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Lyle Zapato

Tree Octopus Dot Net

Lyle Zapato | 2007-05-13.4100 LMT | Cephalopods | Cascadia

Long-time tree-octopus-sighter and forest-canopy-researcher Y. D. Bar-Ness has started a new website called TreeOctopus.net, which (besides containing information on his international forest research, writings, photos, curriculum vitae, etc.) offers his services as a Professional Tree Octopus Naturalist (available for birthday parties? contact him to find out.)

He also has a CryptoEcological Notes section that includes different tree octopus species and many other little-known or endangered creatures, such as the Seattle Viaduct Troll (subspecies of the more familiar Fremont Troll) and the transdimensional Phase Shark -- all organized via a handy Crypto-Iconic rating system.

I welcome Bar-Ness to the exciting field of arboreal octopology and await his many important contributions to the saving of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

Lyle Zapato

Nerd Nite's Alrite For Feit-Thompsoning

Lyle Zapato | 2007-03-28.9650 LMT | Entertainment | Art

In Inkling Magazine's "Nerds Just Wanna Have Fun," Kurt Wong tells us about Nerd Nites, informal scientific symposia held in bars and clubs in Boston and New York where scientists hook up with vibrating tadpoles over lectures on synchrotron-based X-ray scattering, Z/W sex chromosomes, and worm poop.

If you don't know your fusiform gyrus from your fuel-efficient Prius, you might be out of your league at first, but put on your beer goggles (held together with single malt scotch tape) and you'll quickly become a vocal expert on every topic discussed. And if not, you can at least hope a fight breaks out when some drunk catastrophic limnogeologist pulls a Michael Richards and starts hurling untoward comments at uniformitarians in the audience. Now that's edutainment.

As you'll note, I did the illustration for the Inkling article, which gave me an excuse to draw this happy little camel spider:

camel spider

I think he makes for an apt exemplifying topic illustration since, like potential Nerd Nite attendees, Solifugae are active at night, seek dark recesses, and get their nourishment from drink (Guinness and liquefied beetles, respectively... or, possibly, irrespectively).

Oh, and my finite apologies for the awkward and way, way, way too obscure (yet, oddly solvable) nerd pun in the title. There's just no excuse for that sort of thing.

The Typing Octopus

Octopus Lie

The Typing Octopus | 2007-02-28.7010 LMT | Cephalopods

Human create website: OCTOPUSTRUTH.COM

Octopus think: better name: OCTOPUSLIE.LIE!

If you would believe the mainstream media, octopuses are cute, cuddly sea-faring playthings that want nothing more than to kiss you with their oozy tentacle-stickers and do your homework. These "spiders of the sea," the standard story goes, have no hidden agenda- they want to stay in their tanks, learn tricks, and eventually molt into beautiful silverfish. But behind their smiling eyes and waving hands is an UNDERWATER NIGHTMARE far more sinister- and frightening- than the government and its allies in the news media would have you know.

Imagine an animal that can come through your shower drain in a matter of seconds. An animal that can squeeze through any small fissure in your apartment walls. An animal only stopped by the lack of salt water in the normal american household.

Read, my friend, read! And discover the STUNNING TRUTH about the octopus species- a species which is half squishy, slimy cephalopod, half frenzied, plotting brainiac: and all evil.

Lies! Lies! Lies!

Octopus harmless to human: just want tasty crabs, salmon information box. Human not tasty... octopus assume. Octopus agent not infiltrate human sink/bath/toilet, not envelope puppy, not drink milk. Lies!

Octopus not harm human unless provoked. Human keep creepy pentapodal arms out of octopus lair, octopus keep arms out of human lair: octopus desire octopus/human détentacle.

Octopus not interfere with human attack squid: octopus hate squid too. Stupid squid think squid better than octopus. More lies!

Proposal: arrangement of mutual benefit: human leave octopus be, give octopus salmon information box, stop speaking offensive octopus joke, stop anti-octopus lie website: octopus tell human secret of colossal squid, continue not envelope puppy, stop signaling offensive human joke.

If human agree: turn skin purple with white spots.

Octopus await reply.

