Get ready to OD on cuteness !

The Providence Animal Rescue League just put up a flickr page where people who adopted from the shelter can post success stories and pictures of animals they’ve adopted.  The totally freaking adorable fellow to the right is Cappy, who’s currently living it up with a new owner in Hartford.

If you’ve adopted a pet from the Rescue League in the past and have some pictures to share, send them on over to adopt@parl.org with a story about how your pet’s doing.

As part of our endless crusade to let you know about every wacky thing that PETA does, I thought I’d tell you they’ve just announced the winners of the Sexiest Vegetarian Alive Contest, which, as we’ve previously noted, is different from the Cutest Vegetarian Alive Contest because sexy vegetarians are more famous than cute vegetarians.

And the winners are… Alyssa Milano and someone from My Chemical Romance that isn’t the singer!

The voters were clearly sixteen year old emo kids and middle-aged men, because Alyssa Milano hasn’t done anything much lately besides show up on My Name Is Earl periodically.  I’m a little surprised that Milano won, since runners up in the girl category included Hayden Panettiere, last year’s winner Kristen Bell and Natalie Portman.  (And someone named Greta Saltpeter, who sings in a band on Pete Wentz’s label.)  Boy runners-up were Jared Leto (ewwwwww!!), Milo Ventimiglia, the guy from Cobra Starship (also on Pete Wentz’s label, btw) and last year’s icky winner Davey Havok.

Big ups to the Daily Dose’s favorite kickball team, the Providence Burnsiders, for their first win of the season against the much favored French Revenge. As the commentators named him, Tall Skinny Guy, Tibet Sprague acted as the Green Monster in the outfield. Nothing got past those lanky arms.

We had some amazing plays by Candace Toth and her double out ways. The Hurwitz family was in full effect. There was all sorts of backing each other up and just all around good spirit. I think it might have been the new shoulder pads that look kinda like wings that never fully grew in.  Red Bull may give you wings, but nothing makes your head spin like Dan Nesh’s moonshine and that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, he’s on the Burnsiders.
The team really came together and it looks like it is going to be a great season. Big team hugs and a hearty HIP HIP HIZZAH!

Bug eating, AKA entomophagy, is the big new thing, as evidenced by the splashy TIME magazine story covering America’s torrid/nonexistent love affair with eating insects. Also, eating bugs is so green its like driving a Prius into a windmill.

But while the Dose has been all over the bug-eatin’ trend for some time, we missed the boat on giraffe. That’s right - it turns out that the world’s largest ungulate is also a kosher snack, provided you slaughter it correctly. My hebrew school teachers claimed that kosher slaughtering was impossible for giraffes, but it turns out they were either wrong, or lying to keep all the sweet giraffe meat for themselves. With dairy-product-friendly Shavuot coming tonight, why not guzzle some giraffe milk too?

One thing to remember, particularly when devouring exotic creatures: Do not eat unless Mike Huckabee is around to perform the Heimlich maneuver on you. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Kiss livestock-generated methane goodbye, thanks to some plucky New Zealand fart-doctors.

New Zealand scientists claim to have developed a “flatulence inoculation” aimed at cutting down on the massive amount of methane produced by its sheep and cows.

Such animals are believed to be responsible for more than half of the country’s greenhouse gases, causing huge environmental problems.

I smell a Nobel prize… by which I mean sheep flatulence. (more…)

…a few days ago when I mentioned Jane Goodall’s refusal to come to Brown.  For (new) videos of monkeys moving stuff with their thoughts, via the NYTimes, click here.

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Also, if you wanna set the monkeys free, email me, here.

No Bears! A young black bear (Ursa figawi) has been spotted roaming the western part of the state apparently headed south to the beaches and maybe some clam cakes at George’s. Last seen in Narragansett.

Authorities last night said that a clutch of bear gawkers made it too difficult to shoot the bear with a sedative and that they planned to wait until dawn before attempting to subdue the animal using a tranquilizer dart.

I got a bad feeling about this.

Make sure you’re wearing long pants:

After learning that a local horse had rabies, Burrillville authorities declared a “rabies watch” yesterday and strongly urged pet owners to vaccinate their dogs, cats, livestock and other animals.

The announcement follows the Rhode Island Department of Health’s determination that a horse had rabies when it was euthanized last week, according to a news release from a Burrillville Animal Control Officer, Ronald Woods.

(Though post-exposure prohylaxis no longer entails 20 shots to the stomach.)

Edwardian frock coats, hacking jackets and waistcoats? I am so there. Steampunk is a new style, design and music subculture, inspired by the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, 19th century technology, as well as movies like The Prestige and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It seems to have bubbled up in New York City. (I think this is the pleasantly weird aesthetic that informs The Viennagram and its freaky side show.) So what exactly is this?

