Caput Corvi

One of the Nigredo images from alchemy is the “Caput Corvi.” Somehow the phrase Caput Corvi makes me laugh. (Literally, it means “Decapitation of the Crow.” That doesn’t sound so funny, actually. Let’s stick with the Latin.)
Out of all these serious works on the stages alchemy, I have yet to come across the the “Humerous Stage.”It seems to me there should be a “black humor” stage after these Corvis have laughed their heads off.

Solitary Crow On Fence Post Portending Doom, Analysts Warn

GREELEY, NE—Experts confirmed Monday that a single black crow perched ominously on a fence post in rural Nebraska is almost certainly a harbinger of great doom and despair for all Americans.

The crow came eerily to rest on the rickety wooden post at 10:26 a.m. Monday, according to farm hands working in a nearby field at the time. Citing a vague but certain feeling that “something just wasn’t right,” one of the laborers contacted law enforcement officials, and within hours federal authorities had converged on the site.

By late afternoon, sources in the Pentagon had received intelligence corroborating their suspicions that the crow is in fact a dark omen foretelling widespread economic ruin, famine, pestilence, and perhaps even the total collapse of the national infrastructure.

“At this point, all we can say for sure is that the sudden appearance of this grim avian prophet spells disaster for our nation’s banks, its roads, its schools, its health care system, its energy resources—for our entire American way of life,” Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters while examining video footage of the crow. “Would you just look at the way it’s sitting there, with those glassy, black eyes and that creepy beak. Christ. Something bad is going to happen, I just know it.” More: The Onion