Monkey waiter

I thought this was too creepy to actually post - - a restaurant in Japan has a monkey waiter - - which they sometimes make wear a human mask. The video is the stuff of nightmares. Via.

Link roundup

1. "This is why it's notable that some little blue-green bacteria hitching a ride on the exterior of the International Space Station came out of it alive -- after a record-setting 553 days. That's a year and a half in a near-vacuum."

2. "Mao's Great Leap Forward killed 45 million in four years." The details are horrific.

3. McDonald's sponsors sports not to advertise to customers, but to excite store owners about being part of the McDonald's family. Via.

*Buy The Andromeda Strain at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. What happens if you release 100 cats in an Ikea store? Who knows, mostly the video shows closeups of people watching the cats.

UPDATE: My mistake, there's a commercial featuring the cats in action.

2. Michael Lewis looks at Greece's disastrous economic situation, which he blames on corruption and lax oversight. His focus is on a monastery reminiscent of the the one in Neal Stephenson's Anathem:

Knowing nothing else about the Vatopaidi monastery except that, in a perfectly corrupt society, it had somehow been identified as the soul of corruption, I made my way up to the north of Greece, in search of a bunch of monks who had found new, improved ways to work the Greek economy. The first stage was fairly easy: the plane to Greece’s second city of Thessaloniki, the car being driven along narrow roads at nerve-racking speeds, and a night with a lot of Bulgarian tourists at a surprisingly delightful hotel in the middle of nowhere, called the Eagles Palace. There the single most helpful hotel employee I have ever met (ask for Olga) handed me a stack of books and said wistfully how lucky I was to be able to visit the place. The Vatopaidi monastery, along with 19 others, was built in the 10th century on a 37-mile-long-by-6-mile-wide peninsula in northeast Greece, called Mount Athos. Mount Athos now is severed from the mainland by a long fence, and so the only way onto it is by boat, which gives the peninsula the flavor of an island. And on this island no women are allowed—no female animals of any kind, in fact, except for cats. The official history ascribes the ban to the desire of the church to honor the Virgin; the unofficial one to the problem of monks hitting on female visitors. The ban has stood for 1,000 years.

This explains the high-pitched shrieks the next morning, as the ancient ferry packed with monks and pilgrims pulls away from the docks. Dozens of women gather there to holler at the tops of their lungs, but with such good cheer that it is unclear whether they are lamenting or celebrating the fact that they cannot accompany their men. Olga has told me that she was pretty sure I was going to need to hike some part of the way to Vatopaidi, and that the people she has seen off to the holy mountain don’t usually carry with them anything so redolent of the modern material world as a wheelie bag. As a result, all I have is an Eagles Palace plastic laundry bag with spare underwear, a toothbrush, and a bottle of Ambien.

3. A woman fell into a wasp nest and was stung 500 times:

Rescue crews had to deal with yellow jackets even inside the ambulance, and once the unidentified woman was taken to Sturdy Memorial Hospital, hospital staff then had to handle yellow jackets in the emergency room.

Via.

*Buy Anathem at Amazon (it's like Harry Potter, but with string theory).

Scary shark video

Chuck Patterson:

the day before I shot this video, i was SUP surfing with a couple friends and 2 sharks circled us for about 15 minutes. the next day, i decided to go back out at around the same time and take my GO PRO HD camera mounted on a 10 ft pole and do some exploring.

Sure enough within 5 minutes a 9 ft shark came out of no where and circled twice and slapped his tail on my board before disappearing. then a minute later a 7 ft young juvenile Great White swam circles around me for 12 minutes.

The sound is the key to making this unsettling. Via these sites.

*Buy the GoPro HD at Amazon.

Bright Falls (The Alan Wake prequel)

I highly, highly recommend Bright Falls - - the short films made to promote the new Alan Wake video game. They're like a super condensed homage to Twin Peaks:








Here's the companion blog. Via.

*Previously: Watch the first 10 minutes of Alan Wake.

*Buy Twin Peaks collectibles at eBay.

Are you afraid of your staircase? (link roundup)

"Are you in love with your home, but afraid of your staircase?" China Mieville's blog posts are like ultra-condensed short stories. See also: Forest spirit sign.

