Cthulhu the Obscure
A Connecticut Devil in King Arthur’s Inferno
The Golden Bowl of Blood
The Isle of Dr. Moreau and Mr. Hyde
As I Lay Resurrecting
Creature from the Walden Pond
Of Mice and Tentacles
A Midsummer Night’s Scream
Jane Weyrewolf
Oedipus Rex: The Boy With the X-Ray Eyes
Uncle Tom’s Cannibal Cabin
A Poison Clockwork Orange
Rabid Animal Farm
Lord of the Giant Flies
Clone King Richard the Thirtieth
A Morgue of One’s Own

**
With irreverence for: Quirk Classics.

[Update: The literati among you might also appreciate this essay at the 'Jane Austen's World' blog.]

Have You Driven A F*rd Over A Stroller Lately?
This Is Your Late Father’s *ldsmobile.
V*lvo. For Life Support.
Killt F*rd Slough.
Ch*vy. The Last Heartbeat of America.
Chummer — Like Nothing Else!
Ponti*c. We Are Driving Excrement.
Grab Life By The Horns. That Won’t Stop Honking.
Sa*b. Move Your Mind. Off My Lap.
B*W. The Ultimate Chicken Machine.
V*lkswagon. Drivers Haunted.
Juice in Engineering. *udi.
C*dillac. When You Turn Your Car Off, Does It Return The Favor?
Unlike Any Other. Mortcedez Endz.
B*ick. Drive Beautiful. Into Crowds.
The All New Ch*vy. Built to Last Breath.
H*nda. The Power Of Screams.
S*turn. Like Always. Like Never Before. Like Rotten Haggis.
L*coln. Reach Higher. We’re Sinking.
I Hate What You Did To Me — T*yota!
Tahrvernoggin!

PRODUCT NAME: Toast Tito’s Corn Chips
ARTWORK: Corn Chip Bag brimming with crisped brown foot ailments.
REASON FOR REJECTION: Too sick, even for us. The pictured dip is…worse.

PRODUCT NAME: Axe Devitalizing Shower Gel
ARTWORK: “Psycho” shower scene with axe-wielding maniac in silhouette behind a curtain.
REASON FOR REJECTION: This is more an idea than a product parody.
Besides, Axe is for men, and the sudsy nude in the shower is cleary female.

PRODUCT NAME: BloodGeyser
ARTWORK: Brown bottle spraying blood from top.
REASON FOR REJECTION: Not bad, but pun is too easy.
It would help if the bottle wasn’t jaggedly broken in half
and embedded into Smokey the Bear’s chest. (Huh? Yellowstone, maybe…?)

PRODUCT NAME: Ball Park Frank
ARTWORK: Puffy male head, carrots, and bones bobbing in cannibal pot…along with hot dogs.
Caption reads “He plumps when you cook him.”
REASON FOR REJECTION: Getting close. But I see no reference to a “Ball Park”…wait…there’s a baseball cap, filled with…scalp? Ugh. We can’t print this.

PRODUCT NAME: Neumann’s Own Dressing
ARTWORK: Soiled gauze. Literally. A used bandage.
REASON FOR REJECTION: This is biomedical waste, not art.

PRODUCT NAME: Killette! The Blood a Man Can Jet!
ARTWORK: Silver razor embedded in a blood-spraying throat.
REASON FOR REJECTION: Close again…but another blood spray?! Lame. Besides, everyone knows that disposable razors aren’t straight razors.

PRODUCT NAME: Drunken Donuts
ARTWORK: Chubby moustachioed maniac pulls a hacksaw through a wino’s leg. The oblivious wino drinks from paper bagged bottle. Caption reads: “Time to make the donuts, Daddy!”
REASON FOR REJECTION: We’ve done this one before (xref the ‘lost 1992 series’)…only in a much more palatable way.

PRODUCT NAME: Wonder Head
ARTWORK: Human head, pre-sliced, wrapped tight in white plastic. “Fortified with 666 essential sinerals.”
REASON FOR REJECTION: What the hell is this? “Sinerals?”
Is that the president’s face behind the plastic?
Why the fake beard?

PRODUCT NAME: Wack-ee Package
ARTWORK: Square chrome object on shiny silver paper — a machete glinting in a mirror?
REASON FOR REJECTION: I don’t get….

***

[ Note: My "Wack-ee" Packages are not to be confused with authentic Topps brand Wacky Packages. Visit their web site for fun online games and samples...and you'll even find a link to buy their awesome new coffeetable art book (comes in waxpaper wrap!)  Also drop by WackyPackages.Org for more parody-loving bubble gum-smelling Wacky Fandom than you could possible handle. ].

Wormit the Legless Frog
Everybody’s lovable green buddy crawls back from the grave on his two lanky arms, his backside grotesquely tapered much like the tadpole he once was. He haunts the parking lots of French restaurants…and in his nasal-congested voice cries out for “leggggsss!” He leaves a snotty trail behind him. He is frequently run over by cars.

Googee Monster
He chaotically throws fistfuls of cookies into his mouth, munching wildly, growling “Gooooogeeee.” Sometimes you can see his razor-sharp teeth cutting into his own bloody gums. And sometimes you see human fingers jumbling in the mouth fuzz, and they’re not the puppeteer’s.

Clownt von Clownt
Combining the worst elements of a vampire and a clown, Clownt von Clownt’s lofty domed forehead broods above the eyes and mouth painted not with grease but with the blood of the innocent. But he is tortured with immortal irony. He loads the chambers of his revolver with five blanks and one live round, playing Russian Roulette in front of the camera. “Uh-one,” click. “Uh-two,” click! “Uh-three…,” BAM! And the pointy teeth go flying.

Big Dead Bird
His yellow feathers are fading and falling out. Patches of death-pale gooseflesh are visible everywhere. But worse: large earthworms writhe in his Big Rib Cage. His enormous eyes are always closed. He smells. Badly. The children avoid him.

Shuffleupeatus
This shy wooly mammoth is oh so cute…and everyone thinks he’s just Big Dead Bird’s imaginary friend, until he shuffles up within trunk-grabbing distance of you. His trunk is always larger than the children calculate. He teaches them how to count with each determined mash of their bones between his perfect, poisonous tusks. They never really get past three.

Burnie and Dirt
Burnie died in the apartment building fire, but now he’s back from the grave along with his old pal Dirt, his old roommate, who he now carries around in a funerary urn. Dirt perpetually reminds Burnie that the fire was all his fault and that he warned him and he should have listened…when he’s not otherwise whining about having to share his urn with Rubber Duckie. Together they roam the streets, forever homeless, seeking a bathtub.

Scar the Grump
There’s nothing but scabrous tissue where you thought you’d see lips. He’s still a grouch, but at least his nonstop complaining is less annoying, all mumbles and muffled screams behind that stretchy scab where his mouth should have been. His trashcan abode bears the placard for biomedical waste.

Smellmo
No one wants to tickle this stinky scab-colored creature (especially not in those nasty underarms), but that doesn’t stop this monstrosity from sitting in the alleyway, tickling himself in the dark shadows, chortling with perverse glee.

O-ver
This skinny blue corpse dons his grim reaper cowl and scythe. He has come back to the Street, with a lesson to teach the little ones….

***
Related Viewing:
Tickle Me Emo

One of the ways I entertain myself when I stand in line at the local sandwich shop chain is by watching the cold cut artists behind the counter as they prepare my meal. They arrange the order line so you can customize your sandwich as they create it, dictating what toppings and sauces you’d like to include in your meal. It makes you feel special.

But me? I’m fascinated by the open display of butchery and cold meat.

Standing behind the sneeze guard glass makes me feel like I’m in a surgical theater, watching doctors operate as they slice bread with their long knives and handle meaty tissue in their latex-covered hands. They spritz and drizzle dressing along the cut like they’re cleansing an open, foot-long wound. Sometimes it’s a messy affair, when the sandwich spills its contents across the counter like the mess you’d see on a coroner’s table during a lunch break. But I forget all that as they wrap up the meal in paper, twisting it up tourniquet-tight, like they were saving a bleeding leg.

Those creepy latex gloves they wear. That’s what sends me into this fantasy.

And they don’t change them often. They don’t scrub in. They don’t sterilize their instruments. They might put on fresh gloves when you place your order, but they rarely change them when they pick up a dirty butcher’s knife handle or press a button on a crisping oven or a microphone transmitter to the drive-thru window, or — worst of all — handling the cash register or all your filthy lucre before they are finished making your meal.

It’s like they think the gloves are there to protect their hands, rather than the sanitation of your sandwich.

And eating all that contact residue is like — I dunno — like you’re on the subway, licking the seats or something.

