“When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, ‘Get up; let’s go.’ But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home. When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into 12 parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.”

For those of you with a big appetite, we’ve got a special sweet hidden away. Check out this great little recitation of Poe’s “The Red Death” — also read by William S. Burroughs — at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

Read and watch more at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia

A woman died from a heart attack caused by shock after waking up to discover she had been declared dead – and was being prepared for burial. As mourning relatives filed past her open coffin she suddenly woke up and started screaming as she realized where she was.

Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, of Kazan, Russia, had been wrongly declared deceased [the first time] by doctors. Her eyes fluttered and [she was] immediately rushed back to the hospital but she only lived for another 12 minutes in intensive care before she died again, this time for good.

Giant rats as big as cats have killed and eaten two babies in separate attacks in South Africa’s squalid townships this week.

Lunathi Dwadwa, three, was killed as she slept in her parent’s shack outside Cape Town and another girl was killed in Soweto township near Johannesburg the same day. Bukiswa Dwadwa, 27, said: ‘I can’t forget how ugly my child looked after her eyes were ripped out. ‘She was eaten from her eyebrows to her cheeks, her other eye was hanging by a piece of flesh.’

Residents of South Africa’s impoverished townships say the giant rats grow up to three-foot long, including their tails, and have front teeth over an inch long. The suspects in the baby attacks are believed to be African Giant Pouched Rats, the biggest in the world. They are nocturnal, omnivorous and can produce up to 50 young a year. Some tribal people breed them for food.

The deaths appear to be part of a spate of deadly rat attacks in the country. Last month, 77-year-old grandmother Nomathemba Joyi died after giant rats chewed off the right side of her face.

Hard to believe that this is a real communication from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, but it is! From the official CDC blog:

There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.

A Brief History of Zombies

We’ve all seen at least one movie about flesh-eating zombies taking over (my personal favorite is Resident Evil), but where do zombies come from and why do they love eating brains so much? The word zombie comes from Haitian and New Orleans voodoo origins. Although its meaning has changed slightly over the years, it refers to a human corpse mysteriously reanimated to serve the undead. Through ancient voodoo and folk-lore traditions, shows like the Walking Dead were born.

In movies, shows, and literature, zombies are often depicted as being created by an infectious virus, which is passed on via bites and contact with bodily fluids. Harvard psychiatrist Steven Schoolman wrote a (fictional) medical paper on the zombies presented in Night of the Living Dead and refers to the condition as Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome caused by an infectious agent. The Zombie Survival Guide identifies the cause of zombies as a virus called solanum. Other zombie origins shown in films include radiation from a destroyedNASA Venus probe (as in Night of the Living Dead), as well as mutations of existing conditions such as prions, mad-cow disease, measles and rabies.

The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”

Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too!

[continues at the official CDC blog]

The home at 135 Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island, that’s featured in H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Shunned House” is for sale. And if you’re looking for “a particular house on the eastern side of the street; a dingy, antiquated structure perched on the abruptly rising side-hill, with a great unkempt yard dating from a time when the region was partly open country” and you’ve got $925,000, it could be yours.

The house had a colorful history even before Lovecraft wrote about it, none of which is mentioned in the real estate listing however. Aside from a giant monster buried in the basement (which can, admittedly, be killed with acid), it has four bedrooms, a koi pond and a library.

I grabbed the package, closed the door and locked it. The new Black Swan DVD had arrived.

Darren Aronofsky’s tale-within-a-tale, Black Swan was one of last year’s best films. Many are familiar with the Oscar-nominated flick’s re-telling of the Swan Lake ballet to create a psychological horror flick that explores the perils of artistic perfection.

The movie has rightly earned it’s place among genre classics like Rosemary’s Baby and Carrie and — like the former — Black Swan is rife with occult symbolism and references that add weight to the scary-movie-cliches, making this bloody ballet one of those unique films that define a genre at the same time that it transcends the limits of that genre’s conventions.

Twins/Double

Of course, the central symbol of the film is the heroine’s (Nina — played by Natalie Portman) gradual crack-up into two separate personalities. This mental breakdown reflects the ballet’s protagonist/antagonist duality embodied by the White Swan and the Black Swan. Traditionally, these characters are portrayed by the same dancer and while Nina is the right dancer for the White Swan her attempts to embody the Black Swan are where her troubles begin.

