A Toast… To Preserved Shit in Jars.
You can’t go wrong with preserved shit in jars. You just can’t. It’s like a secret handshake. You like shit in jars, you’re on my team. We bond over Mütter mystique. I liked Alien: Resurrection, you hated it, but I know how we both felt about that scene.
And that is why Creature Feature is a site for sore eyes. I’m sure that there are many more modern, fluid ways to locate images of these types of “creature-infused” wines from Indo-China; for example, I just tried typing “scorpion wine” into Flickr, and got 192 crisp (and probably crispy!) results. Still, there’s something precious and ordered about the musty pre-CSS presentation of Creature Feature that draws me. I like looking at that ancient HTML table, reverently stacked with aged Seahorse Wine, Centipede Wine and Toad Wine, the same way I like drifting away into a Joseph Cornell piece. I love stumbling across pages like this, pages that feel like they’re from another Internet that’s totally gone. We should preserve them.
March 16th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Aw hell yeah. I got my dad one of those baby cobra-in-a-bottle concoctions in a riverside market in Vietnam. They had ones that were tiny baby bottles, and some that were almost as big as me. Creepy and awesome.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:55 am
This post fills me with preservative glee.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:49 am
I loved AR, blastitall.
Been thinking recently, that I want to start my own homemade collection of critters (not to be confused with Krites. Although…) in jars. Haven’t gone so far as to research which preservatives to use, but I’d be interested to see what the other readers suggest! Squids! I need squids on my bookshelves!
March 17th, 2009 at 8:53 am
Lovely lovely images! I confess that I am in a certain species if withdrawal now that I’ve left my precious jarred specimens back east. Well, it’s a new day, and time to start a new fluidically preserved bestiary.
March 17th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
THINGS IN JARS!!! <3!
Seriously, I have so much love for this post. OMG.
I’ve been enjoying Curious Expeditions’ photostream on Flickr, and their selection of Things In Jars is sublime — I now know that I MUST visit the Vanderbilt Museum on Long Island at some point because of all of the amazing collections there.
*hearts!*
March 17th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
For more lovely “things in jars”, Morbid Anatomy is a fine point of reference!http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/
March 18th, 2009 at 7:23 am
I didn’t cruise the site but please be careful with where you get these! Endangered animals are often used as they fetch high prices on the black market.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Nadya *clink!*
Jerem: My expert sources say that Everclear is fantastic for such pickling adventures. Bacardi 151 works too (cherry garnish optional) ;)
March 18th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Paul K: How did I never run across that site!? Thanky mucho.
Jessica: Noted! I’ll get to work on my burgeoning collection soon.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Im pretty sure Andrew Zimmern drank some snake wine in one of his episodes. If not, then it was definately Bourdain. I get them confused sometimes, Ive seen nearly every episode from both.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
I’d happily buy curiosities like these in jars but I dunno if I could be the one to kill a creature to put in the jar in the first place. While I’m sure their are OTHER methods used to obtain the specimens…some do look like they were happily crawling along before someone said “Hey!, you’d look awesome in a jar on my desk!”
Yet I’d be perfectly cool with doing this to a few humans. I really want a human hand…I mean REALLY want.
@BlueAnchorNatasha….I think it was the Zimmern episode on Cantonese food. That’s the fun of Cantonese food…it it crawls, swims, or walks chances are it’ll be part of some dish.
@Christy…good point. Would should investigate anyone dealing in such goods just in case.
All that said…what kinda cool shit do most of you want preserved in jars? I’d want something absurd to go along with the creatures like a cell phone circa 1986…or the Great North American 3 Eyed Fish as seen on The Simpsons.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:53 pm
@ Tequila:
Warren Ellis, naturally.
March 24th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Perhaps a chunk of Ingrid Newkirk in a bottle?
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/03/21/rule-against-petatuities-ingrid-newkirk-bequeths-body-parts-for-macabre-testamentary-gifts/