This is Sophisticated Side Ponytail by Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. The video was directed by That Go.

Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
That Go on MySpace

Their first album is called Glistening Pleasure.

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(Nano-Snowman)

Merry Christmas from Electric Children! To start off this Christmas blog, I’m going to link to a collection of Christmas songs by the cast of The Venture Brothers.

Every year (except for this one), the creators of The Venture Bros release a Christmas song sung by Characters from series, including a recreation of David Bowie’s appearance on Bing Crosby’s Christmas special by The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend. Click here for Henchmen 21 and 24 singing Wonderful Christmas Time, and click here for Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy, Venture Aid 2006, Fairytale of New York, and Hard Candy Christmas.

(UPDATE: Click here to see them all.)

And of course we can’t link to these songs without also linking to The Venture Bros Christmas Special.

(The Venture Brothers is what Johnny Quest would be like if it had been written by the creators of The Sopranos, and if you’re not watching it, you definitely should be.)

A few more Christmas specials for you. . .

The Star Wars Christmas Special (Starring Harrison Ford and Bea Arthur)

The Trailer Park Boys Christmas Special

I Love Lucy Christmas Special

A Colbert Christmas

Newsradio: X-Mas Story

30 Rock: Secret Santa

SNL Presents: A Very Gilly Christmas

1967 Bob Hope Christmas Special

Newsradio: Christmas

Did you know that Snoop Dogg has a Christmas album, and Twisted Sister has one too?

And of course there’s the rare and classic Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album.

Kingdom Hearts Christmas Cosplay

I don’t know why, but there is a surprising amount of Christmas-themed Kingdom Hearts cosplay online. As a fan of the game, I thought posting some here would be the most Christmassy thing I could do.

Sora
Kairi
Roxas and Axel
Riku
Sora
Sora
Xion
Riku
Sora, Jack, and Riku
Roxas
Roxas and Axel
Sora
Axel, Roxas, and Xion
Roxas
Sora
Sora, Roxas, Riku, and Kairi
Roxas
Sora
Riku

More random Christmas madness:

The Triforce Tree Topper

A Klingon Christmas Carol

The Science of Santa

The Silly Kid Holiday Booty Bass Fiasco!!

Video Game Tree Ornaments

Santa Was a Mushroom

Merry Christmas from Japan’s Favorite Beat Boxer

My all time favorite Christmas special is an episode from the anime series Big O, which you can see here, here, and here. It’s a fantastic episode.

Recently though, I’ve discovered an anime so completely insane that it might soon have to take that number one spot.

Prepare to relearn everything you thought you knew about Christmas. This is My Santa.

My Santa on Hulu

Merry Christmas!

Revolution | 1 Comment »

(Image by FroweMinahild)

What really happened in Port Chatham (specifically Portlock), Alaska, where an entire village was abandoned for fear of a mysterious white-faced woman in black, and her bigfoot-like accomplices.

Port Chatham Left to the Spirits

What frightening situation caused John and Helen Romanoff to take their children and flee to Nanwalek?

“We left our houses and the school, and started all new here,” Malania said in a recent interview, speaking in her traditional Sugt’stun through translator Sally Ash. “There was plentiful land here for gardening and people. My parents built a house on the beach.”

What had frightened Malania’s parents hadn’t been a single event. Over a “long period of time,” a nantiinaq (Nan-te-nuk) – or big hairy creature – was reportedly terrorizing villagers. And Malania also told of the spirit of a woman dressed in draping black clothes that would come out of the cliffs.

“Her dress was so long she would drag it,” Malania said. “She had a very white face and would disappear back into the cliffs.”

The Nantiinaq is described by many as being analogous to the sasquatch which, given the description of the Nantiinaq in this account, is perfectly understandable. The Nantiinaq does have it’s own unique history though, which may (or may not, depending on your beliefs regarding bigfoots) separate it from other such creatures.

The book Where Bigfoot Walks gives a brief, yet interesting, description of the Nantiinaq. It also mentions a tale similar to the one above, about a town being abandoned because of encounters with a hairy biped.

Martha Demientieff, a native Alutiiq writer and teacher whose family runs a river transport company, told me of a Yukon village deserted as recently as 1992 because of the appearance of the Wood Man, sometimes known as Neginla-eh. And on a recent trip to Homer, Alaska, I became acquainted with a rich lode of Bigfoot tradition on the Kenai Peninsula. The residents of English Bay tell of many encounters with Nantiinaq, who could change from Bigfoot into any other form. Some of the stories were collected in a magazine called Fireweed Cillqaq.

