Andrew.frampton

The menace of Animal Crossing's Villager is upon us, lurking around every corner with his mirthless grin and vitrified eyes. We asked for your worst nightmares and you gave them to us, eighteen in all, including overall No. 1 Anshin above!

Honorable mentions this week go to DonCopal, Insomnis, mrdark and double finalist MrEck0. Oh, btw, there were a bunch of "once you see it ..." entries. I never saw it. On with the finalists!

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Alnilam81

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Anshin

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arniejolt

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DonCopal

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Gurkenlord

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Insomnis

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itfresh

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MacabreAngel21

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Mr. Marsu

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mrdark

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MrEck0

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MrEck0

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negitoro

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NightmareAsylum

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sciteach

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Slate

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TopGun

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wyverntear03

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To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

The LARB continues its series on fairy tales, introducing Hans Christian Andersen’s 1836 story The Little Mermaid. Sarah Kuhn defends her motivations:

The Little Mermaid, no matter how her tale is told, is a heroine with the ultimate mundane dream: to be a boring human instead of the utterly fantastical creature she already is. She gets a lot of flack for transforming her body to pursue what is basically a crush, but I can’t help but feel her quest is bigger than that — a yearning for an unknown that seems fantastical to her because it’s the complete opposite of her daily existence.

A. N. Devers prefers the conclusion of Andersen’s original story – the mermaid dissolving into “a daughter of the air” – to the Disney-fied ending of the 1989 movie:

Andersen’s heroine may lose her soul, but Disney’s mermaid sacrifices her physical identity in order to claim her man. There’s no question that around the time this film came out there was a cultural shift. Is it a coincidence that the media started reporting stories about teens requesting boob jobs and liposuction for their birthdays around the same time as this film’s release? Maybe. Or more likely, Disney’s fairy tale reflected the contemporary culture that had already made a disturbing change. …

I wonder what the tale might look like decades from now, when it is adapted to reflect a new cultural moment. Instead of validating stereotypical gender roles and/or reflecting our culture’s acceptance and near-celebration of plastic surgery, I like to dream there will be a little mermaid who can have her man and keep her tail too.

LARB has also covered Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.

Then the covers would look a little like...this!

Here are the latest and greatest Dr. Seuss themed covers and rhymes from DrFaustusAU, who graced us with other similar covers in the past.

This time we've got The Last of Us, Resident Evil, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and BioShock Infinite—all from the last couple of months. Check em out:

I'm the host of a fungus that grows in my brain,
but it keeps off the Sun and it keeps out the rain.

One herb
Two herbs
Red herbs
Blue herbs

Run or hide?
The answer's plain:

If I stay here,
I'll go insane!

If you have an idea, Fink'll cut you a deal.
He can take all your dreams and then make them all real.

Making gadgets, and skyhooks, and vigors to sell—
it is really quite safe to say business is swell!

Netflix will introduce "Max" on PlayStation 3 today, a new interactive way to find movies and TV shows. Created by Jackbox Games (formerly Jellyvision, the studio behind kooky game show You Don't Know Jack), the Max app features a familiar vibe for anyone who has squared off against Cookie Masterson. And no, it's a different voice.

Max is incorporated within the category sections of the PS3 Netflix browser - it's not a separate program. Once you click on it, you'll play a You Don't Know Jack-lite game. Max will offer up a movie, which you can start watching immediately, add to your queue or receive a 30-second pitch on.

Todd Yellin, vice president of product innovation at Netflix, told us that Max was conceived of in 2007 when Jellyvision and the pair did some testing. The companies re-engaged in 2011 and Max is ready for its debut this week. Netflix will integrate Max into other platforms as time goes on.

Also, no, this does not mean we should expect You Don't Know Jack movie trivia as a direct app within Netflix. We totally asked.

