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shadowkat1. Dang, Smartbitches, they lured me into another book buying spree...the books were between $1.99-7.99, but still. I swear, my drug of choice, appears to be pulpy genre books. I find them comforting. When I was between the ages of 12-16, I used to get bags full of books from my Aunt and my Grandmother, and they were genre reads. Romance novels, mystery novels, science fiction and fantasy. And when I visited my Grandparents, I'd sit in a chair with a stack of books, and just read one after the other, happily ensconced in that other world. The books weren't literary masterpieces, and I can't remember most of the titles...but I loved them.
It somehow pushed the world away if just for a little while.
The worst part about the book buying spree, is I may not read half of what I bought. I have over 400 books on my Kindle, and over 1000 in my apartment, 75% of which I've yet to read. I don't know how this happens...I appear to hoard books. Other people go to libraries. Co-worker has become a trustee at his local library, which is a good thing since he's a huge genre fan. Also, I may convince him to add the novel I wrote to his libraries shelves. Getting a book you wrote into a local library isn't as easy as it sounds. My father has yet to accomplish it. This is actually the reason I stopped going to the library. I took the library's rejection of my Dad's books personally. If they can shelve Stephanie Meyer and El James, they can shelve my Dad's and my book.
And...I went back and bought more books for $2.99-$4.99. Remember when paperbacks only cost $1-5? Just me? Once upon a time I worked at the Little Professor Book Store in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. I loved selling books. Actually, my favorite part was helping people find a book they were looking for, or un-boxing new books. Unfortunately the owners hired more people than were necessary to run the book store. So I was weirdly in competition with the owner in helping customers find books. He'd order me to go sit behind the cash register and work it (which I sucked at) or do inventory (not a heck of a lot better.)
2. This quote was found on the same podcast that caused the impromptu book buying spree...of ahem pulpy romance novels recommended on the site.
I may be wrong about this, but I'm willing to bet "Riley Moment" refers to Riley in Buffy the Vampire Slayer...and ahem Buffy/Riley during that show.
Proof Jennifer Cruisie was a Buffy fan. Although I already knew that, having read two of her books. [She's okay. I'm not a huge fan of contemporary, mainly because I don't find them relateable or believable. My suspension of disbelief works better in a novel that is removed from my own experience. This is true of television and film as well. The closer it is to my own experience, the more likely I'll stumble upon something that will annoy me or will be difficult to handwave. OTOH, I rather like books that are close to my "emotional" experience, just not to my "intellectual" or "physical" experience.
Romance novels I read to appease my heart and emotions...so my mind can flutter into silence.
3. Rather loved this bit...and it's so true. Reminds me a little of a response I wanted to give to a crazy book meme that I saw a while back about being upset with people who don't like the same book you do or a book you recommended.
I think this true. As a writer, I remind myself that not everyone will like or relate to whatever it is I'm writing. I had a fight with myself today. I was musing on whether I should have gone to the Iowa Writer's Workshop and gotten an MFA in Creative Writing as planned after undergrad. Should I have fought to go? (This was after I fought with myself on whether I should have gotten an MBA when I was 40.)I didn't for a lot of reasons. (Besides the fact that I've discovered over time that school tends to be non-conducive to actual learning, the teaching methodology, aka lecture method and reliance on Multiple Choice tests, often get in the way of learning anything worth while. But it probably works very well for human parrots. I, however, tend to start to zone halfway through the lecture. Much prefer discussion groups, less tendency to fall asleep.) My parents took off for Australia. I'd been talked out of it by various instructors who felt that the workshop would have frustrated me and forced me to go in a direction writing wise that didn't fit. And well, Iowa. And no money. It was frigging expensive and hard to get into. I had chosen my undergrad for the creative writing programs, the innovative course scheduling, and two professors, one in political science (who'd written my honor's American Government text-book) and one in Creative Writing. Of the two, I ended up with the Creative Writing instructor, who recently died at 90 years of age. His mind half gone from dementia. James Yaffe, he was published. Had written over 30 murder mysteries, teleplays, novels, and essays in his lifetime. He taught me more about the craft of writing and how people read or view writing than anyone, I guess. And I still hear his voice in my head. We had a tough comprehensive course with him. My undergrad was odd, one class each month, or in some cases for two months. Just that class. So I had a creative writing course in which we had to write a short story every single week. Sometimes two a week. No excuses. With four days off in between -- in which we'd been assigned to revise one of the stories we'd written the previous month. I remember writing a story about a man on airplane next to a sick female passenger who uncomfortably reminded him of his ailing mother. I wrote this story with a 105 degree fever in the computer lab located in the basement of the school library, next to fellow classmates. I couldn't afford my own computer in college. And computers back then were the old IBM's with green screens, no internet, no email, just log in and type. You saved everything on floppy discs and backed up to two discs just in case. Also printed the stories off on lined green paper with key hole punches on both sides. I do not miss those printers or the computers. That said, I did admittedly write more...without the internet as a distraction.