Link

Is this Yukon village, abandoned in the 1990′s, somehow the same village abandoned in Port Chatham? The same story retold until the details have changed? Or have multiple settlements been taken by these beings?

The excerpt from Where Bigfoot Walks compares the shape-shifting Nantiinaq with the Neginla-eh, or Wood Man, while the comment section from this post on Cryptomundo draws parallels with the Hoolaq, and the legend of Headless Valley.

The comments on the original news article link the story to sightings of giant otters in Alaska, and from there the research quickly lead to the discovery of my new favorite cryptid, Land Otter Man.

“Do not sneak around here for I can see you.” They could not get at them. These land-otter-men had come to the women to turn them into land-otter-people also.

Link

At first I thought Land Otter Man was a single entity, but it turns out they are an entire race in Northern mythology. It appears that the Land Otter People have a fondness for large scale encounters as well.

As for the white-faced spirit-woman in black, who lived in the cliffs and accompanied the Nantiinaq; her identity remains a mystery.

See also:

Mysterious Beings in Alaska

Giant Platypus in Alaska

Bigfoots and UFOs

(Image by Galim)

Cryptozoology, History, Supernatural | 1 Comment »

Kenan Thompson continues to top himself. This is What Up With That?

Click here for another episode.

See also:

Jean K. Jean – On and On

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This is Dragon Ball Multiverse, the epic Dragon Ball Z fan manga from France. Written by Salagir with art by Gogeta Jr. It’s available in eleven languages, with new pages added every week.

Dragon Ball Multiverse Page 0

Dragon Ball Multiverse RSS Feeds

Dragon Ball L’Adventure Continue by Gogeta Jr.

They have an autobiographical mini-comic about the making of the series as well. This is their theme song.

See also:

Dragon Ball: Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!

Comics | 2 Comments »

In 1944, the mystic, author, and 33° Mason Manly P. Hall published a book called The Secret Destiny of America, in which a case was made for the secret influence of a group of mysterious immortals on some of the greatest moments in history, from Ancient Egypt to the American Revolution.

The article below (which alternatively interprets these beings as extraterrestrial) proposes a relationship between such entities and the South American revolutionary General Bolivar.

The General and The Aliens

It must seem very strange to our readers to see me state that the Liberator had contact with aliens and received information from them. In saying this, I am basing myself upon the very important historical research of Don Luis Beltrán Reyes, which are rather well documented and therefore worthy of trust. At no point does he suggest that the three strange men that mysteriously interviewed the Liberator were aliens, but the characteristics of these beings, as described, are sufficient for me to sustain, as I do now, that they were in fact aliens without question. During the course of his famous military campaigns, Bolivar would meet with three mysterious men, very strange in their appearance, and whose arrival and departure, or no man knew the means through which this was achieved. According to the description given by Luis Beltrán Reyes, these three men were tall and distinguished in their manner. They wore white uniforms with white dress coats and golden cuffs, with the extraordinary detail that [the uniforms] were emblazoned with golden spikes that gave off a strange luminescence. They also wore Wellington-style boots, but the strangest feature was that their footsteps could not be heard as they walked. Moreover, some witnesses say that they were endowed with magical powers, such as the ability to become invisible whenever they deemed it necessary.

Aliens or immortals, one thing that cannot be denied is that they were snappy dressers.

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The Curious Case of a Woman Addicted to Her Brain Implant

One of the cutting-edge cures for chronic muscle tremors is called a thalamic stimulator – it’s a brain implant that delivers current to your thalamus. But it can also cause intensely pleasurable erotic feelings, leading one woman into implant addiction.

Link

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(Image by Sepulchrally)

I’ve been having a lot of fun getting lost in the synchromystic X-Files analysis of Christopher Knowles (author of Our Gods Wear Spandex) at his website The Secret Sun. I love his take on the show, using synchronicity and symbolism to reveal the true yet hidden shamanistic nature of the series.

These are a few of my favorite articles.

Ten Thirteen: I Want to Believe, Part I

If you asked most people what The X-Files was about, they’d probably say something about aliens and conspiracies and monsters of the week. If you asked me, I’d tell you The X-Files was about Acid, Abuse and Ancient Astronauts.

. . .

Now to clarify, by “Acid,” I mean visionary and shamanic experience, hallucinogenic and otherwise, which was an integral part of the series from very early on. But I also mean DNA, itself an acidic compound. By “Abuse,” I mean the constant undercurrent of child abuse- systemic or intimate- that lurks beneath all of the alien abductions and tests and the rest.

. . .

