HOLY SHIT. I just discovered the website Everything Is Terrible (which should really be called Bad Touch Central, or Kill It With Fire). JACKPOT. I kind of feel like a kid who’s just come downstairs on Christmas morning and discovered grandma giving Santa a hummer a living room filled to the brim with goodies.

A bit of background: long, long ago, I’d obsessively make bootleg VHS comps (later, DVDrs) of all of the funniest, awesomest, creepiest, most fucked up shit I could find, and share or trade them. Everything from Pinky the Cat to Sex Education For Trainables to obscure Italian giallo to The Terror of Tinytown to Death Bed to unsanctioned blooper reels to questionable commercials to Raping Steven Spielberg to crazy shit from foreign lands to “Blue Peanuts” to … well, you get the idea. It was this bone-deep, swap-and-curate compulsion that’s never really died.

Be warned: at about 1:45, this clip gets downright demonic.

After discovering stuff like RE/SEARCH, those Incredibly Strange Music comps, zine culture, and wandering the specialty video store booths at the (then much smaller, homegrown) San Diego Comic Convention, I realized there were entire fringe communities of weirdos compelled to do exactly the same thing! I was so excited! We were all trading these grainy, janky 4th generation bootlegs of our favorite oddball material. Pre internet, those communities were more localized. One the internet kicked in, it went global. Of course, now we have YouTube [and better yet, Vimeo]…

…and Everything Is Terrible –bless their black, festering hearts– has a channel chock full o’ madness. These are only a few of the more soul-rending clips they’ve culled from the etherstatic for our pleasure. If you’ve got an hour (or several) to kill (as violently and memorably as possible), you should probably head on over there. Or, if you quailed upon viewing these clips, click here instead.

More Everything Is Terrible curated gems after the jump.

EDIT 1 2009/08/04 1:50pm: Oh no! YouTube just suspended EIT’s account. “[You] won’t be able to watch most of our videos until we find a new home for them. We’re working hard to rebuild, but it’s going to take a little while. Sit down, breathe into a paper bag, and try to relax. We will keep you updated. Don’t worry, we will continue to post new videos.”

Summer stretches on, dear readers, the air thick and heavy, set to a steady, slow broil. I anticipate these many, seemingly endless weeks with fear and loathing, knowing as I do the horrors that await, squatting, therein. I am decidedly unfit for such fiery months despite my heritage, my people being born of the arid deserts. Perhaps in the many years separating my ancestors and I, my genes have forgotten those traits that made survivable those wind-swept climbes. In the end, it doesn’t matter for the present remains the same, my time during those days between Spring and Fall consisting of scurrying from air conditioned room to air conditioned room in a vain attempt to thwart the heat and the body’s disgusting method of cooling itself. It is a battle I have yet to win and by now, already into the horrid month named for Augustus, my existence is a slick, damp, and sticky nightmare punctuated by frequent showers.

Were that the only plague visited upon this part of the Northeast it would be a blessing but, alas, this is not the case. With this infernal heat comes, of course, vast multitudes of insects. They are ubiquitous, gathering in great swarms that blacken the sky, yet do not provide shade. No, they bring no solace, only pain and itching. Truly it is a terrible time, each day finding me a salty, flailing golem shambling down the street flinging my arms, slick with perspiration, like a spastic and broken marionette as I am pursued by any number of buzzing parasites. It would, perhaps, be bearable were the nights to offer some sort of reprieve, but no. Holed up in my climate controlled habitat I can see them, gathering around the street lights, dancing on the humid air that rises from its dormancy in the asphalt. They are like flecks of summer snow. Filthy, disease-ridden, evil summer snow.

Charles McCarthy has documented this particular blight. His time-lapse photography makes them appear almost beautiful, belying their festering malevolence. Oh, how I long for Fall.

Contrary to the beliefs of some, Coilhouse is not a “fantasy magazine”. Yes, it’s a repository of amazing and wonderful things, but a “fantasy magazine” it is not. Some may dispute this fact and to those people I would say that you are mistaken. At the very least you are confused as to the definition of “fantasy magazine”, for just because you may woolgather about the inner workings of Coilhouse, such musings do not qualify the publication as a “fantasy magazine”.

The dark corners of your mind have no effect, then, on the actual reality of the magazine itself meaning, for instance, that editorial meetings are staid affairs in no way resembling a Cinemax offering in which the three lovely women who helm this ship dress in beautiful clothing and totally make out. Nor do the day-to-day operations of Coilhouse consist of the aforementioned goddesses lounging about in provocative frilly things in a giant, Victorian mansion when, suddenly, a casual discussion about Russian literature turns heated and finally breaks out into a sexy pillow fight, after which they totally make out. These things do not happen, I assure you, and there’s no use arguing about it or even threatening to quit even though you may feel that certain parties may have misled you or outright lied to you in order to lure you into their cold, fetid little lair where, instead of satin pillows, limber nymphs clad in frilly-things, and sloppy make-out sessions, you found a room with a desk, a computer, two buckets, and a 24 hour curfew. So, yeah, no fantasies here.

Der Orchideengarten (The Garden of Orchids) , on the other hand, was a fantasy magazine and it may be the first such publication of its kind. It ran for 51 issues, from 1919-1921, pre-dating Weird Tales by four years and was printed in the bedsheet format of 9¾” x 12″, square-bound. Contributors ranged from contemporary, German fantasy authors to stories by foreign writers such as H.G. Wells, Dickens, Poe, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Pushkin, Washington Irving, and Hawthorne, among others. There were even two issues dedicated to mystery stories and one dedicated to erotic literature.

The real star here, though, has to be the art. Everything from reproductions of medieval woodcuts to work by Gustave Doré to pieces by Alfred Kubin is represented here. The covers, seen here, are simply magnificent, making those of Weird Tales (much as I love them) appear almost childish by comparison. Certainly it can be said that Der Orchideengarten‘s covers lack the kitsch factor so prevalent in its American counterpart. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up to the reader.

There are a myriad number of additional scans at the ever wonderful A Journey Round My Skull as well as some great interior illustrations; well worth checking out.

It’s been days since we hastily cooked up that batch of bathtub MDMA in honor of the Zobogrammatron’s incept date. Still, I don’t think I’ve quite come down yet, so I’m not really sure what we’re watching right now, folks. I do know that it is very colorful and shiny and retro and Japanese and somehow vaguely Lovecraftian by way of Fisher Price, and thus, it cannot help but to be better than coffee.*

OctopieInTheSky, who has created an entire YouTube channel devoted to the show, may be able to clarify:

A messed-up kids program which first appeared on the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation’s JOCX-TV on October 1st, 1973. Every episode is basically about Kure Kure Takora wanting something that belongs to the other characters and then tries to steal it. While the episodes only run 2 and a half minutes each, you’ll be treated to acts of:

• antisocial behavior (always guaranteed)
• random violence (guaranteed)
• cannibalism
• Love triangles that cross not only species but also plant/animal classifications
• torture
• set decorations inspired by Fauvism
• suicide attempts

Enjoy!

Yo Gabba Gabba and Teletubbies, eat yer hearts out. Via Cephalopod Tea Party.

Several more episodes after the jump.

This makes me so happy I could shit bats:

Via Eliza G. at Ectomo.

Bet you didn’t know the Bird of Death was such a funky chicken. Or a Criss Angel fan. More toothsome tidbits over at his YouTube channel. FANGTASTIC. WOULD BITE AGAIN A++++.