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It’s mind-boggling, no, unfathomable, to imagine the, heh, depths of what we don’t know about the ocean. It might as well be another world! James Cameron’s 1989 documentary, The Abyss, proved as much. And now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just finished a mission in Indonesia, using a robotic vehicle and a sonar mapping system to explore nearly 21,000 square miles of sea floor off northern Indonesia, at depths ranging from 800 feet to over two miles. And they found some mighty strange — some might even say alien — shit down there.

That, for example, is a carnivorous sponge. A carnivorous sponge?! The deep sea is a fucking nightmare, apparently.

Scientists predicted that up to 40 new plant and animal species may have been discovered during the three-week expedition. 40 types of horrors we didn’t know about before.

Further proof: this is a Chimaera. For fuck’s sake, it’s named after a monster from Greek mythology. Which it might as well actually be considering the looks of this thing. Their evolutionary lineage branched off from sharks nearly 400 million years ago, and they’ve been growing all the more freakish ever since. The lines running across its body are used to sense pressure waves, like ears, and the dots on its nose detect electrical fields produced by living organisms. So yeah, crazy.

And this Octopod’s head is looking way too much like an alien on a t-shirt from the 1990s for me to be comfortable with. 

Not to be outdone, here’s a fish with feet. You need to decide, motherfucker. Just like Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

I don’t have anything except a bunch of bad news this morning since I spent 5 hours getting ravaged by a tattoo machine yesterday, and was later besieged by several other much less desirable disasters.

The fact that I’m bothering to even patch this meager notice together instead of doing something about the shit storm raining above of my real life just goes to show how completely and utterly fucked my priorities are.

If it wasn’t already obvious… things are probably going to go downhill here quite quickly. Stay tuned, everybody loves an epic downfall.

Movie trailers from the 80s were far superior to today’s mind-blowing, chill-inducing, demographic-targeting previews.

Also, I had to share this… from Ace Show Biz dot com (The Ace in Entertainment Zone, btw), an incredible summary of the film:

Considerably one of the most scariest movies ever made, the original “Poltergeist” tells the creepy story of a family home being haunted by a band of ghosts. 

And now, the most scariest parts of Poltergeist in five seconds…

Oh, sorry, that last one was equally scary but it’s actually from Junior — the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger gets preggo.

In more Poltergeist-related material, however, there’s a remake in the works, although no cast has been announced. Which is nice since now I’ll have plenty of time to brace myself for the announcement that Carol Anne will be played by Justin Bieber. Personally, I don’t see how a remake could possibly improve on the source material in anything except the effects department (and likely at the detriment of the plot/acting/everything else department). Still, it might be interesting, in the “let’s get screwy and watch this on a lazy Saturday night” kind of way, at the very least. Maybe this time they’ll just tell Carol Anne to stop acting like a crazy person, talking to TVs and shit, and everybody can get on with their lives. 

Hey dudes, check it out! Real life Gymkata!

Actually, it’s called freerunning, or parkour, in case you haven’t heard of extreme gymnastics before. And honestly, I can’t decide if “Gymkata” even sounds any dumber than either of those.

Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK), or l’art du déplacement (English: the art of movement) is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment.

The term freerunning is sometimes used interchangeably with parkour. While freerunning is more to do with expressing yourself within your environment, parkour is aiming to get from A to B the fastest. 

I also can’t decide if this is cool or unfathomably lame. Obviously it’s super impressive, either way. And, granted, I’d love to be able to run up a wall, but I’m kind of wondering about the practical purpose of being able to flip backwards through a hole the size of a morbidly obese three-year-old. Then again, I suppose a grown man who spends hours most evenings in dimly lit parking lots, flipping a four-wheeled piece of wood with his feet shouldn’t be criticizing anything for its lack of practicality.

Gosh, learning is amazing. Are you familiar with Sokushinbutsu? It’s not exactly a house-hold word. But, translated from Buddhist, it roughly means “Japanese mummy”.

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?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if instead of having to make shady transactions with sketchy individuals in shadowy meeting spots, you could get your fix by downloading some drugs from the iTunes store? Fuck, then you could even use that gift card your parents got you for Christmas for drugs!!! Yeah, well. It would be nice. But it’s fucking impossible. Although not according to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and this very earnest, albeit retarded, local news station.

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 4^th 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.

Chabott Engineering's Shinya Kimura is, quite possibly, the most creative motorcycle builder working today. At the very least, he’s absolutely a master of his craft, and is truly gifted when it comes to infusing his intense passion into sheet metal and machinery. Perhaps it’s for this reason, aside from sheer technical ingenuity, that Shinya consistently creates some of the most stunningly different custom motorcycles ever made. This masterfully crafted short feature, directed by Henrik Hansen, gets inside Shinya’s mysterious creative process, and shares his insights on both building and riding bikes. Not to be missed.

It feels nothing like how violent it looks from the outside. It’s very serene. The ground and the sky are so white there is no boundary between them. 

Here are a few photos of my favorite builds, courtesy of Chabott Engineering:

Everything about Kimura’s bikes have a “more than meets the eye” appeal — to me, they kind of look like if Transformers crash landed on Earth during a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-esque future (just with fewer insane screaming phone calls to girlfriends). Which would be incredible, obviously.

It’s pretty commonly-known that the 70s were responsible for some of the coolest and most far-reaching tidbits of American pop culture — silly trifles like civil rights and environmentalism aside, the 70s saw the rise of seminal musical acts like Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, The Ramones, The Clash, Blondie, and the release of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. In film, the 70s basked in the glory of some of American cinema’s strongest and most influential releases to date, such as Star Wars, The Godfather, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and yes, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The 70s even ushered in the beginning of the golden age of video arcade games, with, heh, game-changing titles like Pong, Asteroids, and Space Invaders. And then, then the 70s provided mankind with this book.

Hallucinogenic Plants, written by Richard Evans Schultes and published in 1976, was an attempt to educate the new generation on all of the weird flowers and leaves their parents were always making tea with, and delivered it in a simple, easily-digested form, ideal for a grade-school audience. The book also includes beautiful color illustrations by Elmer W. Smith so as to aid in locating magical flora that may be growing on the outskirts of your local playground, for example.

Of course, the book was quickly recalled due to the fact that it promoted mind expansion, psychic exploration, and worst of all, fun. Nonetheless, booksellers’ post-recall descriptions of the tome are nearly as entertaining as some of the plants described within.

Only edition, suppressed by the publisher. Indeed, how the Golden Guide series, devoted to nature books for a youthful audience, came to publish this delightful manual remains a mystery. We do know they quickly recalled it and it has become a most sought-after book.

Scarce book which was pulled from shelves and discontinued shortly after being issued. “Say kids, tired of looking for fossils, how about exploring the dangerous and mind-altering world of hallucinogenic plants?” Discontinued for obvious reasons.

The question remains - what were they thinking? A “Golden Guide” to hallucinogenic plants??? Our little Golden Guides - the ones we used as kids to look up birds and trees and mosses? Hallucinogenic plants? How many editors lost their jobs over this one? The book was promptly recalled and, as another wit has observed, is unlikely to be reissued.

Classic Golden Guide, best book they ever did, quickly recalled through pressure by the Moralist Minority. Proves again Leary’s adage: “(hallucinogens) are known to cause psychotic reactions in people (and groups) that have never taken them.” 

It’s now a prized collectible codex, with rare hardcover copies fetching as much as $500 on some online vintage book retailers. Fortunately for you, if you’re interested in this kind of unpatriotic, immoral trash, the druggies at Erowid have done history a kindness by posting the full text and the accompanying illustrations online, where the children of the future can discover its secrets with even less risk of detection by their parents than ever before.

Feel like losing all hope in the future? Well boy, do I have something for you!

If you’re in a camp and a bear attacks, you don’t have to be faster than the bear. You only have to be faster than the slowest camper. — Michael Ruppert 

This trailer for Collapse, doomsayer-at-large Michael Ruppert’s documentary on the impending oil crisis and ensuing economic meltdown is the kind of shit designed to keep you up at night. Go figure… and here I thought ruminating on the end of civilization as we know it was kind of relaxing. Seriously though, what are we gonna do when we’re too busy barricading our doors to check Facebook? WHAT THEN?

He contends that he doesn’t research conspiracy theories, rather, his area of expertise is conspiracy facts. And when he says shit like that while blowing cigarette smoke out of his flaring nostrils, I fucking believe him. But enough fear-mongering already, let’s go get some guns.

Although honestly, I don’t know what’s scarier: Michael Ruppert’s nightmarish visions of the future, or the YouTube comments for this trailer.

That Quaker Oats comment is about the only thing keeping me from holing up in a bunker and peeing in jars right now.

The sign says no smoking, Egon.

Operating a proton pack under the influence of drugs or alcohol is extremely irresponsible, Dr. Spengler. My god, you’re supposed to be a scientist, man!

I’m not sure how well known this information is, but it blew my mind a couple nights ago when I heard it. For over a decade now, a nasty little rumor has been spreading around the Internets that there was something more to Mr. Rogers than feeding the goldfish, getting the mail, and playing with toy trains… something… darker.

Some tell of a Fred McFeely Rogers with a tortured past… his story was a harrowing tale full of death, but it was also one of redemption. After his passing in 2003, the urban legend gained increased fervor, and was attached to a chain email that was making the rounds at the time.

On another note, there was this wimpy little man (who just passed away) on PBS, gentle and quiet. Mr. Rogers is another of those you would least suspect of being anything but what he now portrays to our youth. But Mr. Rogers was a U.S. Navy Seal, combat-proven in Vietnam with over twenty-five confirmed kills to his name. He wore a long-sleeve sweater to cover the many tattoos on his forearm and biceps. A master in small arms and hand-to-hand combat, able to disarm or kill in a heartbeat. He hid that away and won our hearts with his quiet wit and charm. 

Hid it away… like a silent killer hiding in the tall grass, waiting for his target to emerge from his hut so that he can kill him in front of the man’s crying family. That his signature cardigan was actually only there to disguise his scary tattoos is almost a juicier bit than his kill count. And his subsequent dedication to educating children and ordination as a Presbyterian minister later in life is told to be an effort to save his soul. A perfect legend… too perfect, perhaps.

The story is fantastic… I wish it was true, but the true, uh, truth is that Mr. Rogers was just a genuinely good person. After college, Fred Rogers pursued a career in television and later entered the seminary to study theology because he honestly just liked teaching children and reading about god and shit. I know. Boring.