I was always fascinated by that famous factoid that piranhas can strip a cow to the bone in under a minute. It blew my mind, even in its construct. Who decided that? Who made that call? Did they see it happen? Or did they just decide that a cow was the best metric? That possibility in particular entertained me but tonight I decided to look it up.
So I guess this is pretty well known to most people who aren’t me but apparently this is something Teddy Roosevelt witnessed when he was off being a globetrotting professional motherfucker and it understandably left a huge impact on him, and he wrote about how piranhas terrorize Brazilians and eat their limbs and shit. And the legend was kind of born.
The thing is, his claims are all technically possible - piranhas don’t chew their food and bite continuously with incredibly sharp interlocking teeth, essentially making them the Chain Chomps of the Amazon. The strength and efficiency with which they hunt could very well leave you missing a few fingers.
What Roosevelt’s tale fails to communicate is that feeding frenzies really only happen when piranhas are starving, and the one he witnessed was actually staged. His guides in Brazil wanted their incredibly prominent guest to be impressed, so they closed off part of the river and trapped a shoal there, catching a bunch more and tossing them in and let em stay there for days. By the time they tossed that cow in the water, a frenzy was pretty much guaranteed.
Piranhas are actually for the most part, scavengers. They rarely hunt live animals besides sickly ones that come to drink from the river, and twelve of the 20 species in the Amazon survive entirely by taking small bites out of the fins and scales (which grow back shortly) of nearby fish.
Which is just as well, because honestly, “this fish eats cows” isn’t nearly as interesting as “these people really wanted Roosevelt to like them so they starved a bunch of carnivorous fish and then fed them an entire god damn cow in front of him”
Like, holy fuck, if you thought One Direction’s fanbase was inappropriate
Once upon a time, the author of this blog got high, and then tried to write a drama about an ineffective psychologist. What follows is not at all that story. It is, however, what I wrote while trying to write that story. Close enough?
(Source: awildofnothing)
I try not to use this tumblr as an (emotional) journal because I feel like a lot of people follow me who don’t know me that well, and have no reason to give a fuck about whatever random feelings I’m having day to day. But. I actually started it with that function in mind, and I need to put some words somewhere to get them out of my head. So. Sorry in advance.
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I am so tired of feeling this way.
I have absolutely no reason to be sad. I am so sad right now. It’s an emotion but it feels like a physical thing. Like I accidentally exhaled too much and now there’s low pressure in my chest pulling on me. It feels like my whole body is drooping.
God. Fuck. My head is so full of other people’s words that I can’t find my own. Though I don’t know why I am so set on this idea that I will feel better if I can just say what I am feeling, because I probably won’t. I have never in my life been happy with who I am as a person. Right now I’m upset at myself for how I’ve been living while I’ve been at college, and thinking about the person that I was during high school as some holy grail that I need to work my way back toward. The thing is, when I was that person, I was still miserable, and looking at all the people around me, trying to be them. Which is how I got here.
I don’t know. I’m not going to lie, between the last two sentences of that last paragraph, my brother smoked me out, and I’m not all that sad anymore. Actually, now that I’m back in my bed I can feel it seeping in around the edges, but it’s a nicer feeling. To be honest, I actually really like feeling “sad” most of the time, which is why I panic so badly when it starts to feel crushing: because I can’t ever see myself changing all that much. Not to speak in other people’s words, but I felt like I was drowning earlier. I’m starting to feel that again, but I’m safe and tucked up in my mind now, so it’s okay. I didn’t feel emo tonight until someone said I was- I was just thinking, not dramatically staring into the distance, just… staring into the distance.
But now I’m sad again. Because that’s what I was sad about earlier, I just forgot. I feel like I spend my life just looking at things. Looking at people. I feel like a visitor to a peculiar museum exhibit, at which I’m not particularly wanted.
Actually I feel sort of like a moth pinned to a board, with God looking in on me from an angle I can’t even comprehend. Only the place he’s looking from is in my gut. I feel like there is another dimension opening up inside my chest or in my stomach, and I know this is corny and stupid, but I can imagine it a like a line slicing through me, bursting out of me, and it’s bright white and like a door that’s bigger than anything, and it’s so completely empty. I mean, there’s a ringing in my ears that never goes away, okay? That’s ”normal.” We accept that. I think of it like brain-static and let that be, but what does that mean? Why don’t I care?
Or, more accurately, why don’t I care enough?
I care enough to make myself miserable, but not enough to make myself better.
I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. And I’m tired of it.
