Guide Dog Books has announced that they’ve accepted my non-fiction book, The Popular Uncanny, for publication in 2008-9. The Popular Uncanny studies the mass marketing of nostalgia and terror in postmodern media culture, and features chapters on: the doppelganger in advertising, films featuring dismembered hands, Stephen King’s fiction, and uncanny multimedia online. An early version of this title served as my doctoral dissertation at the University of Oregon; I’ll be updating it over the year ahead.

Visit Guide Dog Books for news about this book and other exciting academic publications upcoming from D. Harlan Wilson and JoSelle Vanderhooft.

The Goreletter Vol. 4, #3, with the title “Introducing MyBlade” was mailed to subscribers on 11/Feb/2007 @ 2:47pm est. It contains extra material not available here on the weblog version, including two subscriber-only contests!

If you subscribe and did not receive this issue, e-mail me for a replacement or review the archives at gorelets.com.

Subscribe today…it’s painless, fun and free! (Well…probably not completely pain-free). — Mike Arnzen

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CORRECTION: The “online gizmo” link to “Operation Thule” should have been to:
http://www.dr.dk/spil/dolph/. Apologies to those who landed on a peanut game and wondered where all the clubbing was.

Nope: this adjective has absolutely nothing to do with Barry Gibb, though it may be associated with a “night fever” of another kind, since the term is often used to describe the moon. A “gibbous moon” is what you call it when the lunar disc is more than halfway illuminated, but not yet full. It is the “pregnant moon” — the one that frustrates werewolves and geeky lunar eclipse aficionados everywhere.

“Gibbous” also more generally describes an oddly convex shape, a lumpy bulge…anything grotesquely tumescent or otherwise odd-shaped and resembling the head of Stewie Griffin from Family Guy. Gibbous comes from the Latin word “gibbus” which literally means “hump” and the term has been employed to malign hunchbacks by foppish aesthetes everywhere since the 18th century. I hereby propose we deem Wednesday of the work week “Gibbous Day” (instead of the colloquial “Hump Day,” which always sounds nastier than it ever is).

Of course, in “first person shooter” games, any splort of blood or flesh blown off a person’s face is called a “gib”…but this term likely comes from “giblet,” not “gibbous,” as any chicken farmer who has read his HP Lovecraft certainly would know.

Thank you for coming out tonight, to this momentous occasion. I’m here to introduce you to a breakthrough technology, one that will change the very way you live your life.

It’s called MyBlade.

And this fantastic device is literally on the cutting edge.

MyBlade is the world’s first electronic knife. You heard me right. This is no mere “electric” knife simply intended to carve your way through a tough turkey. It can do that, true, and more! But no, MyBlade is not electric. MyBlade is electronic. Inside its handle is a 3.4gHz microcomputer with 8 Gigabytes of memory and a wireless network card interfacing directly with a 16-inch stainless steel surgical-quality blade.

MyBlade will entirely change the way you slice, dice, chop and fillet.

Intrigued? Let me tell you all about it.

The “brain” of MyBlade allows any chef, camper, or craftsman to set the slicing speed at just the right level — from a slow-saw that carves so gently it massages — to a rapid cutting motion that puts conventional chainsaws to shame. I’m talking up to 30,000 slices per second, more than the naked eye can see, even up close.

MyBlade can either heat or cool the steel to a temperature you select — or it can recommend just the right level of heat for what it’s about to cut. Your cold cuts can truly be cold, if you like. Or you can you can treat yourself to a hot pot roast sandwich with only raw beef and a loaf of bread. MyBlade is the first cutting instrument to actually cook the very meat it slices, as it slices it!

And if you happen to somehow cut yourself or someone else, you won’t need to worry about dialing 911. The wound will instantly be cauterized!

But yes, even if you still want to dial 911, it can do that for you, too. Did I mention that MyBlade is wireless? And networked? Indeed, it is always online and can easily be used as a phone, a pager, a web browser, a weather station, an emergency medication alert and an IM communication center. You can throw away your cell phone. The metal blade can receive vibrations from your voice and the handle has an earpiece you can use as either a speakerphone or a private line. You simply need to hold it correctly.

