When I originally saw this video I thought, “That’s cute. Some black metal guys clowning around between sets.” But no…this is infinitely more wonderful.

The video is by black metal group The Black Satans, for their song Satan of Hell.

A heroic YouTuber changed the music to Yakety Sax. The result is sublime.

Brute Force Studios – Creators of gorgeous steampunk leather items (including intricate corsets) and other pretty things.

The Hungry Little Hunter – A Little Golden Book cover parody featuring the Predator. There’s also an “Aliens” Facehugs for Everyone. The artist has a bunch of similar video game-themed work in his Etsy shop.

Medieval Magic Wedding – There’s some great inspiration here.

Goat Simulator – This is utterly bananas. (Favorite comment from the BoingBoing thread where I found this: “That video should come with a trigger warning. My dad was killed by an axe-wielding goat with an adhesive prehensile tongue.”)

Ringwraith Cloak – Attractive LOTR-inspired design.

Serial Bowls – Set of cereal bowls decorated with photos of famous serial killers. They apparently used to be carried by Urban Outfitters, but have been discontinued.

Moist Production – Artist Jason Freeny makes wonderful sculptures and other artwork, many involving “dissections” displaying the interior anatomy of Care Bears, Lego minifigs, and cartoon characters. (Hat tip to Empress Pam)

Dracula citrina – Variety of orchid that looks like monkeys on sticks.

Sleep Paralysis in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe – A neat essay on references to this condition in Poe’s works.

Pinstrosity – Site devoted to failed Pinterest projects.

Man, the Victorians just beat us hollow where creative mourning is concerned. Parlor Domes–bell jar-type glass display cases–were a hugely popular part of Victorian decor. Also hugely popular was any kind of memento mori woe-is-us sentiment. Put ’em together and you get gorgeous pieces like this French cemetery scene, containing hair from the deceased.

They put me in mind somewhat of the desktop cemeteries I did a couple of years ago, but I think I might like these even better; the view of the interior is clearer and I love the way the tree fills the dome.

Something like this–with or without the hair–would be relatively straightforward to make. Glass display domes are available at craft stores and trophy shops. Miniature trees and other landscaping details are widely used in model railroad layouts, so there’s a large variety, in several scales, to choose from (this weeping willow and this dead maple are nice). Tombstones, crypts, iron gates, and other cemetery accessories are available for both model railroads and dollhouses; ditto the ground cover and materials used for building up the substrate.

The finished dome would be a lovely addition to a desktop or mantel. If anybody accuses you of being morbid, inform them that such displays have a long historical precedent, so there.

When Flappy Bird hit the scene, developer madgarden realized that it was sorely lacking in lurking horrors. The remedy for that was FlapThulhu, featuring the most adorable little 8-bit Old One that you’ve ever seen.

Flap through the horrible gates of R’lyeh and unleash the Madness to open a portal to the eldritch dimension… or will the madness take you?

It’s available for name-your-own-price download at Itch (currently only for Windows, but Mac and Linux are in the works). It’s also just been made available in the Apple Store.

The same developer has a couple of other interesting games, including Eggnog, described as a “local multiplayer stabbing game,” which may be one of my favorite game descriptions of all time; and Saucelifter, in which you pilot a UFO in hopes of saving your stranded crewmates from the aggressive Earth military.

FlapThulhu. Sooo cute.

(via BoingBoing)

Any salad can be a Caesar salad if you stab it enough
— Lit Pimp Queen

Seven Deadly Sins (updated): PWN’D, NOM, FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU, WANT, WANT, WANT, and meh.
— sween

“You’re not the person I fell in love with!” is a fun thing to say to anyone who isn’t the person you fell in love with.
— sixthformpoet

A good way to make a car dealer uncomfortable is to say, “Tell me if you can hear this,” and then get in the trunk and start screaming.
— rolldiggity

I make sure people who claim they don’t have time for my nonsense remember they weren’t doing much when I found them so actually, they do.
— JTQuest

Roses are black
Violets are white
I’m a dog
— UNTRESOR

SCIENCE FACT: Your throat hurts when you’re sick because your white blood cells have brought out tiny swords and are dueling with the germs.
— MaraWritesStuff

It’s weird how after they couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together the King’s men were like “Let’s give the horses a shot at it”
— mikeleffingwell

I’m not a cyber-bully but I did change my WiFi network name to “I CAN SEE WHAT YOU ARE GOOGLING STEVE”. Sleep well neighbor. Sleep well.
— PaulGibson1963

Yesterday: Used poor grammar on multiple occasions.
Today: Hiding from grammar zombies in the attic.
Tomorrow: IMMMPROPER TENSSSSSSSSSSE.
— sween

This stop-motion animation by Toshiko Hata won the 2012 Jury’s Choice for Short Film at the 2012 Puchon Inter­na­tional Fan­tas­tic Film Fes­ti­val. It is creepy in the way that only Japanese films seem to be able to pull off.

