I was about to say I was as "busy as a one-armed paperhanger," but that phrase really has no real-world meaning. Let's unpack it, as they say.

The likelihood of someone with one-arm going into the paperhanging business is quite small.

Therefore, it's possible he lost a limb while paperhanging, and that explains the burst of activity, but he would be focused on stanching the limb, not making sure the paper stays adhered to the wall.

If he did go into the business with only one arm, he would probably have employees, and would delegate the actual hanging. He might be busy, but these would be managerial tasks that do not require two limbs. "What if he's filling out paperwork," you ask, "and the phone rings?" I expect he would have a speakerphone.

So we need something else to express "busyness." Anyway:

WHOA It's being called "the Headline of the Day," and I can't argue with that:

Buddhist 'Iron Man' found by Nazis is from space

Surely the story explains that away in a clever fashion. Let's see:

At this point you expect an appearance by Indiana Jones, staring with Harrison Ford's trademark non-expression expression, because it's just too good: a statue in Tibet found by Nazis, from outer space. Surely it has straaaange powers they hoped to harness as a secret weapon, because they were into that stuff big-time. If you've ever played "Wolfenstein," you know that roughly 47% of the Nazi's military budget went into Tesla coils, interdimensional transport, enormous zeppelins capable of summoning elder giants from the Nordic pantheon, and so on. No wonder they lost the war. And they were thiiiiis close to perfecting them, too. Alas, this is what they mean:

Ah. So it was a space-rock that humans carved into a figure. Still a better idea than that Crystal Skull crap. I was so pumped for that movie, especially after I learned it had Commies. Then the producers thought "what will really sell this movie is Shia LaBoeuf, and lots of him."

EVERYONE PANIC I mean, everyone relax. Slate calls horse-malarky on the bacon shortage. tl;dr version: it has to do with the drought. You ask: I thought pigs weren't raised, not grown. True, but they eat corn, and the drought pushed corn prices way up, so it's more expensive to feed pigs. Thus bacon will be more expensive. There won't be a shortage.

This reminds me of the Peanut Butter Shortage we were supposed to have this year. Signs at Cub warned us that the crop came in poor, and this would mean constrained supplies. Not once did the shelves anywhere have anything less than the full compliment of Peanut Butter options. They didn't even discontinue "chunky" to save peanuts.

NATURE, WONDERS OF It's titled "Creepiest Looking New Species." They're not new in the sense that someone invented them on some island where horrible vivisection is performed, but "new" in the sense that we discovered them. Some are rather pretty, including the Sea-Angel. This fellow is interesting:

Where have we seen him before?

(That's from the great Quatermass movie, "Five Million Years to Earth." Probably the best British sci-fi movie of the 50s. Not that the category is particularly crowded.)

DECAY PRON The internet loves abandoned, decayed things, so here's that photo spread on Pablo Escobar's drug island. The text says it all:

That begs elucidation, doesn't it? Wikipedia says:

I love that. Escobar was responsible for endless misery, ruined uncounted lives, but c'mon, that gravestone business was totally legit.

VIDEO Oh, this is fun. Bonus points for the Nagels on the wall. Enjoy!

The Butterfly Effect from Passion Pictures on Vimeo