October’s abstract and Monday color

Al Denelsbeck

A twofer today, in more ways than one. While looking through the image folders to see what was going to qualify, I couldn’t fully decide, so I settled for two to feature for October.

dried seed pods of hibiscus flowers
Actually, I lie – I settled for three. But the other will come later, partially in recognition of this momentous holiday, and partially just to space it out. So one more will be along in a bit. For now, we have the dried seed pods, or the ‘fruit,’ of a hibiscus above, and a morning glory blossom below. Nice and flowery and botanical and all that. Quite unlike what’s coming…

vivid blue morning glory blossom

Humidity and arachnids

Al Denelsbeck

American sweetgum sapling Liquidambar styraciflua showing early fall colors
It’s still early in the fall season here and only a handful of trees are showing any color, but if one is selective, they can find examples and frame them to make it seem much more dramatic than, as was the case here, a single small tree in the middle of a still-green landscape. This is a Liquidambar styraciflua, otherwise known by a large number of common names but most often as American sweetgum, one of the few in this area that develop bright colors. The copious morning dew had enhanced this significantly, and featured prominently in just about all other images from this outing as well. “This outing” being last Friday at Mason Farm Biological Reserve where we got out soon after sunrise, “we” being Mr Bugg and I. The remaining photos, as indicated by the post title, are not going to make arachnophobes happy in any way.

But the truth is, dewy mornings are great times to photograph spiderwebs, and even just to drive home how many spiders there really are around us, most of them remaining completely unseen because of their size and subtlety. It’s easiest to see when looking out over a field on a misty morning, but even easy to spot on a well-mowed lawn, as the dew collects on every strand of web in the area and reveals, not just the entrapping webs themselves, but even the draglines left behind by the wandering varieties of spiders; it becomes apparent that very few plants don’t show any signs of arachnid activity.

backlit dew in webbing cluster across weed stems
Now, I’m not even sure this is from a spider – it might be a protective shelter or cocoon of a caterpillar – but it served to capture the dew quite well, and there’s the faintest hint of the lens effect that water droplets will demonstrate; you can see the outline of the horizon inverted in the drops. To make the best of this takes very high magnification, and most importantly, no wind motion at all, which does not describe this day. Not to mention that a close and distinctive subject makes this a whole lot better.

All right, let’s get down to the spiders themselves. We’ll ease into it.

trashline orb weaver genus Cyclosa with lambent web lines
This was a curious find, and as yet I have no explanation for it. There is a subset of spiders known as trashline orbweavers (genus Cyclosa) specifically for the reasons that you see here: not only do they spin the wheel-style “orb” webs, but they arrange the desiccated corpses of their past meals in a line down the center of the web, then sit among them camouflaged from predators. The spider itself is in the middle, right where the bright horizontal bar cuts through, legs tucked in to disguise its true nature – these are very small species. But the key detail is the bright lines of the web itself. This is not dew, and appears to be a different composition than the primary strands, since you can see those in the center, thinner and much more subtle. I have been told that the sticky strands of web are the spiral portions, while the ‘spokes’ are not sticky, allowing spiders to scamper across their webs without ensnaring themselves, and so this would certainly appear to be illustrating the different composition of the webbing. However, I’ve never seen it before, and it seems that being this much more visible, despite the rare backlit conditions, would work against the idea of a web in the first place. But at least it shows the path the spider took a lot better than normal. In a couple of places it also shows the iridescent trait of spider silk that can be captured with just the right conditions and approach – it’s tricky, believe me.

banded orbweaver Argiope trifasciata reweaving web after dew conditions
I was hoping to see one of these, though in truth I figured it’d be a slightly different species that’s far more common in the area. This is a banded orbweaver (Argiope trifasciata,) and they’re among the bigger spiders in NC, getting up the 3 cm in body length with the leg spread expanding that to 8 cm. Argiopes love tall plants and spin their large webs at roughly waist-height in the thick of things, often making encounters an abrupt and startling thing (more so if you don’t like spiders.) And while most spiders can show this trait, it becomes very visible on the Argiopes: dew will form on the bodies of the spiders themselves as well as on the webs, and sometimes you find them completely dripping with it. This one was close to that – I’ve seen much worse – but ignoring the burden while industriously re-weaving its web in the early morning light. There’s a possibility that it dismantled and ate the previous web not long before, collecting the moisture while recycling the material, and you will note that the web is showing no signs of dew, being spun after the conditions had passed. In this case, the glow comes strictly from the angle that I was shooting from, since the same strands disappear as they become more vertical, unlike the other example above.