After we turned in our stories, several would be selected to be read aloud by the professor to the class or discussed. Everyone would read the stories on their own, write comments, and discuss them in class. The writer -- was not permitted to speak, answer questions, or say anything until the discussion was completed. We had to be a fly on the wall so to speak.
I remember during one of these sessions, having a story read, discussed, and realizing that no one knew what it was about. Well except for one or two people. Yaffe told me that I couldn't be oblique or vague, I had to give the reader clues. In another story, loosely based on my grandparents, I'd written about my grandfather who'd lost most if not all of his cognitive abilities after having three brain tumors removed. A fellow classmate hated my story and ranted at me for the three brain tumors, because her close relative had died from one. Yaffe told me that it didn't matter that in my experience my grandfather had three and survived, I should have left it with one. Most readers would only have experienced one, and this threw them out of the story. Through Yaffe, I learned how powerful the reader's perspective and take on things could be, and how crippling to a writer. One wonders why writers bother at all.
But I also learned, or it was reinforced at any rate...that we don't see the world the same. And that's okay.
In re-reading the above quote, I find I have more to say on it. It can be very alienating to dislike something everyone else loves, or vice versa. Sometimes it is worse the other way around. I saw that a lot with people who say loved Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey, while others condemned them or shamed them for it. I remember being pissed that people loved Me Before You...there was something about that book that felt like an assault on my sensibilities and moral character. Which I'm guessing was what spurred the reactions on 50 Shades. It's odd, it happens less with male oriented genres. Not that it doesn't happen, just less. Bret Easton Ellis...people have been shamed for reading Easten Ellis, and Ian Fleming. (LOL!) Also, hello, super hero or action comics...has gotten a bad rap.
Don't get me started on the erotica field. (Folks if no real humans were actively used or involved, it's okay.)
Every once and a while someone will pop up with Book shaming blog...or list. The latest was 100 Books You'd Never Brag About Reading...and often, it's rants by literary writers about people reading children's and young adult books. As if shaming someone for what they read for pleasure is going to change anything? Reading is a private thing. A solitary thing. We do it alone. OR if with people, often by blocking them out. I read mostly surrounded by people -- with noisy, stinking, crazy, people standing on top of my, scrunched beside me, yelling and chatting beside me or in my ear. My mother has no idea how I manage it. But I do. Sometimes, or more often than I would like, I find myself re-reading the same sentences over and over and over and over again. Particularly if the book is literary or requires a certain level of concentration. I did however manage to read Don Dellilo's Underworld on the subway -- but it was on the subway in the 1990s, before smartphones, which are different. I vaguely miss the people who read books. Back in the 1990s and all the way up to roughly 2009 or thereabouts...everyone had a paperback book or hardcover book, some people read the paper, carefully folding it into segments or the New Yorker Magazine. We'd silently read, elbow to elbow. I wrote on the subway back then in notebooks, three lined paper, and a pen.