In ancient Egypt, the twin rivals Horus and Set embodied primal duality, and twin symbolism has long been associated with all occurrences of opposites  sun and moon, night and day, summer and winter etc.  The good folks at hermetic.com offer this list of contrasts between Egypt’s Terrible Twins:

Horus	Set
Day	Night
Life	Death
Fire	Water
Slayer	Slain
Bursting-forth of life	Withdrawal of life and its reappearance later
Openly active	Secretive
Conqueror & King	Victim & Rebel
Hawk, Lion, & Ram	Serpent, Antelope, Hippo
Rises into the sky	Descends into the Earth
Steals Set’s virility	Throws filth in face of Horus

Often, another kind of twin symbolism emphasizes the balancing aspect of opposites. The caduceus staff with its entwining snakes has come to represent both the Greek god Hermes and the Roman god Mercury, but it is thought by some to have originally been a representation — in and of itself — of a more ancient deity. Borrowed by alchemy, the symbol of the crucified serpent became synonymous with the Philosopher’s Stone and poet John Donne referred to Jesus Christ as the crucified serpent.

In Black Swan, the twin symbolism is strictly played antagonistically between the White Swan/Black Swan, Good Nina/Evil Nina, between Nina and a newly-added rival dancer in the company who lacks Nina’s expertise but oozes the sexuality and liberation that Nina cannot seem to summon.

Mirrors

Throughout the film, Aronofsky uses mirrors and reflections to further emphasize Nina’s gradual splitting into two distinct personalities. In some ways this is a technique that simply reinforces the twins theme, but the symbolism of mirrors and reflections has its own specific implications.

Mirrors have long been used in the occult for magical work and the twin-creating power of mirrors is reinforced when one considers that mercury was once the preferred backing used to make glass reflective. Mirror magic has been used to divine the future, contact otherworldly beings/dimensions and — more to the point regarding Black Swan – to peer directly into the chaos of the subconscious mind. From the Prophetic Mystic site:

The purpose of a magical mirror, contrary to popular belief, is not to summon ghosts and have them give you answers, magical spells, or even to place a curse. In psychological terms, it can best be described as a form of psychoanalysis whereby an individual attempts to create a direct connection with the subconscious by suppressing the Id and Ego. Rather than restricting the unconscious to the confines within the mind, a seer is able to visually project the unconscious within the mirror. By projecting the unconscious visually, the desired subject of analysis becomes tangible and not so abstract.

In terms of mysticism, the unconscious is direct link to our psychic interpretation and divine inspiration. In psychological terms, it would best be associated to what Carl Jung described as the ‘Collective Unconscious.’ Specific cultural archetypes, as Jung described, are able to be found universally through this Collective Unconscious, or that common inner experience that we all share. The projections of these archetypes, such as angelic beings or demons, are simple representations of one’s inner self that can be projected within the mirror and confronted.

The mirror, as a tool for this psychoanalytical purpose, functions solely through the individual. What an individual perceives through the mirror is solely based upon their perception and the very limits of their own subconscious which becomes reflected in the mirror. In other words, what you are opening up to subconsciously plays out virtually on the mirror.

Check out this exhaustive examination of the the film and its symbols at Vigilant Citizen.

The face of Jeremy Morlock, a young US soldier, grins at the camera, his hand holding up the head of the dead and bloodied youth he and his colleagues have just killed in an act military prosecutors say was premeditated murder.

Moments before the picture was taken in January last year, the unsuspecting victim had been waved over by a group of US soldiers who had driven to his village in Kandahar province in one of their armoured Stryker tanks.

According to testimony collected by Der Spiegel magazine the boy had, as a matter of routine, lifted up his shirt to reveal that he was not hiding a suicide bomb vest.

That was the moment Morlock, according to a pre-arranged plan, threw a grenade at the boy that exploded while other members of the rogue group who called themselves the “kill team” opened fire.

They would later tell military investigators that the boy, a farmer’s son, had threatened them with the grenade.

Read More in the Guardian

The house from Alfred Hitchock's "Psycho". Photo: Poco a poco (CC)

A Tombstone man was arrested Wednesday after authorities found the decomposed body of a woman believed to be his mother inside her home.

