{"id":66,"date":"2007-10-27T06:07:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-27T14:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=66"},"modified":"2007-10-27T06:07:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-27T14:07:00","slug":"remedial-gigerology-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"Remedial Gigerology, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/toothsquid.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/toothsquid.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>I&#8217;m guessing this portrait is already familiar to a lot of you, since I got the link both from a fellow skiffhead <i><i>and <\/i><\/i>a boardroom mundane, but \u2014 speaking as a biologist \u2014 this is one of the creepiest, most unsettling creature pics I&#8217;ve ever seen.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>This thing has <i><i>teeth<\/i><\/i> where a beak should be \u2014 disquietingly human teeth, at that.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>(In fact, the  <a href=\"http:\/\/tolweb.org\/Promachoteuthis_sulcus\/19531\/2007.05.30\">species profile<\/a>  does refer to a &#8220;beak&#8221;, so this has got to be a superficial resemblance, not a homologous structure.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>Still.)<span style=\"\">  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I never really thought about it before, but this picture makes me wonder if the secret to generating creepy-verit\u00e9 is not to create something completely alien, but to create something <i><i>mostly<\/i><\/i> alien and then insert a clearly human feature onto the strangeness.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>Or maybe it&#8217;s all about mouths; maybe I wouldn&#8217;t be so creeped out if this little monster had a humanoid eye where its mouth is.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>I dunno.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But maybe I was missing the point when I tried so hard to make <i><i>Blindsight<\/i><\/i>&#8216;s scramblers so utterly alien in every respect.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>Maybe, to make them <i><i>really<\/i><\/i> scary, all I had to do was add a little humanity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Thanks for the nightmares, <a href=\"http:\/\/posthumanblues.blogspot.com\/\">Mac<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m guessing this portrait is already familiar to a lot of you, since I got the link both from a fellow skiffhead and a boardroom mundane, but \u2014 speaking as a biologist \u2014 this is one of the creepiest, most unsettling creature pics I&#8217;ve ever seen. This thing has teeth where a beak should be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-marine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}