1. Sexiest scam I’ve seen all day – DETOX PANTS!!! – Debenhams has launched Peachy Body Pants, the ‘cellulite-busting pants’.  How it works seems to involve green tea as an anti-oxidant and of course the removal of toxins (always with the toxins). The secret of these magical pants is that, like every other pair of pants, they don’t help against cellulite.

Polyamide Meryl Skinlife (whose acronym is the not very attractive PMS) ‘accumulates and transfers moisture to the surface of the filaments [which] allows it to easily absorb and transport perspiration.’ It’s also ‘the first bacteriostatic microfibre’ according to a specialist textile website.

So PMS pants help prevent a nasty sweaty crotch full of tiny living things, which is a blessing if you’re going to be wearing them eight hours a day for 21 days. You really don’t want festive thrush.

But they sure are nice to look at on the model.

2. Scienceblogs and National Geographic merger – The greatest source for science blogs on the web is joining forces with National Geographic. The folks at Age of Autism are going to love that. I just wish I could be there and see their faces when they hear the news. I’d pay real money to see that.

3. The most egg-cellent Jesus pareidolia yet -

Yes, clearly two intersecting lines is far too intricate a pattern to be explained by chance alone. So once again, can Bill “I love child rapists” Donohue and Michael “autism’s make believe” Savage please explain to me again why that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode was so offensive?

It’s da mother of the clone of the master of the universe in a pancake

Now, can Bill “I love child rapists” Donohue and Michael “autism’s make believe” Savage PLEASE explain to me why that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm was so offensive and out of line:

Now may His Holy, iron-y, and noodly appendages touch you all in all the hard to reach places:

You really have to question the logic and motive behind the perceived decision of Allah to imbue his name in delicious meat and fat.

What kind of cows get chosen?

What if the cows do not get slaughtered? How will people get to see the name?

Wait, do all cows with god’s name get slaughtered?

Do Hindu cows get a chance?

How about other animals? Camels?

Surely camels are holier, no? They are like, Arabic and stuff.

Another blessed man has found Allah and Muhammad’s name inscribed on the meat while preparing some righteous fried beef. Lesser men would continue frying some crispy beef, but not this man!

He promptly went to the nearest surau and told the surau head, Che Ahmad Safar, 58, about it. Che Ahmad, being astonished, showed off the six cubes of meat to others inside, and presumably the rest of the housing area.

After claiming that this is God’s way of showing His might, he stored the meat in the fridge, where they still stay up until now.

Whether they’ll be used for medicinal purpose is yet to be known.

One thing that pisses me off with these stories of pareidolia in Malaysia—besides being total bullshit—is that there are never photos of the meat in the news!

Compare this to the woman who saw Jesus on her iron:

That totally looks like Jesus, man!

No? Maybe if you squint a little harder…and use your imagination…

Update: I’ve just realised that much like the earlier happening the meat with Allah’s name are in sixes. Creepy coincidence?

1. Michael Egnor & the Discovery Institute expose their anti-science bias – I’ve blogged about Egnor before, linking to the blog debate where Steven Novella refuted his every flawed, ridiculous argument in favor of a “soul.” Now he’s jumping on the so-called “ClimateGate” fiasco, where he insists, like so many other denialists, that a whole lot of private, innocuous emails climate scientists is somehow the smoking gun evidence that global warming is false. Of course he doesn’t pinpoint any statements in any of the emails that would lead any rational person to this conclusion. But who needs facts when you’ve got faith? Egnor proves once again how egnorant he can be.

Is that a serious headline?

2. Uganda proposes death penalty to HIV-positive gays – It suddenly becomes very clear why Uganda is known for having the best medical care in the world. Oh wait. No, it doesn’t. The positive news is that this suggests that maybe not all the Neanderthals did die out after all. Though it’s not really fair to blame Uganda. Stupidity this large can only come from one source:  the U.S.’s own THE FAMILY. I’m looking at you Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts. Can we please lock these psychopaths up now?

3. Ray “The Banana Man” Comfort gave a full interview to the Friendly Atheist – You can read the whole thing in all its idiocy in the link above.

4. The first honest homeopathy product? – As you can clearly read on the packaging, homeopaths have developed the first ever non-drowsy sleep aid. May I be the first to congratulate them on this amazing breakthrough. Good job, guys. Good job.

