raincoaster thinks Tony Blair is a sexy bitch. It’s just one of those attractions you can’t explain, but watch this video and see if you can’t begin to understand.
Also, note the tags on this post.
Must Love Jaws
Category Archives: Squid
Today in Ancient Squid News
This monster is no myth! The Tully Monster is real, it's here, it's extremely queer, and it's absolutely unquestionably Squid. I mean, look in those eyes.
The Tully Monster is the official state fossil of Illinois, having beaten out many an elderly barfly for the coveted honour. Nobody seems to know what the little stalks are, but they've decided, after no doubt having enjoyed a lovely crab dinner, that they must be eyestalks and therefore, and also because of the teeth, that must be the front end of the monster. One notes, one does, that the museum report goes out of its way to stress that there is no evidence that the area with the teeth, which you might be tempted to call a "mouth" connects with the esophagus. So, like, what does?
Curiouser and curiouser: how strange can this Squid get? They think maybe it just gnawed things with the teeth and then sort of slid around until the actual intake met up with the mangled prey and hoovered it up. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. How many years of nursery school do you need to become a paleontologist?
Whatever. You just gotta salute (with all ten tentacles) an ancient, unclassifiable Official State Fossil Squid-like Creature that was discovered by a wandering amateur loony with a metal detector and a collecting fetish.
Dan Tully directs visitors to his Homer Glen home with some simple instructions — it's the one with three tractors on the front lawn.
The retired Lockport cop collects everything from farm implements to belt buckles dug up on his frequent metal-detector forays.
But Tully will be the first to admit that none of his prospecting treasures has quite the stature of his dad's discovery: a 300-million-year-old fossilized creature so strange it was dubbed "Tully monster."
Dan's father, Francis X. Tully, found the fossil — now on display at the Field Museum as part of a new exhibit on evolution — when the two were on one of their weekend fishing and fossil-hunting trips around 1958 near Braidwood.
"He done most of the fossil huntin', and I done most of the fishin'," Tully joked recently, sitting behind a small black-and-white photo of his father, who died in 1987 at 75, holding up a model of the squid-like creature.
And now, the weather forcast, with Charles Fort
From the often-accidentally-reliable Sun. I shall have Yavanna save me a BFO in the freezer for when I come over. How handy if the fish turned out to be something yummy; according to Charles Fort, they're virtually always pilchards or whitefish, though.
BRITAIN is set for a summer downpour of FROGS and FISH, scientists said yesterday.
Recent changeable weather conditions such as storms, droughts and sudden downpours have vastly increased the chance of objects falling from the sky.
Experts say the most likely spot for a BFO — “bizarre falling object” — is the Norfolk resort of Great Yarmouth.
The phenomenon is highlighted in a British Weather Services report.
Past recorded BFOs include jellyfish, frogs, crabs, fish and coal.
BWS senior meteorologist Jim Dale said the phenomenon can be caused by heat and air pressure coupled with atmospheric instability.
He said: “Converging cold air off the North Sea and warm air off the land make for the necessary conditions.”
Other BFO hotspots include east Manchester and Ipswich.
The Shebeen Club: Edgar Allan Poe’s 170th Wedding Anniversary Afterparty notes
Mentioned at tonight’s Shebeen Club:
re: Gabriel Byrne has the sexiest voice in the known universe
re: Project Runway
re: Homer’s Odyssey
re: Narnia Raps from NYC, LA, CAM
re: Narnia Rap from Ramadi
re: The Shoeblog of the Manolo
re: Go Fug Yourself on Lindsay Lohan and Sharon Stone at the Oscars
re: Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding and sorry-ass life (note that when you google “Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding” our announcement is #1! My hit-whoredom is momentarily satisfied)
re: Christopher Walken is So Fucking Cool
and is even more fucking cool as the Archangel Gabriel in The Prophesy
re: Cthulhu sits out an election: the voters’ loss
re: cowbell
Books brought:
As door prizes:
I Shudder at Your Touch gothic horror erotica
I Shudder Again more of that old gothic horror erotica. Same old same old.
Black Thorn, White Rose erotic retellings of fairy tales, although if you’d read the original French ones you wouldn’t need retellings, baby!
As references:
The Castle of Otranto, by Hugh Walpole. the first Gothic Novella (at least the first one not in German). Gets so caught up in the atmospheric effects of the flapping of raven’s wings in the graveyard and the eerie forboding of shadows in the candlelight that nothing actually ever happens. Like a great-looking date that can’t talk, a restaurant where the vibe is perfect and the food awful. Its chief virtue is that it’s just barely over 100 pages.
The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, essentially the first supernatural horror novel in English, The Castle of Otranto being religious rather than supernatural in overtone and this divorcing the horror of the beings from their evil…ie they’re creepy, they’re deadly, but they’re not neccessarily from hell. Far better than TCOO anyway, and a quicker read.