Now let’s get really creepy.

green lynx spider Peucetia viridans mother and young in backlit dew conditions
Green lynx spiders (Peucetia viridans) are fairly common around here, though ambush-hunters by nature instead of web-spinners. The primary exception is the cluster of haphazard lines drawing together a collection of leaves which is used as a nursery for the hatched young, and these clusters are easy to spot on such mornings. I couldn’t resist going in for this shot, but I’ll confess it’s actually a stack of three images to bring out varying details, since shooting with a larger aperture at macro magnification meant a very short depth of field; each frame had select details while the rest went soft, so I had to combine them for this family portrait. So yes, that’s mamma in the center and one of the young off to the right, but really, a lot of young off to the right – you can see the legs up there, dozens of little babbies. The mother has completed her primary task, that of reproduction, and isn’t long for this world, living out the rest of her days protecting the young in their earliest stage. She’ll die, and the young may remain in the same shelter throughout the winter or may move on a short distance, but come spring they’ll start actively hunting on their own. Spiders are remarkably cold-resistant, becoming active immediately upon receiving some nice sunlight, even after a snowfall. It’s impressive.

And to close the post, we’ll go a little less creepy, more fartsy. You may recognize the subject from Mr Bugg’s post, and this shows both the limited angles we had to work from that morning, and the subtle differences from two photographers shooting the same subject.

garlands of dew-laden web with subtle sunburst
I got quite lucky with mine, I’ll admit it. While shooting directly towards the sun was necessary to bring out the dewdrops in these diamond-like points, it also requires a dark background for best effect, and keeping the sun out of the lens itself is paramount unless you really like glare. In this case, either my hand or my outstretched hat – I don’t recall which – was blocking the sun from the lens just outside of view, but it produced a nice little set of sunburst accents across the top of the frame. I probably couldn’t produce this on demand if I tried, but I’ll happily accept it when it happens.

Make mine a double

Al Denelsbeck

Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina peering from deep cover
The other day I commented that the immortal (so far) Mr Bugg had failed to beat me to the punch in posting something from our mutual outing before I did. What I was forgetting was that he apparently lives across two international date lines, so while it was Sunday here, it was Friday there. Thus, he still managed to post a day ahead of me, we just had to wait another day to see it…

Regardless, yesterday’s outing (or was it Wednesday’s?) netted us only a small collection of images, one of those slower days that you (now) read about, and I’m largely going to skip this one to talk about the previous, which had at least more fartsy stuff going for it. For now, I’ll simply show an image of a still-small Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) that peeped out from a stand of tall native plants in the NC Botanical Garden. Despite it being less than 4 cm in length, which seems quite small for this time of year, I was able to spot this one without too much difficulty since it was in largely the same place that I’d seen it 20 days earlier. Mantids may do this, hanging out in almost the exact same location for a few days to a few weeks, before moving on to another location not far off. Of course, I may be assuming a lot here, including that it had not moved off and come back through, or that this was the same mantis. I’m bad enough recognizing people I’ve met only briefly, and won’t claim any better skills with arthropods.

Meanwhile, I’ll add in another perspective, showing Mr Bugg (the human) in action getting his own shots. I was careful to frame the mantis against his shirt so that it stood out noticeably, but even then you have to be paying close attention. It shows scale nicely, though.