Netflix adds movie selection service 'Max' today on PS3, created by You Don't Know Jack studio originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 28 Jun 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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"The ultimate goal of homosexual-rights activists is not to legalize same-sex marriage. Rather, it is to silence those who disagree with them and, if necessary, to throw them in jail. In a world in which the biblical viewpoint of marriage is demonized, it does not take a constitutional scholar to predict that soon those who hold that view will find themselves in court. How did we get to the point where homosexual-rights activists would be clamoring to redefine society’s oldest and most reliable institution and people of faith would be worried about being fined or jailed for teaching their faith?" - Failed GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, writing for the Washington Times. (Via Right Wing Watch)

Illustrations by Marcus Behmer (1879–1958) circa 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, 1901 I became fascinated by Marcus Behmer and his snoot-snout and big-beak creatures after seeing one of his bookplates in 2009 and posts of his work at feuilleton and The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus. (In 2011 I re-hashed feuilleton's work for a post on But Does it Float.) When I saw the image above in one of John's features on Ver Sacrum I knew I'd have to post it myself sooner or later. Most of the images here come from Ver Sacrum, "the art journal of the Viennese Secession," published from 1898 to 1903. See the complete archive. A few come from Simplicissimus and a few from auction listings. The only biographical information in English I could find is Oliver Tepel's account of the artist's life for an exhibit at Galerie Daniel Buchholz:Fascinated by the book art of Charles Ricketts and directly influenced by Aubrey Beardsley's revolution is in the field of illustration, Marcus Behmer starts out at the turn of the 19th century as an autodidact. He soon liberates himself from Art Nouveau and, parallel to Expressionism that was just emerging and to the new impulses from the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna, develops his own inimitable formal idiom. In his native Weimar he catches the eye of the legendary Harry Graf Kessler. Behmer draws, writes and designs books (for Kessler's Cranach Press, but above all for the publisher Insel) developing a style of engraving that was both absolutely precise and astonishingly personal. He achieves a degree of fame in the bibliophile circles that keep abreast of the beginnings of Modernism. At the start of his career everything seems possible for Behmer, he makes early comic books, creates a language of ornament all of his own, and produces writings and pictures of astonishing comic imaginativeness and sexual frankness. But as early as the twenties Behmer suffers from the crisis in the field of the art book, and consequently from his unwavering dedication to the small format. While his book illustrations for Oscar Wilde's "La Sainte Courtisane", Hermann Bang's "Exzentrische Novellen" (Eccentric Novellas) and above all Phillip Otto Runge's "Von dem Fischer und syner Fru" (Of the Fisherman and his Wife) are highly regarded internationally, his visibly freer graphic works continue to disappear into a cultural black hole which swallows up almost all Modernist illustrators. He is still sufficiently visible however to come up on the National Socialists' radar, and in 1937 they imprisoned Behmer, who was living openly as a homosexual, for two years. [continue reading] Also check out the tantalizing installation views at the gallery. I wish I could take a look at some of these books! Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, "Karnevals Begräbnis" from Simplicissimus, 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Simplicissimus, 1901 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, "Faust und Wagner," Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer, Simplicissimus, 1900 Marcus Behmer, from Ver Sacrum, c. 1900 Marcus Behmer for Balzac, "Das Mädchen mit den Goldaugen" (The Girl With the Golden Eyes), 1904 See a set of Behmer's Salome illustrations at The Peacock Skirt Marcus Behmer, "Das Ungerheuer" This post first appeared on June 27, 2013 on 50 Watts

Via Politics With Jarred & Dave.

New work by Cosmic Nuggets

This is Naruto from, well, Naruto. The iconic manga and anime character has been recreated in a Japanese rice paddy.

This is called "tanbo art" (田んぼアート) or "rice paddy art". There are no dyes to create the different colors and hues. Instead, farmers used various rice strains in their tanbo canvases.

Often, hundreds of villagers work together to plant the rice by hand and create these massive works of art. While planting, different areas of the rice paddy are roped off, so people know which type of rice to put where—kind of like painting by numbers.

Rice is planted in the spring, and then harvested in the fall. When it gets close to harvest, the color changes to a beautiful hue called "koganeiro" (黄金色), which is often translated as "golden" or "honey-colored".

This means the art changes as the seasons change.

