Once more I find myself sans any better ideas than the usual flotsam today, so I figure it’s time for a newsy post like I used to do before NaNoWriMo. But none of that Friday Science Roundup crap. That got real old real fast.

Luckily, I got some weird ass news stories to share off my Twitter feed today. So hold on to your asses, for they are about to get weird. (Not in a bad way. I am just continuing the metaphor because it seems like the thing to do. Don’t put on your oldest clothes and put a cot next to the bathroom door or nothin’. )

First up, we have this review of the extremely weird Christmas themed horror movie Rare Exports.

Now of course, this is not the first ever Christmas themed horror film. For instance, there is the Silent Night, Deadly Night series of psycho killer horror films, the fourth installation of which gave us the legendary epic Internet meme of Garbage Day.

I have seen that clip a million times, and yet I am still taken by it arresting and wonderful absurdity. It is downright compelling viewing. Given how generally terrible every other scene in all four of the movies of the series is, I can only assume that this one sequence is some kind of magnificent fluke, where all the forces of crappy low-budget no-talent Canadian film making somehow, spontaneously, for 21 magical seconds, crystallized into one of those moments where the ridiculous becomes the sublime.

It’s like rolling a natural Yahtzee on your first roll, or getting a completely fluke hole-in-one. One of those rare moments of perfect order emerging from chaos that demands a moment of respect and awe of the audience.

Anyhow, back to Rare Imports. Apparently, in this Finnish film (the Finns are a weird people), the story is that Santa Claus is actually a malevolent entity that terrorized rural Finland until the people there lured it into a frozen lake and buried it there.

And there it stayed, until that perennial instigator of horror plots, the archeologist, had to go dig it up.

(Seriously, one of my own hardcore rules for surviving being in a horror film is “stay the fuck away from archeologists and archeology in general. That’s always where the shit starts. Also, leave all old things alone. In horror, old = evil. )

So basically, the Finns made a Santa Claus horror film based on one of their own weird old pagan myths, the myth of Joulupukki the Yule Goat. That’s kinda weird.

But even weirder, and far creepier in my books, is this article about how we may be able to soon ‘resurrect’ the voices of dead singers via electronic voice synthesis.

Yamaha has had “vocaloid” technology for a while now, where you can type in words and have the computer sing them however you like. So it makes sense that this would be the logical next step to that. Why stop at creating new voices when you might just have enough sophistication in the technology now to mimic the singing style and voice of Elvis, Usher, or Vera Lynn?

So when I read the story, I was immediately struck by a feel of “Of course!”. It makes total sense that this would be what came next. But at the same time, I was struck by a visceral sense of disgust. Making the dead sing again is just plain ghoulish. And I doubt I am the only one. I suspect that this technology will receive the same sort of horrified reaction as that infamous commercial where Fred Astaire danced with a vacuum cleaner.

There is a difference between what the technology allows us to do, and what is actually worth doing, and when you start seriously treading on Uncanny Valley territory, and nothing quite screams Uncanny Valley like messing with people’s ideas of who is dead and who is not.

Also, and this really bothers me, if they can imitate someone’s singing voice, how long before they can do the same with someone’s speaking voice? And why limit it to dead people? Imagine the chaos possible with faking the voice of a living person. We recognize each other by voice on a very deep emotional level. Identity theft via vocal imitation might be the least of the problems.

Finally, to really max out our weirdness factor, and to one more prove that, despite what we might think, it really is still possible to do something to shock, horrify, and fascinate people, we have this charming story about how two Danish television hosts decided to taste each other’s flesh.

Bet that got your attention. No, they did not turn into zombies and feast on each other’s gooey brain matter. They just had little bits of flesh removes from their bodies, got a chef to fry the pieces up in some sunflower oil, and chowed down.

According to the duo, “We didn’t add any salt or pepper because we wanted to know what it tasted like.”

Well then you shouldn’t have used sunflower oil, you weird and unwholesome men. Sunflower oil is a flavour-adding oil. If you had wanted to taste it without added flavour, you should have used canola.

Also, I hate to break it to you guys, but you went under the knife for no reason. With modern tissue engineering, it would have been perfectly possible to just scrape off a few dead skin cells from each of you, then use them to cultivate as large a piece of your flesh as you want.

You could have had whole steaks of each other without ever going near a surgeon. Not that I am recommending that, of course, but still. Just so ya know.

Well, that’s it for today’s look into the weird, the gruesome, the disturbing, and the macabre. Tune in next time, whenever the hell that will be. How would I know? I’m not a mind reader!

Don’t ask me, folks, I ain’t in charge. I just work here.