Tube worms about a third of the way down to the depth of the Deepwater Horizon leak

The seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico hosts a bizarre and barely understood ecosystem, only discovered 26 years ago, based not on sunlight or even geothermal heat vents, but on natural seepage of hydrocarbons (methane, etc.). One particularly spectacular element are the tube worms. Some of the individuals (not colonies, individual worms) in the Gulf appear to be over five hundred years old, predating the arrival of Europeans to the Gulf.

Now, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster*, these communities are getting bombarded with extra oil, methane, and other hydrocarbons. Presumably this will have one of two effects.

- The oil will destroy these fascinating ecosystems, irreplaceable and virtually unknown in terms of exploration.

- The oil and methane will supercharge the giant ancient worms, who will wreak terrible vengeance upon humanity.

In related news, SyFy Channel** is opening up it’s Original Movies to the public, in terms of stories (all of which are about Mega-CGI creatures), production etc.. It seems inevitable that someone would make this connection and turn it into schlock entertainment in poor taste, so I’m just pointing the way.

*I understand how horrible the “spill” (seems hard to call it just that). I especially have sympathy for those in the region as someone who lived in New Orleans for over 10 years, and lost all of my possessions in Hurricane Katrina, or more specifically the flood resulting from the failure of the US Corps of Engineers levees, built with poor materials and using out of date soil measurements. But when I read this story, the obvious fantastical possibilities could not be denied, and should not be taken as minimizing the disaster anymore than the movie Godzilla minimizes the nuclear bombings of Japan in WWII.

**Full Disclosure: I once was consulted, quasi-formally, by the Sci-Fi Channel (before it changed its name), regarding archaeology and stories of crashed UFOs (their researchers found my website and wondered if anyone else other than themselves had done archaeological investigation of such stories. I led them to a research proposal I was familiar with, that suggested methods for such an investigation). I was in El Salvador at the time, and I’m not saying they didn’t send me the promised bag of swag, maybe it just got lost in the mail.

Cold, Dark, and Teeming With Life [New York Times]
Image Lamellibrachia luymesi1 by Charles Fisher [Wikicommons]

Released in 1958 and a solid classic ever since, the 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a film each of us loved as children, and haven’t watched since. Let Ectomo gently remedy your ignorance. There was more, far more, to this film than a naga, a cyclops, living skeletons, and a dragon. There is plot, intrigue, racism, sexism, classism, orientalism, the Iraq War predicted 45 years early, a hidden protagonist, and salty Muslim pirates.

But even the hoary old stop-motion beasts will be newly appreciated by your CGI-jaded self. Bathe in the simple liveliness of clay, and Harryhausen’s genius for action and anatomy, simmering in an unforgettable Bernard Herrman score (which I highly recommend downloading on its own).

I was a nervous child. My overactive imagination joined with my natural timidity to make an ongoing horror story of my life, thick with evil spirits and malevolent hands reaching out for my fat little feet from under my bed or pouring like smoke out of eerily anthropomorphic cracks in the plaster. I can trace all of these childhood anxieties to one point, one specific Boogieman that lay lurking in the dank swamps of my own brain: The Bunyip. This is his song.
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For anyone without severe mental retardation, reading anything written by internet plebs is a source of constant angst. The misspellings, the dumb, loud opinions, the lols and :)s where no sane person would be laughing or smiling, and just…just everything. Fuck everyone and their dumb words.

The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I’d normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world.

For example, when I read the sentence “I care about this alot,” this is what I imagine:

Allie over at Hyperbole and a Half has created an illustrated manual to mentally navigating the internet stupidity minefield, a set of coping mechanisms applicable to anything from YouTube comments to our very own site. Thank christ.

This Alot is Better Than You at Everything [Hyperbole and a Half : thanks Dan]

Drive-by firebombings and trailers full of honeys: Fortean Mike Dash spills about the hard life on the mean streets shores of Loch Ness. The perks:

From Searle’s point of view, renown also brought the useful perk of short-lived young female assistants – he called them “Girl Fridays” – willing to share his watching duties and his bed. There were several of these girls, one an Australian, another a Brit. A third, a Belgian named Lieve Peten, reminisced: “There was no romantic involvement, not for him, not for me, but there was a physical involvement. It sounds harsh, perhaps, but that was the Seventies, people experimented. And there was no AIDS back then.” It seems reasonable to assume that she, and perhaps some of the other assistants recruited from small ads placed (the Glasgow Herald noted) in “parts of the country where the unemployment was high,” were more attracted to the romance of monster hunting than they were to the short, baked bean munching, prosthetic-footed (he was wounded in the war) Frank Searle.

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I miss mom so much.

The Number To Heaven [YouTube]

A fine preview of the newest offering from Quirk Classics, who previously released the wonderful Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Not content to rest on their laurels, they continue to spice up the torturous ramblings of Miss Austen, this time with the help of murderous tentacles. Judging from Miss Dashwood’s dress, it took them a few takes, so stick around and make sure the effort hasn’t been wasted.

Quirk Classics #2: Book Trailer [YouTube] : Irreference