5. The official wine of woo – Age of Autism took some time off from shilling bogus autism treatments for profit to shill some silly wine site called “Wines For Autism.” Now at first the site might seem fine. It’s supporting autism awareness after all. So how bad could it b–oh:

From witnessing my son’s significant progress I have made it my goal to spread awareness of the effectiveness of biomedical interventions while supporting charities that share my beliefs.

In other words, she wishes to promote those who support her particular delusion and no actual scientific organization researching autism will receive a dime. In other words, she’s going to exploit autism pseudoscience to make money.

It’s sort of like my business where I sell used cars and give some of the profits to cancer research (please note:  cancer research means those promoting trepanning as an effective cancer treatment). Actually, now that I think about it, this whole story makes me feel like bludgeoning my skull with a large stick so that all that stupid can seep out of my brain.

6. Iron Jesus! -

Wow, just in time for the Holidays, we have another classic case of pareidolia: this time a woman in Massachusetts claims that she’s seen Jesus… in her clothing iron.

A Massachusetts woman who recently separated from her husband and had her hours cut at work says an image of Jesus Christ she sees on her iron has reassured her that “life is going to be good.”

Mary Jo Coady first noticed the image Sunday when she walked into her daughter’s room.

The brownish residue on the bottom of the iron looks like the face of a man with long hair.

The 44-year-old Coady was raised Catholic. She and her two college-age daughters agree that the image looks like Jesus and is proof that “he’s listening.”

Coady tells The Eagle-Tribune she hopes her story will inspire others during the holidays. She says she plans to keep the iron in a closet and buy a new one.

Umm… yeah.  Pardon me, but… IT’S A STAIN!!! Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system.  Come on folks, is it really any surprise that the person making this “miraculous discovery” (which has all the markings of a modern-day “religious relic” such as the infamous Virgin Mary Grill Cheese Sandwich) is a devout Catholic?  That is the classic marker of pareidolia – our evolution-wired brains are developed for pattern recognition, and one of the most recognized patterns for humans is another human’s face. Throw into the mix a bit of religious fervor (i.e. in this case, devout Catholicism) and viola! you have a “miracle” appearance of Jesus on an iron.

Here’s another interesting bit of pareidolia to get you thinking.  Years ago a man cut into a melon, and he saw this…

So what, if anything, do you see?  If you’re like me, you see some wavy lines which are essentially meaningless.  But if you are a devout Muslim who can read Arabic, you will likely see “Allah” (God) written out in Arabic.  And, before you roll your eyes, there are people who treat this as seriously as our Catholic lady does her Jesus-stained iron.

In conclusion, what this all really teaches us about these kinds of “miraculous events” is this: it’s all in your head, folks, and people who believe strongly enough can find amazing ways to validate those beliefs – even if to the rest of us it’s utter gibberish.

Yet another proof on Christians being insane..
People in 2009 falling for bs like this, can you imagine the folks around 2000 years back…

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METHUEN — Mary Jo Coady walked into her daughter’s bedroom Sunday afternoon and noticed a familiar image on the bottom of an iron sitting on the floor.

This is not the first time someone has believed they found Christ on an everyday object.

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The Shroud of Turin has been in the news a bit recently, and I blogged about how it can be replicated using completely natural methods (something many Shroud-proponents say cannot be done – whoops).  Well, now the Shroudies are back, with one of them claiming that she has seen ancient writing on the actual Shroud which “proves” it was the funeral covering for Christ’s burial.

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin

A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says in a new book that she used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to decipher faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the cloth.

She asserts that the words include the name “(J)esu(s) Nazarene” — or Jesus of Nazareth — in Greek. That, she said, proves the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have mentioned Jesus without referring to his divinity. Failing to do so would risk being branded a heretic.

Of course, the claim of “proof” here flies in the face of much other evidence which clearly shows the Shroud’s origins as a pious fraud in the 1300s A.D., way past the burial date of Christ.  This includes evidence from independent radiocarbon dating tests, as well as evidence from historical, iconographic, pathological, physical, and chemical sources that points to its inauthenticity. As one of the foremost skeptical Shroud researchers, Joe Nickell, has concluded: the shroud is a 14th century painting, not a 2000-year-old cloth with Christ’s image.  And, concerning these most recent claims of seeing writing in the Shroud, they are dubious for multiple reasons…

From the article:

On one hand, it is true that a medieval forger would label the object with Christ’s name, as were all relics produced at the time, said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written about the shroud. The problem is that there are no inscriptions to be seen in the first place.

