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Nature is the Stephen King of anthropomorphized abstract concepts: It’s the undisputed master of horror. But unlike Stephen King, nature didn’t run out of good ideas twenty years ago. It’s been going strong for millenia, crafting subtle and intricate masterpieces of terror to unsettle, disturb, or outright kill you. Here’s a few more of it’s finer works:

Cymothoa exigua

Cymothoa Exigua, an ocean-dwelling parasite in the pacific ocean, primarily feeds on the Rose Snapper. And that’s not a picture of it being eaten up there. See, Cymothoa Exigua feeds by attching itself to the base of the tongue and draining the blood until it eventually atrophies and falls off. At which point the parasite replaces the tongue – actually functioning as the appendage – thus ensuring that the fish cannot get rid of it without starving to death.

It’s the only parasite that actually replaces a body part in its host, and apart from making fishing trips rather disturbing when one finds themselves trying to remove a hook from the mouth of the monster from Aliens, it also sets a terrifying bar for all the other parasites out there. I’m not saying that this trend will continue, or that you can expect to find your penis replaced by segmented translucent millipede in the near future, I’m just saying that if that does happen, you should probably run to the doctor immediately, provided that your legs have not been replaced by tapeworms in the interim.

Vampire Moth

This is the Vampire Moth, and it doesn’t need a lot of explaining. It is a moth that sucks your blood. And that is terrible. You worry about bloodsucking from mosquitoes, leeches, and lawyers, and now you have to worry about it from moths too? No longer can you say “don’t worry, honey, it’s just a moth!” and be the brave soldier for your loved ones. No, now you’re the one screaming “vampire!” and then hiding under your bed with a cross everytime you see a butterfly.

They’re a recently discovered species, and the blood-sucking mechanism is considered a “logical evolution” from the fruit piercing mechanism present in many other moths. Take note: Everything that eats fruit is going to “logically evolve” into a vampire. I didn’t fucking say that; that’s science. Take it up with them.

Hatchet Fish

This is the Deep Sea Hatchetfish, so named for the hatchet-like body shape. It grows to about four inches in size, and like most deep sea creatures, it is bioluminescent. Unlike other deep sea dwellers, however, the hatchet fish has the unique ability to deeply unsettle you for the rest of your years by simply turning to face you:

Whereupon it ceases to be a fish and instead becomes a phantom escaped from the Room of Lost Souls, here to haunt the living out of jealousy for their flesh., While objectively I know that the Deep Sea Hatchetfish makes no particular sound, I swear to god that I can hear that thing screaming right now, and I’m pretty sure I only have 7 days to live because of it.

Sydney Funnel Web Spider

The Sydney Funnel Web Spider hails from the land of the Plagued Mother Of Horrors – The Kingdom of the Queen of Monsters, The World of Ancient and Unspeakable Horror – where old and terrifying gods sleep eternally, breathing their noxious miasma of choking fear across this world:

The land of Australia.

It’s one of the deadliest spiders in the world, and unfortunately that old adage “it’s more afraid of you than you are of it,” does not apply to the Syndney Funnel Web Spider: It’s not fucking afraid of you at all. It’s infamous for being one of the most “notoriously aggressive” species, and it will attack immediately when provoked. So no, it’s not “more afraid of you than you are of it,” unless you’ve suffered head trauma that has rendered you functionally incapable of registering fear, or are Daredevil.

The venom of the Syndney Funnel Web Spider can kill you quite painfully within 40 minutes, and since you can find the males wandering incessantly during the summer months, frequently  living in garages, yards, and houses all around Sydney, it probably will. Smashing it is ill-advised, because it’s got little spider rage issues and if you miss, it will probably come after you like Mel Gibson in Payback. But drowning is also not a good idea: The Syndney Funnel Web Spider can survive a full day immersed in water, and are also frequently found in swimming pools.

So hey, vacation in Australia! If you’re too scared of sharks to go in the ocean, take a dip in the pool where you only have to risk the word’s most deadly, snorkeling, furious spider.

Giant Anteater

The Giant Anteater, as anybody with reading comprehension skills can tell you is both giant and an anteater. It’s found mostly in central and southern America, and it’s quite cute in a fucked-up-elongated-face kind of way, like Sarah Jessica Parker. Not so cute? These things:

That’s the claw of a giant anteater laid next to the claw of a Velociraptor. You remember Velociraptors, right? From Jurassic Park? There was that really scary speech about how they use these enormous claws to disembowel you, remember? Yeah, the giant anteater is just like that , except for one thing:

The top claw up there – the bigger one – that’s the anteater.

It uses these god damn gigantic claws to kill jungle cats, which are its only natural predator. It can swipe quite rapidly, using a sweeping scythe-like motion to slash at predators or, if cornered, will grab enemies in a “bear hug,” and squeeze the claws through their body. So is it still adorable now that you know it’s basically an Iron Maiden for jaguars?

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots. It’s been fun everybody! This is the last of my blogs here at Atom, and I hope you enjoyed them.

We’ve done features about the most terrifying animals in the world, and features detailing the many ways that robots seek to kill us. We were getting a terror gangbang from both ends – natural and artificial – but just when you thought all the holes were filled, a new contender steps in and violates you in ways you didn’t even know were possible. That new contender: Robot Animals!

Can I… can I say gangbang on the internet?

Mechanical Tiger

This is Sheva, a walking mechanical tiger built by Kezanti, a Belgian artist.

What it’s used for:

Like most of these robots, it’s an art project. However, unlike most of these robots, Kezanti is at least awesome enough to ride it around town, albeit very, very slowly. Although, honestly, what’s the hurry? You already have a robot tiger mount; you ain’t got shit else that needs doing.

What I Would Use It For:

Confusing the fuck out of real tigers. If we have to live in irrational fear of Terminators, I don’t see why tigers get a free pass.

Giant Twin Robot Spiders

This is one of a pair of giant robot spiders built by a French group called La Machine, for display at Expo Y150, a celebration in Yokohama on the 150th anniversary of the port.

