Today is my little brother’s seventh birthday (which puts a whopping twenty years between us in age). I’m clear across country from him so this (and a cartoon e-card) is my best way of being there since he hates speaking on the phone. Happy birthday, Bubby. I love you.
Fun Fish-in-a-Bag Soap, $6.00
It just occurred to me that no post was made to explain why Will’s been somewhat absent from Moue for the past month or so. He’s not pinned beneath the victrola, crying out for help or anything. He had to take on a new job that has crazy long hours that don’t work well around blogging. We’re keeping his seat warm and his bottle in the liquor cabinet sealed.
All of us Moue-sters have full time jobs outside of blogging since this doesn’t actually pay us anything other than the warm and fuzzy feeling of productivity in the name of procrastinating our real work. I have the most flexible real job (I actually get to put down “writer” on my tax forms) so I tend to pick up the slack when the others are too busy.
Cracker-gate is still going strong and the weirdos are frantically jumping around outside of the woodwork. As you may know if you read the liberal blogs (or read my post, Much Ado About a Wafer), P.Z. Myers has been receiving death threats because he vaguely threatened to desecrate a Eucharist cracker if someone mailed him one. He offered to do this in response to the Catholic Church implying that college senior Webster Cook was a kidnapper or hate crime perpetrator because he walked out of church with a wafer in his pocket (mostly just to piss off the people inside who had just physically assaulted him).
P.Z. Myers makes it a habit of posting on his blog the complete emails containing physical threats. Which I support 100%. If you’re going to be making physical threats, you need to be willing to be held accountable for them. One of the emails appeared to be from a woman named Melanie Kroll who worked at 1-800-Flowers.
The email (The “P” in the “P.Z.” stands for Paul) :
From: mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com
Subject: your short life
Date July 13, 2008 8:07:31 AM CDT
(…)
Paul,
what I would like to know is how did you even
get a job at a collage.
when you are obviously a moron.
How would you feel if nice folks starting ranting against
Fags, and atheist like yourself.
well sir, you don’t get to blaspheme and walk away from this.
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in.
I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt.
Personally, I was lost in a fit of giggles once I got to the “get a job at a collage”. Can you really get hired on for a collage? Are they collaborative processes? What are the job titles? “Glue Stick Guy”, “Photo Arranger”…
Anyway, P.Z.’s readers deduced that it probably wasn’t Melanie Kroll since the language in the letter seemed more masculine in nature (threats of beating P.Z.’s face in would most likely come from a man). It would also seem- and this is being generous- that even a person capable of that many grammatical errors would be smart enough to not send a death threat from their easily traceable business email account.
Melanie Kroll lost her job at 1-800-Flowers. But the readers were right that she wasn’t the sender. It was Chuck Kroll, presumably her husband, who has now publicly confessed. And while he seems to (somewhat) regret using such harsh language towards P.Z. Myers, he is blaming P.Z.’s readers for his wife being fired. He was the one that wasn’t smart enough to send a death threat email properly (or to use spell and grammar check, for that matter) but those darn readers tattled to 1-800-Flowers so they are to blame. That makes perfect sense. And P.Z. Myers and Greg Laden have both publicly stated that they don’t think she should have lost her job (Greg emailed the company to that effect). But obviously, Chuck’s in the right there. That poor logic train- so many lives lost when it derailed.
One of Chuck Kroll’s confessions, delivered via the comments section at Breaking Spells (Greg Laden confirms it is him since Chuck also sent him emails):
Watch:
The first installment of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog went up today. It was created by Joss Whedon (with his brothers) and stars Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. No surprise then that the site keeps crashing/running slow due to heavy volume.
Here’s the trailer again to keep you occupied while you wait to get in:
Buy
Elephone’s new album, Canister, is officially out today. Go buy it.
The novel Lolita, often considered one of the best novels ever written, was partially composed while Vladimir Nabokov was traveling through the western U.S. to catch butterflies. Nabokov was a well respected entomologist during (and after) his lifetime. His writings and research in this area were highly technical and specialized. He was in charge of organizing the butterfly collection of Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. The genus Nabokovia was named in his honor as were several butterfly and moth species. Whenever I hear or see Nabokov’s name, my first thought is always of butterflies.
If you like insects but entomology seems a bit labor intensive for you, there are shortcuts. Bugman58 comes to the rescue of anyone who would like preserved specimens but have no idea how to go about acquiring them. The majority of the insects that he offers have been farm raised in foreign countries where he has established a relationship with breeding facilities and farmers. The insects live in captive breeding populations under controlled conditions where they are allowed to reproduce and die naturally. The insects are dried, shipped and re-hydrated by Mike (Bugman58 ) upon arrival. He pins them out to dry again then frames them either in a glass cased frame, lucite or acrylic.
I encourage you to read the shop profile to find out more about the creation process and to click on each link to read the in depth explanation of each insect that Mike offers at his site.
Metallic Blue Gems, 7″ x 7″ frame for $39.00
The neighbor across the road from where I am currently house-sitting is a 17 year old boy who was left the house when his mother moved in with her boyfriend. As would be expected, there are approximately eleventy billion cars parked along our street at any given time with all people traffic headed in the direction of his house. They are normally fairly quiet and respectable for a pack of teenagers. They’re also apparently a patriotic (or pyromaniac) bunch, since full fledged fireworks shows have been going on for at least three hours every night since June 30th.
But if there are zombie hoards at the perimeter of the city, I’ll have to thank those kids for the head start.
When I was a child, I asked an adult what caused thunder. “Angels bowling,” they said. I asked why the sky was blue and was told that it just was. I got annoyed, did some research and learned the truth on my own. When there was a commercial on television a few years ago that featured a little girl shooting down her dad’s b.s. answer to a scientific question with the real facts (that she learned from her mother), I actually cheered out loud.
Tiffany Ard Art is targeted at those parents who had similar interests in science when they were young that might not have been encouraged. From ABC Flash Cards that introduce terms like “Y chromosome” and “binary code” to art pieces that reference the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, Tiffany Ard’s works offer the colors and themes of traditional children’s art with a scientific bent.
She also has a non-Etsy site here.
Nerdy Baby ABC Flash Cards, $18.00
If you’ve read our sidebar or made a guess based on our name, the Moue blog is going to eventually have an online magazine that goes with it. Each bimonthly issue will have its own “theme” and will feature articles, interviews and products from indie retailers.
The first theme is “No Money, Mo’ Problems- The Poverty Issue”. We already have a few article writers lined up but I’m looking for more writers. Experience is not required (but writing ability is) and you’ll get a byline, possibly a small cash payment and the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with being a part of Moue’s extended family.
Feature length articles should be at least 2,000 words. Reviews, essays, etc. can be shorter. I also welcome flash fiction (under 750 words) pieces. Feature length pieces must deal with poverty issues but the smaller articles have wiggle room as far as topic is concerned. If you’d like to see a magazine that has a similar vibe to what I’m looking for, check out Bad Subjects.
If you’d like to pitch an idea (or just send in an article), email me at mouemagazine@gmail.com with “Submission” somewhere in the title line.
