An American Paleoartist in London: The Next Day

Today was actually a lot of fun, maybe the most fun day we've had so far. In the morning, we headed to the British Museum, which was pretty incredible. The Egyptian rooms in particular were beyond amazing. We were both hoping that the Great Wave painting would be there, but it was being rotated. Curses! But hey, it's tough not to be totally impressed by the Parthenon room. My gosh. My gosh! We stayed there for a very long time, just wandering around and being in awe. Sadly, the museum filled up very quickly, and before too long it was shoulder-to-shoulder. After leaving, we ate lunch and headed to Victoria Station to get tickets to Bromley South (just 10 pounds for both of us!) to see Down House. Getting around Kent was kind of awkward--bus tickets cost 2 pounds apiece, and Gina thought we only had 3 points on the back. Thankfully, she found another pound in her coin purse, and we are officially out of cash and coins!


Down House was incredible, but I was disappointed that it had become so museum-ee. The Heritage Society clearly rebuilt the whole place, adding signs and glass displays. The most impressive rooms were those that remained unchanged with a red velvet rope keeping people away, precisely because they were unchanged! On the trip back, I suddenly realized I was dead tired, and almost fell asleep on the train. There was a very busty girl who was almost falling out of her top, though, so I had to keep one eye open. LOL! Even Gina was impressed! When we got back, we weren't out of the woods yet. We weren't impressed by the food court at Victoria this time, and walked back to the hotel, only to leave again in pursuit of food. Food was incredibly hard to find! I guess London closes at 7 p.m. on Sundays, because virtually every restaurant was closed. Eventually, we just got sick of walking and settled for Subway. But there was an interesting note on the door--their credit card machine was broken! Oh, damn you, Subway! Right then and there, I converted to the Church of Tesco, and found myself enjoying a Sandwich In a Box and a Coke! Currently, we're watching "The X-Factor." It's much better than American's version of the show (American Idol? America's Got Talent?). We keep hoping to come across Jeeves & Wooster, but I don't think it's on tonight.

An American Paleoartist in London: Day I've Lost Track

I'm not saying I dislike London, I'm just saying I dislike certain aspects of it. The crowds, for instance. The apparantly omnipresent delays and closures in the Underground. The mid-afternoon ceiling work in the Victoria Station that actually closes the ticketing area. The expensive taxi fares, unbelievably expensive train tickets, and Pickadilly Circus. Of course, other parts of London I love. I love the concept of the Underground, though it's clear that the execution of the Underground lacks finesse. I love the architecture and old buildings, especially Parliment and Westminster Abbey.

Gina and I left Bristol early today. Can't say I'm sad to go, although I will miss the sauropod symposium and the poster sessions (there's one about Carnotaurus' arms), but I have people seeing things for me and they will hopefully report back to me, perhaps over a glass of chai back home. Why did we have to leave so early? Checkout time is 11:00 a.m., and our train leaves...today. Gina didn't want to just hang out in the lobby with our luggage, and I don't blame her, so we shoved off after seeing Phil Currie's "new" phylogeny of the Tyrannosauroidea, though it's hardly new. There were actually a lot of "repeats" this year--somebody will have to tell me if this is normal. Examples:

1) At least two presentations about how crurotarsians were twice as diverse as dinosaurs going into the Permio-Triassic extinction. Dinosaurs won, we're not sure why. I'd heard this last year, and I've read a few papers about it since, too.
2) I didn't stay for it, but there's a presentation about Spinophorosaurus, which was published before I flew out here. We all know about it now. Will anything change significantly between the publication of the paper and the presentation?
3) Two new coelurosaurs: Xiongguanlong and Beishanlong. I read about them months ago. And here's the shocker--no new material or information was presented today.

None of the talks blew my mind, but what WAS awesome was Julia's Second Annual Paleo-Blogger (and Blogger Groupies) Get-Together. It was held at a pub across the street from the Wills Memorial Building. Lots of people, new and old, showed up. Mo Hassen and Ville Sinkkonen, Scott Elyard and Raven Amos, the SV-POWer Rangers, Julia Heathcote, Andrew Farke, Mark Witton (briefly), Patty Ralrick, Darren Tanke, and a bunch of a new faces. I got the SV-POW sauropod neck posture paper signed by all of 'em, and two of Darren Naish's books signed by the man himself.

When we got back, we came back to the Curzon and rested for a bit, then headed across Hyde Park. It's beautiful, and I wish we'd gone sooner! It features some absolutely enormous swans. We saw Princess Diana's "house" (read: palace) then headed toward home. We ate very good pizza on the way home, but it was getting cold and I only had a T-shirt on, so we tried taking the Underground home. Oh, sorry, no dice there: the Jubilee line was closed. So we got back on the Central and tried to hit the Victoria. Guess what? Victoria is closed, too! So we got BACK on Central to Picadilly and eventually got back to Green Park. It was a hassle and a half. Is this normal, British readers, for the Underground to be constantly crippled by construction and repair?

