More Beasts and Backs

Ain't It Cool News has the DVD art and trailer for the new tentacley Futurama movie, The Beast With a Billion Backs. The trailer looks a little like an animated version of Itch Monster.

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The Summoning

More microwave action. This one's incredible.

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Another Day, Another Giant Cephalopod

What is it with giant squid and the antipodes? This one, captured in Victoria, is six metres long and weighs 230 kilograms.

Fisheries Victoria says the creature is being kept in a freezer and will be transferred to the Melbourne Museum.

The museum is yet to confirm whether it will be used for scientific research or put on display.

Bob McPherson of the local sport and Game Fishing Club says it is not the first squid netted off Portland, but it is the largest.

(Either that guy in the picture is looking for something, or he's trying to make the squid smile. It's odd either way.)

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The Game Boy That Plays You

Logan from Kotaku.au points us to this Play-Thing of the Awakening Gods. It also looks just like a microwaved Game Boy Advance, but that's just what it wants you to think.

You take a Game Boy, you throw it in the microwave, you can kiss your Game Boy goodbye. Maybe the microwave, too. But if you take your Game Boy then apply some Photoshoppery to it, make it look like its been thrown in the microwave, descended into hell then returned with a thirst for human flesh, well, then you've got this puppy. Truly frightening.

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"It's down, baby, it's down!"

Phoenix has touched down, baby. ABC has the quote:

Pulled by Mars' gravity, Phoenix was tearing along at 20,400 kilometres per hour before it entered the atmosphere, which slowed the craft so it could pop out a parachute and fire thruster rockets to gently float to the ground and land on fold-out legs.

"It's down, baby, it's down!" yelled a NASA flight controller, looking at signals from Mars showing that Phoenix had landed.

The little fella has already started beaming images back to the Earth.

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Squid Banister

There's just nothing wrong with Henri David's squid banister. This pic is from Buzz Andersen's Flickr stream.

Link (via Scott Beale).

New Art Book: A Lovecraft Retrospective

Centipede Press says its Lovecraft Retrospective, an over-sized behemoth of a book containing Mythos-inspired art and essays, is now available:

This 400-page artbook features loads of color and black & white art from the last eighty years, including several pages of fold-out views. Artists include H.R. Giger, Michael Whelan, Lee Brown Coye, Virgil Finlay, Gahan Wilson, J.K. Potter, and dozens of others in a massive, oversize 12 x 15.5 inch book. Includes many previously unpublished works, & several major essays. Introduction by Harlan Ellison, afterword by Thomas Ligotti.

Prices range from US$395 - $2,495.

Link (via Bruce Sterling at Beyond the Beyond).

Face Appears on Book Bound With Human Skin

The lede on this BBC story reads like a one-line synopsis for a Dan Brown book:

A "spooky" image of a priest executed for treason over the Gunpowder Plot has appeared on a 17th century book thought to be bound in his skin, it is claimed.

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Life on Mars, the Vatican, and UFOs over England

Earlier this week, the UK government released its UFO files to the public. There's days' worth of reading material, from letters accusing the government of covering up the truth through to nervous little sketches of UFOs, obviously drawn by someone after their tenth cup of coffee. Even the run-of-the-mill 'lights in the sky' stories are great to read, and each one's slightly different from the last.

One similarity is that so many people report coloured, flashing lights. It's the type of thing an alien probably wouldn't want fitted to his otherwise stealthy flying craft, nor, come to think of it, would a black ops government agency want to advertise its latest special project as it zips over the English countryside.

Oh, and apparently, there was no life on Mars, at least not on the surface. Readings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest the crust and upper mantle are "stiffer and colder than previously thought", meaning that life -- as we understand it -- could only exist deep below the planet's surface, where liquid water is most likely to form.

And if you think that finding life on another planet will force the religious to suddenly wake up and turn toward the light of science and reason, it's not going to happen. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Vatican's chief astronomer (an incredible job title, religious or no), reckons the existence of aliens doesn't contradict the Bible at all.

"As an astronomer I continue to believe that God is the creator of the universe... Just as there are a plethora of creatures on Earth, there could be others, equally intelligent, created by God."

Link to UK National Archives, NASA release, and the ABC's interview with Funes.

