I'm dying...dying from all the sweetness!!

How, how did I not know about this sooner? In the 80s Topps released a series of cards and stickers that featured dinosaurs eating people and getting blown away in graphic detail. It's like someone dredged my unconscious and put the haul onto some poorly-painted collectibles (is there any other kind?). Why, right on this very blog I have expressed my heartfelt desire to see a giant theropod get blasted with a bazooka. If only we could get the serious dinosaur artists to draw some of this stuff . . . somebody could get rich.


Oh yes, my friends, that is a freakin' Parasaurolophus eating a freakin' baby. I was thirteen at the time. What. The. Hell!?*

* by which I mean, "How did these come into existence at all?", "Who thought it was a good idea to sell them to little kids?", and most importantly, "How come I never got any?"


Okay, this is not one of those cards. This is from I Can Has Cheezburger? I've just been dying to use it, and it does hail from the same realm as the dinosaur cards. A realm I call "Stupid Awesome!!!"

Hat tip to Sally, who you may remember from her own gory adventures.

Holy crap, does that cow have implants!?

So my labmate Katie is off to Africa for a semester to jump-start her bovid research. She set up a travel blog, The Red Queen Runneth, to detail her adventures. One of the links is to something called Lurch the Watusi. At first I figured this was another African travel blog. Like 'Dance the Watusi', only 'Lurch the Watusi' to indicate that the traveler was somewhat inexperienced and fumbling. Who knows, I thought, this could be the Redmond O'Hanlon of African travel blogs.

Oooooh no, my friends! [Say out loud in an amazed-but-sarcastic Chandler Bing voice]

This is more like the Dolly Parton of cattle, only male and with horns instead of boobs. Although I dare you to look at the photos and not be reminded of certain surgically enhanced actresses who work in the Los Angeles area.


I am going to abuse the label function to lard this one up with everything that is going through my mind right now.

Currently, it's this: Nine tongues of Bathsheba, those horns are (probably) mostly air! That's because (1) the big horns of most large mammals are hollowed out by the frontal sinuses, and (2) pneumaticity is never far from my mind, figuratively or literally. I never stop thinking about it, and my frontal sinuses are about 5 mm from my frontal lobes.

Same goes for you, ya airhead.

More to come on pneumaticity at a saner hour.

Wikipedia find-and-replace biography scramble #1: John Lennon

Who was John Lennon? What has modern science learned of this mysterious person and his times? With some help from yours truly, Wikipedia has this to say:

John Lennon (405–453), also sometimes known with the nickname as Lennon the Scourge of God (Flagellum Dei) or just Johnny Boy, was the final and most powerful king of the Huns.

He reigned over what was then Europe's largest empire, from 434 until his death. His empire stretched from Germany and the Netherlands to the Ural river and from the Danube River to Poland and Estonia. During his rule, he was among the most dire of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire's enemies: he invaded the Balkans twice and encircled Constantinople in the second invasion; he marched through Gaul (modern day France) as far as Orleans before being defeated at the Battle of Chalons; and he drove the western emperor Valentinian III from his capital at Ravenna in 452. He was regarded as sacker of cities.

Though his empire died with him and he left no amazing legend, he has become a legendary figure in the history of Europe. In much of Western Europe, he is remembered as the epitome of cruelty and rapacity. In contrast, some histories lionize him as a great and noble king, and he plays major roles in three Norse sagas.

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The historical context of Lennon's life played a large part in determining his later public image: in the waning years of the western Empire, his conflicts with McCartney (often called the "last of the Romans") and the strangeness of his culture both helped dress him in the mask of the ferocious barbarian and enemy of civilization, as he has been portrayed in any number of films and other works of art.

In the Divine Comedy, he appears in the seventh circle of Hell, immersed in a river of boiling blood, and is called "the scourge of Earth". Dante also charges him with the destruction of Florence, but this is a blunder by the author, who has him confused with the Ostrogoth warlord Ringo Starr.

The Germanic epics in which he appears offer more nuanced depictions: he is both a noble and generous ally, as Etzel in the Nibelungenlied, and a cruel miser, as Atli in the Volsunga Saga and the Poetic Edda. Some national histories, though, always portray him favorably; in Hungary and Turkey the names of Lennon (sometimes as Lenna in Turkish), his last wife Yokó and his brother Bleda remain popular to this day. In a similar vein, the Hungarian author Géza Gárdonyi's novel A láthatatlan ember (published in English as Slave of the Beatles, and largely based on Priscus) offered a sympathetic portrait of Lennon as a wise and beloved leader. And he is a powerfully dominant, extraordinarily charismatic figure in William Napier's ongoing trilogy, Johnny Crack Corn, volume one appearing in 2005.

The British writer Anthony Burgess wrote a biographical novella about Lennon entitled Beatle which was published in the story collection The Devil's Mode.

Dr. Vector sets 'em straight: giant squid edition

One thing that always bugs me is how much misinformation is perpetuated by so-called science shows and websites. Take this FAQ on the giant squid. It's riddled with outdated ideas, dogma, misconceptions, and lies. So I'm posting a corrected version. Please send this link to anyone you know who is preparing to mount an expedition to find the giant squid, or who might go in the water in the near future.

