Pet Squid!

When I settle down I am going to get an aquarium and buy some pet squid.

One Quarter Of A Month With Brendan Mackie

You know the drill, clickity click. Next week is my last full week as an Utne intern--oh no! But that means that my blogging energy will be siphoned off onto this little blog. I'm thinking of keeping up with the Utne-style blogging, with stuff that's more to my personal tastes, but I'm still up for suggestions, if you'd like to drop any comments.

Your Guide To Weirdness On The Web
Sesame Street Goes Online (I'm internet famous yet?)
Striking Writers Discover The Joys Of Blogging
Science And Art: The Blind Date
Fighting Myanmar's Junta With Humour
Iran Fights For Its Write To Party
Growing The Green Biz
GANGS!
Chinese Buddhism Reincarnated

Squid A Month Club

Actually, shit, you need you get me enrolled in the Squid-A-Month-Club.

I'm serious. Get y'all's money together.

B

Squidtivity

Jesus is a squid, of course.

Buy me this.

Squids, and Facts About Them, Part Four

In an old aquarium a couple of miles outside of San Diego lives a group of the most remarkable squid ever. Known by scientists as the Comstock squid, better known as the prognosticator fish, these squid were subject to much attention before retreating from the public eye in 1985.

The prognosticator fish are the only living representatives of their species ever seen. A group of over fifty brightly colored squid, about the size of a wine cork, were bought from a grizzled miner on the Comstock lode in 1863 by a San Francisco investor, Mr. Antonius Shnarch. Shnarch put the squid in a small glass aquarium and included them in his Medicinal Mystery Show, based in San Francisco. People were amused by the strange looking fish, but nobody then could predict how much they would amaze the public for over a century.

A diary recently discovered in an attic in Sugar Bush Knolls, Ohio might shed light on the prognosticator fish's origins. The diary is from a man, Sharky "Pinchum" Jones, who had left his native Ohio in 1860 wanting to strike it rich on the Nevada Gold Rush. He returned in 1864, penniless, and would die of a liver infection April 1st, 1865 in his family home. The diary - in barely legible handwriting - describes a strange meeting Jones had with a Chinese merchant.

Old Smoker mine - played out. The Grande Dame - played out. Damn this luck of myne! To hell, I say! But the Silver Banshee - she has been displaying the sines, yes she has. I may be a rich man yet, therfore, [bought] a hundred feet.

I met yesterday with a consarnned Clestial! Snuck up on me aslepin, he did. Well and he said he knew I'd be in some money soon, saw it in his dirt-worshipin heathan fuckery. I said I don't give a screw and a half go and smoke some opium with the other Celestials, why didn't he, rot in his boots. But that night I done found a nugget a color in the Banshee mine and he was at the entrance, waiting for me like a love-sick mongrel puppy, and he said that I should give him that nugget, or else no other nuggest would come, and should I did what he said, I should be in riches for my natural life. Well I gav him a good thrashing from here to Washoe county, not sparing any blows to his Celestial Ribs and his eyes neither, so that by the time I was finished with him by god he'd never be recognized by his heathan Chinee gods no more, he had to go pray to the Negro gods he was so black and blue. Anyways, next morning I discover outside my tent this here aquarium, with a bunch a funny looking fish. Now ain't that something?

A sudden attack of St. Vittus' dance left Jones unable to work his claim, and his stock in the mine - which later proved a bonanza - was bought by his partners for a mere ten dollars. He had to sell the squid to pay for his passage back home.

Shnarch was surprised as the squid continued to grow, until they were about three feet each in length. The cost to feed them and find a bigger aquarium threatened to bankrupt Shnarch. One night, losing patience, Shnarch resolved to sell the fish to a butcher. But as he plunged a net into the water to fish them, something happened.

The next day, Shnarch opened up a new act. He would lead people up to the squid tank where, he said, the squid could tell their future. Through an elaborate series of gestures, the squid would communicate their divinations. They produced amazing results, and Shnarch's World-Famous Future-Telling Fish were a hit throughout the Western United States until Shnarch's death in 1916, at the age of 103.

