Octopuses Again? More Signs of Cephalopod Superiority; Dreams and Nightmares Received with Plus-Size Egyptian

The octopus is coming for us.

No matter where you look, no matter how far you try and run, no matter how much you wish it weren’t true, the signs of the coming octopocalypse are everywhere.  And who can blame them?  We’ve been poking at these wily mini-sea monsters with sticks, shutting them inside aquarium tanks, and grilling them with slices of lemon for thousands of years.

So begins “13 of the Most Frightenly Smart Things Octopuses Can Do,” by Eric March on UPWORTHY.COM — nor is this the first time we’ve met our eight-armed friends on this blog.  I did say “friends”?  Consider, for instance, January 14’s post or, in 2015, October 8.  And then, of course, there’s my own story, “In the Octopus’s Garden,” in leadoff prose position in THE TEARS OF ISIS (cf. November 1 2015, et al.).  But that’s an entirely different matter.

Anyhow, for the latest in octopuses today, press here.

In more writerly news, this afternoon’s street mail delivered DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES 102 dated January 2016, but then that’s the way things go sometimes.  While not related (at least not directly) to Isis’s Tears, my contribution is the poem called “Plus-Size” (see March 27, February 28, et al.), on page 18, the tale of an ultra-capacious Egyptian soldier and how, in a steampunk world, he arrived in England.