Initially, I was horrified at what was being done to the hapless cephalopod, but then I saw the stereotype on the right, and realized the real crime was against the kids reading this tripe. (No, my name isn’t Fredric Wertham.)

Hey, now New Scientists is cashing in on the LOL_you_name_it craze. The web is being overrun with bad grammar and cutesie pictures!

(I think this is also the first I’ve seen of the New Scientist blogs — I knew they were planning them a while back. They need to let more people know about these things!)

There’s a cathedral for sale in Los Angeles. Makes a great squidmas present for any atheist.

Uh-oh. Those liberal artsie literature types at Crooked Timber, led by the wicked John Holbo, have revealed the breadth of the alliance. Oh, yeah, you’re used to the god-hating shenanigans of the evilutionists, but now Holbo has gone and engaged in the War on Christmas™ and disclosed himself as a lackey to one of the Icons of Evolution™, all at once. How has he done this?

He has made Christmas cards.

Using the artwork of Ernst Haeckel.

And he even photoshopped in extra tentacles.

And he’s planning to sell thong underwear with some particularly tentacly images.

He has outdone me. I might as well just retire now, and turn the keys to Pharyngula over to Holbo. I’ll never be able to top that.

…people send you their weird and suggestively shaped fruit and vegetables. This reminds me of something:

Thanks, Ema! It even smells nice and lemony.

Mornings are caffeine time, but this ad does tempt me.

One of the small disadvantages of academia is that we get hopelessly busy just before Christmas, which makes squeezing in the gift shopping difficult. I’m probably not even going to step into a store until sometime around the end of next week. That’s why you have to appreciate these online gift suggestions. I’m leaning towards the Televangelists’ Rapture Early-Warning System as a universally useful gift for my family members of all faiths. Even the atheists should like the half-hour warning before the Rapture so they can rapidly convert!

The belts and straps and chains slipped that day! I had no idea there was a cameraman hanging around at the time.

It’s a
nice T-Shirt anyway.