Well, that's odd

The writing gods giveth, and then they taketh away. For the last couple of weeks I could look at a story and think of any number of things. This week, not so much. I mean the gods give you a story like this one, about a man who is pregnant, and I can't think of anything original to write about it, other than, "dude, that's fucking weird. Can you imagine what's going to happen to that kid in 15 years when he starts poking around on Google and comes across this story about his folks. That might cause some trauma.

Then again, who knows. Maybe dads becoming pregnant will be all the rage by then.

If you're in the mood for more weirdness, here's a story about how giant squids have sex. The comments section after the story is priceless.

Other stories that have caught my interest, well, there's this one about small record stores in college towns dying off. University students are finding their weird music online and not browsing the racks of their local store anymore. St. John's is not like the town in this story, of course. MUN is practically in the middle of nowhere. The nearest place off campus to do any shopping is Churchill Square, which has very little that's cool or interesting. The only real small record shop left in town is Fred's. And while I worry from time to time it might close up, as it's pretty much the only place in town that has a decent local music collection, it ought to be safe for a few more years at least.

Meanwhile, up north, here's a profile of Kenojuak Ashevak, the famed Cape Dorset artist, who just won a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. And $25,000, which never goes astray.

Finally, I used to review movies once upon a time. I got my start at the Muse. But a little after I got my start, some of my friends created the Bad Movie Review Board. The goal was to find the utter dregs of cinema available on VHS, watch it, review it and then mock it to within an inch of its life. The worse they ever found was Lion Man, a movie so bad that I can't actually find it on IMDB. But I recall it involved twin brothers who had the same lion birth mark, strategically placed trampolines, and extras that looked remarkably alike who tended to die over and over and over again.

Anyway, I mention this because Joe Queenan, a writer I like but haven't read much of lately, looks at what constitutes a truly hideous movie when looking at Paris Hilton's latest. And really, it's hard to argue with his choice for Worst Movie of All Time. I tried to watch it and failed to make it more than 20 minutes. And any movie that destroyed a major Hollywood studio has to be be serious in its awfulness.

Last Five
1. Furnace Room Lullaby (live) - Neko Case*
2. Running on empty - Jackson Browne
3. Rainbirds - Tom Waits
4. Metal heart - Garbage
5. Natural born lovers - Andrew LeDrew