www.jeffthefish.com

Willie is fiddling with a broken TV.
Alf: I think you should leave that to a qualified repairman.
Willie: Thank you, Mr. Smarty.
Alf: It’s Mr Science.
[audience laughs]

While most websites and news outlets are busy preparing their predictions for the year 2007, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict what will take place in a year that hasn’t happened yet: 2008. It makes no sense to make predictions for 2007, because they already happened already. It’s even worse when their predictions are wrong. I mean what the hell, right? Anyone should know that.

1. Hanging out will be more extreme than ever. It’s true. I’ve been watching the trends, analyzing traffic, and as far as anyone can tell, people in 2008 will be hanging out almost to the max.
2. People who use Ctrl+V will be as cool as possible. It’s practically undeniable. My research predicts that people who use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V instead of right clicking and hitting “paste” will asymptotically approach the theoretical maximum amount of coolness, and not back down until around March of 2009.
3. Christmas sea lions will become regular sea lions. The first two were practically givens. Now let me go out on a limb. In the wake of the revelation that Christmas sea lions are just like regular sea lions, I’m here to tell you that today’s Christmas sea lions will actually become tomorrow’s regular sea lions. Mark my words.
4. Skateboards will become sentient. See? There really is hope for the future…The future of awesome!
5. Sunglasses will be the new cool. In world where skateboards are sentient and sunglasses are the new cool, what could possibly go wrong? I’ll tell you: not much.
6. Pope John Paul II will finally become Space Pope John Paul II. If you google “Space Pope John Paul II”, the first three pages of results will consist mostly of denialist websites, but so far every argument against this that I’ve read has consisted of easily debunked pseudo-science. It’s like these people don’t even try to be right!
7. The possible return of dinosaurs. I’ve predicted this every year for the past two years, but I guarantee that in 2008 it will for real happen! No one knows exactly how, but most scientists agree that it’s an almost inevitable side effect of global warming.

Well, check back in a year, and let’s see how I did!

This weekend I drove down to Newport, OR and got to see some Christmas sea lions, among other things. What most people don’t realize is that Christmas sea lions are just like regular sea lions, except it’s Christmastime.

As near as I can tell, these particular sea lions were Steller Sea Lions, Eumetopias jubatus. Also they were HUGE. All or most of the ones we saw were males. I wanted to hug one, but that would have been fool-hearty. When I was a child, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would see real sea lions in the wild! I am so happy, etc!

We also went to a little thing called Undersea Gardens which had the standard compliment of Pacific Northwest marine fauna, except this place had a narrated diver show, in which the diver harassed various creatures. The coolest part was the Giant Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini:

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about rats. The last time I talked about the babies was when they were 15 days old. Since then, we’ve gotten rid of two babies and decided to keep little Gatwo. And she is a tiny preciousington!

She has been tiny for a long time. She’s about 4 1/2 months old and still not as big as the other rats. We’re beginning to wonder if she’s going to stay this small. I would love that!

Gatwo peering out of her cage as Aunt Pi, left, and Mom look on

And here she is in action. She is shy.

Earlier today, one of the dogs came up to me VERY casually and just vomited into my pants.  I was so disappointed, because I didn’t want that to happen.

There are 17 dogs running around on the second floor of my office building right now. All but three of them are bloodhounds. When I got here this morning there were only 15. WHERE THE HELL DID THE OTHER TWO COME FROM???? I’m freaking out.

Here are some of them, if you don’t believe me:

Thanks to GrammarBlog, I finally found out who stole all of my apostrophe’s!

Before Ambulocetus, before Pakicetus, there was Indohyus.

This is very exciting news for me.  Hans Thewissen, who described Ambulocetus, has recently described a deer-like animal called Indohyus, an ancient relative of cetaceans.  Carl Zimmer wrote about it yesterday, and Pharyngula wrote about it today, and included pictures of the actual skull!  This is the best day of my life!

Just imagine, had it not been for this little animal, there would be no Beluga Calf Christmas song!

Yup, this was inspired by Jessica Hagy’s blog. It’s not meant as an insult. Just the truth as I see it.

Since it’s the holidays, I’m finding that the curse words I normally use when someone makes me angry just aren’t festive enough.

So I’ve decided that, for the next two weeks, each time I would normally shout, “FUCK!  I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU RAPED MY MOTHER!!” I will instead shout, “SILVER BELLS! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU RAPED MY MOTHER!!”  That way everyone knows that I’m sharing in the Christmas spirit.