Is The Party Over For Paranormal Romance?

Could the paranormal romance craze ever have a downside?  Apparently so.  Imagine if you will that you are at home, playing your prized 45 of The Monster Mash when the needle is suddenly dragged across the record, making a horrible sound.  Well, this is much worse than that.  The no-holds-barred spate of sexual activity with vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, frankensteins, and ghosts have given birth to the inevitable--new strains of paranormal sexually transmitted diseases.  This is precisely where fantasy ends and the reality begins.  Perhaps a little restraint is in order, unless you want to end up in some creepy clinic high in the forest that can only be reached by horse-drawn carriage.  Be on the lookout for the following.

Tadpoles:  Transmitted through sexual contact with a Creature from the Black Lagoon.  While not particularly dangerous, they can tickle the heck out of your nether regions.

Ghost Crabs:  Because they have no corporeal form they are resistant to even the toughest shampoos.

Frankies Simplex 1:  In men, this will cause tiny bolts to grow on either side of the penis.  In women, the pubic hair will become tall and wild with a shocking gray streak.

Wolphylis: Causes the genitals to emit a loud howling sound for one day out of the month, during the full moon.  Highly embarrassing.  The application of tiny muzzles may dampen the sound, but a cure has yet to be found.

If you find that you can’t resist your baser urges to sleep with these creatures of legend, at the very least take measures to protect yourself.  If you are sleeping with a vampire or a demon, please take the time to have your condoms blessed by a priest.  For werewolves, a prophylactic made of silver should do the trick. 

For Science

You may not know this, but I am deeply interested in all things scientific.  I went to a museum just yesterday.  It was a lot of fun, to be sure, but it also made me think; for someone so passionate about science, there is a great lack of scientific material on this blog (aside from the Freddy's Revenge post, of course).  Well, that is about to change.  From this point on 30lb Dog posts will be entirely devoted to science.  I'm going to kick it off with a little science quiz I crafted.

If you do not care for science, too bad.  I will never diverge from this path.  There is no way that I will get distracted and write about, say, a book or a movie.  We scientists are extremely focused.

So get out a pencil and paper.  It's time for the . . .


SCIENCE QUIZ


Q: What do a humpback whale and a pea have in common?

A: Both a humpback whale and a pea can be found on Earth!


Q: How does osmosis differ from meiosis?

A: Osmosis begins with the letters "os," whereas meiosis begins with "mei."


Q: What do osmosis and meiosis have in common?

A: No one knows!


Q: What scientific principal allows energy to be stored inside a car battery?

A: Pizzazz.


Q: What do a woodpecker and the Horsehead Nebula have in common?

A: They can both be found somewhere in the universe.  And, as far as we can tell, both appear to be some sort of animal.



Whew!  Pretty tough, eh?  Fear not.  For taking the quiz I now deem you a member of the . . .

That is, of course, if you answered all the questions correctly.  If not, the Idiot's Circle is still accepting members.  Happy Science!

From the "Why Didn't I Think of That?" Dept.

A Flaming Freddy?

La Cage aux Folles; The Wizard of Oz; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and . . . A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge?  Could this critically maligned horror sequel be the next must-see movie for film loving gays?

Apparently, there is a good deal of homoerotic subtext in Freddy's Revenge.  Robert Englund and screenwriter David Chaskin claim it was intentional, though director Jack Sholder claims to have been completely unaware.

In the interest of science, I recently re-watched Freddy's Revenge keeping a keen eye out for any possible homoerotic material.  I paid special attention to Freddy's famous one-liners.  Ever the quipster, if any homoerotic subtext were to be found, it would surely be in these pre-slaughter zingers.  What follows are still images complete with actual lines of dialogue pulled directly from A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

"Two tickets for Cats, please."

 

"I must get the name of your moisturizer."

"I just want a man to hold me."

Hmmm.  No sign of anything out of the ordinary there.  But the rumors had to come from somewhere.  I started the movie again from the beginning and watched closely.  Twenty minutes into the film my efforts paid off.  I now have irrefutable proof that Freddy's Revenge is indeed loaded with homosexual messages.  Just look at the name of the board game subtly inserted into the background of the still below.  And the director continues to feign ignorance!

Alternate Histories

Imagine, if you will, a world in which the Nazis won World War II.  Now Imagine a world in which some guy goes back in time and gives a crate of M-16s to Confederate soldiers fighting in the Civil War.  Imagine a world in which dinosaurs have laser guns and use them to shoot out of the sky the meteors that were to collide with the earth and render them extinct.  Now imagine Betsy Ross uploading an image of the first American flag to her Facebook.  And just for the heck of it, imagine Winston Churchill using a shake weight on the back of a triceratops while sending a text message to Mary, Queen of Scots.  Pretty tiring, huh?

Fortunately for you, you don't have to do all that imagining.  Leave it to the writers of Alternate History, a branch of science fiction that looks to the past rather than the future and speculates on what might have been.

Let's imagine that, for instance, the South really has won the Civil War.  Since I am not a writer of Alternate Histories, my powers of imagination are greatly limited.  But I am certain of one thing: the makers of Members Only jackets would no longer have to hide behind the thinly-veiled message communicated by their brand name.  If ever such a scenario were to take place (or had this scenario taken place--which it obviously didn't because, I mean, here we are one and a half centuries in the future and the fact that the South did not win the Civil war is pretty much set in one hundred and fifty years of pretty solid stone) their articles of clothing would undoubtedly look something like this:

No, the company would no longer have to hide their agenda behind their highly specialized brand of country club jargon.  So, the next time you think that the perfect compliment to your skinny jeans and serial killer eyeglasses would be Nehru collared with passants, and be pastel in color, you may want to think again.  If not for their ugly brand of exclusivity, then for their dopey and possibly ironic appeal as relics of a thankfully bygone era.

On second thought, just because they became a punchline after their first post-80s decline doesn't mean that they'll fall out of style again.  Fashion is never fickle, now is it?

A Sure Sign You're a Nerd

Every book you've ever read features a map on the first two pages.

Rat King

Here's an interesting bit of trivia sent to me by my sister.  Rat kings are said to arise when a large number of rats become entangled by the tail, oftentimes fused together by knots, blood, ice, dirt and excrement.

Well, what a way to elect a leader.  Leave it to the rats to be totally disgusting.  Since there are a large number of you and you are held together by ice, blood, and excrement, why don't we just crown you king?  You seem to have all the qualifications to be ruler, so, please, lead us.

Thank goodness we humans have a more sophisticated means of choosing our leaders.

Or do we?  Let's take careful measures to ensure that our bosses, religious, and political leaders are single persons, and not a number of people fused together by a mixture of ice, blood, and excrement.  It goes without saying that this will require a keen eye.

Don't let this picture fool you.  If you have recently invited a rat king to dinner, chances are that when it shows up, it will not be quite this adorable.