Weirdness
pharyngula | March 28, 2007Only the religious could turn a disaster into a mark in the plus column for God. Jim Downey has found an amazing series of books with some impressive titles, all with the point of giving credit to God for personal catastrophe:
Thank God For Accidents
Thank God For Mistakes
Thank God I Adopted
Thank God I Am A Bitch
Thank God I Am A Dwarf/Midget
Thank God I Am A Network Marketer
Thank God I Am A Senior Citizen
Thank God I Am A Single Parent
Thank God I Am A Stay At Home Dad
Thank God I Am A Stay At Home Mom
Thank God I Am A Virgin
Thank God I Am Afraid Of Commitment
Thank God I Am An…
pharyngula | March 26, 2007One sure way to get your Important Message to me is to use the good old US Mail (although my email is much snappier now, thanks to previous suggestions), and sometimes I do get the strangest stuff. This time, it was a formal looking letter from an organization called "Campaign for the Children." How can you possibly turn away a letter from someone who is for the children? You can't, of course. Then once I started reading … well, this doesn't seem to be a campaign for children after all.
The letter opens by explaining that it was prompted by my comments on homosexuality and Albert Mohler, and…
pharyngula | March 25, 2007This week in our regular collection of reader-submitted cephaloweirdness, the theme is "domesticity".
Maybe you're the kind of person who doesn't have ordinary garden gnomes…
…and the iron work around your house has a theme…
…and you see this and think "AwwOOOOOOO!!! Hubba hubba!"
You know what's next, right?
And then you work and slave to get them the nicest toys…
…and a healthy diet so they grow big and strong…
…and next thing you know, their teenage buddies are all hanging about the house, making a mess of the place.
I'm just relieved there aren't any grandkids yet. Just think what…
pharyngula | March 23, 2007I was asked my opinion of this strangely engrossing drawing titled "Man Thru History". It's one of those huge multi-paneled works with lots of little details that draw your eye in—I looked everywhere for Waldo but couldn't find him. Anyway, here's one panel out of 23:
While the details are fun to pore over, I can't say that I'm impressed with it overall. There are too many distortions.
Start with the title: "Man thru history". That's actually accurate, in a sense. It's an illustration of a particular man's perception of history.
While most of the figures are just standing, men are either…
pharyngula | March 22, 2007OK, I can understand copying Wikipedia and setting up your own special interest wikis all over the place—it's an admission that your goals are too dorky or too stupid to survive outside your own special little incubator—but if you're going to set up your own social networking site, why would you copy MySpace, the ugliest, most awkward, most annoying such site on the planet? It's like declaring that not only do you lack any creativity or imagination, but that you are totally tasteless, too.
Behold: His Holy Space. It's like an online ghetto for Christians. Take the cluttered, disorganized look…
pharyngula | March 21, 2007Speaking of satire that's hard to tell from religion, one of the cycles of the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, which is prompting some end-of-the-world hysteria, and even a movie:
Apparently, the whole world is going to change suddenly on 21 December, five years from now.
Armageddon is not what it used to be
I think there is going to be more outbreaks of telepathy
This is my favorite quote:
Whether or not time ends in 2012, we should be assuming it will so that we take care of business. Secondly and most important, don't cancel your appointments for 2013.
The movie seems to be taking this…
pharyngula | March 21, 2007Baby-faced Burt Humburg passed along the word-of-the-day to me:
pogonotrophy (po-guh-NAW-truh-fee) noun
The growing of a beard.
[From Greek pogon (beard) + -trophy (nourishment, growth).]
Pogonology is the study of beards and pogonotomy is a fancy word for
shaving.
Now this sounds like news for Man Beard Blog (who will no doubt be pleased with the Greek etymology), but what is this? Have I got some reputation for facial hirsuteness (a word that is etymologically related to "horror")? Is it a hint that I need to shave, errm, I mean pogonotomize myself?
More likely, it's acute envy.
Besides, I…
pharyngula | March 21, 2007Nooooooo!! The proliferation of special purpose wiki encyclopedias has gone too far!
pharyngula | March 21, 2007
Every once in a while, a reader sends me a link to something I've already dealt with (and that's OK, I don't expect everyone to have committed the entirety of the Pharyngula database to memory), but it's a link to something so dang weird it's worth reposting. In this case, I was sent a link to a page that purports to describe the beliefs of some Jehovah's Witnesses about cats, where among many other jaw-dropping arguments, it gives us this jewel:
Indeed, modern studies of classification of cats, while not necessarily being reliable as they may be based on the discredited 'theory' of…
pharyngula | March 21, 2007Today is the vernal equinox, Bérubé has returned to the blogosphere, and the WAAGNFNP has manifested itself. I don't know what it all means, unless perhaps that all the snow and ice is going to be melted by a giant nuclear fireball, ending the hockey season.
pharyngula | March 14, 2007So, in the last election, we Minnesotans briefly enjoyed the company of a vampire running for governor. Unfortunately, Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey was arrested before the election and we missed out on the potentially amusing spectacle.
