Caption competition

I have no idea why these people are wearing dreamcatcher masks. Maybe it is a new kind of cosplay.

Florida news

Just saying, sewer-dwelling hamsters. Don't blame me.

What is this "web-cam" whereof the house-apes speak?

"An elephant is very like a tree," said the first blind knitter, who had felt its leg

The other five blind Knitterati agreed, so they decided to yarn-bomb the animal.

Evidently guerilla knittery of slow-moving megafauna is an old tradition.

Left: Moose ©Superbass / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Russian technological advances continue to lead and astonish the world

Before a packed audience, the Great Helmsman demonstrated the latest motorised rotatory nipple buffers.

...Now UPDATED with animated version through generosity of ckc (not kc) in comments:

Welcome back Another Kiwi

Imagine his surprise when Evangline van Holsterin (head barmaid at the Old Entomologist) awarded him the first prize in last night's Grumpy-Cat Lookalike Competition, which he had not heard of or prepared for due to his long absence and being "out of a loop" as the kids like to say.

He will have to give back the coveted keys to the Old Entomologist gents' toilet once his name has been engraved thereon, but he gets to keep the Observer's Guide to Strepsiptera.

Second prize was the Yellow Book -- the 2010 edition which doesn't have the appendix on Triungulin larvae, only blank pages for pressing specimens. I also get to wield the Poky Stick of Lamentation. Yay me!

Note our shoelessness. Skyclad feet is part of the Paleo lifestyle -- the gnarly toes are a side-effect from walking into concrete medlars left lying on the ground. No-one would be foolish enough to buy cheap shoes from the vile Throgmorton which he allegedly procured from "A load of old cobblers", only to have them fall apart on the first drop of spilled Spiced Parsnip Scrumpy, so it certainly didn't happen to us.

Honest, she just walked straight into my outstretched fingers and hit the ground like an Italian soccer player. No way was I practicing my Vulcan nerve pinch

Let's get outa here, lads. These ladies look dangerously inbred; the trees are melting; I can hear banjo music in the distance; and there's a bunch of library pixies down in the lower right corner, which always means trouble.

Shimmering neon lights

The consumer feedback from the new Riddled range of neon-themed bedroom furnishings has not been particularly encouraging. The unfocus group had nothing good to say about our conceptual circular pillow, while the test subject complained that the light kept him awake (despite our explanation that what he was feeling was not insomnia, but rather a melatonin rush).

Old Jem added that the lion had halitosis, before storming off to the pub with the stated intention of rendering himself insensible with whisky and cheap gin.

 This is hard to fathom, for Fritz Lang made the cylindrical neon mattress look so comfortable.

Not to mentin Dan Flavin's traditional planar mattress. If you can't trust Dan Flavin, who can you trust?

...Updated with 1955 neon furniture because reasons.

All those Hybrids should go back to Hy-Brasil if they don't like it here

No good will come of hybridisation events between body-painted Mickey Mouse cos-players and hard-up-for-spare-parts cyborgs. Quite apart from the squick factor entailed in ménages-à-trois when one partner is a giant banana slug.


Will no-one think of the children?

... I have no idea what is going on with the images below. Perhaps they are illustrations from "Trumpet Voluntary", an unpublished J.G. Ballard novel in which people turn into the brass section of an orchestra.

"Is it out on You-Tuba?" Another Kiwi vouchsafed.

One of these people is not Smut Clyde

Photos courtesy of Joe Sixpack, Philadelphian beer-blogger and Beer Ambassador to Lithuania. Apparently the responsibilities of his demanding diplomatic position extend to tedious ceremonial tasks such as attending the Pakruojis Festival.

Stereoscopic Image FAIL

The once-dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic, he says.

"How We Revived a Fading Masterpiece" (Garden, 1973) is not a reliable guide to art restoration, people.

Needs moar Drag-&-Drop...

Also needs moar Restored Madonnas.
G. Garden (1973). Goodies Book of Criminal Records; Sphere Books.

Singapore: It's a happening place!

When "Watching Fig Trees Grow" becomes an Olympic sport, the local team is a shoo-in for a Gold medal.

You can't fool owls

It's multiple-choice time again! This is:

(1) The Riddled entry for the next "World of Wearable Arts" fashion show. I thought we were onto a winner with the TV-aerial accessory, but evidently our competitors are all adopting the same idea. There is a security leak somewhere in our organisation.

(2) A sneak preview of the Riddled Amateur Dramatic Society adaptation of Ragnar's Saga. I was careful in the phone-call to the Costumes Department to specify that the main character is "Ragnar Hairy-Breeks" but they still fecked it up.

"You can't go out looking like that!" exclaimed Ragnar when he saw what his sons Ivar the Boneless and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye were proposing to wear. Sodding Goths.

(3) A Renaissance public-health poster warning against Bubonic Plague. The owl is someone's idea of a joke.

(4) All of the above.