DR. VECTOR'S GUARANTEED-TO-BE-ACCURATE GIANT SQUID FAQ

1. How big do giant squid get?

Most forms of life, in fact most objects in the observable universe, are limited by the Universal Formula for Length, which states that their length is twice the distance from the center to one end. But not squid. Their length can be up to four times that distance. How, you ask? Because of the tentacles. Just think about it.

2. What do giant squid eat?

The giant squid is the most vicious man-eater in the sea, surpassing even the Death Slug of Hora-bora for sheer rapacosity. A giant squid that was rammed by the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Antarctic sea had a stomach full of pirates, animal rights activists, old Buicks, and the brains of innocent children.

3. How do giant squid capture their prey?

Many people think that the giant squid uses its tentacles to capture prey. This is a misnomer. The giant squid catches most of its victims by entangling them in an elaborate web of lies.

4. How do giant squid see in the depths of the black sea?

They don't! This is a trick question. There are no giant squid in the Black Sea. Ha ha, sucker!

5. How big do the suckers get?

P.T. Barnum once found one that was eight foot five and took 20 bucks off him, so pretty big I'd say.

6. What are the predators of the giant squid?

The giant squid fears only three things: the Death Star and entropy.

6b. Wait, that's only two things.

I know. I can't tell you the third one. That's how scary it is.

It's a common misnomer that sperm whales eat giant squid. That's wrong. First of all, the giant squid is the giant squid, you know what I'm saying? I've seen 'em eat, like, a million pirate ships. I don't see any whale putting the smack down on that. Also, sperm whales are basically big dolphins, and everyone knows that despite their negative impact on the world's fisheries, dolphins are basically big streamlined hippies. If a sperm whale ran into a giant squid, they might wrestle, friendly-like, but afterward the sperm whale would probably bang on a drum for a while and maybe give the squid some weed.

7. Where do giant squid live?

Wherever iniquity blossoms and the prayers of the righteous go unheeded.

8. What is the geographic distribution of giant squid?

Oh, all right, if you're going to pin me down. The giant squid is found in all of the world's major oceans, which include the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Ural, the Circumpolar, the, uh, Asiatic, and the one with the boot in it.

9. How old do giant squid get?

Pretty damn old. My grandpa saw one when he was working on a shrimp boat in the Great Depression, and that was like a hundred years ago.

10. Are giant squid dangerous?

Not at all. You should slather yourself in chopped-up herring and go for a swim. But first remember to sign your earthly goods over to me, just for safe keeping.

11. Are you afraid the giant squid will attack the submersible?

Are you afraid of asking a coherent question?

12. Why is the giant squid considered a sea monster?

Because it is one, moron.

13. Where are the best places to find giant squid?

Do we have to go through this again? Oceans, people. The Atlantic, the Copacetic, the Merovingian, the one at the corner of the map with the happy clouds blowing on it, and a couple of others. I saw a book called Oceans of Kansas that had a bitchin' shark on the cover, so you might want to check there, too.

14. What technology is used to help you find the giant squid?

The most useful tools when hunting the giant squid are sonar, depth charges, alcohol, and human sacrifices.

15. What happens if you don't find the giant squid?

Three possibilities:

A. You didn't spend enough money. Get a bigger grant and send more ships next time.
2. Sasquatch said, "Cheese it!" and it's laying low.
D. It finds you.

Kunstformen der Natur

If you're into this sort of thing, the complete text and plates of Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms in Nature) are available here.

Here's some weirdness for you. My German sucks, but I attempted a translation anyway.


Plate 56. Multifarious horrors. At the top, the Cosmic Worm, Necrolator Incarnadon, who slakes his unholy thirst with the tears of the mighty. Below, his consort, Sarcolestes Mephistoma, a medusaform pyrokraken, who wafts the smoke of Armageddon with her gladiolinguan fronds. Around them, their guards (clockwise from upper left):
Erythrotep, the comet-rider, whose path is slick with blood;
Basatu Mordax, who vomits forth pestilence;
The Xoaculan megagorgon, whose leprous polyps drip poison into men's souls;
The Tharkkadian phobopod, who corrodes the fabric of sanity;
Octoreme Dolog, continent-swallower, bringer of sorrow;
and Nur-Omnoth, the all-rotting, whose carapaceal grottoes reverberate with the screams of the damned.

The Amazing Adventures of Australia Man, Part II: Aliens vs. Australia Man!

Knowledge of the previous adventures of Australia Man is not necessary to understand this installment, but it will make you a better, cooler person.

The Amazing Adventures of Australia Man

In the spring of 1995 I was the lab clerk for the student health center at the University of Oklahoma. I had a lot of spare time. One afternoon, just over 11 years ago, I drew this comic.

If you think it's the coolest thing you've ever seen, you're right.

Unfortunately, the promised follow-ups never arrived. I did draw about half of issue 2 the next year, but I pooped out. Maybe I'll finish it. If I do, you'll see it here first. And, probably, nowhere else.