***
I fear raw meat and cold cuts. For more of my opinions on such culinary delights, here’s an oldie from The Goreletter

BAGEMUP
Mob Hit Throw Rug with Latex Backing

GNUCKS
Knucklebone Beaded Curtain

HOOGAFLOOF
Neck Pillow Stuffed with Ukrainian Owl Eyes

NOZZOIKS
Teflon Glove for Throwing Electric Chair Switches

JYMJONZ
Paper Cup Dispenser

SMEGMAR
Bordello Mattress Liner

STYNXEE
Swedish Pine Urinal Disc

SLAZISUZI
Saw Blade Turntable Appetizer Tray

BRANZ
Chrome Cannibal Serving Bowl with Designer Drip Saucer

OFFTAPOTTER
Stuffed Otter’s Head Toilet Brush

LILCOUGHIN
Children’s Storage Unit

BETIPAJ
Beechwood Rotating Whip Rack with Emergency First Aid Kit

BLUGH:
Envelope Moistener/Spittoon

***
Related Reading
The Store: http://www.ikea.com
The IKEA Name Generator: http://www.minimarketing.it/ikea_gen.htm
Where IKEA Gets the Names: http://tinyurl.com/2lx9ga and http://tinyurl.com/ob5v
The IKEA Game: http://www.iamcal.com/games/ikea/
How to Survive IKEA by Matthew Baldwin: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/the_nonexpert_ikea.php

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

+ The giant monocle seldom looks flattering.
+ The forehead horn is completely worthless. It just gets in the way, actually.
+ The loss of depth perception makes it hard to know just where to bite when feasting on live meat.
+ No one gets it when you wink at them.
+ The eye chart at the optomotrist’s office is really an “eyes chart.” Not that you can read. But still.
+ The insensitive slurs from the two-eyed community (“myopic,” “short-sighted,” etc.) are never-ending.
+ Only Siamese twins get to look cross-eyed.
+ The giant single eyeball only assists the archer’s aim.
+ The pirate’s patch fools no one.
+ Cartoons have filled the children you eat with all sort of false assumptions about how you do so. (However, this can be a benefit, if you have the right Cyclopean attitude).
+ If you lose a contact, you’re doomed.
+ The Encyclopedia has been replaced by the Wikipedia.

[ Thanks go out to Karissa Kilgore for inspiring this month's Blather by pointing me to the freakouts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopia ]

Take a walk down the pet food aisle, the next time you’re at the supermarket. Marvel at the rows of canned meat and bags of hearty pellets — all those wasted by-products scraped from the slaughterhouse floor and the oily sludge trellises of the fishery, all that scrapple repackaged for consumption by animals who really have no choice in the matter. This is what we’ve ordained to feed our domesticated beasts. It’s a wonder they don’t come after us with…well, tiny little torches and pitchforks.

Take a pensive moment under the fluorescent glare of the pet food aisle to contemplate the fact that you’re surrounded by more dead meat than you’d find in some morgues. Try not to imagine all the chopping, carving, slicing, cubing, mashing, and grinding that went into each and every one of those perfectly stacked cans. The chow packets are as bulky as body bags. Don’t be fooled: there’s nothing “tender” about a “cut.” There’s no gourmet Navy chef at work behind the “Sea Captain’s Stew” of salmon guts commingling with cow testicles in a broth of poultry gizzards. Take a whiff — smell all that yumminess? That’s the fine odor of dismemberment, dried and fortified with “more great taste!”

If cats had taste they wouldn’t lick themselves clean. If dogs had taste, they wouldn’t drool all over my fine carpet.

But I digress. Sometimes it’s the dried foods that are the worst of all. They come in all shapes and sizes — little formed fishies, tiny X’s, teensy squares. More than “nine lives” are in them, their bodies stewed together in some giant vat to produce a brown muck that is subsequently formed and baked and bagged. All traces of life are removed and transformed into a magic “formula” that animals would never find in nature, but which pet nutritionists are more than happy to endorse. Imagine pouring milk over your breakfast cereal and spooning up a brown pellet of soggy meat. That’s what you’re doing to Fido every day, when you’re not otherwise teasing him with a dog biscuit that’s shaped an awful lot like a skinned human leg bone.

The more you think about these things, the more repulsive they become. But we don’t want to think. We want to feel good about spending less on our pets than we do on our own meals, and we want to feel loved for selecting them the fanciest of feasts. But what really creeps me out is the happy little packaging that leads us to believe we’re somehow making the right choices. I’m talking about all those picture perfect cats and canines, from the snarky fatcat models like Morris to those dopey-but-lovable Alpo dogs. Like famous athletes on cereal boxes, these are celebrities in the animal kingdom, right? Wrong: Morris would be dead meat in an alley fight and Lassie would get so mauled by the pack she’d single-handedly redefine the meaning of dog biscuits. Even when the animal sponsors are cutely drawn, they’re kind of creepy to me. The “Meow Mix” brand logo is, essentially, a dismembered cat, it’s alphabet soup of body parts formed into letters that spell the brand name. The happy-go-lucky names and slogans don’t help. Like, do I really want my animal to be “Friskie”? Couldn’t that get me arrested in some states?

