Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Lovecraft art, not at all commonplace

A fine group of Lovecraft illustrations is assembled in this Metafilter post. Lovely stuff, based on HPL's Commonplace Book. I love this, for instance:

Economic horror: towards peasants with torches

Jim Kunstler draws a roadmap to horror and violence, in one unfolding of the economic crisis:

millions of Joe-the-Plumber types will have gotten their pink slips, slipped helplessly into foreclosure, watched the repo men hot-wire their Ford pickups, and eaten down the kitchen cupboard to a single box of Kellogg's All-Bran (which had been sitting there for eleven years infested with weevils). They will be watching the official proceedings in the federal courtrooms with jaundiced eyes as they hunch in their tent cities, in the rain, sipping amateur-brand raisin wine bartered for a few snared rock doves. How long before the hardier ones among them venture out to Easthampton with long knives and matches?

Political Gothic, blast from the past

Bob Hope wonders about zombies:

Wisconsin Gothic

A chilly northern crime: robbing the grave of a decades-dead child.

Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald said someone dug a hole, measured about 20 inches wide, 54 inches long and 48 inches deep, where "Baby Locke" was laid to rest in 1925. They tore the wooden casket apart and took the body.

(via Arnaud Leene via Twitter)

Attack of the Russian vampire moths

A new form of vampirism has appeared: blood-sucking moths.  It's a new thing, perhaps evolution in action:

When the Russian moths were experimentally offered human hands this summer, the insects drilled their hook-and-barb-lined tongues under the skin and sucked blood.

There are some fine Gothic touches, including a sexual explanation for the misbehavior, and the alternative method of feeding on tears.  As for the former, the scientists did really call that theory "the sexual gift."

Cannibals, apocalyptic cults, spy conspiracies and radioactive assassination - is Russia the house of the new Gothic?

(via The Cranky Professor)

New Bryan articles on teaching with technology

Two articles of mine have hit the Web and road:

• "Social Networking in Higher Education", in The Tower and the Cloud, an Educause book.
• "Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre," in the lastest Educause Review.

Both are available in print and pdf.

More on the World of Warcraft zombie plague

The zombie plague continues to gnaw on World of Warcraft.  It all began with a mysterious shipment:

Last week, some mysterious crates leaking a strange greenish gas were spotted in the port town of Booty Bay in the south of the Eastern Kingdoms. People opening the crates were afflicted by a 10-minute debuff during which they could be cured by a Paladin, else they would turn into a zombie.

In zombie form, a character's statistic receive a trememdous boost, and the character gains special attacks that can infect others with the disease.

Here's one account of the aftermath:

The major cities are now littered with corpses. I walk through the trade district and I tread heavily over the ragged skeletons of strangers, comrades, and enemies alike. Worse, they’re not even lootable. All the NPCs appear to be dead, too. Frakking zombies! I can’t get anything done when the whole town is dead! Did no one at Blizzard anticipate these nuisances?

Brett Boessen explains the mechanics, along with an interesting gameplay/ethics issue.

(thanks to Sean Collins and other Infocult commentators!)

Another Russian cannibalism incident

Yet another cannibalism story from Russia: Kamchatkan man accused of eating local long pig.  He recruited help, too:

Investigators believe that a 35-year-old ex-convict killed the victim and then with two friends chopped up the body with knives and an ax and dumped parts on streets of the far eastern region's capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, senior prosecutor's assistant Olga Filatova said.

Also, "the criminals cut off the muscle tissue of the victim, fried the meat in a pan and ate it," Filatova said, Interfax reported.

This is a different Russian cannibalism case from last month's.   is it a fad?  Or will the Gothic economic crisis spark still more Gothic responses?

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Still more presidential Gothic

The American presidential campaign throws off more Gothic goodness, as we head into its final weeks.
McCain:

Obama:

Web services are not immune to the Gothic call.  Amazon.com had an Obama mask categorized under "terrorist":

Previous Gothic presidential scenes: monstrous Palin, monstrous McCain photography, the zombie menace.  But where's the Biden monster?

(thanks to Peter Naegele for the suite)

Speaking of zombies

Apparently there's a zombie plague in World of Warcraft.  Does anyone have more info and/or experience with this?

Zombies in a medieval fantasy setting - reminds me of that great bit in the second Matrix movie, where horror stories are explained as leftovers from a previous install of the world.

(thanks to Jon Breitenbucher)