Still on mini-hiatus but I couldn’t resist sharing this moment of techno-zen with you. From Gizmodo:

“For the low price of $1000 a month, you could overcome your physical limitations with a HAL exoskeleton from Cyberdyne. While HAL prototypes have been around for a few years now, Cyberdyne has just begun building a lab that will mass produce 400-500 of the suits per year starting this October.

Using sensors attached to the skin, the suit supposedly moves effortlessly with your muscles and it has the capability of increasing your strength up to 10 times the norm. It also has a continuous operating time of about 2 hours and 40 minutes. As mentioned, the monthly rental fee has been set at $1000 which includes $300 for maintenance and upgrades. No word on whether or not they plan on selling these things outright, but I would be perfectly happy renting one and going all Hulk on my enemies for a month or so.”

Despite HAL’s lack of lasers and other such minor shortcomings I think I know what I’ll be doing for my next birthday. Can it fly?

Move over, Sea Cucumber; your title as “most obscene specimen of marine life” has just been usurped. Enter The Pigbutt Worm! In addition to its official name, this newly-discovered species is also sometimes called The Flying Buttocks. Its Latin name, Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, translates to “resembling a pig’s rump.” These marble-sized creatures float below oxygen minimum zone and appear to catch food inside a small cloud of mucus that surrounds their mouth. Yum!

So Coilhouse is supposed to be on this crazy deadline moratorium but when I saw this picture, for some reason it made me think of all of you, and I just had to share. Enjoy!

Many thanks to (what other pervert could have submitted this?) Paul Komoda.

• Wikipedia Article
• Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Article

In just a few weeks, Issue 1 of Coilhouse Magazine goes off to the printers! We can’t believe that these final weeks are here already. To make sure that Issue 1 gets done properly, we are going to pause blogging until the end of this month. The next two weeks are going to be a completely grueling process for the entire staff as we proofread, color-correct, proofread again, finish the design, overdose on Jolt Cola, realize that we forgot something important at the last minute, panic, revise and finally send it off to the printer. Wish us luck. We can’t reveal the contents of Issue 1 just yet, but it’s going to be amazing. You just wait.

We’ll miss you guys in the next two weeks. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to watch our community bloom so much in such a brief span of time, and take part in the vibrant and inclusive discussions. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read and respond to the blog, and no worries, it’s not going anywhere! We love the immediacy and the camaraderie far too much. Everyone’s excited to bring in more new writers and features over the coming months. Still, it’s human nature to try for the brass ring.

See you in May!

EDIT: Actually, it’s highly likely we’ll see you before that. (Let’s face it. We’re not going to be able to keep radio silence for two full weeks!)

We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon’s teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.
Stephen Vincent Benét, Litany for Dictatorships

These days, Stephen Vincent Benét is remembered, when he’s remembered at all, as the author of modern tall tales like The Devil and Daniel Webster, the epic Civil War ode John Brown’s Body or his reams of sentimental young adventure stories. Much of his other work is out of print.

That’s a shame, because after 1935, spurred by fascism, war and depression (his own as well as the country’s) Benét produced a series of brilliantly haunting works, both poetry and fiction. These oft-apocalyptic visions — which he did not hesitate to label nightmares — laid the groundwork for what we often expect the End to look like. Anytime a fictional future humanity looks out over the ruins of familiar landmarks, sees the birthrate tank or gets betrayed by its machines, there’s a debt owed to Benét.

An mp3 of an old radio program based on one of his apocalypse poems:

Click Here to Listen

The muses of fashion sing again as we enter spring here in Angel City. To celebrate the turning of the tides agent Yoon and I had ourselves a little roadside picnic near the ever-fragrant LA River.

For this momentous occasion I picked a simple knit dress, thumb leggings and high heels with steel-plated toes – a sensible choice should one need to escape the local packs of roaming hobos on foot. In daylight hours these [equally fragrant] folks keep to dark shelters under bridges, sale with only glowing eyes indicating their whereabouts. Still, treat one can never be too careful when choosing footwear.

Eyes: my usual cobalt eyebrows in a Ben Nye shadow, a hint of drugstore iridescent green shadow on the eyelids to echo the shoes, liquid liner, Urban Decay “Heavy Metal” glitter highlights
Skin: Pür mineral powder
Lips: Nyx coral lip gloss
Nails: NYC enamel in Times Square Tangerine Creme
Dress: Final Touch $30 at Angel on Melrose Ave
Leggings: H&M
Bag: shop near Asakuza Temple, Tokyo
Gloves: Harajuku, Tokyo
Shoes: Naughty Monkey $30 on Amazon

Sometimes, there are no words.

