Summer reading

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Who would have thought these words would ever be typed by me? I’m looking forward to Ann Coulter’s new book.

It’s called Godless(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Apparently, Ann Coulter has written a book about me, although I suspect that she’ll instead be pretending that people like me are representative of the Democratic Party as a whole. I wish.

I’m sure it will be insightful, nuanced, and meticulously researched. Maybe Al Franken and I should get together in a summer book club to discuss it.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

Ann Coulter

P.S. Please don’t buy it. I’m not planning to, myself (although if the publisher wants to send me a review copy, I’ll gleefully read it and review it), but I just know my local library will be getting it.

P.P.S. I’m also amused at the image of Ann Coulter as an icon of Christian thought.

Anencephalic on parade

I mentioned that I was getting a curious number of hits for the term “anencephaly” the other day, and was wondering what was prompting it. Readers have been sending me strange and obscure bits of news that might be relevant, such as this account of an unusual birth in Nepal.

The neck-less baby with its head almost totally sunk into the upper part of the body and with extraordinarily large eyeballs literally popping out of the eye-sockets, was born to Nir Bahadur Karki and Suntali Karki at the Gaurishnkar Hospital in Charikot.

The article has pictures (if the description above makes you cringe, don’t look), and also reflects a very different attitude: it looks like people put the dead baby in a tray and had a parade, with crowds of gawkers. They also had a refreshingly pragmatic attitude towards the whole unfortunate event.

Nir Bahadur, the father, says he does not feel any remorse for the newly-born baby’s death. “I am happy that nothing happened to my wife,” he said.

That’s an excellent point of view, I think, much more sensible than that of old Senator Fetus Fondler. Our country could do with a little less embryo worshipping and a little more moving on with the important things in life, too.

And, by the way, I think “Suntali” is a really lovely name.

GeekProm!

In the rural fastness of Western Minnesota, a legend grows. A man so nerdly that his infamy spreads far and wide; when people see shell-less molluscs, his name leaps to their lips; when geeks and nerds gather, they all whisper the same thing: “Pee-Zee” (or, as the Canadians and Dr Who fans would say, “Pee-Zed.”)

Yes, in yet another of a string of geek honors, I have been invited to the GeekProm, to be held in the Science Museum of Minnesota on 22 April. There will be spaz-dancing, cow-eye dissections, and a talent show, and some couple will be crowned King and Queen Geek.

Obviously, I deserve to go to this. What you may not realize, O Unsuspecting Readers, is that by reading this site you too are now fully certified Geeks and Nerds. Sorry about that, but it is infectious, and you have only yourselves to blame. I’m also afraid that there aren’t any scientists interested in working on a cure, so you’re just going to have to live with your punishment…and show up to out-spaz me on the dance floor.

See you all there.

The things that remind people of me…

They all seem to be demonic, or tentacled, or both. I am always flattered to get the email from people saying, “I found this stinking pile of slime covered with maggots, and I thought immediately of you!” (really, I am flattered—it’s nice to be associated with the weird and unusual.) However, I have to assure you that I don’t actually look anything like this handsome hunk of tentacles, although you’ll have to take my word on it—you won’t find any photos of me sans clothing to confirm that.

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Also, my wife doesn’t look anything like this sexy spawn of Cthulhu*. She’s much hotter, even if she lacks a chitinous crust or suckers.

*Warning: that link is to a page with photographs of a “nude” model, but she is sort of clothed in spikes and shells and other oddments. Links from that page are not really work safe—they get weirder, but much more overtly mammalian.

I really didn’t need to see that

Childbirth is a beautiful thing, I know…but a statue of Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug is just weird, and this one combines a couple of other strange conceptions.

The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears with “water-retentive” hands.

Labor is not seductive. Putting a “pop-diva” in a rather sexual pose is not a celebration of birth and motherhood, I don’t think. Furthermore, it’s supposed to be a monument: a monument to the anti-choice movement. I’m sure there’s nothing Phyllis Schlafly and James Dobson would think represents their beliefs better than an anatomically explicit statue of the woman who sang “Baby one more time” naked and in a gynecologically revealing pose.

I’m thinking some New York artist is venting excess irony here.

(via Blog of the Moderaate Left)