After Shnarch died, the squid - whose numbers had dwindled to a mere dozen - were shipped to the University of San Diego's marine biology department. A group of prominent philosophers, theologians and political scientists protested the move. They believed each that study of the squid could unlock the mysteries of the universe, and each wanted a squid for their department. But a cloistered and diligent wing in the marine biology department turned their efforts to conservation, breeding the small stock of squid so that their numbers almost reached 200.

Finally, in 1956, the squid were ready to go to the public. There were rumors that the squid were involved in code-breaking activities for the Allies in the Second World War, but these claims have - as yet - been unsubstantiated.

The squid did little of any note until 1959, when a visiting movie star named Ronald Regan approached their tank. The squid became agitated. One handler, versed in their language, was surprised. "They say you'll be President," he told the bemused star of Bedtime for Bonzo.

From then on the squid would amuse themselves by predicting the winner of each presidential election. They never guessed wrong. The biologists would keep the news secret, out of respect for the democratic process.

In 1983, Walter Mondale, then the Democratic Presidential nominee, made a pilgrimage to the future-telling squid. He spent three hours with them. When he finally emerged, he was in tears. "Will you win? Will you lose?" an aide is reported to have said. Mondale shook his head. "I will lose," he said. "But that’s not why I'm crying. They showed me something… something horrible. Something no man with a soul should have to see."

Mondale refused to share the squids' secret. Some speculate that he has written in his will that his secret should become public after his death. But for that we will have to wait and see.

Since them, the prognosticator fish have been removed from the public eye. They are now housed in a basement laboratory, where they wait for something only they know. Private meetings are available: but few are ever granted.

A Third Fact About Our Nautical Buddies, The Squid

Squid are the only invertebrates to display a love of coffee.

The first recorded instance of a squid drinking coffee comes to us from Dr. Constance St. Germaine, a naturalist who experimented with cephalopods in the late nineteenth century. In a letter to a friend, St Germaine tells a story of an acquaintance, Mr. S. Mark (complete first name unknown), who had been keeping a pet squid in his London apartments for "quite a while - some say it a year, some say it three, others insist the two have shared over a decade of cohabitation". Originally, St. Germaine reports, Mr. Mark kept the squid as a mere diversion: "he came to admire the undulations of the squid's mantle as it swam back and forth in its tank, positioned, as it was, in the middle of the small apartment's parlor, and he would watch it for hours on end, as if practicing a form of mental constitutional." But after an incident at a New Year's eve party Mr. Mark discovered that the squid displayed remarkable intelligence: the squid expressed what seemed like keen interest at the party-goers' conversation. The squid - who Mr. Mark soon named Clarance, after a beloved uncle - became quite popular around the many scientific salons, making upwards of ten appearances in a week. Often presented as an oddity, Clarance was soon appreciated for his supreme elegance, and what one anonymous newspaper writer described as his "animal wit."He was known to host high teas where he would encourage diners to float small cups of coffee on the surface of the water of his tank. Clarance would position himself over the cup and - to the amusement of all - drink copious amounts of coffee. Clarance was found dead under mysterious circumstances, in a London gutter: St. Germaine suggests that his death might have been caused by "Mr. Mark's jealous hand."

These days, many squid at popular aquariums are given their coffee in special floating bags. They're named Clarance-Cups, in honor of their ostensible cephalopd inventor.

Happy International Cephalopod Awareness Day!

Readers of this blog will know the superlatively interesting squid is one of our favorite subjects. So it's great that today is Monday October 8th, because while you might be in your office battling your malaise with cups of coffee and day-dreams about leaving work and getting a big muffin, you should be aware that over in the world's oceans there are a bunch of squid and octopus plashing around, having fun, like they do every day, Monday to Sunday. Which is why it's apt that Monday October 8th is International Cephalopod Awareness Day. Check it out. And remember those majestic monsters of the sea, the squid today however you can.

Maybe you can go out for calamari?

Or watch squid videos on YouTube?

Or tell a friend a squid fact?

Or buy me a cute squid plush?

Who knows?

So in honor of this day, I'll put up a new squid fact this evening, work permitted.