Abscessive compulsive disorder

Vet bills are punitive enough at the best of times. It didn't help when Mrs Spat went AWOL for a week to nurse her abscess to the largest possible size... thus requiring surgery and anaesthesia and heroic antibiotics and a post-op IV drip,* when she did finally show up looking starved, dehydrated and generally sorry for herself. The staff at the clinic were impressed, describing it as the second-largest abscess they had dealt with, and the largest where the patient could be saved. They welcome her further custom.
With the sutures removed and her shaven patch beginning to grow back, her resemblance to a haggis is not so pronounced. There is a second row of stitches lower on her belly, where the abdominal fat pad had turned necrotic and had to be removed. Let it be noted that the liposuction was for genuine medical reasons and was not at all cosmetic. Perhaps Mrs Spat can recoup some of her medical expenses by modelling for those zipper-bellied animal pyjama-bags.

Mrs Spat has all her old energy back and here she is showing her Flying Superman pose to BFF Doodleberry Cupcake.

Bonus couple time

* Also a drainage tube. I kept expecting a nurse to fling Mrs Spat over one shoulder and blow into the tube to demonstrate how to inflate the flotation device in the unlikely event of an emergency landing.

If this is not an exercise, could it be a drill?

Here at Riddled we are all in favour of theatre performances in my pants non-traditional venues so it is gratifying to read of Absurdist Drama in the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo.


They need more rehearsals, though. The actor playing Bérenger has forgotten his lines!!


From a related story:

The fake zebra finally fell to a fake tranquiliser gun.

Also, Helping tigris.

How much wood would a woodcut cut, if a woodcut could cut wood?

(1) This month's Riddled cutaway diagram shows the working of one of the old-fashioned labour-intensive 'spigots'.

In 1791 when Obadiah Peasemold Tree (one of the Essex Trees, in Braintree*) invented the reciprocating transpiration linkage that would make possible the functioning of today's mechanised 'trees', few people could have possibly imagined how the products of his tinkering would one day come to dominate the world. People scoffed at Tree and the crude wrought-iron models constructed for him by a sympathetic blacksmith, until 1803 when Nathaniel Habakkuk Forest patented his xylem governor mechanism, and suddenly the writing was on the wall for the cottage-industry 'spigots' as they used to be called. "Crips," was the writing, and also "Yah boo sucks bottoms poo".

(2) This is the worst gym EVAH. I should never have allowed certain family members talk me into joining. "A New Year Resolution," they wheedled. "A resolution?" I said. "She goes back to him; the killer is revealed; then the dough boiling in oil suddenly shot out of kitchen pots."

Here at the Patience Gymnasium... the elliptical trainer seems to be missing something... the litotes trainer is not very good... and the hyperbolic trainer is WORSE THAN HITLER.

(3) Further excerpts from the Memoirs of Tiresias, Couples Counsellor to the Gods.
"Don't give yourself such a hernia, Asklepios," I told him. "Lots of surgeons fantasise about sex with their patients."

"I don't think I can stop at just fantasising," he said. "You have to help me bring it to fruition."

I shrugged. "Still not such a big deal. Against the ethical code, of course, but then who wrote the ethics code? You, I think."

It was a test of my broadmindedness when Asklepios pointed out that he was a tree surgeon, and the centre of his affections was a particularly seductive smooth-limbed eucalyptus, yet another of Zeus' arboreal transformations. I tried not to be judgemental, not even of a sicko woodpecker. "That's the thing about being mythological. Different standards. Remember when Daedalus constructed that hollow cow, to help Pasiphaë consummate her unnatural lust for the sacred bull of Poseidon? I think the same strategy will work here."

Of course it never occurred to us that there would be a child.

(4) None of the above.

* UPDATED with moar lynx and Bonus Braintree.

Rugby Cup mascots

It was thoughtful of a clothing company to install an exhibit at Wellington Airport to help all the visitors familiarise themselves with local customs.
See also.

Last Supper FAIL

Wrong on more levels than a multilevel FARKeting scam run by Wrongness McFail in association with Ponzo the Clown. Not only did everyone neglect to tell Judas that the theme of the party was "Come as your favourite Gold Coin" so he's the only one out of costume, but as a practical joke they've roasted his little dog Wuffles and served it up as the main course to see if he'll notice. This was not in any of the Gnostic Gospels I've read.

Also Peter is evidently unclear on the concept of "This is my body given for you".

"Hey Adam, pull my finger!"

I realise that there is some serious competition for the title, but it still seems to me that "Receiving the afflatus of life from a skeleton dude adorned with feathers" is the WORST CREATION MYTH EVAH.
If these divine figures and Culture Heroes were in fact astronauts from another planet, who travelled untold lightyears to teach us their advanced technology, then they lost a lot of muscle tone along the way.

Street signage: Prague edition

Just around the corner from Jan Švankmajer's studio.
The large figure is probably the Goalem, who will keep mechanically kicking goals until Umpirabbi Loew shows him the red flag printed with the characters met.* Doctors Faustus and Dee are not allowed to play any more because invoking the hand of god to touch the ball is totally not fair.

* Loew was the inventor of word-verification. Not many people know that.