At the breakfast table, the entomologist mixes and measures instruments of longevity: vitamins and serums that support various aspects of the body and mind.

Preservation abounds in his house in nearly every sense. The solar lighting tubes and rainwater collection system preserve life on a large scale, while his study houses many small things preserved in both life and death.

A Black Widow spider guards her jar atop  a terrarium.

A glance through the entomologist’s much-used dictionaries reveals many words that have been highlighted
and underlined. Rumor has it that every time the entomologist looks up  a word, he highlights it to mark that it’s been investigated. Repeated inquiries into a highlighted word earn an additional underlining or a checkmark, and, according to loved ones, a small amount of irritation with himself.

Among these highlighted words:

Servomotor: A device for changing a small force into a large force.

Gorge (second definition highlighted): What has been swallowed.

A Tarantula, removed from a friend’s bathroom.

Desultory: Aimless, disconnected.

Canny: Cautious and shrewd.

Skylark: A Eurasian lark famous for the song it utters as it soars.

Specimens apparently collected in the entomologist’s house in February 2011.

Only: Alone of its or their kind.

Actual: Existing in reality.

Numberless: Countless.

Am I right!?

After some photos I took of model Lynsie Lee were published in February 2012′s Hustler Magazine, I noticed a spike in traffic to interrobangbros. This was accompanied by a twin spike in the number of people who came to the site and stayed for only a couple of seconds before leaving. What’s the deal, Hustler readers? Not as interested in pictures of bugs and senior citizens playing Bingo as you are in images of naked women? I can’t imagine why. Here’s some more Lynsie, just for you.

Oh, what’s that ? You wanted her in focus? You don’t want some guy reading a car magazine in the shot? Shoot. I guess I just don’t have my finger on the pulse of this market.

Above: Man outside 7-11, Portland, OR

Above: Haircut Sale, Newberg, OR

Above: Tobacconist, Victoria BC, Canada

The entomologist writes:

“The following are just some notes to help you remember trivial things about “The Entomologist” feature on your blog.

Write Staphylococcus beginning with a capital and ideally italicized as I have done. Another scientific approach is underlining the name.

I may have shown you a mayfly or two, but I’ve collected beaucoup crane flies and that is what you were seeing in the small scintillation vials. Note also, just info for you, when a common name, like crane fly, is referring to a true fly, that is, an insect in the order Diptera [di- two, pteron- wing] then the common name indicates this by separating the name with, in this case, flies separate from crane, but when the word fly is incorporated into a name of an insect which is NOT a true fly then we don’t separate the parts of the name and it comes out, for example, mayfly. Mayflies, order Ephemeroptera, are not true flies.

Write Jerusalem cricket with a capital for Jerusalem because it is the name of a real place. Jerusalem crickets are in the genus Stenopelmatus, family Stenopelmatidae. They go by a number of common names in addition to Jerusalem cricket: child of the earth, niña de la tierra, and potato bug to name three. Some folks refer to them as JCs, a name for the conoscenti.

The last insect in the series you illustrate is in the genus Eleodes, a very large genus of beetles, Coleoptera, and are sometimes referred to in the United States as stink bugs. There are other insects, in the order Heteroptera, that are also called stink bugs and so it can get confusing. Eleodes is in the beetle family Tenebrionidae, the darkling beetles.

The genus name of the beetle that feigns death, plays dead when something touches them, is Phloeodes and the beetle is a member of the family Zopheridae. In the past it was thought to be a member of the Tenebrionidae.

Apropos the “kissing bug,” the name of a possible vector in the U.S.A. is Triatoma protracta and the family of Heteroptera it belongs to is the Reduviidae. Now what you write in the text is true for the kissing bug in South America, but there is something special to note here and this is really important since careful study shows that what we call Triatoma protracta in this country does not seem to vector Chagas’ disease in the States. I always wondered why we didn’t see Chagas’ disease in this country when we had the kissing bug and also other vertebrate hosts, like mice and armadillos, which serve as hosts for the causal agent. Trypanosoma cruzi, to infect in addition to humans. I spoke to (name redacted) of our Department of Entomology at (name redacted) whose research involves these. (Name redacted) points out that whereas the South American species of Triatoma defecate immediately after feeding thus allowing the disease causing organisms to be scratched into the wound along with the faeces by the victim’s fingernail as a response to the itching, the North American bug defecates after feeding as well, but this act may take some 20 minutes after biting a victim. As a consequence the insect may be far from the open wound when defecation occurs. Thus, scratching does not result in introducing the causal agent of Chagas’ disease into the victim’s body since the skin at this location is unbroken. Chagas’ disease is not something to scoff at since the causal agents can infect cerebral and cardiac tissues as well as others. I’m not certain of the current status of this disease, but I believe that there may not be any good means of curing a victim of Chagas’ disease. On the infrequent occasions when the causal agents turn up in the blood of humans the medical community springs into action and tries to understand just why it has occurred.

