Could the icy moon, Europa, harbor life within its icy seas? image source: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00502

Here on Mars we think we’re pretty hot shit being Martians and all, walking around giggling at Earthlings and their notoriously kludged skeletal systems. Looks like we may have some company in a third location of our sweet Milky Way Galaxy….Europa!

Europa, one of four Galilean moons to orbit the planet Jupiter may in fact host life similar to that living in the deep seas of the planet Earth. It is thought that Europa is made of an icy crust some 60 miles deep and -300o ^oF cold. The surface is basically ice covering layers of freezing subsurface salty ocean, a rocky interior, a silicate mantle and finally a metallic core. Sounds like a lovely place to park it and set up a family? If you say “yes,” you’re among many potential Europeans — as well as the notorious Yeti of the Earthly Himalayans, burrrrrr.

And I thought little demon girls would be more with the times.

How long did it take Samara  to figure out that VHS is an outdated psychic weapon and finally create a YouTube account? Ten years??!!

This just proves that Evil is just as lazy as Good. Just look around you. All Hell hasn’t broken loose . . .  yet. I guess idle hands really do the Devil’s work. 

Slackers.

Video courtesy of  Creepypasta. Oh, and Creepypasta isn’t a gothy recipe site.

“Dissected Heart” photo by DeadStarlet.

I literally drafted this poem last night, after waking from some Jungian fever dream. My head full of children’s fingers, digging for some sense of safety in the guts of my brain.

Here is what they dug up.

And there was nothing safe about it.

Tristan and Iseult sail across the ocean of the unconscious, where the neglected, wounded anima is waiting to inflict her pain, to demand her tribute.

tribute

he tells me that he once loved morholt’s daughter, brutal
and bloody like all beautiful women in little boy’s bedtime
stories. their pupils wide in the dark – where he can still see
her fangs, the white worm, wiggling. her curves slithering just
beyond  the black seas of unconsciousness. a vision, a night-light
story, a cardboard cut-out of a red, red heart, a princess
with scales –  in a child’s tattered book.  
the thick paper edges,
gnawed down
to their paper bones.

“she whispers,” he whispers, turning off the light,
the sheets pulled back revealing her wet, soft mouth.
her throat, a warm, throbbing tunnel of meat.

“she whispers, she whispers about tribute, about her boots
of shiny, shiny leather, about crossing the ocean of Nod,
where she hums a lullaby to her sea snakes and her giant
squid and her monster tossing and turning in her bed, ‘take
the ambien. take the vicodin. let your medicine cabinet
sing you to me, where you can crawl inside my guts
and sleep –‘

cozy with her thousands of newly-hatched maggots,
her snakes, her snails, her puppy-dog tails, her soft tendrils –
dark tidal waves of hair, threaten to tangle,
choke, drown wayward dreamers in the current of their own
rotting dreams –

of bleached mornings, coffee and eggs, love with milk
and sugar. a face buried in a handful of bedded curls.
hands curling around a womb that was full of white marbles,
but is now as empty as their promises
never to part.

but she has parted the seas with her weeping — a poem,
a song, for the maggots, the men, clamoring in her organs –
grinding tiny, hopeful hearts, red and bruised, but still beating  –
until not beating.

A womb full of corpses, of the empty shells of souls — the white orbs
like her white marbles, the lights in their eyes – flicker.
the wet acids of her guts gurgle, corrode their armor,
melt off their firm flesh –- licking them back, drowning them
in her great terror,
in her soft, sweet void.”

their screams sound like a song from a passing car. in my room,
i think i can hear them. but nights in the city are frightfully
still and i am too cold to care, my toes curling deeper into
the bed.

he turns to me and growls something about all women being
cold-blooded, reptiles. grips his pillow, tries to sleep.

i sit up and stare through the window. a charcoal cloud coils
around a pregnant moon, like a fist gripping the last white marble,
until it is shrouded and the sky goes black.

Well, the universe is indifferent; I learned to sew . . . well, kinda.

What resulted was a hybrid between Mina’s red Absinthe gown and Satine’s red number in Moulin Rouge!.

I’m not going to claim that it is the most well-constructed costume of it’s kind on the internet. The dress only consists of a few key elements: an 18-inch red tight-lacing corset from Orchard Corsets, one red night gown (previously gifted), a small pillow, red fabric, red rose lining, needle, thread, and the imagination (and construction skills) of the bossy five year-old girl in all of us.

Deadstarlet in the Mina Dress, posed by the Bordello in Venice Beach. Photo by J. Burgdorf

Click here to see full photo gallery.

The fairy in the absinthe wants your soul!

