I remember a time when ads preaching the gospel of simply reading a book were relegated to the realm of antiquated laminated posters tacked up inside a school library. All of these posters were infused with a sense of false hyper-enthusiasm, the kind that adults employ constantly when interacting with adolescents, forgetting that kids are particularly adept at noticing when they’re being treated like mongoloid chimps.

It’s nice to see a quality piece of advertising for literature, even if the necessity of marketing for books makes me cringe. Click through to the larger image to get the full effect of the piece.

Penguin Books [Why Me]

Having been raised amongst a tribe of mad Arabs, it was deemed normal that I be introduced to the invigorating effects of Turkish coffee at an age which would likely constitute child abuse in any other culture. Just why my family decided that allowing packs of predatory children to dose themselves on massive amounts of caffeine was a good idea I will never know, but it was a jetpack fueled blast at the time and now I have an indelible taste for the stuff.

Sadly, coffee of all kinds now makes me ill; so when I do indulge — bracing myself for the unpleasantness to follow — I like to do so with as much eclat and pomp as possible. Eclat and pomp I appear to have found in the modernized version of Turkish coffee claptrap. A surprisingly beguiling design, it really is a necessity for those of us that must occasionally soldier through the slings and arrows of inevitable coffee catalysis.

Mest Turkish Coffee Set [cribcandy : Design Awards]

It wasn’t until I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast that my opinion on ants changed from “loathsome menace” to “fascinating hive beasts”. In my journey toward armchair entomology I’ve come across a number of strange and fascinating ants, but somehow overlooked this spiteful creature.

Camponotus Saundersi (Latin for “Fuck you, buddy”) has two glands filled with toxins running the length of its body. Any animal aiming to make this ant a meal is subject to the toxins in those glands. But poison animals are so passe. Camponotus Saundersi goes one spiteful step further than those half-assing poison hoarders. When cornered the ant will clench its glands, resulting in an explosion of toxins. Yes that’s right, this ant will suicide bomb a predator rather than allow itself to suffer the indignity of digestion.

Any animal that would commit willful self destruction just to spite its antagonist is OK in my book.

The Exploding Lake & other weird natural detonations [Dark Roasted Blend]

Some cells have mattresses, others blankets, still others bare floors. None that we had seen (and we found these cells in each institution visited) had either a bed, a washstand, or a toilet. What we did find in one cell was a thirteen or fourteen year old boy, nude, in a corner of a starkly bare room, lying on his own urine and feces. The boy had been in solitary confinement for several days for committing a minor institutional infraction.

In December, 1965 Dr. Burton Blatt and his friend Fred Kaplan, a photographer, visited “five state institutions for the mentally retarded”. Kaplan was armed with a small camera attached to his belt, which he used to surreptitiously take photographs during their tours. The finished photo essay, which they titled “Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay On Mental Retardation”, is a harrowing catalog of loneliness and despair; the reader being saved from its crushing weight only by its last collection of photos from The Seaside, an institution in Connecticut, whose program is cited here as an example of proper, institutional care. The entire book can be viewed at the link below, as well as hundreds of others chronicling the history of mental and physical disabilities.

Continue Reading…

Katy wrote in to say:

I am simply amazed by what these crafty girls can do with yarn. A knit Cthulhu? And knitted for her husband? What a lucky guy…

I remain suspicious Katy. Craftster member JenGoPop says she made this knit Cthulhu for her “husband”, but I fear it may be a cry for help. I cannot imagine a marital situation where such a fantastic Cthulhu — look at those eyes, they’re perfect — would be manufactured. On the other hand, a poor woman imprisoned in a suburban sweatshop in someone’s dingy basement, forced to work 16 hour shifts in order to meet a daily quota of diminutive, knit otherworldly beings seems perfectly realistic.

Big Honkin’ Cthulhu (Now with More Tentacles) [Craftster]