Talkin' forensic entomology, tinfoil hats, Ted, and Hitler blues

[sabotabby]

I have found four or five corpses of the same type of bug (it looks like a centipede, but smaller and deader) in the same corner of my room. I haven't seen any bugs like this, living or dead, anywhere else in my room or anywhere else in the apartment.

Luna is probably the one killing them, as she has a bug fetish that puts Renfield to shame, but I don't know if she's just finding them in one corner and leaving them there, or finding them all over the place and dragging them over to that one particular corner for some reason.

Luna is weird. I found her hanging off the ground from one of the French doors today trying to catch a fly. What a freak.

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Hey, Amanda Marcotte is talking about conspiracy theories, so you should all check it out. My favourite bit:

I’ll admit, I love myself a good conspiracy theory, because the prevalence of them tells you a lot about the way the human mind works. In my opinion, conspiracy theories proliferate because of the tendency of humans to anthropomorphize pretty much everything, including systems. In fact, it rapidly becomes difficult to describe a system without invoking human-like intentionality as a shorthand for process of a system—the most immediate example is how evolutionary processes are described as “selection”. Feminists invoke the same kind of anthropormophizing metaphor when describing the patriarchy.

The problem is that people begin to take metaphorical intention as actual intention. I often have anti-feminists write or leave comments, for instance, where they assume that when I’m describing the patriarchy, I actually mean that men have some sort of secret conspiracy against women, which is not true. But you can see why they might think that, because that’s pretty much how actual conspiracy theories emerge, in the confusion between metaphorical intent and actual intent. To make it even more confusing, the existence of real life conspiracies makes conspiracy theories very plausible. Regardless of how plausible a conspiracy theory is, however, they offer fascinating insight into what the people who believe in them are anxious about.

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Also, my dear friends, I have indeed seen the Hitler cat site, and it is utterly hilarious. Consider it blogrolled.

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Preliminary results from my last poll indicate that more people dislike goatees than like them. I haven't done a breakdown by gender or sexual orientation (hell, with half of you I don't even know), so I'm not sure if growing one means you'll be less likely to get action, but it's something to keep in mind. Regardless, the consensus even among goatee fans is that they don't work for everyone. Also, thanks to jaymoh and kaelynn for teaching me the terms "flavour saver" and "chin caterpillar," respectively.

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And since this post is more or less devoid of content owing to a weekend spent mostly doing chores and finishing American Gods (squee!), here's your Ted Nugent Quote of the Day:

If a wildman guffaws in the forest, does he make any noise? Let me assure you, he do.

Um what?