Tunez of the Week

These are my musical obsessions for the week. Check em' out!

Pulaski At Night by Andrew Bird

Something Good Can Work bt Two Door Cinema Club

Chandelier by Sia (LOVE THIS VID)

Soon We'll Be Found- Also by Sia

The Ballad of the Westwind Kid- Brumby 

Little Black Submarines- The Black Keys

Learn Something: Prince Stolas

So... just as a disclaimer before someone gets on here and starts trying to burn me for being a heretic... I am not a believer in the Goetic traditions, practices or beliefs. I am also not encouraging you to look into or practice these beliefs. I just stumbled upon this information a few days ago and found it vastly interesting.

So... today I've been studying a demon by the name of Prince Stolas.
He is found first and foremost in "The Lesser Key of Solomon," also known as the Clavicula Salomonis Regis or the Lemegeton.
This book is essentially a large anonymous spell book that was put together in the mid-seventeenth century. It is often associated with black magic and is divided into five separate books.

The book we are going to be looking at today is called the Ars Goetia which contains the hierarchy of the 72 demons of hell. The hierarchy includes titles such as "Grand Marquis" and "King," etc. which I find to be so very cool. I'm not sure why that is so adorable to me but it is.

I was just scrolling on tumblr the other day when I stumbled across what may be my favorite demon of all time (is there such a thing? Is that allowed? It's happening.)

His name is Stolas.

He is a great prince of hell, commanding twenty six legions of demons.
He is also known as Stolos, and is often depicted as a crowned owl with long legs, a raven, or a man.

He lords over the knowledge of poisonous plants and herbs, astronomy, and precious stones. If summoned, supposedly he can be convinced to teach the summoner these things.

LOOK AT HIM. This is Stolas as depicted in Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal (The Infernal Dictionary) which is essentially just a big ol' demonology dictionary.

 

I'm sorry, but if that isn't the most adorable demon you've ever seen then you're 100% wrong all the time.
Here's a quote from a tumblr user that I thought described my feelings quite well (swears omitted to protect your innocent minds)

"You hear 'demon' and you picture like, terrifying monstrosities that if you summon them you would know what true fear looks like or beautiful enchanting beings that have silver tongues and jet black eyes, who lure you in with silky words. You picture terror and allure and glamour and seduction... and then there's THIS guy. This is Stolas, one of the GREAT PRINCES OF HELL. This freaking pokemon of a demon commands 26 LEGIONS OF DEMONS. 

Imagine summoning a demon, ready to lay waste to a countryside or something and this guy poofing up, preening his feathers. 'm.. M-WHO DARES SUMMON A GREAT PRINCE OF HELL, OH PETTY MORTAL!? ... *hoot hoot*"

Anyway, I just find this depiction and description of demons to be crazy interesting. Each of the 72 demons has a kind of market over certain types of knowledge and mischief. Maybe I just liked it because it was so vastly different from my own beliefs, but something about it just totally caught my eye. I really like learning about the beliefs of other people.
If you'd like to learn more, you can check out these Wikipedia articles:

The seventy-two demons

The Lesser Key of Solomon

One more disclaimer, pretty pretty please do not mess with the summoning of demons. That stuff is sketchy and dangerous and never ever a good thing.
DO NOT.

Learn Something: Toxoplasma

 Yeah, remember that time I said I was constantly horrified and amazed by the natural world around us? Well I just found a doozy.

There is a disease called Toxoplasmosis that is caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii.  that actually effects most warm blooded species, but the parasite's primary host is cats. Although it can asexually reproduce within virtually any warm-blooded animal, its only way to sexually reproduce is actually within the intestines of a cat.
Here's an image found on Wikipedia:

Anyway, this parasite works pretty hard to ensure that its species survives. Generally speaking this disease is passed on through the ingestion of fecal matter from cats and through the ingestion of raw meats. But I found one of its survival tactics to be completely bizarre.

Wanna guess what it does?
Betcha can't!