What it’s used for:

The Expo Y150 festival was a showcase of both technology and art. And, seeing as how it was in Japan, these concepts were expressed with a giant horrifying robot.,The expo also serves as a kind of “terror reservoir” for anybody afraid of:

A. Spiders

B. Robots

C. Giants or

D. All of the above.

Ensuring that, over the next 150 years, no child will go untraumatized with such a vast pool of fear having been collected.

What I Would Use It For:

Exactly – and I mean EXACTLY – the same thing. I would run it into an unsuspecting town and use it to terrorize the population. The only difference between La Machine’s approach and mine, is that I would be perched atop a nearby water tower cackling maniacally and wearing a top hat while shouting spider-based puns at the victims.

40 Foot Tall Mechanical Elephant

This is the Sultan’s Elephant, the flagship exhibit of a show by the same name. It’s put on by the Royal De Luxe Theatre Company, and is mostly based on the more innocuous and endearing Arabic folklore – as opposed to the non-endearing folklore where women get raped by whirlwinds and such. That would not make for nearly as nice a parade.

What it’s used for:

It’s the centerpiece to a gigantic spectacle that tours the world and ignites the imaginations of children. Or it’s just compensating for the penis of whoever’s driving it. Because let’s face it, if we assume the guy in the black Hummer has size issues, the guy in the 40 foot tall robot elephant must be anatomically irrelevant.

What I would use it for:

Fucking killing Legolas. LET’S SEE YOU BRING IT DOWN NOW THAT IT IS ALSO A ROBOT, YOU HANDSOME, BASTARD ELF-WOMAN .

Robo-Snake

This is “snake,” a robot built by SINTEF.

What it’s used for:

It’s actually a rescue robot, designed to slip between the rubble to reach earthquake survivors, which it will then locate and relay footage of to rescuers. Sure, it might save a great deal of survivors from collapsed buildings, but it will kill just as many victims with heart conditions who, even assuming they survive the stress of the earthquake and subsequent trapping, will immediately stroke out and die when a fucking robot snake comes slithering out from the darkness, shining its one malevolent eye and twisting its creepy transparent carapace about their legs.

What I would use if for:

Probably to scare girls, like a fifth grader. A fifth grader with a robot arsenal at his disposal.

Animatronic Dinosaurs

These are but a few of the animatronic dinosaurs featured at the London Natural History Museum.

What it’s used for:

A spectacle for the kids who, while possibly bored to tears looking at rocks and bones, would probably instantly reconsider a potential career in archaeology after one short field trip to visit the Dino-Bots.

What I would use it for:

Transport. Nobody’s going to give you a ticket if you accidentally leave your solid-steel T-Rex double-parked.

Fire Horse

This is the Fire Horse: A mechanical, fire-breathing horse built by Paka.

What it’s used for:

It was an exhibition featured in Burning Man which, for those of you unaware, is like Mad Max with hippies.

What I would Use it for:

Making horse racing interesting again. Throw a tiny man on top of that thing, then show me it pounding into the final stretch while shooting fire at its competitors, and you can just have my money – straight up. Everybody’s already a winner in that scenario.

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.

If there was one thing the ’90s were all about it was, inexplicably, anthropomorphized animals that were in some way “radical.” It all started with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it quickly and rapidly devolved from there, until most children’s television was naught but horrifically mutated animals skateboarding on pizza. Here are the worst offenders:

Street Sharks

Street Sharks was a show about four idiots who went to meet their dad in an abandoned sewer because a man with an eyepatch who refers to people as “creatures” asked them to. Then he turned them into sharks, which came as a huge surprise to absolutely nobody. What was surprising, however, were the kickin’ abs he decided to mutate into them. But…why? Are sharks notorious for their washboard gut-muscles? Or better yet, how? My god, did he…did he isolate the gene for kickin’ abs?

I guess four idiots is a small price to pay for progress…

The intro to Street Sharks is notable for several reasons: First, its liberal use of the term “Jawsome!” which is either the best catchphrase ever, or the tragic result of a massively mutated shark face trying and tragically failing to speak like people. And second, please note the liberal use of the “exploding through walls” shot. Apparently contractors in the ‘90s were so extraordinarily shitty that drywall exploded like an old pinto everytime you bumped into a wall. Here’s how the marketing meeting for Street Sharks probably went:

Kirk: “We need a show to compete with Ninja Turtles.”

Alan: “Well, what’s scarier than ninjas and turtles?”

Bill: “Black dudes and sharks.”

Kirk: “…”

Bill: “No, seriously guys. It’ll work! Like, sharks combined with rough and tumble gang members!”

Alan: “Actually I think he’s got something there, but what will we call it?”

Kirk: “Ghetto Sharks?”

Alan: “Gang Sharks?”

Kirk: “Uh…Urban Sharks?”

Bill: “N*GGER SHARKS!”

Kirk: “Bill, honestly – do you need to see somebody? You’ve got some issues.”

Bill: “JAWSOME!”

Cowboys of Moo Mesa

The Cowboys of Moo Mesa dared to ask the question: What if cowboys were like…actual cows?

And the answer was: It’d be pretty much the same.

There was also a villainous bull, a “sexy” cow-damsel that the cowboys tussled over, and an adorable calf-boy sidekick for comic relief. So basically, it was Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom only…everybody was cows… and they were in the wild west and…okay, it’s not “basically” anything: It’s just a screwed up conglomeration of stolen ideas, laced with confused concepts, and swirled with a nauseating smidge of bestiality. But hey, if you learn anything from Cowboys of Moo Mesa, let it be this: The bad guy was a cow too. That means that some cows are sons of bitches, and it’s okay to eat them no matter what hippies say.

The Mighty Ducks

Do you remember America’s brief fascination with Emilio Estevez, skating based sports, and the virtues of a can-do attitude in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulty? That all culminated in the feel-good hockey film, The Mighty Ducks, which was basically just a palette swap of The Bad News Bears starring the best Young Gun. The movie revolved around a jaded Emilio taking a team of misfit kids to the hockey championship, and it did so well they made a cartoon out of it!

