Regina Noctis

MOBA

2008-03-21T09:12:23Z

Somehow, today seems like the appropriate day to post this.

Genties and Ladlemen, I give you The Museum of Bad Art.

And they're not kidding.

I'm sorry. I don't speak idiot.

2008-03-21T07:39:08Z

Wow, it got dusty here. Go away for a few months, and the place just falls apart.

I'm back here, for today only. Yeah, I don't like some of what's going on in LJ. I dislike it enough that I moved to a new place. There's been stuff that was badly done and badly handled, and I figured it was time to move on.

I heard about the No Content Day from gridlore, and I considered that I might come back to post here for the day, just because I'm contrary and figured I'd make a dumb and useless gesture against another dumb and useless gesture. And yeah, my opinion on the strike is that it's a bit of an idiocy. I don't understand how they think it will make one bit of difference, really, but I'm not surprised that I don't understand. I am not fluent in idiot. I only know a couple phrases.

Then I did further reading, and I discovered a few things. The one that made me definitely come back was when I discovered that antisemitism was behind some of the support for the strike. Our Russian Overlords are mostly Russian Jews, and so a part of the support for the strike is coming from people who want to do anything they can to hurt LJ in order to hurt the Jewish folk who run it. That discovery right there solidified my strike against the strike from a maybe to a certainty. Granted, not all of the folks supporting the strike are doing it out of racism. If I remember right from my reading, the whole No Content Day thing was originally organized by a Jewish LJ blogger. Regardless of my opinions about how LJ is being managed these days, I refuse to aid this strike no matter how many or few are giving support out of bigotry. I will not knowingly side with racism, and will act against it if I can, even in so small a way as this.

The only thing I have to say to the people who do this not out of a legitimate (or even completely silly) dislike of SUP's policies and handling of LJ, but who do this out of racism, is this: YOU! OUT OF MY SPECIES! RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!

Hasty la visty

2007-12-02T11:03:51Z

Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

It'll be seven years this month since I started this LJ out of a need to rant. That's a long time to keep up a journal, much longer than I've ever managed before. I've generally been happy here on LJ. I've had most of my friends here, and reading the whole bunch of them in one spot was only a friends page away. I had fun periodically customizing the look of the journal, choosing or making userpics for various moods, and so on.

The thing is that I've been growing to like some of the "innovations" on LJ less and less for some time now. And their near-hysterical "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN" thing is getting on my nerves. The suspension of a number of accounts in response to some prudish idjits was not a good thing a few months back. The adult content filtering thing is annoying. Yes, I can go jump through a hoop to turn it off. But what's the next hoop? And the next? And if I choose - as I have - to turn off the adult content filtering, what happens when some yahoo or someone with a grudge comes along and flags this journal as inappropriate or offensive? I swear, I have been known to talk about things various people could find offensive, and it may not happen very often, but I've been known to post about sexual things in a varying range of explicitness. Very little of that is posted friends-only, nearly nothing is marked private, and I don't tend to censor myself. I have no interest in a wrangle with LJ abuse, LJ's trend toward censorship, or possible account suspension for not bowing to the trend.

As of tonight, automatic payment to LJ for this account has been stopped. The paid account will expire on the 12th.

Content is being moved to a new place. (And LJ doesn't make this easy. You can only export a month of your journal at a time, and with 7 years of this, that's a lot of exporting XML files, which then have to be imported one by one at the new site.)

This account will be largely inactive. I'm not deleting it, and will likely continue to log in daily to read what everyone staying writes, but future posts will be located at http://christophine.wordpress.com/ and there is an RSS feed that anyone remaining at LJ can add to their friends list. I have already syndicated the feed at christophine23 for your convenience.

Bye bye, LJ-land. Hello, WP-land.

ETA: It is possible to make posts protected on Wordpress. Individual posts can be password-protected. Those rare times I make protected posts, I'll mostly use one password, so friends can still read it if they want to. If any friends want the password, let me know and I'll email it.

Finally!

2007-11-15T08:34:09Z

An agenda I can completely support.

Sister Unity reads the Gay Agenda.

The Chiffon Revolution is coming. You have been warned.

A few comments on my trip north

2007-11-13T10:16:12Z

1. maiandra rocks.

2. Her cats are complete sluts.

3. OMG peanutbutter ~~sex~~ mousse!

4. Byebye to Sahari and San Jose Metaphysical. *pout*

5. We really needed a video camera to record Quid's love affair with Twinkies.

6. maiandra and I got to witness Quid's wedding to trip and a half at the bar. What a lovely couple.

