Saturday, March 24, 2007

Gotta love parasites

Newest jottings in the notebooks mentioned 2 posts back: moths and parasites. Ah, you gotta love parasites, nasty little hooligans. I mean: totally amazing. I read that there is at least one parasite specially adapted to every single non-parasitic organism on the planet, not to mention the many parasites on parasites. Urk? There's one that lives only in the left ear of a single species of moth. What? Who makes that stuff up? And there's a parasite that actually effectively replaces an organ on a living creature with itself. It kills a fish's tongue and then it becomes the fish's tongue, nabbing nourishment for its greedy self when the fish eats.
WOW.

You may expect to see some parasitic qualities in some characters in my next book. {Mwah-ha-ha.}

And moths? Did you know that silk moths don't have mouths and don't ever ever eat and only live a week? Can't resist the urge to anthropomorphize a little and imagine squirming out of the cocoon to discover -- oh joy! wings! -- and then realizing -- oh crap! no mouth! They live only for sex. Truly. That fact will not be making an appearance in my book. (That google search did, however, unexpectedly yield this poetry blog that I quite like.)

The critter world is truly stranger than fiction, which brings me to this: Have you seen Stranger than Fiction? Loved it. Really loved it. A whimsical, sweet, original movie, and I can't get the song out of my head, which is unusual for me since I have a brain that music just slides through unnoticed. The song is a cover of one by The Monkees called (Go the) Whole Wide World. If I was the sort to put music on my myspace I would put that, but I kind of hate it when people put music on their myspace so I won't.

Other things that are stuck in my head besides Monkees songs: Calamity Jane's voice from Deadwood, which Jim and I are Netflixxing. If you've seen the show, you probably know just what I mean when I say there's a particular word she says with a particular emphatic slur and darn it if it just isn't fun to say! It is an entirely unacceptable word, though, so I'm fighting the urge, most of the time. My dad says cowboys didn't really talk like that, but I wonder. Did that word exist then? What did Calamity Jane call people?

10 comments:

Jordan E. Rosenfeld said...

Oh, that cover of the Monkees song in Stranger than Fiction is not just ANY cover...no, that is Spoon and one of my favorite bands...How can you resist a band that has an album titled "Gimme Fiction."

Check. It. Out.

Great post!

Paul said...

Glad you found my blog, even if you didn't mean to!

Patry Francis said...

As soon as you mentioned moths and parasites, I could already envision them as fantastic, looming creatures in your next book. And drawn by Jim, of course!

Anonymous said...

Disgusting. Parastites! Our adorable and lovely teenage kitten Lulu has a nasty tick on her we just discovered today. My first tick-in-action sighting. Yucko! Tomorrow I have the strength to deal with it. Funny timing since I have been repulsed by the thought of parasites all day!

Tinker said...

I loved Stranger Than Fiction! K. and I were practically the only ones in the theater laughing - I don't know what was up with those other people, but we thought it was great.

Truth really can be stranger than fiction though, can't it? I mean if you made up an extraterrestrial character for a sci-fi novel with those silk moth characteristics, everyone would tear it apart saying how unbelievable it was, that a lifeform would develop in that way...but then God can get away with all kinds of outrageous things that artists and writers would be lambasted for...

Great post, Laini!

Tinker said...

Came back to say, if anyone could make those moth or parasite characteristics believable in a character in a novel - my money would be on you!

madelyn said...

I think she called them "vermin"

:)

thankyou for the link to the wonderful
poet!
happy Sunday!

Amber said...

Those are crazy little facts of life!

Kory and I watched Strange Than Fiction yesterday, and we loved it, too. It was really good! Will Ferrel is funny even when he's trying not to be. And I loved Hoffman.

I have not watched Deadwood. We tried at first, because we are big fans of HBO shows. But it didn't click. Maybe we will try again. If you liked that you should rent first season of Rome... (I know I say that all the time.)

:)

steve on the slow train said...

I don't know what the expletive was, but if it seemed original or clever, Americans probably didn't use it. In the 1930s, when Americans were overusing "s.o.b." H.L. Mencken wrote that "the dumbest policeman in Palermo thinks of a dozen better ones between breakfast and the noon whistle."

Anonymous said...

A few mornings ago, I was sitting here at the keyboard when a small moth (as I paused to read another blog) flew toward the keyboard, folded its wings and dive-bombed right smack dab into the middle of it...probably right around G and H. I kept waiting for it to fly back up...couldn't see it...so I finally started typing again. It was my first experience with a computer-kazi moth...