What a pretty home you have!

One of the things Parasteatoda does is build cobwebs on the side of our house (yes, we have an orange house) that not only gathers bugs, but also windblown debris. They seem to like it, and will even add to it by hoisting bits of gravel and small twigs from the ground up to their nest, which will gradually become more cluttered over the course of the summer. It’s still early, so this tiny little spider mainly has scraps of flower blossoms to hide behind.

If she survives and thrives, she’ll add her egg sacs to the accretion.

I assume you can see her, just below the dark seed pod? She was hiding behind that, and I had to nudge her a bit to get her to come out.

Spider sex orgy, coming right up

This is the week! It was a busy morning in the lab, doing a complete spider cage cleanup, shuffling everyone around, sorting out males and females, and getting ready for the big sexual event scheduled for Thursday, when the virginal boys are introduced to the virginal girls, and we hope grand things happen.

The party takes a couple of days of preparation — tomorrow is the preparatory feast day, for instance. I’ll be posting all the details on Patreon, if you’re really interested.

P.S. When searching for an image to illustrate a ‘spider sex orgy’, make sure you’ve got Safe Search on. I didn’t, and now I have to go bleach my eyeballs. So many strange images, and virtually none of them included an actual arachnid…

We’ve moved!

Somebody snuck in and moved our house farther south. According to this informative map of plant hardiness zones, I’m not living in Zone 4a — we’ve moved to the steamy, tropical zone 4b.

In 2012, the USDA classified Morris, Minn., as Zone 4a.
Back then, Morris’ coldest winter temperature was somewhere between -30 and -25 degrees Fahrenheit on average.

In 2023, the USDA reclassified Morris as Zone 4b.
Now, the lowest winter temperature is between -25 and -20 degrees Fahrenheit on average.

That’s because the new average minimum temperature in Morris is 1.6º F warmer than the previous average, from an earlier period.

Fascinating. My wife is the gardener in the family. I’ll have to suggest to her that maybe this is the year to plant mangoes, bananas, and pineapple rather than tomatoes and zucchini.

Your turn. Look up your zone and find out what climate change has done to your location.

The Raven!

I’m starting up The Raven in 20 minutes, and will make an occasional comment here in honor of Roger Corman.

5:30 The movie begins with the wonderful voice of Vincent Price reciting Poe’s poem, The Raven. This may be the very last moment the movie has any real connection to the poem, or Poe, or anything from literature. That’s OK, we know what to expect from a Corman movie.

5:32 First bit of slapstick: Vincent walks into a telescope. Har har. Then he moans about his lost Lenore, and is startled by his daughter, Estelle. I guess that counts as a jump scare.

5:35 A raven raps at his window. It’s actually Peter Lorre, who when asked about Lenore, says “How the hell would I know” instead of “Nevermore,” and demands wine and that Vincent should restore him to his human form. He asks for stuff like jellied spiders, which Vincent doesn’t have, since he’s a vegetarian. Good for him! But the magical ingredients might be down in his father’s basement lab.

5:41 He has some nice cobwebs down there. And a tarantula! The movie is shaping up well. Then we get what looks like an undergraduate chemistry lab with colored chemicals and fire and smoke. The raven drinks the potion and turns into Peter Lorre, mostly. They need more potion, but are out of one ingredient, Dead Man’s Hair. Fortunately, Vincent’s father’s corpse is in the basement so they get more, while Lorre explains how Dr Scarabus turned him into a bird. This sets up the big conflict: Vincent needs to battle Scarabus for the leadership of a mystical society.

5:51 Lorre is restored, but the corpse of Vincent’s father warned him, “Beware!” He’s well-preserved and animated for the long dead. Lorre then noticed a portrait of the late Lenore, and says he saw her at Scarabus’ place. The plot thickens! Motives are motivated! Vincent must rescue Lenore’s spirit.

5:51 Vincent walks into a door and knocks himself out, while a servant barges in, swinging an axe. Vincent wakes up in time to zap the bad guy with magic missile. He was under the mental control of Scarabus. Lorre’s son shows up at the door. It’s Jack Nicholson! Looking young and handsome, so handsome that Estelle makes goo-goo eyes at him. The romantic subplot is established.

6:03 Man, this movie has everything. Car chase scene, only it’s a horse-drawn carriage driven by Jack, who is possessed and driving like he’s been hanging out in the Overlook Hotel. The possession conveniently ends when they arrive at Scarabus’s castle.

6:08 Boris Karloff (Scarabus) appears! He offers a friendly welcome, but also denies that he has put Lenore’s soul in bondage. They go to dinner. Karloff is unctuous, denying any enmity. They sit around complimenting each other on their mastery of magic by hand gesture. Lorre challenges Karloff to a magical duel. Karloff casually liquidates him with a lightning bolt, turning him into raspberry jam.

