As a child I always wondered why adults were content with the boring dishware that seemed to fill each and every one of their kitchen cabinets. Slurping soup I’d imagine the poorly painted pilgrims dotting the rim of my mother’s dish set engaged in bloody battle with savage natives.

Soup time was always a little weird with my family.

Thankfully, artist Laura Zindel has everything you’ll need to inject a little oddity into your own murder-fantasy/dinnertime. A wide array of bug, bird, and beast adorned crockery is available on her site, which while not featuring any Octopi that I could spy, do have a healthy selection of bee-based works to appease our wrathful Octobee.

Zindel Ceramics [Laura Zindel : cribcandy]

There is a small cabal of crow devotees along the West coast that count several EctoEditors among their number. You can tell who they are easily enough. The sacks of bread-heels and dog-treats stuffed into pockets and trailing crumbs are a dead giveaway. The occasional full-stop, moon-eyed, staring into the sky might seem like the local weirdo’s weekly fugue state, but maybe they’re just watching the antics of a group of jousting adolescent corvids.

If you’re lucky enough to have a few near your home, try tossing out the occasional treat. It won’t be long before soot-winged minions swoop menacingly over your mountaintop lair, rattling across the bones of your fallen enemies in search of necrotizing morsels as a warning to all that would disturb your uneasy peace.

Crows [Gustavo Lopez : Why Me]

Born around 1910 Mignon - The Penguin Girl (her birth name is believed to have been Ruth) suffered from a disorder known as phocomelia. Phocomelia is characterized by the stunting of limbs and the flipper like appearance of hands and feet. Her limbs forced her to waddle when she walked thereby completing her avian resemblance.

Her act, which consisted of the bikini clad Mignon playing a marimba, was featured at the 1933 “Century of Progress Exposition” in Chicago, as well as the 1939 and 1940 World’s Fairs, both in New York.

She married twice, once to a “normal” man with whom she had a “normal” child and the second time to one Earl Davis, known as “Hoppy the Frog Boy”. She disappeared into retirement in 1960, after which nothing is known of her life.

Mignon-the Penguin Lady [The Human Marvels]

I’m comfortable being “that guy” here at ectomo. You know, the guy who writes about freaky sex that may or may not involve species other than my own. I’m alright with it although, admittedly, for a long time I wasn’t. Everyone here has been really supportive since I came out though, I must say. I mean, Eliza throws-up a little every time we pass each other near the coffee maker, but she’s at least trying make eye contact with me now.

So, that being said, imagine my unbridled joy when I came upon a link to a Guardian article titled Necrophilia Among Ducks Ruffles Feathers. Oh, I’ll bet it does.

The article relates the tale of Dutch researcher Kees Moeliker who, while in his office in the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, was startled by the loud bang of a mallard hitting the building’s glass facade. He then recounts the scene that greeted him upon his arrival:

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