pop

water balloon popping at 1/40,000ths of a second, photographed by Edward Horsford.

i'm real sick.  on hiatus from life, writing, work, everything, until i can overcome this miserable bronchitis.  well not exactly everything i have been consuming both food and media.  last few days highlights have been Bureks from the bakery across the street, reading passing by nella larsen (fascinating late 1920's novel on the phenomenon of light-skinned american blacks "passing for white,) and watching a movie called Rabbit Proof Fence which is about  three mixedAboriginal/Causasian girls who are seprated from their mothers by a governmental body headed by one man which held complete control over almost all aspects of life for Aborigines and their offspring.  This man tried to breed the aborgine bloodlines out by assigning "half-caste" girls to be wed to lighter partners.  It was extremely moving and set me on a fascinating "wiki-clicki-journey" (wherein i got lost in wikipedia entries for a few hours... a wonderful way to pass the cold-medicine addled time).

my favorite bit of history from Ancient Australia pertains to extinct megafauna ( the megafauna  are defined as species with body mass estimates of greater than 30 kilograms, or equal to or greater than 30% greater body mass than their closest living relatives) and particularly to this guy:

 (Thylacoleo carnifex, the "murderous (or 'meat-cutting') marsupial lion"

• was the size of a leopard, and had a cat-like skull with large slicing pre-molars. It had a retractable thumb-claw and massive forelimbs. It was almost certainly carnivorous and a tree-dweller.

There were also giant wombat-ty things and uber-kangaroos,  jumbo Tasmanian devils, and hosts of other weird and wonderful creatures that lived during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs and are thought to have been made extinct through interaction with humans.  pretty freaking cool.  myabe i could write a story  or something with time travelers in prehistoric Australia.  reminded me of the television program THE MAXX.  alright loves i'm very sleepy and the meds and making me feel a bit squicky.  hope this post is comprehensible and at least mildly  interesting.  i'll ttyl.

love,

oni