A Round-Up of Blogs I Like

The Daily Blog Blog
Watch as this young blogger creates a new blog a day for a year! At last count he's hit number 245 - the SausageAppreciator - and my personal favorites include the Edited Journal of Stuff I Lost In The Laundry and Guerrilla Lawn Decorator. I'm certain that you'll find your own favorites in a couple minutes. He updates each blog maybe once or twice a week, which is a pretty amazing feat, if you realize that this means he's making about 1,200 posts a month!

Supermarket Undercover
Susan N. is just one of thousands young graduates who leave college in May to become cub cashiers, working long hours for little pay in hopes of hitting it big in the highly competitive field of Supermarket Sales. Susan dishes all the dirt: how she gives out one customer a wrong amount of change and hides it; how she notices some famous cashiers showing up to work late; and of course there are the daily reports of office gossip from the break room. (Last Tuesday they had cake!) She even has some run-ins with cashier luminaries like Brad, Nancy and Faye! I'm usually not into celebrity gossip, but I've always found the high-wire world of the Supermarket really entrancing. And you will, too - when you read this blog.

I Didn't Know That You Could Eat That!
Well, now you do.

23 Squids Do!
This is one of my favorite squid websites ever! Updated by a zoologist at the Center for Cephelopod Studies in Snarksburg, Virginia, 23 Squids Do! is the official eye into the Center's famous Squid Pen. In an effort to map squid social life, researchers put 23 representatives of different squid species into a communal aquarium to figure out what happens when squid stop being polite... and start getting real. The daily updates about the squids' lives are incredibly illuminating. Everybody ends up having their favorite squid. A friend of mine likes Porky, the diminutive Piglet Squid, whose kind heart means he gets picked on by the other squids. My personal favorite is Lester, whose developing relationship with the trainer Valerie is heartwarming, to say the least. (Last week it was Valerie's birthday, and Lester remembered! He made her a hat out of kelp!) Check it out, and find more about our aquatic neighbors, the squid!

A Fact About Our Nautical Friend, The Squid # 2

Image by Basil Wolverton from the Animation Archive

There arose a peculiar belief about squids among seafarers, that touching a squid would cause severe, almost instantaneous baldness. I've found evidence for this belief in English, Portuguese and Spanish writings (the French are curiously silent, but that might just be a shortcoming of my research). The belief even led to the popular (if mystifying) nautical exclamation: "He's so bald he must've shaken hands with a squid!"

Here's a section of the diary of Robert Snarksman, an officer of the Royal Navy who served from 1798-1820:

We were out afishing in the earlie day when we caught a monstre: a squid, aboute the size of a large dogge; we tried to fling it back overboard, but in the fighte a tentacle touched poore Pipkin, and he woke next morn his pate wholly bald.

This belief has also inspired the sea shanties, Squidtop, and She Served Him Squid For Dinner.

In the journals of Lorenzo Snarkaretti, an Italian explorer who visited China in the middle of the eighteenth century, we find evidence for how far this belief spread:

The Chinese, in their brothels, will have numerous squid living in their baths, as if the baths indeed were large aquariums. The women, when they bathe in these, will be approached and often fondled by the creatures and their many tentacles. This practice renders the women entirely hairless, which is the preference of the Chinese nobleman. The women wear the most elaborate wigs, which are sewn from the hair of peasant women by armies of slaves. The wigs can often be worth more than whole households, and tower over the diminutive women! Though we have never seen these baths, them being in the women's quarters and viewable only by concubines and eunuchs, they are so widely reported, they must not be doubted to exist.

A Fact About Our Nautical Friend, The Squid

Squid are very good at smalltalk!

Researchers at the Society for Nautical Research in Kempsy, Ireland have taught a select group of squid to communicate using an innovative system of symbols. The squid are given a large waterproof boards with over 100 pictures on them, representing everything from simple nouns like 'fish' to a symbol that denotes that the squid is asking a question. The squid touch the various symbols with their tentacles to communicate, often forming complex sentences. After months of painstaking training, three special squid have become quite adept at the system, and repeatedly ask their trainers how their days have been going and whether they can have more fish. The squid have proved adept at smalltalk, engaging trainers on long, pointless conversations about the weather and what was on TV last night.