Both of us need it like Hell

[sovay]

1. I slept ten hours last night. I think the last time I got more than six was in September. Today I'm kind of reclusive and slightly burnt out, but still rather happy. I may go out anyway, just to see what happens. There's sunlight.

2. ratatosk has taken to referring to my persistent belief that other people automatically find me boring/brain-dead/annoying as "Tiny Wittgenstein on My Shoulder." He is apparently modeled after Tiny Carl Jung from Dresden Codak (which I still haven't read), but I flashed on the personality sprites from Narbonic. I'm not really sure what I could promise anyone who felt like drawing me gloomy, winged chibi Wittgenstein—probably in his leather jacket, looking glumly agonized—other than a profound apology, but it seems to be a concept I really like. Also easier to integrate into a conversation than yelling "Wittgenstein!" every time I notice I'm apologizing inappropriately, because that way lies Basingstoke.

3. Speaking of which: Is that descending figure that opens the overture to Ruddigore (1887) a deliberate callback to Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre (1874), or is it just me? I was humming the one when I realized I'd switched to the other.

4. I have been eating the hell out of the durian candies sharhaun brought back from Singapore—I got a package from him after The Lighthouse, when he found out I actually liked them. They were delicious and short-lived. I have no idea where I am supposed to get more.

5. I hope someone at Badass of the Week sees this obituary. "To please his mother, who did not take kindly to his being a pirate, he briefly managed a mink farm, one of the few truly dull entries on his otherwise crackling résumé, which lately included a career as a professional gambler."

I really did have a spectacular weekend. I had a good week. I think the week before that was pretty good, too. (Before that was the hell-cold.) It really feels like I shouldn't sneeze or I'll break my life, but I am enjoying myself.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The notion of "tiny Wittgenstein on my shoulder" is adorable.

Personally, I find managing a mink farm more exciting than professional gambler.

[sovay]

The notion of "tiny Wittgenstein on my shoulder" is adorable.

Thank ratatosk!

Personally, I find managing a mink farm more exciting than professional gambler.

I suspect it is only in the world of John Fairfax that managing a mink farm is boring.

Mink

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

I suspect it is only in the world of John Fairfax that managing a mink farm is boring.

The researchers in Novosibirsk who domesticated the foxes also worked with less charismatic animals, including mink. If you want to read something short specifically about the mink, search for "Have fur bearers become domesticated (behavioural and brain biochemistry aspects)" and you will get a 290 page PDF that contains this note on a few pages.

The numbers in Table 1 show that domesticating mink was extremely difficult, and that at the time of preparing the article only .03% of the mink they had (5/17,500) were all the way on the "fully domesticated" end of their scale (the fox experiment was enormously more successful). The relevant bit to your comment is that they also bred a strain of super-aggressive mink. I will quote their mink-aggressiveness scale, because the descriptions of angry mink are wonderful (there are a few missing words in the original; I blame difficulty of proofreading when none of the authors was a native English speaker):


–Score 1. Fearful response towards human. When
attempts were made to catch the caged mink, it retreated, hid in its wooden kennel, gaping and baring its teeth, cried shrilly or hissed, its posture showed intense emotional stress.

–Score 2. Attack from the wooden kennel. When attempts were made to catch the caged mink, it jumped to the entrance of wooden kennel, hid in it to attack the gloved hand, bit it with considerable intensity.

–Score 3. Active attack outside shelter. When attempts were made to catch the caged mink, instead of hiding, promptly attacked the hand. Even after the test was over, it kept crying, gnawed in fierce assault the bars of the cage at the sight the approaching gloved hand.

–Score 4. Attacks enhancing in response to human approach. Before test onset, i.e. before the breeder opened the cage and stretched out his hand, the caged mink vehemently responded to human presence by about the cage, gnawing its bars.


Moral of the story: Mink can be really nasty, but with selective breeding you can make them even nastier.

Re: Mink

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Ratatosk, for the tiny Wittgenstein notion! And for the scale of mink aggressiveness. (Poor minks!)

[sovay]

Moral of the story: Mink can be really nasty, but with selective breeding you can make them even nastier.

This is where I tell you to read Cordwainer Smith's "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons."

That said—

gnawed in fierce assault the bars of the cage at the sight the approaching gloved hand.

—is a magnificent description.