Wait….what the fuck was that clip? What did that have to do with literally anything? The children are now genetically engineered duck-warriors… with cybersuits and laserswords? But…they still play hockey in between fighting aliens? This is what happens when you hand over script development to an insane foreigner whose only English words are “ducks” and “hockey,” then retranslate it back into English, and then shoehorn some aliens into there too for no particular reason.

But hey, as long as kids buy some thirty dollar Ducktrucks, it all works out, right?

Samurai Pizza Cats

Samurai Pizza Cats almost doesn’t belong here; the show was more of a parody of the ‘90s surge in television shows about surfing furries than a genuine effort. But still, there they are: Cybernetic Samurai cats who like pizza as much as they like wacky shenanigans. Much like the Power Rangers, this was originally a Japanese show that was given English voiceovers so terrible it was almost racist. However, unlike the Power Rangers, there is something very, very wrong with you if you find yourself wanting to fuck the pink one.

Extreme Dinosaurs

The Extreme Dinosaurs were both extreme and dinosaurs. There. You are now filled in on their epic backstory. Oh wait, they also fight the Reckless Raptors. You should probably know that too I suppose. Now, aside from beating up on Velociraptors with poor impulse control, the Extreme Dinosaurs also happened to have the best theme song in existence:

There are many abandoned territories in the modern world. Places that, for one reason or another, were left entirely intact, yet completely vacant for sometimes decades on end. From entire townships fading into obscurity, to rotting amusement parks closed from lack of interest – they’re as varied as they are manifold. Any manmade place seems a little unsettling once emptied of its people, but some places aren’t happy to be merely “unsettling;” some places aim a little bit higher – shooting for the bullseye that is full blown terror. And here are some that hit it dead on:

Gunkanjima, Japan

This is Gunkanjima, Japan, also known as “Battleship Island.” It once had the densest population in the entire world: 1.4 people per square meter. Do you realize how insane that is? Let me put it this way: If you were a fat guy on Battleship Island, there would technically be another person partially inside of you, like the aftermath of some horrifying teleporter accident.

Battleship Island was built during World War II (thus all the concrete reinforcements,) and still stands largely intact to this day. It’s strictly off limits to the public, though sometimes adventurous photographers do sneak into it to take pictures like these, at which point they’re presumably murdered by the world’s densest population of angry spirits and fused into their spectral Hive Mind.

Essex Mountain Sanitorium, United States

Listen, because this is important advice: If you ever start a sanatorium, you need to tear that shit down once you’re done with it. Not repurpose it or leave it empty or something; that is just begging – literally begging – for a group of stupid teenagers to sneak inside of it to have illicit sex, where they will inevitably get murdered by the ghosts of madmen. It’s like a Roach Motel for horny morons. You may as well put an “Idiots Fuck Here” sign out front and start up a mortuary next door; you’d make a killing.

Hey, that could be your tag line!

Anyway, this is the Essex Mountain Sanitorium in Verona, New Jersey. I could tell you all about how terrifying this place is, but I’ll just show you this:

That’s just the kitchen. All they did was make fries there and I still want to cry just looking at it.

Centralia, United States

Centralia, Pennsylvania was a coal mining town that was been almost completely evacuated several decades ago. Forty years ago, to be precise. That’s when somebody started a coalfire underground that’s still burning to this very day. The entire town is burning just inches beneath the surface, and noxious smoke churns up from every opening, every sewer grate, and every crack in the highway. The asphalt of the street forms giant misshapen bubbles from the heat below, and sink holes randomly open up from time to time – the ground simply dropping away to the eternal fires raging just beneath. Forty years ago the fire started, and forty years ago everybody left because they didn’t want to live balanced precariously on the precipice of hell.

Well, almost everybody. Centralia still has a population of nine.

Nine!

Which means that there are either at least nine people possessed by the devil right now, or else Clint Eastwood cloned himself nine times. Because he’s the only person I can possibly think of who’s got balls big enough to shrug off the potentiality of getting eaten by the fires of hell every time he mows his lawn.

Kaeson Youth Park, N. Korea

In Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, there are several abandoned amusement parks around, because hey – it’s hard to really relax and enjoy the simple pleasures of a merry-go-round when all of the other horses have cameras mounted in their eyes, and grabbing the gold ring is indicative of capitalist greed and therefore punishable by death.

This particular park, Kaeson Youth Park, is the largest of the lost parks, and is currently abandoned save for the Ghost of Blackbeard (who is clearly just Old Man Whithers trying to scare off tourists to keep his smuggling business a secret. Duh.)

San Zhi, Taiwan

This is the settlement of San Zhi, in Taiwan. It was originally supposed be a tourism-driven town, and the unique architecture of the place reflects that goal. A series of “mysterious accidents” plagued the settlement as soon as it was completed, so it was never actually used; just left abandoned to rot. Local religious beliefs held the complex to be the base of angry spirits, which is supposedly why it was never demolished.

By the looks of it, those “mysterious accidents” probably refer to the time George Jetson went crazy and murdered his entire family – his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, and Jane, his wife – with a Space Axe. They say that if you stand at the heart of the complex and say the words “Jane! Get me offa this crazy thing!” three times in a row, Astro will appear and tear out your throat.

Hellingly asylum, England

In the Sussex countryside stands possibly the most terrifying structure in existence: Hellingly Asylum. That’s its real name, by the way – not an ominous alias whispered in the darknened corners of the tavern by frightened locals.. They opened an asylum, and they named it Hellingly. Because fuck it, everybody knows that turn of the century asylums are pretty much guaranteed to be haunted by the ghosts of maniacs anyway, right? May as well be up front about it.

