When my husband and I went house shopping for the first time we weren't sure what we were looking for. We found one house that I really liked, only the bedroom was — pink. Lord, it was pink. Pink walls, pink carpet, pink bedsheets (yes, the previous owners would be taking those with them, but it did nothing to make the room look better). It was like a horde of five-year-olds had vomited cotton candy everywhere. It was pink.

When I visibly recoiled, the real estate agent reminded me gently that these were cosmetic issues and could be fixed a lot easier than most. Still, I couldn't picture anything beyond the pink room and we passed on the house to eventually buy a nice place with eggshell-neutral walls.

For a little while there, my husband and I researched what different enhancements to our house we would want to make (new kitchen, a deck, etc.), and what it would do the future value of the house. Thinking like that flat out depressed me, frankly. I realized we were acting like we were just holding the house until the real owners come along. "We don't want to make it so that the Joneses don't like it when they move in."

In our increasingly disposable and digital world, the concept of "ownership" is becoming more and more of a debated term. And I'm not saying do we "own" our house when we still owe the bank a bucket of money - I'm saying do we PWN the house enough to feel confident painting a mural of the mystical city of R'lyeh, where the god Cthulhu sleeps, in our basement?

We live in a suburb. Our house plan is much like others in the neighborhood. We have to clear new paint colors, landscaping, and other external changes and improvements with the neighborhood association. But there are no rules governing what goes on inside the house - beyond, you know, having a business running drugs or prostitutes that have cars on the street day and night. Think of the children! The curious thing is, can we shrug off the "Oh no! What will it do to the resale value if we do X?" feeling in order to escape suburban malaise?

The funny thing is, the only thing stopping us is the thought of a young couple much like ourselves ten years ago, looking at the perfectly fine, not-easily-flooded, spacious basement, seeing Cthulhu, and running. They may not think the secret room that I really want to build as a cool thing but rather, "What the heck would I do with this? I certainly don't have enough books for a library, and it's not big enough to turn into another bedroom."

We've owned this place for ten years and managed to paint four of the rooms. Most of the walls are still eggshell, the rooms are still not-secret, and the books are everywhere, not all gathered into one cozy library. It's a standard, American, family suburban home.

Essentially, the house isn't geeky enough. See? I did it right there. Didn't even call it our house. It's the house. We don't want to own our house. We want to PWN it.

We're not completely Stepford. We have professional paintings of zombies, the Onion Head Monster and little beasts luring people to their deaths with free pie. We have statues of Cthulhu, Death and The Sandman. But this is not subversive enough. We must go farther.

During a recent dinner, where a full bottle of wine split between the two of us did much to lube the conversation, we decided what we wanted to do with the house. Our house. We decided right away that a moat was out. Although our neighborhood covenants don't specifically say "no moats" I'm sure they'd get us on a technicality, on digging, or landscape changes, or something. So no moat.

The next thought was a secret room. We talked about where we'd put it (No I'm not telling you, then it's not a SECRET), what we'd put in it (probably a secret library - or torture chamber), and how we'd hide it. The last part was tricky, because do you use a bookshelf to hide a library? What do you put on that bookshelf? Books you don't care about? Books that are uninteresting because you don't want anyone inspecting the shelf too closely? Erotica to keep people away, embarrassed? So many choices!

We discussed personal bowling alleys, a specific board game room, a sun porch that does greenhouse duties - I really like to grow and kill orchids - more weird art, and possibly adding on a tower. Although that one might be tough for the homeowner's association to approve too. But you never know....

I think choices are what make us PWN our lives. Having choices and making them without looking back. Instead of sitting in our white little interior, our little box made of ticky tacky, afraid to touch anything, to change anything, to choose anything but the status quo, we're going to change it. Our choices may not work, we may be made of FAIL, but at least we'll make them, by golly. Which is much better than holding the house forever for the next family who might have more courage than we do.


Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster who recently released her first novel, Playing For Keeps. She Speaks Geek every month on SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for more of Mur's musings.

Cephalopods are awesome. They are incredibly sexy and the most intelligent class of invertebrates. Due to the totally bomb-ass nature of these “head-foots,” I am hereby dedicating this month’s edition of "Awe and Wonder" to the cephalopod. And what better way to begin than with the sex life of octopuses!

Until recently, not much was known about the mating habits of octopodes due to their shyness (I don’t blame them; I’d be a little frigid if some pervy scholar were taking notes on how I like to get it on, too). But some intrepid biologists at UC Berkeley studying the octopus species Abdopus aculeatus have observed a number of surprising behaviors in the little Lotharios:

That sounds like more than a few of my ex-boyfriends. Strangling, striped body patterns... Chris, you were an octopus all along!

So if the pulpo macho thing doesn’t work out, the little dudes simply continue in the venerable tradition of Publius Clodius Pulcher and cross-dress to get to the ladies. I like this a lot; just think of a sea full of a bunch of little eight-legged Dr. Frank-N-Furters. So posh!

Moving across the cephalopods, we come to the squid. Now, we all know that cephalopods are quite squishy and apparently enjoy using this trait to crawl into jars (hat tip to the inimitable Karl Pilkington), so at some point I’m certain that quite a few people have begun to wonder how something so... so... gelatinous could manage to exist with a beak as hard and as sharp as it has. The critters are made for cutting themselves (whether or not squids enjoy the Cure is yet to be seen.)

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara (you Californians have all the fun!) have been studying the Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas, in order to figure out how this incredible beak works. It’s actually pretty amazing. The tip of the squid’s beak is exceedingly stiff, while the part attached to the squid’s body is 100 times more pliable, keeping it from tearing into the soft bits while still permitting the tearing-into of the soft bits of others.

UCSB engineer Frank Zok lays it out for us:

Truly fascinating, Dr. Zok!

Zok’s co-author, Herb Waite, focuses on something rather different than just the construction of a little beak—namely, what that beak can do:

Why are squids such fucking assholes? While their cousins are simply content strangling passers-by and dressing up like the opposite sex, squids run rampant through the ocean eating people or “hurting them a lot.” The Kraken is apparently real and lives off the coast of Santa Barbara. Take that, hippies!

Actually, the more I read about the Humboldt squid, the more I am convinced that this creepy cephalopod is probably the Antichrist. And, like any good Antichrist, homeboy is situating himself in Northern California.

This ravenous species of squid has left its usual habitat and has settled along the Pacific coast of the United States, eating up a number of species that we humans like to eat. The above video is worth watching if only to see a bunch of grizzled old fisherdudes completely freak out over these creatures, which, like some nightmarish Lovecraftian dream, eat anything that moves in a manner described as similar to how we eat corn on the cob. Anything that moves does, apparently, include humans. The fact that the first fisherman interviewed describes them as like “some kind of an alien that’s about to come after [you]” only serves to confirm the obvious: the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu are hanging out in the San Francisco Bay, eating people like corn, and waiting until the stars are right.

So, while octopuses are our sexy friends with whom we can rassle and dress up in women’s clothing, the squids are their evil twins bent on enslaving humanity and raising us as mere cattle. Like most people, I once thought the intelligence of these creatures to be “nifty” and “super-cool,” but it is indeed a great deal more sinister. As I write, I am forming a non-profit organization to investigate this tentacled peril. If you are interested in donating to this worthy cause, please send money, size 37 Louboutins, and/or first editions of 19th and 20th century occult texts to Flux Suicide c/o Grand Central Station.

Flux, of course, is quite fond of Northern California and sincerely hopes that you are not consumed by demon squids any time in the near future: certainly not before I make it to Zeitgeist again.

As I have long suspected, Howard Phillips Lovecraft's tales of eldritch horrors beyond mortal ken were seeded with the grains of truth.

Ten years ago now, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association recorded an ultra-low frequency sound around 50º S 100º W in the Pacific Ocean. This sound matches the audio profile of a living creature. However, the frequency of the sound implies a creature much larger than even the world's largest known creature, the blue whale. This mysterious sound has come to be known as the Bloop.

I have come to believe that the sound's origin was from just a short distance away, 47.9º S, 126.43º W, which you and I both know as the coordinates of the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh. Brave scientists at BloopWatch.org share this hypothesis, and we tremble in dread, for great Cthulhu is waking. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Please eat me last.

Or so I worried, but now it looks like we'll be driven ill and insane first. As prophesied in "The Colour Out of Space", death and terror is raining down on us from the sky. This weekend, in Puno, Peru, a meteorite fell to earth. Of course, it brought the unknowable and horrifying along for the ride.

Ahem:

You will, of course, agree in the face of the evidence presented that we are dealing with the same non-humanoid, mutagenic, extraterrestrial "colour." Try not to buy any Peruvian skunk-cabbage this autumn, beloved readers.

Regardless, we're all going to die.

Flux has got her Mi-Go brain cylinder prepared for her exit from this doomed planet. How about you?

I don’t know how many of you have been following the sad and strange tale of Rachel Bevilacqua, whom you also might know as Reverend Magdalen of the Church of the SubGenius.

Back in 2006, in a move that can only be described as utterly devoid of Slack, Judge James Punch of the state of New York chose to relieve the Reverend of custody of her son (as well as the ability to contact him) after the boy’s father produced photographs of Magdalen at the Church’s X-Day celebration. In these photos, Rev. Magdalen was in various states of undress, in a few, she wore a papier-mache goat’s head. The Catholic Punch took offense, called Ms. Bevilacqua a “pervert” and “mentally ill,” forbidding her from seeing her son. After going back and forth in appeals, on July 6th of 2007, custody of the boy was awarded to his father, Bevilacqua’s ex-boyfriend.

Until it came out that the ex-boyfriend just had another DUI in a long string.

So, at least for now, the Reverend and son are reunited, albeit with $140,000 in legal bills (follow link to contribute to the Reverend Magdalen Legal Fund). Also, she has been forbidden by Judge Punch from keeping SubGenius materials in her home.

Wait, what was that?

Is a court of these glorious United States of America so pink as to ban the worship and praise of “Bob”? Which of us shall they come after next? Pastafarians, you are not safe, and when the dark days come they will take your meatballs from you with prejudice. Cthulhu cultists, you will not be dreaming, but dead. And the Discordians shall again have to wrestle with Greyface.

I guess that only applies to “real” religions. Harrumph.

My brethren, whether you pretend to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Yog-Sothoth, Eris or J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, stand up for your right as an American to freely practice your fake faith! And even if you don’t mutter chants to elder things invented by a crazy genius from Providence or eat hot dogs on Fridays in honor of Discordia, join us in defending what the founding fathers intended as our birthright: freedom to parody religion and dress up in funny costumes in the pursuit of happiness. Write to your congresspeople. Demand that totally hilarious religious practice be afforded the same protection as the less Slackful faiths. Learn from our Jedi brothers in the UK and make your pretend practice known.

Fictional and joke religions of the world, unite!

Flux has pretended to worship Eris for ten years now and is looking into starting the first ever Campus Crusade for Cthulhu branch at her particular institution of higher learning. This is her first post for the Newswire.