The Enraptured Weaving

[Brett Gilpin]

I don’t want you to think that all I’m going to do is complain, but one thing I have to say is that as I read this, I couldn’t help but space off. It was full of thousands of facts that just bore me out of my mind at points. To me, this seemed strange, because I’m the kind of person who loves to learn things. The more I learn, the more intrigued I get, or at least that’s how it normally is.

Maybe, it’s that I really have no connection to this book yet, other than the fact that I am in a Marine Biology class. Osha Davidson talks all about the coral reefs and it is obvious that he is mesmerized by the beauty that they have. I’m sure that if I had seen a coral reef, I could picture this in my head, but the photos of them, that Mr. Nash showed us, do not suffice. Then, it got into talking about Darwin and after that about drilling into the coral.

This is where I started to get entranced by the book. Everything was about something I had some knowledge about and at times had some humor. On page 32, Osha (at least I hope he is fine with me calling him this, because I will) says: “The drill was turned on and slowly lowered to the coral surface, where it immediately began chewing up coral limestone and boring a hole, which was named, according to the poetic sensibilities of government scientists, F-1.” To me, this simple line, was like this video, that I found a while ago.

Another quote, “Tyrannosaurus rex is gone. But the humble coral remains.”, made me think. My thoughts were about how a creature, that we all think to be huge and strong, can die out long before something that we wouldn’t think of as strong on a normal day. When I say “strong”, I doubt many people would say “coral reef.” The only person I’d believe if they said that they thought of a coral reef when they hear the word strong, would be Osha. For this, I had to make a rather lame comic. If you read the second to the last word of the previous sentence, I know it’s lame, but it’s the best I could really do to show the thought on bitstrips. When you look at this, compare the cute little innocent bunny, to corals. They sit back and don’t do much, but they are there. The rubber chicken, then, is obviously the tyrannosaurus rex. Tyrannosaurus rexes, at least in my opinion, are awesome and so are rubber chickens. The person (who happens to be my character for Corvette) happens to represent nature in a way in the comic. When I was trying to make the comic, the best props they had for the representation of the corals, the t-rex, and nature were the ones I picked. I picked Corvette as the character, because he is the one I’d think would find it necessary to have a rubber chicken laying around.



There is another part, that after reading Lauren's post, I was reminded of. It had taken me long enough to make it through these chapters (with all the distractions thrown at me such as two-a-days for football), that I had forgotten about the preface. Just in the first paragraph is a quote I couldn't help but think of. "There is an Italian expression for this sort of existence, although I didn't learn it until much later: dolce far niente. It means literally, "sweet doing nothing," and that pretty much sums up life in Key West back then." Well, to me, it seems that it pretty much sums up Rémi Gaillard's life too. Just check out this elevator video he made. Just one of the many videos he has made. It seems that it's all he ever does, is stuff like this.

And now for another bitstrip that I have made for this. Not many people will understand this one, but for someone like Corvette, he might find this the funniest thing in the entire world. On page 44, Osha says "Acropora is the superstar of the coral world, and by the standards of geological time it was an overnight snesation. Like the understudy who rises to stardom when the lead falls ill, the emergence of acroporids resulted largely from the misfortune of its competition." Then I started thinking about football and what it would of taken for Dewar (a Lafayette graduate of 2009) to actually get into the game when it mattered. I then thought that it would take a lot more than me falling ill for something like that. Corvette will find the idea that he hurts me in it awesome, let alone the actual idea of the comic.



Something that just knocked me aback, so much that I can barely even believe it, let alone make one of these ridiculous comics for it. They would just insult the sheer ammount of sadness that it brought me. Practically all of page 36 and part of page 35.

This whole section caused me to look up pictures of it. The following pictures I found on Wikipedia. Both images are works of a U.S. military or Department of Defense employee, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties. As works of the U.S. federal government, the images are in the public domain. Here is a picture of Enewetak Atoll taken before the test:

And then after the test

I am just so shocked by the idea that this happened, that I can't even imagine it. I understood that many people in the world didn't care that much about the world in which they lived in, but they destroyed a beautiful coral reef and an entire island just to test a bomb. You can even look at the island to the left of Elugelab in the pictures and you can tell that it was even damaged in the test. I can't believe it. I really can't find much more about this to say than that. Looking up "Operation Ivy" on Wikipedia will give you the page talking about the nuclear testing in the area of Enewetak Atoll. It says that Mike "yielded 10.4 megatons of explosive power, almost 500 times the power of the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. 8 megatons of the yield was from fast fission of the uranium tamper. The detonation obliterated Elugelab, leaving an underwater crater 6,240 ft (1.9 km) wide and 164 ft (50 m) deep where an island had once been."

More on Chapter 3 to come, I'm not feeling like working much tonight.
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All comics created by BrettGilpin (my personal account), using Bitstrips.

PIctures of Enewetak Atoll were found on Wikipedia via a Google image search.

Links In Order:
-Photos of “2008 Andros Island Spring Field Study” by Sean Nash
-Video titled “Slow Motion Slap” by CollegeHumor
-YouTube video titled "BEST OF ELEVATOR (REMI GAILLARD)" by Rémi Gaillard
-YouTube user channel named nqtv by Rémi Gaillard
-Wikipedia page about Operation Ivy

[Sean Nash]

I think adding something more is a good thing. Though the comic isn't a problem. Perhaps it is a good memoir.

[Brett Gilpin]

So is that a "should add more about chapter 3" or "should get rid of the comic even though it was their way before the deletion of Corvette's blog" or both?

[Sean Nash]

I agree. I even agree that the comic making fun of the situation is funny in and of itself. However, the original vid was just way too much for a school site.
;)

[Brett Gilpin]

I will add more on the part about Chapter 3 if you want. And even if necessary delete the comic, because it does have little point. It was just funny to add onto it.

[Sean Nash]

Nice addition to your original post. Normally, I wouldn't choose to copy/paste such a large segment of text straight from a printed volume... however, in this case it does seem as if you were really needing to show the amazingly powerful language used by the author. Really- Osha is an amazing author. He makes the natural world come alive on the page in really amazing ways.

Your Chapter 3 section is a bit light... to say the least. I can appreciate the "lighten it up" idea. I get the comic here. However, my references to this video clip issue on this public site will be addressed for the future in email. This is not the appropriate place to debate the issue. After reading the email, if you feel like discussing it further, please contact me.

[Brett Gilpin]

This is my blog post

[Brett Gilpin]

Thanks, it was a simple fix. Transfer of the coding from Microsoft Word into here happened to replace the apostrophes in the coding with the url's coding for apostrophes. Hard to explain, easy to fix.

[Lauren King]

Brett I absolutely love the bit strip. I saw it and was like huh? But it made me want to really read your post and figure out what it meant. Also Corvette would like a rubber chicken.

Just to help you out you photos and videos link don't work there is an error.