Flying Spaghetti Monster Cookies:

Show your religious fervor by baking Flying Spaghetti Monster cookies this year! LINK

Chandelier Wants To Be Cthulhu:

Tentacle chandeliers:

Artist Adam Wallacavage makes these gorgeous, tentacled "Pulsatilla" chandeliers -- presently on exhibit at New York's Jonathan LeVine Gallery. LINK

That's How They Toilet Paper Roll:

Kentucky Couple To Tie Knot With Toilet Paper
Here comes the bride, all dressed in white ... two-ply, extra soft toilet paper.

Lovebirds Jennifer Cannon and Doy Nichols of Lexington, Ky., plan to get hitched Wednesday in a public restroom. She'll be wearing a gown fashioned from glue, tape and Charmin Ultra Soft and Ultra Strong toilet tissue.

The intricately detailed dress was designed by Hanah Kim, winner of the 2007 Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest, sponsored by Cheap-Chic-Weddings.com.

The wedding ceremony, to be attended by family and friends, will take place in Times Square at the Charmin Restrooms - temporary, free public restrooms, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Naughty Elf Sends Bad Letters:

Rogue Elf sending filthy letters:
Article from: Agence France-Presse

THE national post office and police in Canada are searching for a "rogue elf" who has been sending filthy letters to children on behalf of Santa Claus.
A handful of reply letters to children who wrote to jolly Saint Nick contained comments such as: "This letter is too long, you dumb shit."

Canada Post spokeswoman Cindy Daoust said: "We firmly believe there is just one rogue elf out there responsible for the letters. In our history, we've never had a problem of this nature."

She explained that the letters were part of a Santa letter-writing program in which postal workers across Canada reply to letters from children around the world posted to Santa Claus, the North Pole, Canada, postal code H0H0H0.

Every reply letter is identical, except for a hand-written personalized postscript added by one of 11,000 volunteers.

Last year, Canada Post replied to 1.06 million letters on behalf of Santa, and 15 million letters have been posted since the program began in 1981.

Canada Post president Moya Greene said: "We are shocked and heart-broken that this much-loved quarter-of-a-century old program has experienced an incident of this kind."

"We deeply apologize to any families affected by this," she added.

Canada Post briefly shut down the program in Ottawa after parents complained. A dozen inappropriate letters had been dropped in mailboxes throughout the Canadian capital, but there could be more, officials warned.

Previously, Canada Post had received only one complaint about the program. In 1999, a seven-year-old in Oshawa, Ontario received a Santa message from Canada Post that called him "one greedy little boy!"

Skull Motorcycle Helmet:

Posted by Cory Doctorow, via BoingBoing

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this skull-shaped motorcycle helmet. Joel notes, "this Skull Helmet from Santiago Chopper meets their primary criterion: open-throttle badassery." LINK

Merry Titmas:

World of Wonder new exhibit of Christmas spirit and Boobies - Possibly NSFW, even though it is art...

Awesome! Pro-Atheism Movie!

The Web has made it a lot easier to convey outrage. Witness the controversy (and buzz) surrounding "The Golden Compass," a new children's film starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

The anger stems from the belief that the film is anti-religion and pro-atheism. Some folks plan to boycott the film as a sign of protest. Ironically, searches on "atheism" and "define atheism" have both spiked in response to their efforts. Clearly, people are hearing the message, but not in the way the protesters had hoped.

So, will the boycott hurt or help the film's performance? Searches on "the golden compass" are up 50% this past week and queries on "golden compass controversy" have experienced a similar surge. Some people are looking forward to the flick while others are looking forward to convincing folks to stay home. Stay tuned to see who wins.

Pop-Up Book Photoshopping Contest:

Posted by Cory Doctorow via BoingBoing


Today on Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday contest: improbably pop-up books! LINK

Geeky Xmas Ornaments:

Alice of the Wonderland blog is systematically cataloging the best of nerdy Christmas tree ornaments available online, ranging from crocheted Alien vs Predator heads to World of Warcraft Khorium Ore ornaments, to Star Wars and Super Mario figs to tiny sculpted "Cthulumas" ornaments to recycled mouses:
Part 0
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3

Cthulhu Is Real!

OSLO, Norway - Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric "monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded by science, researchers said Tuesday. Initial excavation of a site on the Svalbard islands in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said Joern Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo. "It seems the monster is a new species," he told The Associated Press. The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year. His team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet — "as long as a bus ... with teeth larger than cucumbers. We are regularly seeing new species of plesiosaurs popping up — in a way because, in the past 10 or 15 years, there has been what we call a renaissance in plesiosaur research," Evans said by telephone. Hurum said the team had only managed to excavate a 3-meter (yard) area of the find. The Norwegian-led team plans to present more detailed findings early next year, and return to Svalbard, 300 miles north of Norway's mainland, to excavate further next year.

Yeti Lives?

A TV crew from the show Destination Truth claims that they've found what could be Yeti footprints in Nepal's Everest region. They've taken castings of the three prints and plan to have scientists examine them. From the BBC News: A Nepalese member of the team spotted three footprints and alerted (Destination Truth's Josh) Gates, who told the BBC the first print was a "pristine" right paw mark, 33 cm (13 inches) long, with five toes in a wide spread of 25 cm. There was also a heel print and another fainter one. An excited Mr Gates described the main footprint as anthropomorphic, meaning it had human characteristics. He said he did not believe the prints were man-made or that they came from a known animal such as a bear. But he also said he was not sure he believed in the Yeti, and did not know what to make of it.
LINK