This was me. I had no intention of being cheerful and optimistic. After all, teh world is coming to an end and we’re all going to die. And my doggie got skunked. What do I have to be happy about?

Then I read about a strange fish called Barreleye.  It has a transparent head. How amazing is that? A six-inch long fish that lives at 2,000 feet under the ocean has a see-through head. They look up though their heads to find prey above them. Nature is truly wondrous.

But it gets even better. A clever little octopus fiddled with a valve in her tank and flooded an aquarium with 200 gallons of salt water. You’re not supposed to encourage mischievous children and animals. But this Two Spotted Octopus made my day.

While listening to me rhapsodize about these things, a friend gave me a link to the Psychedelic fish. A wildly patterned piscis from Indonesia, its fins have evolved into a limb like appendage that it uses to bounce from coral to coral, looking for goodies. I’ve watched the video several times now, and every viewing elicits laughter and smiles. Check it out, it has the grumpiest expression on it’s face and bounces around like a drunken college student trying to get to the next bar. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Wrong. The Weta Studio is renowned for making film props like Hobbit feet and Ork faces, but that’s not all.  Nadya Vessey lost both her legs as a child, and wrote to Weta telling them about herself and her life long desire to be a mermaid.  In between film projects, the people at Weta worked on the mermaid suit and fulfilled Nadya’s dream. Before setting her free in the ocean, they tested the suit in a pool, it worked perfectly. And it looks incredible. Being an Oceangal, you might guess that I am a swimmer.  And you would be correct. But not only do I swim like a fish, I used to play mermaid as a child. Clamping my legs  together, I flapped them like I  had a tail instead of legs. And now Nadya can swim like a mermaid too. I hope it is as wonderful for her to be a mermaid, as it was for me.

All of these things have conspired to remind me that we live in a pretty cool world. And I may be biased, but the ocean is, by far, the most amazing thing about it. My cynical, blasé heart is unfreezing. I am becoming twitterpated and I can’t open my mouth without a song jumping out of it.