Well, I'll give you a clue. When scientists began testing rodents that had been infected by this parasite, they found that it most often concentrated near the amygdala in the brain. Now the amygdala sort of... presides over feelings of anxiety and fear. According to Wikipedia, when these scientists began their testing they found that

"Rats infected with the parasite show increased levels of activity and decreased neophobic behavior. Similarly, infected mice show alterations in patterns of locomotion and exploratory behavior during experimental tests. These patterns include traveling greater distances, moving at higher speeds, accelerating for longer periods of time, and showing a decreased pause-time when placed in new arenas. Infected rodents have also been shown to have differences in traditional measures of anxiety, such as elevated plus mazes, open field arenas, and social interaction tests."

Cool, right? Essentially the toxoplasma kind of took out a lot of the rats' fear center, making them bolder and allowing them to take more risks.

But that isn't the most insane part. Not by half.

Scientists also began to find that a certain smell was actually drawing the rats in. This specific smell was one that generally rodents would hold a pretty strong aversion to. Their natural instincts would tell them to run.
Wanna guess what that smell was?
CAT. URINE.

Toxoplasmosis was actually causing the rats to be more drawn to their predators in order for the disease to be passed on.
 Manuel Berdoy, a zoologist at Oxford University in England, said that  it is "astonishing that [T. gondii] may be able to target specifically the neural pathways responsible for processing cat odors."

As a final kicker, some preliminary tests showed a very strange part of the brain light up when infected rodents smelled these strong cat odors.
The part of the brain that has to do with sexual attraction.

WHAT.
WHAT.
WHAT.
Just process that for a minute.
WHAT.
Parasites are terrifying. And amazing.

Oh, and another fun fact, T. gondii can also infect humans and research is beginning to show that it may cause some behavioral changes within people as well. Apparently a study in the Czech Republic found that latent toxoplasmosis patients were involved in accidents 2.65 more times than people without toxoplasmosis infection. (Wikipedia)  Also, infection with the parasite has been related to quite a few neurological disorders including schizophrenia. Apparently there is also a close positive link between toxoplasmosis and suicide. As such, "crazy cat lady syndrome" has been coined as a term that describes the link between the two.

!!!HOWEVER!!! Please don't let the fear of this keep you from giving a kitty a home, or cause you to get rid of a kitty you already have. Research has found that cat ownership does not strongly increase the risk of catching T. gondii infection. In fact, eating unwashed vegetables and undercooked meat hold a much higher risk factor.
Wash your hands and keep your kids away from the litter box and you should be just fine.  I should also add that generally speaking, this parasite will only cause mild flu-like symptoms. If the infected person has a weak immune system it can in rare cases be fatal. 
Yaaaaaaay!

EDIT: I found a Stuff You Should Know article about toxoplasma! SYSK is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. You can find it here, worth the listen!

My Overenthusiasm for Dragons Scares People

For those of you who have not yet seen How To Train Your Dragon 2, I highly recommend it. I went with my family a few weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it! Here's my favorite song from the soundtrack. It never fails to cheer me up.
It's called 'Where No One Goes' by Jonsi.

Anyway, back to my main point.
My friend and I stopped at a local McDonalds to pick up some food to aid in the process of ombre'ing my hair that we were about to undertake.
As per usual, I planned to order the mighty kids meal with the 6 piece nuggets. It is a delight. My strength in weakness. My weight gain in college.

Upon arrival at the drive through ordering speaker, I stumbled on two delights. FIRSTLY, kids meals now come with a go-gurt option. DAY MADE!
Secondly, guess what toys had just come in?
You guessed it!
HTTYD 2.

I'm sure everyone in the back room at McDonald's went temporarily deaf as I shouted "THEY HAVE DRAGON TOYS?!?!!?" With unbridled incredulous glee.
Unfortunately I also interrupted the speaker lady's welcomes. I think she was momentarily stunned  by the force of my outburst.

I abashedly ordered my meal, only to perk up again when she asked me what gender of toy I wanted. (B.S. Dragons are definitely a joy for any gender.)
"I DON'T EVEN CARE AS LONG AS I HAVE A DRAGON TOY." I replied
(I'm 20 years old. It's fine. Dragons are cool.)
At this point this poor girl was probably so done with me.
She told me my total and sent me on my way.
The dude who handed me my meal was cracking up. He knew. But I had my meal and I was unstoppable.

Of course I ferociously devoured my meal in the car, leading to an incredibly attractive strawberry go-gurt mustache that would make most grown men jealous.

