Mutant Dog-Man

here's the link, with a bunch more pictures.
via Warren Ellis, who people tend to send stuff like this to.

FOR RENT: MISSLE BASE. Slightly Used

COOOOOOOOOOL

What a grand experiment it would be, to live in an old missile base?


oh, and the Sixers beat the Celtics tonight in Boston. Suck it, NBA.

FLYING SAUCERS!!!

Pulp's "Common People", as told by Archie and the Riverdale gang.
and
what in the fuck?

okay, this is actually pretty funny.


aluminum foil as a... what the fuck?
Seriously, is it possible to oppose sex ed in schools when you hear a kid say that aluminum foil works instead of a condom? I'm sure that every generation says this, and maybe it's true, but kids seem to be getting laid a lot more nowadays. Also, they nasty.

Cereal Wars

Last night my wife came home with a box of Golden Grahams she'd picked up at the supermarket (see pic above).
me: "what the hell? Did you buy cereal in 1983?"
her: "No, it's some sort of vintage thing they're doing with General Mills."
me: "that's actually pretty genius. I mean, I can't imagine kids still eating cereal like that, and if you were born between 1070 and 1984, that's pretty much all you need to set started on your nostalgic impulse buying."
her: "I know, right? I actually want some right now just thinking about it, and I just ate"

and so we did. and it still gets soggy INSTANTLY upon contact with milk. But it was alright, because I haven't had that cereal since I was 9 and eating it there with that box in front of me (even the back was the same!) made me feel pretty much like I was a kid. So thanks for that, General Mills.
and to be fair, I like this layout. I like the brownness of it and the fact that there's no holograms or sparkle foil on it. But it also makes me feel 600 years old to look at this compared to today's cereals, even the adult ones. Seriously, of you had handed me a box of cereal from 1981, I'm not sure I would be able to differentiate it from one printed in 1968. You think I'm kidding? Check it out:
Quisp, 1983 (I was gonna insert some snide remark here about how nobody's seen Quisp in 20 years, but of course I'm WRONG).
Super Sugar Crisp, 1984 (which seems kind of cutting edge until you look closely at the bear. Check out those mini arcade games though!Incidentally, who WANTS to give their kids something called Super Sugar Crisp?)
Apple Jacks, 1980 (though I know they continued this poorly-drawn-and-nourished-kids motif for another few years at least)
Check out Raisin Bran, 1981! At what point to the hyper-development of cereal box design take place?
We can't ignore the long-forgotten cereal spokesthings, though. The Walruses, the random sexy whales (the Cap'ns been out to sea a long, long time), the leering, drunken monarch, the unsettling (at best) monkeys, and of course those other weird ass things. Seriously, who uses a scarecrow to sell children's cereal?

Boo Berry, 1981

My personal all-time favorite (character, not cereal*), though, has to be for the one cereal has the LEAST amount of nutritional value ever. Yep; Boo-berry. What fascinates me though is that again, a ghost to sell children's cereal? Not just a ghost, but one that's visibly on drugs? and on top of being a stoned ghost, he's a stoned ghost that looks suspiciously like a hovering blue turd (which might be an indication as to the byproducts of purchasing this particular cereal). Yeah, we got a stoned dead person that looks like poo. and just when you think you're in the clear -OH SHIT- a red bow-tie? and you tell me that they were buying this shit up? WAY.
So I submit to you, the cereal makers, to stop bullshitting us with all these stupid promotions and worthless sparkle and give us some good old-fashioned mascots. I don't mean that think on the Honeycomb box either. It looks like something I cough up only with googly eyes on it.

Favorite all-time cereal? Probably either Smurfberry Crunch (weird, because I've always hated the Smurfs) or Team Cheerios. what can I say, I'm getting old.

Well, I'm off to start moving again. I doubt I'll have any chances for updates until Tuesday or Wednesday, so I hope you have a good couple of days. and if you find yourself in eastern LA County over the weekend, why not stop by and help us lug some boxes? We've got Golden Grahams....

