Monks whose bodies remain incorrupt without any traces of deliberate mummification are venerated by some Buddhists who believe they successfully were able to mortify their flesh to death. … Sokushinbutsu (即身仏) were Buddhist monks or priests who caused their own deaths in a way that resulted in their mummification. It is believed that many hundreds of monks tried, but only between 16 and 24 such mummifications have been discovered to date.

Even if the Internet is liquefying my brains, at least it’s (and by “it” I mean mostly Wikipedia) stimulating them while it’s at it. The next time you feel like quitting something, ask yourself this, “Would a monk mummy quit?” Because monk mummies quit when they’re dead, bitch.

For 1,000 days (a little less than three years) the priests would eat a special diet consisting only of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical activity that stripped them of their body fat. They then ate only bark and roots for another thousand days and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls.

This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it made the body too poisonous to be eaten by maggots. Finally, a self-mummifying monk would lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move from the lotus position. His only connection to the outside world was an air tube and a bell. Each day he rang a bell to let those outside know that he was still alive.

When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed. After the tomb was sealed, the other monks in the temple would wait another 1,000 days, and open the tomb to see if the mummification was successful.

If the monk had been successfully mummified, they were immediately seen as a Buddha and put in the temple for viewing.

Um… so basically what you’re saying is we can expect The Mummy 4: Curse of the Lotus Position 3D coming soon?

From this point forward, I will be officially referring to my skateboard as my scythe. It just sounds tougher than “shred stick”. Not by much, though.

Before I go — my Malaysian sweatshop employees just informed me that small tie-dye t-shirts are sold out, but a bunch of asphalt still exist. Just sayin’ is all

I feel like it’s an understandable obsession. You know, since he’s The Best. THE BEST I SAY:

As the story goes, Heath’s face was numb for three months after that infamous slam at the beginning of his section which, while unfortunate… isn’t that shocking. This is old news, but slightly more shocking… or perhaps amusing would be a better word. They’re not always the same thing, just usually.

Seriously though, I mean…

Heath Kirchart - photo by Mike O’Meally

I’m just gonna say it: total man-crush material.

Edit: D’oh… totally missed this and now I just look like an content-starved copycat, but whatevs. The hardest working skate blog out there, The Chrome Ball Incident, posted up a gang of vintage Heath flicks yesterday. Sheesh… they’ve got their own custom Nike Dunks, they beat me to the punch on retrospective Heath Kirchart coverage…

This fan leads from an alleyway into an abandoned lot. I mean, good air flow is key, no doubt, but seriously… what? Is this a vestige of a laundry room long since demolished? Your guess is as good as mine.

Of course this Jesus guy’s propaganda is always showing up. Or maybe going to church as a kid actually worked… no…

Fire trucks and ambulances barrel down my street roughly every five seconds — no shit, there are some driving by right now, for example. So it’s understandable that a whole shit ton of these auto sprinkler valves are littered throughout my neighborhood. I guess that whole thing where most of the city burned down could make a place a little paranoid.

About 3 minutes in, I think I realized that were it not for a childhood spent plopped in front of Gumby, I might not like this shit nearly as much. Either way, the video is massively cool and must have taken a massive amount of work. According to Quintessenz, the project took four months in an abandoned space with only artificial light — no sun at all. The most impressive thing about the film, to me, is that everything was handmade! To create the stop-motion animation, 5000 pictures were processed with an average of 15 frames per second. Feel free to pick your jaw up off the floor at any time.

Photo via Yahoo! News

And the Gulf shore was all like,

Photo via Associated Press

And then I was like

Seriously though, with hurricane season practically busting the front door down, we’ve really got nothing to look forward to except a whole bunch of poisonous oil and Corexit getting kicked into our atmosphere. And then, say, decades of recovery. And even then, the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico will be forever changed. No biggie. At least we’ve got some t-shirts for you in honor of this most apocalyptic occasion. Hey mang, it’s the end of the world, do you want to greet Armageddon looking like a scrub?

Both asphalt and a very limited number of black tie-dye shirts, for the weedies in attendance, are available in Dedleg’s fledgling store. Support the site you’ve grown to potentially love, or at least kind of like whenever nobody’s updating their Twitter, by supporting the National Wildlife Federation’s recovery efforts in the Gulf, since that’s where I’m donating all the profits. Every little bit counts — when it comes to your growing master collection of cool guy apparel. Oh, yeah, and I guess with the oil spill, too.