It’s an amazing communication device. But MyBlade is still, ultimately, a knife. The greatest piece of cutlery ever invented. It will cut on demand or your money back.

MyBlade is entirely self-cleaning and self-oiling. MyBlade even automatically detects if its edges are dull — and it self-sharpens while it rests in its charging bay.

MyBlade has a brain that can be voice-activated. It can be remote controlled, or operated with an internet browser from your office. Prepare your dinner while you’re still at work!

Or if you like to do it yourself, you can listen to over 1000 songs while you chop, sheer…or even shave!

Amazed?

And that’s only a small segment of what MyBlade can do. I haven’t even mentioned it’s main breakthrough, one only made possible by the invention of something so remarkably unique as MyBlade.

Sonic slicing. And sonic slicing will revolutionize the way you literally make cuts.

The speed of MyBlade is so fast that its subsonic frequencies literally spread the molecules around it.

We could have stopped there, but we didn’t.

MyBlade also records sounds while it slices, saving unique sonic footprints that only MyBlade itself can hear. This is cutting up close — closer than its ever been before. Press the silver button on its grip, and you can save every chop, hack, and stab you make to the copious mp3 storage drive built inside its form-fitting handle.

Cut a sandwich or cut a track — the choice is yours. It is the first musical instrument of its kind, and butchers around the world have already begun composing some amazing new music. You can hear them — and join them by sharing your own cuts — online at the knife’s hone page.

Did I say hone page? I meant home page. And MyBlade logs on instantly, BladeCasting to the world.

Still not sold?

Well, let me demonstrate. Here, put these MyPhones in your ears.

Now give me your arm.

Don’t worry. MyBlade cauterizes. And trust me, MyBlade is faster than you’ll believe.

That’s right, go ahead and sing along. We’re BladeCasting live.

And it’s MyArm now.

***
Note: I was going to call MyBlade an iBlade, but someone beat me to it! See this AMAZING apple peeler with an attitude for yourself at this Mac-lover forum: http://www.theapplecollection.com/design/macdesign/iBlade.html

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.”
– Maurice Maeterlinck (died 1949)

While surfing the web looking for online games that involve clubbing baby seals and other juvenile diversions of that ilk, I somehow stumbled across a delightfully gentle and whimsically surreal game — “Fly Guy” by Trevor Van Meter. It involves an ordinary bloke standing at a bus stop, who spontaneously develops the ability to fly, and zips off into the sky. You steer “Fly Guy” around in the heavens (and if you can figure it out, outer space!), interacting with various floating oddities just to see what they’ll do with (or to) him, trying to avoid getting shot back down to reality. It’s a simple, serene, light-hearted touch of irreality, artfully done.

http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/

Oh, okay, from the sublime to the ridiculous. In a Mario Bros. clone called “Dolph: Operation Thule” you will club seals, bash hippies, and get impaled by falling icicles while being cursed at in Danish. It’s worse than crass, but also surreal in its own way. (Click on “Start Spil” to begin).

http://www.dr.dk/spil/dolph/

Weird Meat

Steve, Don’t Eat It!

Rude Food

For your next movie night, rent:

Z.P.G. (Campus, 1972)
Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973)
Logan’s Run (Anderson, 1976)

I have finally overhauled my primary website, gorelets.com. It was time to rearrange the furniture. Please drop by and take a look around. You’ll bump into a few kinks, but you’ll find lots of fun new things to check out.

I’m still learning (since I do most of this web work by hand), but I’ve borrowed from open source materials out there and have finally got the site up and running so it can “go live.” The Goreletter is now fully-integrated across the site, with rss feed links and even headlines from this weblog now appearing automatically on the front page. I’ve tried to integrate CSS design into the whole site to give it a more uniform look. And I even built a creative writing wiki to better showcase my books and organize my bibliography. New free excerpts of my writing will appear in the bibliography alongside links to older work archived elsewhere online. And I’m sorting through my old photos to find fun things to post in the new gallery.

Unfortunately, I had to dispose of the old guestbook, and the “refrigerator of the damned” may be closed for good, too. I’m still working on these things and will continue to fiddle with the site over the months ahead.