I taught you how to cyclops rock

Ray Harryhausen's creatures never looked real. They looked better than real. He gave them such meticulous, organic detail and then brought them to life. Their animation was graceful, fluid, savage, and electrified...all at once. They looked like they belonged to another world.
This is art.

Larger Than Life

There were giants in the earth in those days;...
-Genesis 6:4

It was that line from the Bible that led to creation of the Cardiff Giant. Standing at ten feet tall and weighing around 3000 pounds, the impossible man of stone is the subject of April's Monster of the Month.

Are you ready? Then we shall begin.

On October 16th, 1869, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols of Cardiff, New York, were hired to dig a well by farmer William Newell. When their shovels struck something hard beneath the soil, they unearthed an enormous human figure, seemingly fossilized. Newell was quick to put the thing up for display, claiming that it was a petrified corpse belonging to the last of a lost tribe of giants. He charged twenty-five cents for people to take a look. The following day, business was so good that he raised the price to fifty.

Geologists and archaeologists cried foul, convinced that no such man could've once wandered the hills of Cardiff. Several evangelical ministers leaped to it's defense. The Giant drew such crowds that it was eventually moved to Syracuse under the new ownership of a group of New York investors. Famed circus proprietor P.T. Barnum leased the giant for three months. It cost him sixty-thousand dollars, but Barnum made sure he got more than his money's worth by secretly having a plaster duplicate made while it was in his possession. Upon returning the original, Barnum began displaying his copy, insisting that the copy was the genuine Cardiff Giant and that he one resting in Syracuse was a brazen sham.

Outraged by the sheer chutzpah of Barnum's claims, the owners of the true Cardiff Giant sued.The courts, firmly convinced that both giants had been fabricated, were unsympathetic to owners of the original. Meanwhile the newspapers had a field day, and P.T. Barnum was famously misquoted as saying "There's a sucker born every minute." From out of the blue emerged George Hull, a tobacconist with a story to tell. Hull proceeded to bust the Cardiff Giant secret wide open, with the explosive revelation that he was the giant's creator. It turned out to all be a practical joke.

Hull was a life-long atheist, and in 1868 he had an especially fiery argument with a fundamentalist preacher concerning the line from Genesis that spoke of giants. Hull bought a block of gypsum from Fort Dodge, Iowa, claiming that it would be used to create a commemorative statue of Abraham Lincoln. The block was shipped to a German stonecutter in Chicago. Sworn to secrecy, the stonecutter carved the block into the giant. The illusion of ancient age was accomplished by staining the stone and wearing it down with acids. Pore-like pock marks were chipped into the stone using knitting needles. The completed giant was sent to Hull's cousin, William Newell, who buried it in his farm. The entire process cost Hull two-thousand six-hundred dollars, but Hull was delighted when it was dug up a year later and caused such a commotion.

In 1870, the Cardiff Giant and it's plaster twin were legally declared hoaxes by New York courts, and the lawsuit was dismissed. That year, Mark Twain wrote "A Ghost Story" featuring the phantom of the Cardiff Giant haunting the plaster replica of his petrified body. L. Frank Baum wrote a poem about the giant the following year. These two Cardiff Giant themed works assured it's place in history. After an ignoble stint as a novelty coffee-table for an Iowa businessman, the Giant was sold to the The Farmers' Museum of Cooperstown, New York, where it resides today. Barnum's plaster copy is currently displayed by in an arcade/oddity collection called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.

The Awful Truth

This is highly symbolic.

"Plague Doctors" or "It Weren't Called the Dark Ages for Nothin"

The Black Plague was one of the most lethal diseases that mankind has encountered. Not only was it responsible for the deaths of those it infected, but it also indirectly contributed to terrible famines as those millions who suffered from the plague were unable to work the fields. The total death toll was astonishing.

Medicine was woefully primitive and muddied with arcane practices born out of superstition and alchemy. Despite this reliance on crude mysticism, even the doctors could comprehend the danger of the plague and the majority fled for their lives. In their absence, groups of volunteers dedicated themselves to studying the disease, treating the victims as best as they could, and fighting further contamination. They were called Plague Doctors.

The beak-faced figure to the left may seem like he crawled out of a nightmare, but his outfit was actually the world's first Hazmat suit. Although the nature of the disease was not understood, the Plague Doctors sought to protect themselves as best as they could. Underneath their heavy black robes, they wore leather aprons, along with boots and gloves of leather. The bizarre bird-like mask was stuffed full of aromatic herbs and spices, in hopes that it would filter out infectious elements (as well as cover the ghastly odor of plague-ridden Europe). The wide-brimmed hat was like a policeman's helmet: alerting others to the Plague Doctor's presence and authority with its distinct design. Frequently they carried canes to prod dead bodies and use as levers to move the cadavers aside.

The Plague Doctors were severely ill-equipped to deal with the crisis, but tried to save as many lives as possible, while their own ranks were progressively ravaged by the plague. As that hellish era eventually came to a close, medicine was changed forever in Europe. The arcane procedures of the pre-plague era were cast aside as witchcraft, and a more practical approach was adopted. While this new generation of doctors were only slightly less ignorant of pathology than their predecessors, it was an important step towards the development of medical science. Despite limited effectiveness, the innovation of the Plague Doctor's protective costume was undeniable, and the modern Hazmat suit has its roots in this Dark Age get-up.