Somehow, though, he is now free (damn those cunning vampires!), and is planning to run for president. As a most interesting and admittedly tempting part of his campaign platform, he is promising to impale GW Bush if elected.
He's crazy, I wouldn't have given him a chance, but dang if he didn't come up with a vote-getting idea. They're cunning, those vampires…
pharyngula | March 13, 2007Here, you can have nightmares too. I could hardly believe this topic that came up in the comments: gospel mimes. I thought it had to be some cynical joke, that no one would combine those two things…but it's real. There are plenty of examples on YouTube, and jpf dug up a list:
K&K Mime Ministries
Praises In Motion Mime Ministry
The Mime Ministry of De'Ju
The Mime Boyz
Yielded Vessel
Silent Praise Mime Ministry
Ms. Tawanda: Gospel Mime Soldier For Christ
I know. My jaw hit the floor, just like yours. If Koran Bratz exist, to name two random and normally unlinked horrors, please don't tell…
pharyngula | March 13, 2007
Stevie C sent along this article on
An unusual presentation of supernumerary breast tissue (just what were you googling for, Stevie?), in which a woman reports an annoying growth on her foot, and when examined, is discovered to have a breast growing there, complete with nipple and fatty tissue (but in this case, no glandular tissue).
It's in the Dermatology Online Journal, not the Onion.
I hadn't heard of this before myself, but it's fascinating. These supernumerary breasts can pop up all over the place, including the face, back, and thigh (and foot, obviously). They can be functionally…
pharyngula | March 12, 2007In case anyone here was still worried about the saga of the rotting bat corpse on some nice furniture, Nic McPhee reports that Goo Gone works like magic.
pharyngula | March 9, 2007In Serbia, vandals broke into Slobodan Milosevic's tomb and drove a stake through his heart to keep him from "returning from the dead to haunt the country". I think that's utterly charming.
When I go, I'd figured the best plan would be to donate my body to science, or to be cremated…but now I'm thinking it would be really cool if crazed folk dug my body up, chopped it to bits, put a stake through it, and maybe paraded the head around town on a pike. I wonder if there is a funeral plan for that?
(via The Pagan Prattle)
pharyngula | March 8, 2007Fark is having an octopus photoshop contest — most of the entries make me go "eh", but there are a few nice ones.
Phil Plait thinks this could be a symbol of rapprochement between the brilliant analysts of the natural world at Pharyngula and those slack-jawed people who stare dully at the sky at Bad Astronomy. (I kid, astronomers probably think a little bit now and then, too.)
pharyngula | March 7, 2007
A recent article on Deep Sea News mentions the Ritual of 365 Points—since this is such an important reference to cephalophiliacs, I thought I'd repost my summary of a classic movie that hinges on it as a plot point.
I have seen The Calamari Wrestler. It was…indescribable. I won't even try. The basic idea, though, is that it's about pro wrestling in Japan, with a dying wrestler who undergoes a magical transformation in Pakistan to keep him alive, which also allows him to become a super-star in the ring. He battles rivals to learn a heartwarming secret at the end.
I've put a few frames below…
pharyngula | March 6, 2007Some ditzy entrepreneur in California has a new twist on bottled water:
As the body thirsts, so does the soul. So why drink regular drinking water when you can partake in a more blessed beverage? Bottled Holy drinking water is bottled in Stockton, California and blessed by priests from southern California.
Funny…the advertising doesn't mention anything about vampires even once, although it does have a warning sticker:
Warning to sinners: If you are a sinner or evil in nature, this product may cause burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness, vomiting, bloodshot and…
pharyngula | March 6, 2007The indecency in public schools is out of control:
"...during school hours in a classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse...at least ten students were witnesses. No disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher... All teachers were told to keep quiet."
The class that incited these students to publicly engage in illicit sex acts? Shop. Those mortise and tenon joints sure are provocative, and I guess the shop teacher wasn't named Mr Adler.
(Yes, I know this is a serious issue, but I think the school was right to avoid addressing it…