Cap'n Pete Straw

April is better... but the last week I'll be in London. Merrydeath, yer personal profile photo creeps me out. Are you bummed, or what? Also, did I miss yer birthday? or is the 31st of February some joke that I do not understand?

Awesome links! If anyone is really interested in cleaning skeletons/skulls, you might want to PM me. I have literally over 30 years experience. For another awesome link... since we have gone down this road, is Rogue Taxidermy. [WARNING -- NOT FOR SQUEEMISH] This link is only one group; there are others, and you should beware them. There are some artists out there who border on absurd... perhaps even sick.... who piece together other animals to make something God had not intended. These ain't yer father's jackalopes, people. Fiji mermaids, griffins, you name it, they made it.

Purchased some more gun cleaning supplies this weekend and went to work on the shabbier of the two Sea Service pistols. When I was done, my hands were black, but the nastier one looked better than the other! Ye-Hah! (Sorry, still in cowboy mode) I am so psyched! Have a matching pair... although the wood stains do not precisely match... Now if I could just score me some flints... Still kicking myself about not purchasing that $20 cigar box full of broken flint arrowheads... except I had just spent $100 less than 30 minutes earlier on three flintlocks, and was totally spent -- in every sense of the word.

..and, as I said, three are here. Can I just say .. the "roma gold" one has SO much more heft to it! What's much more incredibly impressive is that when ye flip it in the air just the right way (clipping it with yer fingernail when ye do so), it will ring most wonderfully. The commercially-available ones lack this feature -- they sound like zinc.

Eddie Murphy

Ye got that one right.... so, who's next? How does this work again? Not to get off topic, but a good party game is to tell a story (not terribly unlike the "6 word story" forum) but you can only speak in song titles. Anyway... I'd like to play this game, but "I'm just waiting on a friend"

J.R.

A thousand and two... but I cannot reveal...

YMCA

Scary ye say? PPhil, when I read Merrydeath's "rusty chastity belt" post (haven't followed this thread in quite while), the first thing that came to mind was WD40....

Been listening to BBC America (TV) since 9:30 pm.... Now it's "Black Adder."

My third coin arrived today.... 855 to go? Is that the number? (races madly through the other forums so as not to lose the next game of Trivial Pursuit -- Pirates of the Carribbean Edition).

Terminator

South Park. They said "turd sandwich" and "giant douche" like 20 times.

-- bloomin' royal navy -- Crayola

You eat chicken in full view of your parrot?? You're cold.

Peter Gabriel (that was "Shock the Monkey")

Listened to the local college radio station's Wednesday night "Strictly Bluegrass" program on the way home. I try to drive home real slow on Wednesday nights. Now? "Alias" is on the TV, so that's what I'm listening to.

I have over 350 skulls. Then I stopped counting. What do I have? Well, considering my original goal was to have a representative skull from every major taxonomical category, it is quite a long list. Wanna play "Stump the Skull Guy"? Sure, I don't have a walrus (oh, walrus... don't I wish....), I did pretty well until Wife #2 freaked out over my having a skull collection. Then I slowed down. Real fast. (If you saw my hot redhead of a wife, you would TOTALLY understand my priorities). Talk about geek... I love looking at unlabeled skulls (in museums, in collections, on roadsides) and determining what animal they are from. I am almost never, ever stumped. There was a local newspaper article written about me/my skulls several years ago. Since it was asked... I have virtually every "common" skull imaginable. But after about a dozen mice, rats and voles (each), I stopped collecting those, 'cuz I didn't need so many. I rarely have more than one of any other skull -- again, for the diversity thing. Sadly, I have eschewed endless opportunities to obtain the larger skulls becasue, well, they are so damned BIG (again, walrus. And do you have any idea how large a giraffe skull is? It is ginormous!) Some of the more "exotic" skulls (off the top of my head -- no pun intended) include: -- Human (that would be a real one! My many fake ones do not count. Don't think that's "exotic"? Do YOU have a real severed human head in your home? Hmmm?) -- Spider monkey -- Rhesus monkey -- Ostrich -- Armadillo -- Snapping turtle (that would be a BIG one) -- Zebra (which is WAY cooler than my horse skull) -- Lion (with two bullet holes in the forehead. I want to see what happened to the trousers of the guy between bullet #1 and bullet #2) -- Pig (but not just any pig -- its snout grew at about a 30 degree left angle to the rest of its head.... Weird) -- Deer (ah, but not just any deer -- it was clearly born without one eye; one eye socket was too small to house an eyeball. Also strange is that it only sports one antler. Hmmm... think it was also purple, flew and ate people?) -- And I may or may not have a couple that I cannot acknowledge possession of in writing. [Remainder of this sentence deleted... love you all, but others can access this information] I read over that list, and it sounds lame... but there are others that somehow I cannot recall. Sorry, it has been a 4 Guinness day. I have done skull educational lectures for schools, park district summer camps, etc. Every skull tells a story, and I have, well let's see... over 350 stories to tell. Yes, I can get kids REAL excited about skulls.

Ward's Biology (wardsci.com) and Carolina Biological (www.carolina.com) have mounted chicken and pigeon skeletons available, but they are EXPENSIVE. Actually, all mounted skeletons are expensive. Skeletons are available from many scientific companies. In the years (35+) that I have been collecting skulls and skeletons, I do not recall ever seeing a parrot skeleton for sale. What you probably want is a plastic model... and I am 99% positive that they do not make one. If you are dead-set on obtaining a skeleton, you can get it for free, and a TON of hard work. Your local pet store, if you can get reall chummy with them, is an excellent source of dead parrots (No, Pyrate Phil, I am not talking about the one in Ipswitch), as animal stock occasionally dies. You just need to be the guy who shows up before they can make it to the dumpster -- this is how I obtained many of the exotic skulls in my possession: from Pet Store die-offs (the guy would throw dead stock in his freezer, and would give me first pick once a week). With this new avian flu, however, I would think twice before handling any bird that dies of mysterious causes. Anyway, with your new dead parrot ("It's not dead, it's just pining for the fjords"), you would need to render the skeleton. I do not think this board is an appropriate arena for the taxidermic (and somewhat grisly) details, but for the advernturous, it can be rather rewarding. The real task is reassembling the skeleton by hand, which is a terribly, terribly painstaking process. But with elbow grease and patience, you can do it. If money is no object, you might want to cheat. Purchase a mounted pigeon skeleton from one of the above sources, along with a Parrot skull (available from both companies -- I got all of mine for free, ala Pet Store), remove the head from (A) and replace it with ( . Voila! A Parrot/Pigeon hybrid, which only a very very good biologist (or me) would be able to spot the fraud.

Sorry, I really have nothing worthwhile to add here.... It was just so sad seeing the "spring invasion in Chicago" topic so far down the list... Actually, as far as I am concerned, EVERYDAY is a Pirate day in Chicago! Finally convinced my wife that an outing to the Piper place is worth the trip... Must check it out.

Listening to "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart. Again, TV adjacent to computer.

...or this guy...

-- toe curling -- Shuffleboard

... Episode 4 of "The L Word." That's it for me, I'm going to bed.