(via Cat)

Fairy Hunter – This awesome artwork from Davesrightmind depicts one of the natural predators of fairies.

Head in a Jar – Easy, striking kid’s costume, which appears to be inspired by this how-to guide. xJane, who sent the link, plans to make a Marie Antoinette version for herself.

Horror Fiction – A good roundup of vintage-y, free, fiction.

Creepy Skull Slouch Hat – Crochet pattern for a hat full of li’l skulls.

Steampunk “Thing” – Lovely sculpture which reimagines the Addams Family “Thing” as a clockwork hand.

8 Hilariously Nonthreatening Monsters from Japanese Folklore – A list of creatures who are somewhat less horrifying than ghostly long-haired little girls.

Armor Corsets – Although these look like they’d be rather ouchy to sit down in, they’re undeniably lovely.

Freya Jobbins – Artist who makes sculptures out of doll parts. A little NSFW; really damn creepy.

Colorized History – There’s a whole subReddit devoted to colorizing old photos. LEAP provides a small sample.

Skull Cake – Easy way to make understated skull-and-crossbones designs in icing. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)

A lot of steampunk costumes have a military bent, making a chestful of medals de rigeur. They’re a popular DIY item, so tutorials are abundant, but most of the ones I’ve seen either start with a premade ribbon (which limits your decorative options) or require you to go through way too many steps to achieve the desired effect. I’ve done a (hopefully simpler) take on the technique. I gothed things up a bit with my choice of pendants, so you can wear these and sneer, “That’s Admiral Frankenstein to you.”

These go together really fast, so after you fill your uniform with them, you can make extras for personalized party favors or just to award randomly to friends and co-workers (“For meritorious service in clearing the copier jam, I present you this medal of honor”).

All the gory details are right here.

Two odd “meaty” things have come across my purview lately, which is my cue to pretend they’re related and try to hang a post on them.

The first was a wonderful refrigerator ad campaign done in Germany. Bosch’s “VitaFresh” technology promises to keep food fresher longer, so they placed packages of “fresh dinosaur meat” in supermarkets to hyperbolically illustrate how long they could keep food fresh.

I adore this kind of fake-artifact thing; the packaged “meat” puts me in mind very much of the products sold in 826 stores. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to create something similar out of carved styrofoam and/or polymer clay, and they’d make awesome decorations at a time travel-themed party.

The other meat-related thing is BiteLabs, an organization which purports to grow meat from “celebrity tissue samples” and use it to make artisanal salami.

We start with top-quality ingredients, and time-honored recipes for the creation of fine cured meats. We mix celebrity and animal meats, grown in house through a proprietary culturing process, into curated salami blends. Starting with biopsied myoblast cells, we grow our healthy, rich, meats in Bite Labs’ own bioreactors.

Our process yields high-quality, luxury protein, in a sustainable manner that eliminates the environmental and ethical concerns associated with traditional livestock production.

Much like the Bonsai Kittens of old they play it completely straight, with blurbs touting their “vision” for a healthier planet and a request that fans urge their favorite celebrity to contribute cells. There’s even a wish list of celebrities they particularly want to incorporate in their sausages, along with a description of what each product would taste like. The Ellen Degeneres salami, for instance: “As a salami, we see Ellen Salami composition blended with ostrich. Black pepper and garlic with a playful kick of mustard give the Ellen salami a highly approachable and well-rounded flavor. A hint of brandy and shallots will finish off the Ellen salami in exquisite fashion.”

It’s an amusing trip down the rabbit hole, and it’d be fun to see how many friends you could convince that it was legitimate. Even better, serve salami at your next party and then provide a printed “fact sheet” about which celebrity sausage your friends had just eaten. (Shadow Manor takes no responsibility for lost friendships or punches in the nose which may result from this suggestion.)

I’m feeling silly today, so I’m going to resurrect a feature from the old SF site I used to maintain. Each month we posted a screen grab from a cheesy movie and invited readers to write their own captions. One of my favorites was this shot from Dark City:

For which Shadow Jack submitted this:

As Freddy stumped wearily through the door after another fruitless day of job-searching, Jennifer couldn’t help wondering, once again, what her life might have been like if only she had married the Goblin King instead.

Get the idea? Want to play along? Submit your own caption in the comments!