Carnival of souls

* To the extent that you care about the blend of enthusiasm and unease this blog occasionally displays for displays of hypermasculinity, you are advised to download and listen to Matthew Perpetua’s best-of mix for mock-cock-rock geniuses the Electric Six. You probably are familiar with their songs “Gay Bar” and “Danger! High Voltage,” but that truly is just the tip of the iceberg for their oeuvre of awesomely accurate lampoons of macho insecurity. The mix even includes songs from their not-yet-released fifth album Flashy, so go and enjoy the sound of the future.

* Tom Spurgeon has done another of his always-worth-reading slush-pile review marathons. This one includes his takes on the rewardingly bizarre Water Baby by Ross Campbell, some Johnny Ryan minicomics, the latest MOME, and, in a review that contains compliments so awesomely backhanded they’ll make your face ache, Comic Foundry.

* Chuck Palahniuk says his first more or less openly horror novel Lullaby is headed to the big screen. Chuck Palahniuk is not the most reliable source of information regarding movie versions of his books, but hey. (Via Bloody Disgusting.)

* Aaron “Chief Galen Tyrol” Douglas says Battlestar Galactica‘s final episodes won’t start airing till April, rather than the originally announced January start date. (Via AICN.) SciFi Channel says au contraire–the January start date is on as planned.

* The very good comics and art publisher PictureBox is having a deep-discount sale on everything in its store this week. Unsurprisingly, I bought a T-shirt.

* Curt Purcell of The Groovy Age of Horror continues his series of essays critiquing–even “debunking,” in Curt’s words–Freud’s seminal essay “The Uncanny,” one of the core texts for scholars of horror. This time out he argues that the supernatural isn’t scary because of how it indicates the return of the repressed, but that the return of the repressed is scary because it indicates the presence of the supernatural. Total protonic reversal!

* CRwM of And Now the Screaming Starts has been taken a lengthy, YouTube-enhanced look at each of Coney Island’s three haunted-house rides. View at your own risk!