The subways were also less crowded back then, and the passengers somehow older.
I'm in the middle generation, the less populated one, crammed between the Baby Boomers and their offspring. Everyone around me is either in their 60s and 70s or 20s and 30s...I feel like an island in of myself. And this is especially true packed on the subways. Also most of the time, nowadays, I can't understand a word people are saying. Used to be, that I could. Now, people speak in other languages...from across the world and back again.
But I still read. Look forward to it actually. Having an hour to read in the morning and an hour to read in the afternoon or early evening. The rest of the time that I do it...feels like stealing time.
But then I was always stealing time to read. Happiest knee-deep in the pages of a book. Preferably one that didn't require an essay, a test, or any lofty thoughts at the end.
As I write all of this, it occurs to me that I would have made a piss-poor academic or English Lit Professor. Stuck with a curriculum or a stack of books I'm told are worthy by some long dead dusty authority. I don't know. Path not taken...the plans laid out but never followed.
4. Smartbitches podcast is cracking me up. It's hilarious.
Apparently someone actually wrote an erotica horror story with a HP Lovecraftian Elder God who has sex with the male crew.
Not to be out done...someone also wrote a book about...well entitle "The Orca King".
Also according to the podcast, Orcas are not whales but actually dolphins. I did not know that.
It somehow pushed the world away if just for a little while.
The worst part about the book buying spree, is I may not read half of what I bought. I have over 400 books on my Kindle, and over 1000 in my apartment, 75% of which I've yet to read. I don't know how this happens...I appear to hoard books. Other people go to libraries. Co-worker has become a trustee at his local library, which is a good thing since he's a huge genre fan. Also, I may convince him to add the novel I wrote to his libraries shelves. Getting a book you wrote into a local library isn't as easy as it sounds. My father has yet to accomplish it. This is actually the reason I stopped going to the library. I took the library's rejection of my Dad's books personally. If they can shelve Stephanie Meyer and El James, they can shelve my Dad's and my book.
And...I went back and bought more books for $2.99-$4.99. Remember when paperbacks only cost $1-5? Just me? Once upon a time I worked at the Little Professor Book Store in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. I loved selling books. Actually, my favorite part was helping people find a book they were looking for, or un-boxing new books. Unfortunately the owners hired more people than were necessary to run the book store. So I was weirdly in competition with the owner in helping customers find books. He'd order me to go sit behind the cash register and work it (which I sucked at) or do inventory (not a heck of a lot better.)
2. This quote was found on the same podcast that caused the impromptu book buying spree...of ahem pulpy romance novels recommended on the site.
Carrie: The main character in Fast Women is a divorcee, and people who have read that book will know what I mean when I say that two of the women to whom I have given that book went on to what we call having a Riley moment, which is a reference –
Sarah: Having a Riley moment?
Carrie: Yes, it’s a reference to a stage that is described in Fast Women. It’s the transitional, casual sex that divorcees have before they move on to a real relationship, just to prove to themselves that they still got it.
I may be wrong about this, but I'm willing to bet "Riley Moment" refers to Riley in Buffy the Vampire Slayer...and ahem Buffy/Riley during that show.
Proof Jennifer Cruisie was a Buffy fan. Although I already knew that, having read two of her books. [She's okay. I'm not a huge fan of contemporary, mainly because I don't find them relateable or believable. My suspension of disbelief works better in a novel that is removed from my own experience. This is true of television and film as well. The closer it is to my own experience, the more likely I'll stumble upon something that will annoy me or will be difficult to handwave. OTOH, I rather like books that are close to my "emotional" experience, just not to my "intellectual" or "physical" experience.
Romance novels I read to appease my heart and emotions...so my mind can flutter into silence.
3. Rather loved this bit...and it's so true. Reminds me a little of a response I wanted to give to a crazy book meme that I saw a while back about being upset with people who don't like the same book you do or a book you recommended.
