Can I trade the cat in for one of these?

i-f253e0593ce41801f29014b99a5d3e03-california.jpg

John Bentley sent me an issue of Seven Days with this interesting illustration on the cover: it’s titled “California”, by Chris Varricchione. Excuse the smudginess, but I just scanned it in from newsprint, so it isn’t exactly the cleanest image to start with. Still, I had to make it my desktop image—who can resist a flying mollusc/bird chimera? Now if only someone would point me to a sharper original source…

Thanks, John!

I knew it all along

Phil has a live one: a woman who mangles digital images with Photoshop filters to determine if they are lizardoid aliens. Foolish earthling. Everyone knows Phil is from Zeta Reticuli.

Along similar lines, I once had someone cast a detailed horoscope for me and send it along…apparently, I am one of the most evil baby-raping SOBs on the planet, and the only thing preventing me from oppressing and enslaving and destroying everyone is an excess of sloth and stupidity. These kooks—they say the obvious and pretend it is insight.

6,666,666

So…is this you?

Pharyngula
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I expected the world to end, but maybe this means I have to wait until I’ve harvested 666,666,666 souls for Satan now.

Portrait of the blogger

The most amusing coverage of the Nature top science blogs article comes from The Technology Chronicles, which begins by calling scientists “sober, dispassionate, precise” and suggests that we’ve abandoned “Olympian impartiality” to compete with Cute Overload. I get the impression the author hasn’t ever met a real scientist. Nick will love being called a “budding Matt Drudge.”

We need more cute, huh? OK, I can do cute. I had to run my photo through a face transformer to do it, but here I am, rendered a bit more adorably than in real life.

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Now I just sit back and wait for the fans to roll in.

(Thanks to Lindsay, who took the original photo.)

Dire warnings

Reading some of my favorite blogs today, I can’t help but feel the looming hand of fate preparing to destroy us all.

  • Jon Voisey is praising a director of the Oklahoma ACLU, Joanne Bell. You’re in Kansas, Jon. It’s not that far from Oklahoma. What happened to Bell could happen to you.
  • Ophelia Benson is saying harsh words about Mother Theresa. An uppity woman criticizing an icon of Christian charity? Someday, you could be in a hospital with a hatchet-faced nun looming over you, contemplating how best to chastise your body before your immortal soul meets the god who will fling you into the flames of Hell.
  • General JC Christian dares to mock those who would sic Jew-haters on the home of the Dobrich family. You’re anonymous, old boy—wouldn’t it be a fine coup for some winger somewhere to publish your home address and phone number? Let’s see how funny you are when a manly Christian fellow shows up at your door with a demand to give your inner Frenchman a workout.
  • Cream Pickle Pups? Oh, no—it’s fair time in the Midwest, when the most obscene foods appear in greasy carts on dirt paths in places that reek of farm animals. We’re all gonna die.

Despite the horrible possibilities, though, I can’t help but hope that everyone keeps it up. Well, except for Diablo Cody—no one really needs to OD on fried fats in grease, do they?