The Tombstone Marshal’s Office received a call Wednesday to do a welfare check on Jill Fattig, 68, at her home in Tombstone, said Marshal Billy Cloud.

A deputy went to the home but, when no one answered the door, he went to question the woman’s son, Timothy Fattig.

Fattig, 34, told the deputy that his mother was at a hospital in Tucson. When the deputy found this was not the case, he went back to Fattig, who eventually told him his mother had died about a year go.

After obtaining a search warrant, deputies found the skeletal remains of a woman inside Jill Fattig’s home, Cloud said.

[Continues at Arizona Daily Star] ]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2011/03/horror-filmmaker-keeps-dead-mothers-body/feed/ 6 http://www.disinfo.com/2011/02/fan-created-trailer-for-e-t-sequel-shows-why-we-should-never-trust-aliens-video/ http://www.disinfo.com/2011/02/fan-created-trailer-for-e-t-sequel-shows-why-we-should-never-trust-aliens-video/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:06:16 +0000 ralph http://www.disinfo.com/?p=47106 Great remixing and animation job by the filmmaker here, no wonder why the little guy always wanted to "phone home" ... cool find from Cyriaque Lamar on io9.com:

Robert Blankenheim and Derek Johnson Productions have created a trailer for ET-X: Extinction, an unnecessarily gritty and violent sequel to Steven Spielberg's family-friendly blockbuster. In this preview, grown-up footage of Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore is spliced with generic disaster flick scenes (starring an authoritative Morgan Freeman, natch) and new animation of the red-eyed, cobra-necked extraterrestrials:

Great remixing and animation job by the filmmaker here, no wonder why the little guy always wanted to “phone home” … cool find from Cyriaque Lamar on io9.com:

Robert Blankenheim and Derek Johnson Productions have created a trailer for ET-X: Extinction, an unnecessarily gritty and violent sequel to Steven Spielberg’s family-friendly blockbuster.

In this preview, grown-up footage of Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore is spliced with generic disaster flick scenes (starring an authoritative Morgan Freeman, natch) and new animation of the red-eyed, cobra-necked extraterrestrials:

]]>

The first and most cardinal rule of any heavy drug habit is to hold fast to your center, not allow yourself to panic at the inevitable bad trip. Assenine braggarts are likely to tell you that it’s an inborn character trait that you simply either have or do not have, and that it is not possible to cultivate a tolerance.

Utter and complete bullshit.  Dangerous bullshit.  Because it denies the essential primacy of DISCIPLINE in the process and is a telltale sign of the feckless self-indulgent irresponsibility that means imminent death or at least a lengthy sanatorium stay.  No, what is required is a steely willfulness and intense focus.

There are several techniques to achieve this focus and they all work, even under the most insane sensory assaults–provided you employ them with an iron discipline.  One method is to always remain in the company of a responsible, experienced user whenever you take a new drug for the first time.  But even more important is the technique of listening to your heartbeat.  It alerts you to any potential medical problems early enough to seek professional care should that be necessary and it grounds you, reminds you that you are still John or Jane Q. Ordinary living in Normalsville, Planet Earth, complete with all the standard plumbing.  You know that you have a living, breathing material avatar to take care of here, even if you can see and count the quarks vibrating through your hands.  Or, as in this particular case, if you haven’t taken any illicit substances (that you know of), but find yourself engaged a in a twelve hour conversation with a Chihuahua dog1 claiming to be the exiled ruach2 of the Paul Ryan, the Republican chair of the House Budget Committee.

Continued at Dystopia Diaries

Skywatchers are excitedly awaiting the total lunar eclipse that will occur tonight between 2:41 a.m. and 3:53 a.m. EST, and if you intend to stay awake to watch this amazing sight, then by all means read the Space.com description of the 12 stages of the eclipse. Joe Rao’s article thoughtfully explains what you will see as the moon transits through different portions of the earth’s shadow. I wholeheartedly recommend it — if you want to wallow in astronomical nonsense.

