this gorgeous photo is copyrighted by Eric Hunt; go check out his nicely-organized site for lots more like it
Y'all know how excited I get when people discover new species of anything. Not just beetles and monkeys and weird fish, though--how about thirty new-to-science orchids in Papua New Guinea?
This is the weekend where the world appeared to go mad. I think the apex of the surreality came for me this afternoon in Berkeley, when just as AX was pointing out a man dressed in a penis costume (complete with inflated testicles at ankle height) who was accosting passers-by and asking them if they were new to Berkeley, a woman in a diamond-patterned sweater vest accosted us to ask if we were members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, presumably because we both have long hair and were nattily dressed (he in his black suit with tie, I in a charcoal turtleneck and straight black skirt).
There'd been other stuff, of course, like my nearly falling off my banquette at brunch because it wasn't fastened down, and more than the usual complement of mumblng, raving strangers, and a person I'd thought was my friend totally going off the deep end Friday and leaving me to hike around in the dark late at night in lovely suburban Lafayette, wondering where the hell the BART station was. A friend we saw at the theater confirmed that everyone she knows seems to be a little stranger than usual. She chalked it up to the seasonal change.
I don't know. I have no answers. Has anyone else felt particularly edgy or unsettled? Or seen it in the people around them?
