Wow, squid are dangerous even after death.
Three of four crew members found dead Sunday aboard a South Korean vessel at a fishing port in Oda, Shimane Prefecture, may have died from lack of oxygen due to a gas caused after the guts of squid in the hold of the ship rotted, police and Japan Coast Guard officials said Tuesday.
Professor Hex posts on things falling from the sky, from frogs and fish to piranhas and ice bombs.
I saw this meme at Return of the Reluctant and decided to participate:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
RESULTS: Algernon Blackwood, "Ancient Sorceries and other Weird Stories" from the story "The Willows":
"Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my realisation of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power of the elements about me."
A dark thought for the day.
Apparently, there is a face on the back side, too.
These days though, Jesus has found new places for his image, like lava lamps (with pic!).
Thanks to Gambols and Frolics, I've found out about the Codex Seraphinianvs. Some claim it's the weirdest book in the world. It's a tome drawn and "written" by Italian artist Luigi Serafini.
The Codex is a collection of original artwork by Italian artist Luigi Serafini, presented as a travalogue or scientific study of an alien world. Unlike such alien worlds as Darwin IV in Barlowe's Expedition, which one might find in a science fiction novel, the world in the Codex is obviously some kind of perverse reflection of our own. All of the Codex is presented entirely in an obscure alien writing. This writing, in combination with the bizarre pictures, is what finally puts the Codex in its own league for weirdness. For instance, on one page is a "Rosetta Stone" - only it just translates Codex script into another alien language.
The Web site above has images from the book and some links for more information. It seems to me to be an attempt to create a modern version of the Voynich Manuscript. You can find a few links about the Voynich Manuscript here (scroll down).
Professor Hex links to this article on the Hypogeum in Malta, a subterranean burial chamber so large that people got lost and never returned. One teacher and her class of 30 never returned. Well, that's what this article claims anyway. Here's a snippet of some of the far out claims:
She claims that out of this lower tunnel on the far side of the chasm emerged, in single file, several very large creatures of humanoid form but completely covered with hair from head to foot. Noticing her, they raised their arms in her direction, palms out, at which point a violent "wind" began to blow through the cavern, snuffing out her candle. Then, some “thing” wet and slippery (apparently a creature of a different sort) brushed past her.
It's fascinating stuff, whether true or not.
You can see pictures of parts of the Hypogeum here. Here's an article that treats it more soberly as a tourist attraction:
For about a 1,000-year span, the Hypogeum served as a necropolis, a city of the dead that eventually housed the remains of about 7,000 people. It was one of many megalithic structures strewn across Malta, built by a complex Neolithic culture that mysteriously disappeared around 2500 BC.
Even without slimy things and hairy humanoids, the Hypogeum is interesting as an underground Stonehenge and home of a death cult of some kind. Thanks Hex!
The Chicago Tribune does a great little article on what kanji character tattoos really mean. (You may need registration for the article, Metafilter suggests using anonymous/anonymous for your user name/password.)
I had a friend who lived in Thailand. She talked about how people there wore remaindered T-shirts from English speaking countries that said horrible things. One T-shirt was supposed to say DNKY, instead it said DYNK. Another said "I fuck horses" or something similar. If you don't know the language, you must be careful with what you wear, or get imprinted on your skin.
Scientists are coming close to surveying all the asteroids that could destroy human civilization. Next they plan on finding the less important city destroyers.
In the Netherlands, people are getting the latest fashion trend, jewelry in their eyeballs.
Dutch eye surgeons have implanted tiny pieces of jewelry called "JewelEye" in the mucous membrane of the eyes of six women and one man in cosmetic surgery pioneered by an ophthalmic surgery research and development institute in Rotterdam.
The procedure involves inserting a 3.5 mm (0.13 inch) wide 1 piece of specially developed jewelry -- the range includes a glittering half-moon or heart -- into the eye's mucous membrane under local anaesthetic at a cost of 500 to 1,000 euros ($1,232).
There's a picture at the link.