“People work on grainy photos and think they see things,” Lombatti told the AP. “It’s all the result of imagination and computer software. … If you look at a photo of the shroud, there’s a lot of contrast between light and dark, but there are no letters.”

Further criticizing Frale’s work, Lombatti said that artifacts bearing Greek and Aramaic texts were found in Jewish burials from the first century, but the use of Latin is unheard of.

He also rejected the idea that authorities would officially return the body of a crucified man to relatives after filling out some paperwork. Victims of that form of execution used by the Romans would usually be left on the cross or were disposed of in a dump to add to its deterrent.

Lombatti said “the message was that you won’t even have a tomb to cry over.”

Another shroud expert, Gian Marco Rinaldi, said that even scientists who believe in the relic’s authenticity have dismissed as unreliable the images on which Frale’s study was based.

“These computer enhancements increase contrast in an unrealistic way to bring out these signs,” he said. “You can find them all over the shroud, not just near the head, and then with a bit of imagination, you see letters.”

In other words, the “writing” that Frale claims to be seeing & translating in the Shroud is likely nothing more than a classic case of pareidolia. There are numerous well-documented cases of this phenomena – many of them related to religious symbols such as the Shroud – whereby through self-delusion and sometimes “computer enhancement” people convince themselves that they’re seeing something familiar which isn’t really there.

So, taking Occam’s Razor out and applying it to the full amount of evidence, it is most likely that – even in the presence of these latest claims – the Shroud of Turin is still not what a lot of Shroudies claim it is.  But then, that won’t stop the true believers from engaging in goalpost moving or special pleading, because one of the last things they think could be possible is that they could be wrong.

Introduction

Pareidolia: (noun) /pærɪˈdoʊliə/ — The tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the viewer; such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals or seeing shapes in clouds. From the Greek para- (“beside,” “with,” or “alongside”—meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech)) and eidolon (“image”; the diminutive of eidos (“image,” “form,” “shape”)).

Pareidolia is something that I addressed in my “Pareidolia – The Face on Mars” post in January 2009. In this post, however, I’ll be addressing a different twist on pareidolia that has a different genesis given the modern age of computers, where everyone with an internet connection can be an armchair geologist.

In this particular case study, I will not be talking about Richard Hoagland and his glass cities on the moon and Mars, but rather a more obscure person, Andrew Basiago, of his self-made “Mars Anomaly Research Society.” In 2008, he put out a “research paper” entitled, “THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE ON MARS,” with the first sentence of the abstract being five simple words, “There is life on Mars.”

His evidence? Read further to find out …

What Does Basiago Say He Found, in General?

Basiago is a lawyer and self-described “amateur scientist.” In late 2008, he made headlines by complaining that National Geographic was refusing to publish his work. The following quote is from his press release:

“I was astonished by what I found,” he said. “There, on the Red Planet, were beings in blue bodysuits and the abstract artwork of a Martian civilization. I was looking at the first evidence of life beyond Earth!”

In his letter to the National Geographic Society, the lawyer writes that careful evaluation of PIA10214 reveals “a cosmic treasure trove of pictographic evidence of life on Mars, including humanoid beings, animal species, carved statues, and built structures.”

According to Basiago, the humanoid beings photographed in PIA10214 have bulbous heads and elongated bodies, like the extraterrestrials described in alien contact accounts. Some have two arms and legs like human beings, while others have multiple appendages and segmented or larval bodies, as if they are human-insect hybrids.

Here are two news stories about it (link 1, link 2).

The original image in question can be found here.

A Famous Photo

This photograph, or panorama of photographs, from Mars was taken by the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) “Spirit” during the last few months of 2007. It is within the Gusev Crater on Mars on the plateau that NASA has named, “Home Plate.” What makes this photograph interesting is that it itself caught the news cycle due to a fairly “obvious” piece of pareidolia, the “Big Foot” on Mars.

If you download the full version of the panorama from NASA, the “Big Foot” is located about 30″ down, 12″ over (2150 px down, 850 px over to the right). Below is a FULL-RESOLUTION version of just that section. Note that the figure itself is about 37 px tall and 18 px wide. At full resolution. And, it really does look like a person sitting with a hand resting on one knee.

However, with MER Spirit having photographed well over a million rocks on the planet, some are bound to look like something that we’re familiar with. Just like the cloud I saw today looked a lot like Mr. Spock.

