Reality Folding in on Itself

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Update: Stardust Entertainment does not fuck around.

The Day I Lost My Faith in Humanity

"Honey, I'm sorry about cheating. To improve our marriage I just ordered us a Better Marriage Blanket. That ought to fix everything, right hon? ... Hon?"

Knarf Presents: That's Just Wrong

By Knarf Black XIV
Seer of the Non-unseeable

On the roundish ball of hydrogen and oxygen that we like to call home, it sometimes seems like nature and mankind are forever locked in a struggle over who can come up with the most uniquely disturbing practices. Nature will lay spider eggs in your brain and send spiny parasites up your urethra, but man counters with the iron maiden and genital mutilation. Whenever either side comes up with something particularly noteworthy, it ends up breaking your brain here at "That's Just Wrong."

#1. The Human Centipede

Despite claims of 100% medical accuracy, we can all thank our lucky stars that the concept of surgically connecting three people via the gastric system remains purely the fictional invention of some clearly diseased minds.

It opens next Friday if anyone is interested. More info at Video Updates.

#2. Tibetan Sky Burials

Tibet is not a great place for "civilized" western style burials. They don't have much in the way of dirt or trees, so good luck getting cremated or dumped the traditional six feet under. Instead you get to go take the fast lane back to nature via the gastric systems of hungry vultures flocking overhead.

While its not too much more than ceremonial window dressing on the ancient practice of "just leaving the guy where he died" or "dumping him outside of town", it makes far more economic and ecological sense than the 'proper' method of pumping the corpse full of embalming fluid and sawdust, then sealing it in an elaborate, expensive box to be leisurely devoured by smelly anaerobic bacteria. (Also, some older boys down the street told me they take out your organs only to put them in ziplock bag and sew them back into your chest.)

#3. Sokushinbutsu

It turns out that leaving you on a mountain to be stripped of your meat by ugly birds is only the second most disturbing method for Buddhists to deal with corpses. At least that way you're already dead when the weirdness begins. The Sokushinbutsu were Buddhist monks in Japan who literally mummified themselves alive; a process that could take up to eight years.

After the monk's decision to mummify himself, he spends the next few years on a nuts & berries version of the Christian Bale Machinist diet. After exercising away all body fat, the monk spends a couple years subsisting on toxic, water-leaching tree sap and nearly nothing else. Barely alive and probably resembling a holy man shaped pile of jerky, he would at last be locked in a cave until expiring. In the unlikely scenario that everything went exactly according to plan, the cave would be unsealed years later to reveal a perfectly preserved "living" mummy. (The consolation prize was becoming a boring old regular corpse.)

In the immortal words of Morgan Freeman, "Get busy living, or get busy dying." Those monks got really fucking busy dying. They put more effort into the simple act of killing themselves than most people put into raising children or starting record executive careers.

More info at Pink Tentacle. (Scroll down past the freakshow mummies.)

That's just wrong.

Super Cool American Psycho Video: A Rambling, Bile Filled Rant

By Knarf Black XIV
Professional Malcontent

Watch this music video from actor/singer/celebrity lookalike Miles Fisher, who is apparently most famous as "Tom Cruise on Oprah" in the instant cinematic classic, Superhero Movie:

Pretty neat huh? He looks just like Christian Bale! (If Mr. Bale and Mr. Cruise had a creepy baby together.)

I'm not going to blame you for having that reaction (and I certainly won't blame you for going "Huh?" if you haven't seen the movie) as I had it too. A few minutes later, I suddenly realized that this was a huge piece of shit with absolutely no reason to exist.

Don't get me wrong, the technical prowess of those involved is not in question. The video is extremely well produced and the Talking Heads cover is... not as bad as it could be, I guess. Okay, so I have nothing good to say about the pitch corrected butchering of a personal favorite, but my dislike of the song is not my real beef with this particular slice of Internet pie.

