I'm sure by now most of you have seen this bit from "Planet Earth", as it was in theaters and likely comes on the telly quite frequently, but I just saw it for the first time last night and thought it was creepily awesome. It's the episode about the rain forests, and shows the Cordyceps fungus that infects the many types of insects that dwell there. When they mentioned parasites, I was waiting to see some creepy little wormy thing or some such. Instead, it's freaking mushrooms!

Mother Nature is one twisted lady, but this thing totally levels the playing field so that there won't be one bug to rule them all. And of course, being the massive geek that I am, I immediately thought of Balthamel's death at the hands of the Green Man. After seeing this type of thing happen in real life, I had to use my new visuals and go back and re-read the end of EotW. I am also gonna go ahead and convince myself that the Green Man is real and that he's the one responsible for keeping those crazy bugs in check.

This, along with the scuba diving red crab spider, was one of the best parts of the episode. However, I could have done without those filthy ass chimps gang banging and cannibalizing there at the end. No wonder the poor people in Uganda struggle! When I go for a little hike, I might see a cow on the trail. These people are all "Uh, I just saw six chimps bludgeon another one to death and eat it for street cred".