I came across a video last night done by VBS which was equal parts haunting and engrossing. The video travels into the Aokigahara Forest in Japan. Aokigahara is the most common site of suicides in Japan. After a 1960 publication of the novel Kuroi Jukai, in which a lover commits suicide in this forest, it became a popular location for the ritual. Insanely, between fifty and one-hundred and fifty people commit suicide in this forest every year. People disenfranchised with society, lonely, or just lost wander into this forest never to return.

The video follows a guide into the depths of the actual forest, as he shows you around the suicide-soaked forest. It’s an engrossing journey, and while it definitely isn’t for the faint of heart, for those of you who can handle it, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Do it up right here.

[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]

It’s that time of year again. The undead are becoming restless, preparing for the annual night of domination. The ghouls are tearing off their flesh-masks, skulking about retirement home windows in the hopes of inducing heart attacks. Perverts are slipping roofies into the punchbowls, their lunatic cousins hiding razor blades in apples. And soccer moms are stocking up on candy.

It’s wonderful.

Clearly, there are a number of ways to get into the holiday spirit. Anyone who doubts this need only view the video for Thunder Kiss `65.

Younger readers may not know this, but before Rob Zombie was a kooky director, he was the kooky front man for White Zombie. My feeble descriptive skills tell me that White Zombie was a horror-oriented metal band that embodied the sloppy spirit of early `90s drug binges. But what do I know?

Anyways, the video for Thunder Kiss `65 is a perfect overture for OCTOBERFEAST. With half of the footage in black in white, the video summons the spectres and hauntings that blessed the Universal lot. A luchador drives a muscle car across a barren wasteland, only stopping to drink with Frankenstein’s monster and the grim reaper. Logically, leggy Go-Go dancers shake their stuff and psychedelic filters wash over the band. It’s a tantalizing cross-section of the different types of mayhem found at Samhain.

Trust me, you want to watch this.

I first came across Trusto Corp over at Super Punch, and spent the good part of Saturday following them across the web via links and references. Oh, hypertextuality! Let me tell you something. Everything is definitely probably interconnected. What the fuck is Trusto Corp, exactly? According to dailyDuJour, they’re a street art collective that debuted last year at Miami’s Art Basel. And over the weekend, Trusto put on a show at Gallery1988 in Los Angeles. Now, I’m a fat, dorky kid who sits in a basement, and doesn’t live in the chic metropolis of Los Angeles. However, thanks to the power of the internet (and Super Punch, and dailyDuJour, and Gallery1988), I was able to check out their work.

It’s amazing, humorous, and painfully correct.

Corp subversively leverages American consumption through the manipulation of our good old leviathan known as Marketing. They riff on familiar feeling logos, such as “Tide” and despite typing this in my Gap jeans, while sipping a chemically-soaked soda, I was amused. While all too aware of how shitty I am. Or we are. Or maybe we aren’t. Whatever, I chuckled.

Hit the jump for more of Corp’s work from their show “New Americana” at Gallery1988, and if you’re in Los Angeles, hit it up for me.

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Did you miss this week’s episode of Dexter? Good for you. ‘Cause I watched the entire thing, and I’m happy to report that absolutely nothing of worth occurred. Oh man! Sippin’ the Hatorade. That’s me, right here. Naw, not even. The fifth episode of season five was unremarkable. That’s the long and the short of it.

And for anyone in the “give it time” bullshit mode, we’re a third of the way through. At this point in previous seasons, we were humming sexily along. Secure in our trajectory. Right now? Waiting for shit to take off.

Wake me up.

Tonight’s episode can be distilled down into three painfully telescoped plot-points, and two interesting moments.

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If this video doesn’t get you pumped for a Saturday night in October, nothing will.

Dinosaur talk always strikes me the same as space talk. That is, in the sense that there’s a ton of interesting conjecture, but I’m always a smidge skeptical. But sometimes when the news is interesting enough, it’s worth repeating. Studies have dropped in the past couple of days suggesting that the King of All Dinosaurs, Mr. Tyrannosaurus Rex was a cannibal. Say it ain’t so! According to a crack team of crackpot scientists – that isn’t fair, they’re in all likelihood more brilliant than I could imagine – the gashes on one T. rex suggests that it could have only been made by another of the same species.