My issue is that it lacks a soul, or at least a reason to exist outside of "Hey, that'll get us some YouTube hits!" Is there some kind of biting satire in the juxtaposition of David Bynre's love song to a floor lamp and Mary Harron's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis? Possibly, but it's certainly not something that didn't already exist in either of the adapted works of art. The point of a mash up (as far as Knarf is concerned) is a dialectical combination of two disparate works in order to create new meaning. American Psycho and 'This Must be the Place (Naive Melody)' create no dialectic energy together because they are thematically similar. The irony of juxtaposing a simple love for 'home' and the hollow existence of Patrick Bateman can already found in the song's subtly downbeat tone and the film's biting satire. Really the only song more obvious and 'on the nose' for this video would have been 'In Every Dream Home a Heartache' by Roxy Music.

Without irony or dialectic frisson, we are left with the viral video equivalent of a Dane Cook "joke." It shows up on stage, references shared experiences so the audience can feel connected to the performer and each other, then flails its arms in a hollow simulation of entertainment.

Oh, good for you.

As Internet culture continues expanding at a geometric rate, I fear that this is its sad future. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with the endless splintering of niches and subcultures; a full ecosystem of memes can spawn incredible post-modern weirdness that the pioneers of Dada couldn't have even begun to imagine. Example: Selleck Waterfall Sandwich. The risk is that we will mistake breadth for depth, expansion for evolution.

Sure referencing awesome songs and films will garner your YouTube videos a plethora of hits, but at the cost of further calcification of whatever niche(s) you are representing.

My apologies for the lack of teh funnies in this post. Allow me to make amends:

Butts.

The Forensic Science of Fake Boobies

By Knarf Black XIV
Women's Health Advocate &
Professional Serial Murderer

After spending weeks carefully picking out a victim, disemboweling her closest friends one by one, and then managing to keep pace with someone running at a full sprint while lugging a chainsaw and pretending not to be in a hurry, I don't have a lot of energy for clean-up. I'd prefer to lay back and fall asleep, but once the fun is over, it's time for the unpleasant reality: cleanup.

Fingerprints need to be charred off, teeth have to be pulled, and the head--don't get me started on how difficult it is to ditch that particular 8 pound millstone. (If I had a nickel for every time I heard "That bowling ball in your bag smells like rotting meat" I'd be brutally slaughtering horny teens in the Cayman Islands by now.) It's not like Hells Kitchen bathtubs can fill themselves with lye.

Anyway, it's already a right pain in the ass to properly dispose of a body...

..and now I have to cut her tits off, too?!?!?!

No rest for the wicked.

The Worlds Worst Song Kicks Ass

Some time ago I was reading Discover magazine (because I am the kind of nerd that the other nerds beat up for not being 'hardcore' enough... that is, if they could muster the energy between asthmatic gasps to actually commit violence against their fellow man) and came across an article about using Science! to determine how appealing works of art would be to average Joe Sixpack. While there was some fascinating stuff about the interplay between danger and safety, and how evolution has hardwired us to enjoy certain pastoral environments, the real meat came from a pair of conceptual artists who were using focus testing surveys to determine the most and least popular artworks for various countries. The least favorite ones were almost exclusively abstract works.

America's favorite painting

Where things get really interesting is in the realm of music. Using the same techniques, the artists created the most and least wanted songs possible. The most wanted song, not surprisingly, sounds like a focus tested shitstorm: a light, Jazz-fusion song about love with an inoffensively rocking guitar solo. It sounds like the shit I have to listen to against my will every time I take my headphones off at the office.

The least wanted song is clearly where the action is: a 20+ minute epic involving cowboys, politics, advertising, children, and whiplash inducing changes in pace and volume. All brought to you by the soothing sounds of bagpipes, tubas, accordions, children, and rapping opera sopranos. It sounds like the wails of the damned if John Waters was in charge of Hell.

I listened to the entire thing, and am going to do it again after I finish writing this.

Abandon all hope, ye who right-click here and select 'saveith-as.'

DoF Celebrates America's Birthday

8-bit werewolves are surprisingly patriotic, and tomorrow they will be making all sorts of little bleep-bloop approximations of howling at the moon in honor of the good old USofA, where they can finally have the freedom to shave their chests in front of shadowy cabals.

