GIP!

Yet another gratuitous icon post arising from my experiments with the digital camcorder's ability to transfer still video from tape to memory stick as a JPEG. The annoying thing is that this transfer involves hitting a button marked "photo" exactly as the frame I want rolls onscreen. There's a lot of trial and error, and I got a little trigger happy, meaning that if anyone wants about forty-nine extraneous screenshots of giant Green Morays, I'm the man to ask.

The first shot is from my most recent trip to Bonaire. It is the only one shot with the digital camcorder; it is also the only frame I felt I had to lighten. The other two pictures come from last year's trip. When I encountered the moray in the second frame, he was trailing about three feet of fishing line from his mouth. A situation like that is exactly why I always carry a pair of dive scissors, and I left him so that he was burdened with only nine inches -- nine inches being about as close as I was comfortable extending my hand towards his mouth. The third moray was being cleaned by three different shrimp. Two Coral Banded Shrimp were working on his head and body while the Scarlet-Striped Cleaning Shrimp in the picture took care of his teeth and gills. I spent about ten minutes videotaping the process.

For those who have wondered at my interests, the Linnean name for the Green Moray is Gymnothorax funebris. Gymnothorax translates, more or less, to "bare-chested," a term which in LiveJournal icon circles more often applies to James Marsters.

(no subject)

If you're not reading Fafblog, you're missing some of the most insightful commentary and perspicacious policy analysis on the internet. To wit:

Imagine you are a country who has been ruled by brutal dictators for centuries and invaded and occupied by a foreign power. You are tired and angry and hostile. You possibly still do not have good food or clean water or a job. What do you want? Ice cream.

Who does not love ice cream? No one that is who! Children and mullahs and Baathists of all ages all love the sweet creamy taste of a fresh ice cream cone! Now imagine that you are the angry tired hostile unemployed waterless foodless Iraqi - and Americans are giving you ice cream, for free! How do you complain, you do not you are so happy with delicious ice cream! Your emotional landscape changes from angry hostile killing to delicious. Ice cream delicious.

For just 37 billion dollars a year we could pay for one pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream a day for the 22 million men woman and children in Iraq. And if we buy in bulk it's even cheaper! We could be feeding them ice cream three meals a day! We could feed them ice cream at all state functions and constitutional drafting meetings! Our troops will no longer ride in humvees, they will ride in ice cream trucks. No one will launch grenades at the ice cream man!

"But Fafnir" you are saying "won't this make the Iraqis very fat." Maybe but remember the ancient proverb: a fat Iraqi insurgent is a happy Iraqi insurgent - especially a fat Iraqi insurgent filled with ice cream. "But how will you pay for all this ice cream Fafnir" you say. The ice cream will pay for itself. As the love grows we will be able to phase out the military operation and thus afford the ice cream, and once we have normal relations with Iraq our ice cream exports there will be incredible. My only hesitation is that the wrong powers will launch other wars to open more markets. There must be no blood for ice cream.

(Zoidberg icon in tribute to the Medium Lobster, I suppose.)