Ugly Bears

Dear Curious,

Today's picture comes from inside a mall. This may sound cheap since most of the tourist attractions, of which there are millions of pictures each, cost millions of dollars to produce, cost thousands each year to keep pretty, and have typically been around for a few hundred years (in Germany, anyway). But this particular picture truly catches some honest Berlin spirit.

What you see seated there is, in fact, a bear. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these bears scattered about Berlin. This one is different b/c he is not in the typical pose (I'll try to get a "typical" bear picture to you in the future). You may not be able to tell, but this bear is in a German soccer outfit and in trying to make the bear look more human, it became that much more hideous. A wise lesson can be learned by any aspiring genetic engineers: bear human crosses are very ugly. Despite its lack of sexual attraction, however, I really like this bear just because he's so different from all the rest.

Fun fact: this picture happened to be taken on the same day the German women lost to the Japanese, ending their charge for the Women's World Cup.