I'm sure by now you've heard the naysayers bitching about the fragility of our democracy ever since the Vice President turned out to be an evil mastermind, but may I remind you of President Michael Wilson's brave actions in that dark time.

If he had not courageously donned his highly advanced power-armor and singlehandedly battled the VP's forces, we'd all be drinking Darjeeling tea right now instead of proper oat sodas.

So bash the flag if you must, but you'll be spitting in the eyes of all the musclebound werewolves and mech-piloting politicians who gave so much to defend your right to do so.

Stop by GamesRadar for an exhaustive look at the videogame heroes who gave their all for Lady Liberty.

I Fucking Hate You, Stupid Car!

Nobody hates cars as much as this guy:



Afterwards he fought an entire army of lawnmowers and made sweet love to a washing machine.

Racist Cartoon Extravaganza

Most folks who get bored with internet access have seem clips of Bugs Bunny fighting "the Japs" or tricking a black Elmer Fudd into losing his clothes in a dice game, but the real gems of racially insensitive (to put it lightly) animation rise out of the more obscure characters, like Flip the Frog. Remember him? Of course you don't.

People took their children to the theater to see stuff like this at one point in time:



Lessons for children:

Chinese people are not to be trusted and have the power to temporarily change gender at will. Also, opium kicks ass.

From Tex Avery:


And again from Ub Iwerks, the man who helped create Mickey Mouse:


We often forget about this side of our cultural history, and when randomly confronted with it, there are several clear stages of reaction: 1. Holy crap is this real? 2. Oh man this is hilarious. 3. Wait, this is real *stunned silence* 4. They let children watch this?

Of course, it is sure possible to go too far in the opposite direction. Do modern children really need to be protected from Hitler's mustache.

Editorial: Attack of the Killer Mutant Eyelashes

By Knarf Black XIV
Women's Health Advocate

No one is under the illusion that Internet banner ads are bastions of credibility, but the naked appeals to vanity are starting to get a wee bit annoying. Almost everyone who surfs enough news & commentary websites should at least be familiar with trying to ignore them. (Do a lot of self-consciously aging women read Slate.com or something?)

Most often appearing in the form of a box hanging out in your peripheral vision, they boast crudely photoshopped pics of (sometimes aging) models and some sort of sparkling divider that can be dragged across the image to reveal the non-computer-uglified picture. If you choose not to enjoy the ad's 'interactivity' it will conveniently demonstrate the effect for you... over... and over... and over. Sometimes it's skin cream, sometimes it is hair gunk, and sometimes the photoshopping is done to the "after" pic instead of the "before," but they are always annoying.Also, since when is "discovered by a mom" supposed to be a bullet point for a complicated dermitalogical product? I would feel much more comfortable with "scientist" or "mom/scientist." Otherwise I start wondering if she was splashed in the face by a freak combination of Spaghettios and Kool-Aid that magically cured her wrinkles.

Before I finally get to the point, click to embiggen the image on the left and examine her mouth closely.

What the hell happened to the right side of her lips? Did she get into a knife fight? Did the Joker throw acid at her? Botched cosmetic surgery? Or did the starving graphic artist making just above minimum wage to airbrush semi-legitimately obtained stock photography get lazy with the blur tool?

Until recently, these were minor irritants to be filed in the stupid cabinet with those dancing mortgage ads and "YOU ARE THE MILLIONTH VISITOR THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Now that Avon has started selling the T-Virus as a skin cream, these vanity-bating sucker cash-ins have crossed the line and become a real public danger.

Case in point: prescription eyelash enhancement by Latisse. Seriously? A drug that makes your eyelashes grow longer/fuller/whatever? A prescription drug?

As a bald man, I have frequently pondered the use of hair growth drugs. I even bought a three month supply of Rogaine in college and used it for about two months before realizing that I would rather be bald that put icky, oily goop in my hair twice a day for the rest of my natural life. Sure I could take a pill to achieve the same results, but who wants to risk turning into the Wolf-man or growing hair on their palms like Pastor Dave used to warn about.

The risks are just too great, and can only be magnified when you are dealing with a drug originally created to treat eyeball disorders. Sure the official "side effects" are restricted to itching and changing your eye color to brown-ish (seriously), but what happens when it works too well?

That's right, you'll look like Mr. Snuffle-fucking-upagus. Enjoy!

Friday Funk: Genre Movie Edition

In the late '80s and early '90s, Hollywood discovered the newfangled "rap" thingy that all the kids seemed to be talking about. Faster than you can say "Sugarhill Gang" a hip-hop media bubble was born, fueling the popular misconception that anyone with even the faintest hint of rhythm and a pair of Wayfarers could be a rapper. Along with all the ill-advised Wendy's training videos, grandmothers, and exercise videos, rap flooded into pop culture though multiplexes and the endlessly repeated dregs of cable movie channels.

Here's a track from the obscure 1990 group The U-Krew, as seen in the Dolph Lundgren vs. Extraterrestrial Drug Dealers movie, I Come in Peace:




Especially in B-movies of the time, rap was treated as a gimmick, but more serious directors managed to find room for artists with more staying power. Staple New York auteur, Abel Ferrara cobbled together a formidable soundtrack for his Christopher Walken led gangster film King of New York, prominently featuring this track by Schooly D:

Even the blockbusters weren't willing to miss out on this trend. Most people forget that Die Hard was a Christmas movie, so here is some holiday cheer from the soundtrack to remind you.

Apartment Ephemera

Posted on the back door of my building

I am supposed to do so how?

The Day I Lost My Faith in Humanity, Part XIV

By Knarf Black XIV, Former Exotic Pornologist

I realize that I'm pretty far behind the curve on this story, but it is in such jaw droppingly poor taste that it may have just soured me Japanese culture forever... and I let the whole tentacle porn thing slide.

Currently making headlines as the electronic boogyman de jure for crusading politicians, is the 2006 "rape simulator" PC game RapeLay. Despite the fact that its a few years old, has only unofficial "fan translations" into English, and is almost completely unavailable (outside of torrent sites) here in the states, the folks in charge began jumping all over it when various blogs discovered that it was available on eBay and Amazon marketplace.

This is a piece of software so vile and disturbing that it has made yours truly, a person who saw Irreversible twice, actually agree with the banhappy nanny-staters for once. The player takes control over a creepy-creeper convicted of subway groping (apparently endemic on the crowded cars) who decides to take revenge on his accuser by, you guessed it, raping her entire family. (The ladies at least.)

Not having a currently functioning PC, I can't take the game for a test spin, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to anyway. (Being killed seven days later by an enraged technophilic Yūrei is only one of many possible worst case scenarios.) The mere existence of a game has thrown the tattered remains of my faith in humanity on a pile of gas soaked rags, having to play through the interactive sex scenes to be rewarded by the victims' Straw Dogs style orgasms would toss a flaming Molotov cocktail on the pile before setting of a nearby thermonuclear device and snapping the necks of all the charred survivors within a hundred miles.

More info from Slate and Something Awful. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to cry in a fetal position for a while.

Confessions in Race Relations by Knarf Black XIV, as told to Blaine Fridley

"In 3rd grade we had one black kid who hung out with us, and every time we played Ghostbusters we always made him be Winston. Partially because it took one person out of the running for the constant battle over who got to be Egon, but mostly because he was black."

The Most Insidious Lie Ever Told

...or Don't Piss in my Pocket and Tell me it's Raining
by Knarf Black XIV, Consumer Advocate/Sandwich-related Subterfuge Whistle-blower

No, it's not global warming you silly bastard; didn't you see Waterworld? I am, of course, speaking of the Subway fast-food chain's "Five Dollar Footlong" promotion.