Weaving throughout all of this is androgyny and psychic ability, since both are part of the alien dreaming and the Mythology throughout the series. As early as the first season, aliens were shown to be shapeshifters who could change genders. And the smoking gun of the alien component of human DNA was telepathy, which was first explained in The End.

Ten Thirteen: I Want to Believe, Part II

The so-called “Mythology” of The X-Files centered on alien abductions, colonization and genetic experimentation. The feature film The X-Files: I Want to Believe did the exact same thing, only in a symbolic, allegorical fashion. Why the reverse-metaphor? What is the film trying to tell us? And what connections does this mysterious Mythology have with the mythology of the ancient Mysteries?

Nine Eleven Ten Thirteen

There are times when art becomes reality. The pilot for X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen, which eerily predicted a 9/11 scenario, is perhaps one of the most notorious examples of this.

Some theorists have pointed at that episode as proof of government foreknowledge of the attacks, yet if you actually pay attention to the dialog in the episode (included in the clip above), it seems unlikely that someone in the government would sign off on such inflammatory rhetoric.

. . .

Gunman Dean Haglund (“Langley”) stated that agents from the FBI and NASA would approach Chris Carter with story ideas. Haglund also claimed that the CIA would send people to Hollywood parties to keep tabs on what was being filmed, and said that before The X-Files premiered, a CIA psychic approached Carter and ensured him that his project would be successful.

Dream Dance

Here’s what I remember: It was one of those dreams where you watch the action and then take part in it- you know, standard dream-logic. I was Mulder in the dream. I was very badly hurt and had put Scully in danger; Satan was after her. I was crawling through a front door in a house and the Sun was rising outside. In my jacket pocket I had a small book that had prayers in it. A small flame appeared on the bottom edge of a picture frame on a mantlepiece. I knew the flame was the Holy Spirit and that Scully had sent it. I rubbed my finger along the flame and I was restored. This dream lingered with me for some time after.

AstroGnostic: You’re a Nine

But the commentary track for ‘Improbable’ is something else entirely. On it, Carter goes into great detail about understanding the nature of God through the use of numerology, Synchronicity, probability, pattern recognition, theoretical physics and the like. He speaks on those topics with fluidity and ease, showing that he’s spent a lot of time working it all out. The episode and the commentary are equally interesting – and useful- in and of themselves.

. . .

The conceit of ‘Improbable’ is that God (played by none other than Burt Reynolds) is not a passive cosmic bystander, he’s constantly throwing clues at us for us to decipher. The only problem is that most people don’t bother to try. Rather than the whole ‘drama’ metaphor you might see in some traditions, the theme in ‘Improbable’ is the game. Which leads to this fascinating exchange:

SCULLY: Look, Agent Reyes, you can’t reduce all of life, all creation, every piece of … of art, architecture, music, literature… into a game of win or lose.

REYES: Why not? Maybe the winners are those who play the game better. Those who see the patterns and the connections, like we’re doing right now.

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre

The X-Files delved into themes explored in Altered States in the apocalyptic “Sixth Extinction” storyline. In the first part, “Biogenesis,” the alien virus in Mulder’s bloodstream is activated by exposure to radiation embedding in the rubbing of an alien spacecraft (that incidentally is an encrypted magic square).

The rubbing was the property of a Dr. Sandoz (heh), highly appropriate since it ultimately activates the deepest recesses of Mulder’s brain, making him psychic and immune to the coming viral apocalypse. The storyline also reintroduced the Navajo shaman Albert Hosteen, who had performed the Blessing Way ritual when Mulder was nearly killed in a boxcar filled with alien corpses (in an episode directed by Goodwin). Somewhere, Terrence McKenna is smiling.

Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre, Part II

So have they finally escaped the mushroom when the wheels come off of their reality conception in the following AAT storyline? Or were their brains blown open enough that it attracted the aliens’ attention? Did they notice Mulder and Scully noticing them, in other words?

The genius of it all is that the third chapter “Amor Fati” likewise plays with your head, presenting three separate realities: Mulder’s Last Temptation of Christ fantasy in which he and Diana are married and raise a family, apparent consensus reality in which Scully is confronted with the astral projection of a Navajo shaman, and a third dream-reality in which Mulder encounters his future son William on a beach, building a life-size replica of the God-ship out of sand.

So here we go- as in 2001, as in Indiana Jones, as in Jack Kirby’s work – psychic and/or psychedelic visions precede or accompany humanity’s encounter with their alien foster parents/genetic engineers.

This really makes me want to go back and watch the series again.

(His writings on Jack Kirby should definitely be read as well.)

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