But we’re also glad because things that are fun and exciting are the most fun and exciting when they come and go and leave you wanting more.

Of course, the breakout star of the Cup was not Ronaldo or Kaka or Messi but an unassuming mollusk whose psychic powers amazed the world. Yes, it was Paul The Psychic Octopus, whose stunning 8-for-8 predictions have left scientists and sports fans reeling with questions regarding cephalopod intelligence, the possibilities of psychic powers, and tentacled understanding of the passing game and the offsides rule.

Housed in a German zoo, Paul correctly predicted all of the German team’s results — including their losses to Serbia and Spain — and Spain’s win over the Netherlands. His method of communicating his predictions to his keepers was a bit unorthodox — Paul would choose a tasty bit of oyster from one of two boxes, each adorned with the flags of the competing teams in each contest — but it worked. He surpassed the efforts of other would-be animal seers at the same zoo: Petty the pygmy hippo, Leon the porcupine, and Anton the tamarin monkey, all picked wrong in other games. A South American dolphin named Sayco announced his pick and the headline “Dolphin favors Argentina” but we all know how that turned out. Paul’s biggest rival, Mani the Parakeet, picked the Dutch squad in the final.

No, it was Paul who made headlines this time out — but his terrific run in the World Cup followed a lesser performance in the 2008 European Cup where he incorrectly picked Germany to beat Spain in the final.

So how did Paul do it? Octopuses have the largest brain of any mollusk, and the limits of their brain capacity are still being studied — they can learn, use tools and recognize complicated patterns and devise cunning strategies for getting food. But they are color blind, leading skeptics to say Paul’s picks were based on the varying attractiveness of the national flags. Since there were only two choices, most say Paul’s picks are the result of random chance, like flipping a coin. But even octopus experts can’t say with certainty what really happened:

“But having said that I don’t want to underestimate how amazing these animals are and how clever they are… they’re doing pretty well for a super snail relative. They can recognise individual people in a crowd, they can do really clever things like learn to unscrew the lids off jars to get prawns out of the inside, they can collect up half coconut shells and carry them around like portable armour and jump inside if something comes along. So they’re doing cool things out there beyond their psychic abilities.”

Paul’s pick against his host country has led to death threats from angry German fans, and cries of “Fry him in a pan!” Both Italy and Spain — where pulpo is a regular item on the menu — have offered to give Paul asylum should the threats prove too much.

Sadly, Paul’s days as oracle are numbered, If he is indeed the same octopus who picked the 2008 Euros — there is some controversy about this arising — he’s getting up there in years at two and a half. Octopuses generally live only three years.

Paul won’t be with us much longer.

And as tempting as it would be to braise him up with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar in an attempt to share his psychic powers through ingestion, perhaps it is best that we let him live out his days in peace — and take the secrets of his strange powers to his watery grave with him.

§ The Financial Times looks at the phenomenon of pop stars writing comic books

The success of the series has also opened the door for musicians to utilise graphic novels as never before. “I’m pretty sure it got into the hands of people who had never read comics before, or who just had a passing interest,” says Shawna Gore, an editor from Dark Horse Comics who published The Umbrella Academy. “It was a bridge between pop music and comics.”

§ Over at AICN, Mike Russell interviews Paul Pope about BATTLING BOY and other stuff. Pope will be a guest at Stumptown this weekend:

And the coroner in “Batman: Year 100″ is based on my granddad. He was a forensic coroner. Kind of a multitasker. It was possible for him to also be an engineer and a farmer at the same time.

§ Chris Butcher finished liveblogging the April 2010 Previews:

11:39pm: Speaking of continuing to do well, Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield’s FREAKANGELS gets a fourth collection in June (or later, probably) in softcover, hardcover, and signed hardcover editions. For a series serialized for free, online, it continues to do well for us in sales. It’s slowed a little bit, but honestly? Good stuff, and I’m glad to see the web-serialization to print-sales model actually works.

§ Just in case you haven’t seen Roger Ebert’s “Video games can never be art” essay, here it is. Remember when the elders told Herodotus that writing things down on scrolls would destroy literacy because people wouldn’t have to memorize things any more?

§ Over the weekend, Marvel’s O.M.I.T. promo was revealed to be a retelling of some kind of wedding that never happened between MJ and Peter Parker. Chris Sims breaks it down in his own special way.

§ For cephalo-lovers everywhere, Octo-cam.

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And more Kraken videos, just because it’s hump day:

The ORIGINAL Clash of the Titans set to CLUTCH! A close friend of the Kraken THE REAL THING (Sorta — it’s a Humboldt squid.)

And another one that’s really pretty scary!

