East Coasters, are you sad that you missed Mer’s theremin performance at the launch party? New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, Lousiville, Nashville, Atlanta, Columbia, Knoxville and Baltimore, you’re in luck: Faun Fables is coming through, and Mer is performing with them. Click here for the tour dates.

You know the drill: we’ll be light on Mer-posts for the next couple of weeks, but when she returns, there’ll be wonders to show! When the tour went through Europe, Mer revealed the the most depressing towel rack ever made, found at the Tyrolean Folk Museum in Austria. When she toured the midwest, Mer uncovered The Tarnished Beauties of Blackwell, Oklahoma – a poignant post that inspired both my mom’s first-ever Coilhouse comment and a heartfelt comment from Shirley Love, a 72-year-old native of Blackwell. What will Mer discover on her East Coast adventure? Stay tuned.

He says that the thigh rash is the worst part.

Old medical illustrations come in many flavors. Beautiful, cialis hilarious, grotesque – there’s a taste of each at NIH’s Historical Anatomies on the Web. Some 18th-century Persian illustrations peel back the subject’s skins to reveal a bright red reverse, which, coupled with the gold bracelets and the multicolored organs, gives the appearance elaborate stage costumes. A medieval battlefield surgery manual (with a very dramatic cover!) shares some tips on limb amputation. An anatomical horse prances in a field under a sky filled with flowers.  A 17th-century Persian depiction of bloodletting and venous figures reminds me of Daniel Johnston. Anime-sized gory eyes (what is even going on here?) stare at you from the pages of the Kaitai shinsho, a book illustrated by the Dutch and published in Japan. And the axe-murderer-style uterus illustrations will send chills down your spine. So… who’s hungry?

Previously:

• Elegant Spine Type
• Victorian Freaks & Other Bodies of Knowledge
• Meguro Parasitological Museum

Okay, I’m doing an asinine thing: blogging about this fiction website called Dollar Dreadful, despite the fact that I’ve not read a single piece of writing on it. I’m not even going to try to fool you guys; I don’t think I’ve read more than 5 words on this page since I first discovered it over a year go. I come back to this website again and again with the full intention of reading the stories, but the layout just hypnotizes me. Before I can download a single PDF, the brain starts going: “DESIGN! Must look up fonts! Need to buy vintage Sears catalogue on Ebay!” and then before I know it, I’m on Flickr drooling over somebody’s grandma’s scanned corset ads. Also, I love the fact that they designed the ads at the bottom in the same exact style as the rest of the page. If only all websites worked this way!

Model wearing one of René Cigler’s apocalyptic adornments.

Sad news from BoingBoing: artist René Cigler has passed away. Cigler’s many talents included illustration, sculpture, costuming, toy design  and running her own shop, Strange Monster, with partner Cameron Smith in Portland. My favorite works by Rene were always her apocalyptic costume designs, many of which were worn by dancers in Ministry’s stage performances, as well as in the film version of Tank Girl.

Gareth Branwyn once described Cigler’s costume work as having a unique sense of play:

Cigler does a great job of creating a strong field, a believable fiction, around her work. Even though this type of industrial/post-apocalyptic/Road Warrior art has been done to death, René’s work still seems fresh and interesting. One saving grace is that her sculptures have a sense of humor – they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously … hub cap necklaces, hats made out of barbecue grills, purses made out of cereal boxes and rubber car mats. This is the kind of high fashion one might imagine wearing after the world has run out of oil, the rainforests are gone, and the local supermall offers nothing but mountains of rubble (fashion accessories?) and lurking blood-thirsty mutants.

Among her many publications (which ranged from Penthouse to People to Heavy Metal), there is one very striking cover:

Boing Boing Magazine, Issue 11

René, you will be missed.

• Rene Cigler’s Website
• Obituary on BoingBoing
• Article/Interview in Gothic Beauty 18

I used to work as a receptionist at a chiropracter’s office. I was in it for the swag: spine keychains (used for assembling an elaborate multi-tiered choker necklace), spine lamps (OK, ours weren’t as cool as the Mark Beam version), and one incredible metallic spine chair that looked like it belonged at a Giger bar… which I coveted, but never got to own. Discovering Bjorn Johansson’s lovely spine-inspired letters on the beautiful I Love Typography blog this morning took me back to those glory days.

It’s not a full font, just the designer’s experiment for creating type. Like my Becher font experiment, only a few letters exist. It wonderful to one day see them all. It would look nice paired with Value Pack, don’t you think?

I must hear the fireworks. This is vital to the whole experience.

Found by Storm – a  m4w Craig’s List ad titled “Want it from behind while you play Super Mario Brothers?” The entire scene is too long and raunchy to repost here, but here’s the gist:

When you arrive the door will be open. Please come in close and lock the door and close the shades if they are still open. I will be in the bathroom and the door will be closed. Turn on the TV and the Nintendo. Remove all of your clothing. Turn off all lights in the room and kneel down on the bed so you are directly in the light of the TV.

