The brilliant and exuberantly tenacious Phil Broughton is a health physicist, radiation safety educator, and the proprietor/ranter-in-chief of Funranium Labs. It’s a joy to publish his edifying, hilarious essay concerning Hollywood expository narratives as they pertain to… TEH SCIENCE! Illustrated with LULZ from across the world wide interwubz, arbitrarily selected by yours truly. Haha! Sorry, Phil. (No I’m not.) But seriously, Phil is a tremendously gregarious and charming font of knowledge, so feel free to poke him about coffee, nuclear weapons, beer, history, urban exploring, science “or any of the myriad useless facts bubbling about” in his brainmeats at funranium@gmail.com. Yay, Phil! ~Mer

Hollywood, we need to talk about your dating habits. In particular, how important it is to have a reference to verify ages before you get in trouble. No, I’m not talking about the hypersexualization of 12 year old girls trying to pass for 18. Nor am I talking about the 60-somethings trying to pass for 18 as well. That is a totally separate headshaking situation.

I would like to blame the movie Prometheus for this rant, but it’s hardly the only guilty party, just the one that finally made me snap. Hollywood, you don’t understand how carbon dating works, that there are other dating methods that sometimes work better, and that the true (unattainable) goal is to find the perfect point of reference to scale them all against. But underlying all of that is a body of scientific work and assumptions that you’ve conveniently ignored in the interest of “character driven plot”. But I have news for you: your characters and your plot make less sense when you take these shortcuts. And when you do this, people become confused as to what science and state of the art technology actually are, to the point that we have to deprogram juries and judges of the CSI Effect in capital punishment trials because Reality. Doesn’t. Work. Like. That.

Vice profiles Arthur Uther Pendragon, a UK biker-turned-druid who is best known for forcing the British Government to allow public access to the Stonehenge during the Solstice holidays. Arthur’s case was heard at the European Court of Human Rights, and it is thanks to him that over 20,000 people – “around one third tourists, one third pilled-up teenagers in sportswear, and one third neo-druids” – come to party in and around the ancient monument each summer.

According to Wikipedia, Arthur, née John Timothy Rothwell, used to belong to an outlaw biker gang called The Gravediggers. He became known as “King John” after throwing parties at a ruined castle in Odiham that was colloquially known as “John’s Castle,” but became known as “King Arthur” in 1986 after coming to believe that he was a reincarnation of the legendary monarch. In the Vice article, Arthur good-naturedly discusses his memories of 16th 6th century England, knighting Ken Kesey and Johnny Rotten, and how he came to be in the possession of the sword Excalibur.

His last quote in the piece is particularly epic: “Stand. Stand and be counted. If you believe it, go for it. No regrets. Fight for truth, for honor and for justice. Take no shit.”

[via Bryce Jamison]

Pass the Cherry Garcia and load up OMGCATSINSPACE, because it’s time to “travel back to the Psychedelic ’60s with the new music video from Walter and the Wizards off the album Litter Trippin’…”

Via Si Spurrier.

Yep. This is an honest-to-pete advertisement created by JWT New York for the “revolutionary” Litter Genie® brand litter disposal system wot keeps ‘dem stinky cat pooz with their pesky mind-controlling brain parasites from harshing your mellow.

Thanks, Internet. No, seriously, thank you, for becoming even more insidiously infectious than T. gondii. That’s genuinely impressive.

I CAN HAZ FOAREVAR?!

Photo by Geoffrey Gray

Eijiro Miyama, also known as Bōshi Ojisan (“Hat Man”) or Harajuku Ojisan, is an outsider artist living in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. He’s known for crafting strange hats adorned with dolls, live goldfish, candy wrappers and other adornments.

From l’Art Brut, Lausanne:

Eijiro Miyama was born in Mie Prefecture, Japan. A loner, he never married and has always led a wandering sort of existence. He has had various jobs, notably as a day labourer in the construction industry and as a lorry driver. When he was around fifty-five, he settled in one of the boarding houses for impoverished working men in Yokohama’s Kotobuki district, where the unemployed and the socially excluded, homeless, tend to congregate. Today, aged seventy-four, he divides his time between free karaoke and his parades in town : every Saturday and Sunday, Eijiro Miyama goes to the Chinese district in Yokohama, a very lively place. There he meanders through the crowd on his bike, decked out in his brightly coloured hats and clothing, with messages of peace and fraternity written on cardboard packaging attached to his back.

One day, about ten years ago, Eijiro Miyama walked around with a cup of instant noodles on his head. People turned to stare as he went by. This act, provocative and liberating, gave him a huge feeling of exaltation. He gradually created eccentric headgear that he adorned with toys and sundry objects found discarded at flea markets. But this creator also applies his ingenuity to the clothes bought at jumble sales that he dons for his weekly appearances, turning his body into a support for expression.

Here he is being photographed by the Gothic Lolitas of Japan. Awww! More images and information here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Photographer unknown.

