2012 Honda Civic ‘To Each Their Own’ campaign

Honda’s ad agency, RPA, has imagined five extreme types of Civic owners — one for each of the 2012 Civic variants. The types are a spot-on match for the young, hipster target demographic: they include a zombie, a luchador, and, yes, a ninja. (Left on the cutting room floor: a pirate, a unicorn, and the double-rainbow guy.)

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While unicorns were initially disappointed to land on the cutting room floor, they eventually embraced the fact that they weren’t picked for Team Civic. They are rumored to be in talks with Ford regarding upgrading the Mustang logo to include a horn.

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Advice to Young Poets

by Martin Espada

Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head

“Advice to Young Poets” by Martín Espada, from The Republic of Poetry. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Reprinted with permission

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Some forms of DIY are really bad ideas.
Others are just stupid.

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Rock-O-Matic, an improvised musical show at Go Comedy theater in Ferndale, MI, took on the complex topic of the Fighting Unicorn school mascot. Whereas other mascots and fight songs can be sung rather passively, the Fighting Unicorns require a great amount of physical participation - and choreography.

We especially appreciate the realistic costuming. From this distance, the finger-horn could be easily mistaken for a stunted alicorn!

So fight on, Fighting Unicorns, because today improv really is the winner!

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While doing research on our story about the city’s vast Civic Art Collection, which includes some 4,000 items, we came across a number of objects that weren’t just your standard paintings and sculptures. Given the limited resources now allocated to the collection, it’s hard to imagine a time when the city was actively accruing its mountain of portable treasures, but between the years of 1946 and 1986, San Francisco threw annual Arts Festivals as a means of supporting local artists. It was from these festivals that the city purchased the bulk of its portable collection. Below we’ve collected some of the more unusual items, from jewlery to a “rocking serpent” that looks like it was plucked from the set of “Beetlejuice.” The descriptions have been pulled directly from the portable collection database provided by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

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4. Unicorn Print

Gentle Unicorn, Richard Graf

Description: Color photo-litho image of a stone unicorn resting in a garden-like setting. Image has several lines of various color and thickness surrounding it and creating borders. Floral pattern on outer border. Set of twenty.

1974, Purchased by the San Francisco Art Commission for the San Francisco General Hospital

(This is not the only unicorn art the city owns. It also purchased a chalk drawing of unicorn called “Unicorn” by artist Charles Ware in 1977.)

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Oh San Fran, how we adore your artistic sensibilities! Your civic art collection features more than one unicorn-centric piece, ensuring both 7-year-old Jenny and cat-embroidered-sweater-vest-clad Aunt Myrtle that they, too, can one day be famous artists.

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Last week, my husband called me at work, reporting there was a dead body in the backyard. When asked to describe it, he said it was sort of like a glob with hair — small, with no discernible features. I shuddered, assuming my dog discovered a baby rabbit, but upon examination of the body when I got home, I understood my husband’s inability to accurately describe the mass –- it truly was a furry glob. Without proper scientific examination, this finding will be eternally up for debate — and there was to be no proper scientific examination because it was simply grossing me out.

This brings up a subject I have always found fascinating: the pseudo-science of crypto-zoology. Literally meaning “the study of hidden animals”, this topic relates to those creatures such as Big Foot or my personal favorite, the Loch Ness Monster, whose existence has not been proved through hard science. This topic also covers animals once thought to be extinct, such as the coelacanth, a big ugly fish thought to have died out millions of years ago, only to be re-discovered in 1938 near South Africa. How cool is that?

Admittedly, the subject of crypto-zoology walks a fine line between coolness and geek-dom, since one may be searching for the Yeti (cool) but also the unicorn (geek). If you ever find yourself searching for a Yeti and then winding up talking about unicorns, simply ask yourself if you want your name on a peer-reviewed journal article describing Yetis or unicorns. Your answer may surprise you.

My work, obviously, does not involve studying “hidden animals,” which is probably a good thing, since there was not a single word said in vet school about how to administer penicillin to a sick chupacabra (a beast reported in Latin America and the southwest U.S.). However, vet school did prepare me to deal with severely parasitized animals, such as the mange-ridden, emaciated coyotes that the University of Michigan deduced as the explanation of the chupacabra sightings. At least I’ll be able to treat the de-bunked “cryptids,” as crypto-zoologists call the animals they study.

On long drives in the middle of the night coming from a remote farm after pulling a calf or stitching up a horse, sometimes I’ll see eyes on the side of the road reflecting back my truck’s high beams and I think: is this the Frederick Fiend, Thurmont Thrasher, or the elusive Emmitsburg Elk? Or am I just making things up to keep myself awake? Probably the latter, which I suppose is a good thing judging by my reaction to the mysterious creature in our backyard. If I ever found a “cryptid”, I’d probably just freak out and vomit. And I definitely would not want that reported in a peer-reviewed journal article.

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The author above is a vet, but not a specialist in cryptids. We’re pretty clear on that, since she has classified Yetis as cool and unicorns as geeky. Anyone who has spent any length of time with a Yeti and its boorish excuse for table manners would not classify it as “cool”, except in reference to its body temperature.

Unicorns as geeky? Geeky-chic is more like it.

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And now it’s time for “Ask the Unicorn Doctor”!

Q. How could something like this happen?

A. In a unicorn’s digestive system, sometimes a prismatic buildup occurs within the lower intestine, and can lead to a very colorful type of diverticulitis. However, should excessive gas be added into the colon - say, by drinking seventeen cans of Dr. Pepper - this type of projectile rainbowing can occur.

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Northland’s marine reserves, wrecks and reefs are increasingly becoming home to fish species from sub-tropical waters.

Five new or rarely seen species have been spotted at east coast dive spots during the past two months but the latest has scientists differing on whether it’s a scribbled leatherjacket or a unicorn triggerfish.

The rare fish was captured on film last week at the Canterbury wreck near Deep Water Cove, Bay of Islands.

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This tortoise-shell-pancake fish somehow earned the esteemed moniker of unicorn triggerfish. So for all the other contenders still waiting in line, the following titles have yet to be claimed:
-Unicorn Mugglefish
-Unicorn Triggerninja
-Uniclunk Triggerfish
-Unicorn Triggerfish18642

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