Joan Jett has correctly picked the winner of the last eight Super Bowls. And she missed predicting the exact score of yesterday's game by three points. [Via]

Paul the psychic octopus, oracle of sport, scourge of despots, and supermarket pitch-cephalopod, is in eight-legged heaven. I mean, he's dead. No cause of death has been provided, which seems kind of—wait for it—fishy to me. (Sorry.) Paul the psychic octopus was 2.

"AN Argentine TV presenter furious with Paul the 'psychic' World Cup octopus has horrified viewers by liquidising one of his relatives live on air…. Argentina fans blamed [Paul the octopus] for their World Cup exit after he correctly predicted Germany would beat them and some have voiced a desire to eat him. So after branding the animal a 'Nazi' [presenter Roberto Pettinato] grabbed an octopus live on air and claimed to be killing it as he hacked its head off and put bits of it in a blender."

Photographer Victor Huang was diving off Wellington, New Zealand recently when an octopus snatched his video camera and swam off with it while it was filming. Huang gave chase, and got the camera back after a few minutes, lucky for all of us. The octopus has a nice eye for close-up action sequences and effectively establishes a dramatic tone through the use of the natural lighting available in a bed of kelp. "He swam away very quickly like a naughty shoplifter," Huang said: "I honestly believe that it saw the bright blue digital camera and went, ‘Oh I need that,' you know?"

"Far from being a simple cephalopod that got lucky on a 256-1 chance of predicting eight two-option outcomes in a row (matches at the 2010 World Cup), it turns out Paul was / is a publicity stunt for a global entertainment conglomerate, the Merlin Entertainments Group (MEG). The biggest single shareholders in MEG are Blackstone (one-time favoured financiers of the former Liverpool owner, Tom Hicks), while until recently another stockholder in MEG was Dubai International Capital, former bidders for Liverpool." —Man, you have no idea just how far the psychic octopus conspiracy goes.

"Paul the psychic octopus may have retired from predicting football matches, but his advertising career has just begun. The eight-legged oracle recently appeared in an advertisement for a German supermarket chain and has received more than 160 endorsement offers, including a book deal, according to the mollusk's agent." -WHAT A FREAKING PHONY. I remember when it was all about forecasting which collection of athletes who were competing in a task that would be completely inexplicable to the octopus if he saw what they were doing, which he didn't, by choosing the flag of one nation-another impossible concept for a cephalopod to comprehend-over another, man. You can't trust anyone.

Paul the octopus, the Nostradamus of international soccer match forecasting, has made his prediction for Sunday's World Cup final: he likes Spain.

Paul the psychic octopus is dead, but there's a new hope: "'Behind the scenes, a young Paul is already acclimatizing himself, he was meant to be trained by Paul the First in the coming weeks,' aquarium officials said." That is some crazy-ass Dalai Lama-type shit going on over there in Germany.

"Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values." -Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemns Paul the World Cup-predicting octopus for spreading "western propaganda and superstition."

Holy crap! This octopus in Germany has accurately predicted the LAST SIX MATCHES of the World Cup for which his powers of prophesy have been consulted. Scoff if you must, but consider the odds: This cephalopod conjecturer has only a fifty percent chance of being right each time, and yet SIX TIMES IN A ROW his prognosticating tentacles have in fact chosen the correct group of men who would kick more balls into a ropey hole than their opponents. It is positively astounding! How can people be discussing trivialities like the role of women in popular entertainment when such magic exists in the world? Yes, sure, I know [...]