Rat Creature's Journal

Today I came across the website of this really cool artist, Alex CF, who creates fake specimen display cases with horror and fantasy animals and such, in the style you might find in old museums or cabinets of curiosities. The website describes it as "cryptozoological scientific art". Sometimes it is whole sets, with documents, skeletons, preserved specimens, tools and all sorts of stuff and they come with short stories of a sort explaining the fictional background. I especially liked Cthulhu Specimen Box, The Lycanthropy research of Edward Harrell, Severed “Draco Alatus” Head and Infant stillborn Draco Alatus, Expedition to the Plateau - Lost World Exploration Case and Experiments in extra dimensions; The Cheshire cat, but really you should browse the whole site. (Obviously due to the nature of the art the displays are slightly gory.) I only wish the photos of the works were in a higher resolution, because you can't make out all the awesome detail and read the text in the documents on the site.

This goes to show that rabbits can be vicious, dangerous animals: Video of a rabbit attacking a snake and chasing it up a tree

I just stumbled upon this via my friendsfriends view: Del Rey now offers some free pdf files of their books, among them the first Temeraire book.

This probably is already obvious to anyone not me, but: I was browsing the internet archive for books, and found that they archived some vintage mail order catalogs, which have lots of pictures and illustrations and thus are great for easy to find period references for anything from clothes to carriages, farm equipment and kitchen stuff. Not to mention that it is just kind of cool to look at mail order catalogs from 1900, 1907 or 1920. I had no idea that you could find old catalogs online, but there's all kinds of interesting scanned things with pictures available there, like I found some sort of British government guideline for protective clothing worn by female factory workers in 1917, with photos of what they were wearing.

I also found old course books on fashion drawing and costume design, which look kind of helpful for clueless and fashion-challenged people like me to figure out how clothing more complicated than t-shirts actually fits together, because when I look at pictures of older clothes I often can't figure out the pieces, and old photographs aren't the clearest either. I mean, even drawing contemporary clothing is hard.

I also found this old book on pen drawing with lots of examples for different crosshatching and other b/w inking techniques for illustrations, which I have only skimmed so far, but it looks interesting.

As stupid as some of the motifs chosen are (often still somewhat funny though), I find the underlying hoax that Czech artist played hilarious. I think that definitely makes it count as performance art that works, and makes a statement about the EU. Far better than if it had taken itself seriously and really been some kind of pompous assembly of 27 artists from different countries, rather than invented personae.

It's the cover of the current issue of the Italian politics magazine Internazionale covering the US election. Though I guess Obama/McCain slashers (and if there are any? kind of disturbing btw) would get a kick out of this. I don't actually speak Italian, so I have no idea why they have a cover illustration with an Obama/McCain kiss, I just saw this on an image blog.

I hadn't known about Deletionpedia, a site that via a bot archives all the articles that get deleted from Wikipedia as not relevant or encyclopedic enough and such. I'm thrilled this exists, because frequently fan stuff and lists get deleted from Wikipedia for being irrelevant, trivia, or "original research" and they don't always get transferred to a fan wiki. I mean, I can understand why you wouldn't want lists of minor Star Wars bounty hunters or The Simpson chalkboard gags, or the timeline of the Stargate universe in an encyclopedia, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to look such things up. So if your favorite "irrelevant" article vanished from Wikipedia you can actually find it again easily.

First, some art comm linkage (even though I suspect most interested people will already know of these):

Yuletart, a multi-fandom art exchange, has started with the nomination process for this year's fandoms. For the next couple of days only the participants from last year can suggest fandoms for this year, but soon it'll open up to new participants. Since I suggested fandoms I guess that'll mean I'm going to do a holiday exchange again this year. Meep.

Also, Paintedspires recently got an overhaul and reopened as an SGA flash art community. The first challenge has been posted, and you should all join or at least watch.

In less happy news ( rat health update )

While I'm among the few people who didn't care for that Discovery channel video (you know the 'I Love the World -- Boom De Ah Dah' one?), I thought the xkcd comic referencing it was neat -- however this video reenacting the xkcd version as live action video is just completely adorkable. A prime example for derivative works making the original so much more enjoyable.

I don't often link to random stuff I've come across, but this dragon sand sculpture is very impressive. Here's a photo from another angle where you can see the baby dragon the big one is cradling.

I follow Dark Roasted Blend, because it often has cool photos and links, however yesterday it featured parasites, which is kind of gross, but okay, so I read about a bunch of parasites.

And this is apparently old news, only I still did not know of this cat parasite, toxoplasma gondii, that also uses humans as intermediate hosts, and is known to change behavior in rats and mice (making them loose their fear of cats, so that they get eaten by the final host the parasite needs). It's apparently still speculative whether the toxoplasmosis disease caused by this also affects behavior in humans, though some scientists apparently claim to have observed correlations showing this, but still. The prevalence of humans with antibodies to this parasite, i.e. they either were infected or still are, is really high, actually over fifty percent where I live (more widely spread than in the US where it's a bit over twenty percent according to what i read), it is kind creepy. I mean, it's more likely than not that I was or still am carrying parasites that potentially can make cysts in your brain to change brain chemistry... Maybe the Goa'uld are less science fiction like than I though. Eeep.

This simple online game is really quite addictive. Also I never manage to clear the board of blocks past level five. I have no idea how people are getting high scores like that.

Because I'm still sick and feverish and break out into shivers as soon as I leave my multiple blankets, and can only sleep so many hours a day even when sick, I've been amusing myself with online games.

So far I've played the BBC mystery games Death in Sakkara and The Seven Noble Kinsmen, Grow Island (I'm pretty sure I've played all earlier grow versions as well previously), Escape from Octilien, DayMare Town and a few other escape games I found linked from jayisgames.com, like the Submachine series.

I'm looking for more entertaining games, that work under Linux (i.e. most Flash games will be fine, Shockwave otoh won't work), aren't too hard or frustrating and don't require mouse dexterity or being fast with clicking and such (I'm using my laptop with a touchpad while in bed shivering so having to navigate some arrow quickly while clicking on things is pretty much out). Do you have any recs?