a bad influence

Lately, a tremendous amount of my megalomaniacal tendencies have been boiling to the surface. Really, I haven't talked as much about laying waste to vast stretches of citiscape since I lived with Hydrass and Bento. I just guess that when I'm on my own I sort of mellow out, but in the company of others I develope the strong urge to domineer over them. And I don't mean domineer in the way that Bush controls republicans, I mean it more as in the way that Chaney does it; with a shotgun intermediary and an overdose of fear and oppression. Beware world, giant robots are on their way. All I need is a few million dollars for parts, research and developement.

Prepare for the Worst

Yesterday (friday) was an awesome day. One so good that something freakishly horrible, if not widely fatal must surely happen to ballance things out. What made it so great was what I found at work. Everyday, the construction workers ask me if I've found any dinosaurs yet. The fact that the rocks that I'm digging in are much too young for dinosaurs means that I usually have to answer in the negative. Yesterday I was finally able to answer "yes." In fact, I found a fossil bird (descendant of the dinosaurs). For those of you who don't know, this sort of thing is rare, extremely rare, rare enough that many paleontologists working in rocks of the right age go their whole careers without finding one. The specimen isn't anywhere near perfect. In fact, it's only about half complete. The specimen includes one leg, the hip, most of the spinal column, most of the ribs, but is missing the skull, wings and pectoral girdle. In life, it would have been about the size of a sparrow or smallish jay.
I only wish that I could provide a picture as proof of my discovery, but sadly, the company issue camera has stopped working this week, thereby inhibiting me from photo documenting any specimens.
The bird is now in the Pasadena office of SWCA where it will wait until donated to a museum. If you're wondering why it's there and not now in my personal collection, believe me when I say that I was tempted to keep it and tell nobody. However, if I did, I would never again be able to aquire a fossil and justify the expense or unethical chanel through which it came by saying that the fossil stood a better chance of being studied with me than some other collector.

Dang!

I'm glat that this happens to other people too.
A great little comic strip

Ghoti = Fish

As perhaps I've mentioned previously, at the site that I'm working, I find a fairly large number of fossil fish. I find fish every day; I'm dissappointed if I don't find one before lunch. Perhaps as a consiquence of this, my brother asked me last week if I'd like to go fishing with him on a 3/4 day boat out of San Pedro. Yesterday I woke up at 4:00 am and we drove other to my parents' place to pick up my Dad and after breakfast we got to the pier at about 5:15. It was at this point that my brother informs us that tickets for the boat don't go on sale unil 6. That was fine since we had no idea how crowded it might be and wanted to get a place. At 7:00 the boat left the dock, and we started fishing for baracuda at about 9:00. People were pulling in fish all around us, but neither my brother, my Dad or I ever got more than a bit from a fish that subsiquently let go of the bait.
Later, we went to an area and started fishing for sculpin. It almost seemed that my dad and I were having some sort of sick competition to see who could bring up the smallest fish, since every other fish that we brought up was smaller and smaller than previous ones. And so, things went on fairly well until about 11 when, despite calmer seas than anyone would have right to ask for, I succumbed to sea sickness and lost my breakfast. I even had to hand my pole (with a fish on the line) to my dad so that I could spend a few minutes in dry heaves. It was only then that I remembered being sick the last time that the three of us went fishing.
Ultimately, I lost all heart for fishing and just focussed on not inverting my esophagus amid dry heaves. Yes, this is real quality time. At the end of the day, we brought home 15 sculpin and 1 baracuda. Once filleted, it amounted to a somewhat pathetic quantity of meat, of which I got half; my brother abdicated his share since he never actually cought any fish of legal size. We could have gotten more fish if we bought salmon for $18 per pound at Ralph's. But then, I wouldn't have anything to write about and I wouldn't be able to say that I've now been hit in the head with two fish in one day.