Speaking of Dr. Seuss ...

In an earlier post, I mentioned that tomorrow is the anniversary of Dr. Seuss's death. Well ... Thanks to Boing Boing, I just came across another Dr. Seuss fact very worth mentioning: The Dr. Seuss Taxidermy Collection (!), which is an absolutely fabulous thing. From the gallery's website:

"Seuss embarked on an ingenious project in the early 1930s as he evolved from two-dimensional artworks to three-dimensional sculptures. What was most unusual for these mixed-media sculptures was the use of real animal parts including beaks, antlers and horns from deceased Forest Park Zoo animals where Seuss’s father was superintendent. Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy was born in a cramped New York apartment and included a menagerie of inventive creatures with names like the “Two Horned Drouberhannis,” “Andulovian Grackler,” and “Semi-Normal Green-Lidded Fawn.” Shortly after Seuss created this unique collection of artworks, Look Magazine dubbed Seuss “The World’s Most Eminent Authority on Unheard-Of Animals.” To this day, Seuss’s Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy remains as some of the finest examples of his inventive and multi-dimensional creativity."

In case anyone is feeling generous, I thought I should mention: I would like any or all of the taxidermy collection for my birthday, which also happens to be tomorrow. ;-)

His secret art collection is quite wonderful too. Given my current status as a writer actively worrying about her book, my personal favorite is certainly, "Self Portrait of an Artist Worrying About His Next Book," pictured right, which really nails it. The book he was worrying about when he painted this: "Green Eggs and Ham."

Blackberry Addiction 'Similar to Drugs'

They don't call them crackberries for nothin: A study just out from Rutgers University says those Blackberry email devices you see attached to everyone's hips (including mine) "can be so addictive that owners may need to be weaned off them with treatment similar to that given to drug users," and that Blackberries are "fuelling a rise in email and internet addiction, with sufferers able to survive only a few minutes without checking for new mail." Reports on the study call Blackberries "seriously damaging to mental health," and offer this as a diagnostic aid: "One key sign of a user being addicted is if they focus on their Blackberry ignoring those around them." Professor Gayle Porter, the scientist who lead the study, says becoming Blackberry addicted can be "devastating." And they say someday soon, we may start seeing lawsuits over this.

It's certainly true that our culture has become email-obsessed to a pathological degree. But I don't think Blackberries are the problem. I actually think they can be part of the solution. I spend far far far (far) too much time dealing with email. It's safe to say I get several hundred emails a day. For years, many of the messages I've written started with the sentence, Sorry for my slow response, but [insert excuse here, usually it's I was out of town and my inbox is now filled with hundreds of unanswered messages I'm wading through]. Because of all this, I was worried about getting my new Blackberry. I knew it might take over my life. But in fact, it's liberated me: I now don't have to wade through hundreds of unanswered emails when I come home from traveling, because I can respond to them while I'm away. Before I got a Blackberry, I spent about half of each day responding to emails, but now sometimes I go all day without even turning on my email program (because I can see if any important emails arrive with my Blackberry and ignore the rest), which allows me to focus on my writing when I'm at my computer instead of my emailing. Plus, the Blackberry forces me to keep my responses short and fast, because you can only type so much on those tiny keyboards. So honestly, I feel like the Blackberry has helped fix my email problem.

It's true, some people might find it strange that I email while dog-walking, or that I often exchange 20 or more emails a day with one particular friend -- who shall remain nameless -- and that we've been known to do this when we're both sitting in the same room. People might find it suspicious that, after this same friend convinced me to buy my Blackberry and helped me pick it out via telephone from hundreds of miles away, he started sending regular emails saying things like, "how is your berry?" and "don't you just love your blackberry," to which I always responded, "yes" within seconds. Recently, on a particularly Blackberry-heavy day, we both noted that we seemed to be developing tendonitis in our thumbs. But we've agreed: We're not addicted. Our Blackberries have helped us get our lives back (we've been emailing like this for years, now we just spend less time at our desks doing so). This morning, another good friend -- who shall also remain nameless, but who I'll call "Dinty" -- forwarded this article with a note saying he's, "consumed by guilt" over over the fact that he and our other friends have become "classic 'enablers" by not taking our blackberries and locking them away. But he has nothing to worry about: He sent that email nearly an hour ago and I have even replied yet. I'm so not Blackberry addicted! What more proof could a person possibly need?!

Cuteness, Funny Mugshots, and Print-on-Demand Marriage Proposal Books

Okay, since I've been spending a lot of time sitting by the hospital bed of a good friend, I'm big on things that make me laugh right now (actually, I'm always big on things that make me laugh). And I'll tell you, goofy as it may sound, Cuteoverload gets lots of points. Just look at this picture, or this one (!!), or this one (I could go on and on, but I'll stop now).

So, in keeping with my current quest for humor, I have to post these two things: First, The Smoking Gun has this hilarious feature on people who do it up for their mugshots -- some of them are great. I mean, really, if you're busted, you're busted. May as well make the best of it, right?

