(As I began scanning the pictures in for this post, I thought, “I am going to go to hell for #2.”)

Good show, everyone who entered! Although no one actually guessed the identities of the photographs, I did get a good laugh, and that’s all that matters.

All of the photos were scanned from the following book:

#1 was: STICK INSECT EGGS

#2 was: CATERPILLAR POOP

#3 was: MOTH EGGS

The reason I went from the book was to test your creativity and get some, y’know, cerebral juices flowing. (With that said, I did google stick insect eggs and butterfly eggs halfway through the contest and there are images of each here and here.)

Anyway, a prize obviously goes to Mr. M.H. Kelly for the best effort, most guesses, and only guess that made me laugh till I cramped; secondly, as mentioned, there is also a prize for first entrant (and therefore best sport), Corey. Well done, boys!

For more ‘What Is it’, I highly recommend the Neatorama collaboration with the What Is It Blog (not the original blog itself, which purports to give ‘clues’, and everyone knows ‘clues’ are for suckers). Though be warned, practically everything looks like a medieval testicle-torture device, even if it’s something as innocent as a coal-lifter.

Blogs! You love them, you hate them, you stay up late and self-abuse to them. Time for a change! Two-way interaction! The World of Tomorrow Today!! So I hereby announce the first ever Meticulous Vandalism What Is It? Contest!

Identify the items in the three close-up photographs below and you will win… err… (glances around distractedly)… some kind of awesome prize package whose components I haven’t yet purchased and assembled, but which I promise to consider whilst the contest is running.

Rules:
1. You are obviously allowed to use the interwebtubenets, but please reference your sources in your guess.
2. First person to guess all three items wins the awesome prize package.
3. Unlimited guesses are allowed.
4. If nobody guesses all three by, say, April 30th, two out of three wins a prize. Or one out of three… or whatever, whoever makes the best showing wins a prize.
5. The judges are myself and Ramon Hand, and we are both open to bribery.
6. If more than one person guesses the same item correctly, it goes to whoever got it first or whoever bribed the judges better.
7. Team entries are allowed, keeping in mind that you still only get one prize, you greedy buggers.
8. UPDATE: Sorry, I should have clarified. Either e-mail or comments are OK to submit your guesses. There may be a special prize for the first contestant (good job, Corey!).

So without further ado:

Image #1:

Image #2:

Image #3:

Good luck!

Whilst discussing a young man we both know, a friend told me tonight, “What’s the big deal? Why can’t you date him? You’re friends, after all. You’ve got common interests.”

Actually, we don’t. I have no idea at all why we’re friends. We don’t like any of the same things. The reason we’re friends is that we caught each other at a difficult and ugly period in our lives, and when the dust cleared we were each unavoidably part of the other’s infrastructure. Otherwise? Nothing.

That got me thinking about what does interest me, and whether that might be related to the fact that I have a really hard time making new friends. Well, let me qualify that - I have a really hard time being myself with people who don’t know me very well. Because we don’t…really… share that many interests.

Things That Interest Me

Beetles
Social insects
Sharks
All cephalopods but especially squid
Sailfish
Native mythology
Def Leppard
Dinosaurs
Folk stories
Russian idioms
Paleolithic megafauna
Spiders
Peak oil
Food writing
Obesity
The social model of disability
Hell
Early Christians
Gems and minerals (all types)
Victorian art
The Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci
Bioremediation
Ancient Rome
Birds
Urban legends
Samurai (especially Samurai 7)
Bats
Mars (especially soil composition)
Sex
The Olympics
Cloning
High fashion, especially from Holt’s
Eugenics
Cults
Island biogeography
Cats
The CBC
Poisonous plants
Narcotics
Trephination
Robots
Conspiracy theory
Shackleton
Shakespeare
Polynesian exploration and history
Neodarwinism
Vinyl toys
Japanese ghosts
Realdolls
Zionism
Centralia, PA
Fluoride poisoning
Shonen ai
Piano rock
Ninjas
Fairy tales
Ireland

And that’s only a partial list, just off the top of my head. Dang. Seriously. No wonder people don’t talk to me at parties.