Tomorrow we head to Kent for Down House. Should be fun.

How to Get to SVP From My Hotel

Here's the quick 'n' dirty version: Go to my Facebook page, where I've uploaded all the relevant photos. I hope to have more tomorrow. But here's Mike Taylor, Matt Wedel, and Darren Naish presenting their teeth in what's clearly a combined threat display. Terror!!!

An American Paleoartist in...Bristol: Day 1 & 2

Because it's a PDF and I don't have a scanner that can make JPEG's, I can't actually show you the map of the meeting this year. You can find this map at the SVP website. I encourage you to look! Look and laugh and point and chuckle. It looks like such a short trip! Well, it's not. For the confused, SVP this year was held at the University of Bristol, but unlike SVP in Cleveland last year, it's not being held in one gigantic building. Last year, it was difficult enough running upstairs and downstairs between presentations. This year, you must run from one end of the campus to the other. Also--look hard for this--there's a building toward the upper-left corner of the map called the "Victoria Room." This is where the poster sessions are. What that unhelpful map does not include is topology. Bristol is not, as you might expect, flat, but rather mountainous. To further illustrate this point, I will encourage a certain analogy.

Imagine that my hotel, the Broad Quay, is at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The university is at the top of the Matterhorn. To switch to a different analogy, imagine the university is in New Jersey, and the Victoria Room in Seattle. Thus, every morn I rise at the goddamn crack of dawn, put on my climbing gear, and begin scaling the peak that is Mt. Bristol. And because I don't drink coffee (and they don't have hot chocolate), I stuff my throat with horrible, horrible water in an attempt to re-hydrate. The secret is this: let's say you have a presentation in the Chemistry Building of 10:00 a.m. You also have one, in the other building (across campus), at 10:30. You basically miss the 10:15 presentation because you're spending that time hiking madly toward the Mills Building. That's how it works, and there ain't no gettin' around it. Also, and this is the best part, the lecture "halls" are the size of the average living room. At that size, every talk, including those dealing with the phylogeny of the Procolophonidae, become standing-room only. The distance between your seatback and the back of the seat in front of you is far less than an American airline coach seat.

And then you get to walk further uphill, and much farther away, for the poster sessions. Even these are horribly "organized:" A series of posters will occupy a very small space, arranged rows about two feet wide. All sense of personal space is lost, and shuffling is inevitable. Actually reading the posters themselves becomes secondary to avoiding bumping into other people. And poor authors have basically no room to talk to anybody, because there's a constant stream of other people trying to get by. I spoke with Bill Parker and...another guy...for a little while about two Silesaurus posters, and we were constantly shuffling around to let people through. There are three such poster rooms, all separated by hundreds of feet of hallway.

It's the worst SVP setup possible, really. This is the kind of thing somebody would have to actively work at to fuck up this badly. Tomorrow, I will have pictures of the daily trek(s) so that you can get a better sense as to what we're all going through on a daily basis. I've been told by a source who will remain nameless who was in charge of this year's horrendous layout, but I don't feel comfortable screaming it to the internets. What's worse, the talks this year aren't all that great (nothing mind-blowing), although I'm told that the always-reliable Jerry Harris had a hilarious "smashy-bird, melty-bone" talk involving a life restoration of a headless duck. I understand it generated insane amounts of laughter. I missed it, though: I was hiking back to the Chemistry building.

An American Paleoartist in London: Day 5

I discovered my first beef with the Underground today: Construction! All the time, everywhere! And at the most inconvenient places/times! Victoria station itself was not closed today, but the train ticket booths were, because some idiot decided it was a good time to do roof work. We asked a fellow herding rampaging crowds how long the booths would be closed, and he said a half-hour, tops. Wonderful! We went upstairs to enjoy pizza and a calazone at...some pizza place. And it took a little more than thirty minutes. Perfect! I can hear you Brits chuckling right now. We went downstairs, and of course, it wasn't open. We asked another fellow, as the first one had gone away. This new person said he had no idea how long the station would be closed. Well, this won't be so bad. See, we bought our tickets to Cambridge at Victoria station yesterday, but since it left out of King's Cross, I'll bet we can just buy tickets at any station for any other station. Let's go to King's Cross! Oh wait, we can't. There's a problem at Oxford Circus, exactly halfway between Victoria and King's Cross. Wonderful. I should've seen this coming: the entire Jubilee line was down for like three days when we first got here.


At least this morning was fun. We took the Underground to Trefalger Square and saw the statues and waterfalls (awesome!), then wandered down to Westminster Abby, which was mind-blowingly beautiful! Oh, the architecture! The statues! The Latin inscriptions! We were both kind of disappointed that ol' Chuck D. doesn't have a more prominant tablet--Dr. Livingston (I presume) had one that was about twice as nice. I really couldn't get over how wonderful the building is, especially from the outside. All this gothic stonework sitting in the middle of the city. I loved it! Then we walked across the bridge to see Parliment and Big Ben. I got lots of good pictures of both. Parliment is ridiculously huge. After that, we got into the Victoria station mess, which took forever. We gave up and walked past Buckingham Palace, through Green Park, and back to the apartment. Tonight we're going to Paddington station to buy our train tickets to Bristol (hopefully they're open and/or functioning).