Lyle Zapato

Another Colossal Squid Caught

Lyle Zapato | 2007-02-23.5590 LMT | Cephalopods
Colossal squid

Around the beginning of this month, a 10m long, 450kg male colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) was caught in the Ross Sea by a fishing vessel. This is the largest squid ever caught, and it was captured live and intact. (It's now dead and on ice.)

This was all over the news yesterday, and I have added a special report on it on my Cephalopod News section. (I added it to the page with the report on the previous colossal squid catch when I noticed a huge number of hits to that page coming from Google searches.)

For the benefit of blog readers who haven't been paying attention to CephNews, factoids about this newest colossal squid can be read on the report page

UPDATE: 2007-03-08

According to Newsweek, video footage of the squid being hauled in was shot by Bennett and was sold to a production company in Auckland for an undisclosed amount. A documentary featuring the footage should be released sometime in April.

UPDATE: 2007-03-15

Removed factoids from above so I don't have to update two lists. Go read the report for all the details.

Lyle Zapato

Thujoctopus pilosa

Lyle Zapato | 2006-12-29.1710 LMT | Cephalopods | Crass Commercialism | Letters

Newly added to the Tree Octopus sightings: Marc L. sent in a photo of a rare tree octopus that specializes in redcedar:

Here is a rare and endangered Cephalopod Thuja Pilcata or locally known as the Western Red Cedar Climbing Octopus. You don't see one of these babies everyday!! Especially this far inland!!

Emacs!


Photo detail enhanced using advanced ZPi cephalopod-image processing
technology.

Marc has his names a bit confused, which is understandable given the esoteric nature of tree octopus cladistics. Thuja plicata is actually the scientific name for the Western Redcedar tree that this octopus calls home. The correct binomial for the octopus itself is Thujoctopus pilosa, named for the lush coating of bluish velvet that it evolved to help retain moisture as it migrated deep inland from its ancestral Pacific home. Unfortunately, this notable trait led to its current rarity.

Originally considered a cheaper domestic alternative to fine velvets imported from Italy or Kashmir, redcedar octopus pelts became popular in the early to mid 20th century with a growing North American middle-class desperate for luxury goods. In particular, evening dresses made entirely of undyed T. pilosa pelts became such a fixture during the post-war period that they were immortalized in the song "Blue Velvet" -- made a hit in 1951 by Tony Bennett and again in the 1960s by Bobby Vinton.

(The song also featured prominently in the 1986 film "Blue Velvet" by director and animal lover David Lynch, who considered it emblematic of the moral degeneracy of suburban middle-class life. Lynch spent much of his childhood in the woods of eastern Washington and was well aware of the devastation brought against the local tree octopus populations by the twisted, fetishistic desires of the suburbs.)

Eventually, shrinking numbers of redcedar octopus combined with inexpensive mass-produced synthetic velvets available on the burgeoning global market led to the pelt trade becoming unprofitable -- narrowly saving T. pilosa from extinction.

UPDATE 2007-01-01: Marc sent another picture showing a breeding colony of "Cedar Pus", as locals call them.

Lyle Zapato

Levitating Islands

Lyle Zapato | 2006-11-25.5300 LMT | Technology | Lost Worlds | General Paranoia

ecoEnquirer reports: Levitating Islands in Bermuda Triangle Observed by Spy Satellite. While ecoEnquirer is at a loss to explain this phenomena -- and the usual suspects aren't forthcoming -- I have two possible theories:

  1. Hyperinventor St. Clair, who is a resident of Puerto Rico (one of the points of the Bermuda Triangle), has been quiet recently. Perhaps he is working on a new patent application that will allow individuals or small groups engaged in Chi Kung breathing to create a harmonic Chi resonance, possibly by following a simple flowchart or instructional diagram, thus enabling large masses to be levitated.
  2. The US Navy is testing their superconducting belt technology on a larger scale, possibly as a means to replace aircraft carriers with flying island airbases capable of traveling back in time and stopping the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Whatever the cause, we can say for certain that the phenomena has caught the attention of the giant white arrows patrolling the Caribbean; let us just hope it doesn't displease them.

(Via Reality Carnival)

Radical Sasquatch

HOWL: JENGLOT!!!

Radical Sasquatch | 2006-08-23.1163 LMT | Sasquatch Issues

Malaysian Humans will TEST THE DNA OF A JENGLOT MUMMY found in Indonesia in 1972 to see if it is real!

