You would probably want to be careful when making a movie that involves Afghanistan. You could, perhaps, be more cavalier in dealing with Osama bin Laden (in the U.S. at least), but I’d think you would want to exhibit some sort of sensitivity when making a film about a country we’ve been involved with on, let’s just say, unpleasant terms for a while now. It seems like a bad idea to make a film about a group of white people (like, super white people) running around a poor, war-torn country (our war, no less) doing sick karate kicks and slaughtering the local populace in droves, even if they’re “zombies”, and then have them partake in hot, white people make-out sessions in between said slaughter. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.

Post tags: Film, Horror, War, We disapprove, Why

Wow. Yeah. So… this exists:

Via Jess Nevins.

That’s the video preview for a full-length comic book mashup of The Muppet Show and The Wicker Man by Paul O’Connell.

It’s… uh…

Well, words seem to be failing at the moment.

Really, what can one say when confronted with something like this, except:

Post tags: Comics, Crackpot Visionary, Film, Geekdom, Horror, Kid Stuff, Puppetry, Silly-looking types, Testing your faith, Uber, Why

Don’t get me wrong, dear readers, I love me some pizza, but that love has its limits. Take, for example, the boomerang shaped pizza featured in this “ad” by Sofa Experience Communications. Hurled down from the heavens by a Fabio-esque, greased up, and bespectacled man-god it seems delicious enough, but around the time it severs the genitals of a creepy gentleman exposing himself to a young lady in a park it loses some of its luster. In fact, it is exactly at that point that it loses all of its luster.

In all seriousness though, I have no idea what is supposed to be going on here. It’s like someone took a bunch of random ideas and a rubber dick, threw them in blender, and called it an advertisement. It’s the [adult swim]/Old Spice, Absurdist aesthetic taken to its logical conclusion, really. Where you would go from here, well, best not to imagine it.

Via Gothamist

Post tags: Advertising, Madness, Silly-looking types, Why

It would seem, at first glance, that this is not a thing that should exist in this reality. This is something that should be glimpsed only when gazing into some dark mirror of this world; something seen on the other side of a portal opening into the formless Void. Here, in the emptiness of this Other Place, one might find this scene, a Fellini-esque performance in which a sweaty, rotund gentleman sings an off-key, off-tempo version of “Jesus Loves Me”, to the decidedly mechanical beat of a cat named Midnight on organ and a mouse named Squeaky on the drum, mallets taped to its paws. No, this is something that should not be a part of our world. Alas, however, it is. Specifically, it is an excerpt from the late 50s children’s television program Andy’s Gang, filmed in front of an audience of what I can only assume were budding sociopaths who did not find this horrible in the least and, indeed, seem quite entertained. For the curious, context does little to make this clip any less dismal.

Via The Daily What

Post tags: End of the World, Horror, Madness, Why

Via John Coulthart!

“boy·taur \’boi-tawr\ n 1 : a guy with four (or more) legs 2 : a guy with any of a variety of multilimb or other transformations 3 : a guy who enjoys the company of boytaurs, and is thus a boytaur in spirit”

“There’s something wildly, almost primally, attractive about a guy with four legs: the crowding of long, sculpted thigh muscle, the four calf muscles bobbing and working in rhythm with his four-legged walk, the four strong male feet supporting his powerful boytaur body. Boytaurs know this attraction well, and it is our constant joy, both to have and to share.”

“Of course, many boytaurs don’t stop with four legs. Some add more legs, going six-legged or more. Some add extra arms. And many, enjoying all their boytaur feet, decide to go wristfooted as well.”

“Other boytaurs have completely different transformations, or none at all, but are still boytaurs in spirit, enjoying their augmented bodies, and sharing that joy freely. boytaur.net is dedicated to helping that sharing go on across the internet, all around the world.”

Post tags: Fairy Tales, Fetish, Queer, Serious Business, Silly-looking types, Uncanny Valley, Why

Via Douglas, with thanks. And a vague, yet all-pervading sense of awe.

How delightful to realize, no! Apparently, there’s just some redolently centauromachian vapor riding the air currents right now.

Folks, it’s officially CENTAUR WEEK on Coilhouse.

Consider yourselves warned.

Post tags: Animation, Crackpot Visionary, Fairy Tales, Fetish, Geekdom, Sexuality, Silly-looking types, Stroke Material, Testing your faith, Uber, Uncanny Valley, Why

Somewhere, in a parallel dimension, this is basically a true story and it is not the most mind-meltingly horrible thing you’ve ever seen because somewhere, in a parallel dimension, human anatomy is exactly like this.