6:20 Bedtime in the creepy ol’ castle. Jack sneaks into Estelle’s room for unclear reasons, and then is locked inside. He has to go out a window and shuffle along a ledge (why not stay with Estelle? She’s cute, and not as dangerous as a high ledge in a rainstorm.) Meanwhile, Lenore (?) appears outside Vincent’s window. She then returns to Karloff — apparently she’s a wicked person who left Vincent for Karloff’s money.

6:26 Jack is outside the castle, and goes back in to find that Lorre is still alive! He was trying to fool Scarabus by pretending to have been killed. Jack goes off to rescue Estelle, while Lorre meets with Karloff. Lorre had been scheming! He had been turned into a raven to lure Vincent to the castle. The plot is getting a bit convoluted, but fun. It’s Karloff, Lorre, and Lenore vs. Vincent, Jack, and Estelle!

6:33 Karloff turns on Lorre, and throws him into a dungeon with Vincent, Estelle, and Jack. It’s going to be 2 against 4 — a strategic error. Lenore comes by to gloat. She is not a nice person at all. Lorre tries to betray the others, and Karloff turns him back into a raven. Vincent’s hands are tied, so he’s helpless; Karloff threatens to torture Estelle unless the secrets of his magical hand manipulations are revealed.

6:39 Lorre returns to untie Jack and Vincent! Karloff suggests a magical duel to the death. Oh boy! They sit in chairs facing each other and do various conjurations against each other. It’s very silly with cheap 1960s style tricks and cuts and gadgets on wires, but this is the climax of the movie, you know. Vincent wins, of course. Lenore tries to sidle back up to Vincent, who is unmoved, and Karloff grabs her and holds her as the heroes flee the castle, as it collapses on Karloff and Lenore, who later crawl out of the rubble. Karloff’s powers are gone. The treacherous Lorre remains a raven and returns to the bust of Pallas.

And that’s the end. It was a bit of low-budget fluff, classic Roger Corman fare, but it never takes itself seriously and most of the actors looked like they were just having fun. The weakest participant was Nicholson — his role seemed mostly superfluous. Price, Lorre, and Karloff were in great form. Lenore (Hazel Court) was having a ball vamping it up and was a perfect cartoon femme fatale. Estelle (Olive Sturgess)…well, she was paired with Nicholson, and they were a good match. Would you believe it was written by Richard Matheson, who wrote scripts for several Corman films at the time?

Five stars. This was good gonzo schlock churned out for the enjoyment of the audience and to keep some well-known actors well-supplied with wine.

Roger Corman is dead

The schlockmaster is gone — the creator of all those cheap ripoff sci-fi and horror movies, built on formulaic scripts and a negligible budget, is gone. Gosh, but that man sure chewed his way through movie and television screens. He was as omnipresent as Japanese rubber monster suit movies.

That said, I ate ’em up like popcorn. If one of his Edgar Allen Poe movies popped up on my screen right now, I’d be compelled to watch it to the end (I better not search for one, I’ve got work to do today). He also launched a fair number of careers.

Among the filmmakers who cut their teeth on Corman productions were Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Polly Platt, Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Bartel, Jonathan Demme, Donald G. Jackson, Gale Anne Hurd, Joe Dante, James Cameron, John Sayles, Monte Hellman, Carl Franklin, George Armitage, Jonathan Kaplan, George Hickenlooper, Curtis Hanson, Robert Towne, and James Horner.

Among the actors whose earliest credits were on Corman projects were Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Charles Bronson, Dennis Hopper, Tommy Lee Jones, Talia Shire, Sandra Bullock, Robert De Niro, and David Carradine.

It definitely wasn’t high art, but I am so tempted to pull up a stream of that camp classic, The Raven. But no! I mustn’t! I have things to do!

Maybe tonight.

You know, the most distinctive things about that movie are the voices. I can hear Karloff, Lorre, and Price in my head right now, and everyone in the movies today sounds so bland in comparison.

No! I’m closing that browser window right now!

the godfather, or grandfather, or one of the prime people that ended up actually killing the unity of the movement

A friend let me know that there was a discussion that briefly mentioned me last night, between Ember and Thomas Sheedy. Sheedy is a long time regressive conservative atheist who founded a group called Atheists for Liberty, and Ember put his views in the spotlight for a couple of hours. Sheedy was glib and articulate for a repulsive monster, but I think everyone could see right through him. He was babbling on about transgenderism, wokeism, Dave Silverman (he was framed!), Boghossian, Turning Point USA, and how he was committed to defending atheism über alles and that all this progressive ideology destroyed atheism, while his right-wing ideology was fine, and that it didn’t spill over into his atheist activism, unlike those weird Atheism+ freaks.

