Student Problems

Fuck this morning

I wake up suddenly at 3 in the morning. There is no reason for it. My nose is running, my heart is racing faster and faster every minute and throat was making me cough like a horse. My allergies have caught me at the worst time as did something else. I was wide awake and confused.

I was so confused that if you were to open a page in my sketch pad and to smack me in the face with it, you would find my goofy face on that very page. Surely that page would go down in art for surrealism.

For hours I tossed and turned with my eyes closed, irratated and annoyed. My allergies were bothering me and the lack of sleep was following behind it. My alarm clock on both my phone and radio went off. Waking me up, both were silenced.

Around 5:23 I found how fed up I was and I headed downstairs to pump myself with meds, by 6 I hoped to be completely medicated to the point of no return.

While navigating through darkness of my house I noticed the lack of a certain smell. The coffee pot wasn't on, though the timer was set to start ten minutes earlier. Only later would I find out what was actually happening. I took two allegra d and went back to tossing and turning for a few more hours.

I was awaking and wishing that either my house was hit by an atom bomb or that I could go back to the point where I was told by this lovely dame to take allergy medicine before I went to bed. Should have listened to her, but I was being stubborn for some reason that day.

It was like clock work, it would squirm around under my covers then my phone's alarm would go off. Torture on a mental scale. I didn't know whether to get up and get an early start on my day or to keep myself in bed until 6:19. I did the latter of the two.

When it was time to get up I wasn't in the right mood, I'm still not in a good mood. I got dressed and went downstairs to drinking a cup of black coffee. Strong and bitter, set my ass straight with a cup or two. Another horrible part of my morning was right there again. The coffee pot, to my dismay wasn't emitting that smell I love to be greeted by every morning. I turn on the kitchen light to see what was wrong. The counter was swamped in a brown water, the the lid to the filter was partially open, the coffee pot wasn't filled all the way but only to the two cups mark.

When I opened the lid to the filter I seen that something had made the coffee maker explode, sending bits of wet coffee grinds and about 10 cups worth of water on to the counter and all over the coffee pot itself. It was a horror.

If, one day, I were to wake up one day to my car demolished, my cats set ablazed, my dogs being used as horses by gnomes and all of my books turned into mulch. Coffee would probably be the only thing that would keep me from breaking down and destroying everything I can before the police taser me down.

Luckily, the coffee pot had some coffee in it. I had two cups of black dirt grind to keep me tethered to my sanity but it wouldn't keep my mood leveled out. Sadly it's going to take a lot more to make me feel better.

I look in the mirror, my eyes looked like they were punched out. It added to how shitty I felt. On the drive to school I thought over my entire morning and remembered- the day has just started. If I get another ounce of bad news then fuck me..

Sableye. Hell yes.

#302-Sableye

Sableye is so cool, yo.

While cleaning out my room I found a paper that my therapist gave me some time ago to deal with obsessive and intrusive thoughts. Sorry the paper is a little crinkled and stained, but I figured I’d post it in hopes that it will help someone like it helped me.

I'd like to make a request. An Iron Maiden... but with hands instead of spikes. Think about it.

why even stop there lets keep this awful finger train goin

should i eat first or shower first *has phone in couch time for another 3 hours due to choice procrastination, a behavioral phenomenon observed in pigeons and rats as well*

Many words can be used to describe how I feel about this. Great way to ask a girl out? Is this how I should go to prom with my date? Why do I feel like this is an okay thing to look at? 

Ten Important Outfits Everybody Should Own:

mugwomps

replied to your photo

“Sometimes when I’m working, Kaiju will violently shove the laptop away…”

I’ve never kept reptiles other than catch-examine-release…does your Very Large lizard actually want cuddles from you? Is she, um, bright enough to know you from other humans? Sorry, I am as ignorant as I am curious!