Sarah: Are there books that you guys have recommended that have the, have always worked? Like, these, this is, this is definitely going to work for you.
RHG: I don’t think there is such a book.
Sarah: I haven’t found it.
Carrie: Yeah, I haven’t found it.
Sarah: That’s really a trick question, ‘cause I have not found one that is, works for every reader.
RHG: And thank God, ‘cause I think that book would be real boring.
Sarah: Yep. And –
RHG: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and it’s funny; if I think about the different reader interests like a big Venn diagram, there are some books that will hit the most overlap, so if you like contemporary romance with smart characters and good dialogue and great worldbuilding and people who have interesting jobs, I can think of, like, four books right away that are going to work for you. But there, there’s, there’s no one book in a subgenre that works unilaterally for every reader, and I always feel bad for people on Twitter that I see, like a couple of years ago, Lord of Scoundrels went on sale for, like, the first time ever. It was like $1.99, and I think it sold so many copies –
Carrie: Oh!
Sarah: – that it hit the New York Times, like, a week later, because everyone on Twitter was like, you must buy this now! And there was this very quiet group of people on, on Twitter saying, I, I, I didn’t, I didn’t really like it. I, it didn’t work for me.
RHG: [Laughs]
Sarah: And I was like, I’m really sorry, ‘cause, you know –
RHG: Aw.
Sarah: – like, a good eighty percent of the world seems to have loved that book at this moment, so it can be very alienating to be like, nope. Nope, that didn’t work.
I think this true. As a writer, I remind myself that not everyone will like or relate to whatever it is I'm writing. I had a fight with myself today. I was musing on whether I should have gone to the Iowa Writer's Workshop and gotten an MFA in Creative Writing as planned after undergrad. Should I have fought to go? (This was after I fought with myself on whether I should have gotten an MBA when I was 40.)I didn't for a lot of reasons. (Besides the fact that I've discovered over time that school tends to be non-conducive to actual learning, the teaching methodology, aka lecture method and reliance on Multiple Choice tests, often get in the way of learning anything worth while. But it probably works very well for human parrots. I, however, tend to start to zone halfway through the lecture. Much prefer discussion groups, less tendency to fall asleep.) My parents took off for Australia. I'd been talked out of it by various instructors who felt that the workshop would have frustrated me and forced me to go in a direction writing wise that didn't fit. And well, Iowa. And no money. It was frigging expensive and hard to get into. I had chosen my undergrad for the creative writing programs, the innovative course scheduling, and two professors, one in political science (who'd written my honor's American Government text-book) and one in Creative Writing. Of the two, I ended up with the Creative Writing instructor, who recently died at 90 years of age. His mind half gone from dementia. James Yaffe, he was published. Had written over 30 murder mysteries, teleplays, novels, and essays in his lifetime. He taught me more about the craft of writing and how people read or view writing than anyone, I guess. And I still hear his voice in my head. We had a tough comprehensive course with him. My undergrad was odd, one class each month, or in some cases for two months. Just that class. So I had a creative writing course in which we had to write a short story every single week. Sometimes two a week. No excuses. With four days off in between -- in which we'd been assigned to revise one of the stories we'd written the previous month. I remember writing a story about a man on airplane next to a sick female passenger who uncomfortably reminded him of his ailing mother. I wrote this story with a 105 degree fever in the computer lab located in the basement of the school library, next to fellow classmates. I couldn't afford my own computer in college. And computers back then were the old IBM's with green screens, no internet, no email, just log in and type. You saved everything on floppy discs and backed up to two discs just in case. Also printed the stories off on lined green paper with key hole punches on both sides. I do not miss those printers or the computers. That said, I did admittedly write more...without the internet as a distraction.
After we turned in our stories, several would be selected to be read aloud by the professor to the class or discussed. Everyone would read the stories on their own, write comments, and discuss them in class. The writer -- was not permitted to speak, answer questions, or say anything until the discussion was completed. We had to be a fly on the wall so to speak.