Most of the images I've used for this post came from here (hence the minimal hotlinking), which is one of the most entertaining sites I've seen in a long time. Obviously.

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted” - Arthur Miller

I wasn't gonna post until tomorrow because I'm exhausted and have a HUGE pile of stuff to catch up on since I got back, but I had some links lying around and figured I could use them here. In any case, I had a great time in Portland and got to spend some time with some of my favorite people on the planet, which I don't get many chances to do anymore. Anyway, here's some stuff to look at. I'm hoping to have a mix complete by Wednesday of this week to post before I send my laptop away to be fixed. I know how many times I've threatened to do this but I really have to fix that thing sooner than later.

-I don't want to get too excited about this just yet, but it looks like people are starting to look at KBR and wonder where the hell all that money went. These people deserve worse than whatever they got coming to them. Great read from the Chicago Tribune about the hilarious world of war profiteering.

-I should probably be wary of a remotely controlled robot vigilante stalking Atlanta, but this is just awesome.

-right about now in California I'm wishing I could build a giant fucking snow fort.

-an interesting little way around smoking bans: pretend you're an actor

-I want to buy everything Luke Chueh has ever painted.

-awesomeness. Even my poor grasp of Spanish doesn't hurt this great site.

-Also, I totally didn't think this actually existed, but I heard on Jordan Jesse Go! this morning about Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, which has to be -according to this synopsis- the greatest fucking video game of all time. You can find a download link here. Thank you, Jesse Thorn. that made my morning. Now let me know if you ever find that clip of Tracy Morgan on the sports show, because I'm starting to think it doesn't exist.

How I get lost without leaving my living room

I was recently asked my how I end up "researching" the crap that I do online. How I go to check the basketball scores from the night before and end up looking at the Hand of Glory or wondering what the dark red liquid is that's all over the control room of reactor three at Chernobyl*.

So last night I sat with a pen and paper and tried to map out how exactly this happens. I wanted to map where I go and how I got there. and looking back on it, I failed spectacularly. I started by checking out what the most recent list on Oobject (this along with Buzzflash, Warren Ellis, BoingBoing, or Fark are generally my starting points for stuff like this, see bar at left for links to all these places), and they had a list of "weird outlaw radio transmitters". Which is pretty awesome as it is. Between that and the page for the B-25 (the plane I took a picture of and posted over the weekend. I wasn't sure if it was a B-25 or a B-26, but I've since learned it was actually a B-25J) I managed to go on a clicking spree that took me from the furthest reaches of experimental artillery to micronations and pirate radio. From painter Thomas Luny to the Stratellite communications airship. Oddly enough, I ended up at the site of this Burlesque Revue, which I was invited to attend this weekend and promptly declined**.

Anyway, excuse my childish penmanship and bear with me. There's no actual diagram here, but it made sense to me as I was writing it. There's a completely logical sequence here, and I can tell you why looking at the wikipedia page for the B-2 bomber would cause me to look up the St. Louis Arch (namely because the picture on the B-2 page shows it flying over St. Louis for some reason and I didn't know you could actually go inside the Arch. Moving on, this was more an experiment for me than anything, and an unproductive one at that. But now I know what the Child Ballads are (see image above). Most of these were wikipedia or directly referred to by wikipedia, with the exceptions of the etymology site, the Fort Flagler stuff, and the Burlesque page. I'm sorry I haven't linked all of that because it would take me for fucking ever. So enjoy this half-assed attempt at explanation:

*As it turns out, it was a heavy foam that was sprayed in the air to remove the floating radioactive particles in the dust from the air that the cleanup crews were breathing.

**I've got my own numerous reasons for doing so, but mostly because I fear my eyes would actually detach their retinas and start rolling my head like windows on a slot machine. Not in a "take it off" way, but more of a "seriously, you already won. I respect your femininity, but it's boring the shit out of me" sort of way.

In other news, I'm rapidly approaching post #400. Which means I should do something celebratory. I almost certainly will not.

Seriously, what the crap is this all about?