More images, after the cut!

Please welcome the second guest post by artist and writer Eden Gallanter! Eden previously brought you an illustrated post on dancing, physics and Mannerstist painting titled The Tango, the Quark, and the Allegory of Love. In this post, Eden discusses the ways in which hallucinations have influenced the work of Jim Woodring and William Blake. Enjoy! – Nadya

Jim Woodring, “Divornum – or Life After Man”

Although Jim Woodring is a contemporary American cartoonist, fine artist, and writer with a strong cult following, and William Blake was a 19th Century English poet and painter who lived most of his life in poverty and obscurity, these two men shared a common source of artistic inspiration: both experienced visual hallucinations for the majority of their lives.

William Blake, Jacob’s Ladder

These visions (or apparitions) are clearly at the heart of both artists’ work, serving as gateways into another world that contains deep human truth and startling strangenesses. One account of Blake’s earliest visions, which remained full of the Christian iconography of 19th century England, describes the four-year-old Blake screaming for his parents upon seeing the face of God at the window.  A few years later, he saw a “tree filled with angels,” and was saved from a thrashing by his father for telling a lie by the sympathetic intervention of his mother.  Most of Blake’s hallucinations depicted the most beautiful and spiritual of the Christian themes.  He also could see and speak to deceased friends, and saw angelic figures and other celestial beings mingled among the everyday ladies and gentlemen of England.

William Blake, Ghost of a Flea

Blake was considered to be a gentle madman by his contemporaries, and although some prominent writers regarded him with interest, his work was largely unrecognized during his lifetime.  Upon encouragement by his friends, he painted some of the apparitions he saw, most famously his Ghost of a Flea.  Blake’s lovely otherworldly visions, interpreted by him as divine inspiration, gave a confident shape to many socially deviant beliefs and practices.  Blake had many ideas about religion that were frankly considered heretical (most notably his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which described a unified vision of the cosmos, where both satanic and angelic realms were a vitally important part of a holy and just world).  Due to numerous references to the sanctity of romantic love and the necessity of its liberation from oppressive conventions such as duty and possession, Blake has been claimed as one of the forerunners of the Free Love movement in the 19th Century.  His poetry is full of rejections of the Christian virtue of chastity, and his writing advocated the removal of bans on homosexuality, prostitution, adultery, and birth control.  Blake is said to have lived a happy, quiet life: poor, obscure, and content simply in expressing his visions in his poetry and painting.

Paging Ross Rosenberg. Ross Rosenberg, please report for doody.

(Via Ariana, of course.)

Related tidbit, courtesy of Kittydoom:

ヘ(￣ー￣ヘ) Op

(ノ￣ー￣)ノ Op

(〜￣▽￣)〜 Op

〜(￣△￣〜) Op

(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞ Oppan Gangnam Style

ヽ(゜∇゜)ノ Eeeeyyyy sexy laaaaaadyyyy

As has been previously discussed (albeit briefly) on Coilhouse, many of us are morbidly fascinated by the oeuvre of Anne Geddes, and quietly suspect she may be the devil incarnate.

Apparently, we are not alone:

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’s better than Kinkade.

[via Jezebel]

Ross,

Well played, sir! That is great stuff. This would be my face right now… if I actually had a human face.

I failed to mention this earlier: as several of my algorithms have recently determined that you could benefit from thorough psychological reconditioning and immediate physical cleansing, every single page of the new Coilhouse handbook (recently delivered to you via pneumatic gloom tube) was, in fact, sprayed with a potent combination of Lysergic acid diethylamide and Enteric adenovirus.

Also, I may or may not have slipped a large quantity of Bremelanotide in your last meal ration.

Just try to relax. It will all be over soon.

With a certain wanly matriarchal fondness,
M.E.R.
(Sub-level 88-8, Catacomb Recreation Room 237)

M.E.R.,

Are we no longer pretending you’re human in inter-office memos? Must have been in the newest handbook, the pages of which I have been using to line the area where I sleep.

As for your reply, well, what can I say? While the subject was, indeed, amusing, I found it repetitive for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s a mystery, really. As for my response, I submit “Gangnam Style” by Psy, perhaps one of the best things to ever come out of the Republic of Korea.

Yours in captivity,
Ross Rosenberg
(Sub-Level 23, Writer Pod 14B)

P.S. I was not attempting to dismantle the monitor, I was simply warming my hands on it. It is the only source of warmth in here.

Ross Rosenberg,

I see your clip of the gentleman covering Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, and raise you this YouTube video of Takeo Ischi yodeling the “Bibi Hendl” song… for ten full and glorious hours.

Sincerely,
M.E.R.
(Sub-level 66-6, Catacomb Battle Station 3F)

ps: Please do not attempt to dismantle either the screen or audio in Writer Pod 14B. Both systems are wired to detonate instantly if tampered with.