And a few more links:

1. A blogger's ill-advised joke cost his employer $1 million when the target of the joke pulled advertising and got allies to pull advertising.

2. Here's a detailed description of the ARG supporting the JJ Abrams/Spielberg project Super 8 (which had a trailer not remotely justifying the buzz the movie is getting).

3. Cory Doctorow describes what happened when he declined to go through a dehumanizing airport naked scanner.

*Previously: The wit of the staircase.

*Cory Doctorow's new book is 32% off at Amazon.

Creepy protein drink ad (link roundup)

The Ring is made even creepier in this ad by Saatchi and Saatchi for Gainomax nutrition drink.

And a few more links:

1. The real story about the blogger who inspired the movie Julie and Julia is her bizarre sex life/infidelity.

2. How to dress up a cheap bottle of wine.

3. How to make Medusa snake-like hair.

*Previously: You're wasting money buying expensive wine.

*Buy Medusa toys at eBay.

Horrifying Christmas short

Graham Annable's latest horror cartoon is Christmas-themed.

*Previously: Principal Skeleton by Annable.

*Buy Star Wars ornaments at eBay.

My family's brush with that scary dream guy

There's a good chance that you've already heard about the website dedicated to the reported phenomena of a creepy monobrowed man haunting people's dreams.

Upon seeing the site, my younger brother reminded me of the nightmares he used to have. He would report of having dreamed of Bert from Sesame Street:



But upon seeing the scary dream guy, he says that man looks like the person he dreamed about. (Which is particularly interesting since the site is just a hoax.)

*Previously: What I used to have nightmares about.

*Buy dream dictionaries at Amazon.

Unsettling animation from Graham Annable

Graham Annable has a knack for creating unsettling animation. This one is called Principal Skeleton. Graham has various prints on sale here.

*Previously: The Hidden People by Annable.

*Buy Day of the Dead art at eBay.

Alex Pardee describes a horrifying incident at a signing (link roundup)

Alex Pardee's signing at Upper Playground & 5024SEA in Seattle, Washington ended in blood. He describes what happened here. Warning - - it's horrifying. (And surprisingly well-photographed?)

And a few more links:

1. William David quit his job at Ubisoft and created a clever flash "game" called Leaving as a sendoff.

2. Morrissey is asking fans not to buy a new boxed set of Smiths music since he won't receive royalties and hasn't received any in over 10 years.

3. Lego Voltron that splits into lions with opening cockpits. Via.

*Previously: How did tainted blood from an Arkansas prisoner enter the UK?

*Buy Voltron toys at eBay.

Cactus Spaceman (link roundup)

"Domsai" cactus spacemen by Matteo Cibic on sale here. Via.

And a few more links:

1. South Park versions of the characters from George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire.

2. Giant Olivia costume (last photo). Via.

3. The Cat in the Hat's hat cake, Very Hungry Caterpillar made out of cupcakes, and more book-inspired cakes.

4. Cracked shows again that it creates the best lists on the net: 6 Real Islands Way More Terrifying Than The One On Lost. (My favorite reader should not click through.)

*Previously: Cactus theft is a major problem in California.

*Buy Dr. Seuss toys at eBay.

Buy a volkswagen and you just might avoid becoming a serial killer's next victim

A young woman, a creepy guy, and an isolated gas station star in this creepy ad by DDB for Volkswagen.

*Previously: Advent calendar features image of a serial killer.

*Buy horror movie poster collections at Amazon.

Obama met a man in Mexico, who died the next day from symptoms similar to flu

Mexico is certainly acting as if the flu outbreak is a big deal, closing all schools and taking other emergency actions. More disturbing, Obama just visited Mexico. And while there, he apparently met a scholar named Felipe Solis, who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu.

Concert poster by Paul Gardner (link roundup)

Concert poster by Paul Gardner on sale for $25 here. Via.

And a few more links:

1. Horrifying story of a married couple from Canada who moved to Dubai when the husband got a good job there, and then went bankrupt. Via.

2. Supposedly, "thousands of dolphins" leaped out of the water to prevent Somali pirates from seizing a Chinese ship. Photo link.

