Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Gothic spaces of the mind

Here's a fine post about resonant spaces, haunted by time and memory.  Hipbone starts off with ruins, moves on to book places, then ends with Tarkovsky.

Video game Gothic

One United States Supreme Court justice gazed up video games and found a superbly Gothic vista:

In some of these games, the violence is astounding. Victims by the dozens are killed with every imaginable implement, including machine guns, shotguns, clubs, hammers, axes, swords, and chainsaws. Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. They cry out in agony and beg for mercy.

Alito continues:

Blood gushes, splatters, and pools. Severed body parts and gobs of human remains are graphically shown. In some games, points are awarded based not only on the number of victims killed, but on the killing technique employed.  

That's gory Gothic, not the horror of suspense and atmosphere, apparently.

Hey, there's something inside

Today's Gothic comic comes from the mad brain of Junji Ito.  It's called "Thing That Drifted Ashore", and Monster Brains has scanned the whole thing.  Like a Poe or Quiroga story, it's a dreamlike tale of monstrosity, memory, and disturbing insights into humanity.

If you don't know Junji Ito, get to Uzumaki right away.

Skynet, as designed by Google

What if Google built a world-ruling, humanity-destroying cyberinfrastructure?  A fun premise, with satirical opportunities a-plenty.

Google Skynet integrated with other Google services, like Maps:

There's an Android implementation, of course:

And boy, is it slick!

(thanks to Thackeray Hovelpox)

Dead, then alive, then dead again

Russia keeps giving the world real-life Gothic horror.  This week it's the old being buried alive theme, as a poor Kazan woman woke up in a casket during her own funeral.  

As mourning relatives filed past her open coffin the supposedly dead woman suddenly woke up and started screaming as she realised where she was. 

The shock was too much for her, causing a heart attack on the spot.  She died 12 minutes later.

Russia's getting to buried alive thing this year.  Some folks are having it done to themselves on purpose.

(thanks to Ryan Brazell)

The alien things reside within us!

Lovecraft or a sex ed class?  Craig MacNeill gleefully mixes the two in a frantic short, “Late Bloomer“. Quite NSFW:

(via Coilhouse)

The wrong number calls you

Here's a fun new urban legend about scary cell phones: a call from the wrong number can kill you.

Number za Shetani

Hi Colleagues,

I don’t know how true this is but just take precaution. Please don’t attend to any calls from the following numbers:

* 7888308001 *
* 9316048121 *
* 9876266211 *
* 9888854137 *
* 9876715587 *

These numbers come in red colors. U may get brain hemorrhage due to high frequency. 27 persons died just receiving the calls watch the DD news to confirm. Please inform all your relatives and friends soon it's urgent.

 

Snopes does its usual fine job of debunking it.

The Gothic of cocaine

Cocaine might acquire a Gothic reputation, offsetting its classy rep in the drug field, if reports like this one circulate.  One coke blend apparently rots human skin.

"We've seen very profound areas of necrosis -- dying skin -- usually located on scalp, ears, face and elsewhere on the body," Mercurio* said. "It's very alarming."

The cause is coke cut with levamisole.  Some bonus horror there, too:

Levamisole is used to treat farm animals for worms and was once used to fight colon cancer.

Interesting to see cocaine's downtown urban rep clash with this very rural opposite.  "You know you've made it when your face sports fashionable deday!"  A kind of doppelganger to botox.

This story can easily be taken up by anti-drug hysteria, of course, and follow established drug horror patterns,

*Mercurio is a terrific name for a doctor in this area.

One Mountains of Madness film

Here's a short, Italian, animated film of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness:

(via Grim Reviews)

Ominous dolls wish you a happy father's day

Happy Father's Day, USA folks, in fine Infocult fashion.

(thank you elena, Sam)