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Mega Playland

Kids can take charge of their own mini city, either indoors or out, with this gigantic Megaland play tent. The EZ Twist technology allows for fast set up so little ones don't have to wait to explore an array of rooms and tunnels. There's even a mini basketball hoop attached to the exterior. Bold, bright colors and a portable lightweight design make it fun for kids and parents. Made of polyester, mesh and nylon binding with a steel loop. Spot clean. Air dry. Imported. Hut: 33Hx33Wx48L". Large cube: 28Hx33Wx33L". Small cube: 28Hx33Wx28L". Tunnel: 20Lx19" dia.

A landscape of tunnels and hiding dens can instantly be assembled in your yard or family room with this compact modular play structure. One of the best features is the abundance of colorful balls (there are 50!). Pile them all into one cube and children can experience the feel of a small-scale ball room like the ones in commercial play areas. When children tire of burrowing, crawling, and hiding, they can use the balls to shoot hoops into the built-in basket. The pop-up nylon play structure is easy to assemble, but be careful while assembling--modules spring open quickly. The challenge is folding it back into the carrying cases (no careless cramming--adults will have to follow instructions carefully). Megaland works with other PlayHut structures. The set includes one large hut with basket, one medium hut, one small block, two tunnels, two carrying bags, and 50 balls. --Gail Hudson

The word snail is a common name for almost all members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word snail is used in a general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails.

Snails lacking a shell or having only a very small one are usually called slugs. Snails that have a broadly conical shell that is not coiled or appears not to be coiled are usually known as limpets.

Snails can be found in a wide range of environments from ditches, deserts, and the abyssal depths of the sea. Although most people are familiar with terrestrial snails, land snails are in the minority. Marine snails have much greater diversity and a greater biomass. The great majority of snail species are marine. Numerous kinds can be found in fresh water and even brackish water. Many snails are herbivorous, though a few land species and many marine species are omnivores or predatory carnivores.

Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata, while those with gills form a paraphyletic group; in other words, snails with gills are divided into a number of taxonomic groups that are not very closely related. Snails with lungs and with gills have diversified widely enough over geological time that a few species with gills can be found on land, numerous species with a lung can be found in freshwater, and a few species with a lung can be found in the sea.

Land snails
Although the word snail is often used for all shelled gastropods, the word "snail" can also be used in a more limited sense to mean any of several species of large, air-breathing (pulmonate) land snails. Whichever land snail species is most commonly seen or most commonly eaten as escargot in a given area will usually be referred to as "snails" by the local people.

Species of land snails live in almost every kind of habitat, from deserts and mountains to marshes, woodland, and gardens. However, certain species are "anthropophilic", which means they are found most often around human habitation. Land snails have thinner shells, opposed to water snails, which sometimes have very thick shells.

Slugs
Gastropod species which lack a conspicuous shell are commonly called slugs rather than snails, although, other than having a reduced shell or no shell at all, there are really no appreciable differences between a slug and a snail except in habitat and behavior. A shell-less animal is much more maneuverable, and thus even quite large land slugs can take advantage of habitats or retreats with very little space – places that would be inaccessible to a similar-sized snail, such as under loose bark on trees or under stone slabs, logs or wooden boards lying on the ground.

Taxonomic families of land slugs and sea slugs occur within numerous larger taxonomic groups of shelled species. In other words, the reduction or loss of the shell has evolved many times independently within several very different lineages of gastropods, thus the various families of slugs are very often not closely related to one another.

Biology (primarily but not exclusively of pulmonate land snails)

Physical characteristics
Most snails move by gliding along on their muscular foot, which is lubricated with mucus and covered with epithelial cilia. This motion is powered by succeeding waves of muscular contractions that move down the ventral of the foot. This muscular action is clearly visible when a snail is crawling on the glass of a window or aquarium. Snails move at a proverbially low speed (1 mm/s is a typical speed for adult Helix lucorum). They produce mucus to aid locomotion by reducing friction, and the mucus also helps reduce the snail's risk of mechanical injury from sharp objects. This means that they can 'walk' over sharp objects like razors without being injured. Snails also have a mantle, a specialized layer of tissue which covers all of the internal organs as they are grouped together in the visceral mass, and the mantle also extends outward in flaps, which reach to the edge of the shell and in some cases can cover the shell, and which are partially retractable. The mantle is attached to the shell and creates it by secretion.

Most mollusks, including snails, have a shell which they have from the larval stage and which grows with them in size by the process of secreting calcium carbonate. Because of this, mollusks need calcium in their diet and environment to produce a strong shell. A lack of calcium, or low pH in their surroundings, can result in thin, cracked, or perforated shells. Usually a snail can repair damage to its shell over time if its living conditions improve, but severe damage can be fatal.

