– – Woo-hoo, we have reached 160,000 hits!–Your readership makes it all possible, and is appreciated! We average slightly above 200 hits daily here, with a high of over 900 hits on our biggest day.–Hugs and scritches to y’all!
– – Once feared as an evil cross between a demon and a turtle, the Kappa has become somewhat of a Japanese national mascot, more loved than feared and depicted on such innocuous items as lunchboxes. The darker incarnation of the Kappa, however, is blamed for the disappearance of livestock and even children, prompting a segment on a Destination Truth investigation.
Journeying to the location of a recent reported Kappa sighting near Tono, Josh Gates and his team set up infrared and trap cameras to capture any images of the elusive beast, and broke into two groups to sweep the area. They saw a large dark shape in the water, which was later regarded by experts to be a large fish or perhaps an eel. Also checking out skeletal remains of a reported Kappa foot at a Japanese shrine, the team returned with photographs of the same, which were regarded by a mammalogist to be bones of a canine.
The conclusion?–Evidence for the Kappa is not convincing, and the creature exists at the juncture of folklore and animal misidentification…
– – Animal abuse can take many forms, some of which are misguided efforts to be funny or clever. One such example involves a chef from Wuchang, China who was recently accused of animal abuse after teaching his puppy, Little Black, to like cigarettes by blowing smoke into his face, and then rewarding the dog with food for putting the lit cigarette into his mouth…
The puppy was smoking within a month, and can now supposedly smoke a pack a day. Local residents have called the man a “bad pet owner.”–You think?!
– – Animal impersonations tend not to win many talent competitions, especially when they’re offered unsolicited in the middle of the night… and so one boozy German who regaled his neighbors by bleating like a sheep and doing other animal impressions, some for as long as twenty minutes, found himself arrested in the Bavarian town of Coburg on Sunday.
The 49-year-old man had an extremely high blood alcohol content, and became “unreasonable and aggressive” when police tried to get him to cease his bleating…I guess his impersonations were pretty baaad, and neighbors wanted to be counting sheep rather than hearing them…
– – I’m more a fan of The Jetsons myself, but The Flintstones turned 50 at the end of last month. Owing much to “The Honeymooners,” the Bedrock gang in turn set the stage for the success of more adult-styled cartoons such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and many others.
Running from 1960 to 1966, The Flintstones didn’t start their popular “Meet the Flintstones” theme until their third season. – -And who can forget the infamous commercials of the cartoon characters smoking, since the show was sponsored in part by Winston?
My personal cast fave Dino (pronounced dee-no), the Flintstone pet dinosaur, was not mentioned by name until the fourth episode, and in an apparent flashback story sequence of episode 18 was portrayed as very anthropomorphic indeed, complete with powers of speech! 
– – There are some clever and innovative commercials featuring furry characters, such as the Geico ad with Maxwell the pig. Other commercials with furry characters do not serve the fandom well, such as the one with a trio of kittens screeching “five-four-three” to the tune of Three Blind Mice.
The kitten “Singamals” appear in a rhythm-challenged brass band, singing very badly about the joys of the fast food franchise’s Value Menu. Internet condemnation of the ad is almost universal, with one commentator stating that the ad “is worse than one can possibly imagine,” and another saying that the kittens resemble “brain-damaged rejects from karaoke night.” These kittens get old very quickly!
Not all Quiznos commercials have been horrendous; I rather liked a 2003 ad called Raised by Wolves which featured Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory as a businessman flashing back to suckling at the teat of a Siberian Husky. While the kittens aren’t creepy, they certainly get annoying in short order… 
– – It kinda feels like a Syfy movie offering, these tales of genetically-engineered animals for human consumption. A fast-growing Atlantic salmon developed by AquaBounty Technologies in Massachusetts contains an extra growth gene that makes it grow twice as fast as conventional farm-raised salmon, and is the first such genetically-engineered animal to be promoted for a food source.
The FDA says that studies conducted by AquaBounty show that the gene is safe for the salmon, safe for humans, and safe for the environment. Some scientists and consumer groups say, however, that the agency should slow down and get more information, citing concerns over potential consumer allergies to such fish and questions about what would happen if such genetically-modified fish escaped from fish farms into the wild, there to mate with wild fish, out-compete with them for food, or irreversibly change their environments. Soon, such fish might be running for elected office…
It all sounds a bit fishy…and there’s gotta be a bad horror movie in this somewhere! 
– – We all know that the government does terrible things behind our backs, like the calamitous Plum Island experiment that created yours truly.–Well, it would appear that the Navy has engineered a half-shark, half-octopus killing machine as a super-weapon which, of course, gets out of control as genetically-engineered creatures are prone to do…life would be so dreary if they didn’t!
The sharktopus shows a perverse predilection for beautiful blond women in bikinis, dragging them off boats, beaches, and bungee cords…gotta love the big lug! He also is not deterred by machine gun fire, otherwise the movie might be over quickly.
Coming from B-movie king Roger Corman and boasting a cheesy theme song, the absurd, low-budget made-for-tv movie Sharktopus may be a real hoot! –Witness the glory that is Syfy this Saturday night!
– – Tigers tend to be thought of as jungle creatures, but a British television crew filmed a population of “lost” tigers living at a higher altitude than any others known. These cats were spotted roaming in the remote Himalayan nation of Bhutan at an altitude of 13,450 feet!
While the number of tigers has plunged to fewer to 3,200 from 100,000 over the past century, countries where wild tigers range hope to double their numbers by the year 2022…
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