put 'em up. all up.

I am currently serving on jury duty. don't ask me about my case because it is TOP SECRET. Here are the only vaguely legal-ish, law-like ceph pictures I could find after much searching:



I especially like the above. Apparently it is a greenpeace person in madrid. the soldiers are like "sweet jesus, whatever that is we need to try harder to kill it!"




and here is something from, well I don't know. the use of octopus as a term applied to overreaching government and spy missions seems to be wide spread so I will have to look into it more.

celebrity cephalopod gossip

Alert reader Matt sent in this picture of British singer Amy Winehouse and her cephalopod oriented hair:



You can read more by clicking here. It is pretty easy to picture a tentacle snaking out of her hair and adding creamer to her coffee. Perhaps the tentacle will also feed her a sandwich (or two) while it is tending to her.

The. Calamari. Wrestler.

This, WITHOUT A DOUBT, is the most amazing movie I have ever seen. And you can get it through netflix. I am also working hard at making it required viewing in all schools--maybe I can somehow sneak it in with the abstinence videos.

The first clip is from the beginning of the movie, when the Calamari Wrestler makes his debut. Pretty exciting!




I won't give away the whole plot line, but here is a little background: The Calamari Wrestler is actually a wrestler who died from cancer (? I think, or some mysterious illness), and then comes back as an ass-kicking squid. Calamari Wrestler has business to finish, i.e. some non-cephalopod butt kicking to do. (I.E. DO NOT WRITE A CHECK YOUR TENTACLE CAN'T CASH!).

The guy Calamari Wrestler wants to wrestle seems like he might be the antagonist, but really, this movie is too deep and textured to be constrained by simple protagonist/antagonist themes. Especially when the supposed antagonist turns into an octopus to wrestle the Calamari. And then, after they wrestle, they become friends, and the Calamari Wrestler faces the biggest wrestling challenge of his career: Wrestling a "squilla." (Some sites thought this creature in the movie was a lobster. It's not. It's a mantis shrimp). A tiny mantis shrimp can punch through plate glass, so obviously, it makes a formidable opponent when it is the size of a person.

Preparing for wrestling the squilla is no lauging matter, and our Calamari Wrestler takes it VERY seriously. Plus there are some touching moments of interspecies friendship at the end of this one:



You'll have to rent the movie to see how the thrilla with the squilla ends. I realize that this post may seem like incoherent babbling but that is because watching The Calamari Wrestler CHANGED ME FOREVER, and frankly I'm not sure if I can effectively communicate with people WHO HAVE NOT SEEN IT.

wash me x 8.

I was just sitting at my desk, staring into space, fantasizing about how clean a car could be if a octopus washed it. (I mean, ignoring the fact that the octopus would actually be a dead slimy pile on the front seat because of that whole needing to be in water to breathe and be buoyant thing.)

But, man, those tentacles could really get all of the crumbs out that are wedged in between my seats.

Octopus Car Wash is a chain, apparently. This picture is of their location in Madison, WI.

octopus wedding invites?

You will note the invitations don't show a male octopus jamming his sperm packet into the female octopus' beak. The invite also doesn't show the male then jetting off, leaving the female to guard the eggs until they hatch. At which point she dies of starvation because she didn't eat while watching said eggs. At which point, can I have the kitchen aid mixer they received as a present?

st. louis cephalopod

I was in St. Louis this weekend, and I thought it might be a cephalopod-free zone (sniff), but it turns out that even the spirt of st. louis used to have eight arms. This picture is of a fossil of an early, shelled octopus known as Techniceras. It was found in Missouri.

I don't know what Techniceras needed the quarter for. Perhaps Pleistocene vending machines.

japanese knitting site

I stumbled across this site (http://tokkyu2222.jugem.cc/). I think it is about knitting. And octopuses. And I know, I know, knitting and octopuses are just so trendy that combining them might be like "crossing the streams" in ghostbusters and after you look at these pictures you might experience complete and total particle reversal. So please be careful and don't say I didn't warn you. That being said, can we get a pair of the octopus gloves for our favorite pitcher, El Pulpo???

This one is an octopus brooch:



Complete particle reversal!!!!!

El Pulpo

Meet Antonia Alfonseca, pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. He has an extra finger on each hand, and an extra toe on each foot (i.e. he is polydactylous). Alfonseca goes by the nickname "el pulpo" and "six fingers."

He says his extra finger never touches the ball when he pitches...but it is still pretty sweet.

octopus vs. jar

check out this video of an octopus opening a jar and getting a treat out of the jar. Take that, jar! Thanks to Marycat for this link!

pastapod

I made an interesting discovery in my homemade mac 'n cheese the other day:

I shall call this creature "pastapod," or "Octopus macoronus" as a proper name. I attempted to catch the wiley creature, but it quickly employed an escape route into the pasta. Check out its sweet camouflage:



But sadly, much like a clown fish in a dead coral reef, the pastapod is very obvious when it is removed from its habitat: