One of the lovely things about running a site like this is that, in addition to finding interesting stuff, interesting stuff occasionally finds me. The nice people at Urban Body Jewelry recently dropped me a line, and I agree that they are relevant to our collective interests.

The business was founded by a group of “body modification enthusiasts,” and they proudly proclaim that everyone who works for them has a lip ring, tattoo, or other mod. Their enthusiasm is reflected in their merchandise and oh, they have some awesome stuff.

They offer a variety of jewelry and accessories for all sorts of body decoration, from ear stretching kits to nose rings (even though the hipster-moustache thing is fixin’ to jump the shark, I thought this septum horn was cute). They’ve got loads of gothy stuff in a variety of materials; a few of my favorites are the black wing talons, bone rose plugs, spiderweb tunnels, Day of the Dead plugs, and the really interesting coffin plugs.

The site also offers a lot of useful information, such as a guide to stretching your ears, and a blog with handy tips like what to look for in a piercer.

Best of all, they’ve kindly agreed to offer a $25 gift certificate to one of my readers. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post by Friday, June 14 about which item you might choose if you win. One commenter will be chosen at random. (They ship internationally, so overseas folks can play too.)

They’ve got loads of really neat stuff, so go check ’em out!

Update:

The contest is over, and random.org spat back the magic number 5, which means Lauren gets the gift certificate. I shall email her with details forthwith.

Thanks to everyone who played along!

(Click to embiggen)

Japanese funeral home director Nishinihon Tenrei asked ad agency I&S BBDO to create an “unconventional” ad for his business. They decided to focus on celebrating the beauty of a person’s life, which remains after death.

The result was this gorgeous life-size skeleton made of pressed flowers and ferns, titled “Life is Endless” (Spoon & Tamago has another photo of the ad here). I would dearly love a framed print of this; unfortunately, the Tenrei site doesn’t seem to mention it anywhere (although I will note that it’s the cheeriest funeral home site that I’ve ever encountered), and the ad agency site is an impenetrable mass of Flash.

I suppose if someone were particularly ambitious they could press their own flowers and create something similar. (The less-ambitious might try a dried-flower skull instead.)

(Hat tip to pdq)

(No prizes, but if you can answer them all without googling you get bragging rights.)

1. The name of this play is widely considered to be unlucky to say aloud, and is thus often referred to as “The Scottish Play.”
2. Which Shakespearean play features the greatest number of ghosts?
   A) Hamlet
   B) Richard III
   C) Cymbeline
   D) Julius Caesar
   E) The Winter’s Tale
3. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who is the King of the Fairies?
4. One of the many omens which foretold Caesar’s murder in Julius Caesar was this person’s dream about Romans washing their hands in his blood.
   A) Cicero
   B) Portia
   C) Brutus
   D) Calpurnia
   E) Pindarus
5. Anne Francis starred in Forbidden Planet, a classic science fiction movie based on which Shakespearean play?
6. The tragedy of Othello culminates in Othello’s murder of whom?
   A) Bianca
   B) Desdemona
   C) Emilia
   D) Hermione
   E) Miranda
7. “The quality of mercy,” a phrase much-borrowed to title everything from punk albums to episodes of The Twilight Zone, comes from a speech in which Shakespearean play?
8. Double Falshood is a 1727 play which most scholars agree probably contains fragments of this “lost” work by Shakespeare and John Fletcher.
   A) Love’s Labour’s Won
   B) Sir Thomas More
   C) Edmund Ironside
   D) Timon of Athens
   E) Cardenio
9. Although modern productions usually portray her as being in her late teens, how old was Juliet in the original play?
10. One of Shakespeare’s best-known speeches, beginning, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends…” appears in which play?
    A) King John
    B) Richard II
    C) Henry IV, Part I
    D) Henry V
    E) Henry VIII

(Answers below the fold)

Read the rest of this entry »

This Midnight Archive episode features Evan Michelson, owner of the New York shop Obscura, discussing “why some of us are so drawn to certain objects, the dark, and the disturbing.”

(Hat tip to Bonni)

The Celtic Viking – Etsy shop offering a range of sterling silver jewelry. I particularly like the Odin’s Ravens Torc Ring.

Creepy Spider Dog Costume – Aw, who wants cuddles?

I Donated My Body to Medicine – Interesting read on donating one’s body to science, including some caveats about dealing with third-party brokers.

Bone Breaker Purse – Striking design from Iron Fist.

Monster Librarian – Resource site for scary books.

Mirror Mirror – Evocative digital artwork. Prints are available for purchase.

Abandoned Mansions – A roundup of “9 of the Most Fascinating Abandoned Mansions from Around the World.”

Haunted Mansion Instrumental – Music from the attraction.

Warg – This made me giggle immoderately. (Some of the other cartoons on the site are NSFW-ish.)

Fossil Cookies – Cute, easy idea for making edible “fossils.” The walnut dough seems like more trouble than it needs to be; I expect you could use any firm sugar-cookie dough instead.

Remember those hard-sugar dots that came arranged on strips of paper that we all ate as kids? It turns out that they’re super-easy to make at home, and if you use the right kind of paper you won’t even wind up with shreds of it stuck in your teeth.

