Jolie Laide, Grandeur, Extinction, and you.

I've always thought Jolie Laide would make a great nom de something (artsy porn?). I've also always loved the concept. (In a self-serving way, of course - no one would ever call me conventionally beautiful, but I think I've often proved to be, I dunno, charismatic?)

But why think so small as to limit this concept to the human face? The animal kingdom excels at jolie-laide, as it does at most other things in one way or another.

Look at this face:





Woof, right? The visage isn't improved if you know that it has a bald head so that the stanky maggot-ridden carrion it eats doesn't get stuck all over its face feathers.


Now look at this wingspan:




That's what these awesome beasts look like when they're doing what they do best (aside from eating carrion, that is): soaring. That's a ten-foot wingspan on a bird that's occasionally mistaken for a small airplane from a distance.

We came awfully close to living in a world without California condors in it, and that would be really fucking depressing. We already live in a world that's lost a lot of truly awesome (in the meaningful sense of the word) things. Once I got to visit the La Brea Tar Pits museum in Los Angeles, which was kind of a thrill of a lifetime because I had a bit of a tar pit fixation as a child. The best part? The museum was having a power outage, so we crept through the giant skeletons and reconstructions of mammoths and saber-toothed cats and the like in semi-darkness. There was a ancient giant condor there with a breastbone and wing structure like some kind of steampunk military flight experiment.

That's the ugly-beautiful thing about the California condor; it's primeval. You look into those beady eyes and you see those massive wings and you remember, in your species memory, when you were prey, and even the leavings of your carcass would be food for something else and you can see them waiting. It's not a reminder of a world where humans didn't exist. It's a reminder of a time when we were insignificant, and for many people, that's far worse.

But we're not. We took the California condor to the brink of extinction, and now we're bringing it back. Personally, I wouldn't mind being fed to them when I die. They couldn't care less that I'm admiring them for their sheer audacity in bald-faced FUG, yet impeccable fashion sense and grace of bearing.