A Disturbing Little Tour Of Rogue Taxidermy

Rogue Taxidermy is a folk-art form where you use dead animal parts to create some new, unique creature that never could have existed... but should have! So appropriate for Halloween.

The folk art form of rogue taxidermy seems to be rooted in the midwestern United States, and can be considered a hallmark of Midwest Gothic. The most famous group is the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. One typical truckstop chimera is the jackalope:

Rogue taxidermists got so carried away with the jackalope thing that they managed to infuse the critter into the North American culture at large, and now no roadside truckstop is complete without a mounted jackalope head on the wall. There's jackalope tattoos and faux nature documentaries and hundreds of photo manipulations. Jackalopes are world famous, a triumph of rogue taxidermy! Future popularity to a similar degree may be won for the hodag:

Or the fur-bearing trout:

As you can imagine, there's a huge crossover between the rogue taxidermy and cryptozoology worlds. Whether through intentional attempts to hoax the public, or tongue-in-cheek attempts to hoax the hoaxers by going "Look, I found one!"

Heaven's Gate cult initiation tape

Heaven's Gate was a UFO cult famous for their 1997 mass suicide, in which 39 members quietly laid down in bunk beds with plastic bags taped over their heads and died. They believed that they would launch themselves onto a flying saucer trailing the then-visible Hale-Bopp comet. At the time, I was working at the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada, on the night shift. We had an excellent view of the comet from the top floor of the plant, where we'd pause on break and stare at the blurry speck in the sky, wondering what madness possessed these people.

Well, I've recently discovered the entire tape series of cult leader Marshall Applewhite's video speeches to the sect members on YouTube. So spend some time listening to this guy ramble and see if maybe he couldn't hypnotise you into cutting your junk off and killing yourself (with $5.75 in your pocket, gotta remember the fare!):

That's just part one. There's the whole series here.

Oh, and let us not forget that the original website, maintained by the cult members who financed themselves through web development, is still up for anyone to view. The creepiest touch is the expanding 'red alert' GIF at the top. Did the cult members check the page every day for this signal? And when it appeared, that was their "boarding call"?

What it's like to crash on a monocycle.

This is a monocycle, which looks cool as blazes and fun to drive. But not so fun to wipe out in at the 2:56 mark. It bounces a few times, maybe not as bad as the equivalent crash on a motorcycle.

Monowheel vehicles have been an area of enthusiastic exploration by inventors. They go back to the 1800s even.

Iowa mystery - Who shot Ashley Okland?

Two years ago, real estate agent Ashley Okland was working in this model house in Des Moines Iowa:

...when someone came into the house behind her, shot her in the head and chest, and disappeared. There's been a reward posted for information on the case, totalling up to $150,000. And not a single lead.

The story has acquired some fame in my local vicinity. Because the crime happened when the area was still under development, there were no witnesses, and little hope of even catching a clue from surveillance video anywhere in the area. More baffling, Okland was a person completely free of scandal - she didn't appear to have any enemies, she was just an up-and-coming realtor who also volunteered at Big Brothers / Big Sisters. She's missed by many, all of whom express disbelief that anybody could have had a problem with her.

But this case, by itself, isn't nearly as mind--blowing as you might think, when you consider the fact that 1/3rd of homicides in the United States go unsolved. That's actually the mind--blowing part. Forget all the forensic technoporn on CSI, in the real world we just have 33% of murderers getting away with it.

The Iowa lapdance scholarship

You've probably heard more than one stripper, poledancer, or other adult entertainer claim that she's doing this to work her way through college. But how about, when you're done, you keep working to put somebody else through college, too? And that was the inspiration for the idea of the lapdance scholarship...

"The LapDance Scholarship was founded in December 2010 by Hailey Jude Minder, a self-proclaimed vaginally-funded experience artist.  As an artist, Hailey has always been interested in, and often troubled by, the sources of fine arts funding. Having become somewhat disenchanted with the whole search for funding and the sources of such funds, Hailey set out to make her own.  Moonlighting as a stripper twice a week, Hailey is bringing funding for the arts into the trenches.  She has funded her own art in this manner and now wishes to help her fellow artists achieve their goals."

