An Arundel turtle-tomb

Prehistoric turtles, squashed in rapturous embrace (via Calista)

Notably, "Their nearest living relatives are probably the pig-nosed turtle (Carettochelys insculpta), a much bigger species that swims in waters around Australia and Papua New Guinea." Which look like this (file under: snouts) --

I have not seen a more viscerally satisfying picture in months.

Of mice and shoes

1. from Marianne Moore, "Silence":

Self reliant like the cat 
that takes its prey to privacy,

the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --

they sometimes enjoy solitude,

and can be robbed of speech

by speech which has delighted them.

2. "Mice" in A.J. Snijders's Very Short Animal Stories (trans. Lydia Davis, in Asymptote):

A mouse inside a shoe is not a primal fear, not a trauma, but I do pay attention, all the same. It's because of the open roofs. I have a house with three tile roofs. They used to be haylofts, they were not timbered, the wind had to be allowed to blow through freely, against the heat and damp. Time and objectives change, I timbered one roof, gas was installed, the electricity went underground, drainage pipes were laid, but the mice stayed. The house is in the fields, there are mice everywhere. [...] Yesterday in a forgotten cupboard I found two pairs of shoes. I recognized them, old, but still useable. First I hold them by the tips, and I shake them—to be absolutely sure, I even poke them with a little piece of wood. Then I put them on; once my feet are inside them, I feel ten years younger, but that doesn't help, I'm still thinking about the oil, the energy, the mice, the people and the water.

---

I have a Google-reader-shaped hole in my heart, now that their latest shitty "update" has excised not only the social features but the "share with note" feature I used to make clippings. For now I've made a new tumblr that should serve some of the same purposes (via GReader's "send to" feature), but it is more work and doesn't work nearly as well. The malign Google+, which is cannibalizing all of Google's other "social" features in a futile attempt to compete with Facebook, is apparently to blame... I fear for the future of Google chat.

"Prick-eared rogue, copper-nose priest"

Priest-appropriate insults from the 17th cent. (LRB, gated):

A Somerset churchgoer in 1632 complains that ‘there was nothing done at prayer time in the said church of West Lidford but tooting upon the organs, and that it delighteth him as much to hear his horse fart as to hear the said organs go.’ In an argument with the parson of Dogmerfield in Hampshire over a tithe in 1581, Rowland Bowrer declares: ‘Thou art a covetous man … Go take Mother Canning by the cunt again!’ Haigh spends several pages on the insults suffered by clergymen, such as ‘stinking knave priest’, ‘scurvy, stinking, shitten boy’, ‘totter legged and pilled priest’, ‘Scottish jack’, ‘jack sauce and Welsh rogue’, ‘a runagately rogue and a prick-eared rogue’, ‘polled, scurvy, forward, wrangling priest’, ‘wrangler and prattler’, ‘black-coat knave’, ‘drunken-faced knave’ and ‘copper-nose priest’. [...] There are many presentments for misbehaviour in church: drunkenness, brawling, gossiping, vomiting, scoffing at the minister, pissing in another man’s hat (Leigh, Essex, 1627), or ‘extreme sleeping’ (Fering, Sussex, 1613). Sex offences were common: fornication, adultery, bastard children, cross-dressing, lewd talk.

Unrelated (see pic above): foxes repurposing an abandoned conveyor belt as a slide. Via zunguzungu.