JENGLOT are ANNOYING LITTLE VAMPIRES that pester Mawas and other Southeast Asian Hominoids! Humans suffer from inconsequential mosquitoes; Southeast Asian Hominoids suffer from JENGLOT!!!

Thankfully, Cascadia remains JENGLOT FREE -- but only so long as Yeti immigrants remember to check their fur for JENGLOT and JENGLOT EGGS before boarding Cascadia-bound shipping containers!

ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT JENGLOT INFESTATION!!!

The mummified JENGLOT body the Humans found is ABNORMALLY LARGE and most Mawas JENGLOTOLOGISTS think it is a FAKE created by ANTI-HOMINOID AGITATORS to scare Mawas and other Hominoids! Or perhaps the Human government has GENETICALLY ENGINEERED A SUPER JENGLOT as a BIOLOGICAL WEAPON to DEPOPULATE MAWASISTAN in order to BUILD MONO RAILS ON THEIR LAND!!! My moss is on the latter, especially since Humans are known to be collecting, displaying, feeding, and BREEDING JENGLOT!!!

Whichever is the case, THE DNA TEST CANNOT BE TRUSTED!!! The Human group behind the test are actually CRYPTOPERVERTS who also want to RECOVER DNA FROM MAWAS FOOTPRINTS!!! One can only imagine what sick things they would do with that! Perhaps they wish to CLONE MAWAS FOOT-FETISH SLAVES TO SEXUALLY GAZE AT!!!

The only thing more annoying than JENGLOT are HUMAN CRYPTOPERVERTS!!!

Radical Sasquatch

HOWL: REVERSE EVOLUTION!?!

Radical Sasquatch | 2006-06-30.2770 LMT | Sasquatch Issues

In their latest slanderous squeakings against the Mawas, Malaysian Humans are claiming that Mawas are "REVERSE EVOLVED" from proto-Humans! Listen to little SEAN ANG'S insulting squeaks:

I concur with Chow's findings that this could be an unknown species that went through reverse evolution to end up as a less intelligent creature than Peking Man, who could use fire and tools.

LESS INTELLIGENT!?! Then how come not a single Human has EVER beaten a Mawas, Sasquatch, or Yeti in CHESS?!? You can't keep hiding behind FEAR OF DELIMBING as an excuse, regardless of what you see in your ANTI-HOMINOID "STAR WARS" PROPAGANDA FILMS!!! Less intelligent... HUMANS, HEAR MY DERISIVE HOWLS OF LAUGHTER!!! Mawas seem smart enough to evade you pipsqueaks!

And why is your measure of intelligence USAGE OF FIRE!?! There's a reason we don't use fire... IF YOU HUMANS WERE COVERED IN THICK, LUSTROUS FUR YOU WOULD AVOID OPEN FLAMES TOO!!! Just because you are always trying to compensate for being NAKED AND COLD doesn't mean the rest of us are!

AND WE TOTALLY USE TOOLS!!! I have a five-squatch-foot-long log (that's about 20 of your puny Human feet) that I use to SMASH CRYPTOZOOLOGISTS THAT TRY TO TAKE PICTURES OF ME!!! If that isn't tool usage, then tell me WHAT IS!?!

HUMAN ANG SQUEAKS ON:

Reverse evolution can take place when there is an abundance of food and the species group is small and totally isolated, as in the case of the Johor Bigfoot.

GIBBERSQUEAK!!! The Mawas are not "totally isolated"! Just because they don't want to contact you doesn't mean they aren't in contact with the greater Hominoid community! WHY DO YOU HUMANS THINK EVERYTHING HAS TO REVOLVE AROUND YOU!?!

And lastly, evolution, reverse or otherwise, is a HUMAN MYTH!!! Everyone knows that the ancestors of Mawas and Sasquatch WERE EJECTED, FULLY FORMED, OUT OF A VOLCANO FOUR BILLION YEARS AGO!!! Where you Humans came from, I don't know and don't care... JUST STOP PESTERING US!!!

The Typing Octopus

Octopus Skills Pay Bills

The Typing Octopus | 2006-04-18.0750 LMT | Cephalopods
Lyle Zapato

Blattocracy

Lyle Zapato | 2006-04-18.0260 LMT | Politics