Greetings brethren and sistren, ’tis time for another edition of THAT’S METAL!, a rare mid-week edition, in fact. For the uninitiated, these are posts in which we collect videos, photos, and news reports that cause us to think, “Shit, that’s metal!”, even though it’s not music. Here we go . . .

ITEM ONE

I know this is a matter of taste, but in my opinion, everything tastes better with bacon on it. Such a sentiment will be offensive to vegetarians, animal rights advocates, nutritionists, gourmands, and people of advanced intellect everywhere. Even though I am not a person of advanced intellect, I am also conflicted in my feelings about bacon for many of the same reasons that cause offense to all those people. However, it just tastes too fuckin’ good for me to alter my own behavior or personal taste!

And by sheer happenstance, I came across several bacon-related items in the past couple of days, which I interpreted as a cosmic message to baconize NCS in this THAT’S METAL! installment. The first item is above (via Presurfer). You can buy it for $2,999.99 from the Everything Should Taste Like Bacon web site, run by Seattle-based J&D Foods, the same company that gave you baconlube (bacon flavored personal lubricant). It’s advertised as follows:

“Is there a better way to show your love of bacon forever than to be buried wrapped in it? We don’t think so. This genuine bacon casket is made of 18 Gauge Gasketed Steel with Premium Bacon Exterior/Interior, and includes a Memorial and Record Tube, Adjustable Bed and Mattress and Stationary and Swingbar handles. It also includes a bacon air freshener for when you get that buried-underground, not-so-fresh feeling.”

Yup. That’s a fine lookin’ ride. But wait, there’s more! Continue reading »

A solid month has passed since I posted the last installment of this series, and I’ve accumulated lots of shit for this one. I couldn’t bring myself to cut it back too much, so this installment is chock full of images and videos that I thought were metal, even though they’re not music. Felicitously, some of these items make nice pairings with each other. And though this is long, what else are you going to do on a Sunday? Give your hedgehog a bath? Inscribe new sigils on your arms with razor blades? Loll around in your underoo’s wondering what to do next? Do this next . . .

ITEM ONE

It’s almost a requirement that these posts include non-human weirdness from the natural world, so I thought I’d go ahead and get that out of the way from the top. Above is a photo (by Alexander Semenov) of a sandworm — more specifically a King Ragworm. They live in mudflats. They often reach great lengths, sometimes exceeding four feet. All of those legs protruding from the body not only provide a means of locomotion, they are also external gills through which the creature breathes. The King Ragworm also bites, and has been known to bite people.

If I came across one, I’d be conflicted by the impulse to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible and the desire to gaze upon its beauty. So I’d probably stand and stare, and wet myself. (via TYWKIWDBI)

ITEM TWO

Sticking with strange imagery, the next two items aren’t gif’s, though they do seem to move. Instead, it’s your damned eyes that are moving, even when you think they’re not. Those movements are called microsaccades. Even when we’re staring at a still object, our eyes keep darting around. Those movements “help us compensate for a peculiar property of the eye: if we stare at an object for too long, the signals each photoreceptor sends to the brain become weaker. Microsaccades refresh the photoreceptors with a different input and breath new life into our perception.”

The following images take advantage of that phenomenon to create the illusion of movement. And I thought this happens only when I get wasted, when everything moves of its own accord. Continue reading »

“An unexpected side effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiderwebs. People in the area had never seen this phenomenon before.”

That’s the caption for this photo I found someplace. It originally appeared at National Geographic. It’s metal, because it’s creepy as shit. Also, I would not stand under one of those trees, because fuck spiders. I hate ’em.

And that’s how we begin this milestone 50th installment of THAT’S METAL!, a series in which we collect images, videos, and news items that we think are metal, even though they’re not music. I have five more items in this installment, many of which were suggested by NCS readers.

ITEM ONE

This next item came our way via Ben C., proprietor of the newly created Church of the Riff blog. In some countries, you show disrespect to pompous dicks blabbing away at press conferences by throwing shoes at them. Apparently, in Russia you buzz them with flying dildos. Continue reading »

This will be our last THAT’S METAL! post of 2011, unless I decide to do another one, in which case this will be the penultimate one.  It really, probably, will be the last one.  I mainly just wanted to use “penultimate” in a sentence. I don’t see why Andy Synn should be the only person at NCS who uses words like this.

“Penultimate” is a cool-sounding word, although it doesn’t really look or sound anything like what it means. In that respect, it’s like “mantissa”. Mantissa sounds like some kind of giant centipede-like monster with big mouth pincers that it uses to tear and consume human flesh. Instead, it means “an addition of little importance”. “Dragoman” is another example. It sounds like a name or the bass-player in a vicious black metal band, or maybe a Bulgarian MMA star. But it simply means “an interpreter or guide”.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, THAT’S METAL! These are the posts where we collect news items, images, or videos that we think are metal, even though they don’t have anything to do with music. Today, we’ve got four items, and I will act as your dragoman as we work our way through them, providing my own mantissas as we go.

ITEM ONE

Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese artist, though he has lived in New York since 1995. His medium of choice is gunpowder. He started off using gunpowder in drawings, and then moved on to the creation of “explosion events”. If you watched the waaay over-the-top opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, then you’ve seen his work. His most recent explosion event was a daytime spectacular on December 5 called “Black Ceremony” at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. It’s been described as the largest daytime fireworks display ever. Continue reading »