Our Family Is Growing!

No, not Cuttlefamily–Freethought Blogs family. Seven new blogs start today!

En Tequila Es Verdad
A Voice Of Reason
The Atheist Experience
The Crommunist Manifesto
What Would JT Do?
Rock Beyond Belief
And my dear friend Kylie, the one who got me started with blogging in the first place (on a pseudonymous blog I had before I was Cuttlefish, and then of course as Cuttlefish), with
Token Skeptic

I am looking forward to getting to know all of my new family, and invite you to do the same!

Today is a mad-busy day
So I really have little to say
Go read these new sites
I’ve got time for two bites
Of my breakfast, then off on my way!

Knit Me A … Sister?

Again, for Daniel, and for the Ravelry visitors, one of my all time favorites from the old place:

Shelley serves as my muse again today… The brain was not her first post about anatomically accurate knitting; there was a previous post on a cute and cuddly teratoma. Ok, so she calls it “complicated and grotesque”, but tomayto tomahto. But the knit teratoma is indeed cute and cuddly, if you ask me. So I thought I would try a slightly different spin on the whole idea of having had a twin who died and whose body, in the womb, was absorbed into yours in the form of a tumor with recognizable body parts.

I mean, that can’t be all bad, can it?

“Teratoma”, or “Knit me a Sister”.

“I have an invisible friend”, I said,
“But she doesn’t hide beneath my bed,
Or in my closet–no, instead,
I keep her tucked inside.”

“We do not mean to condescend,
But we all know, there’s no such friend;
This fabrication now must end.”
My Mom and Dad replied.

“But Mommy! Daddy! Please, I swear!
She’s closer than my teddy bear!
See my tummy? She’s in there!
I even feel her growing!”

My parents didn’t scream or shout;
They trusted me, despite their doubt,
And had a doctor check me out
When something started showing!

My friend was real! I hadn’t lied!
At first, my twin, but then she died.
The doctors cut me open wide
And shoveled out my basement.

I never knew I had a sister,
But once my friend was gone, I missed her;
So, knitting till she raised a blister
My Mom made a replacement!

By the way, the original source of the pictures also has a poem (or song) about it! And instructions!

Knit Me A Brain

Our friend Daniel over at Camels With Hammers has noticed an influx of people with long needles. In a show of freethought blogs support, I thought I’d repost a couple of posts from my old digs that got quite a few visits from Ravelry in the past. Just trying to make the new place more comfy.


A tip of the cuttlecap to Shelley of Retrospectacle for reporting on the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art

We’ve got sweaters to mend; we’ve got socks we can darn,
So pull up a chair, and I’ll spin you a yarn;
It’s a song with a Scarecrow-of-Oz-like refrain:
Please pick up your needles and knit me a brain!

I’ve knitted my bones, and I’ve knitted my brow,
But I’ve never seen brains knitted—up until now;
With each neural pathway a separate skein,
It’s Art and it’s Science, so knit me a brain!

Two hemispheres knit, and then reaching across ‘em
A beautiful, zippered-up corpus callosum;
Such fine application of knit, purl, and chain,
I want one myself—so please, knit me a brain!

With the brain’s convolutions appropriately gyred
This fabric creation has got me inspired!
My love for this art, I can hardly contain—
So how can I get one? Please knit me a brain!

Some people may tell you I’ve gone ‘round the bend
That the stuff ‘twixt my ears needs some decades to mend.
I could use some new grey-matter; mine’s gone insane,
It would not go to waste, if you’d knit me a brain.

You can see for yourself—why, just look at the time
I must take to obsessively put things to rhyme;
Something’s wrong, and I think that the answer is plain:
I need a replacement—so knit me a brain!

The Most Amazing Thing

If you take a look around while you’re out walking
Just to catalog the things you chance to see
From the beetle at your footstep to the pigeon overhead
To the bracket fungus high up in a tree
You will notice the abundances of nature
It’s astonishing, of course, because it’s true

And the most amazing thing about this earthworm

And the most amazing thing about this kitty

And the most amazing thing about this sea cucumber

And the most amazing thing about this virus

And the most amazing thing about this mushroom

And the most amazing thing about this octopus

And the most amazing thing about this fig tree

And the most amazing thing about this wallaby

And the most amazing thing about this daffodil

And the most amazing thing about this slime mold

And the most amazing thing about this yeast cell

And the most amazing thing about this humpback

And the most amazing thing about this baby

And the most amazing thing about this amoeba

And the most amazing thing about this every living thing

Is that all of it’s related… to you.
[Read more…]

God O, Vader 1

It took 80 years to build it, in the European style
It was chiseled out of limestone, meant to stick around a while
The cathedral’s vaulted ceilings and its celebrated towers
Were a physical reminder of God’s powers

Now the national cathedral is a victim of the quake
See, limestone’s great for stacking, but it doesn’t like to shake
Was it purely seismic forces here that led to some collapse
Or is something greater happening, perhaps?

The cherubim and seraphim have fallen to the roof
No casual observer could demand a better proof
Lord Vader’s fearsome visage is untouched on the façade
Where he mocks the claimed omnipotence of God.

We’d be foolish to ignore them, as the signs and signals grow
Someone’s sending us a message—“Under God” has got to go
And we’ll have to change the slogan on our currency, of course
To the safer hollow motto, “Trust The Force”

Explanation, after the jump:
[Read more…]