Will Connell

I've just discovered the photography of Will Connell, who had quite a humorous streak and eye for the bizarre, as seen to the right.

Someone has constructed a Facebook page dedicated to him, which features more great shots like the one here.

Fifteen thousand of his photos are archived here. You have to click thru a couple of links (COLLECTIONS to PERMANENT COLLECTIONS to WILL CONNELL COLLECTION), but then you can search to your heart's content.

Posted By: Paul - Thu May 12, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category: Animals, Movies, Photography and Photographers, Avant Garde, Sex Symbols, 1940s

Monkey Song

More about Clarence Williams here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 21, 2011 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Humor, Music, 1930s

Blood Work

Here is my review of a great and weird new book about the earliest blood transfusions--animal to human!

Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 07, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category: Animals, Mad Scientists, Evil Geniuses, Insane Villains, Medicine, Books

What Does A Wombat Sound Like?

Cranky Wombat from Better Buddies on Vimeo.

Now aren't you sorry you asked?

Posted By: Paul - Tue Apr 05, 2011 - Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Annoying Things, Noises and Other Public Disturbances of the Peace, Australia

The Fox Catcher

This is a poster currently on sale at Etsy, under the title of "The Fox Catcher," discovered by reader Deborah Newton. Does anyone recognize the fable that it illustrates? The essential events are truly weird.

1) A fox comes to a house and steals away a child.

2) The parents track down the fox to his lair and lure him out with drum and violin music.

3) The fox is beaten and/or killed, and the tearful child is saved.

I thought I knew a lot of fairytales, but this one escapes me!

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 27, 2011 - Comments (6)
Category: Animals, Art, Myths and Fairytales, Reader Recommendation

Rabbit Love

I'm not certain that the precise English phrases directed to Mr. Bunny are well understood.



Is it only me, or is all this bunny-stroking oddly erotic?

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 11, 2011 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Hobbies and DIY, Video

Bugs Bunny’s Member

Did you know, as IMDB tells us, that Bugs Bunny displayed his furry rabbit penis briefly in the cartoon embedded below? Yes, I actually captured a screenshot for your edification.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 26, 2011 - Comments (8)
Category: Animals, Cartoons, 1940s, Genitals

Santa Hates PETA

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jan 22, 2011 - Comments (19)
Category: Animals, Business, Advertising, Products, Holidays, 1980s

Weird Shorts – 4

Talk about a mammoth appetite, when most of the world’s large mammals went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago, the vast majority of the vanished species were herbivores. This of course meant that they were no longer around to eat the plants they otherwise would have, and - according to Christophers Doughty and Field from Oxford and Stanford Universities respectively – this freed up an extra 1.4 trillion kilos of food, roughly 2.5% of the net product of all Earth’s dry land. However, the researchers add, this excess had been ‘used up’ by burgeoning human numbers by around 1700 and today we consume six times as much as the Pleistocene critters ever did while simultaneously driving down land productivity by 10% (Nature)(PDF).

That’s not to say that our massive consumption doesn’t have it’s upside, As Vangelis Kapatos of Manhattan discovered when he attempted suicide by jumping from his ninth floor flat, only to survive when his fall was broken by a pile of uncollected garbage. Mr. Kapatos’ timing, from his perspective, couldn’t have been worse, the unusually large garbage pile was due to collections being suspended because of snow. They were due to resume the day after his impromptu dumpster dive (Today Online).

Mind you, we’re not the only animals prone to excess. After finding the bodies of dozens of starlings near the city of Constanta in Romania, locals were concerned that the cause might be bird flu, instead post-mortems of the birds have revealed that they in fact died of alcohol poisoning, having ‘drunk’ themselves to death on the discarded leftovers of the local winemaking industry. A least they died happy (BBC News).

Better than dying happy, though, is living happy, and the secret of that, says the UK’s Office for National Statistics, is having a job. But it’s not the pay but the job security that counts, say the government statisticians, which ironically are facing staff cuts themselves due to the economic downturn. Other key happiness factors, according to the preliminary report, are good personal health and a decent family life. What will we do without these people (Telegraph)?



More in extended >>

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Thu Jan 13, 2011 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Creatures, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Babies, Crime, Death, Human Marvels, Inebriation and Intoxicants, Religion, Sexuality, Weird Names, Body Fluids, Perfume and Cologne and Other Scents

Another Helping of Food Related Weirdness – 7

Scientists have a history of accomplishing what was once thought impossible, be it walking on the moon, splitting the atom or alleviating pain and disease. But now they may have discovered something that will eclipse all that has come before; scientists are on the verge of making chocolate better! A team lead by Dr. Siela Maximova from Pennsylvania State University has pieced together the genetic code of the cacao tree, and not just any cacao tree but the Criollo variety that is widely recognised to produce the very best chocolate. Because of its poor disease resistance, Criollo is almost entirely ignored in favour of hybrid varieties that yield more – if inferior – beans, but Maximova et al hope their work will enable the development of new, elite strains of cacao (News.com.AU).

Meanwhile, here is someone who is taking the chocolate maker’s art way too literally. Jean Zaun of Fredericksburg in Pennsylvania uses a mixture of dark and white chocolate, food colouring and confectioner’s glaze to recreate famous works of art, including the frames, in a deliciously edible form. Her subjects have included the works of Van Gogh, Munch and Da Vinci, as well as a portrait of Ozzy Osborne commissioned by his wife. While the chocolate artworks are edible, Zaun believes they should be souvenirs rather than snacks. “They are meant to be consumed by the eye, not the stomach.” Zaun Explained (Daily Mail).

And the misuse of materials won’t stop there, at least not if Dr. Peter Eisner of the Fraunhofer Institute gets his way. Concerned that meat consumption is both unhealthy and bad for the environment, Dr. Eisner has started looking for ways to supplement or replace animal products with vegetable equivalents. His first success is a milk substitute derived from lupins that can even be used to make cheese, meanwhile co-worker Daniela Sussmann has extracted a protein from the seeds gives low-fat sausages more of the sensation of their unadulterated competition. Eisner reckons that our ever growing appetite for meat could one day be disastrous, arguing that the resources needed to produce 1 kilo of meat could instead yield 80 to 100 kilos of fruit or vegetables (Softpedia).



More in extended >>

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Mon Jan 10, 2011 - Comments (7)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Farming, Art, Food, Bacon, Candy, Junk Food, Nutrition, Vegetables