Something I Learned

Have you ever eaten a Patagonian toothfish?  Would you ever eat a Patagonian toothfish?  What if, instead of a toothfish, you were offered a sea bass? A wonderful, delicious Chilean sea bass.  With extra emphasis on that ascending “ay” sound in Chilean.

Because, as you may have deduced, the original name — and probably still the correct name — for a Chilean sea bass is a Patagonian toothfish.  The humble toothfish was renamed a glorious sea bass in 1977 by a clever seafood wholesaler in an attempt to make it more appealing to North American consumers.

Incidentally, when I was looking into the scientific name for the Chilean sea bass, hoping to determine the “correct” name for this fish, I discovered that it is Dissostichus eleginoides, due to it resembling the eleginus genus, namely the Patagonian blennie, aka the rock cod.  But the blennie’s scientific name is the best name of all:  Eleginus maclovinus.

Maclovinus.  McLovin.

Would you eat a McLovin fish?

Something I Worked On

This week I’ve been working on a short story about a woman who is receiving mysterious packages, potentially from her ex-boyfriend who recently went insane. It’s titled Ophelia and will be found on my Patreon, and my fiction Substack.

Something Beautiful

A few years ago I was trying do some fine art drawings and/or paintings of a woman whose face was covered with a veil and was struggling mightily with how to depict translucent fabric. In scouring the internet for reference photos, or some clue for solving my dilemma, I came across a group of sculptures of “veiled vestal virgins.” Essentially, pieces of dense, solid marble that appeared to be clingy, thin material that was somehow lighter than I could achieve with transparent layers in a digital drawing. The most beautiful one I found was by Raffaelle Monti.

A Final Thought

People convinced that the general public won’t eventually accept AI generated actresses as “real” have conveniently forgotten that early cinema attendees were once convinced that a silent, black-and-white film of a train, traveling in a skewed angle, was an actual train heading directly into the theater.  Perception changes with technology.  People will believe what they want to believe.