Technorati Tags: paging Ray Harryhausen, fashion

The comic is based on the screenplay “Team Hollywood: Project Jupiter verses Mars”, it is the story of the real life “Team America” http://www.teamamerica.com/. Team America was based on the real life “Team Hollywood” www.teamhollywood.com , the members of Team Hollywood have Homeland Security companies (www.worldinstitute.info & www.gfbryantassociates.com) with members of the team with security clearances.

Hm, so this outfit is the basis of a satirical puppet movie that involves puppets puking and having sex? Not something we’d necessarily trumpet about. Actually the “About Team Hollywood” graph is the best part:

Team Hollywood’s principal officers and directors Kevin D. Finn and Preska Thomas are the managing directors and officers of such noted Homeland Security companies as the World Institute for Security Enhancement Foundation, (http://www.worldinstitute.info), Team Hollywood Investigations and G.F. Bryant Associates, Inc. (http://www.gfbryantassociates.com). They are authors of the unedited version of a reality reading book, “The Index: A Road Map,” a book that exposed a building in Sherman Oaks, California that housed Osama Bin Laden’s office over 14 years ago. It also disclosed that the building was never assessed for finding the speculated toy planes and toy helicopters hidden behind certain walls, intended for the disbursement of weapons of mass destruction. Hollywood is in the early stages of the development of a second movie based on the team entitled “Team Hollywood: Project Jupiter Verses Mars” and a television series in the works.

One of the key operations offices for Team Hollywood is located in the basement of a building in the city of Santa Monica, CA. Their main headquarters are in an underground nuclear silo in Denver, Colorado that is 45,000 square feet behind a high-chained link fence. There are three missile silos on that site; all interconnected by underground tunnels. Their underground silo is filled with former U.S. Navy Seals, former personnel in the FBI, CIA and Interpol who are always being deployed for training agencies and private sector as well as contractors for ground operations against terrorists.

Intrigued, we googled around a little, and found links to saving the Titanic, a possible hoax involving a phone call to CNN (which as far as we can tell wasn’t a hoax, but was plenty weird and involved the Trilateral Commission) and other good stuff. And what’s a reality reading book, anyway? We probably spent far too much time on these oddballs, but we like to know what we’re dealing with going in.shop movie girlspanking porn moviesmovie bodies studentsaint sylvia free moviesmovies teen webcam amateurmovie butterfly the effectsex movies threesomein tickle scenes movies Map

Photo © New York Times

Thanks, Zena.

There are a couple of ways we see this playing out.

#1: Helper monkeys are trained to operate their master’s exo-skeletons with their little monkey brainwaves.

#2: Monkeys become resentful, use brain waves to control army of murderous robots which rampage across Japan, resulting in amazing mecha- battle. Love robots come to the rescue, order restored.

Now which outcome do YOU prefer?

“He attacks the net we use to fish the toy out every time we try and take Mr Potato Head away.”

Mr Slater added that the staff had to prise the toy away from Louis on a daily basis, returning it to him for a few hours of fun each day.

The toy was given to the giant cephalodpod as part of an enrichment program. Octopi are smart, playful creatures and when cooped up in an aquarium they need stimulation.

In fact, this Discover piece on octupus intellect made us feel a pang of guilt as we were eating a tasty plate of grilled octopus tapas just the other night:

“Mischief and craft are plainly seen to be the characteristics of this creature,” the Roman natural historian Claudius Aelianus wrote at the turn of the third century A.D. Today’s divers marvel at the elaborate trails the eight-leggers follow along the seafloor, and at their irrepressible curiosity: Instead of fleeing, some octopuses examine divers the way Steve checked me out, tugging at their masks and air regulators. Researchers and aquarium attendants tell tales of octopuses that have tormented and outwitted them. Some captive octopuses lie in ambush and spit in their keepers’ faces. Others dismantle pumps and block drains, causing costly floods, or flex their arms in order to pop locked lids. Some have been caught sneaking from their tanks at night into other exhibits, gobbling up fish, then sneaking back to their tanks, damp trails along walls and floors giving them away.

With an eye scarily similar to a humans, a large, lobed brain and even the beginnings of personalities, octopi are the smartest of invertebrates, which, the article goes on to muse, is odd since they are such solitary, short-lived creatures.

Louis’s time with Mr Potato Head will be brief — at 18 months, his life is almost half finished. An octopus only lives to be three. But at least he’ll spend his short time here happy with a plastic friend, much like some humans we could name.

* Yes, Chip ‘n’ Dale were chipmunks and these are grey squirrels. Who cares! They are so cute chittering back and forth to each other. And oh! their cunning little hands!