Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

What’s the scariest thing you can think of? If you said Mof Gimmers in a silk nightie we don’t blame you. You’re wrong though. What would be far scarier than that is a man morphing into a pig then morphing into a bat right in front of your freaking eyes. You don’t think that sounds scary? Well what if we told you the bat would fly up your butt then start the whole process again. Scary, right?

We thought so.

This story contains no further reference to bats flying up people’s butts. Let’s get that out of the way right now. It will contain plenty about a shape-shifter though. Just so you know – this particular creature doesn’t seem to have a cool name yet. We’d really like to see ‘Jack the Ripper II, Son of Jack’ catch on. It’s an established name and may really get this beast a solid publicity jumpstart.

And it could probably use that murderous tie in – because it sure isn’t earning a name on it’s own. This thing isn’t known to have ever harmed man nor beast.  As we understand things, you’d be more likely to be handed a doughnut when in this creatures vicinity than to have your throat bitten and mangled. Monsters nowadays are so lazy.

Here’s what we know, according to News24.com:

“”The community says that the monster changes shape while you are looking at it,” Warrant Officer Zandisile Nelani said.  He said one man had reported it changed from a man wearing a suit into a pig and then into a bat. The creature had been sighted on a number of occasions near a church and only appeared at night, Nelani said….Although some locals were frightened of it, it had not harmed any people or livestock.”

If we saw some guy in the middle of the night scream out in pain, writhe down to the moon-lit ground, disappear into his loose clothes and then emerge as a pig, we’d be 1) Pretty relieved that we probably weren’t about to die, and 2) Disappointed that no ancient ceremonial dance started the whole process.

Of course when the pig then turned into a bat, we’d probably reach for a broom and see if we couldn’t find a taxidermist with reasonable prices. If we could make it change shape while stuffed on a wooden base, well there’s probably some money up in there.

Emma Thompson is a quirky old dame isn’t she? A real, quintessential English lovie. Someone we know from a television show was invited ’round her house once. Nothing unusual in that you might assume… however, this invite was for a party to celebrate the beginning of asparagus season. Unbelievable Jeff. And now, Emma Thompson is being all quirky again, only this time with a pig.

Thompson is just back off her holidays where she was nursing the freshly single Kate Winslet. We can only imagine it contained a lot of gin and running mascara.

Most people come back from their jollies and use up the camera film on taking pictures of the dog. Not our Emma. She decided to walk some Bacon On Legs down the red (well, blue) carpet at the premiere of Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang.

Naturally, this pig will ensure that most of the press will have spent far too much time coming up with bad puns and wordplays like That Sow You Walk The Carpet!, Snout Weird About Emma Thompson and Hogging The Limelight!

Completely upstaged by the sausage factory was co-stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, Welsh actor Rhys Ifans and comedians Bill Bailey and Katy Brand. One of those resembles the little oinker more than others (and we’ll let you decide for yourself who we’re on about).

So why a pig?

Well, Thompson stars in the film (which she also wrote) which is about a magical nanny who comes to the rescue of a struggling mother called Isabel Green who is finding it difficult to run a farm and look after her children. Then Dick Van Dyke comes along and does a shit cock-er-ney accent. Possibly.

Maggie Gyllenhaal fawned all over Thompson, saying:

“I’m her biggest fan and I know I’m not alone in thinking she is a brilliant genius. I would like to work with her on everything.”

She then absolutely did not say:

“I don’t know why she brought that disgusting little creature with her. Unless I see it on a spit with an apple in its mouth, then it’s stupid and pointless. I hate it when stupid English people act eccentric. Grow up you stinkin’ git.”

Bill Bailey, who plays a pig farmer in the flick, showed the world just how irreverent he is and noted that his animal co-stars weren’t just “common-or-garden farm pigs from up the road”.

“These were proper stage pigs who had been in films before so they were all a bit blase really.”

He probably followed that quip up by smoking a pretend pipe and raising his eye-brows before boring everyone half to death with a rambling sentence about stoats and weasels.

So yeah. A pig. All that stuff. Thrilling. Ha. Ha. Ha. Etc.

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Every superhero has a weakness. Superman has kryptonite, Batman has young boys in capes and sexy leggings, and to beat Spider-Man all you really have to do is move your crime syndicate to a prairie. It really is that easy.