Courtesy of The Great God Pan Is Dead, where the complete story also involves the amazing story of the project to turn copies of dildos into art.

One of which I'll post here, because to hell with being squeamish about it...

Tex Avery war propaganda - "Blitz Wolf"

Sure, you've seen classic WWII propaganda cartoons before. We've all probably watched the Donald-Duck-in-Nazi-land to death. But this is a rarer one, from the cheeky, loopy, surreal animation of Tex Avery. All the staples of Avery are there - fourth-wall-breaking post-modern sign gags, wolf whistles at a girly magazine, literal listening devices made out of giant ears that would tickle Salvador Dali, and improbably gag weapons.

Oh, and unfettered racism, nationalism, and jingoism. And buy some more war bonds, dammit!

Welcome to Vernon California, where homes are nonexistent and the votes don't matter.

Here is the perfect Industrial Gothic set-up: A city with only 90 residents, told whom to vote for, tightly controlled, existing as a paradise exclusively for corporations. You say corporations are people? Well just wait until they kick you out of your house and take over!

The few residents "lucky" enough to get in enjoy largely ceremonial occupations at cushy wages. But it comes at a price: You live as a virtual prisoner of the city council, told what to do, and especially how to vote. One citizen's experience:

"Algee said he got his ballot by mail and decided to go to City Hall to fill it out and turn it in; as he stood at the counter, a city employee hovered nearby, watching him mark his choices.

'I pointed to one of their candidates and looked at her and she nodded, yes, that one,' he said. 'So I went to the next one and looked at her and she nodded again. That's how it worked.'"

The eerie government setup of Vernon, California, has led to uncontested incumbent elections since 1980. A quote from that Wiki:

"Most of the city's less than 90 voters are city employees or connected to city employees who live in homes rented at a nominal fee. In 1979 a firefighter tried to run for mayor and was immediately evicted and told he couldn't run. In 2006 a group of outsiders tried to move into Vernon and run for office. The city tried to cancel their registrations but was ordered to allow them to run and to count the ballots. Almost none of the city employees voted for them. Leonis Malburg, the mayor for fifty years, was convicted of voter fraud, conspiracy, and perjury in December 2009. In May 2011, the former city administrator Bruce Malkenhorst, Sr., accepted a plea deal for misappropriating $60,000 in public funds."

In spite of the austere population, close to 100,000 people are employed at warehouses and factories within the city limits. The city motto is indeed "Exclusively industrial". With the tightly controlled government fortress and virtually no one to cry foul, companies can get away with things in this city that us mere mortals are denied. For instance, city leaders had the power to kick Southern California Edison out of town and build their own power plant - which charges them rates 40% lower than the California standard.

If this used to be TV, what happened?

Public Access TV in the 1980s - they were desperate for content! "It's the law." - Anybody could air their videotape and everybody did. For being such a wholesome enterprise, they sure pushed the sex, sex, sex. And drugs. And sex. And ventriloquist acts. And wacky costumes. And unbelievably untalented schmoos. But mostly lots and lots of sex. Basically if 4chan got to run TV, this is what it would look like.

We don't even have this much liberty on the Internet now - what happened?

Gene Youngblood on Media (1977)

Just listening to Ubuweb Sound and caught the Gene Youngblood interview from 1977 (listen to it here). Was this guy a prophet, or what? Towards the end when he talks about the effects of the digital revolution on modern media, he sounds like he nailed everything we know now in 2013.

Blow your mind by listening to a media theorist who called quite a few shots.

Gene Youngblood on Wikipedia.

Youngblood's book, Expanded Cinema, in PDF.

Building Ms. Pac-Man machines - fascinating factory footage

Just puts 1982 in perspective, doesn't it? I almost can't see a Ms. Pac-Man game without smelling pizza because I saw them in Pizza Hut restaurants so much.

Also, keep your ears sharp for a Bosconian machine playing in the background. Yes, they had to test the games post-assembly, so at least some of them could say "My job is to play video games." Although they look bored as mud doing it, because let's face it, it's still a job.

