Why I didn't take AP Biology

[larryhammer]

rachelmanija on the Night of the Frankenchicken.

In ninth grade bio, for our version of this assignment, we were given the choice of rabbit, cat, or turtle -- corpses provided by the school, and we had to anatomize before skeletizing. One boy picked cat to squick the girls, while everyone else took bunnies -- so of course I went for the turtle.

Which is not the world's easiest animal to dissect. In fact, it's engineered to be hard to dismember. Really hard. It took several class periods to hacksaw through Myrtle the Turtle's shell. I finished on a Friday, just before the end of class, and had to put everything away before actually opening Myrtle up. Can you say "instant delayed gratification," boys and girls? I knew you could. So on Monday, I was ready, even eager, to prize off the bottom of Myrtle's shell. I pulled her out of the plastic bag --

And that's when we discovered two things:

1. There should have been a warning about cutting across the flat, not down the edge, of the shell, lest you puncture the intestines.
2. Not only is it hard to cut open a turtle, it's hard to get enough formaldehyde inside to perfectly preserve it.

I spent that period at a lab bench of my own, by the open window, with a fan blowing out ya you betcha. Also, the teacher had me skip anatomizing (I was running behind anyway, after all that sawing) and go straight to skeletizing. Which turned out to be the neatest-looking skeleton in the class -- until you opened up the shell and could actually see the skeleton.

Me? I became a physics major.

---

As you might guess, I think Jasper Fford pulled something rotten in Something Rotten when he fingered The Faerie Queene as one of the ten dullest books ever. I suspect the_red_shoes would probably agree.

OTOH, Sarah Waters' Fingersmith *rocks*. Even with its problematic bits.

---L.

Comments

Fingersmith

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Boy, is this book impossible to talk about without spoilers. Maybe you should open up a separate spoilered post? Without spoilers, all I can say is...

1. First twist: OMG!

2. Second twist: OMG!

3. Subsequent twists: Don't make that much sense if you think about them, though the entire set-up ended up being so complicated that I don't recall exactly why.

4. This is the only book that has ever managed to make books and reading creepy, evil, and disturbing.

Re: Fingersmith

[larryhammer]

I'm about two-thirds through, and I suspect about to hit the second twist. No spoiler threads until I finish (this weekend no doubt).

Agreed about #4.

---L.

[larryhammer]

Yup, he disses -- give 'em away.

Personally, I find them great fun, but each one has been successively weaker. By the fourth, he seems to have given up all pretense of self-consistant worldbuilding and grabbing whatever details make for a good yarn-at-the-moment.

---L.

[larryhammer]

Better, I suppose, than being squashed flat by a ruined Irish castle.

---L.