Then there's this, which I posted on Critical Mass today, but wanted to include here too: A man has proposed to his girlfriend by creating and giving her a 105-page print-on-demand book called, "50 Reasons Why You Should Marry Me and 51 Reasons Why I should Marry You," by Cameron Kelly. The book is available for sale through Lulu, where you can read the entire thing as a sample PDF (thought I would think you were very strange if you did that -- skimming it for voyeurism's sake is one thing, but reading it all is completely different).

A press release announcing the sale of the book listed some of the reasons she should say yes, including: "Because I clean the bathroom every week. Because I cut my hair. Because I love the way you say 'crayons.'" And, as the book-description notes, there are "FULL COLOR photographs throughout."

At this point, the book has a 4 star customer rating (out of a possible 6 stars), but its target audience seemed pleased: She said yes. How could you not? Come on: The guy's a riot. And making that book took serious balls. (Thanks Clive!)

Of Note: Python Explodes After Eating Alligator

Really, the headline on this one says it all. Rangers just reported that a 13-foot python ate a 6-foot alligator, and the result wasn't pretty. The snake tried to swallow the gater whole -- then the snake exploded.

Apparently, clashes between pythons and alligators are becoming increasingly common in the Everglades, where people have developed the annoying habit of dumping their pet pythons when they get too big to keep around the house (say, six feet long, or more). This has the makings of a tremendous problem: They're encroaching on an $8 billion dollar Everglades restoration project by eating the native otters, the endangered birds ... and now the alligators? Encounters like this simply aren't natural -- these snakes are a native species of Asia. They're not supposed to be fighting Florida alligators. But this is the fourth battle of its kind.

Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor, is quoted by VZW News (which isn't online or I'd link to it) saying that in this case, the alligator and python "were probably evenly matched in size ... if the python got a good grip on the alligator before the alligator got a good grip on him, he could win." But, he says, after being swallowed whole, the alligator apparently clawed at the pythons stomach from the inside, causing the snake to explode. The remains found by the rangers were a mess: The alligator's hind end protruding from the snake's midsection; the snake's stomach still wrapped around the alligator's head, shoulders and front legs ...

This is an unfortunate blow for the folks in the Everglades restoration project -- they've been hoping the alligators might control the rapidly growing Burmese python population. "This indicates to me it's going to be an even draw," Mazzotti said. "Sometimes alligators are going to win and sometimes the pythons will win." Then, in one of the most striking understatements of the day, the BBC quotes Mazzotti saying "Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species ... it means nothing in the Everglades is safe from pythons ..."

See, now that's just one more reason I live in New York City: No pythons, no alligators, and no quicksand ...

Of Note: A River of Cocaine

A group of scientists studying drug use in northern Italy recently reported that, based on the amount of cocaine byproduct found in the River Po, the 5 million people living near the river consume about 200,000 lines of cocaine each day (that's about $150 million worth of cocaine per year).

Cocaine breaks down in the body to form a compound called benzoylecgonine, which is excreted in the urine along with trace amounts of actual cocaine. In the region around the River Po, apparently benzoylecgonine goes from Italian toilets to Italian water processing plants, straight into the River, where scientists can isolate and measure it using mass spectrometry. In a similar study, these scientists found large quantities of prescription drugs contaminating the river as well.

On Life: Not Standing

My dog Bonny and I were out walking this morning when we came across this guy, sleeping in a recliner under a "No Standing" sign. At that point, his feet were actually propped on the fire hydrant, but by the time I ran to the apartment for my camera and came back, he'd unreclined a bit. As I stood in the street snapping pictures, a grey-haired, curler-wearing woman leaned out her street-level window a few feet from me, shook her head and whispered, It's rude to take pictures of people while they're sleeping. She said I should let him get his rest in peace. Never mind that he was sleeping on a busy New York City street just feet from the blaring horns of an impressive Saturday morning Lincoln Tunnel traffic jam.

Of Note: Red Bull, a.k.a. Ox Bile Soda?

This just in: The FDA in Maharashtra, India has banned the sale of Red Bull, the ever-popular uber-caffinated drink, because it's recently been uncovered that one of the enzymes used to make the drink may come from the bile of Oxen, though the folks at Red Bull firmly deny this.

If this is true, I'm sure all those Red-Bull-and-Vodka guzzling hipsters in bars around the world will be surprised to hear this, especially the vegetarians of the bunch. First, of course, there's the eew factor -- I mean, who really wants to be drinking Ox bile? And second, there's the safety issue: Where are they getting the ox bile? How is it being handled? If the FDAs of the world aren't regulating it to make sure it comes from healthy oxen, who is? All very interesting questions. And if this is not true, I'd be very curious to hear how and why the rumor got started. But regardless of the whole ox bile issue, I wouldn't mind if Red Bull was banned all together ... really, who needs that much caffeine? I'm hyper enough without it, thank you: Just one of those babies and I'd be a jittery-babbling mess with no choice but to sprint from New York City to Maine just to get it out of my system.