An American Paleoartist in London: Day 4

The more I take the Underground, the more I wish we had something like it in Anchorage, though we haven't the population nor the infrastructure to support such a system. It gets you from place to place really quite fast, and if you have an Oystercard, it's surprisingly cheap. The only danger is accidentally going the wrong way, although even that is basically moot if you can tell your north from south. I suppose there are some complaints to be had, though: mainly the lack of ventilation on the trains themselves. Hot and stuffy, that's the bottom line. But it goes by quick, as I said before, and if you're switching lines, there's some fresh air between trains.

And today we took the actual train to Cambridge for the day, at the suggestion of Mo Hassen. Cambridge is a lovely little college town where there are more bikers than drivers, and more walkers than both combined. Our first stop was King's College, which is not a learning institute but a massive architectural tower built by Henry VI-VIII in devotion to God. It really is an amazing structure, especially the interior, with a huge vaulted ceiling, beautiful stained-glass windows, and complex stone sculptures within. Afterwards, we took a trip to the Cambridge Museum of Earth Sciences, a treasure trove of European fossils in collection trays and cabinets. Hundreds and hundreds of fossils in there, including a few collected by Mr. Charles Darwin himself. Darwin is quite the celebrated scientist in England, which I most certainly appreciate, myself coming from a country that views this man as inspired by the Devil to undermine God or something.

*audible cursing*


I saw Thomas Holtz there, too, and said hi. He was on the SVP Darwin Heritage Tour. After salivating over rocks for awhile, we walked across the street to the Cambridge Zoology Museum, which was even better. Its specialty is extant animals, mostly in jars or in the form of mounted skeletons. The skeletons were so wonderful--every group of mammals was represented. See above: Gina with The World's Largest Pinniped Ever. There were some extinct taxa down there too, most notably a glyptodont and a ground sloth. All of the skeletons were wonderful, though. I especially liked the tapir and the rhino. There was an indricothere skull, and man, is it BIG! After that, we walked to the Cambridge University Library, which is enormous, and saw a small exhibit featuring Darwin's writings and sketches, including a 1st edition of On the Origin. Then it was a very long walk back to the bus stop!

Now here's one thing I noticed, really, for the first time today: where do people EAT in this country? It seems to me there are two kinds of restaurants. In the first kind, you sit at a table with wine glasses and a fancy menu posted on the doors outside so that if you're not super-rich (like us!) you can just up and avoid it. The other kind is a sandwich shop. And I don't mean Subway. I mean, Subway is an option, but my wife has developed some kind of anti-Subway thing, even when it's clearly a superior choice to whatever else is offered...which is unbelievably frustrating.* The sandwich shops here involve pre-made sandwiches in triangular boxes. You literally pick out a sandwich and pay for it, then leave (or stay, but it will cost extra if you stay)(does not compute). Those are my choices. Well, there's Burger King/McDonalds, where you cannot order your food from somebody who speaks English, a hassle I'm not eager to put up with. It's not like the sandwiches are BAD or anything, they're just not great, either. I need to find one of the Indian food restaurants that Scott's always talking about...**

*Today was diagnostic of a very common theme with my darling wife: we pass three or four places with real food (not sadwiches in boxes) (including Subway) and she says it's too expensive (it's not). Out of frustration, she just marches into a Pizza Hut and says she'll get something somewhere else, as if I wanted to go to Pizza Hut in the first place. We leave, she just starts walking in a random direction, only to turn around a few blocks later and says "you were supposed to be taking us to the first place you pointed out." If only she'd mentioned this before! Eventually she just settles on, yes, a boxed-sandwich shop and continues to be angry about it. It's as though she's got some specific American diner in mind, but fails to accept that we're in Europe, where they might do things differently. I, too, remark often that our choices are limited, but it's also something I've accepted. My wife is not always (rarely, in fact) fun to travel with!

**I'm sure she'll say it's too expensive.

An American Paleoartist in London: Day 3

I swear to Cthulhu, I hear less English in London than any other language. French and Russian seem dominant, followed by Israeli and other...Middle Eastern-sounding languages. In fact, London seems comprised, overall, of relatively few Anglo-Saxons. This is not bothersome, it's just wierd to me. This is truly a multicultural, multinational town. It would be nice to order food from somebody who spoke English, though. I'm just saying. Actually, today was really great. We spent the morning at the wax museum. Despite its tourist trappings, it's reasonably fun. The entrance fee is enough to make you briefly lose conciousness, though: 25 pounds per person? Sheesh! At least there's a ride in there, and a haunted house. Sadly, there is no Salma Hayek. After Madam Tousso's (or however you spell it), we traveled north, to Reagent Park, and also the London Zoo. They also charge way too much to get in, but I figure a zoo is expensive to maintain. The zoo was wonderful, although the constant stream of small screaming children was hard to ignore.