I remember during one of these sessions, having a story read, discussed, and realizing that no one knew what it was about. Well except for one or two people. Yaffe told me that I couldn't be oblique or vague, I had to give the reader clues. In another story, loosely based on my grandparents, I'd written about my grandfather who'd lost most if not all of his cognitive abilities after having three brain tumors removed. A fellow classmate hated my story and ranted at me for the three brain tumors, because her close relative had died from one. Yaffe told me that it didn't matter that in my experience my grandfather had three and survived, I should have left it with one. Most readers would only have experienced one, and this threw them out of the story. Through Yaffe, I learned how powerful the reader's perspective and take on things could be, and how crippling to a writer. One wonders why writers bother at all.
But I also learned, or it was reinforced at any rate...that we don't see the world the same. And that's okay.
In re-reading the above quote, I find I have more to say on it. It can be very alienating to dislike something everyone else loves, or vice versa. Sometimes it is worse the other way around. I saw that a lot with people who say loved Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey, while others condemned them or shamed them for it. I remember being pissed that people loved Me Before You...there was something about that book that felt like an assault on my sensibilities and moral character. Which I'm guessing was what spurred the reactions on 50 Shades. It's odd, it happens less with male oriented genres. Not that it doesn't happen, just less. Bret Easton Ellis...people have been shamed for reading Easten Ellis, and Ian Fleming. (LOL!) Also, hello, super hero or action comics...has gotten a bad rap.
Don't get me started on the erotica field. (Folks if no real humans were actively used or involved, it's okay.)
Every once and a while someone will pop up with Book shaming blog...or list. The latest was 100 Books You'd Never Brag About Reading...and often, it's rants by literary writers about people reading children's and young adult books. As if shaming someone for what they read for pleasure is going to change anything? Reading is a private thing. A solitary thing. We do it alone. OR if with people, often by blocking them out. I read mostly surrounded by people -- with noisy, stinking, crazy, people standing on top of my, scrunched beside me, yelling and chatting beside me or in my ear. My mother has no idea how I manage it. But I do. Sometimes, or more often than I would like, I find myself re-reading the same sentences over and over and over and over again. Particularly if the book is literary or requires a certain level of concentration. I did however manage to read Don Dellilo's Underworld on the subway -- but it was on the subway in the 1990s, before smartphones, which are different. I vaguely miss the people who read books. Back in the 1990s and all the way up to roughly 2009 or thereabouts...everyone had a paperback book or hardcover book, some people read the paper, carefully folding it into segments or the New Yorker Magazine. We'd silently read, elbow to elbow. I wrote on the subway back then in notebooks, three lined paper, and a pen.
The subways were also less crowded back then, and the passengers somehow older.
I'm in the middle generation, the less populated one, crammed between the Baby Boomers and their offspring. Everyone around me is either in their 60s and 70s or 20s and 30s...I feel like an island in of myself. And this is especially true packed on the subways. Also most of the time, nowadays, I can't understand a word people are saying. Used to be, that I could. Now, people speak in other languages...from across the world and back again.
But I still read. Look forward to it actually. Having an hour to read in the morning and an hour to read in the afternoon or early evening. The rest of the time that I do it...feels like stealing time.
But then I was always stealing time to read. Happiest knee-deep in the pages of a book. Preferably one that didn't require an essay, a test, or any lofty thoughts at the end.
As I write all of this, it occurs to me that I would have made a piss-poor academic or English Lit Professor. Stuck with a curriculum or a stack of books I'm told are worthy by some long dead dusty authority. I don't know. Path not taken...the plans laid out but never followed.
4. Smartbitches podcast is cracking me up. It's hilarious.
Carrie: Because I start ranting about the biology, and I’m like, I don’t see why we can’t have – this is my new rant, and I think it’s hilarious that this is now a thing that I discuss publicly all the time – why we can’t have, like, more biologically interesting stuff happening here. Like, if you must, if you absolutely must have a tentacle fetish, then wouldn’t you want to make use of the fact that every, every sucker has, it can be manipulated by the octopus separately –
Elyse: No, because –
Carrie: – at one time?
