For many people, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is the best Christmas-themed comedy ever filmed. Personally, I make it habit to watch this movie approximately a gazillion times between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Even after seeing the film so many times, Christmas Vacation remains as hilarious and entertaining as the previous holiday season. More than just a seasonal film, it’s one of those rare comedies that’s near perfect from beginning to end. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’
Day: December 20, 2012
‘Pay no attention to that spider on top of the web!’
Phil Torres, a biologist and science educator, was leading one of his tours of the Peruvian rainforest when he discovered a spider … being controlled by another spider. It turns out that this possibly new species of the spider genus Cyclosa has taken the creepy in creepy crawly to the next level: puppetry.
Cyclosa spiders are known for making decoys in their webs using leaves, egg sacs and dirt. This one, however, actually crafts a full spider body — legs and all — out of the materials and uses web threads to make them move. Torres discovered 25 of them along the trail alone, with varying degrees of realism. (One of the spiders is experiencing a Cubist period.)
What’s most notable about the decoys is their size and placement. The decoys are nearly twice the size of the actual puppetmaster spiders, and they’re positioned at about human face-height. It’s clear that these compensatory analogues are meant for us humans, as if spiders weren’t terrifying enough.
Thieves steal tons of now cheap consoles
Thieves! Stealers! Potential hoarders! All of these words describe the culprits behind a theft in SeaTac where 7000 Wii consoles were stolen from a warehouse. Seven thousand! That’s enough to create your own artificial shortage of the consoles and be very effective about it…if it were the year 2006 again. Nintendo created their own artificial shortage of the console during the entire first year that the Wii was out.
Now, in the year 2012, a Wii console can be purchased for between 120 and 130 dollars. So, have fun sitting on that giant number of Wii units, guys!
Who stole the maple syrup, eh?
Canada often gets made fun of for being so soft and friendly that it’s not really a country. But they have real problems up there, and a recent mass theft proves just that. Someone stole a lot of maple syrup!
Authorities say that three people are in custody in connection for a huge theft of maple syrup from a warehouse in Quebec, which is apparently not its own country. The theft happened in August, and while the exact amount of syrup stolen hasn’t been disclosed (you know, speculators and all that), the warehouse can hold up to 10 million pounds.
Make sure you don’t buy any black market maple syrup, buy American!