7. What the hell is it about MoFi that attracts so much eyecandy? It really oughta be OMFGHOTPEOPLEfilter.

8. I want to look like Medusa when (or maybe that should be if) I grow up.

9. Two of the Monkey boys at the bar were not all that far from being kidnapped. Too attractive for your own good, gentlemen.

10. Faghag instincts still intact. "Hey, he's nice eyecandy... wait, what username? DAMNIT!"

GRRRR

2007-11-04T09:55:51Z

A couple hours ago, someone tried to drown a cat in our swimming pool. There are no lights around the pool area, so I was unable to see who it was. There was a loud splash as something dropped into the water, and then a cat screaming and splashing with a couple of bursts of poorly smothered laughter. I knew it was none of our cats, as they're all in the house. But someone was abusing an animal, so I jumped up to run out there. Once I was no longer hidden behind the computer monitor, I was plainly visible in this lit room to whomever was out there. By the time I ran to grab a flashlight, turned on what exterior house lights there are, and went charging out the door, whoever it was had run. I heard the retreating footsteps. I went out to the pool anyway, but the cat was also gone. A large puddle of water and a wet trail led over to the fence, and doubtless over it to the neighbor's yard.

I have no idea who it was out there tonight. But they're real fucking lucky that they were gone by the time I got there.

And I'll have something to remind me of it for a little while. I leaped down the stairs a little too enthusiastically. Nothing serious, just hurtful enough to be annoying. I managed to pull a muscle. And, of course, the joints has been hollering at me, "Hey dumbass, you're arthritic, remember? No more bounding down stairs three at a time!" So between these pains and the fact that someone was abusing a cat, I am bent right the hell outta shape right now.

As for who, well, after a confrontation with a neighbor in the early evening, I have my suspicions. Because apparently, our cats that never leave our yard are responsible for his inability to control his dogs. Asshole.

Flash Treats

2007-10-31T08:17:24Z

Exmortis is a Flash game with some excellent atmosphere. The opening premise is rather familiar in games of this type - you wake up in the woods with a lump on your head, no memory, and a creepy old house ahead of you. Turn the lights down, the sound up, and get ready for a decently spooky atmosphere as you explore the mysteries of the abandoned building.

The sequel is a good followup to Exmortis. Though the game can stand alone, it really picks up where the first one left off, as you deal with the aftermath of events in Exmortis. Squeamish be warned: graphic content and profanity to be found in the Exmortis games.

Less of a game and more of a linear interactive movie, Haunted House Massacre still manages to deliver some decent atmosphere. Its rather linear qualilty also makes it a bit easier to get through than many of the other games that are sprinkled through this Gothtoberfest post-a-thon.

A little change of pace in the silly/spooky games: Help Father Painbringer bring peace to the undead hordes in Ghoul Academy, through the gentle medium of the double-barrel shotgun. Fill the Ghoul Harvest Meter by destroying ghouls in any way you can.

That brings us to the end of your Gothtoberfest post-a-thon. We now return you to your regularly scheduled MoFi.

Happy Halloween!

Methods of Perception

2007-10-30T08:11:37Z

bsimple is the gallery of conceptual photographer Misha Gordin (some images NSFW). Gordin's work often makes abstractions out of the human form, sometimes photographing multiple models together to create intricate patterns. Some images hint at the darker side of life, such as conformity and isolation even within a crowd.

"My task is the reunion of the visible and the invisible worlds, photography allows me to pervert the established method of perception amongst those who see and those who don’t." So says Evgen Bavcar (some images NSFW), a man who lost both his eyes before he was twelve in two consecutive accidents. Bavcar's work is black and white, and even his simplest images are fascinating and beautiful.

Wes Hardison at Vision Obscured also does wonderful photography, his work spanning both color and black and white, from landscapes to portraiture. I especially love his work in the Time Obscured gallery. His Figure gallery contains some NSFW images, but the rest is safe for working Monkeys.

Blogs of myth, insanity, and brains

2007-10-29T08:37:42Z

The Endicott Studio is dedicated to the support and creation of mythic arts. Their online journal explores myth, folklore, fairy tales, and their use in modern art. Their blog presents news, musings, and reviews on arts that have been inspired by mythic themes, and has recently been counting down to Halloween with tales, poems, art, and photography based on the mythos associated with the approaching day.

