The Existentialist Penguin

Gravel gizzards literally rock!

What's In John's Freezer?

It’s World Penguin Day! Watch your back though… these penguins aren’t as nice as they seem. But they need us to be nice to them!

Whether you watch a classic GIF like the one above, or a kid-friendly TV/film documentary, you might get the impression that penguins lead carefree, or at least silly or slapstick, lives– happy feet and all that. It works for Hollywood: a Charlie Chaplin comedy relief role to play.  And that’s the vision of penguins I grew up with: they were living cartoons to me.

But what’s the reality? Plenty of documentaries, most notably to my mind the recent Attenborough’s “Frozen Earth” episodes or “March of the Penguins” film, have dealt with the darker side to these two-toned, tuxedo-toting antipodeans. And anyone who has experienced penguins in the wild has probably seen those not-so-light facets of penguinity firsthand. On realiizing just how compulsively horny young “hooligan cock” male…

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Death’s Doll: The World’s Most Beautiful Mummy

Death’s Doll

The Chirurgeon's Apprentice

They call her ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ the world’s most beautiful mummy. Rosalia Lombardo died from pneumonia in 1920 at the tender age of 2. Her body was embalmed by Alfredo Salafia (below), put into a glass coffin, and placed inside the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy. If it were not for the oxidizing amulet of the Virgin Mary resting atop her blanket, you would swear she had died a few days ago.

Very little is known about Rosalia’s life, and, until recently, even less was known about Salafia’s preservation methods.

Embalming as a means of memorializing the dead has ancient roots, dating all the way back to the Egyptians beginning in 3200 BC. During this period, embalmers removed the internal organs before rinsing the empty cavity with palm wine and filling it with natron salts. Over the next 40 days, the body would begin to dry out and mummify. The internal…

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