Steven Boysen, he was the problem too, what started it all, what turned my life around. I was an IT consultant for a big biotechnology company, and she was a Kindergarten Teacher, her eyes were beautiful, when a child was crying, she only needed to look them in the eyes and they would sober up. Her eyes convey things that mere words could never say. They told anyone that looked into them that everything would be alright, that they were loved and that no matter what happened people would still love you. In her entirety she was beautiful, she could launch a thousand ships, and burn a city. Her name was Stephanie, and she was shy, but she would laugh. The children she worked with always put a smile on her face, and when she smiled, you would just about melt. I dream about her someti - I dream about her a lot. I see myself looking into her perfect eyes and kissing her lips gently, but as I kiss her, her face would contort and age and I would wake up, feeling dried tears on my cheek, not just tears, my whole pillow was damp, I would weep. Even in a dream, ones escape from realty, some part of me had known the truth, and cried for it. If I’d been drinking it would all come pouring out, normally in the toilet bowl, sometimes before.
That Bastard, he fucked up, that’s all that happened, and she was there to see it. She went to the police to testify and then the next day she got in her car, and it exploded. Protection my ass. The police had filed away everything that was left, in case new technology came out, but I don’t want them to pin him anymore. I want him to die, with my hands around his neck. His mind conjured the image of his wife’s misshaped head and then an image of himself shooting Steven Boysen in the testicles, seeing the charred hole in his pants, reveling the disfigured remains of his genitals, hearing the scream of pain and then stomping with the heel of his boots down on the remainder.
I spent the rest of that morning in bed - good ol’ Steve’s not going to disappear in a morning - thinking of increasingly absurd things I can do to good ol’ Steve. By the end of the morning I was imaging myself directing good ol’ Steve and his good ol’ bodyguards down a detour, and plunging them off a cliff, or directing them into a tunnel drawn on a rock wall, all the while twiling a comic mustache, or dressed as Elmer Fudd.
—————————————————————————-
It has been 4 years, 7 months and 15 days since anyone’s seen my wife. It has been 4 years, 7 months and 16 days since I’ve seen my wife. It has been 4 years, 7 months and 17 days since anyone’s seen more of my wife than smears on burnt metal.
It’s amazing how quickly a human mind can go from a working, oiled machine to an emotional lump of tissue. I assume few people can sympathise: maybe wives watching on TV as the twin towers fell down, knowing their husbands were in it; or being the driver of a car and crashing your passenger into a tree. But I know, I can sympathise, I have experienced total internal calamity three times. The first time was when the police told me my wife had been killed. The second was when I was made to identify my wife, or what was left of her. Half of her head was crushed; her neck had been broken, causing her head to dangle grotesquely from her neck; one of her collar-bones were jutting out her torso; there was a yellow pussy fluid leaking from the hole in her head; and I could see her brain, grey and cold: it was as if I were looking through a broken window. That was all they let me see, the rest was covered in a sheet, but I could see that her outline was broken and her bottom half was shattered. And the third, the third was when the police told me that they didn’t have enough evidence to convict her killer. I knew who he was, the police knew who he was, and the judge knew he was guilty. But our justice system states that one is innocent until proven guilty. Fuck our justice system! Fuck the police! I have waited 4 years, 7 months and 17 days to get my revenge. The dish has gotten cold, and what better way to enjoy dessert. ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’, who said that? I think it was the Spanish, and they were right. Revenge ripens, and you have to pick your time, if you judge it wrong you get a sour rock, or you get a tasteless mush, which are both almost unsatisfying.
In 1998 the average american walked 320 meters in a day.
90% of first time drug offenders in the US get sentanced to an average of 5 years in prison. Violent offences, however will get you imprissioned less often, and for only an average of 4 years. You are, in short, less likely to go to prison for kicking an old lady down the stairs than you are for being caught in possession of a single dose of any illicit drug.
Every year in New Hampshire, over a dozen people are killed by crashing their car into moose.
In America you have an anual risk of 1 in 150,000 of being killed by dam failure.
