Depicted here is the extraordinarily rare Zombie-Faced Mermaid, a creature not unlike the flounder and the fiddler crab in its stunning asymmetry, and voracious appetite for sailor sex.

Photos From the 2008 Mermaid Parade: Drag, Burlesque, and Little Girls’ Parties [And I Am Not Lying]

Miss Flu, originally uploaded by amoelbarroco.

In honor of the creeping itch in my sinuses, the latest from Handmaiden of the Tentacle, Amoel Barroco. I love the fleshly deconstruction of this piece, and the blase’, but slightly uncomfortable pose. As if one of her buttocks has gone to sleep.

Discomfort. I do love discomfort in art.

Gentlemen, I am outraged.

Your gross negligence in assuming I am ashamed of any of my musical predilections is noted, and will be revenged. There is absolutely no reason to assume, self-righteous pricks that you are, that the carmine creeping up my collar is anything other than stoic pride, a touch of the ol’ toxoplasma gondii, and perhaps a brief spike in my everyday, baseline feelings of discomfort.

Listen you, I was enjoying the Ruski pop nymphets way back, before any hoity-toity English remixes got loose, much less actual American album releases. This shit was edgy and inaccessible. Hell, it still is! I would get home from my live-action Vampire the Masquerade roleplaying session at the local college campus (back when I was a ginger-curled nymphet myself), maybe boot up a game of Fallout 2, invite my BFF Steve over, and we’d watch these videos, on repeat, in silent awe. Why, I thought to myself, did I not have a dark pixie of a partner, an eternal semi-succubus, someone to cling to during the long nights of crippling self-doubt, someone to share my pants and lipgloss, someone to hold my hair while I purged, someone with whom to ghost ride the whip? I mean, someone besides Steve?

Now, emerald-haired, naked in a wooden trunk, chugging Red Bull and typing on a keyboard for which I cannot see the screen, I ask myself: if I had found her, this dark unicorn, would things have turned out better?

But then I think: how could they?

Philosophically, I tend to think Christmas trees should be staggered with a thousand small, colorful toys, as if Santa’s sled exploded over an evergreen. Just like the jumble of gifts beneath, a tree’s decorations should be a chaos of joy, with no aesthetic direction whatsoever.

That said, of course I think this thematically cephalopodic Christmas tree is the best I’ve ever seen. And look at the adorable girls who helped grandma decorate it! Future handmaidens of the tentacle, they. Send pictures of your ultimate consumation, ladies! That will be my Christmas.

Please click through. This tree is great.

99 Octopi [My Byrd House] : Thanks, Andrew!