So recently I've been working on overhauling the paleo section of my web site, with more emphasis on the little essay that goes with each pic, and updating a lot of the original images with color, etc. (hence the amount of rehashed work showing up on dA). Just thought I'd give the heads up, check out the Natural History section at azhdarcho.com!

Tagged by ~NTamura and ~jconway
Well two people tagged me so I guess I might as well...

The rules:
1. post these rules
2. each person tagged must post 8 random facts about themselves.
3. tags should write a journal of these facts
4. at the end post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named
5. go to their page and leave a comment telling them they're tagged
(I'm ignoring #s 4 and 5 )

1) I love curry. I had never eaten any until about a year ago, now I get antsy if I go a week without having some.

2) I dislike organized religion but I love disorganized religion. I think that sounds less cheesy than saying I'm "spiritual but not religious." The closest thing I have to a sacred vitures text for myself is D.H. Lawrence's list of virtues from Chapter 2 of _Studies in Classic American Literature_. [link]

3) I haven't gone skiing in years, despite having grown up next to two ski resorts and having gone home at least for holidays every year.

4) I still come up with new ideas for digital drawings (my latest is a Hallucinations-style therizinosaurs hanging around in a tree), but when I get home after work I inevitably crash and watch Neighbours instead.

5) Same with reading--I have one book to finish and two to start, been working on the first for ages. I really like it but lack motivation.

6) In a half-assed attempt to decorate my bedroom I cut photos of celebrities out of a magazine and taped them up in interesting patterns. The photos include Jack White, Sean Connery, Sasha Cohen, and "1957 Man."

7) The last two movies I saw in the theater twice: The Fellowship of the Ring, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

8) I prefer Chure's definition of Aves. I think all the quibbling about whether Archaeopteryx is in or out is silly. I think taxonomy should be simple and elegant--feathers make the bird. I like Meyr's (1985) suggestion that cladistics and phylogeny should refer to two distinct types of classification. I think the ICZN should be reformed to include official diagnoses just as PhyloCode hopes to adopt official definitions, and expanded to include all ranked taxa above family level.

I also think this will never happen, and taxonomy/classification will become so arcane that it will eventually be useless to everyone but specialists. Que sera sera.

1. Deinonychus and Struthiomimus
--Non-contemporaries who hold a special place in the ol' ticker!
2. Quetzalcoatlus
--Made me appreciate weirdo pterosaurs and the mad-scientist evil-genius of Dave Peters.
3. Hallucigenia
--Cambrian animals = the illest, but this one has acid trip built right into its name.
4. Megalancosaurus
--Or all simiosaurs for that matter. Come on they're called "monkey lizards", there's nothing not to love.
5. Therizinosaurus
--20ft goose + Edward Scissorhands.
6. Citipati
--What the hell is with me and oviraptorosaurs? Maybe I have some kind of sick subconscious desire to correct people on nomenclature. I'll have to ask the rents if I went around a lot as a child telling people "It's Apatosaurus, not Brontosaurus stupid!" as much as I did when Oviraptor essentially got renamed. I also like shattering the dreams of young children by poiting out dinosaurs were boring old animals and not monsters, and it don't get much better than outing a crafty egg theif as a big softy nest-squatter.
7. Epidendrosaurus/Scansoriopteryx
--Somewhere, deep down, I secretly want Czerkas to be right about the proto-maniraptoran thing. How pimp would that be?
8. Microraptor
--4 wings are better than one.
9. Neandethal man
--Apparently they were ginger. We gotta keep the species alive, for the N man!
10. Diprotodon
--The hero of all wombats. Inside every wombat lurks a 3-ton killer. If they were alive today, Diprotodon would usurp bears as Colbert's #1 threat to America.
11. T. rex
--Just to spite everybody who's all, "T. rex? Really?"

This guy hasn't done any new art in ages. What the hell is his problem?

A fellow Deviant posted this quote on Tet Zoo the other day. I love it. It sounds like a Joanna Newsom lyric.

"A childlike poet who has lost his wits, and, having hung himself with potlids and tea trays as protection from his critics, drifts though life eating ice cream and drinking creame de menthe."
--Jacquetta Hawkes on _Stegosaurus_, from _A Land_.

Ideas for drawings and digipaintings are really piling up with no progress. Maybe if I list them, like Dr. Naish does at his Tetrapod Zoology blog, it will motivate me to actually work on some.

Some of these will be cartoony or trippy for the Hallucination series, some slightly more realistic like Upn Branch, some I haven't decided on.

1. Eraly tertrapod climbing onto land in a tropical lagoon.
2. Cambrian cartoon featuring Wiwaxia, by request.
3. Heyuannia, based on my orignal idea for the pencil drawing.
4. Prodryas, the early butterfly ancestor.
5. A drepansosaur among leaves and Dimetrodon sail.
6. Lori, the Morrison troodontid.

Ok. I'll write this one paper I have due and then see if I get motivated.