technically we’re ALL, always LARPing, because the Self is only a construct,

I want a new character

Unfinished Crypt Worlds fanart

Strange alien creature that explores creepy surreal worlds and pisses on everything still manages to be cute somehow I dunno

3D relief of King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson King album cover.

1.25” x 1.25” done in Super Sculpey. Baked, awaiting paintjob.

Real talk though, listen to the album. It’s some of the best prog for a reason. Try not to die of boredom during Moonchild though B)

MYSTICS IN BALI is one of the most outrageous horror films I’ve ever seen. Forget about plot. It’s not germane to the movie. The movie is technically about black magic, but really it’s about insane FX sequences. While there’s little out-and-out gore, with one arguable exception I’ll address in a moment, the movie succeeds in being shocking and delivering gross-outs. I’m skimming the surface here folks. Let’s see … Oh, yeah, at one point there appears to be a wizard melee. Thing is, the wizards are in fireball form!!! You can see the strings on which the fireballs ride a couple times; it’s a night sequence but fire is illuminating. But that only amps the movie’s grody charm. For that matter, the overall apparent, um, inexpensive nature of the FX likewise enhance the movie’s lovability. Grotesque bodily transformations from human form to animal are also high water marks in this FX showcase of a film. The pig woman form in the denouement stands out. Perhaps the most iconic image from the film - it made the DVD cover - is the head of a possessed woman (this is nothing like the kind of possession stuff running through your head right now). It separates from her body while she sleeps and takes with it the innards - lungs intestines, the works. The logic behind this is far and away beyond merely dubious; thankfully we giveth not a crap about logic here. MYSTICS IN BALI is a sick surrealist exercise. Back to the head. It separates to fly about and find blood. In the single most shocking sequence in the film, a pregnant woman is the victim of the bloodsucking (there are even fangs) head-and-entrails. There is a lot of surprising and bizarre shit to lay eyes upon in MYSTICS IN BALI, so if you’re of a mind to treat yourself to odd, obscure Asian treats, treat yourself to this.

Indonesia, 1981, 86 min., color, English, anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1

www.mondomacabrodvd.com

Great film, perfect review!

I love 4chan

Just sayin’, the 4th of July was made even better for me by 4chan’s counter raid on tumblr, all the delicious tears.. They taste like.. FREEDOM

Deleuze and the Anthropology of Becoming I just finished reading Joao Biehl and Peter Locke’s 2010 article in Current Anthropology, “Deleuze and the Anthropology of Becoming.”  The article is an attempt to set a new direction for ethnographic research and as such it should be of interest to all aspiring ethnographers.  Based on Maria Stoilkova’s guest post last week, my hunch is that this Deleuzian anthropology is likely to be an important trend, and this article lays out a theoretical position that wonderfully lends itself to a more literary style of ethnographic writing. The piece is an ambitious call to arms for an “anthropology of becoming,” an close examination of individual lives in all of their messiness and unpredictability.  The authors write: “Continually adjusting itself to the reality of contemporary lives and worlds, th[is] anthropological venture has the potential of art: to invoke neglected human potentials and to expand the limits of understanding and imagination – a people yet to come” (337). I particularly like the idea of anthropology as art, as something that can approximate literature’s ability to unpack the complexities of the human experience.  This proposed anthropology of becoming is an endeavor that hope to bring a reader into the intimate inner lives of individuals as they struggle against over-determined structural constraints.  I have some reservations, however, about only focusing on the micro without occasionally stepping back and examining the larger social, political and economic contexts that constrain and limit individual possibility.

Biehl and Locke seem to guard against this particular critique when they write: “We work to understand the macro without reducing or bounding the micro, accounting for the effects of structural violence, power, expertise, and the embodiment of sociological forces while still crediting the against-the-odds openness and ambiguity of individual lives and interpersonal dynamics – upholding, that is, the value of people’s drive to singularize out of populations and categories, to take themselves out of the stream of history and social destiny” (336).  It is a good defensive statement, but it seems to me that there are still some risks involved in directing our scholarly gaze too fixedly on the micro.