Recreational Simulations 1 is a collection of 4 doses on CD: Marijuana, Cocaine, Opium, and Peyote. Each audio track contains our advanced binaural beats that will synchronize your brainwaves to the same state as the recreational dose. Mixed with our advanced auditory pulses are soothing backtracks of ambient soundscapes to help the brain induce of state of mood lift, euphoria, sedation, and hallucination. For the truly serious psychonaughts only.

I wonder how many times I could listen to all of these at once before I drop out of society to go work on a turnip farm under the assumed name of "Rusty Trapeze" and have daily freakout parades in the 1986 Toyota Carolla that poses as my living room.

Dead Pets Society

A diary of the animals a vet tech puts down. My GOD this is sad. But it makes me happy that we adopted this furry little monster that's licking my feet as I type this.

Will Bunch has to point out again why endorsing both McCain and Obama is completely stupid. I honestly at this point have become concerned about this whole thing. As I head into the voting booth tomorrow, I honestly have to decide which party I want to vote for (registering as an Independent in CA allows me to do this) because while I want Obama to win, I really want McCain to lose. I honestly just can't even fathom our nation being bullheaded enough to vote for this guy after the 7.5 years of bullshit we've just been through. Seriously.

I had this image hanging over my bed for 8 years and had completely forgotten about it until just now.

Stolen from Fark

While I bemoan the state of ignorance that our culture seems to be nosediving into, it's somewhat comforting to know that we're not the only ones. 1 in 4 Britons think that Winston Churchill was a fictional character, that Sherlock Holmes was real.

OK Prostitute had her kids waiting in the car.

Stephen King on the popularization of the Presidential election.

What made my day today: For a brief moment, Tom Petty's wikipedia page had him listed has having been born on January 20, 1260.

Thanks, Warren Ellis.

I love your site. I really do. I've mentioned it here time and time again. I don't get into some of the weirdness that you post, but it's almost always thoughtworthy, and makes me feel a little smarter most of the time. I even check out the weird sex stuff, though I'll never understand how the hell you find it.

and now, thanks to you, I've got the indelible image of a man eating his own testicle in my brain. I'm not kidding. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Please excuse me while I scratch my own eyes out with a rusty melon baller.

okay, it's pretty common knowledge that Q-tips are bad for you, and that since 1997, so has Q-Tip. Forgive me for the terrible joke. I know how bad it is, but I was certain that the Kamaal the Abstract joke I had there would've gone considerably worse.
My problem is that I like q-tips. Does anybody actually not like using them? It takes 2 seconds and you know right away whether or not you've made an improvement*. For probably close to a decade now I've known what they can do to your ear canal, but this hasn't stopped me from just using them to clean my outer ear. I don't know how dangerous that is, but damned if I'm going to stop, despite the considerable damage to my hearing that's already been done. I wish I could just move on to ear drops and be done with it. Fact is, I own and use ear drops. But I hate them. I don't like lying on my side, I don't like intentionally dripping a cold liquid into my ear canal, and I don't like using a rubber bulb thingy to flush it out with water. Yes, there isn't ONE part of that process that I like.
"Well" I can hear you saying, "do you like having good hearing, Cotton? Do you like not being deaf?"
Oh, you smug bastards. my reply to this is to shout "shut up!" and run away crying. Suck on THAT, Kreskin.

*I know this is disgusting. It absolutely is. But I look, and I'm betting that you probably do, too. or that perverse little peek into a kleenex once you've blown your nose. But let's face it, keeping track of what comes out of your body is only slightly less important than keeping track of what goes into it. But then I've been known to drip fake blood in my ears in public to play jokes on my family, so who knows what runs though my head.

New species Discovered.

BoingBoing just totally convinced me to buy a book. an AWESOME book.

What's your favorite diving helmet? I'm really partial to #10, but I think that might be because it reminds me of those helmets that workers in victorian-era sanitariums used to wear.

Little else going on that I care to talk about. Made reservations to head home for the holiday. I think I might still be grouchy from too much turkey. That and I had a sudden urge last night to re-read Brian Lumley's Necroscope series, despite the considerable trouble I'd encounter tracking them all down on top of the suspicion that I'd probably lose interest about halfway through.



moral of the "story": Save every book you've ever owned.

