We are living in the future is a common and often lazy sentiment about the modern world. When I read stories like this in the newspaper I am however forced to agree. This is an outbreak of science fiction in the fun and not bloody terrifying way. While in a café caffeinating my brain and reading The Independent yesterday morning this put a much needed smile on my face.

Tomohiro Shibata and Satoko Inoue tied the knot yesterday under the watchful eye of a 1.5m android known as I-Fairy, in what the machine’s manufacturer, Kokoro, said was the first robot-led wedding in the world.

Wires led from the bottom of the robot, bolted to a chair in front of 50 guests at a rooftop restaurant in central Tokyo, to a black curtain a few metres away behind which a man crouched, using a computer to operate the electronic wedding conductor’s movement and utterances.

The robot, wearing a wreath of bright flowers and speaking in a tinny voice, waved its arms as it asked the groom to “Please lift the bride’s veil”, before inviting the newly-weds to kiss.

The happy couple chose this unique angle to their nuptials because they were keen to showcase an example of the new generation of androids. “This was a lot of fun,” Satoko Inoue, the 36-year-old bride who works at Kokoro, told the Associated Press. “I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends. Those in the robot industry mostly understand this, but people mainly want robots near them that serve some purpose.”

Robot conducts first electronic wedding in Japan [Independent]

Mother of God.

There’s a lot of weird shit out there, and a lot of it comes from Japan. This clip, from a new prime-time television program, features a superheroine who has magical boobies.

Let that sink in. Roll it around in your head for a second.

The laser breasts would make her more than a match for any fishperson river spirit a monster killer might encounter. But what if she’s accosted by townspeople angered at the defeat of the only being that can bring them passion/koi? She’s done for! Not to worry. Her rack’s skillset also includes hypnosis.

Sure, why not.

And then she eats chopsticks.

Let’s all thank Japan, kids.

Kodai Shojou Dogu-chan Defeats The Koi Ogre [YouTube]

My dad seems to be composed of more stories than proteins. He was a firefighter for thirty years, he was in attendance at the Led Zeppelin show that is the first recorded instance of headbanging, and he was in the Army, stationed on Okinawa.

While there, he visited one of the strangest sites on the Pacific Rim: Yonaguni.

All soldiers return from their stations with travelers’ tales, but my pop tells a story like nobody else. He’d talk about the pit fights the locals would stage in which a mongoose would wrestle a habu—an indigenous Okinawan viper, and demonstrate the holds. When I was a boy, he’d tell the story of his trip to Yonagunijima as if he were a bard—gesticulating, insinuating, shaking his fists for emphasis.

He told about strange tombs that dotted the shoreline; tombs that weren’t of traditional Japanese make and that made him nervous if he stayed too long. He always made a point to mention that the cemetery complex seemed to continue on into the water, rather than stopping at the shoreline. When I asked him why, as all young boys must, he’d raise his eyebrows, comically, and intone, “Maybe it was Atlantis.”
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You will find this adorable, and be unable to gross yourself out by his probable sexual investment in the performance. He’s just too goddamn cute.

[thanks Jhonen!]

I’m not sure I would remain as calm if my computer suddenly sprouted a fleshy, pulsating tumor.

mechanical tumor [YouTube]