So it goes . . .

You're probably aware of it by now, but yesterday one of the great American authors Kurt Vonnegut died at the age of 84. You can check out the International Herald Tribune's obit article here if you like. I've only read a couple of his books, but I like them a lot. His writing was unique, one line paragraphs, trippy names, dark dark humour at times and the occasional poorly drawn asshole.

Mr. Kilgore Trout you will be missed.

Now this is something that I had to share, when speaking to a friend last night I learned of Icelandic witchcraft and their strange strange practices . . . one especially scary bit of this are Necropants (Nábrókarstafur). The following is lifted right from a website on the topic:

"These were made with the intact skin of the lower part of the human body, dug up from a church yard. When worn they will become undistinguishable from one's own skin. The stave should be kept in the scrotum along with a coin stolen from a poor widow. Money will then constantly be drawn into the scrotum"

The stave mentioned in that quote is a magical rune or symbol, you can read more about them and see some examples of them here. And just in case you're wondering what a pair of necropants looks like, you can see them here . . . but once you see them you can't unsee them.

I read a little bit on that web page last night and it seems that grave robbing is an important part of Icelandic magic . . . I guess there wasn't much else exciting to do in Iceland hundreds of years ago, eh? But there's a lot of cool stuff to do there now, at least according to their tourism website there is . . . I wonder if they mention hanging out with Bjork on there?

And now for something completely different; I'm sure we're all familiar with the Black Eyed Peas song "My Humps" by now, well apparently Alanis Morisette liked the song a lot too (because who doesn't want to know what you're going to do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk) because Fergie liked the video so much she sent Alanis an ass shaped cake . . . but I can't find the link to that now.

As creepy as Alanis' My Humps was, it doesn't come close to out creepying Tori Amos' cover of Slayer's Raining Blood, you can check it out here if you dare! In case you want to compare, here's the original live in concert.

Well I think that's enough for today, until next time.