Current Anthropology allows for the publication of critical responses along with its articles and the response of L.L. Wynn at Macquarie University in Australia really captures my anxiety: “..in focusing in on individuals’ responses to structural forces, the lines of flight and leakiness surrounding social fields, might we run the risk of heroicizing responses to poverty and oppression?  If shining that empirical lantern on individuals’ ways of making do leads us to marvel at human ingenuity and the triumph of desire even in social death, will out marveling weaken our call to political action?” (346).

Despite my political reservations, I am inspired by an ethnography of human potentialities, of the dynamic process of “becoming” who and what we are in an imperfect and ever-changing world.  It is a recognition of the serendipitous nature of life and the value of microanalysis.  In the article, Biehl focuses in on one Brazilian woman who has been abandoned by her family in a mental institution and Locke does a beautiful analysis of the everyday experience of trauma postwar Sarajevo.  In both cases, the authors explore the amazing ability of humans to adapt and forge ahead even after the most soul crushing events and experiences.  This is a celebration of the durability of the human spirit.

Overall, I think that the Deleuzean impulse will provide a good theoretical framework for more creative renderings of ethnographic material.  In some ways, I think that my latest book, Lost in Transition, is a kind of Deleuzian ethnography, although I certainly did not know that while I was writing it.  I have just gotten Biehl’s book, Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment, which won five book awards and is filled with the most amazing photographs. I’ll be interested to see what this all looks like in practice.

In the end, what seems most important to me about the Biehl and Locke article is that it takes the work of a celebrated French continental philosopher and maps out a sexy new theoretical framework that justifies the writing of more readable ethnographic texts.  Hurray for that!

Welcome to Night Vale Episode Two Transcript

Glow Cloud

The desert seems vast, even endless, and yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow. Welcome to Night Vale.

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Okay, I’m warning you now. This is some fucked up shit to hear about.

First off: A very important rule I learned about life. You know all that time you spend whacking off to fantasies of hot chicks like strip for nude magazines? Well, it’s not worth all the desire and heartache. They’re not...

They’re not exactly obscure, but they’re too often overlooked. I guess that makes them sleepers. Do they do that in a coffin? Anyway … COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE, aka THE LOVES OF COUNT IORGA, is a minor classic of 70s horror and the vampire genre. It’s a gem of atmosphere, of keeping tradition...

It rhymes, doesn’t it? At least there’s an attempt at theme here. I’ve seen some multi-paks from the big Hollywood guys that made no fucking sense. Here, it’s vintage sleaze with “oriental" tweaks, and both from the same freak - I mean director. I don’t know if he was a freak or not. Bet he...

Michael Ottersen. Mary Krishna 2012. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 64 x 48 inches.

Check out my friend Anti-Tales and his sci fi erotic tale!

Muzski’s reinterpretation of Hergé’s famous comic series feature Tintin, Captain Haddock, Snowy and all your beloved characters in an exciting new light as they unwittingly stumble upon soul-shattering vistas from Beyond.

Watch our brave adventurers flee from shoggoths, Deep Ones, fish folk, ghouls, Formless Spawn, Mi-Go, Elder Things, nightgaunts, Old Ones, Outer Gods and foreigners (i.e. non-Anglo-Saxons) as they face many an existential crisis regarding their insignificance on a cosmic scale!

What eldritch horrors await our companions as they unearth the secrets from untold aeons in the dark corners of the earth? Will they heroically flee from these abominations from the stars, or will they choose the merciful oblivion that is death by throwing themselves on squalid pavements or shooting themselves in the head? And what trick does Nyarlathotep have up ‘His’ sleeve this time?

Find out in The Weird Adventures of Tintin, by H. P. Lovecraft!