to father monkfish's habit of telling them Luegengeschichten.
  
• Monkfish is sometimes called "the poor man's lobster" due to its taste.
  
• Monkfish is rarely sold in stores with the head still attached.

Little-known facts about the herring

• The herring is about 16% fat.
  
• In winter maybe a little more.
  
• The herring is a social animal, living in schools, and quickly dies when left to its own devices.
  
• No matter what a herring eats, it makes it look delicious.
  
• A herring tries to do the right thing, but ehn, nobody's perfect.
  
• A herring can sleep, but not like humans sleep.
  
• When a herring hears something interesting in a radio show about a bar for melancholy people at the National Gallery in Berlin called the Black Cube, that the depressed think about themselves and the melancholy think about other things, such as infinity, it tries to convince itself that it sees infinity in a shy black-haired boy, or some ice, or its wife and kids.
  
• Now that a herring has had its first orchestra rehearsal, it hears orchestral music totally differently: rather than hearing all this music, it hears the bass section, and the cellos, and the violas, and the violins, for starters, and it's beautiful, especially if it's baroque.
  
• Although a herring's capacity for self-pity approaches infinity, it is quickly brought back to earth when a neighbor hangs himself in his (the neighbor's, not the herring's) cellar, leaving a sick wife and two kids.
  
• Or when a teacher at the music school who has to get chemotherapy tells his students he's taking time off to go on a long journey.