"Erm, something's really wrong with these McDonald's Japan cups."

You'll have to click through to Mashable.

Finally another use for my "accidental imagery" tag! It's been almost 4 years!

"Sometimes, on the internet, text and images get mixed up."

Email from Meade, with this attachment:



That came up on some news site that aggregates automatically. It's not a conscious human mind joking. (Meade touched up the photo to eliminate the images that appeared in the top left and bottom right corners.)

ADDED: This was the news site, ZergNet.

"Chemists Grew Microscopic Crystal Flowers on a Razor Blade."

Wow!

(Via Metafilter.)

"Kudos to @JCPenney for the right tone in response. #SocialMediaDoneRight."

It's good to know that JC Penney didn't intend to make the teapot look like Hitler. And it's cute to say "If we'd designed the kettle to look like something, we would've gone w/a snowman :)" and include this essence-of-cute pic:



But I've got to step on the cuteness and say: That's not a tea kettle. That's a teapot.

Don't let the old song confuse you.

"Kettle that looks like Hitler brews trouble for JCPenney."

It's even doing the Hilter salute!

At the Kafe Kohoutek...

... it's all so unexpected.

(The photograph is something the camera took on its own, as I was sliding the cover closed. It looks like comets so I called this café post "Kohoutek" after the wonderfully overhyped comet that seemed, at the time — do you remember? — to symbolize the lameness of Gerald Ford. I wrote Kafe Kohoutek instead of Kohoutek Café for this café post — a "café post" is just an open thread — because there used to be a really cool restaurant here in Madison called Kafe Kohoutek. That was back in the '90s. The name was a wry reference back to the fizzled comet, 90s nostalgia for the 70s. And here I am now, in the 10s, reminiscing about the 70s and the 90s, all because my camera had a mind of its own.)

At the Placid Face Café...

... I may lean my head to one side and drowse.

At the I-Didn't-Think-I'd-Be-Noticed Tavern...

... reflect upon the image you present.

(Enlarge.)

Visions of seemingly impossible things.

Did you know you can watch the sunset over Lake Michigan from Wisconsin?



And what is this? The camera has somehow taken a mysterious photograph:

"Maybe Michelangelo was hiding secret drawings of brains inside the Sistine Chapel's ceiling frescoes."

"Makes total sense, right? Because... well, wait, it doesn't make any sense at all."

The shadow man in the rock.

The Daily News deftly juxtaposes pictures from the American Music Awards.

Check it out. It's like panels of a comic strip:

These pictures don't really relate to each other in the manner the sequence suggests, but the apparent story is hilarious.

In the first panel, Taylor Swift — the perfectly popular girl from whom a man once famously grabbed a phallic symbol — clutches her throat and looks with shock toward the second panel. In that second panel, American Idol also-ran Adam Lambert, clutching a phallic symbol, is angling back to get a look at the head going at his crotch. And, in panel 3, Jennifer Lopez, clutching a phallic symbol and looking quite angry, is falling backwards.

Juxtaposed, it looks like a story of sex and betrayal. In real life, the only intentional sex, simulated of course, came from Adam Lambert. He'd like you to believe he's fighting against discrimination:

"I do feel like there's a bit of a double standard in the entertainment community, on television, on radio... I feel like women performers have been pushing the envelope, especially, for the past 20 years. And all of the sudden a male does it and everybody goes 'Oh, we can't show that on TV.' For me, that's a form of discrimination and a double standard. And that's too bad."

The head in his crotch was female, by the way. Lambert subsequently canceled that discrimination by kissing a male.

Swift and Lopez weren't being sexual at all. Swift was expressing surprise — whether she felt it or not, we don't know — for beating out, as Artist of the Year, an artist whose big achievement this year was suddenly dying. And Jennifer Lopez was about to fall on what everyone feels compelled to refer to as her famous ass.

ADDED: The prime example of the womanly pushing of the envelope — in 2003 — reference by Lambert:

Why did the White House select this photo of Sotomayor for its website slideshow?

Here's the whole slideshow — which is labeled "Sotomayor Bio."

An emailer calls this to my attention saying: "I don't think you should post about this, but why would they put in this photo where you can see all the way up her skirt??"

Well, I am posting about this, and I wouldn't say "you can see all the way up her skirt." You can see that Sonia Sotomayor wears a skirt and crosses her legs in a relaxed and casual way that lets you see some leg. The photo also has her smiling prettily, with her hair in relaxed ringlets, one of which falls gently into her eye. Her left hand is devoid of any relationship-manifesting rings, but she's wearing long dangling earrings, and the hand is unclenched and draping gracefully.

Get the message? She's a woman. A womanly woman, fully embodying womanhood — even as she is not married, she's wearing a professional suit, and she's at home with the law books.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian, who has expertise in art, writes:

Her knee looks like a giant grey Idaho potato hovering in the foreground. The arm of the chair repeats the shape on the right of the frame, making it look like her other knee, which in turn makes it look like her hand is dead center in her enormous crotch, pawing at her cooch. You avoid those things in portraiture. Also not good to crop her right arm off. It implies that she's an amputee.

He is right, of course, but that isn't the answer to my question why the photograph was selected.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: Andrew Koenig said:

My first thought was of this famous picture of J.P. Morgan...

... in which the light reflecting from the arm of his chair makes him seem to be holding a dagger.

The photo is by Edward Steichen. The effect was accidental, but in this case, we love it (as much as Morgan hated it). The important thing is to have an eye not just for what you are hoping to capture in a photograph — such as Sotomayor's femininity — but also for the accidental imagery that others may notice. See what can be seen and then decide if you want to use a photograph.

"Hillary wants withdrawal bill..."

"Hillary wants withdrawal bill with teeth."

I'm getting some scary vagina dentata imagery out of that Kos headline.

Hillary wants withdrawal, Bill. With teeth!