To defeat Wolverine, on the other hand, may take a little more work. After all, he’s got those steel fingers he always seems to cut things up with. How’s a person supposed to get around a weapon like that? The answer, of course, it that they can’t.

Pigs can though – especially Mexican pigs with runny noses and a burning fever.

Having already seen the film illegally over 10 times, we can say with a high degree of certainty that it would have been much better if the love-making scene between Wolverine and Magneto had just been limited to 20 minutes. Instead the writers and or producers thought it’d be a good idea to make that night-time romp the bulk of the plot. Sure, at first it seemed sexy enough, but a normal person can only tolerate Ian McKellen playfully choking on Hugh Jackman‘s chest hair so many times.

Seriously – how that thing avoided an R rating we’ll never know.

One thing it didn’t avoid, however, is the swine flu (it’s like the bird flu only better). If what we understand is true, then every single trained movie-house projectionist in Mexico has recently died or something, so the movie premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been seriously hampered.

Or as E! Online explains it:

“Wednesday’s all-star Mexico City premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been scrapped due to the region’s deadly swine-flu outbreak, 20th Century Fox confirmed today.”

If you ask us this is all just another example of Mexico’s unwieldy rudeness. First they clog our Home Depot parking lots, then turn all the money we give them for roads into a governor’s backyard swimming pool with a crazy Spanish colour-scheme, and now this?

No! No Mexico! We are putting our foot down. We have given you the best that we can give, that being in this case a pretty good opportunity for your cartels to put an unsuspecting Hugh Jackman in one of your fancy border-town body bags, and this is how you treat us? With an epidemic?

He doesn’t really have those claws you know. Is that what you thought Mexico? That those special effects were real? You’re so stupid Mexico! What do they teach you in those three-walled schools of yours!

And while we’re at it – you really should treat Paraguayans with respect!

They’re human beings Mexico!

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Coachella was all about one thing this year – a dreary old man forcing a crowd to stand up for three hours while he played songs that your Dad likes.

But Roger Waters‘ Coachella set was livened up by one tiny thing – the moment when his giant inflatable pig broke free and blew off. Blew off into the desert. Get your minds out of the gutter. Cuh!

And the escape of Roger Waters’ big pig has been the talk of the town ever since, with extensive discussions in the press and monetary rewards being offered to whoever recovered it first. Anything, in fact, to take people’s minds off the fact that they’d just basically exchanged $270 for a week of agonising lower back pain and an eighth of a day spent listening to an old posho bleat on about Southampton.

This is just a theory, but we’re starting to think that Coachella organisers don’t want people to go to their little festival. Every year they try to scare everyone away, either by hiring an old lady to dance around in a leotard or persuading a bunch of angry boys to scream abuse at everyone, and this year they must have thought they’d stumbled across the holy grail of audience repellents – Roger Waters from Pink Floyd.

Because, honestly, if we wanted to listen to an old man go over his past achievements word for word in brain-numbing detail for the millionth time surrounded by drooling medicated fartheads, we’d go and visit our Grandpa in the nursing home. And we don’t like doing that because it reminds us that we’ll die one day.

However, Roger Waters was performing Dark Side Of The Moon in full at Coachella, so he drew a huge crowd of people eager to discover what an album they’ve already played to death sounds like when they have to jam themselves in between a bunch of hippies who’ve curled elastic bands into their beards and listen to them bleat on about how deep it is for Roger Waters to turn some green lights on during a song called Money because money is, like, green. And being pretty sure they’re suffering from the early stages of heatstroke. Man.

Anyway, long story short, Roger Waters did the old inflatable pig trick during his set, but it accidentally blew away and some people got sad until they found it in the desert later. And apparently that’s news now. The Telegraph reports:

A huge inflatable pig bearing the word “Obama” which went missing in the California desert after it was released into the sky during a music festival has been found. The pig, which disappeared following a show by Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters at the Coachella music festival on Sunday. was found by two families on their driveways in La Quinta, California. They will split the $10,000 (£5,090) reward offered by the festival, according to the BBC.

Apparently, as well as telling the residents of California to vote for Barack Obama almost three months after they had the ability to do so, the giant pig also “displayed the words ‘Don’t be led to the slaughter’ and a cartoon of Uncle Sam holding two bloody cleavers. The other side read ‘Fear builds walls.” See? You can take the hippy out of the sixties, but you can’t stop him being an insufferable overbearing dick.

Read more:

Pink Floyd’s flying ‘Obama’ pig found – Telegraph