My milkshake. I used a small pillow as the bustle pad which I sewed into an elastic band that went underneath more corset and around my waist.

This tight-lacing corset closes at a minscule 18-inches at the waist. No. I didn't get it all the way closed.

Mina dress at the Labyrinth of Jareth Ball, 2010. Photos by E. Poole.

Mina dress in Venice Beach. Photos by J. Burgdorf

"Perky Pat Playset" by Steve Young

Cognitive researcher, neuroscientst and European hottie Henrik Ehrsson and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institutet have already mastered the existential art of illusory body-swapping — tricking the brain into believing that it has “swapped” bodies with another humanoid form.

Now this “eccentric” research is being taken a step further by playing with peoples’ perceptions of body size.

Ehrsson et al. have successfully tricked people into perceiving the world as if they were as tiny as a Barbie-like doll or as giant as a 14-foot mannequin. Basically, this means that subjects percieved the environments around them as if they were the body-size they were primed to “perceptually swap” with . . . So, if you were primed to swap bodies with a Barbie doll, the objects around you would look really, really big.

I know. Weird. Just think Alice’s “Eat Me” cakes — but all in your head.

AREN'T THESE NERDS HOT? Karolinska Institute in Sweden (from left) Arvid Guterstam, Henrik Ehrsson and Björn van der Hoort pose with the tiny, medium-size and giant mannequins used in the study. (Photo: Staffan Larsson, Copyright Staffan Larsson/Henrik Ehrsson)

Now, all we need is some Can-D or Chew-Z, so we can feed your head.

Ehrsson and his colleagues may claim that their research is the first step in mind-controlled robotics, but we Martians are pretty sure that they’ve been hired by Martian Mattel to design the new generation Perky Pat Playsets.

If you don’t know what a Perky Pat Playset is, you’ve never been bored on Mars.

Last month, I found myself in the mossy green arms of the N.E. seaboard, on yet another adventure into 21st Century Bohemia, where I got the chance to jam with experimental darkwave group Cyranoid, headquartered in the heart of darkness of Brooklyn.

The improv musical session resulted in this song.

\”The Dust That Never Settles\” by Cyranoid (ft. Deadstarlet)

Yes, that’s me on vocals. Yes, I know, I sound like a tart.

Just to make it clear, I’m technically not singing on this track. I’m more or less using my “boots of shiny, shiny leather” voice, which disturbingly sounds like a teenage strumpet with the extracurricular activities of Laura Palmer. No, you cannot read my diary. (Or are you reading it now?)

Cyranoid is comprised of Pharwolf and Mr. Nothing. I’ve known these assholes for what seems like an eternity. You may have not heard of these motherfuckers here on Earth, but they are huge on Mars. HUGE.

What’s interesting about Cyranoid is that everything we taped (yes, with a cassette tape) was live and improv’ed. No computers were used. Just a synth, a sequencer, a twenty dollar microphone, and a confluence of all the grimy, shiny things that flowed from our gray matter and guts. All roughness and feeling — you, know, like in the olden days when life was as black and white as our television sets.

Pharwolf puts it this way, “Cyranoid has always had a complex relationship with the technology of electronic music. We are interested not only in using synthesizers, computers, samplers, and sequencers, but also competing with them, struggling against them, and rebelling against them, as we were inspired to do by the literature of movies of science fiction.”

Other themes involve paranoia, surviellance and the push and pull of humanity against the tide of technology. Does it make our lives better? Oppress it? Oh, fuck it: “We choose not to attempt to describe it but rather to experience it intensely in cyborg music sessions where the sound of man and machine painfully and gorgeously merging are explicit.”

Cyranoid’s usual vocal artist Mr. Nothing, not breaking character, had nothing to add.

I guess you can think of Cyranoid as Cyrano de Bergerac, but really, really paranoid about digital surveillance. So, forget receiving love letters in your inbox. Not with all those eyes without faces.

Look out for a follow-up post about the story behind this song. Yes, yes. There was a sacrifice.

2)      The Enemy of My Enemy . . . Should NOT be wearing Spandex. It looks like the Republicans successfully harnessed the power of the “Tea Party” – but this is really a game of political Russian roulette. See, the “Tea Party” identifies itself as  independent and they are already talks about forming a Tea Party Caucus in Congress. Don’t be scared. It will only hurt for a minute and then you’ll love it.  I promise . . .

a.       If the Tea Party actually pulls off the formation of a small, but legitimate 3rd party it will be like a stake through the heart of the undead Republican Party. The Tea Party is only going to take away votes from Republicans, since Democrats and Liberals don’t typically tend to fall into the over 65, over-weight, under-educated, bigoted, racist demographic.

b.       If they don’t, the Republicans will have to cater to their bigoted views, thus alienating the vast majority of moderates in this country. By playing hard and fast to win this election, they are actually insuring their decline over the next 20 years, because their views and concerns are completely irrelevant to the younger generations.

c.       Regardless, the Tea Party has a short shelf life, since most of them are older, obese, carry guns, and don’t think most people should have access to health care. This means they will all die sooner than later from old age, heart disease, or gun accidents . . . because they refused to go to the Hospital and get treated by “ObamaCare.”