The insect house was great, as it included some giant spiders and a small colony of naked mole rats, which I'd never seen. The reptile house had gigantic rhinoceras iguanas, and the bigger one was very active! For my money, though, it doesn't get much better than ground hornbills. We also saw a family of Asian lions: a big male, a lioness, and their two new cubs. FAR too cute for words. At one point, they were all laying together, and the cubs were playing! I know, I didn't get any pictures. I blame the hoard of people swarming the overlook. Now here's something really wierd. At both the wax museum and the zoo, a map cost extra. Four goddamn pounds extra. Really? Four pounds for a piece of paper? At every other zoo I've been to, the map is included in the ticket price, as God intended. Here, it seems like they're trying to bilk you just a little. We actually got a free map (perhaps by accident) from a woman near the aquarium, so it wasn't a big deal, but the very concept of having to pay for a map boggles the mind. As it turns out, the map isn't all that helpful because it leaves so much off, and also doesn't provide an adequate sense of scale, so you end up missing the tigers like three times because it's just not clear where they are.

The only disappointment is that there isn't really a close tube stop to the zoo: we ended up hiking back through the park to Baker Street, stopping for fish 'n' chips on the way. Now we're back at the hotel, and BOY does it feel good to get off the feet! Reagent Park is gorgeous, and it makes me want to wander around Hyde Park and Green Park. We'll see if there's time for that, but I want parks like this in Anchorage! Sure, we have Kincaid, but that's more like a sports park.

An American Paleoartist in London: Day 2

Today we woke up fairly early and headed out in search of the Globe Theater. This turned out to be much more difficult than we'd thought, as the Jubilee Line was closed. So we took a different route and ended up very far from the Globe. Our map guide is impressively detailed, which actually makes navigation more difficult. After probably a half hour or more of wandering aimlessly, we discovered the Globe and took a tour. The tour was great, and we learned a lot about what the theater was like "in the time of Shakespeare." I was most interested to learn that the best seat in the house was above the theater itself, and was reserved for rich men who would spent the performance showing their legs to the ladies. And because the Globe didn't use scenery, actors were constantly narrating the stage direction ("I'm hiding behind this tree!" "We're fighting!").

We then headed to the Tate Modern, which, despite its impressive size, isn't all that great. Considering the enormous empty spaces within, a lot more art could fit in there. Only the first floor contained pieces I genuinely liked. The rest was modern wierd sculptures and a bunch of Warhols and Warhol imitators. Gina and I were both underwhelmed, and went across the Millenium Bridge to see St. Paul's Cathedral.


On the way, we stopped at a place called "Pizza Express" for lunch. Back in the States, when a place has the word "express" in the title, it means that it's essentially a hole-in-the-wall where you get cheap, but often good, food. This was none of those things. We sat at tables with wine glasses and were served by a woman in a suit. The pizzas weren't so much pizzas as deconstructions of pizzas, paring down the ingrediants to their most basic forms. Gina's was shaped like a doughnut. They were sparsely decorated with a minimal assortment of ingrediants, and the crust was thin enough that without the cloaking power of tomato sauce, the plate would have been visible through the dough. We also got dessert: something called "gelato," which is not some kind of gelatin, but instead the common ancestor between soft-serve and normal ice cream. It was very good. The whole meal, including drinks and tip, cost 30 pounds, which seems excessive considering the strange pizza.

We crossed the street to St. Paul's only to be confronted by a horrible entry fee. Maybe if the American dollar were not so weak, we would pony up the dough. Am I the only one who thinks it's odd that a house of God would charge people to enter? Oh wait, it's a Catholic church!

Returning to the hotel was a goddamn nightmare. The sun wreaked its firey judgement from on high, roasting me. Picadilly Circus may in fact be Hell on Earth on a Saturday. If and when I am cast into The Pit, it's going to look something like this. Unbreaking waves of people swarm the sidewalks, going all different directions at once. Sometimes you'll make a crosswalk ahead of the tide and for a brief moment you can breathe, but the billowing crowd immediately overtakes you. Add to this the heat, and the exhaustion from walking all morning, and Gina and I both became quite cranky. The longer I'm in London, the more I notice what it's missing. I hold by my earlier statement that no liquid in this town is free, and I took the time to look today. You can also only buy two brands of pop here: Coke and Pepsi. Derivative brands like 7-Up or Fanta or, yes, Mt. Dew are entirely absent here. Actually, that's not correct: Fanta is present, but it's a bizarre orange juice, not the sweet Sunkist-like soda pop we find in the States. I also haven't found a proper grocery store. We've been procuring out meager food and drinks from a Tesco two doors down, but I have yet to see a Safeway or Fred Meyer equivalent. There is also no AC, and its absence is heavily felt right now.