Lovecraft or Bust

Arkham Studios is now selling a new Lovecraft bust:

Standing approximately 12 inches high, the expertly sculpted countenance of HP Lovecraft sits atop an antique style base with curved scrolls and filigrees, not unlike the aesthetic of Lovecraft himself. At the face of the base is a small plaque which reads “I Am Providence” and signed in Lovecraft’s own signature beneath.

If busts aren't your thing, check out the 12-inch statue, which also happens to be the Howie Award from the HP Lovecraft Film Festival.

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Dunwich Horror Done Good?

Director Leigh Scott reckons his upcoming indie horror film The Darkest Evil, based on The Dunwhich Horror, nails Lovecraft. In a recent blog post, Scott criticises the Lovecraftness of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, takes a swipe at CGI, and praises The Darkest Evil's main actors Jeffrey Combs and Dean Stockwell.

He also hints at the design of Yog Sothoth:

Lovecraft's creatures are also strange hybrids of the known and unknown. I think people will be really freaked out by the creature Yog Sothoth who plays a big part in the film. It's nothing anyone has ever seen before. So much so that when the producer saw the concept drawings, he said "I don't know what I'm looking at, but it's disturbing". Always a good sign when trying to make a Lovecraft film.

The film's in post-production, and a trailer is due in the next few weeks.

(Image shown here of the thoroughly un-Lovecraft, 1970's version of The Duniwich Horror)

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Gay Pride at Miskatonic U

Miskatonic University's Gay People's Alliance has a bunch of queer merchandise available on CafePress. Here's some background:

Among the first organizations of higher education for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and queer persons, Miskatonic University's Gay People's Alliance and Gay Alumni Association were founded in May 1971.

After the turn of the second millennium of the Common Era, the Alliance and Association decided to update their original Pink Elder Sign logo with the addition of the Miskatonic U. Rainbow design.

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Needy Stars Need You

Skywatcher Alan Cumming is calling on amateur astronomers to join the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and record information on neglected stars:

[AAVSO] have recently published a prioritized list of Stars In Need Of Observation, called ‘Bulletin 71’. The AAVSO is perhaps the most direct way that amateurs like me can co-operate with their professional counterparts, and these ‘Stars In Need’ are a group of objects that are in the middle of an interesting and complicated part of their evolution: They are the red and slowly pulsating Long Period Variable stars (LPVs).

The manual's arcane cover (right) is reason enough to sign up right now.

Link (via Sydney Observatory).

Herbert West Hacked/Slashed

Cassie and Vlad go up against everyone's favourite re-animator Herbert West in an upcoming Hack/Slash series. ShockTillYouDrop.Com has the details:

West will rear his bespectacled head in issue #15 for a three-part story arc entitled Cassie and Vlad Meet the Re-Animator.

Hack creator, Tim Seeley, teamed with Brian Yuzna (producer of the Re-Animator and director of its subsequent installments Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator) to make this pairing happen.

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Beyond Space and Time at the LHC

TED's posted a couple of talks based on the search for extra-dimensional space and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Brian Cox and Brian Greene believe there's more to the universe than the conventional three-plus-one dimensions, mainly because there's a bunch of equations out there that don't seem to work. So rather than spend $1.50 on a pad of paper and a 2B pencil to create new equations that do work, physicists instead spent US$10 billion on a machine to tell them how the wrong equations could work. Or something.

In any case, both speakers wax on about string theory, relativity, and sub-atomic particles in a way that a child could understand. Greene's talk is below, and head to over to TED to see Cox and hundreds of other smart and creative people be smart and creative.

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That Squid Colossus, Thawed

New Zealand scientists have thawed out the giant squid caught in the Ross Sea in February 2007. Not only is the 8-metre (26-foot) long creature the largest preserved squid ever captured, but it isn't even fully grown. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Steve O'Shea, a marine biologist who is part of an international team looking at the creature, said he could tell from the creature's beak that it was not yet fully grown.

"Perhaps the colossal squid gets up to 750 kilograms. That is certainly not the largest specimen out there," he said.

Even more interesting: it has the biggest eyes of any known animal. From National Geographic:

"This is the only intact eye [of a colossal squid] that's ever been found. It's spectacular," said Auckland University of Technology squid specialist Kat Bolstad, one of a team of international scientists brought in to examine the creature.

"It's the largest known eye in the animal kingdom," Bolstad told The Associated Press.

Here's a video of the thawing, which is nowhere near as dull as it sounds:

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