Author: Chris BJ

Love and Other Disasters

Because

1. It’s funny enough to make you pee
2. It stars the very pretty Santiago Cabrera (who looks just wrong without a beard and moustache) and the gorgeous and lost-too-soon Brittany Murphy
3. It’s a story about a gay best friend which won’t make you cringe, and actually puts him and his needs and his romance ahead of the female lead’s
4. Tango!
5. Catherine Tate is hilarious, and her double act with Stephanie Beacham is a scream
6. It uses modern London as a backdrop very nicely (please to be excusing the blatant bullshit about how Heathrow and registry office marriages work)
7. It includes the most accurate description of the stages of a relationship I’ve ever heard

Therapist: Relationships are best measured by farting.

Peter Simon: Excuse me?

Therapist: The stages of a relationship can be defined by farting. Stage one is the conspiracy of silence. This is a fantasy period where both parties pretend that they have no bodily waste. This illusion is very quickly shattered by that first shy, “Ooh, did you fart,” followed by the sheepish admission of truth. This heralds a period of deeper intimacy. A period I like to call the “Fart Honeymoon”, where both parties find each other’s gas just the cutest thing in the world. But, of course, no honeymoon can last forever. And so we reach the critical fork in the fart. Either the fart loses its power to amuse and embarrass thereby signifying true love, or else it begins to annoy and disgust, thereby symbolizing all that is blocked and rancid in the formerly beloved. Do you see what I’m getting at?

I recommend seeing it like I did, with good friends, but perhaps without the attention-seeking three year old. Booze definitely an option 🙂

Remember the grubs from hell?

Hi Christine

 

These are sawfly larvae, but they are not bottlebrush sawflies.  They are true spitfires (subfamily Perginae), which are quite diverse and not easy to identify from the larvae (for examples of the diversity in this group see: http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_sawflies/Perginae.htm). 

The tapping behaviour that Christine has observed and filmed occurs in response to disturbance.  The larvae also use this as a form of communication to reform the group after some individuals have become separated.  Most species feed on eucalypts, and if the larvae are disturbed at close range on a tree, they will typically rear their heads back and exude a concentrated solution of eucalyptus oil.  The larvae extract the oil from the leaves and then store it for the purposes of defence.  There are two reasons for the larvae leaving their host plant as they have done in the supplied photograph.  Firstly, if the plant that they were feeding on has become defoliated, the larvae will move elsewhere in search of an another food source.  Alternatively, if the larvae are mature and ready to enter the next stage of development, they will leave the food plant and find a suitable place to burrow together (such as the soft organic matter at the base of a tree) before transforming into pupae.  I suspect that in this case the larvae may be ready to pupate because they look quite mature, but it is hard to say for certain.

Thanks for your query and the video!!  Actually would it be OK for us to use your video at the museum at some stage to show their interesting tail wagging behaviour? If so , could you confirm this be email reply.

Colleen 

Colleen Foelz

This is disturbingly plausible 🙂

Reply from Colleen Foelz at the Queensland Museum about these things

Hi Christine

As you suggest these are sawflies, but to identify the actual species is not straightforward. Most of the descriptive work for identifying species has been done on the adults.

Raising the caterpillar through to its adult form would be the best way to obtain a species identification but we’re not sure of the conditions that would be required to make that successful.

Thank you for the video, it’s certainly an interesting behaviour that this groups shows.

Regards

Colleen

So if we see them again, I guess we better take a sample and try and raise one to maturity 🙂

Seen at Ferny Grove (Brisbane) this morning in a school playground. The best guess is some kind of sawtail larvae, but none of the photos quite match. I have put an enquiry in with the Queensland Museum. They’re about 2 inches/6-7 cm long, and the tail flicking, which you can see in the video, tends to start at the front and goes to the back in a wave. Very very weird!

Moving out today, yay!

And the neighbours from heaven are staying. Talk about good luck 🙂

To rave about this 2011-12 BBC series which we bought off iTunes recently. The Hour has everything – strong plot, amazing acting, beautiful men and stunning women, really fascinating female characters and brilliant writing. Set in 1957-8, the first series happens during the Suez crisis, the second during Britain’s nuclear tests and the rise of the fascist Oewald Mosley and his followers. It was very successful in America, not enough in Britain so a third series was canned 🙁 But you can still watch the two that exists.

(PS – sorry to everyone who got a notice about a locked post – that’s just for us and our neighbours to plan our trip to Tassie at the end of this year.) Continue reading “We interrupt our usual programming….”