I have disturbing visions of seeing Kermit’s brain wobble as he he talks to the camera.

Nudibranches, also.

You can see a whole lot more of these things at io9.

I notice that this guy is very popular on the nets at the moment. It isn’t hard to see why.

The coolest guy ever to be called Feargal Sharkey.

Feargal then

Fergal now

A Good Heart is Hard to Find.

John Peel’s favourite song.

From the Times Online

Pyotr Kuznetsov was in hospital yesterday after he was discovered hitting himself over the head with a log. Members of his religious group have been hiding in a cave since November, believing that the world would end in May.

Years ago I lived in a house with a guy that I’ll refer to as “Jaden”. I did not enjoy living with this person, because he was a spoilt and ineffectual twerp. His habits were interesting to observe which went some way towards making cohabitation temporarily bearable.

Every morning he would singe one piece of toast and then throw it in the bin. This was his breakfast. His sex life consisted of one expired condom which he left on obvious display in the medicine cabinet. One day he replaced it with a selection of new ones. There is no way this was due to him using the expired one.

He was trained as a chef, and his father (who was very wealthy) had recently bought him a restaurant which was being renovated in preparation for the grand opening. He was constantly having loud conversations on the phone with the other chef, his friend “Dane”. These conversations were largely misguided attempts at trying to impress his housemates. He was under the misapprehension that we gave a shit about the restaurant business. Sometimes he’d try out recipes at home and then ring up “Dane”.

“DANE, COME OVER AND TRY MY STICKY DATE! WE SHOULD DEFINATELY DO THE STICKY DATE, IT’S SOOOO GOOD!”

Dane would arrive and try it out and agree that they were about to open the best restaurant in town.

“IT’S GOING TO BE TOO BIG FOR THIS TOWN, PEOPLE WILL BE QUEUING!” Jason would grin maniacally, one buggy eye bulging out of his skinny face, while the other normal sized one studied the opposite wall.

Due to his caloric deprivation he looked extremely emaciated. In particular he had obscenely thin wrists. When he drove his Citroen 2CV car it appeared as if a French mollusc was rolling down the street while digesting a grinning stick-insect.

I like swearing. I don’t believe there are bad words, only the bad use of words. The most elegant sentence I know of was constructed out of just two words, one of which was “fuck”. What’s more it was uttered by somebody I once met; his name was Ramon. He was unsuccessfully attempting to fix the engine of a car and his frustration led him to exclaim…

“Fuck the Fucking fucker, the fucking fucker’s fucked.”

Try saying it out loud.

From Zooilogix

A new exhibition of nature drawings, paintings and renderings has just opened at Buckingham Palace. The event focuses around four artists and a collector (Leonardo da Vinci, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby) who lived from the mid 15th century to the late 18th. As an added bonus the exhibit, Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery, was a collaboration by curators of the Royal Collection and Sir David “Superfly” Attenborough.

There’s also a painting of a crocodile wrestling a snake. Personally I’d like to see a lion wrestling a shark – both home and away matches.

Take a look at Wilfrid Wood’s peculiar organisms…

He used to work on the British satirical tv show Spitting Image.

Via Drawn!

According to Wikipedia, the smoking jacket

…became a popular accessory in Victorian times, when it was believed that the sensitive and delicate nostrils of ladies would be assailed by the pungent fumes of tobacco clinging to everyday clothing. Consequently it became de rigueur for every considerate gentleman to don his smoking jacket before lighting his cigar or pipe, usually after dinner.

Here we see Mark Twain reclining, no doubt he’s coming up with yet another pithy aphorism.

Decades later we see the Superfine Dandelions displaying their superfinery.

If you think having a jacket especially for smoking is strange, the Victorians also wore heavily embroidered smoking caps.

Franz Kafka’s tale of a salesman that wakes up to find he has been transformed into an insect is a favourite of mine. Scenes from the book lend themselves to illustration, and two illustrators that are capable of rendering images with suitable pathos have interpreted it within within the past few years

Peter Kuper’s adaption of the book is described at the publishers website which contains a great animation of the first part of the story.

Robert Crumb illustrated a number of Kafka stories in his book R. Crumb’s Kafka.

You can see orignal artworks from the book here.

Many other Kafka insects are scuttling round the web.

You can read the book for free online at Authorama or download it and listen to it as an audiobook from Librivox.