???est posts of 2014

Otherwise known as the now traditional lazy retrospective listicle

We all know by now don’t we my little blackguards my pretty roadside fartflowers of the friggingfields my dearest filthy fuckbirds yes we know yes yes yes oh yes that the top pages on the site are invariably James Joyce’s paeans to using the tradesman’s entrance and the translation of Hokusai’s tentacle hentai. Tens of thousands of you, constantly, from all over the world, day and night. You must have massive right arms by now (if you’re right handed).

But there is so much more to explore, and some of it doesn’t even involve sexual fetishes. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

JANUARY

“What a shocking bad hat”, and other stupid 19th century memes.

Unscary Monsters

Pigmon. It’s the expression that makes this one magnificent. Prawn hands? Feathers? Pink lipstick? DEAL WITH IT.

I don’t know much about Ultraman or the context of the characters depicted here, except that it was a Japanese tokusatsu (特撮 “special effects”) TV series from the 1960s involving battles between the title character and various kaiju (怪獣 usually translated as “giant monster”, though it’s more like “strange monster”) of the kind best known to Western audiences in the form of Godzilla. It still looms fairly large in Japanese culture via various spinoffs, sequels, reboots and vinyl figures based on characters from the show. I got a catalogue of the figures in Tokyo a few years ago, mainly because I liked the pathos of these endearingly crappy monsters. On the other hand, I suppose even Pigmon would be legitimately terrifying if it was really the size of a building and it came crashing down onto your house.

In classic Japlish style the book’s katakana title reads as something like “Neo Ultra Monsters Vinyl Complete Album”, and its pages record in exhaustive and occasionally amusing detail the imagination of the show’s costume designers. Or their lack of imagination, in some cases. The pictures are scanned from the book, which has hundreds of examples, every one beautifully photographed and catalogued.

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The Adolf Hitler artist playset we’ve all been waiting for

It’s not at all unusual for me to see things on the internet that make me wish they were a brilliant piece of satire instead of an actual thing that really exists. Unfortunately I must report that action figures of Hitler and other leading Nazis are definitely things that really exist. The subtly and charmingly named 3Reich* offers such a wide selection of evil warmongers and architects of genocide that there’s sure to be somebody who takes your fancy: choose from Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich, Dönitz, Himmler or even Japanese luminaries like Ito Hirobumi because, hey, there were loads of brilliant atrocities perpetrated in Manchuria, Korea and China too you know! The site says “our product is for historic education purposes only, and is not intended to glorify, nor exploit the horrors and atrocities of war.” So make sure you appreciate Hitler for his art and for how much you can learn from him, and not for his atrocities, OK?