Originally, tanbo art was started in the early 1990s after a village Aomori Prefecture was looking for a way to rejuvenate itself. Since then, the rice paddy art has been good for local tourism—so good, it seems, that it has spread to other prefectures. The Naruto tanbo art, for instance, is located in Okayama Prefecture.

So while tanbo art isn't new, the Naruto rice paddy hit Twitter earlier this week.

Now, people visit these local rice fields and take photos of the rice paddies from scaffolding. Some, of course, take photos with the tanbo art.

Traditionally, tanbo art has taken its designs from traditional motifs—Japanese or Western. But in the past few years, there have been more and more "geek-friendly" rice paddies, whether that's Mazinger-Z or, more recently, Naruto.

Photos: “ちょっと”いいもの見付けた！, jopparika, uchinome, 俳句とお星様と山歩き, Hatena, kisaragituan, Aomori, 湯郷りんりんブログ

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Douthat views yesterday’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act as “updating a successful law to reflect contemporary realities, which under our system is supposed to be the role of the legislature rather than the courts.”

[A] Republican-controlled Congress showed absolutely no interest in fulfilling that obligation when the V.R.A. was actually up for legislative review in 2006. On one level, that year’s 98-0 Senate vote, which extended the act by another quarter century, makes the case for judicial deference on the issue even stronger, since it suggests that a broad democratic consensus exists in support of the existing provisions. On another level, though, it’s an example of how Congress can effectively invite the judicial usurpation of politics, because that’s what many of the Republicans who voted to reauthorize the V.R.A. in 2006 were kind-of sort-of doing: They favored revisions to the act, but saw no political percentage in picking a fight on such a highly-charged, historically-freighted issue when it could be litigated through the courts at a lower political cost instead. So the Court’s intervention here isn’t just an example of judicial activism; it’s an example of judicial activism in a sphere where many members of Congress clearly preferred such activism to the exercise of their own constitutional prerogatives.

His larger point:

In some of these cases, Congress is ceding power out of incapacity, but just as often it’s ceding it by choice — deferring to the imperial presidency, welcoming the encroachments of the administrative state, looking to the juristocracy for refuge and support on difficult and polarizing issues. So while it’s worth criticizing judges for their immodesty and our presidents for their power grabs, it’s also important to recognize the role played by legislators whose abdications have enabled both: Politics abhors a vacuum, and our elected representatives are often far to happy to have someone else step in and fill it …

logotv:

Double Elimination: Ring It On with Logo!

YASSSSSSSS!!!!

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has called for a second special legislative session that will begin on July 1, according to ABC News reporter Arlette Saenz. The news comes less than 24 hours after Texas’ first special session concluded with a 13-hour filibuster that effectively blocked an omnibus abortion bill from passing.

Perry convened the first special session to give lawmakers more time to consider abortion-related bills that failed to advance during the state’s regular legislative period. Since special sessions operate under different rules, they allow the Republican majority to more easily rush through legislation without as much room for debate. Nevertheless, a coalition of grassroots women’s health activists and state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) were able to delay the stringent SB 5 measure by delaying a final vote. On Tuesday night, Davis successfully filibustered SB 5 by talking about the legislation for over 12 hours without sitting down, going to the bathroom, eating, drinking, or straying off-topic.

Nevertheless, despite Davis’ successful maneuver to defeat the legislation and the outpouring of support from activists across the country, there’s nothing to stop Perry from calling another special session. Some women’s health advocates speculated that Republican lawmakers were counting on it. There were two other pieces of legislation up for consideration during Tuesday’s debate, and in order to block SB 5, Davis was forced to filibuster all of them — so the governor may be able to use those bills as an excuse for giving lawmakers yet another extra lawmaking session this year.

It is unlikely that the same tactics that women’s health advocates used to delay SB 5 during the first special session will be effective during the second. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that, under a second special session, the legislation is likely to be approved.

If enacted into law, SB 5 would criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and shut down 90 percent of the abortion clinics in the state. Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards has pointed out that, due to the Lone Star State’s size and density, leaving Texas women with just five abortion clinics would be tantamount to banning the procedure altogether.

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