The timely Mr Bugg Homo sapiens photographing a juvenile Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina

Just because, part 20

Al Denelsbeck

red-bellied water snake Nerodia erythrogaster basking before molting
I have a handful of pics from a recent outing to post, and while this one came from the same outing, it is notably different from the others and kinda “out of theme,” but I liked it too much to let it go. This is a red-bellied water snake (Nerodia erythrogaster,) a good-sized specimen, basking in the morning sunlight at Mason Farm Biological Reserve. Now that the nights are getting pretty chilly but it’s not yet hibernation time, this is a more common sight, as mostly nocturnal snakes bring their body temperatures back up to assist in their digestion. This particular one was very close to molting, as indicated by those cloudy eyes – in a day or so, it would shed its skin and become much more brightly-colored for a while. While their vision is hampered by this state, snakes tend to be much more defensive, and with water snakes this is a typical temperament anyway, so handling was out of the question – escaping without getting bitten would have been next to impossible. This species is harmless, by the way, and a bite would have drawn little droplets of blood and nothing further, but there really wasn’t a point to picking it up.

More will be along shortly, but I didn’t want to deprive you of the lovely textures brought out by the low sun angle any longer than I had to. You can thank me later on.

It’s not that hard to drive safely

Al Denelsbeck

… but you wouldn’t believe it from looking at an awful lot of drivers today.

Sorry, this is way off topic, but coming right after getting rear-ended in a stupid and pointless manner, I just feel the need to point some things out. I also walk alongside the road semi-regularly, and observe the really poor handling of pedestrians and bicyclists too, at least in this area. Seriously, driving safely really isn’t a difficult thing at all, and I can’t fully fathom why it seems to elude so many people. So here are a few little items just to kind of get the reminder out there.

First off, of course,

Put the fucking phone down. You are responsible for a large, heavy vehicle that, even at slow speeds, is capable of doing a shitload of damage. It deserves your undivided attention. There is absolutely nothing, at all, that comes ahead of maintaining a proper level of attention to its control and the surroundings you are within. The call will wait until you are not busy with driving, but even if it’s of extreme importance, then pull the fuck over. Texting, it should go without saying, is not only completely unnecessary in virtually all regards, it is the stupidest goddamn thing to risk anyone’s life over. You don’t need to be playing with your My Little Pony action figures either, which rate the same level of importance and usefulness…

Chill the fuck out. Nobody cares if you’re late for something, or don’t like being held up in rush hour traffic, or whatever. If you’re late, it’s your own fault – own it. And traffic is traffic – if you’re in it, you’re part of the problem, aren’t you? But madly switching lanes, cutting people off, and tromping on the accelerator can provide, at best, a fractional improvement in the situation while exponentially increasing the risk. Worse, if you think that any of these things are going to correct the situation, then you’ll just get even more irritated when you inevitably find out that they don’t do shit.

It’s not a competition. I’m not sure how this idea got started, but speeding, especially through town where we all travel between traffic lights, cannot provide more than an immeasurable difference – nobody is doing time trials, Andretti, and your dick isn’t bigger than the guy you have to pass. I know how satisfying it must be to get to the next traffic light ahead of someone else, almost as satisfying as being first on the playground for recess, but nobody is keeping track or actually gives a fuck. I mean, organized sports themselves are pointless and childish, but carrying this idea over onto the road is especially asinine.

Braking isn’t painful. Seriously, it’s not – try it and see. And believe it or not, it’s far safer to do so when approaching stopped cars on the roadside, or bicyclists, or pedestrians. You’re going to get where you were going, in extreme situations, perhaps 45 seconds later than intended, but most often it’s down to ten seconds or less. If your time is that valuable – oh, bullshit, it isn’t, so get over it. Slowing or, god forbid, even stopping to prevent a close encounter or potentially dangerous situation is not going to count against you in any way. Moreover, if the hazard is in your lane, then oncoming traffic actually has the right of way. This means, to spell it out in small words, you wait for them.

