Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCCXXXI

Bank Holiday! The perfect occasion to take a break from watching the rain inching ever closer on your phone's weather radar app, and do some reading to avoid having to talk to your family

When he was 20, a combination of too much LSD and no sleep for days caused Peter Welch to descend into madness: a complete psychotic break, resulting in incarceration in a mental institution, before eventual recovery. This is his story of where he went, and how he got back: ”Don't let my severe awesomeness trick you into thinking you can go crazy and come back and end up like me. I wasn't supposed to come back, and nobody thought I ever would. People who freak like I freaked tend to die horribly in the first month, or at best spend the rest of their lives in mental institutions or living in the woods and abandoned factories.”
N.B. I had to direct one of those links through a URL shortener, as the naughty words filter won't allow "****" even in a URL
Audubon Made Up At Least 28 Fake Species To Prank A Rival - The famous American naturalist wasn’t above a joke, it seems: ”The prank's full extent—11 fake fish, 3 fake snails, 2 fake birds, 1 fake mollosc, 2 fake plants, and 9 fake rats—is only now clear.”
Victorian Love Letters - "Letters Sent from a Victorian Valet to a Housekeeper in the 1890s.”
Apparently There’s a Jellyfish Whose Sting Causes Feelings of Impending Doom - "Look, I’m not much of a beach person to begin with. But I’m decidedly less so after reading about the Irukandji, a collection of jellyfish species less than an inch long whose sting causes symptoms so severe and so bizarre as to have a medical condition named after them." There doesn’t seem to be any record of them in British waters, so that sense of impending doom just comes from being at the seaside on a Bank Holiday
Awful Library Books - Librarians Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner present books found deserving of removal from libraries around the world - either books that were always bad, or ones that have just become seriously outdated. ”This site is a collection of library holdings that we find amusing and/or questionable for libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection… No libraries are specifically mentioned to protect our submitters who might disagree with a particular collection policy."

The back cover says that Mr. Kilpatrick investigated mail-order “smut” by receiving shipments under three pseudonyms. Of course he did. For “research.”
The Bible: 2,728 Objects in Order of Appearance - A handy reference by Emma Kay: ”This list catalogues every individual object in the Bible in the order in which it appears… No given object is mentioned more than once, even if it is subsequently referred to in the text because it is still the same object. The list does, however, include multiple instances of the same type of object. For example, “Asherah pole” appears seven times in the list, since it is clear that these are all individual Asherah poles rather than repeated references to the same object. Hypothetical objects, such as those described in the visions of the prophets, are not included.”
The incredible true story behind the Toronto mystery tunnel - "Why Elton McDonald built the Toronto tunnel that captivated the world.” The strange story of a young Toronto man who built a ten metre tunnel, complete with a hidden generator to power lights and a drainage pump, near his home. HT to barrydidit for this one
Natali’s Journey with Pfeiffer Syndrome and Jackson-Weiss Syndrome - HT to Zeity for this story of a young woman who has grown up with a rare craniofacial syndrome: ”As soon as I was born, the room fell silent. It was very clear to see that something was wrong with me. No one had ever seen anyone look the way that I did.”
Practicing hermeneutics on commercials - Another HT to Zeity for Neil Postman’s explanation of the spiritual messages contained in TV commercials: ”Television commercials are a form of religious literature. To comment on them in a serious vein is to practice hermeneutics, the branch of theology concerned with interpreting and explaining the Scriptures. This is what I propose to do here. The heathens, heretics, and unbelievers may move on to something else… the majority of important television commercials take the form of religious parables organized around a coherent theology. Like all religious parables, they put forward a concept of sin, intimations of the way to redemption, and a vision of Heaven. They also suggest what are the roots of evil and what are the obligations of the holy.
The Wormworld Saga: Chapter 8 - Ambush in the Mushroom Forest - The latest instalment of Daniel Lieske’s beautiful graphic novel, published last night at 8pm.