Somehow, he thinks promoting Trump and Desantis is compatible with his overweening support for a secular America. He’s completely blind to the fact that he is ideologically driven by forces that are inherently in opposition to atheism.

The bit where I’m mentioned is brief and not at all a big part of the conversation, and is at about the one hour mark in this video.

Sheedy says I am the godfather, or grandfather, or one of the prime people that ended up actually killing the unity of the movement. Cool. Not true and rather silly — lots of people found themselves dissatisfied with the movement, and I wasn’t a leader — but still rather flattering.

Tucker Carlson has always been ignorant & nuts

His madness was exposed on Joe Rogan’s show — and Carlson made Rogan look intelligent, which is quite a feat.

The 3-hour conversation, which racked up 5 million views on Rogan’s Youtube channel in just 3 days, left many online baffled after Carlson claimed, among other things, that scientists had given up on the idea of evolution.

“It’s visible,” Rogan replied. “Like, you can measure it in certain animals.”

In response, Carlson alleged that adaptation could be measured but that the theory of evolution as articulated by scientist Charles Darwin was not true.

I have a lot of dogs, I see adaptation in dogs through… litter to litter. But no, there’s no evidence at all, none, zero, that people evolved seamlessly from a single cell amoeba, Carlson said. No, there’s not. There’s no chain in the fossil record of that at all.

While the transition from unicellular to multicellular lifeforms is still a murky field of inquiry [No. Also irrelevant. The evidence of common descent is crystal clear], some experiments and findings have affirmed the theory. In 2010, a study published in Nature by the biochemist Douglas Thomas found that the theory that all life comes from a shared genetic heritage with single-celled microorganisms, called the theory of universal common ancestry (UCA), is “millions of times more probable than any theory of multiple independent ancestries.”

Carlson went on to state that he had his own theories, which boiled down to the belief that God created people, distinctly, and animals.

I think that’s like what every person on Earth thought until the mid-19 century, actually, Carlson said before breaking into a deranged laugh.

Yeah, that deranged laugh. Look it up. It’s pure madness. And what he said was just wrong, errors compiled from straight-up creationist lies. One of the clues is that reference to single cell amoeba — only creationists claim we think humans are descended from an amoeba, which is a rather highly derived protist (which is also a polyphyletic group, but one that doesn’t include any animal ancestors).

But Carlson’s fallacies don’t stop there. He’s lately been touting psychic prophets.

Tucker Carlson clearly thinks highly of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, telling Joe Rogan that he believes he is a psychic prophet who predicted 9/11. (Note: Alex Jones did not predict 9/11.)

He’s channeling something, Carlson said. I’ve asked him about it. ‘How did you do that?’ At length, during dinner on my barn recently. We’re talking about this. ‘How’d you do that?’ ‘I don’t know. It just came to me.’ And that’s real. That is real. The supernatural is real and I don’t know why it’s hard for for the modern mind, I guess because it’s a materialist mind to accept that.

That’s not a new phenomenon. It’s happened throughout history. There are people called prophets, and there are people who were prophets who weren’t called prophets, but there are people who have information or parts of information, bits of information, visions of information come to them and then they relay it, Carlson said.

The man’s brain is broken. It’s probably been broken since the start of his bow-tied career, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the loss of his privileged position at Fox News has sent him into an ugly tailspin.

Oh, it’s Eurovision season?

We don’t get as much of the noise about Eurovision here in the benighted Americas, but every once in a while something trickles into our media. I’m liking the Irish entry, “Doomsday Blue,” partly because it’s aggressively weird, partly because I think it’s catchy, partly because it’s satanic, and partly because it has pissed off conservatives.

Even delicate little Tommy Robinson has fallen onto his fainting couch.

Also, I partly like it for its politics.

The performance is definitely provocative, and combined with Thug’s non-binary LGBTQ+ identity, it makes them the perfect target for right-wingers.

But at no point has it seemed to occur to conservatives that their outrage might be the point of the performance—even after Thug themself called the uproar “quite iconic” and said it’s “p*ssing off all the right people.”

Thug calls themself a “rebel witch” who’s been “conjuring Ouija Pop since 1993,” and “Doomsday Blue” uses the phrase “avada kedavra,” popularized in the “Harry Potter” series by outspoken transphobe JK Rowling.

Thug called it a form of “wordplay,” a sort of reclaiming of the word from Rowling’s TERF-y hands, and has also used their performances to call for trans rights and a “ceasefire” in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Definitely satanic.

I missed the whole Eurovision thing this year, and just learned that Doomsday Blue came in 6th, while the winner was this song by Nemo, another nonbinary artist.

Nice voice, but I liked Bambie Thug better.