Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Another Christian-themed social networking service

Yet another Christian-themed social networking service has appeared.  MyChurch aims to help you (a Christian) "find, connect, and grow your church community."  Users can search for friends and churches.

We noted a Christian-themed MySpace competitor earlier this year.

(thanks, Jesse)

Too far with RSS for some Facebookies

Facebook adds a new RSS feature... and users hate it.  Why?  Too much information?  A realization of just how extensive their networking has been?

The protesters complain that the RSS feed publicizes potentially embarrassing developments including romantic breakups, friendships going sour, professional setbacks, and the like. Even though this information was available before, Facebook's active spreading of it via RSS feeds offended hundreds of thousands of the site's users.

(thanks, Kellie Parker!)

Browser games from TonyPa

TonyPa designs interesting browser-based Flash games.  I'm addicted to the gear- and wheel-based ones.  The music combines with some of the graphics to feel like a lost 1970s science fiction movie.

(via Jim Hanas)

Russian Gothic ruins

So much of the Gothic is about spaces.  Haunted, power-drenched, decadent, mysterious places.   Today's example comes from post-Soviet Russia, a series of buildings left to the elements in some city or cities.   

(via BoingBoing)

Japanese Gothic overview

Steven points me to this fine exploration of the Japanese Gothic tradition.  Hughes does a fine, and much needed job of surveying a rich terrain, touching on Kyoka, Rampo, and Akutagawa, along with Chinese ghost stories, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, religion and western influences.

I've been hoping to work on something I think of as "the global Gothic" for a while.  So many circulations of traditions and tropes, authors and movies are national boundaries, genres, and times.  And multimedia, movies, tv, and computer games.

Death by Google Calendar

Death by Google Calendar looks at how easy it is to snoop on a person's data and life, once they do bad guys the favor of publishing life info to the world via Google's useful tool.  Nicely, the piece ends with recommendations to protect oneself, and in a nonhysterical, nonGothic way.

(via Slashdot)

Gaming The Game

Between bouts of revising my alternate reality games (ARG) paper, I'm re-watching The Game (1997) tonight.  Interesting to see how the IMDB's trivia page has some comments describing further iterations of the titular game:

#  The equipment need to solve the real Game has become, in recent years, increasingly high-tech. Palm Pilots, pocket PCs, wireless Internet connections and portable photocopiers are a given. One year a snorkel, mask and a wet suit were required to locate a clue tied to a rock at the bottom of a lake. Another time, tuxedos were necessary so that a clue could be surreptitiously solved in the midst of a formal banquet.

Remake of Wicker Man oozes into theaters

A remake of The Wicker Man (1973) is being hurled at screens across America this weekend, no doubt as punishment for some unnamed cultural crime, or a Lovecraftian manifestation of the sheer horror the universe inflicts.  I like Neil LaBute, but I really do not want to see this.

Reviewers seem to agree, so far.  The RottenTomatoes rating dropped from 20% down to 17%, as I worked on this blog post.  And that leads us to some cheerily, some wistfully bad reviews.  Word of a twisted ending, along with that geographical shift, brings to mind the staggering vileness of the US remake of The Vanishing (1988).  Ebert has a nice line on that, which sounds like it applies to this current remix:

a textbook exercise in the trashing of a nearly perfect film

Here, in order to wash that foul remake taste from your collective mouths, is Christopher Lee exulting: