Archive for the ‘weird’ Category

Halloween Horrors: Strange Sky Sounds

Monday, October 30th, 2023

All around the world, people hear strange things from the sky. Here’s a roundup of the various “sky trumpets,” booming noises, hums and other things people have no explanation for.

Happy Halloween!

Monday, October 31st, 2022

Today is Halloween, which means it’s time for the annul Fark scary story thread!

Here are the links to threads from previous years:

  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014
  • 2013
  • 2012
  • 2011
  • 2010
  • 2009
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • 2006
  • 2005
  • 2004
  • While you’re here, feel free to check out some of my other freaky/creepy/scary/silly Halloween posts.

    Halloween Horrors: Mysterious Dark Atlantic Mass Eats a Torpedo

    Wednesday, October 30th, 2019

    Have you ever heard of the cryptid known as the Lusca?

    The Lusca has been described in varying ways. Some cryptozoologists have suggested it is merely a giant octopus that has been misidentified. Many others have described the Lusca as a half-shark, half-octopus hybrid monster.

    It has razor-sharp teeth and multi-suckered tentacles. It sometimes has many of the same characteristics as a colossal octopus, but has also been described at different times as having multiple heads, dragon-like features, or even appearing as a vaguely described evil spirit.

    Some eyewitnesses have described the Lusca as appearing like a squid-eel hybrid, rather than the shark-octopus combination.

    The Lusca is said to be over 75 feet long, possibly growing as large as 200 feet in some cases. It can change colors, much like some smaller species of octopus. Its habitat is rugged underwater terrain, large underwater caves, the edge of the continental, or other areas where large crustaceans are found, as this is assumed to be its food source.

    It’s said to inhabit “blue holes,” deep blue pits in the ocean floor, especially in the Caribbean.

    Which brings us to this story, relayed second-hand by a guest of Joe Rogan’s:

    Back in the ‘90s, this pilot’s job was to fetch BQM aerial target drones and submarine telemetry torpedoes from the ocean. At the time, the pilot was flying a CH-53—“a big, heavy-lifter the Marine Corps uses for certain things,” Fravor told Rogan. “Off the East Coast they do a lot of shooting, at the time it was off Puerto Rico.”

    “The helo drops a swimmer in the water, he hooks the whole thing up and they fly back,” Fravor said. “The first time they were out and they were going to pick up a BQM, he’s sitting in the front—in the CH-53 you can see down by your feet—and as he’s looking down, they’re 50 feet (15 metres) above the water, he sees this kind of dark mass coming up from the depths.”

    As the pilot picked up the BQM, he was apparently at a loss for words. “He’s looking at this thing going, ‘What the hell is that?’ And then it just goes back down underwater. Once they pull the kid and the BQM out of the water, this object descends back into the depths.”

    One dark mass coming up from the depths is weird enough. Two is officially cause for concern. A few months later, the helicopter pilot saw the exact same thing.

    “He’s out picking up a torpedo, they hook the diver up on the winch, and as they’re lowering him down, he sees this big mass. He goes, ‘It’s not a submarine’. He’s seen submarines before. Once you’ve seen a submarine you can’t confuse it with something else. This big object, kind of circular, is coming up from the depths and he starts screaming through the intercom system to tell them to pull the diver up, and the diver’s only a few feet from the water.

    “They reverse the winch and the diver’s thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And all of a sudden he said the torpedo just got sucked down underwater, and the object just descended back down into the depths. They never recovered it.”

    Some people are obviously going to think of UFOs, but I thought of the Lusca…

    Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Peaked at Tony Sarg

    Thursday, November 24th, 2016

    I dislike Macy’s (for numerous reasons I need not detail here) and am bored by parades, but when I came across this image of an early balloon from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I thought it was so cool it must be fake:

    Turns out that not only is it real, but it was among the very first balloons featured in the parade, and was designed by a man named Tony Sarg:

    In 1921, Tony Sarg, a celebrated illustrator and puppeteer, bought a home on Nantucket and eventually opened a toy store in town. From his off-island studios nestled in Times Square, Sarg’s artwork appeared on the covers of magazines, on the pages of children’s books, and eventually in Macy’s department store window displays. Beginning in 1924, Macy’s held an annual Christmas parade to celebrate the holiday shopping season in New York City, and appointed Tony Sarg as its chief designer.

    After three years of the Christmas Parade, in November 1927, the president of Macy’s, Jesse Strauss, announced to America that the parade was going to take it up a notch, way up. The press and the people of New York City swelled with anticipation, all waiting to see what Tony Sarg had in mind. At one o’clock, Thanksgiving Day 1927, Sarg unveiled his lofty creations—first a twenty-one-foot balloon man that peeked into second story windows and then a jaw-dropping sixty-foot-long balloon dragon. The balloons were a huge hit, and have been the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving Day Parade ever since.

    Later he used the same balloon (or a modified version of it) to hoax the media that there was a sea serpent out on Nantucket. What a card.

    Anyway, I don’t think Macy’s has had a balloon in the parade nearly as interesting since.

    Insert your own (SFW) Man from Nantucket limerick below.

    For Auction: Queen Victoria’s Lacy Underthings

    Wednesday, May 20th, 2015

    Finally something for the ultimate Steampunk enthusiast/Queen Victoria fetishist: an auction lot of her underwear.

    Yes, for a mere £1,500 starting bid, you can own Her Majesty’s Bloomers.

    The Dreweatts & Bloomsbury auction takes place on May 21 BST, which means you’ll either need to place a bid online or get up fairly early in the morning (if you’re in the U.S.) to bid…

    The End of the Llamas With Hats Saga

    Thursday, March 5th, 2015

    I’ve mentioned Llamas with Hats before. While I wasn’t looking, the people at Filmcow went out and completed the saga.