Not quite sure what tomorrow holds yet. Perhaps the British Museum and the Tower of London.

An American Paleoartist in London: Day 1

Well, technically, yesterday was my first day, but most of it was spent on two different planes. Highlights from the trip:
1) British Airways treats you like a person, not an inconvenience.
2) Our row's flight attendant was kind of a bitch. She didn't ask "tea or coffee?" as much as bark it, loudly, demanding a rapid answer.
3) Jesus H. Christ, the customs line was freaking long. And they only ask like two questions.
3) Dot2Dot is a godsend--I left my DSi on the shuttle, realized it hours later, called them up, and they had it to me the next morning.

Here are some things I've learned about London more generally:
1) Years of watching "Are You Being Served?" and "Keeping Up Appearances" does NOT prepare you for the chatty young British woman trying to get you into the Ripley's Believe It or Not "museum" downtown. She spoke so fast, and with such a heavy Cockney accent, that I can't imagine her fellow Britons could understand her, much less an American. Also, 22 pounds per person? I don't freaking think so.
2) The British are unfamiliar with water fountains, water pressure, or temperate showers. I spent most of today completely parched because my only hydration options were in bottles that cost 2 pounds or more. As for water pressure, there is none in our apartment: water doesn't so much rush from the shower head as fall limply from it. It's like showering in a mobile home. Despite this, the shower also only has two temperature settings: Absolute Zero and The Surface of the Sun. To find an acceptable medium takes much longer than you can possibly imagine.
3) Do not plug your American electronic appliance into a British outlet without something called a "power converter" except for the outlet is in the bathroom that says "shavers only."
4) Something about the air here is making me really bloody productive, cough-wise. I don't know if this is encouraging or worrying. Seriously, I haven't gotten this much sputum out at once in years.

On to today. We spent the morning in the London Museum of Natural History. The highlight of the trip was meeting fellow paleoblogger Mo Hassen, who showed us the library and some exhibits we would have otherwise missed. He's a real nice guy, and very knowledgable about the museum's specimens. I suppose he should--he does work there, after all, but it was great meeting him. I realize now that I should've gotten a picture with him, although we'll see each other at SVP, too. The museum itself was a bit of a mixed bag. You'd think that one of the world's premier natural history museums would keep up with the literature, but it hasn't in any meaningful way. The dinosaur hall is disappointing: poorly-lit skeletons hang from the ceilings, forcing one to use the battery-draining flash to capture them on digital film. A whopping three European dinosaurs were on display: Hypsilophodon, Baryonoyx, and Iguanadon. Well, Dacentrurus was there too, but out of place, in the marine reptile hall. Anyway, there were more American dinosaurs than British ones. Where's Eotyrannus and Xenoposeidon? Give me Neovenator, not Camarasaurus! There was no discussion on dinobirds, no feathers on the (hideous) animatronic raptors, and no pterosaurs (in the hall). It's clear that the museum has made virtually no effort to remain current with paleontology for at least the last decade. I did like this fellow, though:


Next up: the mammal area! Lots of stuffed mammals, including several pangolins and even a golden mole. The best room in the place was the giant hall with stuffed and fossil mammals, including a life-size Baelenoptera musculus life model and skeleton, flanked by skeletons of a bowhead and gray whale. Behind them was a sperm whale, with a restored "melon." Plenty of interesting fossil beasties, including Arsinotherium and lots of extinct elephant skulls. Again, the paleontology is not current. Whales are explained as having mesonychid origins, and Deinotherium has a long trunk instead of a tapir-like nose. Maybe I'm asking too much, but is it really that horrible to want the London Museum of Natural History to stay current with its science?

Mo showed us the museum library, which is extensive and impressive. He also took us to the marine reptile hall, which is far and away the most enjoyable room in the place. Plenty of wonderful specimens of ichthyosaurs and a few mosasaurs and plesiosaurs for good measure. Mo explained that many of the specimens show the original names, but they have been placed in new genera. He also said that the famous fossil of Ichthyosaurus giving birth might not be giving birth. My favorite fossil was a beautiful, complete Eurhinosaurus. It's a much larger ichthyosaur than I thought!

After leaving, we wandered into the Science Museum, saw what it is, and promptly left. Don't get me wrong, technology is great, but the history of steam is not on my list of things to see. Also, we bought Oystercards and took the Underground everywhere. It's fantastic and much easier than I thought it would be, though the shuttles themselves are devilishly hot. After a nice long nap, we explored downtown in an effort to find the Virgin megastore, but never did. Instead, we fought our way through a living sea of people, eventually finding solice in a bookstore where I bought Darren Naish's new "Great Dinosaur Discoveries" book. It's a great read so far, though I'm only five pages in. Not technical by any means, but an interesting history of the science.

Tomorrow we may venture toward the Globe and the Tate Modern. In the coming days before Bristol, we may yet take a day trip out to Cambridge. Also, does anyone out there know the easiest method of getting to Down House?

