Baboon Pirates

Scribbles and Scrawls from an unrepentant swashbuckling primate.

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Location: Texas, United States

Monday, February 04, 2008

Some People Are Just... Different...

I Don't March To A Different Drummer, I March To Well-Timed Artillery.

I was reading a blog on my sidebar recently, and in a recent post that had nice things to say about me, I saw the following said in the comments (also about myself):
I'm a big fan of El Cap, too. And I'm not sure why, either. He just has such a twisted, unconventional view of the world - my kinda guy.

Flattering, to be sure, but still vaguely disconcerting.

Am I really that far off center? I know I'm not known for following trends, but I dunno if I'd go so far as to say I'm twisted.

Then again, maybe that description is appropriate. After all, how many people long to have a private library, full of leather seating and dark walnut shelves, with a pissoir secreted behind a hidden door so I wouldn't have to quit reading and traipse across the house in search of a bathroom. Ditto for the garage work area.

I'm all the time having my brain run off in weird tangents, only rarely related to what I'm actually engaged in.

Case in point: I recently saw this documentary about cuttlefish, and it spawned about an afternoon's worth of thought on the subject of cuttlefish mating.

See, when cuttlefish mate, the male of the species uses a tentacle to lodge a packet of sperm deep inside the female's mantle. He'll do the deed, then hang around to guard against other males. He's still got to hunt & eat, though, so occasionally, he's got to leave her side.

It's not unknown for an interloping male to take advantage of a missing cuttlefish "husband", and grab a little tentacle nookie of his own.

The returning cuttlefish husband can somehow figure out if there's been some unfaithful behavior on the part of the cuttlefish "wife". It might be pheromones in the water, it might be rumpled bedsheets, or perhaps a stray tentacle poking out from underneath the closet door. This sends the husband into a frenzy of jealous jizz-cleaning.

He grabs the female by the tentacles, and uses his own tentacles to sweep her mantle cavity free of any sperm packets. Some species use their propulsion jets to literally hose out the female, to make sure no foreign sperm remains. He then re-mates with the female, and this process repeats pretty much every time he leaves to go get a crab sandwich.

Now, most people would watch this documentary and say "Interesting. Now,on to my regular life".

Nope, not me. Instead I spend quite a bit of time imagining what life would be like if humans evolved to have cuttlefish mating habits. How different a path your life would have if you had to, every afternoon after work, drag out the wet/dry vac, the turkey baster and a toilet plunger and chase your wife around the house until you could corner her and commence to some diligent douchery. Imagine how exciting and damp a trip to the airport would be, to greet returning mates. Would we invent spousal flushing stations in public places?

So, twisted? Or just sorta creative? I just don't know...