By now you have undoubtedly been exposed to the campaign's trademark jingle. (Slate has an excellent piece about it, appropriately titled "Jingle Hell") If not, consider yourself one of the lucky few whose minds will not be slowly, painfully destroyed. You see, this is no ordinary musical slogan, it is a painstakingly crafted form of irresistible white-noise that, when heard or even recollected, overwrites the contents of human memory with copies of itself. Filling and overtaking the mind like something out of a Borges story.

With phase one firmly established in the already atrophied pre-frontal cortex of the American consumer, the evil geniuses at Subway Central Command began "lowering" the prices of their footlong sandwiches. Initially this seems like a great deal: a customer can save nearly $1.70 (or almost but not quite the cost of adding chips and a soda) off the price of a higher-end sub like the "Chicken Bacon Ranch." The savings becomes more modest in the midrange section, but thanks to phase one, the drooling masses are not likely to notice.

It is in the basic, no frills, single meat section on the menu where phase three comes into play. Early last year, a customer could find a small selection at prices like $4.89 or even $4.69. During the initial phases, the masses could laugh these off as "pussy" subs and go on to order their prime rib or seafood sensation--where the "deals" are.

With minds clouded by jingles and attitudes coddled by moderate discounts, few noticed the subtleties of the dread phase four. The infectious commercials were scaled back, the large colorful banners replaced with more subdued versions, and the promotion retreated to the low end sandwiches. No longer a "limited time" deal, $5 Footlongs are simply a menu item. This means that the base price of a Subway Sandwich is now a crisp, green Lincoln.

Son of a bitch. Subway just raised their prices on us and we liked it. We thanked them for the simplification of sandwich related math.

It did not take long for stronger minds to cut through the deafening neural-noise and raise their voices in righteous complaint, but the Subway Restaurant corporation was prepared for this eventuality. Hence phase five: the return of full force five dollar footlongs. The garish red banners are back, along with even lamer commercials to reinforce the already endemic neural degridation. No longer are there any footlong menu items listed below the $5 mark, nor is their any indication that this has ever not been the case. They've always cost that much. You don't need a six inch sandwich, you are hungrier than that. It only costs a dollar and change more, anyway.

Five.
Five dollar.
Five dollar foot-looo-oong.

Join us.

Urinalysis: a multi-part study of the behaviors, codes, customs and characters of the workplace restroom

Exploring the States of Matter with Poo

Solid: Molecules are packed tightly together in a rigid structure. Has a definite volume and resists deformation.

Achieved in poo form by: Consuming a high-fiber diet rich in leafy vegetables and not having any fun.

Liquid: Molecules are held together loosely. Only has definite volume under uniform temperature and pressure. Moves freely.

Achieved in poo form by: Eating a high fat diet rich in wholesome animal products; especially the bacon explosion. For the lactose intolerant, try consuming lactose.

Gas: Molecules are only held together by the money they make on tour, and no longer have any real relationships with each other. Volume is completely determined by the containing vessel.

Achieved in poo form by: A diet rich in low grade lagers and Phaseolus vulgaris. For the layperson, this means Schlitz & Beans.

Plasma: A form of ionized gas containing a large proportion of free electrons. The main component of stars.

Achieved in poo form by: Buffalo Sauce, and lots of it.

The Horrible Truth About Renee Zellweger

The following printout was retrieved from Southern California by the DoF Industrial Espionage and Light Opera Society:

---
----Init_Boot: zellwegerbot_X51 --- Serial: 405629
---
---- CPU_check: okay
---
---- RAM_check: okay
---
---- Run_Directive_Prime: Locate lantern-jawed male unit and activate program: A01_adorability
---
---- Run_Directive_Secondary: Kill Osama Bin Laden
---
---- Sensor_check: okay
---
---
---
---- Input_detect: misunderstanding_humorous
---
-------- Run_Sequence: K04_Cute_Scrunchy_Face
---
---- Analysis_Report: Carbon Adorability Response 64%
---
---- Adorability_Check: FAIL
---
-------- Run_Sequence: X08_payload_detonation
---
---
---
---
---
---
---- Connection_Terminated


The DoF Industrial Espionage Light Opera Society is currently accepting new applicants for all positions.