Skunk Ape

The Economist 11/24

GRHAWAARGH

English Russia has one of the most interesting stories I've read in quite some time. Basically, some construction workers in Russia discovered either a new or a previously thought extinct species of fish on a job site. Before smashing it to death with their tools. Check out the link though because the pictures are pretty amazing and you can only wonder how bitey these things might get. Remember that crazy Snakehead fish that everyone freaked out about a few years ago? Imagine if this thing was flapping around our suburbs...

I think I've figured out this Economist thing. I hope so anyway, because I've spend a whole day trying to figure out how and where to host this thing. I'm hoping to find somewhere else, because I don't like megaupload's software and the file is too big to use mediafire or rapidshare. So yeah, suggestions are welcome on that. Anyway, here's the audio podcast for the upcoming week's Economist. Please let me know if that link doesn't work, and I'll work out some sort of resolve. With fire. I usually skip about a quarter of it because, well, money bores me. But it's still an amazing source of information and perspective that I can't recommend highly enough.

I've been reading up on the cryptozoology again, specifically about yeti scalps and the Alma, Russia's counterpart to the Abominable Snowman. Someday, I swear, I will actually try to maintain some knowledge about something that is actually useful. Something that could prevent someone from getting sick or provide a nice little tax break or some damned thing.
But it won't be today. Because I'm currently about to sit down and spend a couple hours reading the compiled oral history of a fictional zombie war.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen returns on Wednesday with The Black Dossier, which I'm all too fucking excited for. Even with the knowledge that I've gleaned from the web, I still have no idea what sort of story it will tell and I can't wait to put my life on hold while I read through it.

off to read. enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Riverbend in Syria

evacuation

I've been looking through these pictures of suddenly abandoned homes I came across on English Russia. They're amazing. It's too easy to imagine a context in which someone would rush out the door of their apartment, leaving for good with their highly personal belongings strewn out across their floor. I imagine fear of toxic gas, of nuclear holocaust. Fear of mob reprisal and torch-wielding mobs. Fear of secret police and instant death. I imagine crying children leaving behind filthy, beloved stuffed animals and prized television sets left in haste.
But the sad reality of it is that these places were probably left in fine order with everything where it was supposed to be. The apparent havoc left by scavengers and drug addicts, looking for expired medicine and Nazi gold.
When I was a sophomore in high school there was an abandoned house that some friends of mine had found. There were newspapers dating back to 1986 stacked up just inside the front door. The closets still had sweaters, the pantry still had dry goods.
There was also a fully stocked bar in the basement. I remember we found some sort of board game that basically consisted of a vinyl football field and a stack of cards that we somehow had turned into a drinking game. We would line up four shots of whatever we'd come across (this was the first and only time that I ever would drink banana schnapps) and somehow counted them as downs and field progression.
I went outside to smoke a cigarette (I still am filled with a small pride that I respected the abandoned home enough not to fill it with smoke) and walked smack into a police officer. I was 16 and pretty drunk. It was the second time I was ever arrested.
This is how I live now. It's 11:30 on a Saturday night and I'm looking at crap on the internet and telling high school stories to nobody in particular. We went to a nearby shopping center today and came very close to dying in a car crash on the way home. Fucking California drivers.

Watching: The Science of Sleep. It's so filled with whimsy that I just want to blink myself out of existence.

Reading: The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman. I'm pain in-the-ass late on this, but it's the most impressive graphic novel I've read in a very long time. It's put together from a graphic design standpoint and can at times be an utterly exhaustive read. In a good way. I can't recommend this enough.
I got Warren Ellis' book in the mail on friday, and expect to read it in one giant sitting. Perhaps I'll write something on it late.r

"they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up,"

Lonesome George: Bangin!

and just so you don't start hating him just because he's too busy sexing it up outside of his species and not even bothering to wipe the food off his face, he's also got a little buddy: