Thu Tran is a mixed media artist who has a show on IFC called Food Party. Aside from The Mighty Boosh, this is my favourite show on TV right now. Visually this show is what I only dream of being able to one day do with my photo shoots. Call it ‘advanced DIY’ (*cough*- read:budget). I have been living in Thu’s fantasy world of slightly horrifying cardboard friends and living inanimate objects since about 1979 when I became entranced with Sid & Marty Krofft.
Artisan status aside, Thu is also naturally hilarious. Her delivery, cadence, and choice of words are being siphoned directly from the marrow of my funny bone. Some highlights of the show consist of a baguette having sex with a hamburger bun (complete with climax), a carnal representation of peanut butter and jelly finding each other to be soul mates, and crazy recipes like the noodle and ham pancake made in the video above.
This graphic video addresses a sudden surge in secret horse slaughterings in Miami-Dade County, where authorities suspect a black market for the meat has popped up. Some small justice is served, here: the buyers get meat tainted with dewormers, antibiotics, tranquilizers, fly spray, and the myriad other toxic chemicals blanketed over the average domestic horse. Seventeen horses have been killed so far.
Next time someone tells you the Beatles are overrated, show them this photo and invite them to shut their whore mouth. “Ahead of their time” doesn’t begin to cover it.
Diesel, the clothing company for people who will not wear jeans costing less than $100, has been releasing a number of disturbing videos advertising…clothing? To be honest, I’m not sure. What I can tell you is that their newest short piece, Pete the Meat Puppet is topping this weeks list of weird.
The story follows the life of Pete, created by an overweight, barren butcher out of various meats, who is brought to life through the magical properties of her breast milk. So shocked is she that she promptly dies, sending Pete into the world to find his own way. You’ll follow him as he achieves fame and fortune as a fast food spokesman, eventually entering into a booze, coke, and whore fueled downward spiral that includes bestiality, cannibalism, prostitution, and maggots. Yep, feel-good story of the year right here folks.
Monkey Dust is a hard cartoon to describe without completely blowing the premise and turning people away from it insofar as it comes off as completely disturbed. Which it most certainly is. Nevertheless, I have been obsessed with it since I found out about it and, like most obsessions, it needs to be shared.
Monkey Dust is a nightmare vision of Britain, a dark, twisted other world full of giant advertising conglomerates like Labia, who takes the job of rebranding cancer as “Closure”, an attractive end-of-life option. Its citizens are no less bizarre. Take Mr. Ivan Dobsky, The Meat-Safe Murderer or so he was known until he was cleared 27 years later. He himself always said he “never done it. I only said I done it so they would take the electrodes of me nipples.” Then there’s Geoff, the first-time cottager, who despite his meek, introverted personality holds the lofty goal of fellating a complete stranger in a public place. There’s also Clive, who constantly comes home late only to tell his wife a lie based on the lyrics to The Eagles’s “Hotel California”, inept chat-room pedophiles, pretentious yuppies, and classically trained actors.
These series of interconnected vignettes and recurring characters make for a delightfully sick experience but it is no doubt one you will either love or hate. Some may be turned off by the humor on display here as it is unapologetically dark; but for those who enjoy their laughs more on the grim side of things you are in for quite a treat.
Our deepest apologies, dear readers, for having fallen down on the job as of late in regards to one of our most sacred traditions. Needless to say, we are filled with a great sense of shame and assure you it will not happen again. If, in the future, one of us is unable to fulfill their obligations our newly acquired team of Korean animators will leap into action, producing original cartoons for your enjoyment, although in all honesty I personally cannot guarantee this. You see, by “team of Korean animators” I actually mean a Korean family that Eliza met — and subsequently forced into her windowless van — while running errands at Home Depot. They have tried to reason with her, explaining that they are involved in other professions, the father is a salesman for a lighting manufacturer and his wife works as a bank teller. The children are, well, children.
Eliza would hear none of it however, either assuming that they were lying or under the impression that all people of Korean descent have an innate ability to animate. The rest of the staff has done their best to ignore the situation, knowing full well that once Miss Gauger has set her mind on something, one has little chance of ever changing her opinion. It is for this reason that we do nothing when she insists that her aforementioned van has the ability to travel through time or that Qais is, in her words, “a spy sent by space Turks to steal her chocolate secrets.” Regardless it has been uncomfortable, the tired and nervous familial unit has taken up residence in our break room where they were horrified to find only four items : coffee, tea, pipe tobacco, and squid chips. It would be worse when they found out that these items were our sole sources of sustenance. The children, unsurprisingly, did not take well to the tobacco. Perhaps we should send out for food.
Ah well, I’m sure they’ll be fine, besides it’s cartoon time! Click through, loyal Ectomites, and witness their triumphant return!
P.S. Also, remember that if you visit the YouTube page for a particular video you have the option to watch it in high quality. Especially well suited to the anime.
I can’t wait for lab grown meat. The possibilities that industrialized in vitro meat production brings are not only ecologically and socially conscious, but potentially deviant as the day is long. The long march of science nearly vibrates with the science community’s eagerness to make human hocks, chimp scampi, rhino roasts, and sure, ethically obtained beef. Yet while supermarkets lined with freezers full of laboratory delights have been the stuff of science fiction for some time; the hour of orgiastic over-indulgence in SmartFlesh is nigh.
Recently, at the In Vitro Meat Symposium in Ås, Norway, an economic analysis was presented that indicates meat grown in tanks would be cost competitive with European beef prices. So while the benefits of lab grown food are blatantly obvious to anyone that stops to think about it for more than a minute, it’s a similarly obvious fact that the almighty dollar (or euro as the case may be) is what really speaks, and the sweet, sweet song of bio-science gone oh so right is tickling my tympanics.
But doubt runs rampant among freak meat elite, with experts revealing skepticism as to whether “there is a large market of early adopters who want to eat test tube meat for environmental, health or ethical reasons.” I am here to calm your quaking. Not only is there a market for it, but if the readership of any number of blogs in my feed reader is an indication, the market is not only large but eager and deeply, deeply disturbed.
With a little luck — and a basement full of “missing” puritanical no-fun-niks — the first Ectomo barbecue will be vegan friendly.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