To some, “steampunk” is a catchall term, a concept in search of a visual identity. “To me, it’s essentially the intersection of technology and romance,” said Jake von Slatt, a designer in Boston and the proprietor of the Steampunk Workshop, where he exhibits such curiosities as a computer furnished with a brass-frame monitor and vintage typewriter keys.

Oh just read about it. More pix (of some dudes) after break.

(more…)

Well, it took millions of dollars, and thousands of man-hours, but through the miracle of CGI, animators have finally taken the cuddliest and most adorable creatures ever to walk the earth and made them creepy and menacing. Thank you Dreamworks.

This happened like two weeks ago, but I just got the e-mail that Peta2, the branch of the animal rights organization aimed at Dilinger Escape Plan-loving teenagers, finally announced the winners of its Cutest Vegetarian Alive contest.

18-year old Kelly Anderson has terrible Karen O hair with mysterious yet grating blonde pigtails, but she makes up for it with a really cute t-shirt; Leonard Sun, the totally emo boy winner, has a lip ring and the same camera as me and according to his bio he’s really into tight pants and big sunglasses.

Because I have lots of free time and an unhealthy addiction to the internet, I had been following the competition pretty closely when it first started; 32 original contestants were featured, each with a little bio and one photo, and visitors to the site all voted for their favorites–the Peta2 website is something to behold, but I won’t get into why because that’s more the subject for a dissertation than a blog post.

Naturally, all the contestants have perfected the art of taking lots and lots of pretty pictures of themselves, and a bunch of them have three or four Myspace profiles just to keep up with their trillions of friends.

Not that I was checking their Myspaces or anything.  I mean, you know, except to get some context about them and to evaluate how cute their other pictures were.  And stuff.  Kayle, for instance, looked pretty cute in his picture on the Peta2 site, despite the really lame Transformers tattoo on the back of his hand and the fact that his name is freaking Kayle.  But, upon closer inspection, what a dopey cheesebucket!

Jordan’s pictures were less impressive than I thought they would be (as were the Youtube videos of him snowskating), but I liked the range of stuff going on with sixteen-year old Austin’s pictures.

Of course, all this was entertaining for about five minutes, and then it got mildly creepy because I realized I was judging the cuteness of boys and girls that were as young as fourteen.  And rather than letting Peta2 turn me into a pervy old man, I thought I’d just stop voting.

I believe my urbanite credentials are now in order.  I have just been outside my apartment building throwing rocks at a woodpecker in a tree (he came right back).  I bet a well-aimed bottle rocket would do the trick.  I moved to the city to get away from these problems.  Where are those damn falcons?!!!!!

No sarcasm, pun, or wit could make this news any funnier. Wonkette reports:

Hillary Clinton’s pick to win horse racing’s Kentucky Derby, Eight Belles — the only female horse in the race — finished second, broke both front ankles, and subsequently was put to death on the track. The first place horse was “Big Brown.” Go nuts.

This makes my Dad’s attempt to find political meaning in the “underdog” Giants’ victory over the “machine candidate” Patriots in Superbowl 2k8 seem even more far fetched by comparison.

For readers new to the Dose, let’s get one thing straight: dolphins, those rubbery, sonar-using marine mammals who are probably smarter than us, totally kick ass.

It is, therefore, a tragic day: a dolphin at Sea World in Orlando is dead after colliding with another dolphin in mid-air during a performance in front of a crowd of onlookers.

Officials said the dolphin, called Sharky, hit the other dolphin during a Sunday show at Discovery Cove. The incident was apparently a freak accident.

Sharky was a 30-year-old female dolphin that had performed the trick dozens of times, officials said.

The dolphin will be used for research at the park, Local 6 reported.

Meanwhile, it appears that mean-spirited old buzzard Dick Cheney is blocking the implementation of a federal rule that would set a lower speed limit for large ships, reducing the amount of fatal ship-on-whale collisions. Good thing Whale-defender Henry Waxman is fighting back.

The bottom line: it ain’t easy being marine.

Next time you are scurrying across Kennedy Plaza, stop for a second or two and look up (close your mouth). Peregrine falcons are once again nesting atop the Bank of America building. According to Tom Meade writing in the ProJo the nestlings hatch after 28 days and we have another little family there right now.

Joe Zbyrowski built the falcons’ nesting box on the 30th floor of the building in 1996. Last week, he watched the adult female leave the nest for about two minutes. She returned with a downy young pigeon that she had snatched from its nest and killed. She shredded it to feed to her nestlings.

Yum. (Check out the work of Bill Murphy and Scott Kingsley in the photo gallery.)