There’s a new movie coming out with Eiko Ishioka’s costume design in it! The film is directed by Tarsem, who previously collaborated with Ishioka on The Cell. Events take place in a 1915 hospital, where a bedridden patient befriends a little girl with a broken arm and offers to tell her an adventure story about five men – an Indian adventurer, an African ex-slave, a masked bandit, an Italian bombmaker, and Charles Darwin (what? yes!). The girl is enthralled by the exotic tale, and waits eagerly for every new chapter. But the storyteller, a broken man emotionally and physically, has a dark motive for telling the tale: he wants her to steal something at the hospital in exchange for the story’s conclusion. Here is the trailer:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/yQt0QjWHUjY" width="400" height="330" wmode="transparent" /]

I did a quick Google search on when the film is coming out: nothing. I did a search for it on IMDB, and learned that it was completed in 2006. Hmm. That’s when I started digging into the YouTube comments. One guy writes that he saw it at a private screening in LA a week ago, and that they asked the audience to critique for the purpose of determining whether it will go on the big screen or on DVD. Another person writes that they have not yet found a distributor. And then there is this comment by Khan Higou:

I spent a year working on post-production of this movie (in Paris); I know every single image of this feature and believe me, it IS beautiful for sure. And you Americans are not lucky about this independent movie (self-produced, directed, even self-distributed, no big studio logo in front of this trailer, did you notice…) ’cause I heard it has been rated R in the US; a way to punish Tarsem everybody thinks here ’cause the movie is not that violent

Further research turned up one review that indicates that the film has not been sold for distribution due to scathing reviews at the Toronto Film Fetival. The reviewer writes that Zoe Bell (Death Proof) was the president of the jury that year. “(She was) seated two seats away from me quite enjoyed at least from what I could get from her reactions to the film while it was being shown.” Maybe she didn’t like it so much after all.

Maybe the ending is a little predictable, but the visuals look stunning! I want to see this – and I want to love it. Thanks to Paul Komoda for the tip.

Update: Obviously I’m not very good with The Google! Looks like it’s finally coming out May 9th. Thanks, Rachel!

• The Fall – Official Site
• Eiko Ishioka
• Tarsem Singh

If you aren’t regularly perusing archive.org‘s ever-expanding selection of 78rpm recordings, you’re missing out, friend. It’s a treasure trove of vintage delicacies you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Their Paul Robeson collection alone is enough to send one into fits of rapture. And it’s all public domain, so you can download mp3s to your heart’s content, completely guilt free.

Nevertheless, something tells me you’ve been bad, very bad, this week, so here’s a cheeky little ditty from 1917 to usher in your weekend:

Download “Naughty, Naughty, Naughty” by Dan W. Quinn

I’m worried, I’m worried, thinking about you
and here’s the reason why
Its all on account of the things that you do
You know you’re naughty and I know it, too
You made me love you right from the start
Why do you play with my heart?

(Image from vintagespank.com.)

Naughty, naughty, naughty.
Can’t you be good? Can’t you be good?
Things you do just set me wild
Still you’re daddy’s angel child
If you keep on worrying me
I’m going to take you right across my knee
Because you’re naughty, naughty, oh so naughty
Just a naughty baby to me

With a grateful pat on the petudie to DJ Dead Billy for the mp3 link.

Are you sick of being victimized by the overly confident and spoiled women of America?

Are you intrigued by the exotic yet vulnerable women of Eastern Europe?

Do you want to feel like a Big Powerful Savior Daddy-Man?

If you answered “yes” to one of more of the above you are part of a growing demographic. A demographic that’s ever-expanding, cheerfully bubbling to the surface of the internet like a pot of boiling baby feces. Yes, legions of xenophiles are uniting in one common goal – to meet and wed a Russian Woman – the perfect blend of dignity and modesty wrapped up nicely in a blanket of historical misfortune. And they’re doing it on Russian Women: The Real Truth.

Here you are led by the brave American-born blog admin through the finer points of kindling Russian romance on the Web. He unveils the complex secrets of the Russian woman’s psyche, the way brute Russian men treat the ladies as a commodity and insightful tips on avoiding the scams of “mail order bride services”. How does he know so much about Russia, you might be wondering to yourselves. Well, that’s because he lives there now! Yes, living in Russia has granted him unique access to Russian intricacies the rest of you non-Russians aren’t privy to. Just look at the way he describes his inspiration behind the blog:

“Russian women are like heroic characters because they are always dealing with dirty situations and environments but somehow they still manage to stay beautiful and out of trouble. I am like most Americans in that I love a good underdog story where the hero faces incredible odds but still comes out as the champion. This is a labor of love because it is an opportunity to bring the true story of these women into the light.This is especially important since their own modesty would never allow them to do it themselves…Russian women are looking for manly leaders who have a clear direction and purpose in life and from a historical and survival perspective this makes a great deal of sense”.

Too many good things going on in this picture not to post! A tea-colored composition of all my favorite fashion things: ruffs, rosettes, oriental-style hair, intricate sleeves and medical crosses, drawn by Christine. Hot! I must say that I’m not crazy about the striped stockings here. Maybe if they were transluscent and had that same tea color as the rest of the outfit, it would work better. As of now, they look like they were bought on Ebay, if that’s possible to tell from a drawing. Overall I find this picture delicious to look at, even though it might not be Christiane’s best work from a technical standpoint.

I would love to see the same fashion concepts executed as straight-up linework with a more fluid composition, along the lines of this amputastic masterpiece that Christiane completed in 2005: