Osmoregulatory strategies of marine, freshwater, and euryhaline teleosts

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I wrote a paper with that title, but that was over three decades ago on an old Smith Corona electric typewriter.
I could hardly be expected to hold on to that damned thing for all these years. Have some trout. It's what's for dinner.

© Pseudocognitive

State of the Unfocused Blog: Random Spew No. 222

A motorcycle rider on a road near Rio Vista, March 2009

On this, the arbitrary first day of a cyclical series of phenomena, I make (for a legion of imaginary subscribers) my 3rd Annual State of the Unfocused Blog address. Bear with me, please. It’s brief.

Trying to constrain myself to topics and styles of expression that might provoke the interest of large numbers of people has produced no tangible results. Instead, I’ve spent several months posting stuff I’ve already written, much of it nothing more than episodic thought convulsions that sound much better inside my head than on a page. For some reason, my need to have others read the stuff  I spew randomly on this blog continues unabated, which should probably tell me something about myself I don’t really want to know.

Cobra slash-cuts on my old bike

My  ex-fish Bob, eaten by a heron

Locke, California

I could go pseudo-scientific and try to apply some kind of ridiculous Freudian model to this perplexing need, but to what end? I’d just end up making excuses for myself. No, the simplest model is generally the best place to start.
I can write and take photographs just well enough to know how deficient I am in both skill sets. I can look at a photo and describe the characteristics of technical proficiency, compositional artistry, and subject matter context that make it work (or not work) for me as a viewer, and I can occasionally produce something better than a snapshot myself, but there’s a wall separating me from excellence that is every bit as robust as the one that divides decent little league players from Hall of Fame big leaguers. I’m generally able to write a sentence that’s more grammatically correct than not, and I can occasionally turn a phrase that describes or expresses something in a unique, effective, or meaningful way, but that’s it. No cohesive whole has ever emerged and it never will. My need for public approval is probably a result of finally realizing that truth. 

That way

Read this stuff if you want – it’s a good experience to have others pay attention to what I say (and I do appreciate those who have done so already). But if there’s just too much chaff to sift through for the two or three tiny seeds you might find, feel free to skip it. From now on, I post for the audience of me, which is probably the way it’s supposed to be anyway.

Hood, California.   38.368302, -121.519232

Leaving Hood

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©Pseudocognitive

The Undiscovered Country

The Undiscovered Country is not a Shakespearean death metaphor, and it’s not a future where humans and Klingons get along. The Undiscovered Country is a place inside your head, a tenuously-held position that is periodically shelled by the forces of doubt, worry, and amorphous anxiety. It’s not a comfortable place, but it’s better than retreating or blundering forward in a clumsy stumble toward doom. Fortify, plan, act, and bring that zone of creative tension along as you make a coordinated advance. Avoid the extremes of complacency and fear to the point of inaction. Don’t get caught doing nothing, but don’t do any old thing just for the sake of doing it. Make it count.

© Pseudocognitive

Old miseries, myth oxen, and the pungent piss of feral longhorns

On the thirteenth of May we went down the mountain for the last time. Passing quietly through long shadows, our route led us in painful divergence from what we’d once believed we were, offering nothing in place of those beliefs except a more desperate tendency to preserve and defend old miseries. Along our descent, we chewed and snapped at the imaginings of our common fate, like manic dogs unhinged by fleas or pin worms they cannot reach. Farther down, past the place where the creek bends double and tough grasses thrive under the urinary and fecal onslaught of feral Texas longhorns,

the secondary ridge fell off abruptly, so we followed instead the rusted old Union Pacific tracks, all the way around to the south exposure, into a zone where dry grass and scrub predominate more severely the farther down you go. Here, but for the dust and rock and crackly brown plants, there is nothing worthy of careful notation by any but the most desperate chroniclers of human folly in wild places. The truly sobering influence of these lands is best left to others to ponder. None of this would matter anyway, not once we reached habitation, because we would soon be made dead at the hands of self-righteous fools and those who do their bidding. You may have resigned yourself to a similar fate as the likely outcome of the current mess you’ve blundered your way into, but you should remember that I was of a similar mind at the time, yet here I am still.

Continuing down-slope, furtive creatures—perhaps refugees of the last county war—were sighted ahead, shifting in and out of our bleary plane of focus. These were far less substantial than a dusty old boar taking a dirt bath. A man can shoot a boar and eat his muscles and tender parts and use his tusks to beat back the inexorable myth oxen. Not so with these undefined forms flitting about before us. They held fast to no spot for longer than half a moment. We chose to ignore them, and in that manner we passed without further imperilment into town, where the plan was to spend our last night on this earth in stuporous inebriation.

•     •     •

This was the first installment in a senselessly continuing series of fractured ramblings by an old man who’s outlived his usefulness, and it was set down on paper while traveling through the badlands bordering the state of Fugue. The second installment will likely never be set down on these pages. I do not expect nor want you to make any sense of it. Anyone attempting to do so will be consigned to the corners of my mind reserved for blathering media whores like Michelle Rhee and Andrew Breitbart and Tom Tancredo, to name but a few.

About Pseudocognitive:
Meta-nonconformity consultant for a large public agency.  Married father of adult children with autism. Motorcycle rider. Quasi-photographer. Irascible curmudgeon. Get off my fescue. Moved west with the Giants in ’58 but forgot about it until recently. My head grabs a bunch of stuff and doesn’t like to let it go. It has been determined that I should escalate my efforts to rid myself of some of these extraneosities. There is no pattern to be found in the scope or sequence of the topics I post except whatever patterns your own mind creates. Any attempt by the reader to impose his or her patterns on me will be met with apathy. I am a strong and active supporter of the Establishment Clause. Keep your religion out of my publicly funded agencies. I have nothing to do with any ads you may see here; direct your ire elsewhere. I am in favor of eating animals if a person so desires. Save the winter-run Chinook salmon. I post first and proofread later, making numerous edits. I no longer rudely pick my nose in public. No one reads this; you probably shouldn’t either.

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© Pseudocognitive

Mono County Line

I do not ever cross this line into Mono County. Thirty years ago, I ran afoul of the sheriff over there, Johann Braun. He always hated me. I don't know why.

© Pseudocognitive

Bookhouse Gang

Yet another random iPhone shot, taken while I was waiting for my car to be serviced across the street one Saturday morning. There’s a story that goes with it. 

© Pseudocognitive

Random scenes from the 70′s and 80′s, Part One

CHP pursued a parolee-at-large in a stolen Delta 88 one winter night, southbound on an old two lane hard-ribbon on the muddy Central Valley floor. The officer did not employ the PIT maneuver; I don’t think CHP started using it until the mid to late 80′s. Instead, he passed the suspect vehicle and tried to stop him by slowing abruptly. The consequences are pictured above. No injuries.

A man and his granddaughter fed some snarky avian fiends. Honolulu, 1983. The kid is now in her 30′s and the man is 94. I was unable to locate the pigeons.

I tamed a wild rat and named her Mara, after a character in some book I was reading at the time. This was back in the analog age, and most rats got their reps from films such as Willard:

The above video is © someone else, not me.

Rats are cool—they’re like cheap dogs.


© Pseudocognitive

BLOGGING UNDER THE INFLUENCE. Jenny McCarthy's insanity. I said Jumanji!

I haven’t had distilled alcohol since 1986.  This Old No. 7 is good stuff.  One cup is enough.
(Slightly edited 9 February 2014.)
Lots of people, lots of blogs. Here’s where to get a good burrito.  There’s a place to avoid in the event of a tsunami.  I’ll show you how to promote your business and make money from domain names named after 14th Century philosophers and 70′s porn stars.  Grow your mustache and lead the invasion of Normandy as you wound your heart with a monotonous languor. Sell your house this way. Flip your house that way and join the ranks of the rich bastards. Drink these berries from the foothills of the Himalayas.  Feel like an activist by following me on Twitter while twirling with Mylar-festooned ears in the moonlit streets on a quiet night in Mill Valley.  Beware of cell phone antennae–they might fry your ‘nads in the event of seismic activity. I’m a guerrilla marketer, pay for my drink. Lock up vandals. Graffiti artists are not vandals. Yes they are. No they aren’t. Ban guns! Guns for tots! Liberty is just another word for nothin' left to lose. Ron Paul Rand Paul Ted Cruz! We're the Good Guys With Guns! We're the Good, Caring Humans With No Guns! Petaluma is a great place–visit my pro-Petaluma blog.  Petaluma is a festering sore on the ass end of a syphilitic chicken.  Petaluma Poultry sells only free range organic chickens and is exempt from all negative Petaluma characterizations.  Rocky the Range Chicken is a healthy source of animal protein.  Republicans are bad.  Democrats are bad.  Democrats are good.  Republicans–pass the beer nuts.  Watch the cops–videotape ‘em when they violate your 4th Amendment rights.  Support the cops and give them your cell phone cameras. Stop whining about law enforcement officers and just quit being an asshole! Take back our streets from the criminals and gang members.  Gangs only exist because children need love. Lock up the gangsters.  Free the children.  Learn martial arts by watching this DVD and reading my blog.  I reviewed a book.  I read a book.  I wrote a book.  Read my Star Trek fan fiction.  I want to be an extra on Sons of Anarchy.  I have a story-line idea for Sons of Anarchy.  Sons of Anarchy is a TV show–it’s not real.  It is too real; I saw them in Temecula.  Rio Vista!  This movie sucks.  This movie is the best movie of the year.  Don’t contaminate our drinking water with fluoridation.  Autism is caused by vaccines and Jenny McCarthy is a powerful creature capable of shooting flaming napalm from her nipples at the eyes of people who dare to speak up against what she knows to be true because after all, post hoc, ergo propter hoc.  Lock up aggressive panhandlers.  Lock up Jenny McCarthy.  Lock up scientifically illiterate parents who endanger their kids and everyone else's by refusing to vaccinate based on their own voluntary ignorance. The Book of Eli is propaganda of the religious right, and I for one am surprised that Denzel Washington agreed to star in it. The Book of Eli is a cautionary tale about the dangers of pseudo-digitizing complex analog phenomena and actually has very little to do with religion.  Aw, you’re both full o’ crap.  Protect the panhandling community from aggressive cops on steroids. Tase the violent, freeloading panhandlers into submission! War is not healthy for panhandlers and other living things! I'll hit you with this cast iron pan if you try to pry my mobile device from my cold, dead fingers! Get US outta the U.N.  Frank Burns eats worms.  One nation . . . way messed up.  The best nation on Earth.  One nation under God.  One nation NOT under god.  One nation founded on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  One nation founded on genocide and slavery.  Hot dogs will kill you. It’s possible to make a fertilizer bomb using sausage casings.  Just kidding. NSA, please disregard. The British Navy stopped issuing rum and I blame Jenny McCarthy. The British Navy will kill you. Don't let the British navy kill you. I got sixteen hits on one of my blog posts today.  Fourteen of ‘em were from bots.

Cold fish, midnight sky
Pulls the stars across his gills
The moon in his eye

Jumanji, you rifle wielding wanker!  I said JUMANJI !




Bleary-eyed morning-after edit: Just so we’re clear, Jenny McCarthy should be billed for the medical expenses of every child who contracts pertussis.  Since there’ve been some some fatalities that wouldn’t have occurred if not for her exploitation of the disturbingly widespread scientific illiteracy of the American public, she really ought to be incarcerated as well.  Since no legal means exist to further that end, I guess I’ll just have to hope that one day she becomes smarter than a 5th grader.
                                 

Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.

Two-paragraph picture: Lodi Man

This guy can’t possibly think that the woman he met a few hours ago can actually see him from the cargo container she’s hiding in. He has to know that even if she could see him, she wouldn’t bother to acknowledge his solitary presence on that gray beach. Look at him–his posture saying nothing so loudly as “defeat,” his bag full of whatever physical hooks to his history he considered important enough to pack when he fled the basement room back in Lodi. This guy should be tacked up on the office walls of high school guidance counselors everywhere as an example of how not to carry yourself if you want to avoid being bullied.

For God’s sake, man, you were nothing but a means to her end anyway.  Straighten your spine, throw away the cracked, useless condom you’ve been carrying in your wallet since 1984, and walk the hell out of there!  Start a new life. Get a boat and take people fishing for leopard sharks. Set up a fire-walking franchise on Mt. Tam; there are still plenty of harmonic convergers willing to part with some cash for the chance to believe in totally bogus bullshit. Something, anything besides staring at that ship. I can’t watch you any longer.
                               

Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.