Wow! Just get me started and I write an opus. But you may find this info useful and worthy of addition to your blog.”

And indeed I did! And the rest was history/this post.

Dan (below) is one of the zoo’s tour guides. During his shift, he continually rounds the doughnut-shaped duo of rooms comprising the zoo. Guests drift in and out, joining or leaving the tour at their leisure. At each terrarium, Dan pauses to give a speech and to scoop out one of the bugs within, which he then allows brave gusts to hold.

Noting that he is fairly new to the bug zoo, Dan says he has only seen a female mantis destroy a mate once. He describes the spectacle as a steady diminishing, saying that each time he passed the mantis terrarium, less and less of the male remained, until there were only small undesirable bits. Curiously, the male mantis doesn’t resist the female as she attacks him; in fact, it’s thought that in these cases the male offers himself up, in a last-ditch evolutionary mechanism, as supplementary food for the female carrying his eggs.

Dan pauses at a terrarium housing leaf insects of varying sizes. Sliding open the glass door, he blows air inside, asking us to note how the real leaves and the leaf insects sway at once. The effect is uncanny.

Some guests jump at the chance to hold each bug, and others make disgusted comments and shy away.

And some bugs, Dan explains, aren’t for holding.

This white bug (below) was so beautiful that guests were immediately taken with it and began asking questions. One guest asked what it was called. “I like to call her Bianca,” said Dan, before blushing and correcting himself–it was an Orchid Mantis.

http://www.bugzoo.bc.ca/index.htm

http://www.alteregossociety.com/

-Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Nabokov is fascinated by the idea that the self can be multiplied and projected, appearing in more than one place at a time, and perhaps even in a different form. In the above opening lines of Pale Fire, the speaker describes the thrill of the illusion created by reflections; in the windowpane, the image of a room could be seen as existing both around the speaker and transposed on the winter landscape outdoors. In Despair, the protagonist is confronted with a man who is his physical double but unlike him in every other way. In Lolita, Humbert is pursued by a man who embodies the full acceptance of his own appetitive desires and depravity–of course, Humbert Humbert, by name, is inherently duplicitous.

When we are faced with desires that seem to oppose one another, the self cleaves in order to preserve a consonant self-concept. Vasiliy, above, came to the USA from the Ukraine as a child. He mentally carries a version of himself who never left Ukraine, and who informs the decisions he now makes as an American. Due to the countries’ differing economies, the price of a cocktail with friends can seem like a betrayal to that other self. However, he has recently decided to allow his social spending and the concern for his family’s financial situation abroad to co-exist. To allow two opposing concepts of the self to merge is a brave and difficult thing; as nature abhors a vacuum, the human brain abhors dissonance within itself, and will take drastic measures to resolve it.

Sometimes the solution is a dishonest one. I once had the surreal experience of reading back over an old diary from years before, and coming upon a lie; I had said I’d gone shopping with two people to whom, in reality, I had never once spoken. The most likely explanation is that I wished so much to be friends with the people in question that I had created a little lore for the moment, but the flaws of time and memory present another, irresistible possibility: that somehow I had at once been the person who had never spoken to these people, and the person who had met them at the mall every weekend.

This organic fluff is meant for both flying and clinging. Humans, in their own quest to distribute seed, mimic these properties of fluff.

The above fluff is more sedentary and bleak-futured, having fallen in clumps from some animal. However, it may yet experience flight as birds carry it to weave into their nests.

This fluff has been caught by a spider’s silk. The breeze creates the illusion of a struggle. The seed is the very embodiment of potential! Think of the pressure it must feel to land in the right place at the right time.

Shelby, an 18-year-old Seattleite, rolled into downtown Portland with a suitcase full of dresses, three swimsuits, and a few Trojan Magnums.

The black one is Shelby’s favorite of the three swimsuits she had with her; however, she is careful to note that any of her suits will look good, “because, well, it’s me.”

I was impressed by Shelby’s modeling ability and her charisma–we grabbed strangers from the sidewalk for her to pose with, and she was completely unfazed. One of those strangers, Liam (below), was on his way to the Columbia Gorge in business attire and a friendship bracelet for unknown reasons.

Darcelle (above) has headlined her own drag cabaret at Darcelle XV, her downtown Portland club, for more than 35 years. Darcelle’s alter ego, Walter Cole, first dressed in drag at age 37; he is now 80 years old.

The showplace was largely populated by shockingly young bachelorettes and middle-aged birthday parties. Each performer held a distinct appeal and attracted tips, though some members of a bachelorette party near the stage were also seen stuffing dollars into their own bras, for reasons unkown.

www.darcellexv.com