Monday, August 27, 2007

Believe it or not



It's a 4 1/2 foot fossilized walrus penis. (What did you think it was?) If you'd had 8000 dollars, you could have bought it. Instead, it will be in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum.

Here's another story about it, with more details but no picture.

I really want one of you guys to use the word baculum in a poem. Isn't that a great word?

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Last night I dreamed that I was talking to C. Dale (who I have never met in real life) and he asked me who my favorite bloggers were. My response: "Me, of course!" I think this is perhaps a sign that I am spending way too much time online.

Then we continued the conversation but neither of us would name any names. Come on, C. Dale! You can give me better gossip than that in my dreams!

*grin*

* * * * *

Also present is Mark Doty’s incredibly rare 1981 manuscript The Empire of Summer, a book that Doty has since disowned and stricken from his official resume. The book appears in only eighteen libraries worldwide.

One of those libraries happens to be the one I work in. Hee, hee. And I am a huge Mark Doty fan, but after reading the book, I can understand why he wouldn't care to lay claim to it. But isn't it kind of reassuring to know that one's favorite poets didn't, oh, spring from the forehead of the Muse or whatever -- that there was a time when they hadn't yet figured out what to say or how to say it?

All the same, the fact that people are apparently willing to pay a great deal of money for this book makes me want to burn the high-school literary journals with my crappy teenage poems in them, just in case. Oof. Not to mention being grateful that the crappy book manuscript I was sending out about fifteen years ago never got published. Apparently, sometimes one can be grateful for rejection. Ha!

12 comments:

Collin Kelley said...

Wow, I guess we can use a variation on "hung like a horse" now.

Anne Haines said...

Walruses (walrii??): the sex symbol for the twenty-first century.

Which I think may put David Crosby in a much more favorable position than he's been for a while. ;)

Unknown said...

whoa...that walrus has a big one!

Lyle Daggett said...

To which I can only say, "Goo goo ga joob!"

Actually, I believe it's the penile bone (i.e. the baculum, as you alluded) -- not the entire penis. (At four and a half feet, how much more does one really need...?)

The ever-entertaining Wikipedia has a little basket of fun facts about baculums (bacula?), here.

I checked a few other online sources too -- I'd been aware that seals and walruses have the bones, but apparently most male mammals do, including most primates -- humans are among the exceptions.

The Wikipedia article also makes reference to the baubellum, a homologous bone found in many female mammals (but again, apparently, not in humans).

According to a couple of the sources I checked, the baculum (in animals that have one) is not attached to other bones in the skeleton -- it's essentially free-floating, attached only to soft tissue (muscle, cartilege, etc.). Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking that's a good thing for all concerned...

Anne Haines said...

Huh, huh, huh. Lyle said "basket." Huh, huh, huh.

:)

Montgomery Maxton said...

i informed brent goodman via private email that they found his, well, private.

C. Dale said...

I apologize for being so tight-lipped in your dream. Maybe I was just feeling shy...

Lyle Daggett said...

Anne, I laughed so hard at your comment below mine ("Lyle said 'basket'") that I got a muscle cramp in my ribs. Serious LOL here. :)

Pamela Johnson Parker said...

This gives me a whole new insight into the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus."

Amanda Auchter said...

I am so going to write this poem.

Anonymous said...

ok. I want to say that is one big member, but it is all about scale: how they heck did they ever reproduce!?!?!?!?

Anonymous said...

ouch it looks pointy