Ooops. I forgot to add that the first image isn't safe for work. It's a really bad painting of a woman with impossibly shaped breasts, whose skull appears to be over instead of under her skin.

I was just about to link that image (oops). That's a meta?

I refuse.

What is so meta about the Mercury Meta? It looks like a pretty straight-forward SUV.

Honey... I'm home!!!!

Meta-interpreter. Capable of translating thomcatspike to english in 1.4 seconds.

No hard feelings, thomcatspike! I really do like your confusing asides.

Meta chai? (scroll down)

In 1816, at the famous scary-storytelling activity at the Villa Diodati, on Lake Leman, the one where Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had its origins, Dr. Polidori’s original contribution was a tale about a skull-headed woman, so cursed, apparently, for peeping through keyholes. Alas, everyone mocked his idea (which, we know know, must surely have been entitled The Meta, and he came back with his second idea, The Vampyre: the original Gothic vampire story. A speculative literary historian has attempted to reconstruct Polidori’s original tale, viz.:

It happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon Paris in winter, there appeared at the various parties and salons a noblewoman more remarkable for her singularities, than her rank. She gazed upon the mirth around her, as if she could not participate therein. Apparently, the light laughter of the fair only attracted her attention, that he might by a look quell it and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned.

Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead black eye-sockets, which, fixing upon the object’s face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass. Her peculiarly-formed bosoms caused her to be invited to every house; all wished to see them, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention.

[…]

There was no colour upon her victim’s cheek, not even upon his lip; yet there was a stillness about his face that seemed almost as attaching as the life that once dwelt there:—upon his neck and chest was blood, the horrid remnants of a dozen bony kisses, and scratches inflicted by some savage feline claw:—to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, “Sacre bleu! Une Meta! Une Meta! et un Meta-chat!“