Lyda here. Okay, so usually the Weirdness comes out on Tuesdays, but that didn’t seem appropriate yesterday and besides, well, what’s the point of being one of the Pollyannas if I can’t break my own (non-existent) rules?
So, here’s this week’s Weirdness. Inspired by Marin:
1) Check out AntiM’s theory on the Huge Spider Commune and knitting.
2) Proof number six-zillion and seven of my “people are weird” theory of life: Apparently there is no creature however small, poisonous or disgusting that someone somewhere hasn’t a) eaten, b) used as medicine, or c) used to get high/drunk.
3) A butterfly traveled over 1,870 miles in four months. How do we know this? Someone invented a way to tag the wings of butterflies. “Just hold still, this won’t hurt a bit…” This is a weird way to spend your time. Cool, but weird.
4) The Big Rat is in league with those flying devils! How many were in the swarm, do ya think? Scary, kids!
5) I’m serious, ya’ll. People will eat anything. I mean, termites? Ugh!
6) The farm news from Mississippi includes streets paved with… caterpillar guts. “Weirder and weirder,” says the entomologist at Mississippi State University. Ugh, says Pollyanna.
7) Stick insects are forcing scientists to rethink evolutionary theory. (BFF & bro, please note scientist’s name.) The stick insects change body design as often as a beauty queen changes husbands. What’s next? Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
8.) This was just not a good day. But there’s a deeper story here: “The Spy Who Buzzed Me.” The Austrian Spy Insects push a spy for the Insect KGB (cleverly disguised as a boy) into the pool. Bond (played here by an Austrian boy) saves him. Insect spy boss sends his insect thugs for revenge, but our boy Bond survives to quip from his hospital bed, “Any bug who drinks Dom Perignon ’52 can’t be all bad.” Okay, maybe I do watch too many James Bond movies…
9) Robert Heinlein wrote about “human versus bug” in “Starship Troopers.” Video games, including the classic Halo series, owe a lot to this book. This is where Master Chief’s suit came from, gang. The 1997 movie (while it does have a nude shower scene, always a plus) bears little resemblance to the actual plot or characters. “Bugs, Mr. Rico. Zillions of em!”
10) And just for fun and my sister, a little Calvin and Hobbs: “My mandate also includes weird bugs.”
Pollyanna Rainbow Sunshine and the Needles of Doom 
I did a training led by a woman who did a lot of her graduate work in China. When one of the other people in the training asked her what was the strangest thing she ate there, she said “Live scorpions”. They were “drunk”–they’d been soused in alcohol and were pretty much incapacitated. She said they didn’t really taste of much other than alcohol, it was the texture she had trouble with. She described it as “Crunch-squish”.
Ewwww!!! Only worth eating to just say you have eaten it. Ugh ugh ugh.
And now I go to lunch.