It has been a constant struggle in our relationship for my other half and I to reconcile our respective environmental proclivities. I, for example, abhor nature and would not shed a single tear should it be decided that the verdant fields and sweltering jungles be paved over, where she finds the bustling, concrete hives of cities to be a sensory apocalypse of which she wants no part.
This becomes especially evident when we travel. I simply cannot think of a more uninteresting vacation destination than Pangaea. Really, I ask you, besides cowering in fear from the vicious flora and fauna, what is there to do? Lounge around the resort? No, thank you, give me the Outer Colonies. Even future Tokyo, with its loathsome, robot denizens, wins hands down over the unpopulated super continent.
Whichever you prefer, you can remember your trip with these retro-styled time travel posters. 826LA, McSweeney’s non-profit student writing center, is offering five of them. Perfect for you, or the time machine enthusiast in your life.
As much as I appreciate the work that has come out of Pixar, Wall-E is the first of their films that I have anticipated. These fantastic, and pricey, retro prints — featuring illustrations by Eric Tan — only increase my desire to see it.
The Mattel Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster 5530 fires compressed air with a deafening blast. Our measurements top out at 157 dB–above a level that can do permanent damage to the hearing of an adult. We rate the toy Not Acceptable.
Some examples from a British game, circa 1940, called “Vacuation”; the object of which was to “complete evacuation by discarding every card in the hand.” The packaging reads:
Vacuation
TOPICAL AND FASCINATING
BRITISH MADE
THE GAME OF THE MOMENT
A GAME FOR ALL AGES.
Wendy and Richard Pini, creators of long-running indy comic series Elfquest, are making the whole caboodle available free of charge at their website. New issues will be posted weekly until 30 years’ worth is online.
Comment from BoingBoing and Metafilter remind us why this is one of the best comics you’ve never heard of, but here’s a quick primer on why it rules.
• With Dave Sim’s Cerebus, it was among the first self-published comics to make it big, booting down the door for new talent the nation over. Its success as a graphic novel in mainstream bookstores helped infect the American mainstream with a European-esque appreciation for comics. Women actually read this. Women.
• Wendy Pini’s art is a melting pot of comics, manga and classical illustration. And she’s been at it since before most people had even heard of manga…
• The feral, omnisexual, hallucinogen-guzzling protagonists aren’t Tolkien-derived clichés, but a freakish medley of european lore, native american myth and hippy free love.
• No superheroes, magic wands or other arbitrary magics. It’s consistently plotted to tight rules of engagement and expertly crafted by the same wife-and-husband team thats been doing little else since 1977.
• It’s a neat blend of high fantasy and science fiction: the “elves” are aliens who wanted to impress us by appearing as angels, but got stuck in a genetic disguise by their slaves’ violent rebellion.
• All the fashions in it are either from the 1970s or the 1930s: everyone is either a pimp in furs and leather or something sculpted by Erté. They just don’t make ‘em like this any more.
• Winnowill is the best arch-villainess since Maleficent Cthulhu.
• It’s not over: the story’s final showdown, the creators write, has been written but not yet published.
• 6,000 pages of full-color classic indy brilliance free of charge. Precedent set.
• Issue #17’s Elf Orgy. If nothing else, a great name for a punk band. (Brownlee has already demanded scans, but I don’t have a copy to hand — any fans out there who can do the honors?)
This grotesque creature inspired a thousand coulrophobic children to imagine a clammy, corpse-white hand grasping them around their ankles and pulling them down into the cold black deep every time they went to the beach: it’s Glurpo, the Underwater Clown! Even his name is the onomatopoeia of a drowning man’s scream.
Glurpo was apparently quite the tourist attraction at the San Marcos Texas “Aquarena,” where — during a sub-aqueous show mostly devoted to bathing suit beauties combing their luscious, liquid hair — he would swim out of an underwater cave and horrify small children by mutely laughing and sucking his insane rictus up against the glass like a parasitic eel.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey is a phenomenal site allowing you to search the archives of 17th Century Court Records by keywords such as “buggery” and remind yourself that a scant 400 years ago, we were all total savages.
A married woman lately living without Cripplegate, that appeared to be between 30 and 40 years of age, was arrigned, For that she having not the fear of God before her eyes, nor regarding the order of Nature, on the 23. of June last, to the disgrace of all womankind, did commit Buggery with a certain Mungril Dog, and wickedly, divellishly, and against nature had venerial and Carnal copulation with him, &c.
It was was proved that the Prisoner was a person of a lewd conversation, and lodging in a Room into which there were several holes to look in at from the next house, they had often seen her in the very acts of uncleanness with Villains that followed her; but one day one of the Witnesses (a young woman) happening to cast her view in, saw her use such actions with a Dog as are not fit here to be recited: At which being amazed, she called up another woman, and after that a man, who all saw her several times practising this beastliness, and fully evidenced the same in Court, where the Dog was likewise brought, add being set on the Bar before the Prisoner, owned her by wagging his tail, and making motions as it were to kiss her, which ’twas sworn she did do when she made that horrid use of him.
Summary: a woman who was regularly viewed through a peephole in her wall by three leering neighbors was found guilty of buggering a dog because it wagged its tail at her and tried to lick her during the proceedings. Sentence: Death!
Brian Morris, who describes himself in terms of Google Maps as “a freelance designer living on Chicago’s west side”, crafts, among other things, wonderful sculptures decorated with a Rockabilly tattooists sensibilities and an eye for the bizarre. Take for example this pig/human rape baby, looking all the world like it stepped out of a Woodring inspired nightmare.
It’s Friday so just sit back, relax, and watch James Brown, his man breasts glistening through an obscenely low v-neck, his legs clad in the widest and finest of flared pants. Watch him as he dances for he dances for you, Ectomo.
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.