Oh, I’m sure Joe Rao’s piece is backed up by an abundance of scientific facts and observations, if you care to put your faith in such things. But those of us well-versed in the ancient wisdoms know that the real 12 stages of a lunar eclipse are as follows:

1. Faint penumbral dimming of the moon’s disk.
2. Pervasive creeping sensations of unease.
3. Howling of wolves.
4. Unclean things walk the earth; Dick Cheney rises from the grave.
5. Contortion of the zodiac.
6. Intrusion of strange dimensions.
7. Universal gibbering madness.
8. Cthulhu.
9. A glimmer of sanity in the chaos.
10. Restoration of Euclidean geometry.
11. Fungal Mi-go from Yuggoth return captive brains to their rightful owners.
12. Applause, followed by waffles for breakfast.

[Image: An interpretation of Cthulhu in the sunken city of R’lyeh. By Dominique Signoret via Wikimedia Commons.]

Read More on PLoS

Aviva kicked me out. Said I was “no fucking fun anymore” since I started crusading against the Brylcreem Brigade1 and their weird rhetorical war on the middle class and just plain common sense. “Goddamn it, Liam, it was funny at first, but it’s getting old. Now you’re starting to sound more like my econ professor than the writer I thought I was living with.”

I guess I could see where she was coming from.  When we’d met at a mutual friend’s holiday party last December I was riding high on the crest of a fresh wave of creativity. I couldn’t stop blabbing about this novel I’d planned to write. It was a Kabbalistic parody of contemporary American religious culture centering on a cabal of ambitious up-and-coming angels who set up to hit God’s target numbers of human souls by dealing in volume rather than quality. They’d try to do it by exploding the human population, stretching the available supply of human souls by patching them with bits from the souls of animals like foxes, sharks and sheep, who’d be dying off at any rate due to the environmental  damage caused by the extra human population. It seemed like a great crack at the time, with no end to its scope to satirize religion, finance and industry.

Aviva ate it all up with a spoon. She’s a pretty sharp girl who appreciated the seamless elegance with which it seemed to comprehend all the sickest contours of 21^st century American culture. And she had more than a little to add to the mix herself; she was in the middle of a rebellion against what she saw as the stupid complacency of her conventional, limousine-liberal Reform Jewish parents.  With a business career closed to her not only by the economic downturn, but by an undisguised personal disgust for the stupid banality of Rotary Club wankers, she’d settled for draining her college fund pursuing a degree in comparative religion — with an emphasis in Kabbalah, the loopy esoteric tradition of her Polish great-grandparents. The same great-grandparents her father couldn’t stand living with as a ‘progressive’ secular kid during the Boomer era. Using the Kabbalah’s legends about angelic hierarchies and the architecture of the soul to collaborate on a big literary ‘fuck you’ to her parents’ generation was just the sort of gig she was looking for.  And if she could top it all off by sleeping with some big, nasty Mick, it’d be all the sweeter.

More at Dystopia Diaries

*This bit is an allegory, okay?  By nature it is a symbolic, fictional narrative illustrating in a subjective way factual realities whose tangible real-world importance could get lost in a dry technical account.

About 700 clowns attended the Fifteenth International Clown Convention in Mexico City last Wednesday, where attendees set a new record. After laughing for 15 minutes, the clowns could not break the “laughing world record” but were able to break the national record in Mexico.

Clowns from the United States, Peru, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and other countries attended three days of meetings, which began on 18 October, participating in conferences, exhibitions and make up competitions.

[Here's] a slow motion version of the Olsen Twins “Gimme Pizza?” Yes, folks, 2010 seems to be the year the internet discovered that slowing things down makes them over 9000 times better. The slow version of Gimme Pizza is so creepy that you won’t be able to look away. The Olsens’ repetitive dance — seriously, they’re doing the same thing in every shot — is weird enough, but it’s their friends who really steal the show. I’ll be having nightmares about the “whipped cream pouring like waterfalls” kid for a week.

On a dark and creepy island in the canals of Xochimico near Mexico City sits what might be the world’s strangest and scariest tourist attraction ever. However, this sad island was never meant to be a stop on tourists’ holiday itineraries. The Island of the Dolls was dedicated to the lost soul of a poor little girl who met her fate too soon.

The Island of the Dolls (Isla de las Munecas) sits in the canals south of Mexico City and is the current home of hundreds of terrifying, mutilated dolls. Their severed limbs, decapitated heads, and blank eyes adorn trees, fences and nearly every available surface. The dolls appear menacing even in the bright light of midday, but in the dark they are particularly haunting.