Elyse: No, because –
Carrie: If I were writing tentacle porn, I’d put that in! I’m just saying!
Elyse: Carrie, you and I have discussed this. Octopuses can taste from their tentacles, and the tentacles always go in the ass. Always.
....
Elyse: Yeah, I think the, the submariner tentacle book was really upsetting to me because basically the monster on the U-boat that had enslaved his crew to have tentacle butt sex with him was described as like a Lovecraftian Elder God, and I’m like, what kind of shitty fucking Elder God do you have to be that you got a U-boat? You got a shitty U-boat. Like, you don’t get your own planet, you don’t get a moon, you don’t get some fucked-up dimension where people who are crazy from looking into it, no. Here’s your U-boat, Steve. You are a disappointment to all the other Elder Gods. I feel like I’ve been so corrupted by all the tentacle erotica I’ve been exposed to now.
Apparently someone actually wrote an erotica horror story with a HP Lovecraftian Elder God who has sex with the male crew.
Not to be out done...someone also wrote a book about...well entitle "The Orca King".
Elyse: I actually listened to The Orca King on audio.
Sarah: You listened to The Orca King on audio?
Carrie: [Laughs]
Elyse: It was an audiobook. So, to put this in perspective, this is the book about the orca shifter –
RHG: I don’t think that there is any perspective.
Elyse: [Laughs] This is the book about the orca shifter with the time travel penis.
Elyse: It is the most fucking crazysauce book I’ve ever read, and I just remember, I’m listening to it on audiobook at work while running reports, and there would be extended periods of time where I’d just be kind of staring wide-eyed into the middle distance –
Also according to the podcast, Orcas are not whales but actually dolphins. I did not know that.
Elyse: Is she sexually attracted to a whale?
Sarah: Well, yes, ‘cause he’s the Orca King!
RHG: Orcas aren’t whales.
Elyse: Aren’t – dolphin, sorry. Sorry!
RHG: I’m just saying.
Elyse: They’re the wolves of the sea, Redheadedgirl.
Sarah: Wait –
RHG: Just saying.
Sarah: – orcas are not whales –
Elyse: Right.
Sarah: – despite being called killer whales. They’re actually dolphins.
RHG: Right.
Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-29 06:26 pm (UTC)Need I say, you don't have to be an expert on anything to be on a pod cast? All whales and dolphins fall under the Order Cetacea. That Greek word means whales. Then down the taxonomic scale we get Parvorder Ordontoceti. Which means toothed whales. It includes dolphins and guess what? Sperm whales. We can keep going down the scale and finding whales. Killer whales are closely related to dolphins, not so close to porpoises, which confusingly is what most people think of when the word 'dolphins' is said. But all of them can be and are classed as whales at some point on the scale. If this Sarah wants everyone to start calling orcas, 'killer dolphins,' good luck to her on that!
Books: I quit buying so many throw away books when I got out of grad school. I sold off a big batch of books I'd never read when I moved then. I kept quite a few, but gave them away (still unread) when I moved to AZ. Moving can be a good thing!
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-29 07:24 pm (UTC)My 81 year old father loves the Kindle, because he can increase the size. It also occasionally has an audio...which is a bit annoying.
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-29 07:27 pm (UTC)So they are dolphins but dolphins are actually whales, so they are whales but also dophins...?
Actually dolphins have gotten a bad rap recently on the internet and science community. Apparently they are quite aggressive sexually speaking. Just look up dolphin attacks..