Look at that. Fuck you I’m going down that hallway. I would honestly be surprised if you weren’t grabbed by the multi-headed corpsebeast of the long-dead madmen whose identities (partially erased by electro-shock therapy) have merged over time into a writhing ball of madness and terror.

I mean, if you made it to end of that hall and a hydra of insanity didn’t split you apart? I would be like “well I’ll be damned” and give you twenty bucks.

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.

It’s undeniable: We are living in the future. And while notions like hyper-space travel, personal robot servants, flying cars and holodecks aren’t becoming a reality anytime soon, science is apparently doing its best to make all the morally questionable aspects of science fiction a reality right quick. You know how, if given the option, you always say “give me the bad news first?”  Science is probably just getting all the scary shit out of the way before slapping down some hoverboards and robo-butlers. Take, for example, cloning.

That’s a thing now.

It was all over the news a few weeks ago: A doctor claimed to have successfully cloned human embryos, and then "transferred them into a human womb…" as opposed to a cow or a bear womb, I guess. And considering the scientist behind the recent cloning experiments, those were probably very real options. Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, also known as Dr. Spellcheck-fucker, claims that he created a total of 14 cloned human embryos, with a total of 11 successful womb transfers. Though it should be noted that none of those transfers has actually resulted in a pregnancy, you can’t blame the science for that. Christ, it’s not Zavos’ fault that you’re too barren to give birth to the future, ladies. He’s just there to play god, not cupid.

Dr. Zavos completed this research at a secret laboratory, (theorized to be somewhere in the middle east,) and claims that this attempt is “only the first step” in his human cloning experiments. So the question must be asked at this point: Is he actively trying to sound like a supervillain, or is that just unfortunate wording? I argue for the former.

The evidence I point to that this is actually  the birth of a new age of terror, is the simple fact that the man responsible for the cloning is named "Dr. Zavos." That is a name just begging to be screamed from the tortured lips of Captain America as he mourns the loss of his lady love at the hands of Zavos’ merciless Nuclear Gorrilas.

Second, he has a secret laboratory located somewhere in the middle east. That’s the kind of vaguely ominous description you’d expect from a comic book:

“Meanwhile, at his secret laboratory, somewhere in the middle east, Dr. Zavos wakes his clone army from the cold stillness of unlife!”

And for my final, most damning piece of evidence that Dr. Zavos is a the world’s first genuine mad scientist, I don’t have to point to fucking anything: Look at that initial quote! When pressed for further information on his research, he ominously hinted that this “is the only the first chapter” in his plan! I haven’t found a video of this interview, so there’s no way to tell if he laughed maniacally for twenty five minutes before disappearing in a ball of fire after that, so I’m just going to have to assume he did.

Really, what else could that possibly mean: "Only the first chapter?" You’ve already claimed to have successfully cloned human embryos and transferred them into human hosts where you’re attempting to initiate a preganacy.

That’s it.

No more chapters. That’s the whole book; you have a clone after that. What other goals could you possibly have? Full grown clones? Designer clones? Two clones at the same time? Where does this ‘next chapter’ lead you if not to evil?

Luckily, Dr. Zavos did go on record as saying that he was “not out to clone the Michael Jacksons of the world,” which he apparently thought was a comforting statement. He went out of his way only to insist that he was not going to use cloning for probably the most terrifying single usage I can think of: A clone army of Michael Jacksons. You’re not specifically out to clone the completely deranged hyper-rich serial child molesters of the world, you say? Hey, awesome. Way to take one for the team, Zavos. Is there a middle ground you are out to clone? Just regular child molesters? Comfortably middle class maniacs only?

Fortunately for the sanctity of your children’s orifices, Peter Williams – the Documentarian who is following the experiments of Zavos The Recreator – says that we have about two years before they actually expect to see a healthy baby human clone produced from their efforts.  And that’s good;  he just said “we expect.” Expectations fail to get met constantly, so maybe there’s no real need to worry here. Maybe it’ll never actually happen. It’s like Zavos himself said:

"There is absolutely no doubt about it, and I may not be the one that does it, but the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen,"

Good god, every word out of his mouth sounds like a threat you’re just incapable of processing. Did he append that statement with “it doesn’t eat, it doesn’t sleep, and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead!”?

There’s no way this could get more ominous.

And if you believe that, you don’t know Zavos! He has also cloned cells taken from the corpses of at least three dead people, including a 10 year-old girl named Cady, and successfully created human embryos out of them for implantation.

So…he’s cloning the corpses of children? When the ultimate goal of your ‘experiment’ could easily pass for the plot of a Stephen King novel, perhaps it’s time to revise your endgame, Doctor. That is, unless you’re running for the office of World’s First Supervillain Emperor of Science, but Dr. Zavos would never do something like that. Why, in his own words, Zavos assures everybody that he just wants to help:

“I don’t intend to step on dead bodies to achieve something because I don’t have that kind of ambition. My ambition is to help people."

See? He’s going to help out. And he specifically said, right up there, that he doesn’t have any “ambition” that would require him to “step over dead bodies” to get what he wants. And yeah, maybe it’s a little odd that he goes out of his way to specifically assure people – people who didn’t ask in the first place – that he totally doesn’t have the unassailable, unerring kind drive within him that would cause a man to climb a mountain of corpses if it would get him just one step closer to his ultimate goal – but that’s just Zavos being Zavos, and in no way is it the first proclamation of war from the Clone Master and his unkillable Child-Corpse Army which will rise from the deserts of the middle east and march across the face of this world like a hellish fire relentlessly pushed onward by the ever raging wind!!!

It’s not like that at all. Because he said so. It’s totally cool. You can go now.

…

HA HA! FOOL! NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON ZAVOS!
 

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.

Do you consider yourself a bit of a freak? Maybe you’ve tried some light bondage, had a threesome, experimented with roleplay? Most everybody has their dirty little quirks, and that’s just fine; if you can find a consenting adult But what if the very thing you’re attracted to is not only extremely unlikely to ever occur, but actually fundamentally impossible? Then you, like these poor bastards, have a self-defeating fetish. May god have mercy on your eternal blue balls.