Incidentally, Ms. Pac-Man was never conceived in the halls of Midway Games. Instead, rogue hobbyist programmers created mod kits - exactly like the indie gaming mod community today - and sold conversion kits for existing arcade games. When they made such a kit for Atari's Missile Command cabinet, Atari sued, but dropped the suit in exchange for an agreement from the makers - General Computer Corp in this case - to not make any more mod kits to sell to the public, but to come work for them instead. Ms. Pac-Man started out as a mod kit for Pac-Man called "Crazy Otto", which they sold to Midway, whom turned around and sold it as Ms. Pac-Man.

And now you know.

Intellipedia - A US government intelligence Wiki that mere mortals aren't allowed to view.

So I was browsing Wikipedia looking for creepy United States government intelligence agencies. Hey, they're a dime a dozen! Such as the "Information Awareness Office" (established at the height of the paranoid Bush years), which seems to be going out of its way to say "government spooks' world-wide conspiracy" with just their logo alone:

But then I linked along and discovered "Intellipedia", a collaborative database for sharing information between the various (multi-hydra-headed) intelligence communities. "Cool beans!" I exclaimed dorkily, because I've heard all about this open government thing and what better way for all of us US citizens to participate in our national security than to collaborate with US intelligence, right? And we cyber-denizens and open-source proponents know that "obscurity != security", right? Besides, if it's just intelligence about outside threats to the US, what could they possibly have to hide? If there's a terrorist plot afoot to bomb something, don't we all have a right - perhaps even a patriotic duty - to be informed?

Well, no, turns out that you need US security clearance just to view the damn thing! The link at Intellipedia stops you dead, demanding some kind of electronic passport called an "Intelink" to go any further. Ironic, considering that it's supplied by Google. Wait, who played that scare chord?

Well, there you go, you've heard of the "dark web" before? What could be darker?

Oh, and the FBI has its own "Bureaupedia" - and it's closed to public viewing as well. Fine then, catch your own criminals!

And more classified US websites. The thing that is impressive is just how large this is. The US basically has its own "shadow Internet". Now, pause and consider this point: Citizens frequently complain about how the US government seems out of touch with its people. Picture your own internal office intranet at work, if you have one. Naturally, if there's an artificial wall between public and private, you tend to stay on one side of it, right? So it just could be that government officials act as if they're ignorant of what the rest of us are thinking because they use their own Internet.

The quack medicine that turns you into a Smurf

What, did you think we were joking?

Boom! There, real-life Papa Smurf all up in yo' shizzle! And here's Smurfette:

...and in fact there's dozens of photos online of this condition. Most recently, Baby Boomer Randroid politician Stan Jones fell victim to the condition.

What you're seeing here is the effects of a condition known as "Argyria", which is caused by the ingesting of colloidal silver. That's right, drinking silver potions turns you blue. Colloidal silver is frequently prescribed by quacks as treatments for various illnesses - it's been a staple of alternative medicine for some time. As for Stan Jones, he actually made his own silver potions and drank them at home for reasons related to Y2K paranoia back before the turn of the century. And he still swears by it!

For those stuck with this condition, guess what? There's no cure! OK, technically there's laser surgery, so if you call having all of your skin being burned off and waiting for it to grow back a "cure" then yes, that's a cure.

If you're a resident of Colma, California, you're probably dead

Colma, California, is a city with a bit of a macabre history. It was explicitly founded in 1924 as a necropolis - a city of the dead. Graves outnumber living people by as much as 1000 to 1 - and growing!

In 1900, nearby San Francisco passed a city ordinance forbidding the laying of any further cemeteries within the city limits. California being a pretty populated state, that left the question of just what to do with the dead - and so Colma because the great graveyard of San Francisco.

It's a peaceful, if somber, place to live. Just miles and miles of gravestones, crypts, plots, memorial parks, and florists, with about 330 households composed of the living, including those raising families. But the town of Colma hasn't let its largest industry dampen its spirits; in 2007 they put together an independent film called Colma: the Musical which was a smash hit on the indie film circuit.

Clever parody: 52 Shades of Greed

This artist creates "52 Shades of Greed", 52 cards in the style of a Tarot deck named after some of the individuals, organizations, and elements of the US's troubled economy. ("Troubled Economy" is saying the least, but I'm trying to stay away from hyperbole for a change).