That is actually an EXTREMELY GOOD QUESTION and something I’ve been working on defining for as long as I’ve known Kaiju! It’s hard to describe affection without being anthropomorphic, so I usually approach this question by looking at what I know about reptile behavior and then trying to figure out what specific behavioral sets mean. This is gonna be a long post- it’s something I REALLY LOVE talking about.

Reptiles socialize in ways that are very different from mammals, and this can be really confusing- especially when one of the big things they tolerate humans for is our body heat. Research into reptile behavior suggests that lizards can definitely distinguish between people by scent alone, as well as by sound. It’s not uncommon for captive lizards to recognize their primary keeper- who’s feeding them, who’s interacting with them. Kaiju can actually differentiate between my clothes and other peoples’ clothes (she’s a horrible laundry thief). The people don’t even need to be in them. But beyond that, the most interesting things (in my opinion) happen in larger lizards- things that are big enough not to be everybody’s prey species, things that are able to be a little more confident and less reliant on hiding or running away.

The benchmarks for attention-seeking behavior and and curiosity/interest in humans that isn’t food-driven have been best studied in Komodo dragons due to interest in the zoo industry because encouraging these behaviors has become a key part of Komodo dragon management. These criteria include interacting with human keepers in a non-food context, expressing heightened interest in items that smell like a specific human, and non-predatory non-regulatory behavior- i.e. play. Trooper Walsh, who’s the guy at the National Zoo who got Komodo dragons to breed in captivity and Gordon Burghardt from UT, as well as a bunch of other herpetologists lay it all out in a chapter of Komodo Dragons: Biology and Conservation, which is one of the best books about big reptiles I’ve ever read. An example of both play and preference is seen here- Kraken, the dragon in question, has no reason to want that handkerchief. It’s not food, it doesn’t smell like food, and it doesn’t look like food. And it’s not feeding time! But she’s gonna take it regardless. Kraken was also notorious for stealing shoes and sticking her face in them, which is something Kaiju does as well. (I think that’s Walsh in the video with her.)

Now, Kaiju is a tegu, not a monitor lizard. But a lot of this still applies- tegus are extremely curious. There’s actually an evolutionary advantage to that- they’re scavengers with extremely broad diets, and investigating novel things can have great rewards. Being able to solve problems and work through natural puzzles is beneficial- there’s definitely incentive to be curious and to get highly comfortable with the environment.

There’s also a lot of anecdotal evidence that just… suggests that they like being around people, that they’re interested in what people are doing. 

This is one of my favorite videos because it’s really cool visual evidence that these tegus… well, want attention. The human offers food and they’re all far more interested in contact and attention. And I don’t think it’s just these tegus- I think it’s any tegu that’s learned that humans can be trusted. I’ve met a whole bunch of really well-socialized tegus, and they definitely have their people- they’re happy to accept pats and scratches, but at the end of the day, their human is their constant. They’re built for different worlds that the one we live in, and while they are highly adaptable and curious, having something they know is safe to return to is probably very comforting. 

So how does this look for my very large lizard in particular? I represent a constant- I’m something that she associates with pleasant things, comfort, and food. But I also represent a continual source of entertainment- I do new, strange things and make odd noises and sometimes dispense food. I pet her- if I don’t, she shoves her face into my hands until I do. Anecdotes aren’t data, and it’s not a rigorous study or anything, but time and again I see her making decisions that put her in proximity to me. I see her scratching at the cage door when I come home. I see her climbing into my bag in the mornings before I go to work, even when she’s got a million other places she could hide. I see her having all this space to move around and regularly choosing to be near me- even when it has nothing to do with thermoregulating or food. When I came in to pick her up from boarding, she fought the lady bringing her out to me and then wouldn’t let me put her down for hours after I got home. It was a struggle to get her in the pet carrier. I see this wild animal falling asleep on my lap, and I have to wonder- this isn’t a dog. This isn’t a cat. She’s not domesticated, and she wasn’t even raised by humans- she’s a feral animal from the swamp in Florida. And yet she feels safe enough to fall asleep on me. I think that means something. 

Long Garfield