Anthurium no. 0728 "Sister Dimension"

It's not particularly on-topic, but I'd like to say that I hate Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica). So much. Two days in a row now, I've been out picking them off the Cannas¹ and gotten about 200-250 individual beetles both days. I'm pretty sure that's the worst it's ever been, and I don't know if the reason is because it's an especially bad Japanese beetle year or if we're just growing that many more plants, but surely it's one or both of those.²

Does milky spore live up to the hype? 'Cause I'm interested.

As for our actual subject today, I'm pretty happy with seedling 0728.

There have been other seedlings with similar coloration, most notably 0097 Colin Ambulance, 0694 Brad Romance, 0791 Joslyn Fox, 0805 Triana Hill, and 1181 Tajma Stetson. Sister Dimension doesn't do everything better than all of them, but she blooms more frequently than Triana, has bigger spathes than Tajma, seems less prone to thrips damage than Colin, holds her color better than Brad, and doesn't flip her spathe back like Joslyn, so she's at least playing in the same league as the others, if not decisively superior to them all.

Left column, top to bottom: 0097 Colin Ambulance, 0728 Sister Dimension, 0805 Triana Hill.
Right: 0694 Brad Romance, 0791 Joslyn Fox, 1181 Tajma Stetson.
The plant as a whole could be better:

the leaves are nicely-shaped and glossy, but there's more thrips damage than I would like.

Nevertheless, Sister Dimension is a keeper.

It's easy to find websites that mention the drag queen Sister Dimension, but very difficult to find anything that explains who she is, what sort of thing she did, or whether she's still performing. Which is irritating. Best I could come up with on short notice is that she was a queen in the East Village drag scene in the 1990s, in the same circles as RuPaul and Lady Bunny. Not sure which one she is, but she's apparently in the (in-?)famous "Pickle Surprise" video (as are Ru and Lady Bunny):


Which is itself probably sufficient to give an idea of the sorts of things going on in the East Village in the 1990s.

You're welcome.

-

¹ They don't, so far, seem interested in the houseplants I've got outside for the summer (mostly Euphorbia tirucalli, Ficus benjamina, and Coffea arabica. I pretty much never have to worry about the Euphorbias, which is why I love E. tirucalli so much even though it occasionally tries to blind me.).
² We also got the plants out later than usual this year, and the squirrels have gone after them worse than usual too. Dunno if either of those makes a difference?

Music video: Isosine "Psychosocial Baby" (Justin Bieber / Ludacris / Slipknot mashup)

This was put on YouTube in March, but I'm only finding out about it now.

I don't know that I like it exactly.

Frankly, I'm not sure what the hell I think of it, but -- it's definitely the acme of whatever the fuck it is.

It's also a fairly good example, I'm pretty sure, of a mashup being significantly better than either of the component tracks (Slipknot: "Psychosocial;" Justin Bieber feat. Ludacris: "Baby"), though more research is needed before I can say for sure. And the research would likely destroy my brain, so we will probably never know.



In case you were wondering -- and why wouldn't you be wondering? -- Slipknot's lead vocalist and lyricist Corey Taylor has heard the mashup, and approves of it.



I couldn't find any evidence on YouTube that Justin Bieber knows about the mashup, but one supposes even if he did, he probably isn't free to comment. If he says he likes it, that's bad for his squeaky-clean non-threatening boy image, and if he says he hates it, he risks the wrath of a thousand rabid Slipknot fans.

Poor Justin Bieber.

Monstrosithurium

Remember this spring, when we all got to bemoan the existence of dye-injected orchids? (Phalaenopsitrocity! Dendrobomination!)

Well, certain douchemonkeys have decided that those were such a great idea that they're wanting to do the same thing with Anthuriums.


Presently, one "breeder" is offering a white Anthurium that's been infused with blue or yellow dye. The picture at the link doesn't actually look that terrible, but I'm guessing it's also been very carefully manipulated. The dyed Dendrobium and Phalaenopsis probably look very nice too, if there's enough Photoshop involved.

I have no hope of being able to stop dyed Anthuriums from happening (indeed, my guess is that in the future, all plants will be available in every color of the rainbow, and every one of them will rebloom white), but I figured I should at least warn y'all that this is on the way.

New Frontiers in Christmas Decor

This . . .


was at the ex-job yesterday. The flash washed out the purple lights, so this isn't quite how it really looked (I've tried to compensate by turning down the green a little), but perhaps you get the idea anyway. It was very, y'know, striking, so I said so to a former co-worker, who was all like, "oh, yeah, the hooker tree." And then there was a discussion with her and another employee about whether "hooker" was appropriate or not. (The other employee pointed out that we had no reason to think that the tree actually slept around -- all we actually know about it is that it has flamboyant tastes -- and said she preferred "burlesque Christmas tree." I like "burlesque" better too. And I'm pretty sure I now like the other employee, who I'd not previously met.)

You know you're having a nice day when you get to talk about whether or not an artificial Christmas tree is slutty.

For my part, I was initially horrified, but the more I look at it, the more I think it's one of those so-wrong-it's-cool things. Your mileage will vary.

In more houseplant-relevant Christmas merch, we have this:


Poinsettias don't fall apart and die fast enough on their own, so we have to speed it up by sticking them in tiny, no-drain spherical pots full of sopping wet peat. The wooden sticks don't seem to serve any useful purpose; they read "http://www.optimara.info" on one side, but that address goes to a page displaying African violet varieties (which, judging by the page's formatting, was last updated in 2001) and "easyGrowing...easyCare" on the other, none of which is true. Unless the ellipsis stands in for missing words, like:

easyGrowing is not at all what this plant is, even under ideal circumstances, nor are there any imaginable circumstances under which this plant, as it is currently being grown, could be construed to be easyCare

In that case, then the ellipsis, at least, might be true.

This, I think, is just kind of self-evidently horrible and wrong, but everything involving poinsettias tends to strike me as horrible and wrong, so whatever. I'm not sure what could possibly happen to launch these poinsettia-balls into so-revolting-it's-awesome territory (Glitter? Bows? Plastic neon bows covered in glitter? Artificial ivy spilling out of the bottom? Little metal stars bobbing above the plant on springs? Plastic neon glitter-covered bows on springs? Spray-paint? LEDs around the inside rim of the pot? Plastic neon stars encrusted with blinking LEDs, on bobbing springs, with a tiny mechanical Santa walking in circles through the artificial ivy spilling out of the glitter-covered metallic-painted spherical pot?), but I enjoyed thinking about the possibilities.