It’s beautiful!
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Those Veridian Dynamics ads were the best use of stock footage I’ve ever seen. I adored Better Off Ted. A buddy of mine and I once wrote a pilot script about a handful of people working dead-end jobs as 800-number customer service drones for a huge amalgamated corporation named GigaCorp (like if Proctor & Gamble merged with Time Warner and General Motors… and not unlike Veridian Dynamics), and the corporate culture we’d come up with was hilarious and slightly surreal… and then I saw Better Off Ted and I realized they were doing the same thing, only better.
The only bit that I really liked in our script that I didn’t eventually see in B.O.T. was the boss. Our heroes worked in a phone pool, answering 1-800 help lines and customer complaint calls for all the various subsidiary companies… hair products, foodstuffs, appliances, motor scooters, you name it. Their immediate supervisor was a mealy-mouthed, irritating, easily-ignored middle-management type who’s constantly trying to get everyone’s productivity numbers up while simultaneously trying (and generally failing) to improve morale. Towards the end of the pilot script, that manager gets fired and immediately replaced by some completely different manager… who is actually functionally and character-wise utterly identical… so much so that the rest of the cast doesn’t realize he’s been replaced. And that would be the running gag: that manager character would be played by a different actor (or two) in every episode, and yet the character itself would always be the same, as if there’s an unending and utterly interchangeable pool of middle managers. Because of course there is.
At some point, several episodes in, one of the other characters notices that the manager has actually been the same person for an unusually long spell… like two episodes running, and would actually comment on it.
Well, anyway. I thought it was funny. They didn’t do that on B.O.T. But otherwise that show was brilliant.
Also, the Veridian Dynamics offices were the barely-redressed offices where I worked on a short-lived TV show called Traveler. Formerly the west coast headquarters for Unocal, it’s now L.A. Center Studios.
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For what it’s worth, I’d totally watch that.
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I has a new favorite jumper! It’s weird!
Very little is known about it, it lives in New Guinea, and it’s called ‘coccorchestes ferreus’
It’s a BEETLE mimic! There’s tons of ant mimic jumpers, but this is by far the best beetle mimic I’ve seen, it’s apparently kind of tanky for a spider too!
I even managed to hunt down a video of one in action (I have no idea how I pulled that off) 
It’s the one at :16
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I’m not usually gaga for spiders, but this one is freaking ADORABLE! I want to hug it!
My spouse disagrees with my judgment and is not happy with me for bringing up spiders in general and this post in particular.
Tangentially related: I didn’t see Arachnophobia until after we vacationed in Cambria several times. So many familiar landmarks in that movie! But I never saw big spiders while we were there.
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Tangentially related to your tangent: a friend and I went to see Arachnophobia and threw rubber spiders into the audience because we were TERRIBLE PEOPLE.
Terribly hilarious people.
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CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH
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Your spouse is poorly trained! 
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It looks ike a little mustachioed dude wavin’ his arms in the air like he just don’t care!
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Combining everybody’s favorite things: spiders and CLOWNS!
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Aranea cavatica, I believe, spotted on my way to work. I always love finding them because, well, y’know, Charlotte’s Web. Tell me I’m not the only one who wished the pig died and the spider lived.
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I know some arachnophiliacs who absolutely fit the term.
Although they’d probably say they’re into monstergirls, not spider chimeras specifically. I’m sure there are plenty of vorophiles with a focus on spiders.
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Spoiler alert!
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Can y’all help me identify this lady? She’s an orb weaver approximately half an inch long. I thought she might be a species of Nephila but we aren’t supposed to have those in Tennessee.
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Go to Reddit and post on /r/whatsthisbug (and/or /r/spiderbro) with the pic and your location. I can guarantee you’ll get an answer.
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Google says spider. Helpfull huh.
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Possiblly.
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