GIP and some bitching

First off, this is a Lion's Mane jellyfish, notorious in Sherlockian circles. The Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific had an exhibit on jellyfish, and Mirrorthaw, who is truly a spouse without peer, took pictures of these jellyfish for me, because I am a big geek and he seems to think that's okay.

What you can't tell from this picture is how long the jellyfish's tendrils are. Completely out of scale with the main body. Beautiful and creepy. (Also, the only thing I did to this picture is crop it. The color and light are as-is.)

And the bitchery: it's sultry today, was sultry yesterday, and wasn't very damn not sultry in between. My mousepad is sticky, that's what it's like here. I don't like heat, I deal with it badly, and one of the few things I miss about summers in Tennessee is the understanding that, yes, air-conditioning is an inalienable right.

There are things I should be doing (such as laundry, and balancing the checkbook, and other sundry domesticities), but I'm hot and grumpy, and my creativity is lying fallow (sprawled out on its back like a cat, trying to expose maximum surface area to the ministrations of the box fan and melting into a big furry puddle. Yes, of course, creativity is a cat--or some days a herd of cats, cranky, evil-tempered, naturally perverse cats. Hadn't you realized?). Also, when I was "tidying" my desk before we left for Los Angeles (a process which consisted of stuffing everything into drawers and file boxes so that there wouldn't be anything left out where my evil Napoleonic cat--real cat, not metaphorical, even my creativity isn't that, er, gifted--could find and destroy it), I put the index cards on which I keep track of short story submissions Somewhere Safe (::horrifed intake of breath from the audience::). I have this vague memory of thinking, I'll remember if I put it here, but not even a whisper of a shred of a clue where "here" might have been.

::beats head gently against desk::

So the chances of my actually overcoming my baser nature and accomplishing anything today are, um, slim. I'll let y'all know how it turns out.

(no subject)

In our upstairs hallway just now, I slew a large and Goreyesque insect with my copy of H. P. Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories.

Before I could dispose of the corpse, one of our half-grown formerly feral cats came toddling along, said, Ooh, hey! Bug! And ate it.

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I've been meaning to post this HPL quote anyway, and this seems like the quintessentially opportune moment.

It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle's lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.

--H. P. Lovecraft, "The Cats of Ulthar"