As part of my fascination with variations on the word “Apocalypse”, I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the word “Atacopalypse”, which I can barely say or even spell.

“Atacopalypse” showed up in the recent “Lucy, Daughter of the Devil” episode “Escapeoke”, an equally difficult to say or spell word. Lucy is - the devil’s daughter - and is a charming, alterna-21 year old who appalls her father the way that many charming 21 year old women do. Her father is really the star of the show, and is off doing things like opening a Mexican restaurant, buying a Dildo factory or - going to burning man. He frequently bumps into DJ Jesus, and crosses paths with the three special functionaries from the Vatican who are off looking for the Anti-Christ.

In the first episode of the season, “Escapeoke”, the Devil opens a Mexican restaurant so that he can sell “Atacopalypse”s to people. He also decides to call the diet margaritas “diaritas”.

The devil is voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, whose voice you may recognize from “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist” and “Home Movies”.

They had me at “daughter of the devil”, but “atacopalypse” sealed the deal.

“Lucy, Daughter of the Devil” airs on Sunday nights on the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” block of programming. You can also pick up the first few episodes through the iTunes Store:

Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil - Escapeoke

Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil - Dildo Factory

Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil - Temptasia
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Naegleria fowleri - sounds a little like some kind of scam where someone emails you telling you they want to wire you lots of money if you will send them your bank account number. It’s actually a brain-eating amoeba, and when you see a big graphic proclaiming “Brain! Eating! Amoeba!” on a new service web page, it tends to catch your attention.

While not strictly apocalyptic (except to the person whose brain is being eaten), it qualifies as “Plague” and is therefore blog-worthy. As an added benefit, it even has a global warming tie-in!

The news article describes amoeba infections as attacks, as if the amoeba are sitting around dark corners of lakes waiting to mug you. In reality they live on the bottoms of lakes and go up your noise when water is stirred up such that it goes… up your nose. So don’t get water up your nose and you’ll probably be okay.
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Phil Plait posts the likely answer to the question of what’s going on with the Peruvian meteorite - it really was a meteorite, and the reason people got sick was that the area it struck was tainted with arsenic.

No sign of the Anti-Christ at this time.

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Hey did you hear the one about the meteorite and Peru?

Something hit the countryside in Peru leaving a giant muddy crater and a bunch of sick people. Almost everyone’s calling it a meteorite, and at least one person is connecting it to a prophecy of the third Anti-Christ by Nostradamus. I can’t keep track of how many Anti-Christs there are, or are supposed to be… maybe kids will dress up as the Anti-Christ for Halloween this year. But in a sprawling screed that connects… lots of dots… with some very shaky lines, The Temple of Love mentions Hitler, George Bush, Peru, Nostradamus, Tom Cruise and the Peruvian meteorite all in one very long breath. Time to inhale, please. Or maybe it’s too late for that.

Boing Boing likens it to the Andromeda Strain.

Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog, says it doesn’t really sound like a meteorite… usually they’re small enough to burn up completely or large enough to behave differently from what’s been observed in Peru.

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Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” has won many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, and was boosted by being a selection for Oprah’s book club. McCarthy is notoriously publicity-shy, but Oprah was able to lure him out to do an interview as well.

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Sorry for the downtime yesterday. I’m trying to switch servers for the blog - its URL will stay the same, it will just be at a different IP address on a different server - and things went awry. What was supposed to be 10 minutes of being offline turned into most of the day. The blog is back at its old server and I’ll try again soon, hopefully with a bit more success this time.
[tags]server, apocalypse blog, downtime[/tags]

Jericho’s second season is still not scheduled, but it has been written and is being produced. The writers have condensed their original 22-episode plan into seven episodes. SciFi Wire covers it at the link below; despite their statement about spoilers, they discuss the season in only the most general terms.

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Back in the 90’s, Ebola was all the rage. With books like “The Hot Zone” and movies like “Outbreak”, Ebola was the fashionable new apocalyptic plague. You can even buy a plush, stuffed Ebola microbe toy. And Ebola is the base of the infection “Rage” in the zombie films “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later”.

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Ain’t It Cool News has an early review of the best kind of zombie film - the George A. Romero kind, with underlying social commentary and flesh-eating acid.

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It’s been a while since we’ve had anything on the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder, which has been causing bee colonies to die off in the US and some European countries. There’s been a lot of speculation as to its cause, everything from fungus to viruses to cell phones, but no definitive cause (or treatment) has been found.

The latest clue to the problem is the identification of a virus now called Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV). The virus was discovered by researchers at Hebrew University - I would imagine having somewhat complicated feelings about naming the virus which may be killing off honeybees after yourself.

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