The Batty Chronicles: Excerpts and Correspondence of the Late Madam Harriet Batty. Erik Seims finds himself editing and publishing the papers of Madam Batty (1874-1977), giving "an invaluable historic guide through a century of life in New York City, from the point of view of somebody who was absolutely batshit crazy."

Brains. The title of every post (as you might expect) in Zombie Eat Brains, the musings of one of the living dead.

Flash games, yet again

2007-10-28T09:50:54Z

La piedra de Anamara (The stone of Anamara) While running from the police, you find what seems to be a perfect hiding place. It's not long before you must deal with supernatural forces and mysteries hidden in the mental asylum for children.

XRaye is a simple game in concept, but nicely executed. Turn all the pegs yellow to advance to the next level. Some pegs must be hit more than once. Left and right arrow keys move you from peg to peg, space bar makes you detach from the peg you're on, ctrl skips the next peg you would have contacted.

Not really a game, but a cute little Flash timewaster: Build your Wild Self is offered by New York Zoos and Aquariums. First you build your human avatar, and then graft on various animal parts. Mine own efforts toward my virtual Halloween disguise.

Three good webcomics

2007-10-27T07:02:02Z

The DM of the Rings is an excellent webcomic. Though it's created entirely from movie stills, it hits comedic notes that anyone who's played D&D will recognize. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash AD&D roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign. The gamers are easily distracted, obsessed with loot, and have a tendency to quote Monty Python at the drop of a d8. The frustrated DM tries to keep the party on the rails, and the players fight against the railroading. All in all, I think I've gamed with all these people before.

In Demonology 101, an adopted demon girl named Raven tries to deal with friends and high school while an epic struggle between the dark Powers that Be and a resistance group called the Network takes place. The entire story arc is complete, so there is no need to wait for the next episode. There is, however, an ongoing spinoff.

Stylish two-tone artwork with touches of color, a solid sci-fi story, and some nice worldbuilding all go into making NYC2123 worth the read. The story takes place in a grim cyberpunk future Manhattan, surrounded by the Wall and ruled by martial law, surrounded by floating, lawless barge-cities that are operated by organized crime.

Friday Flash Fun

2007-10-26T08:15:38Z

The Four Rooms of Kharon is another escaper game, though this time there are four rooms instead of one. The game has a dark, gritty atmosphere with high tech/genetic engineering themes. The game is meant to inform as well as entertain, and has lots of information packed into it for those interested in genetic concepts and famous geneticists. Some commenters on the game had problems with the camera angles. I did not, but thought it worth mentioning that some camera angles are not appropriate for all Monkeys. Player discretion is advised.

Stuck? Frustrated? Want to give the poster a good kick for mentioning this thing in the first place? Don't worry! We has walkthrough.

Also in the "yet another escape game what the hell is Christophine's obession with these things" category is Daymare Town. It features hand-drawn graphics and a mysteriously deserted town to explore and try to get out of. The game's creator, Mateusz Skutnik, has given Daymare Town a very different look and feel from his previous efforts in the Submachine Series and Covert Front. He warns that this game has the most difficult puzzles he has devised so far and it is for "advanced" point-and-click gamers only.

Of Darkness and Decay

2007-10-25T07:39:39Z

The Nocturnes Gallery is a collection of the night photography work of a number of photographers who are serious about evoking images from the dark. Each photographer has a small gallery, each gallery has a link to the photographer's website. Their styles vary, from moody black and white to use of lighting effects, and much between the extremes.

The photographic essays of Mustard Gas Party explore the decay abandoned structures and modern ruins. The site collects three years' worth of photography of urban and suburban decay to keep aficionados of modern ruins happy.

Lab-Wan's photography is an exploration of both decay and darkness, with sections devoted to both abandoned places and night photography.

If your taste runs toward entire abandoned town and historic sites, Ghost Town Gallery houses some 1700 pictures of 180 Western US ghost towns, mines, cemeteries, old mills, and more. Includes an interactive map of the abandoned places that the gallery contains.

Effective FX

2007-10-24T08:17:03Z

Indy Mogul, a site by and for amateur movie makers, produces Backyard FX. A new episode goes live on the site every Monday, and there's a Weekend Extra episode every Friday. Indy Mogul firmly believes that cool-looking effects can be had in amateur movies for a minimal outlay of cash, whether you need to tear off limbs, stage a fight, cook up your own sugar glass, or get a gunshot squib effect on a budget. The episodes show the creation off the effects and a short test-run. The Indy Mogul blog gives more detailed instructions and shopping lists. Some of it could also be useful for costuming and decorating for Halloween.