Parents, stay vigilant! Your children are more gullible than ever!

I heard it was like, some weird like, demons and stuff through an iPod or something. He was just freaking out! — Meghan Edwards, Mustang High School Student

A shocking testimony, to be sure. Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics be more concerned with, um, real drugs? Like the crystal meth I imagine 85% of the state’s population is addicted to?

Are we going to crack down on apple juice whenever the 4th graders pretend that they’re drinking beer now too?

Anyway, what the fuck do I know, I just got high as fuck off my Casio Digital Piano.

Isn’t it bizarre that butterflies survive by licking flowers? That’s really what it comes down to. Except when Wikipedia tries to sneak by incendiary information like this when nobody’s looking:

Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung, decaying flesh, and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt.

I’m sorry, but did you say decaying flesh? Oh, ok, you did. Just wanted to make sure of that before I added butterflies to my ever-growing list of mundane horrors.

Yeah, so… there are close shots, and then there’s this close shot. Obviously, it would have been better if in the adjacent shot that ambulance had been the Ecto-1. Not that the Ecto-1 has anything at all to do with orchids, I just really like Ghost Busters.

In other news, the arachnid invasion in my apartment is unrelenting. It’s not obvious what they want, aside from lots of bugs, and I don’t really mind the company, but the statistical likelihood of me inhaling at least a few of these little fuckers in my sleep has got to be skyrocketing by the day. And the thought of that just makes my insides, um, crawl

So yeah, if you never hear from me again, you know what happened.

Darth Vader robs a bank - photo via nydailynews.com

Apparently the Lord of the Dark Side took some time off of his usual galaxy-conquesting last week to rob a bank in Long Island. Hey, all the money for those Death Star repairs have to come from somewhere, right? And it’s not like the fucking Ewoks have anything of value… all they care about are berries and dancing.

A gun seems a little pointless when you can just Force choke a mother fucker, but I guess to the uninitiated, pointing a crooked finger at the teller is way less intimidating than pointing a Glock 9. Maybe the light saber was out of batteries.

I think that’s supposed to be an impossible, but I’m not sure. Honestly, I’m less concerned with the actual trick than I am with the fact that The Joker is riding for Tracker. Dude really is deranged.

Anyway, like so many rap wunderkinds, Slug has dabbled with as many side projects as substances… which can have addictive results — for both him and his listeners, depending on which half of that comparison you’re talking about. Such is the case with Felt, Slug’s ongoing collaboration with Murs of Living Legends, who’s not too shabby at putting together a good 16 either.

Murs and Slug - photo via urchicago.com

To date, the duo have released three separate albums, each featuring a different producer stirring their own distinct mixture of loops and instrumentals into the brew. This keeps things fresh, by occasionally forcing the emcees out of their comfort zone, and simply by hearing them rap over beats that may be atypical of their usual style. Felt’s first album was produced by The Grouch (of Living Legends), their second album was produced by Ant (of Atmosphere), and their third album was produced by Aesop Rock (of… himself), so each release has an individual sound, which makes them a lot like Lucky Charms or Pokemon — a golden recommendation I dare any critic to best.

Each album has been named after a different female actress (Christina Ricci, Lisa Bonet & Rosie Perez) and each features two songs named after other celebrities (Suzanne Vega, Rick James, Morris Day, Marvin Gaye, Kevin Spacey & Paul Reubens). I have to imagine this is intentional, if only because a coincidence of that magnitude would split my brain in half almost immediately.

Originally, the title of the first album was decided based on a wager between the two rappers over who could sleep with Christina Ricci first — to date, neither has been successful. Which, I suppose, is why they move on to new actresses every couple years. Like Rosie Perez for example… who you may know as that “adorable little cop” from Pineapple Express:

To be clear, the only real reason I posted that clip was for the two seconds when Rosie Perez shoots the hapless bystander in the arm. That’s what you get for wearing an over-sized windbreaker, dickbag!

I’ll leave you with one last track, from The Hood Internet’s recent mash-up album of Felt 3 and Tobacco’s latest journey into the realm of psychedelic indie rock, Maniac Meat. Thanks to the mind-bending beats, the 5 track EP is pretty much complete insanity and boy, does it ever have its hooks in me.

That was a music pun, I don’t know if you guys got that or not, what with the super obvious italics all up in your face. But I couldn’t bear to see it go to waste in case you’re less of a nerd than I am.