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February 21, 2006

COOL

Ice worms!

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... read, then blog ...

"Bad news, honey. Turns out freezing your ass isn't going to get rid of them..."

Oh! Them! Yea, they're used for ice fishing!

G@WD! Thought everyone knew that!

Looks kind of like a staple to me. Text too long and boring, just commenting on the photo...

I bet they live in the ice at the fast food joints, too.

My thought precisely, Lab!

The downside is extreme sensitivity to heat. At about 40 degrees F, the worms' membranes melt and their enzymes go haywire.

Next study, their mating habits!

*goes to get NASA grant application*

"Lee picked ice worms for his undergraduate biology thesis because they're weird" ... UMM yeah, and "A COLD-LOVING Minnesotan" is NOT wierd, how?

Leme see - if NASA will grant $200K to study ice worms, surely I could get them to fund...

good news: people can be frozen after death with the help of ice worms

bad news: if the temperature rises above 40, great-great-great-great-grandfather becomes a puddle of goo

Searching the Internet, he connected with biologists Dan Shain and Paula Hartzell, who between them probably account for the bulk of the world's ice-worm expertise...

Dan: and that is why we can never be together...for if an avalanche or bad clams should intervene the bulk of the world's ice-worm expertise would be gone!

Paula: shut up and masticate my tail, you fool!

so, we're gonna send ice worms to jupiter to see what they do ... will they be able to email nasa?

Sheesh. Anyone who saw the X-file episode "Ice" already knew about ice worms. And knew not to go looking for them, lest they enter your brain via your ear in a Wrath-of-Khan-creature manner and make you violent and suicidal.

"You may not be who you are!"

"...lest they enter your brain via your ear in a Wrath-of-Khan-creature manner and make you violent and suicidal."

Dude! I thought it was just a sinus infection!

BY THE WAY, Airborne™ does NOT prevent SINUS INFECTIONS.

*curls into a ball of sinus-infected unfunniness*

In "The Ballad of the Ice Worm Cocktail," published in 1940, Service took up the theme and recounted the comeuppance of a boastful British nimrod who gagged ...

Right up there with Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald as a fun party song.

*sneeze, snort, cough, nose-blow*

Mind if I join you Tamara?

*whimper*

It's that time of year, isn't it?

*offers Bumble a sugar-free cough drop*

*accepts cough drop and hands Tamara a mug of hot cider*

Set to hit record stores with their latest recording "IT SUCKS TO DIG," by Elusive Cryonic Nematodes.

* passes out lozenges & tissues to Bumble and TRWC *

*curls into a ball with Bumble and TRWC*
I'm not sick, they just look like fun to roll around with.

I'll have some worms on ice. Shaken lightly.
I hope it doesn't get big in Seattle. We allready have oo many coffee places.

The world needs joiners.

(attempt to imitate Service)

There's a lack of cash in the doctoral class
When the grant money started to wither
As the glaciers recede, the Ph.D's need
More excuses for banding together
The NSF docs have read a few crocks
But the dumbest thing they'd all agree
Was the proposal to study, just me and my buddies
The ice-worms of the Arctic Sea!!!

Get up, CoastRaven. You're getting fuzz all over your clothes.

Airborne™ certainly didn't keep me from catching a cold last week when I flew home from Orlando.

Of course, I did forget to take it.

Oops.

CoastRaven~ As James Taylor says, "Well, I'm a steamroller, baby; I'm bound to roll all over you."

"Get up, CoastRaven. You're getting fuzz all over your clothes."

And snot.

*accepts hot cider and hands Bumble a bowl of the hot chicken noodle soup that she wishes she had made for herself last night instead of practicing guitar*

*rolls away*

Tamara~ You can keep it. Mom just called up and told me she made a pot from last night's leftover broth. Nummy.

I *heart* [real!] chicken noodle soup! Hooray for moms!

"Ice Worm Cocktail" would be a good name for...well, you know.

And their first release could be an album of ballads.

You're (not your) welcome, Dear. I ♥ U2.

Here I am being all warm and smarmy, and all I get is snot and rejection
*sniff*

I like U2's earlier stuff....

Tamara RW Centipede: I have home-made chicken soup for lunch today, coincidentally. The Wench made some yesterday.

It's like the Ant and the Grasshopper.

Lab is the ant with the wife who makes him homemade chicken noodle soup.

And I am the grasshopper who buys the ingredients for homemade chicken noodle soup but then strums on the guitar all night hoping the chicken noodle soup will make itself and then in the morning is stuck packing herself a small jar of peanut butter and a few slices of bread for lunch along with a bottle of water and a baggie of Cheez-Its and a package of cough drops!

GAWD, I HATE FABLES!

CoastRaven~ Have you ever heard that song? Read the lyrics on my link. That wasn't rejection. ;-)

*sniff* Now I feel all sorry for Tamara. Wish I could really send you some soup. :-(

Bumble DOES love me!! Yes I've heard Steamroller Blues - Both by James Taylor and Elvis (ew) - roll over me any time!

