Uncanny Listmania on Amazon.com

I’ve started building a ‘Listmania’ of Uncanny-related books on amazon.com. Recommendations via comments are most welcome. This is all part of my renewed interest in all things Amazon.com and ebooks. I just ordered the new, international version of the Kindle 2, and I’m very excited. Read all about it on my horror writing blog here.… Continue reading Uncanny Listmania on Amazon.com

Save Your Life: Clone It

While doing a little holiday shopping last Fall (on the occult-sounding ritual known as “Black Friday”), I spotted a bargain and caved in, buying something for myself. I purchased a gigantic external hard drive — with a Terabyte of space — to archive my files: a Maxtor OneTouch 4. Imagine my surprise when I opened… Continue reading Save Your Life: Clone It

My Unheimlich LibraryThing Books

My Library at LibraryThing [NOTE: Those covers above go to amazon.com with an “associate” link — this was necessary to include the widget with cover graphics. To just visit librarything, not amazon, click here!] What you see above is not a complete bibliography by ANY means. But over the past few years, I have slowly… Continue reading My Unheimlich LibraryThing Books

Photoshop Disasters and the Fantasy of Picture Perfection

Photoshop Disasters is a funny weblog that collects flawed design elements in advertisements and elsewhere (like the above image from a Sears Catalog). The accidental amputations, bizarre hands, and other forms of freakish anatomical blunders strike a viewer as uncanny when you spot them in what would otherwise be a “picture perfect” advertisement. We always… Continue reading Photoshop Disasters and the Fantasy of Picture Perfection

The Web Browser as Ouija Board

I recently came across The Blog of the Damned — a group weblog that has compiled some interesting instances of “forteana 2.0 and the uncanny internet.” One entry in particular really jumped out at me: The Browser as Scrying Tool — that is, the literalization of the metaphor that “the Internet is haunted, and that… Continue reading The Web Browser as Ouija Board

Next Nature

In his essay on “The Uncanny,” Sigmund Freud writes: …an uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes,… Continue reading Next Nature