Elektro enjoys a smooth Chesterfield cigarette

Tragically, even robots will take up smoking in an attempt to be popular and look cool.

Big Time

It was the pictures that got small.

Death Worship At the Borderlands

The border between Mexico and the United States is currently a raging storm; a storm of such intensity that many things previously under the waterline have whipped up to the surface. As the deep extent of drug-trafficking and gang violence is revealed, a unique religion has also received unprecedented media attention: the worship of the Most Holy Death, sometimes called La Nina Blanca but more commonly referred to as Santa Muerte.

Mexican culture has always had a unique relationship with the concept of death, dating back to the time of the Aztecs. The ancient celebration of Mictecacihuatl, queen of the underworld in Aztec mythology, fused with Spanish Catholic traditions to become the modern Day of the Dead festival, held every year on November 2nd. During this time, it is believed that the souls of the dead can commune with the living and join in with the prayers. It's also a commercialized bonanza, with a plethora of a skull-adorned and skeleton-themed merchandise available for both the Mexican citizen and the American tourist.

In keeping with the blending of Aztec and Spanish traditions, Santa Muerte owes equal measure to Mictecacihautl and the Virgin Mary. While occasionally depicted in a masculine form reminiscent of the Grim Reaper, Santa Muerte is almost always a female skeleton draped in colorful gowns. Her shrines typically have a carved wooden representation, dolled up in wigs and dresses. She's a fickle goddess, prone to jealously and spite, and unimpressed by virtue. One can only remain on Santa Muerte's good side through the liberal use of offerings. She is particularly fond of tequila, cigars, candy, fresh fruit, and marijuana. One can also purchase a variety of icons, cards, and tokens in Santa Muerte's image to better facilitate prayer. In exchange for allegiance and reverence, Santa Muerte is said to lend a cadaverous hand in financial matters, protect the family from crime and violence, and aid in the recovery of stolen property. The Catholic Church had condemned Santa Muerte as a pagan diety, and assert her worshippers are practicing "black magic." While the Church is fine with weekly symbolic cannibalism, the notion of a garishly dressed skeleton is clearly over the line.

Believed to have emerged in the 1940's, the worship of Santa Muerte is largely confined to the impoverished and crime-ridden bordertown slums in Mexico and United States. Like the folklore figure Jesus Malverde (a drug-trading hybrid of Robin Hood and Jesus Christ), Santa Muerte has been widely adopted by the drug-traffickers, kidnapping gangs, and prostitution rings that operate out of these areas.

While anthropologists have been studying Santa Muerte for years now, "La Nina Blanca" has come to prominence due to the recent crisis at the border. On March 24, 2009, the Mexican authorities destroyed thirty shrines in Tijuana at the behest of the surrounding communities. A self-appointed Santa Muerte church leader from the town of Tepito responded by announcing a "holy war" against the Mexican government and the Catholic Church. In turn, the Mexico City Archdiocese released a statement labeling the followers as "terrorists." In an effort to distance themselves from the inflammatory statements from Tepito, small groups of Santa Muerte worshipers have taken to the streets to hold parades complete with Santa Muerte effigies. Whether or not this will develop into a religious schism has yet to be seen.

Further Reading:
The New God in Town
Article on the destruction of Santa Muerte shrines

Now it Can Be Told

Knowledge is power!

Mindless! Formless! It hungers for human flesh!

Globsters.

You may know of them as "blobs" or "amorphous jelly-devils." Starting in 1896, nearly seventeen enormous masses of flesh have washed ashore on our beaches. They were clearly organic, and while some appeared to sport the odd tentacle or fin, they were largely without distinguishing features. The globsters had no distinct head or limbs, no internal organs; just quavering, slimy flesh.

Biologists were baffled as to the origin of these strange lumps of life. Their blank, glistening forms rendered them unidentifiable, and they were often in such advanced states of decay that examination was difficult. Several tentative explanations were offered, including the theory that these were the hideously decayed remains of large sharks or even malformed octopi. The lack of scientific consensus allowed for the circulation of some gleefully implausible theories that the globsters were undersea mutants or ancient sea-monsters. This assured the globster's place in cryptozoology lore.


Modern DNA analysis closed this long-unsolved case in 2001, when a pale-green globster washed up in Newfoundland, Canada. This time, scientists were able to arrive before decomposition and preserved the thing for further study in their laboratory. Tests concluded that the globster was a huge hunk of fat from a sperm whale, sloughed off and separated from a carcass. While this doesn't necessarily explain the other globsters, it's a safe bet that they have a similar origin.

Or is that what they want us to think? Were these advance scouts? Are we looking at an invasion? Have globsters infiltrated the government?! Board up your doors and windows. The Glob War is coming.



Would you like to know more?
-An overview of the globster phenomena
-The BBC's hard-hitting story on the Chilean Blob (winner of the Hyper Kitchen's Best Headline of 2003 award)

Ingenuity and Anxiety