My favorite Bizarro comic of recent days involves Mr. Peanut — that dapper mascot of Planter’s nuts — in a scenario that makes plain the inherent contradiction of advertisements that employ cartoon mascots to represent the very same products they sell. What IS the appeal of these imaginary spokespeanuts and mascots and similar characters in… Continue reading You Don’t Eat Your Own Kind
Review of Pea Green Boat (Spring 2012) — Special Issue on The Uncanny
Pea Green Boat is an online magazine of curious and compelling miscellany, publishing issues that collect articles and snippets on unique themes. The current issue of PGB (Spring 2012) focuses on The Uncanny. I should say up front that one of my articles, on “Eyebombing,” is reprinted from this very site. But PGB’s Uncanny issue… Continue reading Review of Pea Green Boat (Spring 2012) — Special Issue on The Uncanny
The Uncanny in your Inbox — and a Book in your Mailbox
A brief alert to let readers of this blog and fans of all things “uncanny” know that my latest book is a large collection of micropoetry — called The Gorelets Omnibus. Aside from hundreds of twisted (and sometimes funny) horror poems, it features a collection of academic articles written about the gorelets project (by critics… Continue reading The Uncanny in your Inbox — and a Book in your Mailbox
JC Penney — Screaming For Retail
In their latest campaign, “Enough. Is. Enough,” JC Penney is running what is, to my mind, a hilarious television commercial, involving a serial montage of consumers shouting for outrageously loud and extended time periods at sales tags and other marketing tricks familiar to us all. What makes this commercial so great is all the horror… Continue reading JC Penney — Screaming For Retail
The Freakiest Ads of 2011
Thank you, Tim Nudd at AdWeek, for posting the 30 Freakiest Ads of 2011. Some of them were quite disturbing (I think the anti-child abuse PSA from Ireland hit me hardest (literally). And some are freaky in the way they just push the boundaries of what is taboo. But many are prime examples of the… Continue reading The Freakiest Ads of 2011
Eyebombing
Here’s a fun form of culture jamming — a very soft and cuddly act of public defacement not unlike smiley face graffiti — that’s picking up attention online this month: “Eyebombing.” “Eyebombing” is the art of sticking “googly eyes” (a.k.a. “wiggly eyes” — the glue-on sort of craft store kind) onto an inanimate object in… Continue reading Eyebombing
Celebrities in The Uncanny Valley
Wired magazine recently posted a clever infographic: “Where Celebrities Fall in the Uncanny Valley.” I don’t want to take this one too seriously, and really just wanted to share it. It’s pretty funny…and also accurate. I think it’s really just an inside-joke at the expense of the Wired editor who is included on the chart.… Continue reading Celebrities in The Uncanny Valley
The Freud Snowglobe — and others
I have to laugh whenever I see this snowglobe of Sigmund Freud, which is on a shelf in my campus office. This came to me from my old friend from graduate school, Bill Hamilton, who picked it up during a trip to Vienna last year, when he visited the Sigmund Freud Museum among other things.… Continue reading The Freud Snowglobe — and others
Stephanie Lay’s Uncanny Valley Research Project: Call for Participants
Stephanie Lay is researching the uncanny valley and is looking for participants to take a survey that rates the eerieness and humanness of an array of faces. The survey takes less than 20 minutes and will likely get you thinking about your own perceptions of what is and is not uncanny. Sign up at http://bit.ly/FaceExperiment.… Continue reading Stephanie Lay’s Uncanny Valley Research Project: Call for Participants
Transhumanism and the Second Uncanny Valley
The above schematic is an extension of the “uncanny valley” theory that futurist Jamais Cascio proposed in 2008: a “second uncanny valley” that occurs after culture moves into “transhuman” territory. I like this because it causes us to rethink the structure of “uncanny valley” theory through — uncannily — its mirror reflection, or double image.… Continue reading Transhumanism and the Second Uncanny Valley