Between the lines, all the time, every time. Why do I even have to mention this? The lane markings are there for a reason, and it’s as a guide to prevent, you know, little inconveniences like head-on collisions. Staying within those guides, as opposed to cutting corners or sweeping wide, takes literally an immeasurable amount more effort – you might have to bring the other hand into play and will have to stop playing with yourself, but so be it. If you’re physically unable to remain in the lane, you’re undoubtedly going too damn fast. It’s a really stupid thing, and I have no idea how people justify it to themselves, but I see it a lot. There’s even a thing here where, when a painted divider widens between lanes, people feel this is extra space for them to use in cornering (and even on perfectly straight roads, and try to figure that one out,) never actually realizing that it’s a bad situation if the oncoming driver behaves in exactly the same way.

It’s not a matter of special privilege. We’re all on the same roads, we all have the same importance behind being there, we all have the same frustrations. There’s nothing that makes you special – I’m sorry to be so blunt and direct about it, but you’re old enough to drive, you can handle it now – buck up. There are a lot of drivers, it seems, that rely on everyone else on the road obeying the laws so that they’re free not to. And there are plenty that feel that their presence on the road is somehow more important than everyone else. I know this is hard to believe, but there is no royalty in the US at all, and especially not in North Carolina.

If the traffic light has stopped working, the intersection has become an all-way stop. Seems like simple logic, but there are much simpler people out there, a lot of them. I think they believe that, if there is no red light, then it’s somehow safe to enter an intersection, again, never really fathoming that anyone else believing the exact same thing means lots of mangled metal and pooling blood. It never seems to register that there is no green light – you are not denied permission, you have never received it in the first place.

Turn signals are not an advanced skill set. This is apparently a well-kept secret, but pushing up on that little lever, as fatiguing as that might be, means turning right, while down means left. This applies to all turns, and even lane changes. Again, a reminder about competition and privilege, but it’s actually a good thing to let others know what the fuck you’re about to do, and follows this arcane concept called courtesy. Look it up if you need to. And you might, because a turn signal is not considered permission to cut someone off or change lanes without safe clearance – nothing is, actually. If you need to get out of the lane you’re in, you wait until it is clear and safe to do so. It might take as long as the average YouTube video of someone crashing their skateboard, and we all know how excruciating it is to sit that long – it’s like waiting for the microwave to finish with that damn burrito. Agony!

The laws of physics will make you their little bitch if you need the reminder. No matter how much in control you believe yourself to be, no matter what kind of driver you tell yourself you are, simple physics still rules and couldn’t care less about your ego. The faster a vehicle goes, the more effort it takes to stop, and the more likely it is to break traction. And the more sudden you have to maneuver, the more likely the vehicle is to tell you to go fuck yourself. Truly experienced drivers never believe they are in control, only that there are situations where the chances of losing control are far less than others. Such situations include safe following distances, safe maneuvers, and speed appropriate to conditions.

All bets are off. We are a betting species. We believe, constantly, that while something bad might happen, as long as it doesn’t happen right now, then we are ahead of the game. It’s okay to leave our lane on a blind hill or curve because the chance of an oncoming car coming through right now is low enough to save us the supreme effort of having to slow down. Too many people really do believe that if it hasn’t happened yet, it will continue not to happen. These same people keep buying lottery tickets, so apparently they aren’t consistent in these beliefs, but then again, they’re special, so who cares what physics, experience, or logic tells us?

What’s disturbing about this is, how simple it is to avoid it all. The best technique is usually called defensive driving, but there are probably a lot of sports-minded chuzzlewits out there who don’t like the idea of pussy defense, so it’s better to just call it accepting the risks. At any time, something bad might happen, and believing that is the first step towards handling it. But more importantly, driving a vehicle means having the responsibility of an inherently dangerous mass of metal, one that there is no perfect control over. And when something goes awry, the potential for fatalities is significant – just ask any emergency responder. It’s really, really hard to weigh the likelihood of killing someone, including ourselves, against the horrible inconvenience of driving a bit slower or being a little considerate of those around us. I know, right?

