Welcome to 'Animals that are well-suited to their environments' appreciation night!

This was going to be a massive rant about the gratuitous dramas generated in a mere bloody bicycle shop, but let's brush that aside in favour of a quick discourse about a random comparison.

I was involved in a conversation the other day about tuna and, for some reason (probably because they're my favourite animal), I compared tuna to pigeons. I couldn't really figure out why, but I think now it's because they have a similar shape, build and style (ellipsoidish, big-breasted and swift), and are both examples of finely honed evolution that's suited them perfectly to their environments, either natural or adopted.

Tuna can swim at 70 km/h and pigeons can fly at over 100 km/h, and both do this with precision & style.

I wonder if pigeons and tuna realise how lucky they are to have the abilities they do; do they enjoy racing through the air and water in a way humans can but dream about? Probably not. It's probably just everyday stuff to them, and if that sort of thing did cross their minds they'd quite likely also be envious of humans' ability to ride bicycles and do the many things involving opposable thumbs. Or any thumbs, for that matter.

Bleeurgh, it's quite late and have no idea why I'm writing this and I'm rambling but, basically, don't eat tuna (apex predator, yadda yadda yadda, food chains, blah blah blah, trophic levels [how many tonnes of consumed biomass lie below a several-hundred-kilogram bluefin tuna on an energy pyramid...?], this, etc.) and start loving pigeons (they don't carry diseases communicable to humans and are rather pleasant to observe).

I'm actually falling asleep on my keyboard so I'm gonna wake things up by finishing with David Guetta, again:

I love (cheesey) house music.

(And Wikipedia.)

A lonely Peckham bin

Before:

06/08/11

During:

08/08/11

After:

09/08/11

17000 miles an hour!

Along Ice-T & Jay-Z I too have 99 problems.

But all those little problems faded to naught when I popped out onto the roof of the pad and gazed at the surprisingly clear sky: Hark! what is that star that moves so brightly across the heavens? Too slow to be a meteor, too fast to be a jetliner, the smoothness & swiftness of its passage can only be LEO. Ah, ISS, how you represent both magnificent isolation and lonliness and yet always have a steady stream of visitors.

You should see it too! It's ace: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/

Pills

Sometimes proceeding to the general practioner can be perchance perceived as productive as would have been a puffin pissing on the petroleum pyre pouring from the Piper Alpha platform.

Exit Music For A Fool

I want this played at my funeral.

Not that I plan on having one anytime soon.