Sundry cephalinks

Here are a few miscellaneous cephalopod-related things people have sent me lately.

Obscenity!

Hang on, people, don’t look below the fold if you are easily offended. I’m including a horrific photo that was shown on a magazine cover, one that elicited the following reactions from readers:

“I was SHOCKED”

“I was offended and it made my husband very uncomfortable when I left the magazine on the coffee table”

“Gross, I am sick”

“I had to rip off the cover since I didn’t want it laying around the house”

Are you ready for this?

[Read more…]

Weird items I’ve forgotten to put on my CV

This Neonbubble site is strange and baffling, and now they’ve gone and blown my cover with this biography of a former student.

Her high intelligence and keen insight caught the eye of her Biology professor, PZ Myers, who informed the U.S. Military as the terms of his continued freedom dictated. Gia was abducted and experimented upon for a number of years in an attempt to delve into the secrets within her mind.

I suppose I could be turning over my promising students to top secret government agencies, but I don’t remember this Gia Milinovich. They must be erasing my memories! The bastards!

Cartoon Mormon theology

Jim Lippard has dug up a bizarre animated summary of Mormon theology that was put together by some other religious group to debunk them. I know that at least some bits and pieces of the cartoon are accurate, but I can’t judge the whole thing—I can tell you that religion looks pretty ridiculous when you explain its basic tenets with cheesy animation. Can we get a whole set of these made for Catholicism, Islam, Lutheranism, the Baptists, etc.?

I don’t think it would cost much. From the look of the Mormon story, maybe $9.99 each.

Here’s a picture of Mormon heaven.

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Looks just like Utah.

I could use a sign like that…if we can change “dog” to “cat”

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Isn’t that a sweet little old lady? I guess the sign offended a few people, though, and they turned her in to the police.

Insisting that the sign was simply a lark, Mrs Grove said yesterday that she had never received any complaints about it. But police ordered her to take it down and her details were taken. Once the officers left she hung the sign back up.

I like that last bit—what a simple no-nonsense response to bureaucratic BS.

She said: “it’s been there for more than 30 years and all the people who live nearby are used to it. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never had any complaints with any religion. The sign is just a lark that’s been there for a long time.

I don’t know. I’m looking at that obviously vicious little puppy and wondering how many Jehovah’s Witnesses he had eaten that day.

At least the British seem relatively civil about the whole thing. Symbols seem to inflame a whole ‘nother level of insanity in this country.

(hat tip: Richard Dawkins. Yeah, that Richard Dawkins.)

The Rapture Index just went up a point…

…because Pam Spaulding at Pandagon had a kind word to say about James Lileks. Not his Bleat or Screed blog, fortunately, or for his regular column in the Strib which I find tediously twee, but for his masterful book, Interior Desecrations. You have to have lived through the 1970s to be able to understand how tacky things got for a while there—someday I’m going to have to dig up that old photo of myself in a polyester paisley print shirt and bell bottoms just to put the younger generation of readers here into shock.

While I’m in a “what were they thinking?” mood, I’ll mention one shock we had in this otherwise nice 1950s era house we own. The upstairs is carpeted bright red…no, scarlet, a flaming crimson color, which was discombobulating enough. In addition, though, one of the upstairs bedrooms was wallpapered in bright ♣ green shamrocks ♣ .

It was one of the selling points, actually. I figured if we ever had trouble making the mortgage payments, I already had the decor to open a bordello for leprechauns.

‘Ware the Minneapolis police, fellow weirdos

The Minneapolis police are getting a little too serious—they’ve started arresting zombies (those are some really good mugshots.) I think the fact that there was a zombie dance party at the mall might have tipped them off that there isn’t a real threat here.

The reason they were arrested is ridiculous.

Harteau also said police were on high alert because they’d gotten a bulletin about men who wear clown makeup while attacking and robbing people in other states.

What’s the matter with law enforcement nowadays? They can’t even tell clowns from zombies. Here’s a hint:

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What are they going to do when the mad scientists invade Minneapolis next week—run around and start locking up dentists and undertakers?