Blogobituary

Sable, 12 or 13, was put down at the vet tonight. She died, like Liquid, from a whole bunch of things: cancer, terrible arthritis, and the beginnings of liver disease. She'd also been almost completely blind for about a year. It became more and more painful to see her limp around the house and develop a very throaty pant (which is indicitive of pain). I can't help but wonder if she knew the end was coming--she wasn't eating as much these last few days, and stayed outside much longer than usual, just laying in her dirt patch. After the deed was done, the vet made an impression of her front paw in clay, which is nice.

For my wife, Sable was the best dog in the world, and she was very close to Sable. Sable herself was very independant and didn't necessarily see us as her owners as much as people she lived with. The second treats were made available next door, she probably would have easily lived with our neighbors without skipping a beat. But she loved walks and head-scratches, and we'll both miss her terribly.

Sable is survived by her roommate, Ozzie, and the humans who loved her very much.

Blogobituary

Liquid Gecko (right), four, died last week of systemic infections that may have included cancer. Both eyes were horribly infected with green pus and a tumor-like growth appeared behind his left eye. Minor sugery to the area revealed nothing inside but white tissue. He may have also been compacted, but it's hard to tell. I put the poor lizard down by refrigerating him for a half hour, then moving him up to the freezer. He hadn't eaten in months and was visibly declining. I suspect he was days from death when I "helped him along," but I didn't want him to suffer any more. He is survived by his brother, Solid (center) and his cousin, Mr. Fat (left).

His corpse was buried in the backyard and marked with a paint stiring stick. Hopefully his body will have skeletized by next summer. The one good thing to come out of the saddness is that I'm no longer losing sleep worrying about the little guy.

In times like this, I find myself selfishly hoping Liquid is going to some abstract "better place." That Big Terrerium in the Sky, as it were. It's useless to speculate on some higher plane, however. I suspect that humanity creates afterlife myths to comfort the living and remember the dead, but the reality may very well be that we become the very dirt we were born from. Those with unshakable faith know that white clouds and angel wings await them beyond death, but I have no such luxury. Death is hard for me, not only because I will miss the individual who I've lost, but because I worry about what it means for me. I cannot, and will not, entertain ideas of an afterlife of which there is no physical evidence. I may as well waste my time hoping dragons exist. Maybe they do, but until one is found, I'm going to worry about more worthwhile endeavors.

The bad news? We may...probably will...lose Sable tomorrow, too.

When Pigs Fly Proper

Obviously, the comic went a totally different direction. This became a birthday present for Marcus one year, colored, though I believe it was colored by hand, thus I don't have a copy. It's not obvious in this B&W version, but there's a big window by Marcus' bed, and the hospital is apparently on the coast. I really like making comics like this--taking several lyrics from a song and transplanting them to bizarre situations where they mke new sense (sort of).

When Pigs Fly

Many of you might not realize that I used to do a weekly comic called, predictably, "When Pigs Fly." In fact, that was the original intent of the original version of this blog. It quickly grew beyond my self-imposed fence, though, and eventually morphed into what it is now: a collection of ramblings, paleontology, and art posts. Back when I was still in college--this would be the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Two--the university newspaper, The Northern Light, put out a call to student cartoonists. Monetary compensation was advertised as well artistic exposure. I leapt at the chance, producing the comic you see above, as well as the following variant:


I thought my efforts would be rewarded. You see, several years earlier, when I was still technically in high school, I produced a one-panel "Far Side"-esque comic called...wait for it..."When Pigs Fly" that made fun of dinosaurs. I recall, with some trepidation, one particular comic involving a dromaeosaur in a soccer jersey, a blown soccer ball hanging limply from his deadly pedal claw. The caption read, "Why raptors weren't good at soccer." Oh, the hilarity! I think I need a hug. That comic ran almost an entire semester, my many submissions leaked out slowly, week by week, until finals arrived.

Apparently, the entire staff at the Northern Light had been replaced by slack-jawed yokels. One of the comics (I forget which one) ran a few weeks later, though titled "Miller Time," a pitiful play on my last name which was, handily, scrawled above the third panel in print. Thank Cthulhu for that! The readers would then be in on the joke. Two reader-produced comics ran: mine, and one involving crudely drawn stick figures talking nonesense that wasn't funny, and perhaps wasn't supposed to be funny. I don't know if you've ever encountered a poorly-drawn stick figure--these are not terribly difficult objects to draw: toddlers scrawl them onto walls with crayons on a regular basis. The quality of these stick figures, the ones in the comic below my own, were not up to toddler standards.

But I digress! I had submitted several more comics the next day, assured they would run in the coming weeks. This did not occur. Furthermore, the cash promise was never satisfied. After inquiring, I was told that they small staff had "lost my information," and they handed me another weighty stack of forms to fill out. This I did, and when I hadn't heard anything several days later, I returned to their offices and demanded to know, as they say, "what's up?"