For some DIY fashion and costuming, Threadbanger may have what you're looking for. Perhaps a pirate costume for under $10 is what you need. Or maybe you're feeling a distinct lack of fairy wings.

Hey, sylvan

2007-10-23T08:58:37Z

Maybe I was wrong about River. Maybe there's a different reason she was cuddled up with you while you were asleep. Maybe she has plans. And maybe, just maybe, she intends to wake you up some morning like this.

Books as Art

2007-10-23T08:55:31Z

Daniel Essig creates book-based art. He uses a binding style known as Ethiopian-style Coptic bookbinding, which dates from the fourth century. His sculptural books are mixed media, incorporating handmade papers, unusual woods, fossils, mica, and found objects.

The books created by artist Tara Bryan are just as unusual as Essig's work. She creates her books with unusual bindings, materials, and formats. The books have unexpected folds, flaps, and ties, among other whimsical elements of architecture.

Su Blackwell does lovely book-cut sculptures, creating scenes from the printed word, as if she is releasing the characters and places that were trapped between the covers.

Georgia Russell is a Scottish artist who transforms found books by meticulously shredding them with a scalpel into new and unusual forms. She also works with sheet music, photographs, maps, and other types of word or image on paper.

Dreamscapes and Fantasies

2007-10-22T10:33:17Z

Al Magnus is a photo montage artist whose work has a surreal, lovely, dream-like quality. He plans his scenes, photographs the elements and scans them, and composites them into his montage digitally before printing. His images are planned in advance, some of them taking as much as two years to assemble all the photographic elements before work on the montage begins.

Jerry Uelsmann (Flash site, and some images NSFW) is another photographer who works in montages. Unlike Al Magnus, Uelsmann creates his images through use of multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work, using up to a dozen enlargers at a time. An interview with Uelsmann on the making of photographs and the role of art here.

Uelsmann's wife is Maggie Taylor, formerly a photographer who now works digitally. Her compositions are created with objects placed directly on the glass of a scanner and then montaged. Her work is both whimsical and surrealistic.

The paintings of Siegfried Zademack are also filled with the strange and fantastic beauty of a visionary dream. His work is divided into 7 galleries that showcase 153 of his pieces, as well as a smaller gallery of graphics and studies. Many of his images feature nudes, so working Monkeys beware the NSFW clickage here.

Vincent and friends

2007-10-21T07:40:56Z

Vincent is a short animation by Tim Burton about a young boy who wants to grow up to be Vincent Price, and is narrated by Mr. Price himself. Classic Tim Burton story and animation.

"She danced in her mother's womb and she was dancing when she was born. As God is my witness and the devil her father, she will dance your dead back to their grave..." So says the grandmother in El Despertar, an animated short film about zombies and Flamenco.

Halloween's not far away. Are you prepared with Candy?

(And an aside I left off of MoFi - Of all the games, articles, photography, artwork, videos, etc, that I dug up for my daily posts throughout October, these three are my favorites. That's why I specifically waited to post these three on the 21st. I wanted to say LOOK LOOK LOOK! THESE ARE SO COOL! four months ago. I hope you folks in LJ land like them as much as I did.)

Spooky Saturday Flash Fun

2007-10-20T07:12:25Z

Nightmare Escape You're in a sealed room. In front of you, bloody footprints lead to a message written in blood: You are the next. Looks like it's time to find a way out of here. For the terminally lost, a complete walkthrough is behind a spoiler tag here at Jay is Games.

In Zombie Inglor, you wake and find you are disoriented and tired. You've been bitten by a zombie! The infection will take 50 days and 50 nights to run its course, and you must find a cure by that time or become a zombie forever.

You have no memory of who you are, but you do know that you've died and now must solve the mystery of your death and those of several other ghosts in The Dead Case.

If you're not in the mood to be a potential victim, a zombie, or a ghost, try being either a vampire or a werewolf. Whichever one you choose, you are a warrior in the fight between these two species of supernatural creatures in Monsters Game: The Battle Between Vampires and Werewolves.

Making Up

2007-10-19T08:13:13Z

A Kyoto geisha preparing by putting on her makeup. (This and all other links here are YouTube) It's a little long at a bit over 12 minutes, but it seemed a good inspiration for those who might be looking for last-minute costuming ideas for a Halloween shindig.