Eagerly, I tore open the package of my toy, fully expecting a small dragon figurine or some cool little book or something.

THIS.
WHAT. IS. THIS.
Literally the stupidest thing I have ever held in my hands.
Is it a frisbee?
It is a boomerang?
Is it a massive failure that destroyed the momentary childhood that glimmered in my eyes?

The days of good McDonald's toys have ended

Also, the new happy meal box is terrifying.

Yeah, see you in my nightmares.

Artings

A few months ago I ran to the thrift store and picked up a 50 cent journal that I could paste little artsy odds and ends in whenever the mood struck.
The cover was beautiful, and when I returned home I found a lot of creepy articles from the 70's with titles like "Escape From the Living Tomb" and two copies of "Migrane: The Driven Person's Pain" that had been cut out and carefully preserved between the pages.
So... The journal is probably possessed. If I start writing "enemies of the heir beware" on the walls in blood please just let it happen because that would probably be the coolest thing that's happened to me in my entire life.

Anywhee, here are some of the recent pages from my journal. I really need to get a nicer camera.

Who even knows what's going on here.

Love them owls.

BUGSSSS

Alice in Wonderland characters- created with coffee splashes

A sailor frog, of course.

Pugs on wheels.

Nothing is complete without depressing existentialist poetry written on old receipts. Obviously poetry is also not a major strong point of mine.

A Billy Collins copycat poem and my name written in ancient runes. I do need to fix the poem so that there aren't two "cry's" in it.

Sewings

I've been looking at a lot of refashion blogs on the internet this week and really admired these peoples' ability to take something they found at a thrift shop and turn it into an absolute treasure. I spend so much time at our local thrift shop that I practically live there as the thrift shop troll so I thought I'd give it a try! If you can save all that money by just finding something cheap and ugly and turning it awesome, why not?
First thing I realized is that I am 100% NOT the sewing prodigy I thought I would be. I definitely cannot sew a straight line to save my life. But hey! This one actually turned out relatively well when you keep all that in mind. I've got two more dresses that I'm working on so posts about them will probably come later.

So here was the lovely dress beforehand.

It was long, too big, and riddled with all sorts of holes but I loooved the color and the patterns.
SO...
I removed the GIANT shoulder pads, brought in the waist, and shortened the sleeves and the hemline, and added in a zipper so that I could actually get the thing on which resulted in:

This is a lovely work selfie I took while balancing my phone awkwardly on a large stack of papers. HIGH CLASS! Also I'm standing in front of a garbage can. DOUBLE HIGH CLASS!

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it. Here's the pattern on the chest that made me fall in love:

Good times, good times. It turned out far better than I thought it would! Tallyho!

Sing the Thing: Kodaline

As I said before, this blog is a place to explore all different types of creativity and experimentation. I've been working in my life to go after all of the things that I'm curious about even if I may not necessarily be good at it. So... without further ado, here is an audio of me singing one of my favorite songs by Kodaline: "All I want." It is neither good nor perfect, but it's something I enjoy and that's what really matters :)

Learn Something: Cordyceps

The natural world continuously amazes me. I'm filled with a constant sense of wonder at how amazing and complex and frightening the world around us is. This weekend I was watching the jungle episode of Planet Earth and became soon fascinated by a fungus that it mentioned called cordyceps. Of course, I had to investigate!!!

Essentially, the cordyceps is a parasitic fungi that includes around 400 species. Many of these species are specialized to affect a certain type of organism. According to Wikipedia,
        "The generic name Cordyceps is derived from the Latin words cord, meaning "club", and ceps,   meaning "head"

When a cordyceps fungus attacks its host, the vegetative part of the fungi will begin to invade and actually replace the tissue of the host itself, taking it over and bursting through its body- resulting in, well... THIS

(All images found on Google)                                  

Isn't that insane? Insanely cool.
Some cordyceps also have the ability to affect their host's behavior to ensure survival. Many forms of cordyceps will cause their host to wander away from its home and find an area that is perfect for fungal growth. The insect will then climb a nearby plant and attach itself to the plant. It will then die and the fungus will send out its little sprouts as pictured above.

MIND. CONTROLLING. FUNGI.


Also crazy- many species of cordyceps are used medicinally today. Sweet, huh?