No, there’s nothing cute and cuddly about the pet food aisle — all those perfect pet faces on the packages are utterly unnerving. Look at them, lined up in rows and columns like some animal cloned pet army — gazing up at us, head cocked to one side with unknowable intention, licking the Pavlovian drool from their lips and baring their sharpened, pearly white teeth! It’s a bad veterinarian’s living nightmare.

And did you ever notice that in every pet package, the animal is smiling? Smiling! Animals do NOT smile! They don’t waive hello and say “howdy-do” or “it’s grrrreat!” or “hmmm…snuggle!” They snarl and champ and would bite the hand that feeds them if they weren’t so preoccupied by the puzzling sound of food pouring into a ceramic dish. Seriously — the “photoshop tricks” on the pet food packages don’t fool me. I can still see that look in their little kitten and puppy dog eyes. And I recognize it. It’s the same look you see on Wild Kingdom or Animal Planet, when they show lions tugging a string of bloody muscle from fresh kill. The glint of primal satisfaction from gnawing on all that gamy goodness.

Now, I know there are a lot of “alternative” pet foods that are out there — from scientifically formulated dietary mixes to “vegetarian” snacks to chocolate covered dog biscuits. But the more that pet food becomes like human food, the more human food becomes like pet food. Most of the prefab stuff you buy at the grocer’s is close enough already, thank you very much. And until Fido can pick up the tongs properly, he isn’t getting any of my salad.

So I guess we have little choice but to slop it all out in a pretty little dish and leave the stinking dead meat in the open air. It sits there in a puddle in the corner like a torn carcass in the Serengeti, drawing flies. Fluffy comes and goes as she pleases, lapping at the corpse cuttings, happy that her owners have provided her with every morbid morsel.

Mange! And I mean that both ways, carnivores.

And don’t even get me started on the TV commercials. Where you see puppies hopping on laps like happy little children, licking their owner’s faces, I see wild animals getting a little taste of their prey before the bestial mauling and fanged carnage begins. Dogs love bones. And we are pet food. Don’t forget that.

Flesh-a-Sketch
We ought to have temporary tattoos that are nonetheless permanent. Why must the art be stagnant? Especially if it’s bad? We want art that we can revise and change, yet something that still sends the message that we’re so committed to our art that we’re willing to be surgically altered. If they can make adjustable pacemakers and prescription birth control patches these days, they ought to be able to make movable tattoos. Here’s my idea: embed little colored metal pellets under the surface of the skin, so we can use a magnetic device to move them around whenever we want to. Like that children’s art toy, I’d call it “Flesh-a-Sketch.” Don’t like that evil Ace of Spades? No need for that blow torch. Just shake your arm. It’s gone.

Replaceable Fingers
I think there’s much more we can do with the human hand. Particularly the fingers. I think our fingertips should be replaced with jacks that allow us to screw in and swap all sorts of prosthetic devices, right from birth. As a writer, naturally, I’d love it if I could press a secret button on my palm and click a ballpoint right out from the tip of my finger. Got a kid who likes to suck on his thumb? Give him “fingernips” instead. And we call all be really wild Freddy Kreugers with insertable blades. We could embed cell phones into our palms and literally “talk to the hand.” Set it on vibrate. Imagine the possibilities!

Stomach Paperclips
You’ve heard of stomach stapling before, right? Same idea. Only temporary. Sometimes I like feeling so full I have to open my belt.

Mobile Airbags
When a car gets impacted, airbags inflate and save lives. Why can’t we embed a similar technology in our flesh? Someone punches you — boom — your shirt explodes and a large pillow of air absorbs the blow. Slip on the ice — bam — a large buttock inflates and you land so safely you could go tubing down a mountain on your own rear end. We could all play suicide with trains and tall buildings. What a thrill! This invention would make the automobile airbag useless, so it would even save us millions.

Tongue Implants
People get all sorts of things implanted into their mouths — braces, bridges, fillings. Why should the teeth have all the fun? Let’s accessorize our mouths with extra tongues. Clone ‘em, take them out of cadavers, make ‘em out of vinyl…it’s all good. Maybe get one pierced that wouldn’t always get in the way; or mod them both to play mouth maracas. We could even invent a new language when we’re not too busy French kissing. Wait, that wouldn’t be “French” kissing anymore. But you get the idea. I’m sure you’ve even got some ideas of your own now.