Black widow spider in a container of grapes at a Milwaukee supermarket.

"I saw the legs moving frantically... I've seen bugs on fruit before, and I thought, 'That is a very big spider.' Nothing I'd ever seen before."

Black widow spiders, which build webs in grape vineyards to capture insects, have occasionally been found in supermarket grapes since the mid-1990s. That's when growers came under pressure to cut back on insecticide use because of high levels of pesticide residue on grapes...

Reports of black widow spiders on grapes have popped up in the past few months in Missouri, Michigan and Minnesota.

"The world's deadliest spiders have been found on a bunch of bananas bought in a British supermarket."

"A family from London was forced to flee its home after discovering dozens of the poisonous Brazilian Wandering critters crawling over the fruit."

"I got halfway through the banana when I saw something white on the skin. I thought it was mold, but when I had a closer look I saw some funny looking spots... I had a closer look and was horrified to see they were spiders. They were hatching out on the table, scurrying around my carpet. I was so scared I cried"....

At the Spider Leaf Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Did heavy metal guitarist Jeff Hanneman — of Slayer — die of a spider bite?

The band's website said in January that he "had contracted necrotizing fasciitis 'likely caused by a spider bite, and has been undergoing surgeries, skin grafts and intense rehab since." He died Hanneman died Thursday of liver failure:

... Dr. Donna Seger who routinely treats spider-bite victims at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee... said that spider bites do not lead to organ failure. But infections -- which could develop after a variety of scenarios ranging from a mosquito bite or even a scratch on the skin from a nail -- can sometimes lead to bad outcomes....

Seger stressed that, on the whole, patients with spider bites recover fine if they follow medical instructions and keep their bite areas clean so that a scab can form and fall off.

"I think it's really important that spider bites be understood because there's so many urban legends about, you know, you get a spider bite, your limb falls off and you die," Seger said. "That doesn't happen."

UPDATE: It wasn't the spider.

"Rookie golfer suffers Black Widow spider bite during Women’s Australian Open, uses golf tee to remove deadly venom."

"After being informed that a bite from a Black Widow can kill a child in about 30 minutes, Daniela Holmqvist channeled her inner MacGyver and took matters into her own hands."

"Lincoln" smears Connecticut.

"I could not believe my own eyes and ears," said Connecticut Congressman Joe Courtney. "Placing the State of Connecticut on the wrong side of the historic and divisive fight over slavery is a distortion of easily verifiable facts."

"It is historical fiction -- a noble genre going back to Shakespeare and well before -- not history," [said Columbia University historian Eric Foner].

And yet we're pressured to go see that movie because of the way it explains history. 

By coincidence, Shakespeare is getting some negative press this week, after bones found under a parking lot in England were determined to have belonged to Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, supplanted by the Tudors, whom Shakespeare had reason to flatter as he portrayed Richard III as a villain.

No “bunch-backed toad,” no “slave of nature and the son of hell,” no “bottled spider,” the exhumed Richard is enjoying a remake as a physically challenged fellow with spinal curvature who might have starred in last year’s London Paralympics if given the chance.

Alas he got clobbered several times with a halberd (presumably wielded by a halberdier ignoring late 15th century safety regulations), and may have suffered the ignominy of being sodomized with an unlicensed dagger while being carried naked on horseback to Leicester. ....

“I’ve spoken to scoliosis experts and they say acute scoliosis like that was painful,” Philippa Langley, a Richard III enthusiast, told The Guardian. “So we know that he was working through the pain barrier every day just to do his job.... He had an incredibly powerful, strong work ethic. This man never stopped. He was on a horse every day, fighting skirmishes, doing everything they had to do.”

Imagine a movie about Lincoln that does not cater to the tastes of the present-day dynasty. There's plenty of old material to rake over. He wasn't called "bunch-backed toad" or a "bottled spider," but he was called "The obscene ape of Illinois." And:

The illustrious Honest Old Abe has continued during the last week to make a fool of himself and to mortify and shame the intelligent people of this great nation. His speeches have demonstrated the fact that although originally a Herculean rail splitter and more lately a whimsical story teller and side splitter, he is no more capable of becoming a statesman, nay, even a moderate one, than the braying ass can become a noble lion. People now marvel how it came to pass that Mr. Lincoln should have been selected as the representative man of any party. His weak, wishy-washy, namby-pamby efforts, imbecile in matter, disgusting in manner, have made us the laughing stock of the whole world. The European powers will despise us because we have no better material out of which to make a President. The truth is, Lincoln is only a moderate lawyer and in the larger cities of the Union could pass for no more than a facetious pettifogger. Take him from his vocation and he loses even these small characteristics and indulges in simple twaddle which would disgrace a well bred school boy.

"Birds Appear to 'Self-Medicate' With Our Cigarette Butts."

Headline at The Atlantic. What birds are actually doing, apparently, is using the butts in nest-building, and nicotine works as an arthropod repellent.