Hvalur

I ate mink whale today–it came on a shishkebob. Let me say right now that I would rather use the crusty toe of a vampire as a toothbrush. When choosing between a suckle at the Undead’s feet, versus a nice chomp of whale flesh, I have picked my team. And let me tell you that Team Undead is going to be hard to beat.

To describe: the whale was a burntish brown on the outside, but once you slice it open it is a deep, purplish, raw color. Whale blood drips out. The taste is a little beefy, but there is something else, an overwhelming background taste that’s hard to describe. Maybe it could be classified as putrefying fishiness. There was no doubt: not only was I eating whale, but I was eating rotten whale.  I must have looked unhappy, because halfway through my meal, an elderly Icelandic bloke appeared at my elbow and crowed, “It’s good, yes? It’s very good!”

Baby Steps

As you may have noticed, my aunt Audrey was contestant #10. Unfortunately, she had forgotten the URL of my blog, and because it was her birthday, I felt obliged to help her out. And then help her some more. The email exchange that follows is true and unaltered:

—————
Audrey,
Did you figure it out?
Benjamin
—————
Hi, Ben,

I tried to get your mom to give it up – she did give me two hints – “think of what Benji likes” and “think spider”
Combined with fighting walruses (I now inadvertently have a blog spot at wordpress.com), my answer is http://fishburritos/wordpress.com

Alas,
Poor audo
—————
Audrey,

NO! Come on, what’s another way of saying “walrus ambush”?
Then put that, no spaces, in front of dot wordpress dot com. And there you have it. You could also try googling smakaka + walrus

Benjamin
p.s. you’re pushing the deadline, buddy.
—————
[follow-up from Ben]:
Also, what do fish burritos have to do with spiders?
—————

Spiders -> web so there’s the http part for that.
You like burritos. Walruses like fish.
—————
Okay, but that’s still not my blog’s URL. What do you call it when a shark eats someone? But instead of a shark it’s a walrus. Walrus + when a shark eats someone. Then add dot wordpress dot com.

That’s as much information as I’m going to give you. Seriously. You are horrible at riddles Audrey.

Ben
—————
Ben, U R terrible at hints!

[…]
Fishburrito. Seriously. I thought that was a good guess.
[…]

——————————————-

With great pleasure, I announce the winner of Contest #10: Audrey Ling!

Contest #10

The first contestant in the double digits: Audrey Ling!

A wayward aunt with no computer access, in honor of her birthday. Audrey, this is your moment to shine.

In case anyone is wondering, yes, I am attempting to give my aunt a blog post instead of an actual birthday present. I am a bad person. But at least I look like I should be a nice, friendly person.  I only care about appearances.

Also, I posted on the Glimpse blog, which is here.

Glimpse

For the next few months, I will be a correspondent for something called Glimpse–it’s a magazine aimed at students traveling abroad. So I will probably be re-directing most of my posting during that time to my Glimpse blog. This also means that I will generally be less offensive and weird, because they will know my name and where to find me.

In the meantime, I’ll try to post duplicates here, on walrusattack. And keep checking in to see if there’s a new contest.

Tata, darlings.

I Poop Diamonds

Click here to download a podcast of an interview with me, done by the editors of a small literary magazine where one of my stories appeared. Enjoy.

I am a mystery to myself

In my imagination, I was still posting to this blog

Posts I thought about writing in the last month, but didn’t:

1) Post about crazy llama farmers in Ohio (e.g., did you know that llamas are communal dung-heap users?)

2) Post about my sensors being buried in the snow, and my numerous expeditions to try to find them

3) Post about my life–some exciting developments recently. I am currently trying to pick a graduate school. But honestly, no one I’ve talked to seems to care about this as much as I do.

4) Post with some cool pictures of me & company wandering around in the snow trying to find the sensors. I took along a metal detector, but in 3 meters of snow, there was no chance. My car got stuck, so we hitched a ride from these guys with 4 foot tires. Then one of their tires fell off. Anyway, I think I’ll post some of these photos at least. They were taken by Luke–thanks Luke!

From top (left to right, then top to bottom): Hiking towards the gully where my sensor is. Drinking from our only water bottle (the other one froze). The sensor is somewhere around this snow canyon… . That’s me trying to locate it with the metal detector. And then, after failing to find it, the trek out waist-deep in snow.

Yay for China!

I read a New York Times article today with the following pleasant paragraphs about the Detroit auto show:

“Five manufacturers from China are showing cars here this year, up from one in 2007 and 2006, when Chinese vehicles were first displayed in Detroit.

They are still learning the finer points of auto-showmanship. Their displays tend to be plain and dated. Changfeng Motor’s name was misspelled on trinkets the company gave journalists this week, and it proclaimed in a press release that its display “steps on” the auto show for the second consecutive year.

Guang Ming, meanwhile, suggests on a placard that its tiny, yellow electric cars, with names like The Book of Songs and A Piece of Cloud, are suitable short-range transportation for “renowned environmentalists” like President Bush.

On Monday, the head of a battery maker called Build Your Dreams, which started making cars just five years ago, offered to show a hybrid sedan to a writer from the blog Jalopnik.com. Instead, he provided a mini-test drive, right through a news conference going on nearby.”

Hey, I’m in Iceland!

I went stargazing tonight. An amateur astronomy group runs a telescope on the top of an elementary school in Seltjarnares, and tonight they had an open house.

The school was dark–a man emerged from the cafeteria to guide us up three separate ladders and into the dark room where the telescope was. Through a slot in the roof we could see the sky. There were ten or so people up in that small room already, which was nice because it was cold.

I couldn’t see anyone’s face, but we all stood in a circle around the telescope and took turns looking through. Occasionally someone would crack a joke in Icelandic (I could only imagine–probably along the lines of “Is that a galaxy? It looks like a smudge!”) and everyone would laugh. Briefly there would be a chuckle of conversation. Somehow all of this seemed like a quintessentially Icelandic experience.

We looked at Mars, the Crab Nebula, and Orion, which was stunning. The crab nebula was just a smudge. But I still tried to memorize it–I knew there were people waiting behind me in line, but this was my one opportunity to see something extraordinary. There is a metaphor there, by the way–and I’ll give you a hint, I think it’s a metaphor about death.

The build-up was so fantastic–the deserted school, the three flimsy ladders, the darkened room full of people–that the stars were just about the only thing that could have lived up to it.

Contest #9–For the lawyer in all of us

Contestant #9 is Tina Codini-Longoria. I don’t know why, but I have decided to depict her like this:

You go girl!