web analytics

Green crystallized dead Russian mouse mineral thing

mouse pseudomorphIn geology, a pseudomorph is a mineral that takes on the shape of another mineral (or other object) by infiltration or incrustation. Petrified wood is an example, where the form of the original wood (right down to the cellular structure) has been replaced over time by minerals.

This here thing? It’s a mouse that has been partially incrusted with chalcanthite and atacamite. Where did it come from? Is it ancient? I don’t know! I found it years ago, while surfing the web for limonite pseudomorphs (for entirely personal reasons). It’s from the Fursman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow. Please to click the link and see it in its natural green.

When talk turned to Russia and Pravda and Lenin’s tomb and assorted other dead things — the internet today, for example — I naturally thought of my friend, green crystallized dead Russian mouse mineral thing.

Comments


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: February 26, 2008, 4:42 pm

Oh, kewl! A few years ago my Mom got me a book about unusual things that had happened to dead people. One story was about a guy that had been buried near a tree. He’d been there for quite some time when they dug up for some reason and it turned out that the tree got a root into the casket and took over the body. It was a very human-looking tree root.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 26, 2008, 5:19 pm

Well! That was very likely to be Roger Williams, founder of Providence, Rhode Island. Whereabouts I be at, at the the moment. The man who dug him up in the early 19th C and reported the curious tree root was Zachariah Allen, Rennaisance man, inventor and silviculturist. He planted the forests I hike in on weekends.

Small world, hm?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 26, 2008, 5:28 pm

Damn. I’m impressed. It *is* a small world.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 26, 2008, 5:51 pm

I just checked on … *that* … phrase, and you’re still number one, Weaz!


Comment from Muslihoon
Time: February 26, 2008, 5:58 pm

The peanut lady phrase? Did I remember it correctly?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:20 pm

Google it, Musli, and see….


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:30 pm

Speaking of That Phrase…have you noticed Ace has taken a turn for the blue this week? Not just him; seems like his whole blog has cranked up the raunch a notch.

I’m not complaining, but it’s very noticeable. I wonder if there’s some bad-word-to-traffic-ratio thing they noticed.


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:31 pm

Woah, that’s too weird Weasel! Oh, man – I’m gonna have that song running through my head now.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:34 pm

Song?


Comment from porknbean
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:42 pm

Does anyone have a picture of root man?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:46 pm

PnP – I found no photo – just a simplistic sketch at one of the links.

Yeah Weaz – I *kinda* noticed that a few hours ago. It just seemed that there were more expletives flying around than usual. I figured it was just me….things seem a little *off* today.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:47 pm

I looked, PnB. The link I posted said the thing was on display at the John Brown House, but I always heard it wasn’t kept. I mean, they dug it up, like, 200 years ago and he’d died 150 years before that.

(Oh, and Badger House was built a hundred years before that. Whew!)


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 26, 2008, 7:50 pm

This from Ace: Larry Craig (the Bathroom Stall Senator) is advertising for summer interns:

http://craig.senate.gov/releases/pr022608a.cfm

Get your application in early for the experience of a lifetime!


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 26, 2008, 8:08 pm

Will the expression “Congressional intern” ever be the same?

Some day. Some day when the wells run dry. When stars fall from the sky. When “gay” means “happy” again.

Go! You may call it madness, folly,
You shall not chase my grief away;
There’s such a joy in melancholy
I would not, if I could, be gay.


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: February 26, 2008, 10:13 pm

Song?

What, are you kidding me? This one of course.


Comment from Pupster
Time: February 26, 2008, 10:51 pm

GAH!

Damn you Enas Yorl.

Damn your pitch-black soul.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: February 27, 2008, 3:51 am

Hey, B – did ya feel the earthquake?
Goddamned thing woke me up. Mind you, I’m a lot closer to the epicenter than you.
Woo.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 27, 2008, 4:19 am

Earthquake?


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: February 27, 2008, 6:35 am

Not a thing, Gibby. Mind you, I had been taken unexpectedly drunk at the time, in which condition I can sleep through more or less anything.

And yes, there was a small earthquake in the UK. It astonishes people here when they realise we get them but (touch wood) they are few and mild.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 27, 2008, 8:02 am

You know, Enas, I’d hate you for that…except, improbably, it made the Pirates of the Carribean music stick in my head instead. Not the movie, the ride. Yo-ho-ho-ho, a pirate’s life for me.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 27, 2008, 8:16 am

“It’s my understanding that before I came in here a person who was on the program before I spoke made some disparaging remarks about my two colleagues in the Senate, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton,” he said. “I have repeatedly stated my respect for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, that I will treat them with respect. I will call them ‘Senator.’ We will have a respectful debate, as I have said on hundreds of occasions. I regret any comments that may have been made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans.”

John McCain, yesterday.

Ugh.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 27, 2008, 10:34 am

Better check the Engrish coastline to see of Godzilla or Gamera (or Rodan) has popped out of a fissure. Ya can’t be too safe. It happens in Japan all the time.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 27, 2008, 10:45 am

But Gamera is a friend to children!


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: February 27, 2008, 10:54 am

Oh. I forgot. Well, Gamera will be hungry. Better cook up a shitload of buttered scones.


Comment from Lokki
Time: February 27, 2008, 11:03 am

Only the truly EVIL unleash Earworms on their (soon-to-be-former) friends.

Already, just the mention of them above has started my most hated song running though my brain.

Even having my ipod on my desk blasting (sic) the Allman Brothers “Can’t Lose what you never had” (I love the shuffle function) doesn’t seem to be erradicating it.

What is it? Is it worse to tell you or have you start guessing and have your very own most hated earworm start resonating through your brain?

God, it was an evil thing that someone did, mentioning earworms!

Sigh, Mantra time:
Must
Think about the green stone mouse;
Think about the green stone mouse;
Think about the green stone mouse;
Think about the green stone mouse;
Think about the green stone mouse;
Think about the green stone mouse;
Think about the green stone mouse;


Comment from Lokki
Time: February 27, 2008, 11:06 am

What would an English Godzilla act like?

Would he be posh

We shall smash your houses on the beaches, we shall smash them in the hills, we shall make remake after remake, we will never surrender, puny ones!

or Cockney?

‘ere now, Guv, don’t be blastin’ me with tanks, or I’ll have to be smashin’ em a bit, wot?”

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny