I’d try this, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t do any good

Werner Herzog leaves a note for his cleaning lady.

Rosalina. Woman.

You constantly revile me with your singular lack of vision. Be aware, there is an essential truth and beauty in all things. From the death throes of a speared gazelle to the damaged smile of a freeway homeless. But that does not mean that the invisibility of something implies its lack of being. Though simpleton babies foolishly believe the person before them vanishes when they cover their eyes during a hateful game of peek-a-boo, this is a fallacy. And so it is that the unseen dusty build up that accumulates behind the DVD shelves in the rumpus room exists also. This is unacceptable.

There’s more. Go read the whole thing.

Today in AWWWWW

Baby hippo likes swimming.

If you, like me, find yourself curious about hippos after his video, Wikipedia is of course a great destination. Therein you will learn, if you read far enough, that Pablo Escobar’s private animal collection included four hippos — animals that the Columbian government found logistically impossible to seize after the drug lord’s downfall, so they left them unattended on the estate. By 2007, the population had grown to 16, and is presumably larger still today. However implausible, it pleases me to think of the drug lord’s river horses spreading gradually northward, like the menacing killer bees of my youth.

Confidential to Certain Heathen Women

There’s a delightfully odd web series of which I’ve just become aware called 7 Minutes in Heaven, in which host Mike O’Brien does a brief interview with some nominally famous (and typically funny) person inside a closet — i.e., in the style of the teen party game of the same name.

Certain Heathen tribe members — e.g., those involved perhaps in personal training or nonprofit accounting, and certainly Mrs Heathen herself — may find the Christina Ricci episode amusing due to a certain tic she exhibits.

Metafilter has more. Don’t miss Patrica Clarkson.

So very wrong

Onion: New Study Shows People With Panic Disorders Respond Poorly To Being Locked In Underwater Elevators:

NEW HAVEN, CT — A study published Monday in the Journal Of Abnormal Psychology found that individuals who suffer from panic disorder react negatively to being locked in underwater elevators for indefinite periods of time.

According to Dr. Samuel Lepore, who led the Yale University study, test subjects suffering from the disorder experienced full-on panic attacks as soon as the elevators shuddered to a halt, and they exhibited symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, and numbness in the extremities when it became apparent the car was stuck and the emergency call button didn’t work.

“Given the results, we can now say conclusively that people who suffer from severe anxiety dislike being trapped in small boxes hundreds of feet under water,” said Lepore, who logged more than a thousand hours of clinical study on the subject. “In fact, our research suggests that it makes said individuals experience extreme discomfort with almost no degree of relief.”

“Furthermore, statistics showed their displeasure increased exponentially every hour we kept them locked in there,” Lepore continued.

“A martin is a member of the weasel family.”

From our far-flung correspondents; there is so much to love about this:

HOQUIAM, Wash.(AP) — Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into a Hoquiam apartment and assaulted a man.

The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker said, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a martin,” then punched him in the nose and fled.

The attacker was apparently looking for his girlfriend and had gone to her former boyfriend’s apartment Monday night where the victim was a guest.

KXRO reports he left carcass behind.

Police later found the suspect arguing with his girlfriend at another location and arrested the 33-year-old Hoquiam man after a fight.

He said he had found the martin dead near Hoquiam, but police don’t know why he carried it with him.

A martin is a member of the weasel family.