Further inspiration:

Low-budget zombie, Budget zombie/ghoul makeup, Showgirl makeup, Flapper makeup, A tiger face, and applying basic latex prosthetics.

For something a little more complex, the Theatrical Makeup Design Interactive lessons for cuts and bruises (and it's rather amusing to watch the woman get more and more battered as she applies new effects):

Blackened teeth, split lip, black eye, broken nose, open and sewn cuts, burned skin, vampire bites, and the Sacred Wafer trick.

Memento Mori

2007-10-18T08:04:22Z

The Art of Mourning is a collection of memorial and sentimental jewelery, funeralia, and art, ranging from hairwork to mourning brooches to miniatures. It also has information about the symoblism used in these forms of memorial art.

Memento Mori: Mourning, Monuments, and Memory (PDF) explores the relationship between memory, photography, and death.

A Victorian memento mori photography gallery at Haunted When it Rains contains a good-sized collection of images that may seem a little sweet or somewhat disturbing, depending on how you take to these things. The same can be said for Photography and Loss in the 19th Century and Gone But Not Forgotten, two more galleries of post-mortem photographs.

The Virtual Museum of Death Masks (Flash) is the web front-end of the One Street Museum in Kiev, Ukraine. It features death masks of a number of famous people, such as Pascal, Chopin, Beethoven, and Pushkin, as well as a history of death masks.

And, if you want to build your own model of a death mask, the Cleveland Museum of Art offers instructions and a printout for a model of a Pharaoh's death mask.

Paranormal Exhibits

2007-10-17T08:49:22Z

"The Surnateum is far more than a website designed to entertain and enlighten you. It is the virtual front-end for one of the most astonishing collections of authentic magical artefacts and strange stories gathered from around the world by the Collectors and Curators for more than a century." The museum is divided into departments, such as Cryptozoology and Teratology, Sacred and Secular Relics, and Demonology.

The Ghosts of the Prairie host The Haunted Museum. It chronicles ghost research, from Spiritualism to the modern day. Information on ectoplasm, a history of spirit photography, and how fraudulent mediums do what they do.

The Skeptiseum is hosted by The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and is the skeptical museum of the paranormal. Supernatural, paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs proliferate worldwide. This virtual museum includes descriptions and images of artifacts and souvenirs associated with such beliefs from around the world.

Leather Masquerade

2007-10-16T09:12:45Z

The Merchant of Venice hand-sculpts lovely masks from leather. Each mask is a work of art.

At Mansour Designs, the hand-sculpted leather can include masks with dreads, be crowns and hats, or have elaborate carving and decoration.

More handmade leather masks at Fantasy Guild Studios, including masks based on astrological signs, the Greenman, and designs inspired by Shakespeare. Beautiful work.

Grave Matters

2007-10-15T09:09:37Z

Graveyards of Illinois is where we start our small tour of cemeteries and funerary art. To our left is Bohemian National Cemetery with its beautiful domed chapel, Odd Fellows Monument, and larger-than-life statuary. Another impressive Illinois graveyard is Acacia Park Cemetery and Mausoleum, known for its obelisks and its Masonic connections.

As we move on, please watch your step as we enterImmortelle, a pictorial tour of New Orlean's cities of the dead. St. Louis #1 or Cypress Grove, Metairie or Lafayette, New Orleans cemeteries reflect the mix of Spanish, French, African, and American that give the city itself its character.

The last stop on our brief tour is Afterlife: the 4 seasons of Streatham Cemetery, a flash presentation featuring photos of the cemetery with animation and sound.

Video Tales of Death

2007-10-14T07:23:36Z

Fear.net has made the move from reviewing and providing clips of horror movies into making their own. Their first effort, Devil's Trade, is complete, and offered for free online. It tells the tale of a cross made from pieces of a cursed tree, and the effect of the curse on the current owner of the cross. The current project is 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails, a tale of vampires in New Orleans. Episode 6 just recently premiered.

The 1953 animated short film of Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (YouTube) stars the voices of Stanley Baker and James Mason, and was deemed culturally significant and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the US Library of Congress in 2001.

Mikhail Baryshnikov dances with a lovely black-haired incarnation of death, and is ultimately led to his doom by her, in Le Jeune Homme Et La Mort. (YouTube)

In a series of short segments, Day Off the Dead explores the romance of a pair of skeletons who fall in love in the afterlife. A little sentimental, a little sweet, a little funny, it's a nicely done stop-animation piece.