Weird Animals - Och Aye The Roo!

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).

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Follies of the Mad Men #84

[From Playboy for April 1983.]

Here's the thing about visual icons: you should know what their standard meaning is before you attempt to use them.

Rowboat plus lake plus two individuals equals romance. Or fishing buddies. That's it, your only two choices. With the presence of a gaily striped parasol and the lack of fishing equipment, however, you're pretty much limited to romance.

So what this ad is saying is: "Wear our shoes and all your dates will look like hippos." Or possibly: "Those who wear our shoes are closet furries." Or maybe: "Our customers work for a carnival and like to spend their leisure time in costume."

Take your pick.

Bad Boys Blue

Well, at least the "bad" part was accurate in the name of the group Bad Boys Blue.

They Had That Back Then? #3

Today's lesson: Flat Screen TV (this is a long one to make up for not posting anything in a while).


From the February 1972 issue of Popular Science.

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Car Talk

Is anyone else reminded of the callers on Coast to Coast AM?

Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley

Time to make fun of the Eurovision Song Contest again. Here's the winning entry from 1984.

Flexi Discs

Vinyl records maintain a certain level of popularity these days. But I don't think anyone plans on reviving the Flexi Disc, which ceased production in the year 2000.

Visit this great site for a history of this odd phenomenon. Be sure to look at the Flexi Disc stamps from Bhutan!

The Big Snit

Personally, I would happily watch a TV show titled "Sawing for Teens."

The Chipettes

How did I never know till now that Alvin & the Chipmunks had female analogues in The Chipettes? Here, they sing one of my favorite songs--and I don't half mind their rendition!

Lotti Golden

In Look magazine for September 9 1969, there's an article about an aspiring young singer named Lotti Golden, who wanted to be just like Dylan. Never having heard of her before, I got curious and did some research.

She did go on to release a couple of albums. This blogger discusses her career and offers a compressed audio file of one whole album. This fellow does the same.

But overall, poor Lotti is so obscure she doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, and her records never made it to CD.

In 1982, she tried again with a group called Warp 9, purveyors of "new wave funk." You can hear two samples of their stuff here.

If you listen to the clip below, you might see why she never made it big. This song is like five different disparate songs jammed into one.

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.