The County Sheriff in Milwaukee want to the local airport with sniffer dogs, to practice explosive detection. They hid a 5 pound package of live explosives somewhere in the airport and - I wish I was making this up - forgot where it was. Needless to say the dogs couldn’t find it. That was the second time the Sheriff had mislayed explosives at the airport.
In 1995 hackers sucsesfully breached the Pentagon’s security systems 161,000 times. That is once every 3.2 minutes.
This is the Daddy Hog Deer, and with him I shall describe to you their Distribution.
Hog Deer were once widespread across Southeast Asia, where they have declined dramatically in the last century, becoming extinct in Thailand, East Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and being nearly extinct in Cambodia, however they are also found at the foothills of the Himalayas and the mountains in Pakistan. They have also been introduced to Australia and the US. In Australia they are found in Wilson’s Promontory in Southern Victoria, and Flinders Island near Tasmania. In The US they are found in Maryland.
In Pakistan they are restricted to grassland along the Indus Valley, and its promontories. In India and Nepal the animals occur in the grasslands along the foothills of the Himalayas, along with the Floodplains of the Ganges. They are extinct in Bangladesh. Found in the Lowlands of Southern Bhutan. They have been recorded in Southern China, but are considered extinct in the country. It was formerly common in Myanmar, but are now restricted to the more untouched regions of the Country. They were abundant in Thailand, untill they were hunted out of existence, with 20,000 skins being exported in a single year, by the time there were concerns about their viability. They had become extinct. There have been reintroductions, however, to some large national parks in Thailand, and are surviving well without the threat of hunting. They are now absent from Laos and Vietnam, surviving in small numbers in Cambodia. They have been introduced into Sri Lanka, but are restricted to a 35km area in the South West.
I think I should talk about Hog Deer first, due to their part in my URL.
Hog Deer are considered an endangered species by the IUCN, but it takes them over 900 words to justify why they put it there. One of the criteria for inclusion on the Endangered Species list is a decline of 50% over the last three generations, which is considered in this species as 21 years. And although they have declined that amount, the species is now increasing throughout much of its range. During the mid 20th century there was a drastic decrease in the population, virtually eradicating Hog Deer from South East Asia. By 1980 they were more or less absent from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, where they were common before. The rest of the population is declining at a much slower rate, of is stable. However the entirety of these declines have averaged at over 50% in the last 3 generations. Which justifies it for an endangered listing.
Well, I have finally come back to tumblr after an absence. This return has resulted in my tumblr changing. A lot. I hope it has gone from a reblogging paradise, to a blog full of, well, useless shit. I hope the useless shit is interesting, or at least, thought provocative, I find it so. Also, I’m good at useless shit. I can tell you that Brush-tailed Possums range across the Murray River, minus a small section between Tilpa and Wilcannia, and I can tell you why they lapse in their distribution. I can tell you that every year in the US, there are roughly 142,000 people who find themselves in the Emergency Room because of injuries inflicted by their clothing. I can tell you that Kate Bush has released 10 albums, 15 if you include singles. I can tell you that Altina Wildlife Park has the only viable population of Bentang in Australia. I can tell you that Henry the Horse will be dancing the Waltz, of course. I can tell you that Stephen King does not look attractive when pitching a baseball (nor does he ever). I can tell you that it costs $35 annually to keep a goldfish. Animals, Cartography and Statistics excite me, in a way that isn’t sexual, but not healthy. That being said, if you show me the new mapping software that the IUCN (International Union of the Conservation of Nature) uses to map species distribution, complete with Esri integration (as I only found out yesterday), I will quite uncontrollably orgasm. Now that is partly the aim of this blog, not to orgasm, but to share useless shit. Most of the time it will be about animals, most of the time it will be nicely illustrated with pictures, but occasionally I will lapse into a froth of biological talk about Haldane’s Rule, for which I apologise. But you can always just look at the pretty pictures. Also, I like to dabble in photography myself, if I took the picture that I showcase, I will make that known.
But for now, may the birds be with you!
You know who’s really the best… Douglas Adams.