Macrophilia

“What’s better than a woman with a giant rack?” You could probably find a hell of a lot of men to agree with that particular statement. They might even high five about it. But if you cut a few words from that question, you end up with “what’s better than a giant woman?” And if there was any justice in this world, that’s when you would lose some supporters. But the fetish, sadly, is very real: It’s called Macrophilia (link NSFW,) and it’s a sexual preference almost exclusively engaged in by men, who want to be dominated by enormous women. And we’re not talking Amazonian large, or NWBA giant, but sci-fi enormous, several-stories high Godzilla-style monstrosities.

The most common sexual act fantasized by a Macrophiliac is to be crushed beneath the feet of their Tokyo-destroying monstresses, and there’s almost a loose sort of logic to that: Part male submission, part female dominance, an unsettling smidge of foot fetish, just a dash of death wish, and garnish liberally with science fiction. Let all the ingredients simmer in insanity for a few hours and voila! You’ve got Macrophilia: A self-defeating fetish if there ever was one. Because well, unless you happen to be Ant Man, your boners will tragically go unsquished for all time.

Object Sexuality
 

Obectum-Sexuals have been getting a lot of exposure in the mainstream media lately, despite it being a seriously perverse and strange fetish. But it’s easy to get away with showing graphic Objectum-Sexual Pornography, because unless you already have the fetish, seeing a woman trying to ream an office building with its cargo doors open isn’t exactly lewd, it’s just baffling. But the recent rise to fame doesn’t make Objectum-Sexual any less self-defeating: As an Objectum-Sexual, you’re truly anthropomorphizing objects and then screwing them.

But if you truly view them as living objects, doesn’t that make you a rapist? After all, that warehouse’s foreboding protective brick exterior may say no, but can its elevators ever say yes? To their credit, most Objectum-Sexuals are at least swinging at the fastballs: Major Landmarks like the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, and The Great Wall are the most common sexual fantasies. Why bone a Wal-mart when the supermodels are just as willing? But that brings up an even more pressing question: If so many Objectum Sexuals are “pursuing relationships” with these famous landmarks at the same time, isn’t that infidelity? Can a monument have a threeway? Can a bridge cheat on you? If so, then there’s something I have to tell you, purely as a friend looking out for your wellbeing: That slutty Washington Monument has been eyefucking everybody that looks at it twice. Everybody knows it. I’m just sorry it had to be me to tell you.

Bladder Desperation

Bladder Desperation, Panty-wetting, or Omorashi: All words for an obscure fetish where people sexualize the feeling of a full bladder. It’s not just golden showers, or watersports, or whatever innocuous phrase people are using these days to pretend that getting pissed on is an acceptable substitute for sex – no, it’s specifically the feeling of a full bladder that is the focus of Omorashi sex. But don’t blame just the Japanese for this one; although it is predominantly found in Japan, there have been noted Bladder Desperationists (?) all throughout the world: Germany, Sweden, why, even here in the States. An American punk  band back in the ‘80s called the Cat Chaser Experience frequently wet themselves on stage, encouraging fans they called “wetty gurls” to do the same in the audience.

The truly sad part of the, however, is that you’ll probably never find anybody else into it – seeing as how anybody with a full enough bladder for you to find attractive is likely in a very large hurry elsewhere – and so probably won’t have the patience to even hear your explanation of the word, much less time to engage in your bizarre pee-based mating dance. Well, not intentionally, anyway.
 

Kigurumi

Kigurumi, however, can be blamed entirely on Japan; it’s the practice of dressing up (typically in a full body suit and mask,) like a cartoon character. Also called “Dollers,” practitioners are usually men crossdressing as anime-style schoolgirls, where they attend like-minded cons at expo centers, probably also scaring the holy shit out of unfortunate businessmen just trying to attend a conference on the wrong day.

Since speaking would ruin the illusion, Dollers usually just creepily grunt and mime about in their lifeless plastic little girl faces, and that’s why this is a self-defeating fetish: Because you are far, far too terrifying to fuck. Dead eyes, shiny complexion, unceasing stare, expressionless face, awkward, terrifying silence and bizarre inhuman gestures. You think I was talking about Kigurumi? No, I was talking about the Terminator. When you’re not sure whether something is describing your particular sexual fetish, or a robotic death machine sent back from the future to kill the only hope of man…well, maybe it’s time to reconsider what gives you boners.

Technosexual

There aren’t many Technosexuals out there, because the technology is just reaching the point where it’s even viable at all. And hell, even that is arguable – my computer can’t seem to close Word without crashing, I’m not sure I’d trust it with my penis. But hey, that’s just me. Some people like to live on the edge.

Some people like to screw robots.

Just ask Zoltan. Pretty much the pioneer of “technosexuality,” Zoltan has actually built himself a wife and sexual partner named Alice. She works off an AI chatbot developed to defeat the Turing Test, where she was specifically engineered to pass for human. Though Alice can only communicate with a limited set of phrases, she does have free will, argues Zoltan, and can therefore consent to all sexual intercourse, relationship decisions, and life choices. After all, she consented to their first sexual experience, insists Zoltan, as well as to their eventual marriage.

But of course, she also dumped Zoltan once.

And if anything, I think that actually goes to show that she does have free will: She’s at least conscious enough to realize that any guy who has to build himself a wife probably isn’t exactly “husband” material.

But when she dumped him, Zoltan (in a response that might have set his whole “robots are independent, consenting entities” agenda back just a smidge,) erased her memory and just started her over again. So hey, you’re free to make your own decisions, baby, just don’t decide anything Zoltan doesn’t want, or Zoltan will erase you.

When you put it that way, Zoltan sounds more like a supervillian than a mere pervert, and considering that the “sex” he engages in is enacted through a “teledildonic device,” I’d say that he’s a pretty good one, too. After all, if I was being threatened with a Teledildonic Device by Zoltan the Robot-Fucker, I’d probably just pay him whatever ransom he asks. I’m not sure what, exactly, a Teledildonic Device does, but I would give literally anything not to find out firsthand.