(NSFW)

Thanks, Oddy and maicro!

Post tags: Horror, Music, Sexuality, Surreal, Why

Gaze in awe upon the majesty of the Bennie Railplane, designed and built by Scotsman George Bennie (more details about which can be found linked below). Capable of producing a a steady 60 brake horsepower, it was projected it would be able to reach sustained speeds of 120 mph. By 1930, a prototype of this weird not-a-monorail was running on a 130 yard test track at Milngavie near Glasgow, transporting thrill-seekers from one end to the other. By 1937, however, Bennie had gone bankrupt (no doubt due to the fact that his machine only traveled 130 yards) and, in 1950, the line was demolished for scrap, thereby closing this ridiculously impractical great chapter in land-based, propeller driven transportation.

Not long after the Railplane began its brief service, another strange wonder emerged from Europe: Germany’s Air Torpedo. Developed by Richard Pfautz, it was meant to transport mail from one side of the country to the other. The claim was that such a trip could be made in 40 minutes, the sleek, propeller driven bullet riding on rails (you can see a larger image here). The cost? Six cents. And here we are, sending our mail by truck and plane when, instead, we could be building air torpedo rails. Shameful.

Via Modern Mechanix and Gear Wheels

Post tags: Crackpot Visionary, Cryptohistory, Industrial, Magazines, Technology, Why, Ye Olde

When I saw this striking image of Tokyo while riffling through my RSS feeds, my heart stopped. Supposedly, it’s a still from a forgotten video game made in 1995.

There’s something about this cityscape. I’ve been coming back to stare at the large version of it for two days now, marveling at all the details: that puffy-cheeked man and that lobster, the people on the streets, the density of the buildings, the beautiful pixel weave that makes up the clouds, and that ominous yellow moon. I want to know the story of this game world and its makers. If it’s a still from a mid-90s video game, very few people would have considered that art at the time. Now, in the world we live in, I could easily see this image selling at an art opening. If it turned out that this image was done by a contemporary pop artist, emulating/exaggerating the aesthetics of retro games, I would not be surprised. However, this image feels even more compelling to me precisely because it’s not that, but a forgotten relic, a lost gem, a genuine artifact.

Tumblr tells me (for once) that this striking image is from a video game called “Power Slave,” produced by Jellyfish Software in 1995. I’m not sure if I believe that; the only game titled Power Slave game I could find was this first-person shooter set in Egypt, released by Lobotomy Soft in 1997. Nothing in the game descriptions suggested the appearance of this scene. I checked out a couple of Power Slave playthroughs - not all 17 levels, but enough, including the intro and end, to be fairly sure that this scene was never among them. And the only Jellyfish Soft release that came up in my searches was Aerokid, an aviation game for kids, released in 1998. But then I read somewhere that on the Saturn conversion of PowerSlave included a hidden game. After some Googling, I found that name: Death Tank Zwei. With a name like that, I thought it sounded promising. But after looking through the entire game thanks to some guy’s research video for a Port-to-PC project on YouTube, I came to the conclusion that this game wasn’t the source of the image, either.

And that’s where the trail grew cold. Maybe I missed something. Maybe it’s just another beautiful Tumblr scrap I’ll never find the source of. Anyone have a clue?

Update: mystery solved, thanks to Coilhouse reader Fmtownsmarty. It’s Power Slave, a hentai first-person adventure/strategy game from Japan. “Tetsuya is a rather ordinary Japanese teenager, who prefers hanging out with his sweetheart Rika than going to school. His passion are 3D video games. The newest game machine which allows the player to completely submerge into the virtual world, modeled according to his desires, has captured his heart. But one thing is strange: lately, Tetsuya keeps seeing himself as a killer and rapist. Dreams begin to haunt him. Is this just a side-effect of the game, or does he have a dark side he knows nothing about?” Oh, Japan, don’t you ever change. <3

Post tags: Cryptohistory, Cyberpunk, Future, Gaming, Geekdom, Japan, Sci-fi, Why

This video is not safe for work, nor the squeamish, nor the lactose intolerant. TASTE DEATH.

Thanks, as ever, for keepin’ it real strange, Al.

Post tags: Animation, Better than coffee, Crackpot Visionary, Medical, Memento Mori, Sexuality, Silly-looking types, Why