A Member of the Beast

A writer called Cheeseburger Brown has penned a bestiary of traffic-based organisms, interpreting each freeway pattern as "a distributed animal with human components." Here's a sample:

Unfettered, the Epiphysian Cyclosalp is like half a butterfly, its riparian body gilded by a slowly flapping wing of accelerating, gliding Librigenates ebbing and flowing in a stately round. Its insides whorl as partners switch places, benthic turning briefly pelagic, pacer cars joining a rippling pulse of local inertia forward, headlights cross-sweeping.

Don't worry about the unfamiliar words: By the time you get to the passage, they've all been defined.

[Via bOING bOING.]

Comments

[librarian]

e?piph?y?sis n., pl. e?piph?y?ses. 1. The end of a long bone that is originally separated from the main bone by a layer of cartilage but that later becomes united to the main bone through ossification. 2. See pineal gland. [Greek epiphusis, an excrescence : epi-, epi- + phusis, growth; --ep?i?phys?i?al or ep?i?phys?e?al adj.

cy?clo?sis n., pl. cy?clo?ses. The streaming rotary motion of protoplasm within certain cells and one-celled organisms. [New Latin, from Greek kuklosis, a surrounding, from kukloun, to surround, from kuklos, circle.

ri?par?i?an adj. Of, on, or relating to the banks of a natural course of water. [From Latin riparius, from ripa, bank.]

ben?thos n. 1. The collection of organisms living on or in sea or lake bottoms. 2. The bottom of a sea or a lake. [Greek.] --ben?thic (-thik) or ben?thon?ic adj.

pe?lag?ic adj. Of, relating to, or living in open oceans or seas rather than waters adjacent to land or inland waters: pelagic birds. [Latin pelagicus, from Greek pelagikos, from pelagos, sea.

[CheeseburgerBrown]

Nice gloss!