Headless corpses found in Paris picnic spot

I bet it was an orang-utan!

"PARIS (Reuters) - Police were questioning a couple on Monday about two headless torsos and a footless leg discovered near a popular picnic spot on the eastern edge of Paris.

"The macabre mystery began when a jogger found a rotting leg in the Vincennes woods earlier this month and a guide dog then unearthed a torso nearby, a source close to the inquiry said."

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Le Passe-Muraille

While wandering around Montmartre, you might be lucky enough to bump into this great statue/sculpture, Le Passe-Muraille (the Passer-Through-Walls). Le Passe-Muraille is the title of a story by Marcel Aymé about a man named Dutilleul who discovers that he can (you guessed it) walk through walls. The statue is situated in a place named after Marcel Aymé in beautiful Montmartre.

Dutilleul was a lowly civil servant from Montmartre who discovers this amazing ability, and he first uses it at work to drive a middle-management-type guy crazy because he had constantly humiliated him. Dutilleul then moves on to burglaries, leaving notes signed, "Garou-Garou"... Read more ►

Fountain behind l'église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis

Haha, this is rich; I was wandering around the Marais with a friend, and we noticed this nice fountain, situated directly behind l'église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis (which is beautiful and very much worth visiting, by the way). I spied the roman numerals "MDCCCXL" up at the top and started trying to figure out the date out loud, and my friend started to help. (Is it worth mentioning that we were kind of halfway drunk?) Then I noticed some helpful person had climbed up on the fountain and scribbled "1840" in good ol' normal modern-people numbers. Thanks, mystery person who's good at roman numerals! You saved me a lot of complicated thinking, for which I am not suited.

Incidentally, I cropped the bottom of the fountain out of the picture; the date is about twelve feet up off the ground! I miss being young enough to be climbing up on fountains and vandalizing them pedantically. Anyway, I'm glad I zoomed in to take this picture of the date, because otherwise I wouldn't have noticed the tiny lil' dragon at the top of that arch. Not to mention the fish monster off to the right. Good stuff.

Pixel monster hunting in Paris — part 5

If, in your Paris wanderings, you've perhaps glanced up once or twice, you've probably seen a few pixel art mosaics, usually in the form of little low-res aliens, like something out of a 1980s arcade game. I've always really enjoyed spotting these things, mentally cataloguing my favorites, pointing them out to friends, et cetera, so a couple years ago I started taking pictures of them whenever I happened to notice one... Read more ►

Part 5 of 5. (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5)

Cool centaur statue in the 6th arrondissement

Check out this neat centaur statue I found at the corner of Rue de Sèvres and Rue du Cherche Midi, in the 6th arrondissement. A little internet research tells me this sculpture was created in 1985 by French sculptor César Baldaccini (often referred to as simply César), who happens to be the same guy who did the huge thumb (aka Le Pouce) at La Défense.