There’s two ways you can take this advertisement for Fred’s “Video Movie” and animation services. The first is as a hilariously perplexing display of the kind of human tragedy lurking within the seething morass of “normal” people. That interpretation is really more than enough to keep you amused as you watch the rest of Fred’s inexplicably edited and composed videos.

There is however, a second, far more insidious (and I think more accurate) interpretation. You see Fred is no ordinary Canadian man with a video camera, computer, and delusions of film-making grandeur. Fred is a monster, an evil man that has conducted horrific experiments in the unspeakable regions of science that no self-respecting man or woman gives any thought to lest they run shrieking into the night. That lifeless lump of audibly monotone flesh is not his wife, but an automota created in his hideous lab simply to see if he could accomplish the feat.

She was probably once a beautiful woman, rife with vim and vigor, full of the promise and untapped potential our parents and Disney have led us to believe we all have inside. Now the poor thing is nothing more than a shapeless mound atop a wheeled stool (adjustable in height of course, even mad scientists need their rocks off once in a while) shuffled around to be put on display as Fred’s greatest accomplishment. You can almost hear the screams of a shattered psyche echoing in her mind as she mumbles the speeches Fred has programmed her prior to show time.

Isn’t pretending fun?!

Fred and Sharon’s movies [Youtube : Thanks, Grisella!]

In spite of what you may have heard, our beloved mascot wasn’t the result of a stroke of genius (or just a stroke depending on your opinions on the matter) leaping full born from the hideous brains of our inimitable editors-in-chief.

Oh no, there were countless inhumane experiments in cutting edge Octopus/Insect combination technology. While the aforementioned editor’s gruesome experimentation resulted in flabbergasting advances in the field, it also resulted in a trail of adorable abominations such as the above.

While I sure do love the little Beetlepus “gifted” to me by John and Eliza (and would never begrudge him the space in my bathroom); who ever heard of an octopus that’s afraid of water?

Imps and Monsters [Justin Hillgrove] : Juxtapoz

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a contact lens that integrates a biologically safe circuit into its design. The circuit will allow for a myriad number of possibilities such as giving pilots or drivers info on their speed projected onto their windshield or to help the vision impaired.

Of course, the lenses can also be applied to entertainment and communications purposes. They would allow videogame designers to completely immerse the player in their virtual world. One would be able to browse the internet on a floating display that only the wearer could see. I can only pray that these appear soon; I look forward to posting “Your Daily WTF”, knowing that, somewhere, perhaps on a park bench, someone is staring, an expression of pained shock and horror on their face, as people walk past wondering if, perhaps, someone should get them some medical attention.

Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision [uwnews]

I love abandoned places…especially abandoned scientific establishments. You’d be amazed at the stuff that people will just leave behind. In Russia, the government literally left behind an entire neurological laboratory full of monkey brains in jars, half-mummified rat heads, and assorted other blocky, thrown-together Russian electronics. This place is like a candy store for zombies and medicophiles like myself.

The next time I’m in Russia (which would, technically, be the first I will have ever been in Russia), I plan to bust into this joint and abscond with a number of preserved brains and Frankensteinian Russki computer equipment. All part of my longterm plan to turn my house into an authenthic Mad Scientist’s Laboratory.

Abandoned laboratory of studying a human brain [Brushnicka.com]

In the dim history of my mumblings there are mentions of a property called, intriguingly, Ranklechick and His Three-Legged Cat. I first read this and wrote about it back at Table of Malcontents, mentioning it in a post on comic book MBQ. The post earned me to scorn of an entire generation of American manga fans (”white, fat, mousy-haired, wire-framed and lacking in personal hygiene”), and perhaps was not the best venue in which to introduce Rankle.

Allow me, instead, to quote from creator Rosearik Rikki Simons:

Ranklechick and His Three-Legged Cat is about a child Ghoul named Ranklechick. Ranklechick lives near Jupiter’s moon, Europa, within a sentient space station called the Europan Zoo. He lives with his three-legged cat, Pumpernick. Since birth, Ranklechick has been accused by his father of murdering his mother and now the sad little Ghoul thinks he can make everything right if he can just talk to his mother’s ghost. This is Ranklechick’s obsession, and every Ghoul on board the Zoo must have an obsession in order for the Zoo to survive. Being that he is of the inventor class of Ghoul, Ranklechick invents an absurd collection of devices in his quest to speak to his mother, like his Bliss Extractor, which he uses to try to get an autograph from the ghost of Charles Dickens, or his Sphere of Belligerence, a spacecraft propulsion system that literally insults physics. All Ghouls are social idiots trapped in a society that thrives off of absurdity, like a vast population of Asperger’s patients. Ranklechick spends his time living in the densely populated Europan Zoo, building necrotic communicators when he isn’t being interrupted by the the strange and unnatural — and he has many interruptions: running from handshaking lessons, avoiding being made into candy by the evil android Nathan Burblepinch, getting repeatedly decapitated, suffering the company of oniomaniac children, being possessed by the Spirit of Failure, suicidal disembodied brains, melancholic ham, a sardonic talking three-legged cat for a best friend, and all the while Ranklechick continues to believe he is becoming a comic book character. When all is quiet and he has time to think, he wonders if he’ll ever get to tell his dead mother that he loves her. This is a comedy.