Like I said, we’re taking leaps of impressive speculation here.

Huffington Post:

“They’re the kind of marks that any big carnivore could have made, but T. rex was the only big carnivore in western North America 65 million years ago,” Nicholas R. Longrich of Yale University said in a statement.

Longrich and colleagues report their findings in Friday’s edition of the journal PLoS ONE.

They found 17 fossils with deep V-shaped gouges of a type identified as being made by T. rex. Of those, four were remains of T. rex themselves.

It seems likely the marks were made during scavenging from a dead dinosaur, the researchers said.
“It does seem improbable that Tyrannosaurus routinely hunted full-grown members of its own species,” the researchers wrote.

However, they added, it is possible that combat led to casualties, with the dead becoming convenient sources of food for the victors. “Still, compelling evidence for predation in Tyrannosaurus remains elusive.

So well then! I mean, yeah, what the hell is the story worth? Some interesting guesswork and a handful of possibly this and possibly that. But I mean, yeah! There you go. I think more interesting than the fact that the there were T. rexes walking around in North America. For sure, millions and zillions of years ago. But still, it’s interesting to imagine that the very land we’re smashing about on, at one point in time, houses cannibalistic insane-o creatures of unfathomable fright and might.

[DEFEAT. is Rendar Frankenstein’s truest attempt at fiction.   Presented in weekly episodes, the novella tells the tale of Daryl Millar – a hero who dies at the intersection of pop culture, science-fiction, war epic, and fantasy]

When he thought about it logically, in the practical terms that really make the Earth go `round, Riff knew that there’s no way she’d get with him. She was too smart for him. Too hot for him. Too popular for him. Too old for him. “But I’ll be damned,” he thought, “if Ms. Lang isn’t the finest piece of ass in town.”

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Source: Super Punch

Fucking Cylon Terminators. I knew it. I just knew it. They be lurkin’, they be hidin’. It’s only a matter of time, guys.

There was a moment in last night’s episode of Dexter where Boyd was rocking out with his shirt open and his sick ass yokel mustache riding the damp Miami wind when everything became clear to me. The power of Boyd had distilled the universe into a simple message I could comprehend: via the power of some sick facial pubes, and a backwards hat, existence was mine! I could take it!

Seriously though, I loved the fuck out of Boyd. He was such a ridiculous change of pace that I had to tip my cap to him. Dexter had to ruin my torrid dong-sloshing for Boyd though. He had to get all high and mighty. Really, Dexter, Boyd deserved to die? I noticed that Harry said Boyd was your first kill since…”You know.” No really, I don’t.

‘Cause I seem to recall the piece of refuse you bludgeoned to death with an anchor. Doesn’t that guy count, at all?

Dexter seems to get shittier and his shittier in his execution of his executions. The dude has gone from some high proficiency slayer into a wielder of dumb assery. Remember in the first couple of seasons when he pulled off everything with aplomb? Those were the good ole days.

Dexter dude, have to heed the code, yo! Or some piece of shit is going to bring you down.

Like Quinn!

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Rafael Grampa is a gahdamn stud. While he hasn’t had too many releases in the States, the shit that has dropped has been spectacular, astonishing, amazing, sensational, fantastic, and uncanny (hrm…I can’t think of any DC titles with modifiers).

This trend looks to continue with Strange Tales 2. Grampá describes his contribution to the anthology in the following terms:

Here is two of the eight page story that I did for the Marvel’s anthology STRANGE TALES II. It is the main story of VOL. II and I have to say that I’m really proud of it. I did the script, art and colors — a tentative for a new vision for the palette of the 80′s comics. It is a “mutant wrestler” story (could be cool if it was a genre, huh?), very violent and “sweet” at the same time.

[Furrywater]

Strange Tales 2 hits stores 10/13/2010.