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-29 07:38 pm (UTC)Regarding throw-away books? Well I sort of want to throw away Don Cervantes Man of La Macha, and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, both are taking way too much space on my shelf and no one wants them. Also Proust's Swan's Way, and Gray's Anatomy, and Gotham -- which is non-fiction book about New York City. Then there is that god-awful Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations...wait, I did actually throw that out, it was sort of moldy, I put it outside and let someone else own it. Probably should get rid of the Chicago Manuel of Style, totally outdated and also taking up space, along with the Norton Anthology of Literature. And some sci-fi novel by Doris Lessing...which honestly, will I ever read? There's also that book about Jaquars, the travel guide to Africa...and let's see my collection of Harry Potter books -- which I actually did get rid of, because really why keep them? ;-)
My point being of course...like all things cultural, throw-away is in the art of the beholder. But, if they aren't electronic and take up shelf-space, they will probably end up on the basement laundry room shelf free to the public.
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-29 08:46 pm (UTC)Both are probably taking up too much space on my shelves, too. But then besides the English versions I own two copies of War and Peace in Russian (for technical reasons, or silly reasons, depending on how you look at it), and one Don Quixote in Spanish (Man of la Mancha is the musical play), and I have to admit that my Spanish was never good enough to read Don Quixote in Spanish! I do remember: En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme...
I can't remember whether I threw out my Chicago Manual of Style or not, but I do remember strongly considering throwing it out! ;o)
no subject
Date: 2017-07-30 02:31 am (UTC)It's very easy to pick up a bunch of books when they're under $4 I've noticed. The last batch of books I'm burning through came about through a sale which was B2G1 but since there were an odd number of titles I wanted I ended up with a few more, especially since Kobo paired off similarly priced books.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-30 12:49 pm (UTC)Now, I feel the need to google Orcas...;-)
Orca Killer Whales are the largest members of the Dolphin Family...according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
So yep. And it does explain their more aggressive and carnivorous diets...dolphins are misunderstood by people. They are friendly but they are also predators. Sort of like humans.
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-30 12:54 pm (UTC)Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society Facts About Orcas
The term "killer whale" actually meant kills whales, not whales that are killers.
An orca is a marine mammal. Did you know that orcas are actually dolphins? In fact, they are the largest member of the dolphin family! Dolphins and whales are closely related – both are in the order Cetacea, which includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Orcas were given the name “killer whale” by ancient sailors’ observations of groups of orcas hunting and preying on larger whale species. They called orcas asesina ballenas, or “whale killer” – a term that was eventually flipped around to the easier “killer whale.” Their Latin name, Orcinus orca, also reflects this observation of orcas feeding on large whales. Orcinus translates to “of the kingdom of the dead,” and orca refers to a kind of whale.
What we now know is that not all orcas prey on other cetaceans. Some populations specialize on fish, some on seals, some on sharks and rays, and some are generalists and eat many different things! We also know that they are complex, highly social, and have different cultures – orcas have their own civilization under the sea. Top predators, yes, but not the vicious “whale killers” that the ancient mariners thought them to be. If you could give orcas another name, what would you call them?
Moral? When in doubt? Google or search for reliable sites on the internet...aka fact check. It's okay I forgot to do it too.
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-30 02:46 pm (UTC)Always start your search for info on anything with something neutral. Then you can make your own decisions, not worry about what I said or someone else said. I began my search with the two volume reference book Walker's Mammals of the World. It's general and my copy is a bit old. So I looked for neutral sites on the web for more specific and recent info on the whole of the Cetacea family tree. If your are looking for balanced info on orcas don't go to a site entitled, "Murderous orcas rampage across the world," or one that has "conservation society" in the title. They both are going to try to steer you more than give you unvarnished straight facts.
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-30 06:10 pm (UTC)Because neutral sites disagree with you as well, unless you consider National Geographic Society and Nature biased:
Orca (killer whale).
And wiki, which isn't always reliable, but this site actually has endnotes.