At this point, I'll interject that the stick-figure fiasco was still running, though my comic, which required effort to produce, never made it past that initial printing. Erik Nielson, who sojourned to that campus for years after I graduated, tells me of that comic's amazing success: despite not being funny, well-drawn, or at times intelligible, the stick-figure theatre survived for several semesters. We both came to theorize that it was produced by one of the paper's own staff members, who after a certain amount of time graduated.

Back to the story, though. Miraculously, the staff had once again lost my information and didn't even remember who I was. At that point, I decided that it wasn't worth the trouble, and that my information was probably being "lost" purposefully. Print media, or at least the people who worked on said copy, became undesirable, so I started this blog* and did my own goddamn thing. The comic that would come to occupy When Pigs Fly (the weblog) looks virtually nothing like what you see above. It came to resemble Penny Arcade more in terms of main character body outline (I like to convince myself that this is purely coincidence, but cognitive dissonance only gets you so far). As for humor, though, my unique brand of sarcasm coupled with a healthy love of fetuses quickly dissolved any meaningful comparison.

Erik and Marcus still prod me to produce more comic strips, which is something I very well may take them up on.

*several years after graduating, sadly.

The Silk Succubus

There's a variant where the lighter-green "glow" is missing, leaving just the zig-zag behind her. The most arduous process was getting rid of the outline in places I didn't want it anymore, then filling in gaps left by uneven colors "behind" that outline.* I left the horns out: they just made the piece to busy and left no room for her hands. Or at the very least, I would've had to completely retool her arms and hand placement--not something I was eager to do at this late date. Future revisions (I ain't done yet) may yet see the addition of horns, and fattening of the 2nd wing finger at its distal end. I also fully intend to work on the other two girls--Medusa and the Harpy, but this show will have to do without both. Time is of the essence! I'll probably at least submit the unfinished sketch of the Harpy, which doesn't differ significantly from the last draft I posted.

I have just about finished the pages from Lake's notebook: they only need a final scrubbing with a bag of black tea to age them a bit more. My final piece will be hammered out today and tomorrow: a sketch of Great Lord Cthulhu, with all the interesting anatomical features detailed. Scott decided to participate, and is printing out some older digital sketches of Lovecraftian horrors. Exciting! Not bad for two weeks' work!

Silk Succubus Progression

Here's my girl with wings attached. Given the name I've given to the piece, you can probably see where I'm going with this. The right wing is cut off because she's on an 11x17" copier but her wingspan is 19." Damn!


Here she is with most of the base color. The tough part was figuring out what kind of outfit she should be wearing. Bikini seemed too cliche, but I didn't want to totally cover her up, either. Look at that figure, dammit! What to do? And what colors go with black and red? Well, I found a picture of Silk Specter that proved inspirational...


So here's what it eventually became, after about three hours of work. I'm still working on her hair and little details on the outfit, but I'm pretty close to being finished (by requirement--I have to hand in all my work on Monday night). Now you can see why she's called the Silk Succubus: it's an homage to her outfit. One of the toughest parts was the front of the corsette, and I'm still not entirely happy with it. Anyway, that's how it's going. Any last-minute suggestions? It's too late to change anything drastically, but I figured out how to do color replacements last night...

Go Forth and Do Science!

Ever wanted to get your name on a scientific publication? Now you can! Andrew Farke, Matt Wedel, and Mike Taylor (one part Open Source Paleontologist, two parts SV-POW) are hoping to figure out what made ornithischians go down on all fours so very often. Three separate times, in fact! To figure this puzzle out, they are trying to get limb bone measurements from as many ornithischians as they can, and YOU CAN HELP! Head over to The Open Dinosaur Project and find out how! It's a very exciting prospect, and I'm going to dredge up a few ornithischians later tonight. SCIENCE!

Is Religion in our DNA?

Just something I've thought about before. Assuming, of course, that the universe works perfectly well without a Creator (as I do), a question springs to mind: is the belief in some almighty diety, no matter what diety is it, somehow written into our DNA? Did humanity go through an evolutionary bottleneck that conferred an advantage on those with faith? Certainly, shared belief would help a community stick together and grow, but is it really a necessity for reproductive success? Every other critter on the planet seems to get along just fine without making sacrifices or chewing on stale crackers. There are no Jewish meerkats (not to single out the Jews, that's just a funny phrase). So what is it about humans that makes them, so often, default to religion? It's certainly not utilitarian. If anything, it gets in the way of natural processes.

But it's hard to deny that faith is a gigantic factor in what makes us human. Many humans may not be religious, but will awknowledge a "higher power," abstract though that term may be. But why? Why is the the natural world not enough? At what point did mankind begin shouting at the sky, and why? What advantage does (or did) it confer?