    The verdict? Eh. The combination of humor and disturbing off-screen violence of the first few hit the spot, but they gradually cranked up the disturbing while sidelining the humor.

    Not the choice I would have made.

    Here are all twelve for your viewing pleasure.

    Three is still the funniest.

    Also enjoy these complimentary memes with your flight:

    Llamas1

    Build Your Own Electric God!

    Thursday, October 16th, 2014

    Not many people read Frankenstein and think “Hey, what a swell idea! I should try that!”

    But John Murray Spear was not an ordinary man. Nor did he think so small as to merely attempt to create a living creature with electricity. No, Spear thought much bigger than that.

    He wanted to use electricity to build his own God.

    Spear was a former Unitarian minister who had been driven out of more than one church for his strange ideas (oh those straight-laced Unitarians and their rigid dogmas!) who took a turn toward spiritualism right after the Fox sisters started their toe-tapping shenanigans. In 1853, supposedly following the instructions of a cadre of spirit guides (including Benjamin Franklin) he called the “Electricizers,” Spear and his followers began construction of his his electrical messiah, dubbed “New Motive Power,” on a hilltop in Lynn, Massachusetts.

    “From the center of the table rose two metallic uprights connected at the top by a revolving steel shaft. The shaft supported a transverse steel arm from whose extremities were suspended two large steel spheres enclosing magnets. Beneath the spheres there appeared [..] a very curiously constructed fixture, a sort of oval platform, formed of a peculiar combination of magnets and metals. Directly above this were suspended a number of zinc and copper plates, alternately arranged, and said to correspond with the brain as an electric reservoir. These were supplied with lofty metallic conductors, or attractors, reaching upward to an elevated stratum of atmosphere said to draw power directly from the atmosphere. In combination with these principal parts were adjusted various metallic bars, plates, wires, magnets, insulating substances, peculiar chemical compounds, etc… At certain points around the circumference of these structures, and connected with the center, small steel balls enclosing magnets were suspended. A metallic connection with the earth, both positive and negative, corresponding with the two lower limbs, right and left, of the body, was also provided.

    Once it was given life, New Motive Power was supposed to usher in a new era of heaven on earth.

    After 9 months, they tried to give it life. Let me spoil the suspense for you: Didn’t work, though Spear claimed it did twitch feebly for a few minutes. Later it was supposedly torn apart by a mob of enraged townspeople.

    Spear spent the rest of his life promoting spiritualism, free love, and socialism. (Speaking of gods that failed…)

    I wonder if anyone has written the steampunk horror story where Spear succeeded, only to discover that building an electrical god based on instructions received from spirits turns out to be a really bad idea

    Trailer for Terry Gilliam’s Zero Theorem

    Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

    So the trailer for Terry Gilliam’s forthcoming Zero Theorem is out:

    It’s the science fiction dead end job loser virtual reality physics dating sim you’ve been waiting for!

    Could be epic, or an epic train wreck…

    The Day of the Dead Memes

    Friday, November 1st, 2013

    Here, on the Day of the Dead, it’s time to remember those who were once briefly (if inexplicably) popular, but which have now largely passed from our consciousness.

    I’m speaking, of course, of dead memes.

    Once they roamed wild and free across the Internet, but now these memes are largely dead in popular culture. Consider this a Whitman’s Sampler of the once-popular memes.

    Dead Memes

    The Dancing Baby

    This computer-generated dancing baby was one of the first Internet memes, so popular it evidently showed up on an episode of Single Female Lawyer Ally McBeal. (Kids: Ask your parents what an “Ally McBeal” was.)

    Mahir (I Kiss You!!!!)

    In the early days of the Internet, people started putting up home pages willy-nilly with only a basic understanding of HTML and little-to-no taste or guiding aesthetics. It was a different era, when Geocities roamed the land.

    Into this era stumbled Mahir Cagri, a Turkish man with diverse interests and a shaky grasp of English. “I like music , I have many many musicenstrumans my home I can play. I like sex.”

    If you had an email address in 1999, chances are pretty good someone forwarded you Mahir’s page…

    Hamster Dance

    Basically rows of animated gifs of cartoon hamsters dancing to a silly, sped-up song. There were many offshoots and parody pages as well. I remember an “Objectivist Dance” page with animated dollar signs…

    Bert is Evil

    A website that claims Sesame Street‘s Bert is an agent of historical calumny, and has the photoshops to prove it.

    Briefly flared into worldwide consciousness after 9/11 when radical Muslims incorporated an image of Bert with Osama Bin laden into a street sign supporting the terrorist.

    All Your Base

    Are belong to us.

    Domo-Kun

    A Japanese plush mascot chasing a kitten in divine retribution for your Onanistic sins.

    Badger Badger Badger

    A short animation of badgers, mushrooms, and snakes set to self-referential music, in an infinite loop. The surrealist Internet hit of 2003.

    David After the Dentist

    Woozy little kid gets filmed after dental surgery. Hilarity ensues.

    Boxxy

    Teenage girl makes video. 4Chan gets hold of video. Flamewar so epic that 4Chan grinds to halt ensues.

    So look on these dead memes, ye mighty lolcats and ponies, and know that one day you too will pass into obscurity…

    See also: Charles Mackay’ Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

    Guillermo Del Toro Simpsons‘ Couch Gag is Awesome

    Saturday, October 5th, 2013

    This came out two days ago, and already has over 6 million hits, but I still thought Guillermo Del Toro opening couch gag for The Simpsons forthcoming “Treehouse of Horror” episode was too awesome (and too full of SF/F/H references) not to share.

    Hat tip: Hank Wagner’s Facebook feed.