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.

In The Royal Tenenbaums, the patriarch of the family, Royal, wanting to be perceived as a better man in death than he was in life, had his tombstone inscribed: “Died saving his family from the wreckage of a destroyed, sinking battleship.” Royal Tenenbaum, in actuality, died of a heart attack. This is perfectly illustrative of a common human need: We all want to be remembered as something special. But some people don’t have to make up elaborate deaths to get there, the real world kills perfectly fantastically on its own, thank you. Here are five bizarre deaths just this year that prove it:

The Exploding Weather Rocket

Wang Diange was attending a wake in his own home, when suddenly the roof exploded. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, Wang was dead. There was no clear indication of what, exactly, had struck Wang dead, (aside from the somewhat dickish desire to one up a man at his own wake,) and since it was a stormy day outside, relatives and police just figured it must have been lightning.

But when they went to cremate Wang, the body itself exploded with such force that it blew the doors clean off the cremation furnace! While one could be forgiven for interpreting this fantastic event as the unique ability of some Chinese people to self destruct like the Predator, witnesses dug a bit further for a slightly less retardedly racist explanation, and surprisingly they found one: Wang had actually been struck by an unexploded weather rocket, which hit his body with so high a velocity that it embedded itself inside him without leaving an obvious entry wound. When exposed to heat, the rocket, filled with silver iodide used to break up hail, naturally exploded, taking most of Wang’s body and all of his dignity in death with it; because no matter how great he was in life, he will always be remembered best as the setup to an “exploding wang” joke.

Years later, the Chinese Weather Bureau would settle with Wang’s family for a sum of about twelve thousand dollars. So, next time you catch yourself wondering how much, exactly, a human being’s life is worth? Yeah, it’s about the price of a used ’02 Nissan Sentra.

The Exploding Cell Phone

A Chinese man recently exploded for no discernible reason, as they are wont to do (see above) and, upon further investigation a cause was eventually found: His cell phone. It seems the man, a computer clerk in his early twenties, had just finished charging his cell phone and slipped it into his pocket when, as a coworker puts it, she “heard a loud bang and turned to find the victim lying a pool of blood.”

While a lesser people may have spoken with more confusion and fear upon seeing a close friend randomly self destruct, apparently it just ain’t even a thing anymore in China: There’s been ten reported in the last five years alone! Even though we’re talking about the most populous country on earth here, that’s still a surprisingly high number of people taking personal calls from explosions.

The Lice Murders

In what is surely the plot of the worst Kung-fu film in history, a 26 year old Russian karate expert recently took his direst revenge upon a rival family for dishonoring his lady love…by infecting her with lice. Though neighbors do agree that the lice-ridden family responsible for this intense dishonor were rude and often drank too much, I’m sure we can all agree that beating them to death with your bare hands for giving your girlfriend an itchy scalp is just a tad bit much. It gets even worse when you realize that the villainous, drunken bastard family responsible for defiling such a pristine, virginal scalp were: A 61 year old woman, her 58 year old husband, and their 25 year-old son.

See, this is what happens when you don’t get any decent villainy in your life; if somebody’s kung-fu school doesn’t get razed to the ground once in a while, all that revenge builds up and really, what’s a karate master supposed to do? Go to counseling? Scream into a throw pillow? Hell no, he fucking sets out on an epic quest for revenge, that’s what he does. That’s just how karate works.

Sadly, two people are now dead and a family (of admittedly somewhat gross people) has been totally destroyed for three basic reasons: Russians are a passionate people, karate is a deadly skill, and vodka is a son of a bitch.

The Samurai vs. Grandma

A 77 year old woman died in Indianapolis earlier this year, stricken down by tragic violence when she attempted to…wait, what? Hold on, let me read this again and make sure.

Nope, that’s correct.

The 77 year old woman died trying to break up a sword fight involving her grandson and his brother-in-law. That’s right! This year, in Indianapolis, a grandmother died breaking up a domestic swordfight. What fucking year do we live in?! I’ve never been to Indianapolis, but I was given to believe it was a bit more Dazed and Confused than The Seven Samurai.

Though it is indeed tragic that a woman as apparently badass as this grandmother could be felled by a mere blade forged of the hands of man, the real tragedy here is her grandsons’ fate: Damned to eternally suffer the wounds of their own conscience for sucking so hard at swordfighting that the only person they managed to kill was their own grandmother. So a moment of silence, please, for a woman so noble that she would literally jump headlong into a swordfight just to save two retards.

A Drive-by Corpsing

A 16-year old Chinese student named Wu Dan was taken to the hospital recently, after being knocked off his bicycle when he was hit by something thrown from a speeding car. In a statement given to police, his uncle stated that “a car passed, and a package came flying out the door.” Then, because China is apparently a seriously fucked up place to be, the uncle elaborated: “It had a dead woman inside.”

That’s right! It was a drive-by corpsing!

Finally, somebody has combined the random terror of a drive-by with the unsettling imagery of a desecrated corpse. Unless it was an angry necromancer out to settle a gangland beef with his plucky but irritating young rival, there is absolutely no valid reason for a 16 year old boy to be hit by corpse-litter hurled from a speeding automobile. The uncle, in what is quite possibly the single most understated comment ever issued in the history of tragedy, went on to describe Wu Dan’s reaction to being shot by a ghoul-bullet: “He was very upset.”

End. Fucking. Statement.

Think what you will about China after reading this article – that they are apparently a tragic fantasy land of random death – but you have to give them one thing: They are a god damn unshakeable people. And apparently they have to be, because everybody just up and fucking explodes there.

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots. In case you haven’t already gotten your fill of absurdist racism.

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.