And worse, so much of the irritation with other drivers comes from them behaving exactly like us. Too many people seem to believe that hey, if they aren’t going to drive respectfully and safely, why should I do so? Which is the same as saying, “If they can be stupid, why should I be the smart one?” Funny, I always thought that was kind of the goal in the first place, but if you’re the type to resent being better than the fucktards, well, I know a few that aren’t even allowed to drive, so…

Scooped

Al Denelsbeck

common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina portrait showing old injuriesI had another session with the immutable Mr Bugg yesterday, and I figured he’d be trying to scoop me on posting, but here we are. More importantly, I know he can’t show off any images of my subject here, because I encountered it after I dropped him off.

I spotted this common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) heading out from an ornamental pond across the sidewalk as I drove past, and I turned around quickly and headed back, because its path was going to take it directly across the road. By the time I’d parked and gotten out with the camera, it had already made it to the road surface but not yet out into traffic. Getting run over is a common demise for turtles, more often in the spring, as their treks towards mating or egg-laying opportunities carry them across busy roads. On occasion, some helpful passerby will move them from the road, but the important thing is to take them in the direction they were facing and not just to the nearest roadside, since they were going that way for a reason. So while it would have been easy to push this one back into the grass immediately behind it, I carried it instead across all traffic lanes and deposited it in the grass on the far side before getting these images.

And as you can see, this is not its first encounter with traffic, or most likely not at least – that cracked shell, an older injury, almost certainly came from a car, and it has a cracked snout to match, which you’ll get a slightly better view of shortly. My subject, defensively grumpy as the species always is, was not going to pose in the best light angle and I was disinclined to continue stressing it out. By the way, safely handling one of these, the largest turtles we have in the area, takes a little knowledge. Their heads can come a lot further out than we typically see, reaching well over either shoulder, and most distinctly, they do so with lightning speed, sometimes able to dislodge someone’s grip on their shell from the violent nature of it, but also easily able to startle someone into dropping them. The legs also have great digging claws that can be used to fend off typical grips on their carapace, so it takes a certain approach, with varying recommendations across the net. Some people suggest simply gripping the fat tail, while others say this can dislocate the vertabrae – myself, I have never seen nor heard of examples of this, but it never hurts to play it safe. The best suggestion is to scoop it up with a shovel, but not many people have one handy, so the next best is to grasp the rear of the shell on both sides of the tail, which is awkward and doesn’t keep you from the hind legs. For this one, I just used my fingertips to grip the edges of the carapace between the front and rear legs, keeping back from the reach of the head.

Here’s another shot because everyone needs a snapping turtle portrait for their phone backgrounds. But I have to wonder where this little bugger was last week, when it would have been appropriate?

common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina showing snout and carapace damage

You don’t know danger

Al Denelsbeck

green treefrog Hyla cinerea backlit on pickerelweed Pontederia leafThere are a few people, it seems, who imagine wildlife photography to be kind of a rough-and-tumble business involving forbidding locales and exposure to challenging and sometimes dangerous encounters with fauna. To those people I only want to say, “You’re absolutely right!” While out capturing the images within this post, I was better than ankle-deep in some muck that could have sucked my sandals clean off, had I not been careful, and there was even a chance of being stung by a bee, perhaps more than once. And there was no one within, oh, about two hundred meters or so. The walk back to the car alone, at the edge of a shopping center parking lot, was a good thirty meters through poorly-cut weeds. Uphill.

Anyway, this was a brief side trip, actually back in September, a few days before this post featuring images from the same excursion (it sounds so much better using the big words than when I say I just stopped at the pond on my way past to see what was happening.) But for a casual check on conditions, I shot over 160 frames in 35 minutes and I couldn’t begin to tell you how many individuals I saw; more than I initially thought at least, since the second image in the previous post came from the same day. Safe to say it was busy down there.

When I say, “casual,” it means I didn’t bother with the versatile macro flash rig and was primarily shooting in existing light, which reduced the number of options and keepers from the session, largely because the breeze was quite stiff and pickerelweed stems are fairly tall; movement was a constant issue, and to keep the shutter speed up I was shooting at larger apertures most often, which kept the depth of field pretty limited at these magnifications. And this is more magnified than it might seem, because all of the green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea) that I breathtakingly encountered were juveniles, this year’s brood, and so about half the body length of adults; this means an average of about 25mm. You can easily see the net effect here, with the eyes and foretoes sharp while the hind end of the body has already gone well out of focus.