3)      You Love Watching Stupid People Be Stupid. Come on. Don’t you secretly love how politics have turned into one of those epically dramatic seasons of the “Real World”? Take a whole bunch of fame-craving idiots, who will do anything to be on T.V., and make them  live and work together in a great big “House.”  What would television be without Palin, Bachmann and . . . Rand Paul . . . that really annoying roommate who wants to repeal all the Constitutional Amendments, especially the ones about Civil Rights? Bret Michaels is gonna have to melt all his Stripper love into a liquid form and feed it to you through an intravenous drip just to compete.

4)      Martian Property Values Will SkyRocket! Tea Partiers don’t believe in science and, therefore, cannot travel to Mars. So, while you’re watching Sarah Palin move her meat flaps, we’re throwing  a rave with a bunch of hot scientists, traveling space bards and alien prostitutes. Oh, and we can totally grow as much pot as we want. Don’t you wish you lived here? There’s this perfect “cozy” cottage at the South end of the Valles Marineris. The property features spectacular views, a newly renovated kitchen, and a complementary Perky Pad Playset. I can get you into it for a song.

Right now, at this very moment, Google is sucking your brain to build a super artificial intelligence that will one day make YOU completely obsolete — like your iPhone 3G.

Don’t panic.

I’m sure they will offer an upgrade.

It’s just the immanent Technological Singularity brought to you by Google – the user-friendly face of the future.

Hopefully, we’ll still be the users.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, must be a little obsessed with Douglas Adams, because they are developing what Page calls ”The ultimate search engine” that will directly interface with your brain.

Sigh. Can’t the Technorati brainchild anything more original than the daydreams of unstable, unshaven, deadbeat sci-fi writers?

No.

Google’s version of Deep Thought “would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly” — including the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

Let’s just hope it just says “42″ and doesn’t tell your girlfriend about your porn subscriptions. You have a lot of them.

I know this isn’t new news to our more tech savvy readers, but I have to raise the question: Is a Super Search Engine manned by an all-knowing A.I. modeled after horny web-surfers really gonna change the world?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not worried about the Technological Singularity. I don’t believe that machines can reach the same form of “conciousness” human brains produce. If you disagree, you can lock me in Searle’s Chinese Room and throw away the key. Or just sell me really hard.

But if anyone can berth an artificial intelligence capable of reading The Onion while Twittering Ashton Kutcher, Google can.

Hell, Sergey is already a cyborg.

See, I’m not afraid of Google’s cyber kid taking over the world. I’m afraid that little mister Deep Thought will just turn out be a slacker — just like you.

Like Sting, every click you make, it’ll be watching you, learning about our online universe through your eyes. It will read Gawker and download Lady Gaga. It will believe everything Wikipedia says about the Louisiana Purchase. It might even try to friend you on Facebook and then write a zillion updates a day about the universe, life and everything in it. And if you try to de-friend it, it will erase your badass WOW score.

It will become a supercomputer that only cares about its unmatched lust for porn, epic fails, kitten videos, and Japanese Lolita themed chat rooms .It will think that hacking into NORAD is a drag compared to putting a cap in your ass in Mafia Wars.

And it will be all your fault, because whatever A.I. emerges from Google’s experiment will be in our image.

I’m personally more interested in what the Sergey and Larry are building at Burning Man.

Porn is so boring. Isabella Rossellini will make it better.

As our collective online porn experience is pushed to the brink of ennui, leave it to Rossellini to re-wet our appetites with her new Sundance series Seduce Me, which promises to indulge us in the “vaginal complexity” of ducks.

Quacking Hot.

Seduce Me is the naughty offspring of Rossellini’s series of short films called Green Porno — the Brothel’s first choice in erotic viewing.

Isabella will do anything to turn you on. She’ll tote a giant whale penis, penetrate flies and revel in the sadomasochistic sex of snails with the horny zeal of a middle-schooler. You know, the kind of entomological eroticism that more evolved little green men would pay us big bucks to watch.

So, keep the satellite feed coming, Isabella. And I mean, cumming.