A Pennsylvania church tried to teach kids about the crucifixion of Jesus by having actors whip the Easter Bunny.
People who attended Saturday's performance at Glassport's memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, "There is no Easter bunny," and described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.
Melissa Salzmann, who brought her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. "He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped," Salzmann said.
A school dormitory in Malawi was attacked in the night by a bare breasted assailant who beat several girls severely.
When the unknown assailant entered the room he appeared to have knelt down and suddenly started beating and hacking the helpless girls with what appeared to be a pipe, leaving blood sputtered everywhere including the walls, according to the girls.
The girls said the assailant seemed to have briefly gone out but reappeared briefly, grinned widely at the girls and then disappeared.
Police took the girls to a safe place and the beaten ones are being treated. But the assailant found them the next night.
Boarding mistress Bridget Muhemed said the assailant’s identity has not been established.
“We are still baffled by the whole incident. It has never happened before. Many believe this is either witchcraft or something to do with satanism. And how did he or she track down the girls and even know we had taken them to police?” she said.
...
The incident comes at a time when stories of vampires, blood suckers and trafficking in body parts are yet to die down in Malawi.
George Romero is making a movie about a living dead rock 'n' roll band. Called Diamond Dead, the movie will be produced by Ridley Scott and has music by Richard Hartley, who did some uncredited work on "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and was the composer for "Shock Treatement." The Web site for Diamond Dead has a Flash trailer, a jukebox with Hartley's songs, and actual portions of the script as it goes through rewrites.
I just watched the trailer. It's basically just a list of names and then the character sketches of the main characters while some of the music plays. In concept, it looks interesting, if they can pull it off.
I'm so tired of movie remakes, especially when they start tackling classics. Admittedly, I enjoyed both the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead remakes, but I still don't think they're necessary. And now, they're remaking one of the greatest films ever made, The Manchurian Candidate. It has a good cast and Jonathan Demme is a fine director, it may even be a good film. It's still pointless.
In a survey, the Scottish town of Bonnybridge was named the UFO capital of the UK. The survey was sponsored by Grolsch beer. The real alien question here: Why is a beer company sponsoring a UFO survey?
I was going to mention Jeff Vandermeer's new Web sites and articles online, but Trent at s1ngularity::criticism put together a nice post of all the relevant links. If your interested about Vandermeer's work (and you really should be) start clicking.
Singularity.net has published the first in series of interviews, this one with Jonathan Carroll:
JC: When you're working in the fantastic it's as if you're boxing with the gloves off. There are no rules so anything goes. You want God to appear eating an ice cream cone? Fine. You want a woman to give birth to Hitler#2? Fine. When there are no rules there is certainly more chaos and it can be a lot harder work for the reader, but there's also a lot more room to move and maneuver. You can talk about things on the page that you couldn't in more "stable" fiction" because of that anything-goes element. When you read ["Corrections" author Jonathan] Franzen, you're going to a Chinese restaurant. You get what you expect and the only surprise is if the food there, invariably Chinese cuisine, is wonderfully prepared. When you go to my restaurant you have no idea what the food is going to be or if it will be well prepared. There's an element of doubt that isn't in the Franzen restaurant, maybe even dismay, but there's potential for wonder and all out delight that cancels out the other negative stuff if you like this "anything goes" sort of place.
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has signed an agreement with Russia's EKIP Aviation to produce flying saucer shaped aircraft. The ships are good for putting out forest fires and monitoring oil pipelines, according to the story. There's a picture at the site too.
The 40-year-old pregnant woman lived in an area of Mexico without running water or electricity and eight hours from the nearest hospital. She had lost a baby previously due to labor complications. She wasn't having that this time.
Dr R Valle, of the Dr Manuel Velasco Suarez Hospital in San Pablo, Mexico, said: "She took three small glasses of hard liquor and, using a kitchen knife, sliced her abdomen in three attempts and delivered a male infant that breathed immediately and cried."
Before losing consciousness, the woman told one of her children to call a local nurse for help.
(Found at Cylindrical Primate Storage Unit.)