Ladies of the (Halloween) Night

Okay, I've got a confession to make: I haven't started shit on the Medusa. Instead of starting on her, I reworked the Harpy, still basing her on Nadine Chanz, but with an eye on measurement this time. Came out much better. I've given them both clothes:


Much better, right? The Powergirl outfit is coming together nicely. I don't know if I like that cheekbone or not...I can just take it out later. She doesn't look so much like a harpy as a woman dressed as a harpy, though: this is something I must fix. The Succubus, however, looks a lot more like a Succubus. I think it's the horns, mostly, but also the garb...and the wings. I suppose that, instead of some kind of superheroine outfit, I could give the Harpy something a bit more...medieval. Something to keep an eye on, that's for sure.












Don't ask me where those horns originate, because I'm not sure yet. I think right behind the ears, but honestly, at this juncture, it's not my main concern (looks at watch). I like the scale mail though--inspired by Red Sonja if you haven't already guessed that. I'm very happy with how the Succubus is turning out. The final may well have the fingers of the right hand sticking out of the hair. As Erik pointe out a few days ago, it sort of looks like her hand is reaching into her cranium. As is sort of noticable here, the bikini used to come up a little higher, revealing the bottom "rim" of her breasts. My wife suggested that was kind of overkill, and I agreed. The straps will be leather ties, and the scales are all attached to a leather cloth. The horns will be textured like a ram's.







And here's what she flies on: quadradactyl bat wings. Because I'm lazy, I'm going to merely flip this image for her other side. The wings originate from the shoulder blade, and the largest part of the patagium connects more or less right above her butt-cheek. Thoughts? Comments? I apologize for the crappy formatting.

Halloween Harpy v.1.0

This harpy is based primarily on Nadine Chanz (Ms. October 1996) with my own elements thrown in there--face, hair, arms, feathers on the arms. She's going to have a Powergirl sort of outfit. The next version will see the breasts lifted higher on the chest so that a more obvious circle will show between the shoulders and top of the breasts.

Not sure where Medusa's going to come from. Fifty years of centerfolds, and I can't find the pose I've envisioned for the Queen of the Gorgons. I may have to stitch a bunch of body parts together, which I'm not looking forward to.

I've also decided to give the Succubus open wings. I'm not going to detail any of these girls until I have sketches of all three. That means I'll start on Medusa tonight.

Girls, Girls, Girls (and Halloween)

Scott and I just wrapped up an art show. It was called "Art Remains" and it was a complete and utter failure. It's as if there wasn't art on the walls at all. I think it was the venue, personally. Just not a coffee shop people hang out in to consider ink and paint, arranged to form discernable shapes. Also, the staff was unhelpful enough that I will avoid said location from here on in, at least until those slack-jawed yokels go back to school and the place is re-staffed.

And is it too much to ask that the woman behind the counter shave her omnipresent and disturbingly prominant mustache? Is she aware of it? Is it something you bring up while ordering hot chocolate? And how would you broach such a topic? "Ma'am, are you going for a traditional handlebar or something more exotic?" That seems too severe.

Anyway. The point is, Art Remains underperformed. It's time to take a break from dinosaurs, folks. Bizarrely, nobody responds to them. A new subject is required. And, in fact, it will be required very quickly--we have been invited to partake in a Halloween-themed art show in...get this...an actual studio. The catch? We'll be in London for the better part of the month, so all of our contributions have to be out the door by the 15th. Well, I'm going to take the plunge. Scott still hasn't made up his mind, but I'm sure he can get one good piece ready by then.


For me, I can work on some art I've always meant to experiment with but haven't had the time or an excuse to do so. One of those subjects is pin-up girls. You see the first draft of one of a trio of pin-up girls I'm going to draw in Halloween garb. This particular vixen will be a succubus (plural, "succubi;" masculine, "incubus"). She'll have wings and horns and some kind of clothing (I haven't decided). She will also be in color, alongside two other gals: a harpy and Medusa. My reference for the succubus is Shannon Stewart, a.k.a. Ms. June 2000 (that's her centerfold). The face is my own design, with different bits taken from different Frank Cho faces, and I moved her inward angle of her back up. It looked somehow wrong in the centerfold.

I can't decide whether to make her wings outstretched or folded back. Outstretched would require a very long piece of paper, but it might make for a cool effect. And what should she be wearing? What do succubi wear?

The other two pieces will be Great Lord Cthulhu and...something else. I haven't decided. So that's what happin'in' kiddies.

Explain Something Else to Me

Was Jesus teh_Christ at Woodstock or something? It's the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, in case you've been living under a rock. It's all I hear about on the news, even NPR. There's a new movie out concerning (and taking place at) Woodstock called, predictably, Taking Woodstock. Talking heads pop onto news screens that reminice, and others talk about how great baby boomers are.

I mean, from what I've read, Woodstock was a very long concert attended by a lot of pot-smoking American hippies who must not have had jobs or responsibilities (I'd love to have that kind of time). The way I hear it, Woodstock singlehandedly brought about World Peace, the Second Coming, and an end to social injustice everywhere.

It did none of those things. It ended, and people went back to their lives.

What's all the damn fuss about?