Bumble, you're not supposed to feel sorry for the grasshopper! Aesop would be rolling in his grave to hear such talk! ;)

Anyway, I have herbal tea packets around here somewhere... And there are Reese's peanut butter cups in the snack room! Which I will not eat--not only because sugar is bad for the immune system, but also because I already had six* this morning! Oops!

*This was right around the time I was checking Fed's prostate on Cbol's blog, for which I should probably apologize, but I won't. I plead sinus-infected sugar-imbibing insanity.

Tamara - if all else fails, try Bowling for Soup.

Tamara~ So would Jean de La Fontaine and various lit teachers, but I don't care.

*hands Tamara some cider mix and Lipton soup *

I didn't know ants had wives. And I didn't know they liked chicken soup.

I had a few lit teachers when I was in school - one of them constantly had the Irish coffee going. He was pretty laid back. The math teacher with the whiskey flask in his jacket was pretty mean when he got lit though.

*zips in on day after you-know-what*

I read the FIRST 2 paragraphs and found 2 best lines:
1. "Nobody knows what ice worms do in winter."
2."They're kind of hot right now".

Sounds like they're engaged in an activity that involves parfaits - hmmmm.

*wants to be sick so she can roll around with Tamara and Bumble*

Lab~ Ants like everything.

Eleanor~ If you roll with us long enough, you probably will be.

CoastRaven~ I wonder if all my "coffee breath" teachers were just trying to cover up (sober up?) another kind of breath. Hmm...

This teacher's eyes are clearly too red.

At night, the ice worms hide from the ice weasels so they don't get eaten, duh.

ice worms or swizzle sticks? you decide.

I had high teachers too. It was great. They couldn't remember the last 5 seconds let alone a book. And I would get chewed out for not showing up for tests I never heard about.

On the other hand we had a science teacher who always had water. big bottles of water. That smelled odd. Man she loved that water. She even admitted to knowing how to distill.

Bumble and Tamara - the solution to your problem is blackberry brandy - it has no actual medicinal value, but it tastes really good, and after you drink about a pint of it, you no longer care that you have a cold

There's a husky, dusky maiden in the Arctic
And she waits for me but it is not in vain,
For some day I'll put my mukluks on and ask her
If she'll wed me when the ice worms nest again.

Chorus: In the land of pale blue snow, where it's 99 below, and the polar bears go roamin' o'er the plain,
In the shadow of the Pole, I'll clasp her to my soul,
And she'll wed me when the ice worms nest again.

Ah, the memories.

Eleanor...Not that I want to implant a horrible earwig in anyone's brain (heh heh), BUT "Nobody knows what ice worms do in winter" cries out to be set to "What do you do with someone like Maria?"

I always thought ice worms were just kewl earworms!

Bumble and TRWC - For your cold(s) you should drink a quart of Sunsweet(TM) Prune Juice. As I've said before, it won't cure your cold(s), but you will think twice before you sneeze.

Annie W-b-h, if you're lurking around the blog, make note that I am wearing my Acme(TM) cast iron collar. Also note that "...solifugus, means sun-avoiding."

There are strange things done, in the Midnight Sun
By those who hunt the ice worm.
The Arctic's tales name wriggly trails
that show up when the snowpack is firm.
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did mark
Were the times they shone through darkest moon
and the worms come outa Glacier Park.

Yes, Betsy, very, very.

How do you solve a problem like an iceworm
How do you hold an iceworm in your hand

Take it, Betsy!!! :)

crossgirl-That would be in the bar at the Ice Hotel

Betsy-

Probably wouldnt have walked out of the theater during Sound of M if I had known they were going to have an ice worm song.

Enter: Singing Minnesota Nun with Shovel

Nobody knows what ice worms do in winter
They vanish somehow in the Permafrost
It’s really hard to ask them home for Christmas,
If all of a sudden they’ve suddenly gotten lost… (plunk plunk)

In June they can be packed and shipped with Fed Ex
In December they are nowhere to be seen
We need their DNA
To help us on our way
With studies of that wiggly iceworm gene
But nobody knows where ice worms go in winter
We only know they’re gone by Halloween.

Folks chuckle when I say I study ice worms
No wonder that research has lagged for years
There’s no cachet to crawling through the tundra
To whisper in their brittle little ears

They tease me as they play in summer daylight,
And feast upon digestible debris
They’re such a festive crowd – I’ve heard they chirp out loud!
They seem to move through solid ice with ease
But
Even I don’t know their plans for winter –
And I’m the one with iiiice wooorm ex-per-tise!


Danke, danke. But now ich muss getten in mein kleinen car, und disappear over die Alps. (exit, stage left, wearing drapery lederhosen)

Applauds Betsy!

BTW, do ice worms suffer shrinkage?

Stupe - an iron collar? Resistance is feudal, you silly, silly peasant. Soon you will awake and remember nothing. How that differs from any other day, I have no idea.

A W-b-h, it differs not at all.

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