After a bit of Goomba-stomping, platform-jumping, brick-smashing foreplay, Serious Business ensues:

When you reach the end of level one, make sure to trigger the fireworks. This is vital to the entire experience. I must hear the fireworks. When level 2 begins and Mario walks into the pipe, I will penetrate you.

But it’s not all fun and games! “I will continue having sex until the level ends. DO NOT take the secret level skip. If you die I will pull out and spank you until the level restarts.”

Creepy? Hilarious? Awesome? Fake? Whatever – I’ve found his soul mate!

Photographer couple Bernd and Hilla Becher, cheap born in the 30s, dedicated their life to creating a visual taxonomy of the world’s industrial structures. Armed with a large-format camera, they traveled together for over 40 years to photograph and catalogue man-made constructions from every corner of the globe. Among their subjects were gas holders, blast furnaces, mineheads and water towers, whose monolithic portraits were arranged by the couple into “Typologies”; families of images that showcase the uniformity of these buildings, in context of each other, as they come together from all over the world. If you look at any of these images by itself, it’s meaningless – but if you look at them together, each picture’s power is multiplied by the ones around it.

Seeing prints of these (or similar ones) at MOMA, my friend remarked to me, “these look like alphabets.” It’s true; as I looked at these I began to see a grid, stems, serifs, ligatures, bowls… slowly, letterforms began to emerge from the stoic architecture. Back in LA, I got to work: scanning, cutting and rearranging, I’ve been able to come up with several letters. Below are “C” and “U”. Would any designers/typographers out there be interested in collaborating on this? If so, drop me a line!

Zoetica’s solo art show (and birthday! woo!) takes place in Toronto this Thursday. The event unveils a new series of gorgeous monochrome ink and digital drawings, which began with our jetpacked Coilhouse poster girl and spiraled off into a new mythology. The subjects of the series – a team of “off-world cloud hunters” – posses high-altitude breathing devices, candy-shaped gravity-defying hairstyles and futuristic clothing that’s remeniscent of Plastik Wrap, the host of the gallery event. Adriana from Plastik Wrap and Zoetica previously collaborated on several fashion shoots, my favorite one taking place at the Bradbury Building in Downtown LA (most famously captured as J.F. Sebastian’s apartment building in Blade Runner). More information about this event can be found on Zo’s personal blog.

Just in case you can’t make it, here’s a cloud hunter – and three more after the jump.

Up here we breathe what we can.

How hot is this? Needs to be worn with a space helmet, though. Another lavish image after the cut, and more from this collection at Scherer Gonzalez’s site.

Previously in futuristic fashion:

• Be a Dear and Put on Your Pressure Suit
• Let Chen Zhun Take You To Fanboy Heaven
• He Came From Outer Space to Save the Human Race
• Artificial Luminescent Eyelashes
• Degenerotika
• The Jackson Space Adventure Continues

[thanks, Storm]

Figure A: Russia’s bad kids [via]

Oh, modern Russia! My former homeland, with your gold-plated toilets, your polonium, your hotpants, your outdated military technology, your simple modesty… how you continue to enchant me with your many wonders! Especially when it comes to feats of social engineering. Witness, for example, the Kremlin’s ingenious new plan to ban emo and goth, as reported by The Moscow Times:

State Duma deputies, Public Chamber members and social conservatives have hammered out legislation aimed at heading off the spread of emo culture, which they describe as a “dangerous teen trend.” The Duma last month held a parliamentary hearing on a raft of proposed amendments contained in a document called “Government Strategy in the Sphere of Spiritual and Ethical Education,” a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times. Among other measures, the proposed legislation calls for heavy regulation of emo web sites and for banning young people dressed like emos from entering schools and government buildings. The bill also outlines what it calls a “spiritual and ethical crisis” facing Russian youth, including the high rate of alcohol abuse, teen abortions and “negative youth movements.” Emo ideology encourages and justifies drug use and sexual relations among minors, according to the bill, which also lumps emos and goths together with skinheads.

Negative youth movements? Sexual relations among minors? Of course you’d never encourage such a thing, Russia. Certainly not with government funds! And especially not if they dress like Anonymous! Oh, wait…

Update: Zo adds, “just wanted to supplement the post with this link submitted to me this morning by Apaniyam on Flickr. There is talk of curfews, a ban on body mods and more.

Under the new measures, schools would be prohibited from celebrating Western holidays like Halloween and St. Valentine’s Day, which are deemed inappropriate to “Russian culture.” Toys in the shape of monsters or skeletons would be banned as “provoking aggression.”

Bonus extended remix: compare and contrast to the Mexican government’s treatment of its young emo citizens. After violence against the subculture increased, government officials actually launched a campaign to promote understanding under the slogan “for the freedom of being young, live and let live.” Russia vs. Mexico: it’s on!

Figure B: Russia’s good kids [via]. The one with the asymmetrical bangs is about to be seized and removed from the scene.

[thanks, Milly.]