Not surprisingly, the island’s origins lie in tragedy. The story goes that the island’s only inhabitant, Don Julian Santana, found the body of a drowned child in the canal some 50 years ago. He was haunted by her death, so when he saw a doll floating by in the canal soon after, he hung it in a tree to please the girl. He hoped to both appease her tortured soul and protect the island from further evil.

One doll in a tree, however, was not enough to ease Santana’s troubled mind. He continued to fish dolls and doll parts out of the canal whenever he saw them, hanging each one carefully on the island. There weren’t enough canal dolls to satisfy Santana’s tortured spirit, so he began scavenging more from trash heaps on his rare trips away from home. Later in life, he began trading his home-grown fruits and vegetables for dolls.

[More at Web Urbanist]

Have you ever wondered what The Call of Cthulhu was all about but didn’t want to go to the bother of reading the H.P. Lovecraft story?

Wonder no more. This is a cute and concise summary that anyone can understand:

[Image at right: An interpretation of Cthulhu in the sunken city of R’lyeh. By Dominique Signoret via Wikimedia Commons.]

LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH report in the New York Times:

In the years before its collapse, Lehman used a small company — its “alter ego,” in the words of a former Lehman trader — to shift investments off its books.

The firm, called Hudson Castle, played a crucial, behind-the-scenes role at Lehman, according to an internal Lehman document and interviews with former employees. The relationship raises new questions about the extent to which Lehman obscured its financial condition before it plunged into bankruptcy.

While Hudson Castle appeared to be an independent business, it was deeply entwined with Lehman. For years, its board was controlled by Lehman, which owned a quarter of the firm. It was also stocked with former Lehman employees.

None of this was disclosed by Lehman, however.

Read More in the New York Times

Robert Pattinson has a lot to answer for. Ever since his lanky frame immortalised Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight character Edward Cullen with an American twang, all the vampires of the world seem to have lost their British passports. Those populating Bon Temps, the fictional town in Louisiana that is the setting for TV drama True Blood, have a southern American drawl. Meanwhile Mystic Falls, Virginia, where The Vampire Diaries is set, is a long way from the London and Whitby homes of the most famous vampire of all: Count Dracula.

But watch out, bloodsuckers: the Brits want to bring you home. Academics at the University of Hertfordshire are organising a conference that will serve ketchup-smothered food (it’s tastier than blood) from coffins, all in the name of putting British vampire fiction back on the map. It’s the brainchild of Dr Sam George, a lecturer in English literature at Hertfordshire who is fascinated by vampires and keen to use them to make literature exciting.

“British actors have traditionally been cast as vampires on screen, but recently they’re all American, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Twilight. I aim to turn the focus back to the texts, which are mainly English, and what they say about our society,” George explains. “I wanted to put them in the setting of a rigorous academic conference on vampire fiction to prove that you can study popular literature in a serious way.

Read More in the Guardian

Three decades ago, a loathsome, worm-like parasite burst from the chest of a hapless spaceship crew member — an electrifying moment that made cinematic history, as well as the reputations of pretty well everyone concerned. Sigourney Weaver, playing beleaguered Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, had previously best been known for a minor role in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, and director Ridley Scott for his work in British television commercials.

The creature was designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger based on the nightmarish creature that had appeared in his then just-published art book, Necronomicon (Masks Of The Dead), which director Scott had seen. Together the two conferred on what the parasite should look like when it erupted from its human host’s body. Giger readily admits he was influenced by another artist. “It was Francis Bacon’s work that gave me the inspiration,” Giger said, “Of how this thing would come tearing out of the man’s flesh with its gaping mouth, grasping and with an explosion of teeth … it’s pure Bacon.”

Giger didn’t directly work on any of the sequels, and his subsequent Hollywood experiences were not always salutary. Though Alien brought him worldwide renown and an Oscar in 1980 for best achievement in visual effects, the filmmakers continued to use variations on Giger’s original creature without involving the artist. “With the fourth Alien film, they just took my creations, they used my ‘chest-burster’ and they didn’t even give me any credit. It’s offensive. I mean, one of the reasons the film became so famous was because of my Alien, wasn’t it?” The question is rhetorical. He pauses. “For the fourth Alien film, Sigourney Weaver got US$11 million. I received nothing.”

Read more in the National Post

Image at left: An interpretation of Cthulhu in the sunken city of R’lyeh via Wikimedia Commons.