While the image of “Big Foot” on Mars garnered some press on its own and made the rounds on Coast to Coast AM, it quickly came out that the rock in question was just a few inches tall and it fairly quickly dropped from the public consciousness.

Expanding Beyond 100% Size

The etymology of the word “pixel” dates back to the 1960s, when it became an abbreviation for “picture element.” In other words, the smallest part of a picture. The smallest “piece” of information that was recorded. A pixel cannot be subdivided into more than one pixel to yield more data because it simply does not exist in the image.

And yet, graphics programs have no problem expanding an image beyond that 100% scale, to make 1 pixel into 2, 3, 4, or more. Software does this through a variety of algorithms, and it may really look like it has smoothly added information to the image, but it has not. It has also introduced artifacts through the expansion process that were not previously there. If, for example, you expand a photograph to 250% its original size, and then you shrink it back to the original 100%, you will not have the same photograph you started with, and you will have lost a little bit of information.

This basic concept is not something that Basiago seems to understand. He took NASA photograph PIA10214 and blew up various parts of it, stretching objects that may have originally been only 5 pixels tall and 7 pixels wide into something 50x that size. In other cases, he has stretched the aspect ratio, making the image much wider or taller than it should be if given a simple expansion.

Let’s look at two examples. In the example below, Basiago describes as: “These and other animals on Mars defy classification by any known system on Earth. We would include among the new forms of fauna on Mars the animal whose giraffe-like head can be seen peering from behind the cliff literally within feet of Spirit. This animal has red lips, a patch of blue beneath its bulging eyes, and a crest atop its head like some dinosaurs. Even the most spirited disinformation that this report will inspire will have difficulty finding a mundane, non-biological explanation for The Spying Giraffe.”

Basiago Pareidolia Example 1

In this second example below, Basiago describes: “Maybe the creatures seen – including both living plesiosaurs (left) and dead ones (right) – are plesiosaurs that survived on Mars the extinction that befell plesiosaurs on Earth.”

Basiago Pareidolia Example 2

I’ve been kind with these examples. In the many, many photographic blow-ups that he includes in his paper, these are among the best few that actually sorta kinda look like what he claims. However, any normal reader with pretty much any amount of common sense can tell that these are simply rocks. Or, at the very least, one would need higher-resolution photographs to really tell anything, as opposed to just blowing up a low-resolution image (e.g., the far-right one in the first example).

Final Thoughts

What automatically enters my mind when someone claims they see something anomalous in a photograph, or that they see “data’s head” on the moon or subway systems on Mars, I first think “pareidolia,” and my second thought is, “what’s the resolution?” In other words, is the object they’re describing actually fully resolved, or are they stretching the pixels to bring out something that’s not really there? As was the case in the examples of “amateur scientist” Andrew Basiago, both of these were at play, and what he was really looking at was simply a bunch of rocks.

Here are two more conditions you need to be aware of if you believe you may be haunted.

First, a visual phenomena called Pareidolia. This is a psychological condition where vague visual impressions are perceived as significant.  This is probably what’s really bothering people who think they see the face of Jesus in a tortilla, the Virgin Mary in wood panelling, rocks on Mars having faces, or even animal shapes in clouds or human gestures in punctuation =D.

Pareidolia is also the reason why Rorschach inkblot tests work. In a Rorschach test the person projects whatever is going on in his head onto the cards, which have been designed to not represent anything at all.

Secondly, are you being visited while you are sleeping?

If weird things are happening while you are in bed, the cause may be a form of sleep paralysis. Let’s say that you’ve been sleeping in a nice, deep, happy REM sleep. Sounds great!  But, please know that your body does not wake up all at the same time.  The brain can wake up from sleep before the rest of the body does. This leaves the door wide open for hallucinations, dream-like states with people in the room, and often an acute sense of danger.  Some researchers believe that sleep paralysis explains many of the abduction stories we hear about in the UFO literature.  It is just as easy to have ‘visits’ from Aunt Margaret, your guardian angel, or somebody far more sinister.

The flip side, obviously, is that if your guardian angel were to visit you, it might be most easily done when you are in a state of sleep paralysis.  Whether it is a psychological cause or a psychological effect is a discussion point since science has no way to determine if there is anything truly paranormal going on around us anyway. Just realize that your own mind can play tricks on you!

1. Jesus returns. . .to Ikea – It’s unclear at this time whether Jesus has come for the Swedish meatballs; the elegantly designed furnature at low, low prices; or he just wanted to return the furnature he bought from them before because he couldn’t assemble it himself. But one thing is certain. Jesus is at Ikea.

2. Jesus is also black and in an electric chair, as well as a crucified gorilla – Artist Paul Fryer has just introduced his latest work, which is guaranteed to piss off Child Rapist Apologist Bill Donohue any time now.

3. R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis, Illustrated is finally here – Greta Christina gives a review of the controversial comics artist’s complete, unedited translation of Genesis into graphic novel form, a project that took five years to produce.

Perhaps looking for a cheap cross..

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HEAVENS above! The ‘face of Jesus’ peers eerily out of this door at Swedish furniture giants Ikea.

Shoppers have been left stunned by the spooky Turin Shroud-like image at the entrance to a loo.

The long flowing hair and beard of Jesus can clearly be seen in the grain of the wood on the door of the gents’ toilets in Ikea’s Braehead outlet, near Glasgow.
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More Science Bytes

ADVERTENCIA: las frases escritas en cursiva y en color gris son solamente opiniones provenientes del costado mas sincero del autor, para evitar el posible desagrado que podría llegar a causarle le sugerimos ignorarlas y seguir viviendo su vida normalmente, gracias por su atención, continué conectado a vinfommore. Si, es una orden.

No crea que esta leyendo un blog con contenido interesante, a veces lo que parece no es, y lo que es, no queremos que lo sea.

Usted es una de esas personas que están al pedo que pasa sus ratos libres tirado en un prado mirando la belleza del cielo terrestre, que imagina bonitas imágenes cuya hermosura parece ser proveniente del mismísimo paraíso, un ángel, un corazón, un ciervito aunque para usted es un bamby, una oveja, porque ¿Quién no diría que una nube no se parece a una oveja?, si hasta incluso si pudiese llegar a tocarla se sentiría tan suave como la lana. Usted se pasa horas y horas observando las nubes y disfrutando de los hermosos dibujos que nos ofrece la naturaleza, si claro, la naturaleza. Aunque algunas malas lenguas crean y digan que solo los drogadictos pueden llegar a tener esta gran capacidad imaginativa, todos sabemos , mentira que no es así, poder observar claramente formas de objetos reconocidos en lugares en donde obviamente no hay intención de que sean visibles es una facultad que tenemos todos. Y otra facultad que tenemos muchos y no todos, es la de creer que esas imágenes que vemos son reales, y esta facultad se llama ignorancia, como ¿Eso es una facultad?, como ¿Eso no debió haber ido en gris?, que confusión.

La idea que una mancha de vomito con un forma media rara, sea percibida como la cara de Elvis, no es una locura, simplemente es un fenómeno psicológico llamado pareidolia. Y seguramente lo a experimentado varias veces, porque básicamente ya esta incorporado en la mente, este mecanismo de asociar las diferentes formas que vemos con algo que ya hallamos visto antes es la base para poder reconocer por ejemplo, el rostro de una persona después de mucho tiempo. En conclusión no seremos unos locos si vemos algo con forma de… y que nadie mas ve, solo seremos unos ignorantes si luego llamamos a eso como la cosa con forma de…, porque obviamente es nuestra mente quien le esta dando esa forma para que así lo interpretemos.

Así que ya sabe, cuando vea en las noticias de una vieja que encontró en su guiso, un fideo moñito con la cara del Gauchito Gil, o una ardilla que se parece a Abraham Lincoln, o cualquier otro tipo de disparates de ese estilo, ya podrá tranquilizar a su familia, y con toda la tranquilidad del mundo decirles, “tranquila familia, no es mas que una pareidolia.”

Aquí algunos casos de pareidolias conocidas si que hay gente al pedo eh. :

• Visión de animales o rostros en la forma de las nubes.
• Visión de rostros en las cimas de algunos cerros pedregosos
• Visión de rostros en la parte delantera o trasera de un vehículo
• Imágenes de rostros en aparatos (en la imagen), edificios, etc
• Visión de personas o siluetas en el pavimento.
• Audición de mensajes reconocibles en grabaciones en idiomas desconocidos o reproducidas al revés.
• Avistamientos de ovnis, críptidos, fantasmas u otros fenómenos paranormales.
• Numerosas figuras religiosas o simplemente humanoides en objetos astronómicos como la Luna, la Nebulosa del Águila.
• Imágenes religiosas en objetos cotidianos (árboles, piedras, etc.).
• Imágenes en el humo de los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001
• Una silueta del papa Juan Pablo II en una hoguera en Polonia. [1]
• Imagen de la Virgen en el Vidrio del auto blindado en el Atentado al General Pinochet en Chile
• Mensajes subliminales en comerciales, publicidad o dibujos animados.

Algunas frases de los que saben:

El término pareidolia, actualmente en desuso, es el que mejor designa las alteraciones perceptivas en las que, a partir de un campo real de percepción escasamente estructurado, el individuo cree percibir algo distinto, mezclando lo percibido con lo fantaseado. En este sentido es una forma de ilusión o percepción engañosa que se diferencia claramente de las alucinaciones, seudoalucinaciones, alucinosis o metamorfopcias».

Martín et al

Frecuentemente el ser humano, al observar un objeto, una nube o una mancha, tiende de manera inconsciente, a reconocer en estos objetos con formas caóticas, patrones asimilables a objetos conocidos. Este fenómeno es conocido como pareidolia».

Patricio Bustamante

«Diversas obras rupestres y sitios arqueológicos a través del mundo, presentan características que permiten asociarlos con el fenómeno denominado pareidolia. En ellos, accidentes del paisaje, rocas, etc., presentan formas que semejan personas, animales, etc. Parece ser un fenómeno extensivo que podría constituirse tanto en una herramienta de análisis como de contraste de obras y entornos pertenecientes a diversas culturas a través del mundo».

Patricio Bustamante

Y vealo usted mismo:

Bien, los dejo viendo las imágenes, seguramente se quedaran un rato largo ahí, si claro, comos si les interesara el tema. Bien, yo me despido. Saludos. Gr@yFoG.

Fuentes

http://www.anfrix.com/2007/03/las-pareidolias-mas-llamativas/

http://www.xeduced.com/2008/01/28/10-imagenes-de-parecidos-razonables-pareidolia/

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Photographed by cobalt123

Delicate wire sculpture by accident, seen at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, just west of Tucson, Arizona.

– License

Here’s a quickie for you, while I’m working away diligently.  It’s a cute site that George IMed to me (from across the office) yesterday called This Peanut Looks Like a Duck.  Because if the Virgin Mary can show up on a piece of toast, the Great Duck will not be outdone. In fact, lots of things can look like a duck, see for yourself…

Semi-related… want to get a fantastic, nostalgic song stuck in your head? Thanks to Tim for tweeting this around last Friday…

It’s that time of year, when gardens begin producing more fruits and vegetables than any household can reasonably be expected to consume. All the hard work has paid off and is now being thrust into the hands of others. (By the way, have you met our income tax system yet?) This eggplant was given to us by my wife’s parents. It arrived accompanied by many vegetables, but it stood out from the pack.

It took over the counter. It demanded respect in a gruff voice. It tried to pick our pockets while slapping Nixon pins on our shirts and intimidating the tomatoes.

It said things about not being a crook and shadowy setups by people on the “list.” It conjectured that bailing out French colonies never worked and that it had tried to meet “those stupid hippies halfway.” I caught it late at night, huddled over the stereo, making conversational mixtapes for someone. It denied things categorically.

It went into a ratatouille attempt, bellowing the whole time.

It was no Jesus tortilla or Virgin Mary sandwich, but it did carry a certain air of wounded superiority and blustering desperation, despite its ridiculous Jughead hat. It was the only vegetable we ever saw sweat.

-CLT

En estas nubes se puede apreciar la ilusion optica que nos hace ver la cara de un hombre.

En estas nubes se puede apreciar la ilusion optica que nos hace ver la cara de un hombre.

Like Ado, I had performances/practices all week. Which, for me, equals either Good times and LOLZ, or a major lack of sleep. This time was a heady mix of both. HOORAY! The performances themselves were pretty damn awesome, even if I do say so myself. I had several friends in it with me, but only one of which is on this site. A big clap for Luneix, if you please! Parei, NeverHasLupus and stuffusernames aren’t really performing people. So Whoo for Luneix, Ado, and I! (Ado was in a different production). And Parei, stuffusernames and NeverHasLupus, YOU MISSED OUT ON SOME AWESOME AFTER PARTIES! XD Oh ours was fun. Whooo for 2am! (That’s were the tiredness comes in).

Anyway, Thanks Ado, (if you don’t know why, go away ).

One more thing, stuffusernames and Pareidolia, an extra special thanks to you two, once again, if you don’t know why, get out.

Farewell!

CFBGW