– Everyone does romance in their own way: Cats purr to indicate happiness and contentment—or whatever passes for those in the warped mind of a cat, anyway. Humans purr, for the most part, to imitate cats in a semi-sarcastic manner. Now we know that some species of spider make purring noises as a form of seduction—except not ironically, the way humans might (indirect h/t Alice). Spiders don’t have ears, though, so they actually do it for the vibrations. You can make your own joke about that last bit.

Personally, I like to think that spiders are learning all of our best movie quotes from the tactile impact of sound waves coming from televisions, and repeating them to each other in spider code.

– Today in “not a scene from a Japanese horror film”: A mom is seen pushing her son in a swing. For a rather long period of time. Possibly since the previous evening. Turns out her son is dead. She didn’t seem fully aware of this, though. I’m not going to make any jokes here.

– “Is your iPhone on fire, or are you just happy to see me?”: A man in New York claims that he suffered severe leg burns after his iPhone 5c exploded in his pocket. I’m glad I skipped the 5 and went straight from 4s to 6.

– See? The definition of marriage has changed!: Marriage ain’t what it used to be in the old days. By this, I mean that it’s relatively rare in this country for a man to ask a woman’s hand in marriage by offering livestock to her father. That didn’t stop one lovestruck man from Kenya (actually from Kenya, not, like, pretend from Kenya) from offering 150 barnyard animals to President Obama as a bid to marry Malia (who, as I guess I should mention, just turned 17 earlier this month) (h/t Georgette).

The offer breaks down to 50 cows, 70 sheep, and 30 goats. As one person pointed out on Facebook, at an average going rate of $900/cow in the U.S. beef industry (a number I have not even tried to confirm), the cow part of the offer comes out to about $45,000. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he is still waiting for a call back from the White House.

I can’t wait to moove into the White House!!!

– Life imitates bad ’70s disaster movies: Remember all that rain we had back in May? Really? Wow, modern technology has really stunted your attention span. Anyway, the rest of you might have heard about the alligator that ended up in a parking garage in Houston (h/t Lindsay). Fortunately, it wasn’t mutated by years spent in the sewers eating growth hormones (I wasn’t kidding about the bad movie—it did have Robert Forster, though.)

Also fortunately, that picture of a shark swimming along a flooded highway in Houston was fake.

– And ye shall know their wrath: If you decide to use a port-a-potty as a forum to publicly exhibit what ought to be your private, ahem, “happy time,” your unwilling audience may decide to take matters into their own hands (heh heh). That might result in you finding yourself trapped in an overturned port-a-potty, and that will seriously mess up your happy time (h/t Jack, Sondra).

– Check it off the bucket list: Everyone has a dream—something they’ve always wanted to do, but have never been able to accomplish. Some people lack the means or the opportunity, and some people have dreams that are simply beyond the technological capabilities of the era in which they live. For example, I know that I will never realize my childhood dream of visiting the planet where The Dark Crystal takes place because (a) we are not likely to have the capacity for manned interstellar flight for a very long time, and (b) that planet is fictional (although are we looking for planetary systems with three suns? Throw me a bone, NASA!)

Anyway, one man in Illinois was able to realize a lifelong dream, thanks to a combination of ambition, determination, drive, and rather low expectations. Yes, he finally fulfilled his dream of driving a car through a garage door. Kudos, sir.

– Modern Stupid warfare: If you’re part of an organization that has pretty much declared war on the entire Western world, especially the United States, just, seriously, post as many selfies as you possibly can, all over social media. You should go do that now, instead of reading the rest of this post.

Now that they’re gone, here’s why ISIS members posting selfies might be a great thing:

Many of us know the feeling of posting a regrettable pic or two online. But while your thoughtless photos might be an embarrassment, they (typically) aren’t offensive enough to merit a US Air Force strike. If you’re a terrorist, on the other hand, a wee bit more discretion is probably advised.

ISIS didn’t post dick pics, but in hindsight that might have been a better call for the Islamic State militants who instead allowed selfies taken in front of a secret headquarters to surface on their social media. The photos caught the attention of US Air Force Intelligence, who, 22 hours later, took the entire building out with three JDAM-equipped bombs.

This calls for a song.

Photo credits: “Adult female Phidippus audax jumping spider in Nashville, Tennessee” by Kaldari (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, modified by me (dialogue from “Say Anything”); “Cow, Pasture, Animal, Almabtrieb” by DominikSchraudolf [CC0 1.0], via Pixabay; “Dark crystal triple sun” by OperaJoeGreen (Own work) [CC0 1.0], via Wikipedia.