Uh, right. That line comes from a story in a 1949 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, “Octopus wrestling is my hobby”.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Uh, right. That line comes from a story in a 1949 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, “Octopus wrestling is my hobby”.
What little I’ve read of the extreme audiophile community makes my brain hurt, and I’ve avoided it like poison. James Randi deals with the freaky audiophiles now and then — people who believe their special magic cables will make your stereo sound better, or that an array of weirdly shaped hatstands in your room will make the music resonate just right — but it’s not something I want to get into regularly. A reader sent me a link to the special One Drop Liquid, though, and I just had to share my cerebral agony with everyone else, out of spite.
The title of this article is terribly misleading: “The Octopus that can open drink bottles”. I was thinking it would be so cool to have an octopus on your shoulder, and you hold up your beer bottle, and he reaches out an arm and twists the top off for you. And then you read a little further and discover that the little smart-aleck will only do it if you open it first and put some octopus food inside for it. I wouldn’t mind a bit of shrimp or crab bobbing about in my beer, but having to open the bottle first to put it in there defeats the whole purpose of carrying a bottle-opening octopus around with you.
I thought maybe I’d just have to train the octopus to like beer … but then I’d have to share, and just my luck I’d probably get an eight-armed lush. Having a clever beast around who’d probably figure out how to open the refrigerator and then crawls in and drinks all your beer seems like a bad idea.
Hey, maybe this fits into the framing debate. The famous violinist Joshua Bell stood in a Washington DC subway station, playing Bach on his Stradivarius, in a test to see how many commuters would stop and appreciate the magnificent music.
A few people stopped, but no crowd formed, and he got a total of $32.17 tossed into his violin case. That actually isn’t bad for 45 minutes of playing, but I suspect he isn’t going to give up his day job.
From Geoff Arnold, it seems there is a cult of Schneier. Since I said hello to Bruce Schneier in my brief visit to Minicon yesterday, I feel that I am obligated to set the facts straight. It’s all true. He is a god among men, and the earth would tremble at his footsteps if he wasn’t so beneficent that he insisted on levitating himself everywhere.
Speaking of deities on earth, I also got to briefly meet Teresa Nielsen Hayden at her panel on conversations on the net. Yes, in person, she is exactly like she is on the web, only more so. Somebody interrupted her, she raised a finger, and with a glance disemvowelled him on the spot, something you really do not want to see occurring in the real world. Alien geometries were involved; people reduced to consonants are angular, dysphonic, disturbing, and very hard on the eyes.
Fortunately, I only waved to Patrick Nielsen Hayden from a distance, otherwise an evening in the presence of a Trinity might have perturbed even my absolutely inflexible dogmatic atheism.
I am a little jealous of Skatje, who is spending all day and all night today and most of tomorrow at the con.
Skatje’s keeping us up to date on the con at her weblog. I’ll have you know I introduced her to de Lint’s books, and now she’s going to be bringing home a bunch more for me to read. Bwahahahaha! My clever scheme bears fruit at last — there’s the true reason I had kids, merely so they would one day bring me books.
His people are starving, and Kim Jong-il is roaming the countryside, eating up giant rabbits.
Karl Szmolinsky of Eberswalde faces a grim Easter.
His gold medal pride, ‘Robert der Grosse’ , the largest rabbit in recorded Prussian history , is missing and believed dead in North Korea.
The 24 pound UberBunny was sent to Pyongyang last year along with 11 others “with the aim of setting up a breeding program to alleviate famine ” , but they ended up on the table at Dear Leader Kim Jong-il’s February 16th birthday banquet.
This is what happens when megalomaniacs rule — not even the bunnies are safe.
Those wicked farkers have taken this charming photo of a clutch of innocent cephalopod embryos and … and … oh, I cannot even describe the perversities they have wreaked upon them.
Do you think if I work up a good head of outrage, I’ll be able to get on Fox News, get a few people fired, and shut down the obscene display? Billy Donohue, if you’re reading this, give me a call … I need tips.
I’d been kinda hoping to be Inara, but this is good enough.
Your results:
You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 75% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 75% Wash (Ship Pilot) 70% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 55% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 30% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 25% River (Stowaway) 20% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 15% A Reaver (Cannibal) 5% Alliance 5% Inara Serra (Companion) 0% Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.
Click here to take the “Which Serenity character are you?” quiz…
(via Evil Bobby)
Sure, you can talk while looking at this page, but it’s even funnier to have it loaded while someone else is talking to you. (My wife is going to kill me now.)
(via Present Simple)
Minneapolis is a lovely city, except for the geysers of blood erupting out of the sewer system. Don’t get the wrong idea, though—only some of it was human blood.