When retracted into their shells, many snails with gills (including many marine, some freshwater and some terrestrial species) are able to protect themselves with a door-like anatomical structure called an operculum. (The operculum of some sea snails has a pleasant scent

Did I greet the Moon, “Good Evening, Sir!”
Into the great incessant night,
The universe at large?
Did I lose my mind to you,
While floating around the universe alone?

“I need some space,” you said to me.
“I can do that, ” I said, “I’ll give you the Sun, the Moon, the stars;
Every last lost illuminary in the eternal expanse,
And then some.

And you can keep them where you kept me
Or throw them away.

All the light at the end of the world,
Is darker than your soul.
Is darker than my memory,
As I travel across these celestial bodies
That all remind me of yours.

As for myself,
I drift like the particles in a cross-section of light,
In my home-made earthen rocket,
Through all kinds of time and space.
Aging as slowly as Evergreen trees,
So that every year orbits out from me,
To keep me warm at night.

I build my ship of cosmic plywood
Of old Douglas Fir
(and other epoxy polymer composite material
collected from the wreckages of NASA test launches)

“She’ll crawl,” they say, as I form my hull in my front yard,
“She won’t break the atmosphere. You’ll burn alive and plummet.”

But I keep at it. Day and Night.
I greet the Moon.
I part ways with the Sun, again and again.
Because it will soon be just another star.
And you will soon be just another, too.
But I will miss you more.




I am of generations of sea-faring men,
And their intimate affairs with the tempestuous edge of the horizon,
As it cuts into flesh,
To excite the blood and spirit.

I am the end of a species of men,
Who can only find love at the end of the world,
And can just barely live on.

I remember the first boat I ever made.
Out of a clawfoot porcelain tub,
Discarded at the end of Slocum Street.
When we boys used to play by the aquafer
And dream of discovering continents
And peoples.
And conquering them.
Becoming kings by our bloody swords.
And taking their women as ours,
Before we knew what to do with them.
Before we knew to leave them alone.

And Wiseman, the Drunk
whose house staggered for him,
With it’s red paint peeling like a sunburn off cancered skin
He gave us the wood and the tarp for our mast and sail
Without ever waking.

And we caulked the drain,
And plotted our course.
And stole a compass from someone’s father’s desk.

And we cast off down by the road
Flowing into the aquifer
Ducking under the low branches
Then at the rivulet we raised our sail
And drank blue juice that burned our throats
And traded ghost stories along the coast.

Barbarella, she was sea-worthy vessel,
And had Oscar been a better captain at ten,
Should have crossed the equator
And taken us round cape horn,
And made Magellan’s of each of us.
Crazed, starved, and zealous,
Chewing on salty leather,
Our eyes burnt and full of adventure.

But we ran aground,
And swam instead for shore.
And abandoned more than our ship.

And I will miss those youthful days
And the spray of the sea.
But I will miss you more.

And when you look up at the night
Into a sky not drowned by city lights
To watch shooting stars and satellites
I hope you wonder
If one of those flecks of lingering white
Is my rocket,
Across the universe,
And lonely in mid-flight.

And I hope you don’t hate me,
For naming my ship LUCY,
Because the name was no longer taken.

And though you won’t like this,
when I set myself aflame,
Through the atmosphere,
Melting like Icarus,
And preparing to fall,
I feared not death,
But only never making it out of this world alive.
And imagined our baby had felt the same way.

Because you were her world.
Even more than you are mine.

“But let’s not talk about her,” you said,
“I said let’s not talk about her!”
And your eyes went cold and distant,
Like frigid planets,
Far from the sun.

So I will travel there to meet you.
Because when you are the tiniest of specks,
Like the little red ember at the end of a cigarette,
On the other end of the endless universe.
I will float alone through infinite space,
To be with you again.

This Rekords Records re-issue (in conjunction with Domino) has been fully remastered from the original tapes and has been expanded by three tracks on both CD and double viny. The Bronze & These Aren t the Droids You re Looking For (from the a split EP from 98) and Spiders and Vinegaroons which was part of the posthumous Kyuss/QOTSA split EP. The vinyl is a double vinyl deluxe gatefold package that will also include a free digital download as well.

Any similarities that Queens of the Stone Age may have to Kyuss are probably inevitable--all three members of this group were in Kyuss at one time or another. The intention of this band, however, is not to create Kyuss 2, but to make its own brand of noise. Falling somewhere between Can and Canned Heat, the trio brings an occasional electronic aura to the guitar-based chug of stoner rock. While not as brash and earsplitting as their previous band (singer-guitarist Josh Homme--a Jack Bruce sound-alike--lays back where Kyuss frontman John Garcia would have yelped), these guys have made a debut album that is nevertheless an intriguing, aggressive, trippy aural journey that bows down to no trend. --Janiss Garza