Treefrogs need to stay moist, so they don’t like direct sunlight or hot days, which meant that most of the ones I saw were staying to the shady side of the leaves at least, but more often even well down into the thicket of stems, reducing the available light even more. Still, the color tends to be richer in the natural light images; you can compare natural light and flash with the photos in this post, from the same location. And while the selective focus has to be pinned down on the eyes most often – we’re put-off by not seeing the eyes sharp in a photo – it does lend a somewhat surreal look to the rest of the image.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea drowsing on pickerelweed Pontederia
Treefrogs are primarily nocturnal, so they spend most of the day snoozing in safe locations. It was midday and many of my subjects, while aware of my presence, allowed me a close approach as long as I did so slowly, but perhaps half just didn’t want me around and jumped away to more distant leaves. Thus the variety of the images that I snagged was limited, and pretty typical of the daytime poses. On a couple of occasions, though, I caught something a little more interesting, like two of them sharing the same leaf side-by-side.

two green treefrogs Hyla cinerea sharing the same pickerelweed Pontederia leaf
Mated pair? Siblings? The latter is somewhat likely, given the large number of eggs that got deposited in the pond and the same general age of the individuals, but since these are under breeding age the chance of them being romantically entwined is virtually nil. Frogs also don’t have the social structures that we have and no particular reason to hang out together (“You like mayflies? I like mayflies!”) so I’m more inclined to put this down to just happening to settle on the same leaf when it came time to catch a few winks. It’s rare enough to see that I had to go in closer and do a portraity shot (spellcheck doesn’t like that word.)

two green treefrogs Hyla cinerea being abstract
Remember what I said about keeping the eyes sharp, and about short depth of field? Yeah, imagine trying to get the camera lined up just right, with the image plane (essentially the back of the camera) equidistant from the eyes of both of these spuds, while the wind was blowing, and without disturbing them. Standing in muck and awkwardly aiming down from above the leaf, without touching it or any neighboring leaves which would set up warning vibrations. I’ve said it before: macro work can occasionally make you ache in muscles you never realized you had. You might have heard the saying that good artists suffer for their art, but at the very least, even mediocre ones make you suffer through listening to them pursuing it…

Later that same evening, as they also say (probably not the same ‘they,’ but anyway,) I found another of the same species in the even more exotic and intrepid locale of the backyard fence, even if this one is notably darker than the others. Since we don’t see too many green treefrogs in the immediate vicinity I’ve been pleased to spot several this year, and this one posed much more dynamically for me, possibly because it was dazzled by the headlamp and really couldn’t tell what I was doing.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea poised alertly on fence
At nearly 11 PM the flash was a necessity, and I could use f16 and get a better focus range, while the conditions let me get in even closer for the best portrait of the bunch. Or at least I think so, though others may have a different opinion. They’d be wrong, but that’s still allowable…

Spotted frogs

Al Denelsbeck

As promised, I am back to reveal where the frogs are, but just in case you’re late to the game and haven’t seen the original challenge, it can be found here, while the remainder of this post will continue below the fold.

Frogspotting

Al Denelsbeck

Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True is fond of posting readers’ photos with some animal camouflaged within and challenging everyone to “spot the [blank].” I never submitted these photos to him, but as a lead-in to further images of the species, I’m going to host my own challenge, with the keyword being “frog” (as if the title of the post left you hanging.) The first isn’t too difficult, but if you find yourself needing help, you can click on the image to open a larger version in another tab.

title says it all
There is a little bit of curious trivia concerning both of the photos in this post, but it’ll wait until I provide the follow-up, where I will also reveal the targets.

But if you felt that the first one was too easy, this next one should wipe that smug grin from your face, using higher contrast and a much more complex scene to sadistic advantage.

title says it all
So have at it, and I will be back in a bit with the reveal.

