Man, I am so jealous of that Stupid Evil Bastard: he’s gotten so lovely for Halloween.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Man, I am so jealous of that Stupid Evil Bastard: he’s gotten so lovely for Halloween.
Here’s a weird and trivial phenomenon to consider: gum disintegration syndrome.
I’m not much of a gum-chewer, and never have been…but I remember gum from when I was a kid, and you could chew and chew and maintain a flavorless wad for a long time. Recently, I thought I’d try gum as an appetite suppressant, and I got some of the sugarless stuff. To my surprise, I’d chew on it for a few minutes, and shortly I’d feel it losing its texture and getting runny, and then it would dissolve into small fragments that I’d just swallow. I thought it was those dang cheap confectionery companies, that the formulas for gum base had changed since I was a kid, or maybe it was the sugarless kind that was just different. I tried a couple of different brands—same result. I would have abandoned it there and chalked it up to yet another example of the evils of creeping capitalism and Things Were Better in the Good Old Days, but I mentioned it to my wife, who thought I was nuts. She’s been dipping into my gum, and noticed no difference—it lasts as long as she wants to chew it.
Weird. My wife sent me this Straight Dope article on it, but it’s not very helpful. There’s some speculation that it’s a result of secretions during arousal (unlikely in my case; I can be reading, or driving the car, and it happens…unless perhaps I have a remarkable libido) or temperature (I tried taking the gum out every once in a while to cool, but no difference, it still breaks down. Besides, my body temperature isn’t unusual enough that my doctor has noticed.) At this point it’s simply a mystery. Maybe I’ve acquired some novel new digestive enzymes, but I don’t think I’ve been in any teleporter accidents—if I graduate from dissolving Wrigley’s to novel ways of eating donuts, I’ll let you know.
I’m not concerned about it*—maybe it’s just as well this is a vice I won’t be pursuing—but now I’m curious. Anyone else have the power to reduce gum to soup? Does it only happen in moments of passion? Details!
*Although…if everyone gets a mutant superpower in their life, and mine is the ability to digest gum instead of acquiring laser eyeballs or telepathy or super-regeneration, I’m going to feel ripped off.
A reader sent me a link to a site I hesitate to reference, just because I know some people will be aghast at the exposed mammalian flesh and weird exploitation of women…but it’s got tentacles everywhere, and molluscs, and even a few arthropods and a giant salamander. The title, Tentacles of Desire, and the list of organisms tells you what it’s all about. If you’re easily offended or squeamish about slime or freaked out by perverse fetishes, don’t go there!
Otherwise, though, just consider it a celebration of biodiversity.
As everyone knows (or should know), October is the month named in honor of the octopus, and we’re supposed to celebrate cephalopods every day. It culminates in the great festival of Octoween, when all the good children who keep molluscs in their heart are rewarded with sushi, while all the wicked children who think eight or ten arms are too many get surprised by tentacles rising up from the ground to snatch them away to a pelagic doom.*
Whoever carved this is going to get a whole bucket of tako.
*Don’t you dare criticize my mythology!
If I were in Philadelphia next week, I’d be at the Mütter Museum on Tuesday, where to celebrate the macabre holiday they are showing Tod Browning’s Freaks. One of the most disturbing museums in the world and one of the most disturbing movies of all time…how can you pass up a combination like that?
(via Museum Madness)
As a vanity plate, it’s trite; on that particular plate, it’s disturbing and subversive.
I laughed and laughed.
Perhaps it doesn’t fit your stereotypes of what Minnesotans are like, but there are also freaky wild parties with cocaine and huge…huge…well, you know. Watch the video to find out.
I think it’s shot in Lake Wobegone, actually.
Here’s an interesting collection of scans from a defunct comic book called Action. It’s rather grisly—most of the action seems to involve people being bloodily devoured by marine organisms—so don’t look if you’d rather not see people getting pulped in a shark’s jaws. This comic book was apparently shut down because of the outcry over the violence, but I see another reason:
Badly drawn squid, completely false information about their eating habits, and poor grammar (“liquidises”? Don’t they know that the plural of squid is squid?)—clearly, the book’s audience turned away from it in contempt for their lack of accuracy.
(In case you’re wondering, and don’t want to look…I’m sorry to say that yes, it pecks a hole in poor Pat’s stomach and dissolves away his internal organs. And then it gets in a fight with a Great White Shark!)
(And before anyone sends me more links to that video of an octopus vs. a shark, I’ve seen it, and I know the octopus wins. In this comic, though, the shark is the title character, so I think he wins.)
Evil Bobby (with a name like that, he should know) tells me that Darth Vader’s little brother Chad Vader is working as a night manager at a grocery store in Madison. I’m going to have to suggest to my son that he look the place up and toss a tangelo down one of the ventilation shafts, just to see what happens.
