Popular UK tourist attraction The London Dungeon got a little creepier this week, when it turned out one of the skeletons on display at its “creepy crypt” exhibit was the genuine article. The skeleton, since nicknamed “Kate Moss” by staff, has been on display since 1975, but will now require a license to remain on show, at a cost to dungeon owners Merlin Entertainments of £2000 per year. In the short term at least, this will likely be more than made up for by the surge of visitors arising from this fortuitous publicity, occurring just before school break (The Telegraph).
Miss Moss isn’t the only famous beauty to have her image misappropriated this week, with German magazine Focus deciding a photoshopped image of the goddess Aphrodite giving the finger was an apt summation of the current financial crisis among “Eurozone” countries - popularly (in Germany) laid at the doorstep of member country Greece. However although the country is out of money, it is not without pride, and the provocative cover has led to questions being asked in the Greek parliament and widespread outrage. Now a party of six Greek citizens have started legal action against the journalists responsible. Soon to be a major motion picture, My Big Fat Greek Lawsuit (Orange).
Someone else who still has their pride, but only just, is the husband of 69 year-old Virginia Valdez of Palm Springs, California, who after 32 years of marriage, decided enough was enough and tried to cut off her husband’s penis with a pair of scissors. No motive for the attack has yet been released, but this close to Christmas, wives everywhere are sure to insinuate that it was possibly a seasonal condition brought on by lack of jewellery (NBC San Diego).
The week saw the publication of the 2010 Eden Wildlife Report, which tracks the numbers of foreign species introduced to the UK over the past century. Compiled by Dr. Toni Bunnell and a team from the University of Hull, the report mentions wallabies thriving in Scotland, scorpions setting up home in Kent and aardvarks that have somehow emigrated from Brazil to Cumbria (Telegraph).
Of course, this won’t be news to one member of Britain’s thriving rod-fishing community, who this week caught a piranha in his local pond (Guardian).
Another place you might not expect to see exotic creatures is on your lunch menu, but that didn’t stop one restaurant owner in Mesa, AZ from putting “lion burgers” on the menu to celebrate soccer’s World Cup. Cameron Selogie of the Il Vinaio makes his “mane course” with genuine lion meat imported from South Africa, earning him the ire of local animal rights groups and several death threats, but not a reprimand from health officials. According to an FDA spokesman serving lion meat is perfectly legal, as long as it’s not roar (Scotsman).
Slightly luckier than the lions, one cat who has fallen on his feet is Oscar, a housecat from the Isle of Jersey in the UK, widely billed as the “bionic cat” after successfully receiving two artificial hind legs to replace the ones he lost in an altercation with a combine harvester (BBC News).
You might think pitting a rodent like mammal against a 12 tonne Triceratops makes for an equally one-sided match up, but evidence emerged recently that our primitive ancestors occasionally feasted upon dinosaurs. Seventy-five million year old “gnaw marks” of a kind characteristic of early mammals, and belonging to a creature not much bigger than a squirrel, have been found on the fossil bones both of Tricerotops and the crocodile-like predator Champsosaurus (LiveScience).
Sadly today the nearest we get to dinosaur flesh is turkey or chicken, but not all birds were prized solely for their meat. The huia bird of New Zealand for example, was once used to make the feathered head-dresses of Maori chiefs, until predation from accidentally introduced species drove it to extinction around 1907. But if the bird has gone its feathers have not, and one recently became the most expensive feather ever when it sold at auction for NZ$8000, i.e. $4000 American (Telegraph).
While we wait for our banner-artist Rick Altergott to finish his concluding installment of RAISIN PIE, we will have to content ourselves with these great covers he did for two Gilbert Hernandez graphic novels. I just finished reading both of them, and they are of course superb.
The third one, due out at the end of this year, seems to lack the distinction of Altergott cover imagery, but will no doubt repay your attentions as well.
Never let it be said that Florida is boring. In April, In Port St. Lucie, Carl J. Frost was arrested and charged with aggravated domestic battery - for hitting his roommate's son (Jason) in the head with a five pound ceramic frog. Mr. Frost is claiming self defense, of course, because Jason punched him first. One of the folks who left a comment on the article made a valid point: "You people shouldn't make fun of this situation. A five-pound ceramic object can be very dangerous. If the victim had been hit hard enough, he could have croaked."
Category: Riots, Protests and Civil Disobedience, Synchronicity, Violence, Armed Forces