Things are looking down

Al Denelsbeck

Once again, like clockwork – or I guess calendarwork is the more accurate description – we find ourselves on the verge of National Grouch Day, which is this Saturday; that’s October 15th for those of us who are days-of-the-week-challenged. Whoever was responsible for this could have scheduled near the first day of school, or the day after the idiotic Daylight Saving change, or when income taxes are due, or at the very least the first Monday of something, but noooo, just “middle of October.” It’s this kind of lack of foresight that screws things up regularly.

The one bright spot to all of this is that virtually no one knows it’s coming, so when we begin reluctantly trying to foster the sentiment among others, they can respond genuinely without forewarning – there’s nothing worse than a fake grouch, not even those horrible grimaces that are produced when everybody is lined up for a group portrait at work. The optimum effect is achieved when you catch someone having a good day (I apologize for the coarse language) and can crash them down here with the rest of us, but who I am kidding? That kind of shit never works; it’s probably not even worth trying. But just to get my own thing going, I once again present a list of things you can attempt to help, not celebrate, but at least recognize the day, fully realizing myself that no one’s going to try or even be reading this goddamn post. I’ve done this, not once, but twice before, and people were still as upbeat and cheerful as ever when the 15th rolled around so, yeah, thanks to all of you for that. You don’t even deserve these ideas.

And remember, it’s important that we all take part, so no cheating and picking only the suggestions that affect others.

  • Wear something too small

  • Schedule the kids for a surprise dental visit

  • Order the crappiest thing at your favorite restaurant

  • Call in sick to work, especially if there’s some big event you’re coordinating. Leave lots of unfinished business too

  • Switch the labels on all the spices in the cabinet

  • Drive very slow in a no-passing zone, then speed up when the opportunity finally comes to be passed. Of course you slow down again immediately afterward

  • Definitely go without deodorant

  • Screw with your alarm with your eyes closed

  • Sniff a lot, as if you have a cold. Refuse tissues in surprise every time they’re offered

  • Insert long pauses

  • into your sentences

  • Especially in meetings

  • Replace the hand cleaner/degreaser with lotion. Lilac-scented

  • Leave the car radio volume up full blast

  • Remove two primary keys from your keyboard

  • Re-microwave an already popped bag of popcorn

  • Get a squeaky chair from a thrift store

  • Use lots of incorrect grammar on a forum that’s really hard to sign on to

  • Schedule yourself for a surprise dental visit

  • Take up two parking spaces, but end-to-end rather than side-by-side (halfway pulled through.) As the lot fills, from a distance there will appear to be two empty spaces when there are none

  • Get several short, curly hairs embedded in the bar of soap

  • Replace nail polish with greasepaint

  • Leave fifteen seconds of near-silence on voicemail accounts

  • Make chocolate-chip cookies for everyone with unsweetened chocolate. Or raisins

  • Do one of those “easy” projects on Pinterest

  • Hide someone’s damn selfie-stick

  • Pay attention to the election

    • Make it stop, oh god make it stopA few of those were solicited from Dan Palmer, mostly because I got tired of doing this thankless task. I don’t think he’s very accomplished at being genuinely grouchy, instead more like playacting, but then again, he does have two teenaged daughters, which is something that could be added to the list I guess, if I posted with a bit more advance notice…

    There are people who believe that National Grouch Day should be devoted solely to personal efforts, without any attempts to instill such feelings in others. These people, it goes without saying, are selfish little shits who believe that grouchiness is a spectator sport rather than participatory. Feel free to set them straight. You know how you’re always told, “Cheer up! It’s [some holiday]”? Right. This time, it’s the cheerful people who are our targets. It’s still not gonna be fun or satisfying, because someone will find a way to ruin it, but… ah, hell. You know what? Don’t even bother.

    Given all that, I’ll leave you with Lewis Black, who is better at it than anyone I know. Or worse. Whatever. Too bad he has an audience full of ‘norms’ who seem to be doing that spectator thing…

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