3. Yikes, the public elementary school closest to me has an after school course based on Kabbalah.

4. Former baseball player Eric Karros has possibly the worst combover ever.

*Previously: Foggy day in Dubai.

*Buy concert posters at eBay.

Watch a Golden Eagle yank goats right off of a mountain

Well, now I'm thoroughly afraid of Golden Eagles. Watch as Golden Eagles pluck baby goats right off of a mountain. There's one goat victim right at the beginning of the video, and a second five minutes in. Via.

*Previously: Chilling description of vampire bats.

*Buy nature dvds at eBay.

Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre catalogue (link roundup)

The Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre catalogue looks to be full of cool automata. Via.

And a few more links:

1. Eighty computers have gone lost or missing from Los Alamos National Laboratory. I don't see how this could possibly happen without some sort of corruption. I work in a fairly large office, and people freak out if a chair goes missing. Via.

2. Super agent Scott Boras gets a bad rap for his tactics, but here's an example of one his college-age clients turning down a $500,000 deal, playing another year in college, and accepting a new deal worth as much as $2 million.

3. Abraham Lincoln as a giant Dr. Manhattan terrorizing the White House.

4. Superman riding Devil Dinosaur, by Joe Quinones.

*Previously: Batman is jealous of Superman's dinosaur.

*Buy the Watchmen "Vietnam" army patch at eBay.

Chilling description of vampire bats

Here's how Bill Schutt's article about vampire bats for Natural History Magazine starts:

It was on one of the first of those special feeding days that I noticed two of the white-winged vampires doing something incredible. They crawled across the floor of their feeding enclosure like a pair of spiders, and then one of the bats made a bold approach to a rather large hen. The bird cocked her head to one side, eyeing the bats. Her beak could have severely injured or even killed them, so I got ready to intervene. Sharing my concern, perhaps, one of the vampires stopped a couple of inches beyond pecking distance. The other bat, however, crept even closer, and then, amazingly, it nuzzled against the hen’s feathery breast. Instead of becoming alarmed or aggressive, the bird seemed to relax. The vampire responded by pushing itself even deeper into what I would later learn was a sensitive section of skin called the brood patch: a feather-free region, densely packed with surface blood vessels, where body heat is efficiently transferred to the hen’s eggs or to her chicks. As I watched, the hen reacted to the bat by fluffing her feathers, hunkering down—and closing her eyes.

My God, I thought, these bats have learned to mimic chicks!

Click through to read the whole thing. It's illustrated.

Relatedly, here's the website for Bill's book about real-life blood-sucking creatures, Dark Banquet.



It's currently 34% off at at Amazon.

Also, here's a rather disturbing video of a vampire bat in action.

And finally, here's a photo of vampire bat medicine:



*Previously: Vampire desktop wallpaper.

*Buy vampire toys at eBay.

Scary Gnome, Perverted Ninja

Jeremy Spake made this scary little gnome figurine. He stars in a rather creepy short animated film by Graham Annable, called "The Hidden People":



Relatedly, here's a "pervert ninja" print by Graham, on sale for $20 at Gallery Nucleus:



*Previously: Ninja Dungeon.

*Buy gnomes at eBay.

Get your grandparents a prescription handgun for the holidays?

This is the Palm Pistol, ergonomically designed for the elderly and disabled. Apparently, it's been classified as a medical device and might be covered by Medicare once released. Via these sites.

Here are a few more random links:

1. Warren Ellis invited artists to remake a comic book character from 1930 called "Captain Justice." Here are the results.

2. Brandon Jennings decided he'd teach the NBA a lesson and play a year in Europe rather than suffer through a year in college. His backers insisted he'd be revolutionary trailblazer. So how's the experiment going? Instead of starring at a major university, he's the fourth guard on a 4-4 Italian team.

3. New G.I. Joe movie action figures look like they'll be closer in quality to the 80's action figures, than the updated figures. Via.

4. The Chuck E. Cheeses in Los Angeles are loaded with germs. Via.

*Previously: .75 Caliber Pop Ray Gun.

*Buy toy ray guns at eBay.