Wiki on Killer Whales as Dolphins
Orcinus orca is the only recognized extant species in the genus Orcinus, one of many animal species originally described by Linnaeus in 1758 in Systema Naturae.[9] Konrad Gessner wrote the first scientific description of a killer whale in his "Fish book" of 1558, based on examination of a dead stranded animal in the Bay of Greifswald that had attracted a great deal of local interest.[10]
The killer whale is one of 35 species in the oceanic dolphin family, which first appeared about 11 million years ago. The killer whale lineage probably branched off shortly thereafter.[7] Although it has morphological similarities with the pygmy killer whale, the false killer whale and the pilot whales, a study of cytochrome b gene sequences by Richard LeDuc indicated that its closest extant relatives are the snubfin dolphins of the genus Orcaella.[11]
Common names
English-speaking scientists most often use the term "killer whale", although the term "orca" is increasingly used. Killer whale advocates point out it has a long heritage. Indeed, the genus name Orcinus means "of the kingdom of the dead",[12] or "belonging to Orcus".[13] Ancient Romans originally applied orca (plural orcae) to these animals, possibly borrowing it from the Greek ὄρυξ, which referred (among other things) to a whale species. Since the 1960s, "orca" has steadily grown in popularity; both names are now used. The term "orca" is euphemistically preferred by some to avoid the negative connotations of "killer",[14] and because, being part of the family Delphinidae, the species is more closely related to other dolphins than to whales.[15]
According to some authors, the name killer whale is a mistranslation of the 18th century Spanish name asesina-ballenas which means literally whale killer.[16] Basque whalers would have given it such name after observing pods of orcas hunting baleen whales.
They are sometimes referred to as "blackfish", a name also used for other whale species. "Grampus" is a former name for the species, but is now seldom used. This meaning of "grampus" should not be confused with the genus Grampus, whose only member is Risso's dolphin.[17]
So, apparently Walker's isn't accurate.
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-30 10:49 pm (UTC)Look at the chart in the middle of the page. See what's included in extant whales.
Again the problem is not that orcas can be considered dolphins, it's people insisting they are not whales. When various popular media outlets' articles read so very similar you can bet the source is exactly the same. In this case likely the folks at at the conservation society.
Sorry for implying you didn't look. Very much my bad! But, I tend to dig a little deeper than the popular magazines.
Re: Cough, cough
Date: 2017-07-31 01:24 am (UTC)This is what I discovered:
Differences between Whales and Dolphins
Six species in the family Delphinidae are called "whales" but genetically are dolphins:
Melon-headed Whale, Peponocephalaelectra
Killer Whale (Orca), Orcinus orca
Pygmy Killer Whale, Feresaattenuata
False Killer Whale, Pseudorcacrassidens
Long-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephalamelas
Short-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephalamacrorhynchus
So now you can argue about five different whales that are in reality dolphins...Bwahhahha! ;-)
Ah...I found a biologist on Answers.Com...who interpreted your stupid evolutionary chart for us and says they are dolphins and whales:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=A0LEVvXvhH5ZNCgAAvwnnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?qid=20101121152159AAIoV1U Yahoo Answers - Are Orcas Whales or Dolphins.
Best Answer: As a biologist, I would say that orcas are dolphins in a taxonomic sense (naming sense) since they are in family Delphinidae, which includes all "dolphins", but that they are whales since dolphins are really just toothed whales (odontocetes).
If you looked at an evolutionary tree that shows how closely related all whales (cetaceans) are, you'll see that "dolphins" (ie species in the family Delphinidae) are spread all over the branch of the tree that include all the toothed-whales. The other big branch on the tree are baleen whales, or mysticetes.
The difference between a whale and a dolphin lies in the teeth...Whales apparently aren't toothed.
So we are both right and wrong...Orcas are dolphins, dolphins are in the whale family or subset of that family...or evolved from whales. So, it is in a way splitting hairs. Or depends on how you interpret it. Which I'm guessing is a personality thing. Because technically it is correct to say they aren't precisely Whales in the definitive sense.
And I thought law was contradictory. Frigging humans and their need to label and categorize everything. Reminds me of that segment in Restless, where Riley can't figure out what to label all the monsters, freaks out, and builds a fort with pillows.