2 of Spades

SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)

Weak regulator which routinely destroyed records of investigations, sometimes right before the investigator went to work for the regulated.

Jamie Dimon

“CEO JPMorgan Chase and Chair of NY Fed. Conflict, what conflict?

Fights aggressively and successfully against bank regulation”

Repo 105

Accounting gimmick used by Lehman to make balance sheet look $50 billion prettier than it really was.

According to its about page, it is by the Occupy Wall Street crowd. How unfortunate. Nevertheless, it is a very clever work, and the Flower Power source of the work shouldn't dissuade you form its core truths, however foggily understood they are by the movement.

Intimidate Your Surroundings

Fun parody commercial, but how did they get that thing to stay up like that?

Also, check the gorgeous scenery! Saguaro cactus and beaches are the only things I miss about the West.

Fire rainbows in the sky

The concept is called a "circumhorizontal arc". It's an atmospheric phenomenon in which sunlight strikes airborne ice crystals to produce a rainbow effect. Four things have to happen for this to be seen:

1. The sun has to be higher than 58 degrees above the horizon.
2. There has to be a mild haze, such as cirrus clouds, slightly overcast, a marine layer, etc.
3. The clouds must contain flat, hexagonal ice crystals.
4. You have to be standing farther than 55 degrees latitude away from either pole.

For these reasons, the rarity of the event causes it to only be visible from certain parts of the world at certain times of the year. In North America, it's most commonly observed inland and to the north during the colder months, although as long as there's ice in the clouds and you're standing in the right spot, it could happen anywhere.

Because of the rarity of the event and the strange cloud formations that sometimes occur in conjunction with it, the phenomenon could be mistaken for things like UFOs and other conspiracy-laden legends.

A month of Fridays brings bad luck

In a tense image only a conspiracy theorist (or Nicholas Cage fan - as if there were a difference) could love, artist George Widener captures 30 Fridays, with corresponding dates, when disasters hit. And one free day!

More outsider art at the edge of sanity here.

For those of you wondering what a demonic exorcism is like...

No comment.

Amazing Playing Card Trivia

The cards directly invoke the days of the year. In a standard deck of playing cards, count ace=1, jack=11, queen=12, king=13, joker=1, and all of the other cards at face value. Without the jokers, the rest of the cards total 364. If we add in a joker (for April Fool's Day), we get 365. Add in the other joker (for Leap Day) and we get 366.

Discard the jokers and count the cards. There's 52, corresponding to the weeks in a year.

There are 12 face cards, corresponding to the 12 months of the year.

There are four suits, with 13 cards each. Each of the four seasons of the year has 13 weeks.

Within each suit, there are 13 ranks, corresponding to the months in the lunar year.

According to this source, Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of the Periodic Table of Elements, came up with the idea for the organization of the table as he laid out a tableaux of cards on a table while playing solitaire.

The only reason that the ace of spades gets a big, fancy design is because British royalty used to charge a special tax on cards, being a leisurely commodity. To show that the duty had been paid, a clerk would stamp one card in the deck. Because of the way cards were sorted and packaged, the top card just happened to be the ace of spades. Hence the expression "Duty ace".

Bonus buck: See my old open-source Flash card-shuffler here, though it's not much to look at. The link to my blog post includes an explanation and source code download for developers interested in using it for their own games.

In the United States, 10 to 15 people still die from the black plague every year.

The Black Plague (actually known as the "Black Death") is a legendary outbreak of an infectious disease which peaked in Europe in the late 1340s. Many people have the misconception that that was the end of this grisly disease.

But oh, how wrong they be! In fact, the Black Plague continued to return for outbreak curtain calls throughout Europe and the Middle East well into the 17th century. A third wave pandemic started in China in 1855 and lasted for a century, spreading throughout the world. Furthermore, here is a map showing plague-infected animals as of 1998:

But there is still more glum news: In June of 2012, this story reports an Oregon man who is currently battling the disease. Mostly the Western US still reports 10 to 15  cases of the plague each year, which still resists antibiotic treatment in some cases, resulting in a fatality rate of 1 in 7.

Just a reminder that we can be wiped out today as easily as we were in past centuries. All it takes is one determined strain of bacteria.