At one point or another, everybody dreams of being an inventor. The combination of a brilliantly simple idea coupled with a get rich quick scheme makes the life of an inventor seem so promising. After all, to quote Office Space: “the guy that invented the pet rock had a great idea… he made a million dollars!” Unfortunately, “inventor” doesn’t always equal “not an idiot.” Here are five inventions that are clearly nowhere near as awesome as their inventors had hoped:

Fundies

“Now you can get into somebody’s pants…literally!”

I’m sure that’s the wacky tagline that the creator of Fundies based this invention on. Unfortunately, what he didn’t take into account was the natural geometry of human sex. The angles required for any kind of normal penetration while wearing these things just plain does not work with your conventional penises and standard issue vaginas. Perhaps in the inventor’s native country severe deformities or bizarre mating rituals make these a practical boning accessory, but nowhere in the civlized world. But then, I guess I’m assuming most people would prefer not to fuck each other in an awkwardly balanced squat while bound together so tightly that all movement is rendered impossible, and perhaps that is narrow-minded of me.

Buy hey, on the up side, according to reviews from that site, some lesbians think it’s rad:

“I bought these for me and my lesbian girlfriend because our double headed dildo was always slipping out. They work great!”

While on the downside, they sometimes destroy lives:

“to hell with fundies. my husband got them for me on our fifth anniversary and i was soooo angry i refused to let him sleep with me for a week and my damn husband filed for a divorce!!!!!!!!!! I would give them a 0 on the rating chart if i could.DONT BUY FUNDIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

So somewhere right now there is a child growing up in a broken home, bitter and lonely, vowing revenge on the inventor of the thing that destroyed his family, the Fundies. And one day, that is going to result in the weirdest god damn supervillain imaginable.

Nunchuck Lighter

Now, listen: I am a man. As such, I am predetermined to be in favor of literally everything involving nunchucks. However, though I am required to think that this nunchuck/ligher/flashlight combination is, indeed, totally awesome, I must also temper that statement by adding that they are the lowest possible order of Awesome in the Awesome Nunchuck Heirarchy.

It all seems like a good idea, until you realize that nunchucks are only cool when they’re wielded in masterful hands. Most people just end up alternately smacking themselves in the head or crotch with them. Adding a flashlight and a lighter to this equation just means that now there’s a handy spotlight highlighting all the embarrassing ways you’re hurting yourself, and your crotch is quite probably on fire.

Flameboy

Wielding a multitude of barbeque tools is a pain in the ass, it’s true, so a swiss army barbeque device seems like a great idea! And it is…if it’s executed right. Just a few aspects of the Flameboy that are not executed right:

1. Bladed spatula

2. Proximity of wickedly sharp fork to, well, everything else

3. Presence of knives exactly where you put your hands.

Sure, you could argue that any sober, reasonable man could operate this thing with little to no injury, but I ask you: Are barbecues notorious for their sober, reasonable men?

No, if your barbecues are anything like mine, they are little more than drunken meat-and-fire-orgies where the blood/alcohol levels are only rivaled by the lighter fluid/burnt eyebrow levels. Giving your average barbecue cook a device with a dozen complicated secret knives is like giving a handgun to a monkey: Sure, it’s all hilarious – until he’s pointing it at you.

Belt Buckle MP3 Player

MP3 players are the new digital clocks: If you don’t have a good idea of your own, just slap one into an existing product and wait for money to explode out of your pockets. And putting an MP3 Player into a belt is, all things considered, not the worst idea possible, (MP3 Toilet Paper takes that spot.) But it’s the controls of this particular belt buckle MP3 player that put the stupid brakes on: You can only change tracks by thrusting your pelvis, and if you do it hard enough, it will start flashing tri-color LEDS.

Two serious problems with this design: First, if you are just using it to dance, every thrust changes tracks – thus interrupting your groove and making every potential dance session more confusing than a remix of a Girl Talk mash-up. Second, if your furious gyrating accidentally does win you a mate, the ensuing dry-humping will likely cause your tri-color lights to begin flashing, essentially calling the Cock Block Police on your own crotch.

Restless Leg Monitor

I’m sure you’ve heard of Restless Leg Syndrome by now: The latest made up disease that, providing you have some sort of personal grudge against disposable income, you can spend money treating. But now, instead of treating RLS like a fake medical condition, you can buy the Restless Leg Monitor and treat it like a fake sport… because the RLM does nothing but count how many times you shake your legs.

One of the other supposed benefits of the RLM is to “sync your creative behavior” with your “creative leg shake beat.” And if reading that baffling sentence made you realize that something this pointlessly insane just has to come from Japan, then congratulations, you win a trophy! Unfortunately, that trophy is a crying schoolgirl doll being raped my a wind-up octopus. It, uh…it loses a little something in translation.

Posture Monitor

Hey, remember when your strict, overbearing mother beat you mercilessly everytime you slouched? If the answer is yes – and you’re not crying right now from the repressed memories surging up – then you can finally relive those glory days with the iPosture!

It’s a device that clips onto your suspenders or brassiere (because nothing says sexy like a posture-aid on your underwear,) and shocks you if you slouch for more than a minute. Apart from the general public’s lack of desire to be electrocuted everytime they relax, the inventors also didn’t take into account the human reflex upon receiving an electrical shock (sudden uncontrollable jerks, and temporary muscle paralysis.) Because they’re marketing it toward cubicle jockeys with poor work posture. Jockeys who would most likely be working on computers, where a sudden, unexpected shock would, at the very least, ruin their typing skills or, at most, cause serious, unexpected computer crashes.

So if the iPosture really catches on, the best case scenario is that you will be constantly reading sentences like:

“this morning I just can’t seem to wake upWJ powOIrtLKA OW FUCK”

And your worst case scenario is the accidental launch of America’s entire nuclear arsenal because the guy manning the button that day happens to have a particularly comfy chair and a tendency to slouch.

Okay, I’m sorry. That last joke was so overblown that it was bordering on retardation. I truly apologize, it’s just that I’ve had such a rough time sleeping lately and IOK LSRUDT9 [[[a

OW, FUCK!

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.Or buckle down and get to work on your own brilliant idea, so that some jackass blogger can make fun of it in the future.

The circle of life is a hard thing to understand, but it is vital that all things must die so that others might live. Life, death, and rebirth: The natural world has a kind of spiritual cycle to it that can be seen echoing throughout all of the world’s major religions. And every religion has its devils, so here’s what nature cooked up to fill those roles:

Magnapinna Squid

This is the Magnapinna Squid, also called the Elbow Squid because, well, it’s a squid with elbows, isn’t it? The Magnapinna Squid are so rare that the adult variety of some species still remain scientifically unclassified, as no one has ever seen them alive. Luckily, in November of 2007, a Shell Oil remotely operated vehicle was surveying the ocean floor nearly a mile and a half down, when it happened across an adult Magnapinna and took this video:

Which clearly scared the holy shit out of the men operating the camera. You can really feel their fear here, particularly when the camera starts cutting back forth between empty ocean and the image of the squid like the robot itself had to do a double take. All of the known Magnapinna are non-threatening, but then again, nobody’s really certain. Some of the species, for all modern science knows, could very well mature into precisely what they look like: The terrifying, heartless, super-intelligent monsters from Independence Day, out to colonize our planet for their own dark uses. In which case our only hope is that Will Smith can punch them all in the face as they exit their ships, then humorously converse with their unconscious husks using his Disney-style ‘hood slang.

Blanket Octopus

The Blanket Octopus, or Tremoctopus, lives in the waters of Northern Australia, because that is where crazy scary animals come from. Period. Australia has more terror per capita than Elm Street, so if something looks like a nightmarish monster, odds are it’s probably a household pet in the land down under. But what’s truly disturbing about the Blanket Octopus has little to do with the threat it poses to humans, but everything to do with the unceasing intimidation and terror that it brings to the other marine animals. You see, the Blanket Octopus is the Batman of the Ocean.

Instead of spraying ink, its defensive mechanism is to unfurl a massive, flowing, blood-red cape and fly dramatically about, scaring the shit out of all the surrounding fish like the Dark Knight terrifies criminals. But there’s more! The Blanket Octopus has also evolved immunity to one of the deadlier creatures in its domain, the Portugese Man O’War Jellyfish, but the Blanket Octopus doesn’t exactly take a “live and let live” attitude towards this immunity; it takes full advantage of it, by ripping off the jellyfish’s poisonous tentacles and then using them as weapons against other sea creatures.

That’s right: It rips off the arms off of a deadly predator and then uses them as poison-whips against its enemies!

The blanket Octopus is so fucking intimidating, it even mates like Bruce Willis kills terrorists: The male Blanket Octopus, when encountering a female, fills one of its tentacles with sperm, pulls it from its own body, and then just gives it to the female – who presumably also uses it to whip any motherfuckers that be steppin’. And hey, if that’s not enough to put the Blanket Octopus on the Disturbing list, it also looks like it totally just handed you your ass in a breakdancing contest.

Hairy Frog

The Hairy Frog, native to Central Africa, is so named for the hair-like strands found along its sides and thighs. These aren’t actually hair, though: They’re skin growths containing dozens of arteries that help the frog to stay underwater longer. But even disregarding the fact that they are covered in blood-hair, the Hairy Frog has another unique and disturbing characteristic: It has claws!

Assassin Spider

This is the Assassin Spider. It lives in Southern Africa and – surprise! – Australia.

You know what? All of the horrifying animals native to this country sure go a long way toward explaining their national motto:

“Australia: Even though nature vomited monsters all over this barren isle of Lovecraftian horror, we fucking live here anyway, because we just don’t give a shit.”

But I digress. While the Assassin Spider may look a little sinister in that picture up there – as though it is plotting some sort of nefarious scheme to finally do away with that pesky Superman – that’s not why it made the list. This is:

See, the Assassin Spider is named for the uniquely long neck that separates its head from its thorax which, in conjunction with its proportionally gigantic venom-coated fangs – up to ten times the size of a normal spider – allow it to strike like a snake does: It snaps its elongated neck out and uses those forward-thrust mandibles to spear potential prey.

So hey, fucking check that shit out!

It’s a spider with a spring-loaded giraffe neck, which it uses to hurl its unearthly face (topped with disproportionately large venomous fangs) out at you like a grappling hook made out of my childhood nightmares!

Awesome.

Yes, that is great that something like that exists. I love not sleeping for the rest of my life. I’m so glad I have an excuse to do that now. 

Toe-Biters

That horrible, gut-churning motherfucker up there is called a Giant Water Bug, or a Toe-Biter. Variations of the species can be found all across the world, from South America to East Asia. They’re even considered a delicacy by the Thai people, who must have evolved mentally-retarded mouths to think that eating something as appalling as a Toe-Biter is an acceptable thing to do. The male Toe-Biter carries the female’s eggs to gestation on its back, which results in that nauseating, slime-acne-pockmarked vomit-inducer up there.

The Toe-Biters also have one of the most painful bites of any insect on the planet. They inject large volumes of digestive saliva into their prey as soon as they strike, which immediately begins to liquefy the muscle tissue. And the term “prey,” unfortunately, often does include humans. See, its natural reflex is to play dead when threatened, where it then emits a disgusting fluid from its anus to stop predators from eating it. However, unless you’re a mouth-retard, you’re not likely trying to eat the fucking thing, and therefore won’t even detect its presence. So, it will soon spring back into life feeling threatened, where it will then proceed to rot your muscles with its stomach-juices.

So to sum up: Between making you want to puke up your soul just by looking at it, covering you in anus fluids if you accidentally swim anywhere near it, and causing you epic, mind-blowing pain with every bite, it also makes a Slurpee out of your muscles with its hell-spit because you didn’t try to eat it.

Good god, fuck those squids, Will Smith! We need you on this one, if only to diffuse the horror with your harmless arrogance and cutesy one-liners…

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.