I was so taken with Ranklechick’s cast and setting that I penned two pieces of fanart, something I never, ever do, one of which can be seen to the right. That is Sister Toovibohnes (I’m iffy on the spelling), a straight-laced space nun that lives aboard the Europan Zoo with the rest of the gang.

Ranklechick has been generously made available for free on Simons’ website, along with Super Information Hijinx: Reality Check! (which I have not read, but I believe it involves catgirls and also “the internet”).

Ranklechick and His Three-Legged Cat; Reality Check [Studio Tavicat]

Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla in Tesla’s lab, 1894.

Nikola Tesla [Wikipedia]

I do not personally know Steve Erenburg, who goes by the name of Radio Guy, but he may be one of the coolest people I’ve never met. This is due, in large part, to the fact that he happens to collect and deal in such oddities as the “Shock Therapy Helmet” and “Oudin Resonator”, among other various contraptions, medical instruments, and equipment, including this incredible firefighter’s respirator from the 1800s. I badly want one of these, you know, just to wear around the house.

Radio Guy [Radio Guy] : boingboing : Kircher Society

BE STIFF! It’s hard to believe that 1) Saturday Night Live used to be funny; and 2) DEVO was once regarded as the future of music. Here at Ectomo, we believe heartily in Devo’s theory of de-evolution! I may only speak from personal experience here, perhaps because I am the only member of the staff who lives in the wilds of southwestern Pennsylvania and routinely ingests mutagenic materials for Fun and Profit, but I have seen de-evolution in action: both in my neighbors, and in myself. My newly-grown semi-prehensile tail clearly demonstrates a step backwards–but not so much as my realization that Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” describes visually, musically, and conceptually my entire love life.

*Le sigh* I guess I’m just a spud boy, looking for a real tomato. You’d think things would’ve de-evolved enough by now that I’d be able to find on every street corner spud girls being stiff, through being cool, to get me jerkin’ back and forth…but not, it was all just wind in sails. ARE WE NOT MEN?! Sadly, we all still are. Nothing but a bunch of damn new traditionalists bound by our duty now for the future. As a transhumanist, I know that someday…someday I’ll be a mechanical man and be above all this human BS, but until then…I’m just a blockhead.

As my week has been busier than most, I’m sorry to say I simply haven’t had the time to finish the 11th, and nearly final part of “Trois Freres.” Yet fear not, fellow Lovecraftian nihilists! I bring to you instead a sneak peak at the follow-up tale to “Trois Freres,” the prologue to “Goodnight, Antarctica”!

“Goodnight, Antarctica” follows the disastrous International Expedition to the Elder Ones’ Antarctican cities on a last-ditch effort to search for any hints of how the Elders beat and imprisoned Great Cthulhu and its fellow-kind in R’Lyeh millions of years ago. Continuing the tradition of the first story in using “real life” personages (such as myself) as narrators or major figures in the tales, the leader of the International Expedition and primary viewpoint character for “Goodnight, Antarctica” is none other than well-known dark fantasy/Lovecraftian author and professional paleontologist (and Official Homegirl of the author), Caitlin R. Kiernan. Continue Reading…

I, Derek Cthulhu Fh’tagn Pegritz, have a confession to make: I have a raging medical fetish, especially when it comes to mortuary equipment and insane asylums. I collect antique medical equipment, and my house looks like a combination of a 1920s doctors office and a shrine to Skinny Puppy and broken computer equipment. If I ever find an Innsmouth babe of my own, we shall certainly honeymoon at Danvers Asylum in Danvers, Mass.

So when I came upon Cyril Van Der Haegen’s online portfolio, I was interested in just flipping through the illustrations, chasing down a few rumored R’lyehan prints until…I came upon the one above. Continue Reading…

Since my band Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos is playing tonight in Pittsburgh and I have had to teach students how to properly pronounce “wgah’nagl” and its various declensions all day, I’ve but little time to post today–so here’s what you’re gonna get: A PHAT JAM PHOR YOUR ASSES!

Witness the insane mixage!

Take 1 Part Skinny Puppy’s “Pro-Test.”

Mix with 1 Part Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Bay.”

Stir until mixture begins to phatten.

Heat it up ’til it’s steamin’ awesome hott (with no less than two T’s!)–

THEN SHOVE IT UP YOUR BOOTY and get down with your bad self! I wanna see ALL rumps shakin’ to this beat…or, if you are an amorphous blob of protoplasm, I’d better see them membranes wigglin’!

(Sorry…still can’t get YouTube videos to embed. I think YouTube hates us now. I knew I never should’ve uploaded that video of me and Yog-Sothoth mudwrestling in twelve dimensions. Shit like that probably warped the spacetime in which their servers reside and now it’s all gone to hell. Don’t blame me if some of you sudden;y start to find videos embedded in the solid rock of mountains, bulkheads of naval ships, or the foreheads of newborn babes.)

“Cheese pirate” is my new favorite slur.

Artist, musician, toy-maker, robot overlord: there is nothing the incredible Dr. Steel can’t do.

A shiny bald skull throbs with gelatinous cerebral might; inside, purple arcs of electricity shoot from one self-implanted flux capacitor to the next, bringing strange visions of a robot rock future to the eccentric mad scientist, which he brings to life by using his sinewy arms and insane scientific acumen to build a loyal army of mechanical men. He also recruits sexy red-headed nurses and Girl Scout Lolitas for his cause. Dr. Steel is wonderful.

And now he commands you to READ. Go do it.

Dr. Steel [Official Site] : image ectotweeted by Robin L.