Weird Things FridayTM: Octopuses

Say hello to my little friend.

My daughter went through a phase where her favorite animal was the octopus. And I thought that was the coolest. I mean, how unique! How not My Pretty Pony of her!

We bought her stuffed octopi wherever we found them. One of my favorite memories is watching her, aged 5, leaving the aquarium gift shop carrying a giant leopard print stuffed octopus. It was as big as she was, so from the right angle, it looked like the octopus was walking.

Unfortunately, she's gotten over octopi. She thinks they're babyish. But I haven't. And neither have a lot of people.

For one thing, octopi are unique. And intelligent. And versatile. I mean, here I am, thinking I'm so great with my large mammalian brain and opposable thumbs--meanwhile, this octopus is working as an archeologist.



Admittedly, sometimes octopuses have terrible taste. For example, this octopus loves its Mr. Potato Head toy. Oh well. At least it's not a Bratz doll.

No wonder octopi are trendy!



An octopus can be a lamp that looks like an octopus or acts like one. Here's a whole bunch of lamps named for the amazing octopus. Although surprisingly enough, I couldn't find a single lamp with eight tentacles.

Then there are octopus purses



and necklaces--silver


and gold

an octopus Wiggle



and for very wealthy grown-up art collectors, this dazzling octopus bracelet from Tiffany, which will set you back $270,000.



There's even a blog, Everything Octopus.

Just wait until I tell my daughter. I mean, come on. When people are blogging about something, it's HAWT. Maybe she won't make me give her stuffed octopuses to the thrift shop.

So. I love octopuses. So much that I see them where they don't exist. Like those round yellow cakes that Yankees and ignorant people use for strawberry shortcake? If you line them up, they totally look like a row of suckers on an octopus's arm.

So do the little round holes the contractors made in the ceiling when they installed my Spacepak air conditioning.


Don't look now, but your ceiling is growing suckers ...

Maybe I'm a little obsessed, but we're all lucky this isn't Japan. If this were Japan, I'd probably be asking an octopus out on a date. Because you know how Japanese women apparently can't stop thinking about having sex with octopi.* Just think of the ramifications if I posted a picture of what is, inexplicably, a rather common fantasy in the land of the rising sun.

Because that would be porn.

Unless the picture is really old and by a Japanese master



in which case maybe it's OK.

* This gives a whole new meaning to WTF.

Weird Things I LikeTM: Old crappe

Confession time: I'm a pack rat married to a pack rat.

And this is good news! It means there will never be a shortage of Weird Things for me to write about. I've got a few years worth of posts right here at home. This means you can look forward to some delightfully schadenfreude-y Fridays.* You'll look around at your tiny accumulation of old newspapers and catalogs and think "At least I'm not as bad as Poppy."

Here's how bad I am. Yesterday Mr. Buxom got a new violin string from Amazon.com. He'd been missing a string for a while, and as soon as he tuned up, he wanted to play.

Mind you, the last time he played the violin, internet shopping hadn't been invented. There was no Amazon.com. Or if there was, it was for buying books. Which gives you an idea of how long it's been since he's played.

Anyhow, he tuned up the violin and started looking around for his sheet music. And couldn't find it, so he asked me if I knew where it was. Now, we moved into this house 11 years ago and he hasn't used the music in all that time, so no, I didn't know where it was.

The contents of what we laughingly refer to as "the music room":
Four instruments, one amplifier, a bunch of music, and two
misplaced board games. What's missing? Talent.

I started digging through the sheet music. When I was finished going through my vocal music, my old piano music, my now-deceased father's piano music, the flute music for my daughter who never learned to play the flute, the recorder music from each child's third grade recorder-playing stage, my collection of sheet music from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, a few random bits of accordion and organ music of my father's which really shouldn't be here because we don't own or play an accordion or organ, I still hadn't found it.

A small sampling of my massive accumulation collection of vintage sheet
music. Do I actually play it? No. Do I frame it? No.
Does it hang out in the piano bench? Yes.

He started giving me the hairy eyeball, but I didn't throw his violin music out, I swear. I told him that if I haven't thrown out his Ranger Rick magazines from the early 1970s, or his high school spelunking equipment, or his grandfather's genealogy charts, or the 12 linear feet of National Geographic magazines even though ALL of the NG is available on disks now, I wouldn't have thrown out his violin music.

I mean, there's been an empty violin case in our basement storage area for years, and I haven't thrown THAT out.

And he believed me. Not because of my eloquence, but due to the completely ridiculous amount of crap I generously allow him to own.

I guess this means I need to clean/reorganize the basement, because I really believe there's a box of violin music down there somewhere. So if you don't hear from me for a few days, send paramedics. I'll probably be pinned under a collection of vintage Fisher-Price Little People sets.

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* Yes, people. The internet has spoken, and the weekly Weird Things post is going to take place on Friday. Apparently people like the whole WTF idea.