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Great books, I’m sure, if I could ever get through them. Like chewing through a glacier made of Turkish Delight. Historically important, great works of art, exquisitely overwraught, and virtually indigestible. A beach read…if you’re headed to Gitmo.
The Loved Dead and Other Revisions (and other works) by HP
Lovecraft. Cthulhu mythos stuff was discussed, EAP envy (which Lovecraft had in spades)…and the fact that this book contains the single most vivid and compelling tale of necrophilia I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. No, I didn’t read it out over dinner.
Damn, forgot to tell my tale of the old boyfriend of mine who heard about how I was such a fan of “Lovecraft books” and asked to borrow them. A week later he returned them, with a puzzled expression. I asked if he hadn’t liked them and he replied: I thought they were gonna be how-to’s.
A Warning to the Curious by MR James. I put forth my theory that ghost stories are definitively English, while Gothic supernatural horror is particularly American…it was not well-received. Fools! again I say Fools! Ia! Shub Ni-ohfugedaboudit.
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. I state unequivocally that this, combined with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, are the two novels which define my generation; this is not good news to anyone who’s read both books. I test my theory that I can recite the first line…The snow was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. I get about 70% right.
The New Gothic which includes such authors as Jeannette Winterston, whom we all agree is a genius. I quote her: Why have we submitted to a society which makes imagination a privilege when to each of us it comes as a birthright? Unfortunately, the book also includes Joyce Carol Oates, who is obviously paid by the word…and we descend into the crude, embittered remarks of literati who are not paid by the word at JCO’s rates.
Music for this evening:
Lou Reed: The Raven, his rock opera based on Poe
Closed on Account of Rabies, articulating a theory that Poe died not of alcoholism but of rabies. The album is produced by the Genius Hal Willner and featuring Christopher Walken, Gabriel Byrne, Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, and Diamanda Galas reading Poe’s works
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Murder Ballads, which is a collection of songs about murder, either from the point of view of the victim or the point of view of the perpetrator. This plays while we are eating. Bon appetit!
Diamanda Galas: Defixiones/Will and Testament; you either love her or you don’t even recognize it’s music. I, personally, loved the part where she synched up the throbs in her screams with the flashing of the strobes, but that’s just me.
And the menu was: a glass of wine (amontillado was unfortunately not Irish enough for the Shebeen) and The Tell-Tale Artichoke Heart Pasta. Now aren’t you sorry you missed it?
Admiral Akbar for President
So this is our third celebrity campaign on the ol' raincoaster blog, and I have to say so far it's my favorite. Why? One word, my friends.
Greetings and Salutations Global Citizen!
For around twenty years now the fish faced shenanigans of the Mon Calamari known as Admiral Ackbar have been delighting we humans. Supposedly he was a great warrior and a mighty leader – that at least is what we are told in the Star Wars films. Yet his sole contribution to the almost disastrous attack on the second death star was to spin round in his chair,waving his flabby hands about, shrieking "It's a twap! It's a twap!". Anyone who witnessed the actions of Admiral Ackbar can be in no doubt – these were the actions of an idiot.Yet, contrary to popular belief, this idiocy was NOT a failing on the part of Ackbar. Nay. With his erratic arm movements and his absurd lisp, this Calamarian clown was actually attempting to boost the morale of the rebel troops – and just look at the results of Ackbar's watery wit. In one single day of sustained jestering, the Admiral managed to kill the emperor, destroy the evil empire and save Anakin Skywalker from the clutches of the dark side. Are these the actions of an idiot? We once thought that the power of the force lay with the jedi knights, but we can now see that it does not. The true power of the force lies with risible Vaudevillian comics like Admiral Ackbar.
VOTE ACKBAR
That is why we here at the UK offices of Finned Celebrities Co.(a subsidiary of Amphibious Actors(UK)Ltd.) believe that the comedic genius of Admiral Ackbar must be recognised now, and must be put to good use. Quite simply we demand he be made president of the entire world.
VOTE ACKBAR
Think of the rewards and opportunities that would arise for planet Earth if we had an oceanic bug-eyed clown ruling over us. Day to day problems like mass unemployment, a growing violent subculture, inadequate health care and the worst global economy this side of the Horse Head nebula would all fade into insignificance, for we would all be too busy laughing at the marine madness that is Ackbar.Just think – no more racial tension. All that xenophobia that seems inbred in we humans would be channelled into the ridiculing of the dome headed buffoon that would be leading our planet.
Global citizens unite – you know it makes (non)sense.
Manifesto
(Complete and unexpurgated)
1. More fish for everyone.
2. Plenty of squid for just about everybody.
3. Erm…
4. I think that just about covers everything.
raincoaster 