The candy is simply royal icing that’s dotted onto freezer paper and allowed to dry. Sweet Sugar Belle has a great start-to-finish tutorial on making and packaging the buttons. She also has a recipe for the icing hidden in the wall o’ text, but here’s another one:

1 lb (about 7 C) confectioners’ sugar (you may need slightly more)
6 Tbsp water
2 egg whites or 2 Tbsp meringue powder plus 2 Tbsp additional water
1/2 tsp flavoring extract (almond, vanilla, lemon, peppermint, coconut, etc.)
Food coloring (gel is best; if you use liquid, reduce the amount of water slightly)

If using egg whites, separate the eggs (if salmonella is a concern, use pasteurized eggs or go with the meringue powder instead).

Place the sugar, water, egg whites/meringue, and flavoring in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer on medium-high speed for about 6 minutes, until thick and glossy. The icing should fall in ribbons when lifted with a spoon and allowed to fall back into the bowl, and the ribbon should sit on the surface for a few seconds before melting back in. Add a little additional water or sugar to thin/thicken it if necessary (remember that it should be a little thick if you’re going to use liquid food coloring).

Divide into bowls and tint with food coloring. Cover until ready to use. The icing will keep for at least a month (refrigerate if you used fresh egg whites).

Most tutorials suggest piping the dots using a decorator bag or a sandwich bag with one corner cut off. That’s fine if you’re only going to do a few, but if you plan to make a lot of these (and they do lend themselves really well to an assembly-line approach), I’d recommend using condiment squeeze bottles instead. They’re much less messy (I seem to have a talent for squeezing icing out of the top of a decorator bag and all over my hand), and they can be capped and stored if you don’t want to use them all at once.

Instead of piping them in a simple rectangle, you can also get creative with the arrangement of the buttons on the paper. Quake N Bake has a video tutorial for making Space Invaders dots, and any simple pattern that fits on a grid should be suitable: Cross stitch patterns (like spiders), 8-bit computer icons (like skulls), or letters and numbers.

Packages of the buttons would make wonderful party or wedding favors; Halloweenish dots can be tinted orange and black, wedding dots could use the bride’s colors. You could also leave them white and, once dry, draw pupils (and, optionally, bloodshot lines) on them with a food coloring pen for a whole package of googly eyes. The eyes are great for decorating cupcakes, too; just pop them off the paper backing and stick them on.

The packaged buttons can be stored in a cool, dry place for several months, so they’re an excellent make-ahead project. They’re also simple enough to make that they’re a good activity for kids.

Netflix coughed up this movie from the depths of my queue the other day, and since it wasn’t particularly successful at the box office it occurred to me that most people probably haven’t even heard of it, let alone seen it. This is a pity, because it’s a lot of fun.

It’s also got some surprisingly high-powered talent. It was written and directed by Peter Jackson, produced by Robert Zemeckis, and scored by Danny Elfman. (Also John Astin plays one of the ghosts.)

The film is a horror-comedy, starring Michael J. Fox as an architect who finds himself able to see ghosts after an accident. He’s befriended three of them, and they haunt houses in the area to drum up clients for his ghost-hunting business; he “exorcises” them for a fee. And then…something a lot darker comes to town.

Here’s the trailer:

It’s a fun, lightweight movie, reasonably family-friendly (for older kids). If you have a chance to rent it, give it a try.

BoingBoing recently posted a ridiculous picture of a monster made from a taxidermied deer butt, and my immediate thought was, “Huh; somebody had too much time on their hands.” However, the comments soon made it clear that deer butt monsters are kind of a thing.

They can also be found under the name “rearwolf,” “deer butt alien,” or–my favorite–“assquatch.” They’re periodically available on eBay or from taxidermists with a sense of whimsey. Redneck art connoisseur Don Burleson even provides general instructions for making one of your own, although you would need to already have a decent familiarity with taxidermy to make much use of them.

Still, if you ever find yourself in possession of a deer butt that you don’t know what to do with, this would certainly be an interesting project. (Or you could make the “doe bell” deer-butt doorbell, also showcased on Burleson’s site, instead.)

If you’re less ambitious, you could also follow the general guidelines and use faux fur instead. The taxidermy fangs and eyes look pretty neat, and a fake-monster “trophy” would be an arresting addition to a wall or bookcase.

Saturday the 14th is a cute short film which follows the nightly routine of a masked man named Mason. It’s been entered in the CG Student Awards contest, so if you like it you can vote for its creator here.

(via Laughing Squid)

Wonderland – Lovely series of fantasy photographs, created by a woman to honor her mother’s memory. (Hat tip to Cat)

All We Have is Now – Music video involving zombie love.

Black Cherry Cake Company – Dark-and-geeky cakes and pastries. Some really lovely handiwork, particularly on the wedding cakes.

Blossom the Baby Bat – If you imagine vampires turning into something this patently snorgle-able their scare factor goes right down the toilet.

Deep Sea Fauna… with Googly Eyes – Tumblr which is just what it says on the tin.

Handheld – Miniature furniture made of fake human skin. These are utterly horrifying.

Cthulhu Mittens – Free pattern. Man, I really need to learn to knit.

Spider Web Bedding – Cotton sheets by Sin in Linen.

Dancing with the Green Fairy – A short history of absinthe, plus lots of nice vintage images and photos of impedimenta.

Lessons From My Mother – Series of embroidered superstitions and old wives’ tales related by the artist’s mother. An interesting, vintage-y vibe; somewhat NSFW.