Intensity Is Everywhere!

I’m excited to share a post by another Guest Blogger for Ocean Week….The world of the Leafy Seadragon brought to you by Mr. Conor Lastowka. Conor is a great friend of mine and loves bacon more than anyone I know. He’s a comedy writer at Rifftrax, has a tumblr called Bacon, a blog called Citation Needed (which is now also a podcast and a book) where he documents The Best of Wikipedia’s Worst Writing, and is one of the co-founders of National High Five Day. I was talking to him the other night at dinner about Ocean Week and it was clear the man had a passion for something else other than bacon…the Leafy Seadragon. So I asked him to kindly share his knowledge on the little guy. Enjoy!

Just so you’re aware, you’re living in a world where these exist:

That’s a Leafy Seadragon, also known as a “Thank god they are not nine feet tall.” They are also called Glauert’s seadragon, mainly by Glauert, and by anyone at a party where Glauert is in earshot that wants to spare themselves a fifteen minute lecture.

So you take the seahorse, a sea creature that already has off the charts intensity due to its prehensile tail, color changing ability, eyes that rotate independently of each other and the whole “males carrying the eggs for nine weeks and then giving birth” thing (that we pray never gains any traction on dry land.)  Then you put it and a big stalk of seaweed in some sort of matter transporter, and ignoring all safety warnings, beam it somewhere causing the two to become A) eternally fused and B) hopefully not hellbent on mankind’s destruction.

They are found only in Australian waters, which means that could they communicate verbally, they would likely indicate that they feel our American knives do not measure up to their knives. Leafy seadragon’s are such an important part of the culture that the state of South Australia put them on their Official Marine Emblem, an honor so great that there is not a single picture of this emblem anywhere on the internet.  I’ve therefore taken it upon myself to provide what I imagine the South Australian Marine Emblem looks like:

A creature this intense is of course endangered as hell. It’s not up to me to speculate, but I’m pretty sure this is due to bitter discrimination by the seahorse community.

And frankly, this makes sense. If there were two types of people, the perfectly normal people like you, me and this guy, and then people who looked just like us except for the enormous seaweed-resembling protrusions all over their body, we would hunt the freaks down and eradicate them.  That is, if we weren’t already holed up in our fallout shelters trying to ride out whatever nuclear catastrophe had created the freaks in the first place. In fact, someday, all we may have to remind us of these majestic creatures of the deep is this lady’s neck tattoo:
What is my point? The Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, where we took some of these pictures, really should stop using Comic Sans in their Leafy Seadragon exhibit.

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Meet the Rosy Lipped Batfish, the disgruntled Mary Kay saleswoman of the sea who hasn’t sold a product since 1986.

Can we say chip on the shoulder? I promise there was no photoshop work done on those lips…they are 100% all hers. Scarlett Johansson, you’ve got competition girl. If they were to make an animated fish version of the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas the R.L.B would be the perfect choice for the role.
If you’d like to get a look at her up close and personal, plunge into the waters of Cocos Island off the coast of Costa Rica. Or keep your eye out for the human version of her, cause she’s obviously out there…

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GUEST BLOGGER ALERT! One of my favorite people in the world …Ms. Saskia van Gendt! A couple things about Saskia. 1) She is one of the original ii party planners. 2) She can make a mean sandwich especially when it entails gouda cheese. 3) Has a strong love for the planet Earth 4) Is working with me on a list of words that are hard to spell. On it: cinnamon and thorough. Thanks, Sas for your contribution to Ocean Week on Intense Individuals! 

Warning, you’re probably going to want to keep yesterday’s happy little guy at your fingertips because this one’s kinda grisly.  (While I’m passing out tips, never ever Google Image “goiter”!!!)

Announcing the Osedax, also affectionately called the zombie worm and snot flower, the Chim Chimney sweeps of the ocean floor.  As Steely Dan would say, “They’re a fool to do your dirty work.”

These 2 centimeter long worms swoop in after a “whale fall”, the rare event when a whale carcass falls the 4,000 meters to the ocean floor.  An 80 year old whale can provide nourishment for dozens of species for 50 to 100 years.

The Osedax smell the rotting remains from miles away and descend by the thousands to feast on the oil in the whale bones.  A 40 ton whale skeleton can contain 3,000 kilograms of fats inside their bones. Talk about doubling down!

That’s not all.  When scientists first discovered the Osedax in 2002 they thought there were only females, but it turns out that the females had 50 to 100 microscopic male worms livinginside of them.  Go figure!  That’s awkward.  Anyway that’s their deal – cleaning up all the mess on the ocean floor and probably dancing a dandy jig as they do it.  Chim Chimney!

Also 2 facts to keep in mind for your ocean creature research:

Behind every interesting sea creature is an enticing band name.

And a great craft project.

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It’s almost hard to pick just one Intense Individual Under the Sea every day because….THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON DOWN THERE. But I will stay true to Ocean Week and only pick one. Today, it’s the Axolotl. Destined to be a Hollywood Star in the next Pixar movie if I had my say in it. This little guy is off the charts. Happiest creature in the deep blue? I think so!

Sometimes when I am driving I see those stickers on cars that say No Bad Days and now I know what they are talking about….Axolotls! There is no way if you look like this you would ever in your life have a bad day. I imagine the sea creatures swimming among the Axolotls just bowing down to them as they float on by. These little guys are so freakin’ cute you almost need to take a cute break and just google Nick Nolte’s mugshot.

Now the only thing this dude needs to do is get a new name for the stage. If Cherilyn Sarkasian La Pierre (Cher), Cordazer Calvin Broadus (Snoop Doggy Dogg), and Demetria Gene Guynes (Demi Moore) can do it…so can you Mr. Axolotl. So far the one name that I think would be a perfect stage name for this guy is Cody Rain. What do you think?

Very open to suggestions….

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